Val emerged from her studio and descended the stairs to the gallery. She paused at the foot as she spotted a gentleman perusing her works.

Startled, as not many had frequented her gallery, she spoke haltingly at first. "May I help you, Sir? I..I am sorry, I had not heard you come in."

She smiled, and felt a bit awkward as she noticed the paint staining her fingers and nails, and the smears on her clothing.

Her eyes flashed, darkened from their usual icy blue. Out of habit, her tongue flicked over the now tine points of fangs. She sighed and spoke in an odd voice, nostalgic and angry maybe?

"Personal experience." Was all she said. Her nervousness and shyness forgotten, the hunger curled in her belly began to awaken at the dredging up of past memories.

She stepped and stood before the photograph of herself, bound and gagged. "Personal obsessions." She said this time. Turning from the photo, she walked towards the front of the gallery. "Let me know if I can be of assistance, My Lord."

She paused mid-step, paint spattered hands were shoved into the tight pockets of worn denim. A soft sound, perhaps a sigh? and she turns. Her shoulders relax, her posture softens; it's almost as if she has already submitted to something.

"I have been painting since childhood, but nothing like these pieces. I found my way into the darker side of pleasure at the age of 16, and have been obsessed ever since. I would say...ten years, give or take."

Standing, watching him study her works, and those of her own body, something in her stirs. Pain rises to the surface, memories are harder to subdue, but she finds she likes it. She finds herself amid one of those moments of clarity, of almost sanity. They have been rare of late.

Her eyes of icy blue meet his momentarily, years of pain and torment are mirrored there; but only for a moment. She shuts them, tightly, blinking several times, and it is gone. She finds she has to force herself to meet those auburn eyes, something instinctual in her wanting to look at her feet.

She licks vermilion hued lips, and compromises by looking to the girl with him; she smells her, hears her, can almost taste her. She rakes her baby blues over the girl, almost hungrily, predatory. She sees the collar, and must tell herself 'This one is taken, Valentine, she is not food for you.' A shift in her posture, she tenses, muscles shifting beneath flimsy material. Eyes once again focus on the portraits, "I had no choice, actually, when these were done. They were done seven years ago."

As she speaks, the image of that collar still flutters to the forefront of her mind's eye. A pale hand rubs at scars ringing her wrists, one flutters to her throat, and she forces that hand back into a pocket. She moves languidly, her small but shapely form stepping before another portrait. "There are more, upstairs in the studio. I had not hung them because of the content. Some have complained they are too bloody, and have accused me of," She laughs harshly, "'Snuff Photography'. I had the Watch threatening to investigate. I took the advice of a friend and hung them elsewhere. They were commissions, but the lady unfortunately passed before she could collect them." She glances to him, coming to the realization that she is rambling.

She bows slightly, and steps back, murmuring, "I carry on too much, forgive me."

"Valentine De'laCroix. It is a pleasure, Lord Travanix," She extends a delicately boned hand to him after a brief moment of hesitation; would he be insulted that her hands were covered in paint? Well, screw 'im if he was, she decided, quiet to her astonishment.

For a moment, a genuine yet faint smile graces those lips, and then is gone. "As for the pointers? I doubt that I could have any suggestions for you that would be of any use. I was never formally trained, and these are merely an outlet. Expressions from a spoiled, twisted, rich girl; one who has become addicted to capturing that moment of exquisite pain. Some of them, however, are memories that are better put to canvas and photograph, rather than haunting me."

She motions with her head to the latest she had hung, entitled Ode to Belle. "Like that one," she whispers.

"I tried to kill my Sire. I failed. I was trying to make myself feel something more...the girls that come to me, they no longer give me the pleasure they once did." She shrugs, placing her hands in the back pocket of her jeans.

"I like pain. Giving it used to be enough. Now, I think it doesn't." She laughs, softly but with no real humor. "I'm sure you really do not want to hear all this. I think maybe I tried to kill her to get her to attack back. She never looked so beautiful...I never felt so alive as when I thought I might die again."

Her slender form rocks slowly, she seems to stare at the painting again, but a far away look returns to her eyes. Her thoughts slip back to that night, and her senses tingle with the memory. "It think I try to forget it because I know I will never find what it was I was looking for. I don't think I will ever find anyone who can top me. I am destined to dominate these weak little girls and boys forever, never being given the pleasure I give to them."

A moment passes, and she stands taller, angry that she has told so much of herself to what amounts to a mere stranger. "I am sorry. Listen to me go on. My desires are none of your concern. Feel free to look as much as you like, Lord Travanix. Through that door at the back and to the left is a staircase leading to my studio. You are welcome to browse at what is there, as well. If you have something specific in mind, I do commissions."

With that, she turns from him and walks further into the gallery to stand before the picture of herself bound and blindfolded. She stares at the grainy black and white intensely, and a pink blood-tinged tear slips down one cheek. She will never get back those days when it was she who did the screaming.

Val's eyes fluttered, then shut as her head tipped back just so. His words reverberated around her thoughts, a soft sound escaped her lips as she seemed to almost hold back a sob. Her hands clutched at her chest and she spoke in thought, somehow knowing he would hear her; she felt he would understand her better that way.

"It has been so long...the screams find their way out in my work, but it is no substitute. I long to feel the blade against my flesh again, the ropes tight about my limbs. I miss the frustration of being forbidden to climax as my Master teases and lashes my skin with whip and tongue. I miss the cold, hard steel of cuffs clamped tightly about my wrists and ankles. I miss the humiliation of it. I am so eager to please, to give a Master or Mistress pleasure..."

Her eyes open, they are filled with tears, but she wipes them away. Her thoughts are bound and intertwined with the memories, emotions, and sensations. "For awhile, the absense of it all was cause for enough pain to suffice. Then I discovered I could give as well as I took it. The many many girls, and boys, the men....the monsters. All came looking for someone to top them, to make them give in. I did it, and it was enough. But now, faced with the fact that I will live for so much longer than before...the lonliness overwhelms me. My strengths, speed, and thirst...I am a danger to myself and others, they say. No one is willing to break me again."

Her head drops, eyes lowered to study her hands; small cresents of blood appear as her nails had dug into her palms. She speaks, aloud this time, "Yes. The absence of the pain has become something akin to it. It is more desperation and dispair. I am no longer whole."

Valentine stiffened, the sound of a man's voice sending thrills of fear down her spine. She hissed, turned, and back-peddled. Her eyes spark with mania, and she screeches.

"Who are you? What do you want?!"

Her fangs bared, she looks around herself like an animal trapped, spotting the pet with Lord Travanix, and she whimpers, staring at the collar.

Valentine has once again lost it, and the voices scream at her.
"Run! Get away from him! NO! KILL him! NO! Submit!"

She grabs her head, screaming and tossing it back and forth. She bangs her head against the wall to silent the myriad of voices; and when this fails, she bolts.

Running full tilt out the door, she scrambles up and over the brick and stone wall surrounding her back yard, and hides in the overgrown gardens.

She cowered, hiding like a terrified child. She was hiding from her own demons, and not doing so well.

A sound at the Gallery's door alerted her, found it's way through the voices, and Lord Travanix's as well. She scented a human female, the underlying richness of her masked ever so slightly with the faint perfume she wore. Valentine rose to her feet, walked past Lord Travanix, seemingly in a daze, and spoke, "I smell a new obsession..."

She opened the gate and walked around the building, coming up behind the woman at her gallery.

She returned to the gallery after sending off that simpering little human, and without a snack, too! Val was hungry, tired, and bored with this town.

She walked to Lord Travanix and looked him in the eye, as best she could. "Okay. I'm interested. I'm sick of this place, sick of the people, and sick of who I have become. You have an offer? Let me hear it. "

Defiant to the last, she stood before him, barefoot and all 5'4" of her a taught bundle of nerves. Her expression had shifted from politely bored to a mask to hide the eagerness. Her eyes betrayed her, however.