The tharp responded with a gentle, non-sexual caress—a soft brushing of its velvet surface against her skin—which felt like a plea. Remembering that the living fabric drew nourishment from being next to her skin, Kara relented.
“All right, you were very good at dinner,” she told her new dress/pet. “I guess I can wear you to bed too as long as you promise to behave.”
There was no answer except another soft, pleading caress, but that was enough to decide her. Taking off her boots, Kara slipped under the purple coverlet and snuggled into Nadiah’s bed. The last thing she saw as the wall glows faded to dim was the holo-picture of her Aunt Nadiah waving and smiling. The image followed her down into sleep, making her feel safe and secure.
Nine
“Wake up. My Child, you must wake up.”
Kara was having the strangest dream. The picture of Aunt Nadiah was speaking to her. But the voice wasn’t light and bubbly like Nadiah’s voice. Instead it was a warm, resonant, feminine tone filled with authority and power.
It doesn’t sound like Aunt Nadiah, she thought in her dream. But then who is it? Who’s talking to me?
“Wake up,” the holo-picture said again and now Kara saw that it had changed. Aunt Nadiah was no longer smiling and waving. Instead she had a worried look on her pretty face and she was motioning urgently at Kara. Also, her eyes had gone the strange green-within-green that Kara associated with priestesses of the Goddess.
The Goddess, she thought sleepily. It couldn’t be her talking to me, could it?
The thought brought her fully awake and she opened her eyes in the strange bed, feeling disoriented for a moment. Then she became aware that there were low voices coming from somewhere outside her room. She was tempted to roll back over and go to sleep but then she caught her name in the low murmuring and realized that her aunt and uncle must be talking about her.
Need to check this out, she thought and stumbled out of bed, straightening her new tharp, which had somehow gotten twisted around her breasts and between her legs as she slept.
Feeling a sense of déjà vu, Kara crept out the door and down the hallway, listening as she went. She could hear her Aunt Zeelah and Uncle Grennly talking but there was someone else as well—a well modulated, slightly fruity male voice.
Peeking carefully around the corner, Kara saw her older relatives sitting on a stiff, rather uncomfortably looking brown-spotted sofa. Sitting across from them in an equally uncomfortable looking high-backed chair was an older male.
He was a Prime, like Aunt Zeelah and Uncle Grennly, since he had no fangs and his bony shoulders were narrow, unlike a Kindred males would be. He was dressed like Uncle Grennly in a furry orange tharp-kilt and boots but he pulled off the look much better. Maybe because he had a full head of silver-gray hair and an important air about him. He was also carrying a small black bag which looked made to hold medical instruments.
Dr. ThrobGood—that must be him, Kara thought. But what is he doing here so late? Or is it early?
She frowned. Aunt Zeelah had told her that they had made her an early appointment with the doctor. Had she overslept? Or was it still the middle of the night?
Kara checked the chronometer on her arm, which she had set to Tranq Prime time when she got to the planet’s surface. Sure enough, it was three o’clock in the morning, which meant she had been sleeping only about five hours. What was going on?
She started to go out and ask—maybe announce her presence and explain that their talking had woken her and she had decided to introduce herself to the doctor. But something stopped her. Maybe it was the lingering effects of her strange dream but she decided to hang back a bit and listen to what was being said.
“I’ve never performed the procedure on a female before,” Dr. ThrobGood was saying to her aunt and uncle. “I never dreamed I’d be called to do it. A female with fangs—Gods, what an abomination!”
“Yes, Doctor, we quite agree. So you can imagine how desperately we need your help.” Her Aunt Zeelah leaned forward, clasping her hands pleadingly.
“And how much we are relying on your discretion,” Uncle Grennly added grimly. “If anyone found out the girl is related to us…”
“Social suicide.” Aunt Zeelah threw up her hands dramatically. “That’s what it would be—social suicide!”
“Of course you can trust me to be discrete.” The doctor nodded his distinguished looking silver-gray head. He hesitated for a moment. “You do realize there may be…side effects, though?”
Side effects? Kara’s heart began to pound. What was he talking about?
“Side effects?” Uncle Greenly said, echoing her thought. “What do you mean?”
“Well, when we do this procedure on a Kindred male it tends to neuter them sexually. The fangs are inextricably tied to the sex drive in a Blood Kindred.”
They are? Kara thought wildly. But when she considered it, the doctor’s statement made sense. Wasn’t biting seen as a sexual act? And when her fangs throbbed and ached to bite a male, didn’t her pussy also throb and her nipples get tight? Yes, her fangs were definitely a sexual part of her.
“It’s very possible that extraction of the fangs may have the same effect on your niece,” Doctor ThrobGood continued. “She may be unable to experience sexual desire after the fangs are taken out.”
Extraction? Fangs taken out? Kara felt sick. All her nice daydreams of a kindly old doctor giving her cream to rub on her fangs to make them shrink were rapidly imploding. As much as she hated the effect her fangs had on the people around her, they were still a part of her. She didn’t want them removed—she just wanted them to be less
