The Merger - Spirals - Part 3 Bonus Chapter

(This story is a prequel to The Merger - part 3).

Nadia was busy preparing for her evening show…that is to say, she was bossing other people around while she sat down and enjoyed a drink. It was a hard life, but someone had to do it. 

While she was enjoying her drink and some reading material, she happened to notice a young woman walk into the theatre. The woman immediately smiled and waved at Nadia as she moved towards her table with a nervous yet energetic smile. Nadia just rolled her eyes. She didn’t have time for fan service. 

She was about to get up when one of the waitresses happened to get between the young woman and herself. To her surprise, the young woman simply placed a hand on the waitress’s shoulder and, as she watched, Nadia swore she saw the waitress’s eyes glaze over...as if her mind had simply been switched off. 

Nadia’s curiosity got the better of her and she continued to watch as the young woman that had touched the shoulder of the waitress simply pushed her aside and moved closer to Nadia. The moment the young woman’s hand left the waitress’s shoulder, the life returned to her eyes and she carried on with her previous task as though nothing had happened. 

The situation was...intriguing, to Nadia, to say the least. But it also raised some red flags in her mind. Before the young woman could get to her, she rose from her seat and headed towards the stage, moving onto it and behind the curtain as quickly and casually as she could. She didn’t want to alert the young woman in case she was mistaken, but she did want to observe her first. Something about what she had just done stuck out in Nadia’s mind, although she couldn’t quite figure out just what it was that the young woman was doing.

She slipped behind one of the set pieces backstage just as the head of the young woman appeared through the curtain took around. “Damn.” the pale redhead said in frustration as she pulled the curtain closed and disappeared. 

Nadia slipped out from behind the set piece and slowly peeked around the side of the curtain as she moved to the edge of the stage. The redheaded woman had managed to corner another waitress against a table. “Excuse me…” she said with a smile, “My name is Kelli, I’m with Card Enterprises. I need to talk to the stage hypnotist that is performing tonight…Nadia, I believe? Do you know where she is?” 

Nadia watched as the waitress attempted to brush off the young woman, Kelli, by simply walking away and ignoring her. But to Nadia’s surprise, Kelli reached out and grabbed the waitress by the arm, spinning her around to look eye to eye with Kelli. What was even more shocking was that Kelli’s eyes had taken on an unnatural yellow glow. “Where is Nadia?” the young woman asked softly but firmly as she stared into the waitress’s eyes.

The waitress’s expression instantly shifted from annoyance to relaxation. Her jaw fell open slightly as her eyes took on a very faint, almost vacant, look. “I don’t know, miss….” the waitress responded blankly. “She was here, but I don’t know where she went… maybe the dressing room. Stage door on the right.” 

Nadia quickly pulled her cell phone and started to record what she was seeing. “What the hell?” she asked, shocked, as she glanced between the screen and the two young women she was filming. She blinked a few times and adjusted the angle on the camera, thinking that maybe she was just out of frame. But no matter what she did, she couldn’t see Kelli on the screen. “Holy shit…” she thought to herself. “A vampire?! I haven't seen one of those in…actually I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one of those.” 

While Nadia watched Kelli erase the memory of the waitress and head in the direction of her dressing room, she quickly started to use her phone to look up vampires. Specifically their powers. Because Google is a thing even in New Chicago’s universe. She learned pretty quickly that searching for ‘powers of the vampire’ gives you nothing but Dungeons and Dragons links. After a few refinements, she eventually found what she was looking for: a complete description of vampiric powers and abilities. 

She began scrolling through the list quickly as she continued making her way back to the dressing room.  “Teleportation, weather control, transmutation, hypnotic touch…yeah watch out for that one…hypnotic gaze. Ok, well, this is just… awful. How am I supposed to defend myself against all of this?” With a few more scrolls she learned that you could reflect a vampire’s hypnotic gaze back onto them. “How the hell do you do that? They don’t cast a reflection.” Of course the very next line explained that a vampire will cast a reflection…in a blessed object. “Oh, well that's helpful… let’s see…” she quickly dug through her pockets, hoping to find  something that might be blessed. Because of course people randomly carry blessed objects for no reason. Come on Nadia. 

While she fumbled through her pockets like she was doing the macarena, she happened to look up and notice one of the waiters walk in wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses. “Perfect!” she thought.  She quickly checked to make sure that Kelli wasn’t around and then hopped off of the stage and ran over to the man wearing the sunglasses. Without so much as asking, she yanked them off of his face and looked into them to see how reflective they were. “This should do the trick.” she said, glancing at the confused man in front of her. “Tell me, are you religious by any chance?”  The man shook his head, all while maintaining a pretty solid level of confusion.

“I am…” the waitress next to the man said in an equal state of confusion.

“Excellent!” Nadia shouted louder then she intended. “Do me a favor, honey…make the sign of the cross over these, please.” She said as she held out the waiter’s sunglasses. 

Both of the employees seemed to think that this was part of some pre-show warm up act, so the young woman smiled and made a cross motion over the sun glasses. “Excellent!” Nadia said deviously. “Thank you! Now, both of you…right to sleep!” she said snapping her fingers between the pair of them. 

The snap and command seemed to take both the waiter and waitress by surprise, as they both jumped at the sound and gave Nadia a confused look, but within moments their eyes began to glaze over as the tension faded from their bodies. The waiter’s body began tipping back slowly until he finally fell to the floor, as the waitress next to him fainted in a manner that looked like it was straight out of a TV show. 

Armed with an item that could conceivably do nothing, Nadia confidently put on her newly acquired pair of blessed and, in theory, vampire resistant sunglasses. She marched her way back to the dressing room and just as she opened the door she realized that she needed an excuse not to shake Kelli’s hand. She quickly looked around for anything she could find and settled on the only useful thing in the room…a fire extinguisher. 

She pulled it off of the wall and opened the door to the dressing room where, to no surprise, Kelli was standing. “Hello!” she said with a smile, a cute and innocent expression still present on her face. “I’m Kelli from Card Enterprises, pleased to meet you!” the young redhead said as she extended her hand. 

Nadia lifted the extinguisher up in her hands with a smile. “Pleased to meet you!” she said, pushing past the younger woman. “What can I do for you?” 

“Oh, well, I was wondering…” Kelli said with a devious grin as her eyes looked over Nadia, “If you would be willing to…” she let the sentence trail off on purpose.

Nadia smiled and set down the fire extinguisher as she slowly turned to face Kelli. “If I would be willing to what?” 

“Look into my eyes…” Kelli said forcefully as she stared up into the taller woman’s eyes, or at least where they should have been under the sunglasses. As she did, Kelli’s eyes turned a bright, hypnotic, vampiric yellow. 

Nadia’s heart skipped a beat. The sunglasses managed to block the hypnotic effects of her eyes, either because they were ‘blessed’ or because they dimmed the light. They also afforded her the perfect view. She was staring directly into Kelli’s eyes at the exact moment that Kelli realized she could see a set of eyes in the sunglasses…her own eyes.  This was rather surprising for Kelli as she had not seen her own reflection in several weeks, and never expected to again. But there it was, staring back at her in all her hypnotic splendor…

And that was the moment it hit her. Kelli was staring into her own eyes…while their hypnotic energy was at full force. She felt the energy bouncing back off of the glasses and could feel her body becoming heavier, and heavier as her shoulders were slowly sinking with every passing second. The look in her eyes was one of confusion. She couldn’t look away no matter how much she tried to will herself to look away. The look of her victims as they slowly faded into her power was on display in front of her…but it wasn’t her victim’s face that she was seeing… it was her own. Or...was she her own victim?…She was her own victim…wasn’t she? She realized this just as what was left of her thoughts simply faded away.  

Nadia smiled. “How do you feel, Kelli?” she asked with a devious grin. 

“Good…” was the only reply that slipped through Kelli’s lips. 

Nadia slid her hand along the girl’s arm, up to her suit coat, and moved it off of her shoulders just enough for it to slide off of her and fall to the floor. “That’s a good girl.” Nadia cooed. “You can turn off those hypnotic eyes of yours now Kelli…remaining deeply hypnotized, deeply relaxed as you sink down…ever so deeply and easily for me now…isn’t that right my pet?”

“Yes…” was all Kelli said as her eyes stopped glowing. Nadia smiled and leaned in to kiss the young woman passionately. It was a one sided kiss, Kelli was too far gone to register what was happening, no less react to it. With a gentle tug of Kelli’s blouse, she dragged the girl over to the makeup table and pushed her down to her knees. 

Nadia sank into the chair and stroked the cheek of her prize before as her hand glided down her neck to the buttons of her blouse. One…Two…Three…Four….Five….Six…one by one, the buttons fell away and Kelli’s shirt joined her suit coat on the floor. Nadia couldn’t help but smile as she noticed the young woman didn't bother to wear a bra. “Being immortal has its perks I see.” she said, pun intended, while looking at the eternally young and perky breasts of the hypnotized Kelli. 

Nadia looked at the time…only about 30 minutes until she had to get ready for the show. “Plenty of time.” she thought as she undid her jeans and wiggled out of them, then sat back in her chair and spread her legs with a smile. “Now, my pet…” she cooed as she wrapped her hand around the back of Kelli’s head and slowly pulled it between her legs. “Lick.”