MY SUGAR MUMMY IS A BEAUTIFUL VAMPIRE

Yet when her sister at last swept into view, clad in a figure-hugging sheath of red and looking every inch the haughty aristocrat, it was all Rose could do not to sneer outright at the blatant affectation. There was a petulant set to Elena's features, an all too telling downturn of her lips that put the lie to her attempts to feign grace and serenity.

The lady was offended, her pride stung, that much was clear. And oh, how that realization fanned the banked flames of Rose's barely restrained fury. She could practically scent the self-centered outrage wafting from her sister, the gall of one so deluded by her own overweening hate towards her as to believe herself deserving of utmost deference and acclaim.

"Rose," Elena drawled at last, the barest hint of a sneer curling her lip as she eyed her sister with naked appraisal. "To what do I owe the..." Her pause was deliberate, heavily laden with implication. "Unexpected pleasure of your company?"

"Spare me your hollow platitudes, Elena," Rose bit out, refusing to be cowed by her sister's patent attempts at condescension. "We both know there is no love lost between us, no sisterly bonds of affection that might forge your wretched excesses into something approaching civility."

She took a single step forward, indomitable conviction shining from her eyes like righteous foxfire. "I have come for a reckoning, dear sister - to strip away the veils of lies and deception within which you have shrouded yourself."

Elena's brows quirked in an artfully arched display of faux confusion, her poses as transparent as they were grating to behold. "Lies and deception?" she parroted, one delicately manicured hand rising to her breast in a mockery of maidenly dismay. "Whatever can you mean, sister? I have only ever conducted myself with the utmost--"

"Enough!" Rose's bark of outraged negation cut through the cloying fug of Elena's dissembling like a whipcrack, her composure slipping for one brief, unguarded instant. "Do not compound your already staggering litany of transgressions by layering it with further deceptions, Elena. I know the truth - the mimic you unleashed to ensnare Blake, all this because of jealousy and naked ambition!"

Each accusation fell like the swing of a sledgehammer, pulverizing the flimsy artifice Elena had sought to construct. The color drained Elena's face until she seemed little more than an ashen specter, defensive bravado dissipating like smoke on the wind.

"You...no...how?" she stammered, taking a single faltering step back from the scorching fury of Rose's volcanic outburst, all trace of her practiced poise and feigned disbelief instantly consumed in the face of such blistering certainty.

"Oh, spare me the practiced act of innocence, Elena!" Rose spat with venom tailored to draw blood. "Did you truly delude yourself into believing I would not find the truth, follow the trail of lies and betrayal inexorably back to their source?"

Her advance continued, single-minded and unstoppable, feet seeming to devour the distancing separating them with each punishing stride. Elena retreated until her back collided against the unforgiving geometry of the spiral entry stair, suddenly looking far less the haughty aristocrat and far more the cornered, quivering lamb.

"I have seen the proof with my own eyes," Rose purred, lips peeling back to reveal the glistening lengths of her fangs. "The doppelganger's deception, its attempts to unmask Blake as the architect of its own horrific actions.

And you..." Her hand whipped out, talons scoring crimson furrows through Elena's flawless cheek as she wrenched her sister's head back in a grotesque parody of a lover's embrace. "You played the willing accomplice and enabler to it all, did you not? Fueled by petty jealousy and that insatiable, soulless ambition you've nurtured within you for far too long!"

Defiance flashed in Elena's eyes then, banishing the momentary dismay and fueling the resurgence of naked aggression and venomous condescension. Her lips peeled back in a bestial sneer, revealing the lethal lengths of her fangs as she bared them in an unmistakable threat display.

"And what if I did, dear sister?" she spat, the admission falling like a gauntlet between them despite her bravado. "What if I did use some certain powerful connections, to further their own interests in exchange for my rightful inheritance - power, influence, respect?"

Her hands came up, talons scoring deep furrows across Rose's forearms as she attempted to throw off her sister's vise-like grip. "For far too long I have endured your callous disregard! Was I to simply stomach such injustice meekly, to ignore the path to ascendancy that was finally within my reach?"

Rose recoiled slightly from the ferocity of her sibling's outburst, the mask of disdain and moral certitude slipping for just an instant before it resolidified, cold and unyielding as a rictus cast in iron.

"Then you are even more the deluded ingrate and waste of existence than I could ever have fathomed," she snarled in tones of purest contempt, her own talons scoring deep furrows through Elena's haughty features.

Seizing her sibilant by the throat, she slammed Elena against the unforgiving contours of the entry hall wall, pushing her across the wall and then pulling her back only to repeat the same process.

Each percussive impact shuddering through the foundations of the estate like the death throes of a wounded leviathan.

Elena's aides wanted to rush in to help their master but a hand wave from Elena saw them stand still.

"Get out!!" She yelled at her aides who stood worried for their master. Rose simply smiled as this happened.

She knew her sister all too well. This wasn't about honour. This was simply Elena's pride refusing help and unwilling to let those she considered beneath her watch her in a vulnerable position.

"They used you, you pathetic fool! Exploited your disgusting jealousy and insatiable greed like a puppet-master manipulates an assemblage of wood and string!"

Her grip tightened until rivulets of deep purple discoloration began creeping across Elena's features, stark interruptions against the pallid perfection of her flesh.

A fresh, scalding wave of visceral disgust and seething outrage crashed over Rose then, searing desperation and simmering anguish adding white-hot fuel to her merciless tirade.

"Because of your treacherous, repugnant complicity, the man I love beyond the scope of eternity itself, the only soul who has ever managed to awaken my withered heart from its endless slumber, was damned to an eternity of ruination and despair!"

Her laughter rang out, harsh and scathing like shards of poisoned glass given voice. "And for what pathetic windfall of supposed fortune? A few fleeting morsels of false power and empty promises cast off by whoever it is you're working with? "

Elena's struggles intensified as the laughter continued to peal out, talons and flashing fangs seeking purchase as she fought and flailed with every ounce of her preternatural strength against Rose's unforgiving grasp.

But for all her sound and fury, her efforts proved ultimately as ineffectual as a gnat battering itself against the implacable surface of a diamond.

Rose bore down with merciless intensity, grip tightening to what must have been agonizing degrees as she bored accusation after accusation into her sister's stricken countenance.

"Do not seek to deny it, Elena! Not when the evidence of your transgressions lies scattered at my feet like so much filth and effluvium cast off by the incontinent bowels of one stricken by the foulest poxes of humankind!"

She leaned in closer, talons scoring deeper furrows through the delicate flesh of Elena's throat until trickles of vitae welled up like obscene crimson tears.

"Know this, and know it well - I am far from done unraveling this increasingly tedious skein of lies and corruption you and whoever it is have woven. The path ahead for you is bleak indeed, an endless stretch of retribution and suffering from which even the coldest, most insensible of deaths will provide no reprieve!"

There was no hint of remorse in Rose's proclamation, no stay of merciless conviction or promise of absolution if only Elena would bend the knee before her righteous fury. Only the gleam of utter certainty and vast, terrible inevitability no amount of pleading or protestation could ever hope to mitigate.

With a heave of supreme effort, Elena finally managed to tear herself free, her own talons leaving deep, ragged furrows in the wake of her retreat. She staggered back several paces, hunched over and clutching at her ravaged throat as bloody ichor seeped through the spaces between her talons.

A glare of pure, undistilled venom and unconcealed hatred blazed outwards from her eyes as they met and locked with her sister's implacable stare.

"So be it, then," she spat, every word etched from flensed vocal cords that had been scoured with shards of broken glass. "Let the warmongering commence, let the dogs of our lingering family rift finally slip their leash to roam unfettered!"

Her lips twisted in a crimson rictus of bottomless cruelty and depraved amusement, the last gossamer threads of composure or decorum rent asunder in the wake of Rose's unforgiving censure.

"You think yourself so firmly astride the moral high ground, sister dearest? You delude yourself - we are all wretched, gnarled husks measured against the perfection of human nobility and conscience. To bask in the fiction of your smothering sanctity is to play at more lies than you could possibly conceive!"

Her lips peeled back in a firedrake's snarl of blistering fury. She shoved Rose back with savage strength. "I am no willing accomplice to anyone's agenda but my own!"

They crashed together in a whirlwind of slashing claws and furious snarls. "Lying worm!" Rose's words burned like vitriol. "I'll tear the truth from you!"

"I'll see you dead first, you self-righteous hag!" Elena's fangs dripped with venom as they grappled across the entry hall, the unmistakable sounds of battle joining the cacophony.

Porcelain and plaster shattered while priceless artworks and antiques were reduced to so much kindling caught in the maelstrom of their vicious, purebred animosity. There would be no quarter asked or given this night - only the primal satisfaction of reckoning finally delivered.

Sister against sister, both fierce and cunning, implacable titans locked in an eternal, blood-drenched struggle for supremacy and bitter vindication. No matter who emerged triumphant once the dust settled, the devastation left in this confrontation's wake would be of suitably mythic proportions.

Eyes coloured in blood red mist and nails sharp as a sword locked in combat. May the best woman win.

May the best sister win.

May the best vampire win.

May the best Shelly win.