"We want to take him out on a fact-finding mission. He is the only chance we have to infiltrate one of our own among the ruling vamps and find out what they are up to with this new plan." She stared, aghast. "You have us torture him for more than a decade, and now you want to let him go? Are you insane? He isn’t one of our own and he never will be." "No, my dear, but you are. You have established yourself as his control. You are psychological dominant. All the controls and triggers we have carefully carved into him over the decades will help you keep him under control. He will go, with you as his blood-servant. That position will protect you from the others. You can control him, subtly--or unsubtly if need be. You are trained to battle the vamps, you can resist their whims in a way that will make it more believable that he is your blood-bonded. He will listen to you, he must, you have been the only stable point in his sea of pain and confusion." "But he’s mad!" "Indeed. And that is not so uncommon either, as we know, among the older and greater of them. It will seem entirely plausible, I assure you. You need not worry about that part of it." "That's not--I'm not worrying about a *part*. I'm worrying about the whole thing! This idea is mad! Crazy! You will be throwing away my life and all the good that we've gotten out of him over the last couple of decades." The bishop leaned back and shrugged. "The information we've gotten from him, and the knowledge of vamp capabilities and physiology, will not change. That we already have as much as we can get. What we have from him is done. We cannot get anything else out of him that will be new--unless we put a leash on him and take him out into the field."


Inspiration: "Slither" - Velvet Revolver
Story potential: High.
Notes: I like the potential for this one, even if vampires are perhaps burned out in genre. Lots of potential for some very dark stuff, studying effects of torture, Stockholm Syndrome, PTSD etc. Also potential for kinky sexual stuff--no actual sex, though. Making that a thing that will never happen between them makes the dynamic a lot more interesting, I think.

Light travels at a different rate in the mountains. First it covers the peaks and slowly it creeps down the side of the mountain until it reaches the valley. It leaves in reverse, letting shadows sink in to cover us first. So sometimes if you get a really paranoid person who habitually wakes up and tunes in to the radio before the sun reaches that valley floor, if you hear a broadcast screaming at everyone to get out of the light, to hide and not let it touch you no matter what, and if you have fifteen minutes before the light touches the valley, well, you may survive. If you're paranoid, if you believe the broadcaster, or maybe just if you make it a habit to believe every paranoid threat because someday it's going to be right. Not many of us types live in the valley, of course. We favor higher spots up on the mountain, where it's harder for people to get to us. The advantage of high ground, right? But my daughter was 8 months pregnant with her second child, her husband had to work long hard hours, and she needed a hand with the kid. I knew the house well enough, and I believed the radio broadcast. I might not be at home, where I had the full supply stocked, but I did set up an emergency go bag as soon as I got in. Just reflex, really. I knew that my daughter would be the problem. Too many false alarms as a child. She'd never listen in time. But pregnancy's lack of sleep and hormones made her suggestible first thing in the morning. First thing I did was grab the radio and my go bag. I ran to my grandchild's room and lifted her out of bed. As she complained sleepily, I carried her down the steps and into the basement. There was one room without windows and I put her in there and then squatted down and said, very sternly, "You MUST stay here, do you understand? If you leave you will be in a whole lot of trouble." She nodded her head, scared. Good. Now to trick my daughter.


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/53400673@N08/8201465748/in/faves-aswiebe/
Story potential: High.
Notes: Light is bad, and maybe vampires are involved somehow, or not, and...not sure if this is actually a good story idea or if it just pulls at all my post-apocalyptic triggers!

I stood in the sun's X-ray, feeling my bones melt and dissolve and wondering if I would live beyond the sunrise. It had been six hundred years--on the early side, for the transform, according to the notes of those who were left behind. Many didn't risk it until a thousand years, when the odds were 80 percent of success. And we didn't even know if it was worth it. Those who left never communicated with us who remained. But they always looked--transcendent. At 600, I had only a 4 percent chance of success, according to those who documented it. It was almost suicide, but not quite. I hadn't been Catholic for 602 years, but some remnant clung.


Inspiration: A little bibliomancy, based on Eli's suggestion. The first clause is from Sometimes, After Sunset by Tanith Lee.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: This is a different take on vampires. I don't know what it is, but I am intrigued.

Surprise make-outs were surprising! Especailly when you discovered mid-session that you were making out with a vampire. A quick round of spin-the-bottle seemed harmless enough, but when Rob, the new kid at school, the one with the skin condition that got him excused from gym, was kissing her--suddenly she felt something hard shooting out in his mouth. He pulled back and clapped a hand over his mouth, his eyes wide with--embarrassment? "Hey, let me see?" she said, leaning forward and pulling his hand down, and there they were--two quivering little points. "Sorry, I'm sorry--"

Inspiration: Friend talking about surprise make-outs.
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: Well, if vampires are an analogy for sex, why not go all the way with it? So to speak.

"Dinner plans, my darling?" he drawled, wrapping one hand casually around her shoulders.

She grinned at the computer, where the date matching service showed a hopeful-looking white guy in his thirties, slightly overweight, with an average face and a professed "difficulty committing." "Dinner and desert, I hope. His profile says he's into things being a little kinky, so I figure I should be able to talk him into letting me tie him up and--play."

"Am I invited?"

She laughed. "I'm not sharing. I'm sooo hungry, and I don't plan on killing this one, so he'll have to last."

"Aren't you worried about--"


Inspiration: Making dinner plans. Of course, mine involve tacos and not pure terror, but, well--
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: A bit on the clichéd side.

I smelled death and decay and rot on my blind date, even though he smiled with bright white teeth and dressed nicely and was handsome and funny and wore tasteful cologne. I never wore my nose plugs on dates or interviews or anything important. My grandmother would have told me never to wear nose plugs at all, but she'd lived in the country. She'd never had to deal with the constant stink of this many people so close together. And even she had moved to the other side of her little county to get away from a pig farm. I didn't have that kind of money, so I couldn't move away. That was one of the things I'd given up when I'd decided not to become a perfumer in a--

Inspiration: On the bus, reading one of the Greywalker books and thinking about vampires. I want to see the old non-sexy vampires make a comeback.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Don't know where the perfume stuff came from. It's important to note that this main character isn't a werewolf. Is. Not.

"Do you think they'll guess?" Nayla whispered, leaning closer to her sib-sister and running her long nails along the side of her face. "Never," answered Laya. "We are too clever for them, dearest not-sister." Layla chuckled throatily. "Most dear of not-sisters!" Nayla sighed and leaned against Laya, feeling the vibration of the spaceship through the body of her love. "They'll say we're too young," she lamented. "When have elders ever said anything else?" Laya answered. She bent her head and slid her lips across the full, yielding mouth of the girl--


Inspiration: wilowisp answering my cloudscudding poll by saying that I should post less about Barely Legal Lesbian Space Vampires.
Story Potential: Low. Dear lord, this is so awful.
Notes: The kicker, of course, is that they're not actually talking about their, err, sensual relationship...they're talking about about that guy they just killed by draining his blood.