The Blood of Kings

by John Michael Curlovich

  But finally, I found what I was looking for. Albert’s body. I shined my light on it and could see at once that it was cut open, exactly like the others. But this body was mutilated even more. I realized the foxes had been at it already. I could hear them—could hear something—moving around me in the dark woods. Were there wolves?

  I suddenly felt foolish and vulnerable, standing there alone in the darkness. But I had had to see.

  And still did. I took a step toward Albert’s remains and bent over to look more closely. There were a few shreds of clothing still around his ankles and wrists; otherwise he was quite naked. His genitals were gone; his eyes were gone. The vast gash that tore him open was filled with blood and shredded flesh. Where his heart should have been there was a gaping black cavity.

  Danilo had done this. This was not like finding Grant. I had known Grant. Finding him dead had been… But Albert had been a stranger, and a hostile one. Danilo had killed him. He had kept trying to tell me why, but I was too slow to understand. Something about the Book of the Dead, something about the Bible, something about an immortal life…

  Looking at Albert’s corpse, knowing that Danilo had done this for me—for me—I felt a thrill, a sexual thrill. I could have gone back to the house and made love to him again that moment. Instead, I got down on one knee and pushed a finger into the body. The blood was congealing; it was thick and sticky. But I raised my finger to my lips and licked it clean. It was nowhere near as sweet as it had been on Danilo’s lips.

  Some mad impulse made me do it. I leaned down and kissed Albert’s lips. For a moment I thought I felt it his body twitch under my caress.

  There were foxes in the dark woods around me, or raccoons, or… I could hear them moving. I was interfering with their unlooked-for feast. I got up and dragged the body further into the trees, then went back to the house.

  Danilo was still sleeping.

  He was as naked as Albert had been. Asleep, he had an erection. I kissed him till he woke up, and we had hot, wild sex. It seemed to last forever, the night seemed endless, before we finally fell asleep again.

  And in the morning the first rays of the sun woke us. Danilo was young and vibrant, more so than I had ever seen him. I could have eaten him with a spoon, I loved him so much. And I was also still scared. He sat up and yawned and kissed me.

  “Danilo, I don’t know whether to feel guilty. I don’t know what to feel.”

  “Should we go and bury Albert, then?”

  “No.” I stood and stretched. “No one will ever find him. The bears and foxes will see to it. They were already at it last night. People will suspect, but…”

  “Let them. They won’t have any proof.”

  I had an ugly thought. “The ones in Pittsburgh…”

  “I wanted them to be found.”

  “Why, Danilo?”

  “So that people would know.”

  “You killed them all? Tim? Grant?”

  He nodded. “It was necessary. For us. If I hadn’t done it, we would not be here now, together.”

  It didn’t make sense to me. Albert had threatened us. But Tim… I suppose I had never quite stopped loving him. How can you? “Did you kill Tim because you knew he had been my lover? Were you jealous?”

  “I didn’t know it was him at the time, no.”

  “I still have mixed feelings about him dying, Danilo.”

  “I did not kill him, Jamie, nor any of the others. They themselves chose to be dead. What I did was merely a postscript to their empty lives. Let’s go downstairs. I should get some clothes.” He headed down the staircase and looked back to make sure I was following. “All of them threaten us, Jamie. Not always as directly as Albert. But they would deny our nature, they would have us deny it ourselves, as they deny theirs.”

  I made hotcakes for us and fried a pan of bacon. Danilo ate like he hadn’t been fed in weeks.

  “You still have some of Albert on your chin.”

  “I’ll get a shower.”

  “No, Danilo. We will.”

  * * *

  The next afternoon was cool and rainy. We headed back to Pittsburgh. I switched on the radio to hear a forecast. It was supposed to rain all day.

  Danilo picked a different route than the one we had taken on the way up. After a while it became clear why. I realized he was heading for Ebensburg.

  “Danilo, please don’t.”

  “I’m curious to see where you came from. What kind of place produced you. We won’t stay, if you’d rather not. We’ll just drive through.”

  I knew it sounded foolish, but I did not want to see the place, it carried too many unpleasant things for me. But I couldn’t make myself say so.

  Late in the afternoon we drove into town. Danilo coasted to a stop in front of the bus station. The streets were nearly empty, just a few scattered people with umbrellas. The rain was coming down fairly heavily; sidewalks were flooded, water cascaded through the streets. Overhead there was a flash of lightning.

  Neither of us said anything. He sat behind the steering wheel, taking it all in, seeming to study it. A woman came out of the bus station carrying an old, battered suitcase and looked around, not seeming to recognize anything. She looked lost. After a moment she lugged her bag off along the street and disappeared into a little restaurant.

  “Are you hungry, Jamie?”

  “Not for anything here.”

  “You told me once about a swim coach here, who—”

  “Danilo, can we please go?”

  He fell silent and looked up and down the street again. “That church there. Is that where your father—?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember.” I knew it sounded petulant, but I added, “I don’t want to.”

  Slowly he said, “Of course. I should have realized.” He started the car and we left Ebensburg, slowly. He seemed still to be studying it or looking for something. I couldn’t imagine what.

  When we reached the main highway, the rain started to come down even harder. The wipers were hardly keeping the windshield clear, and I thought we might have to stop. But Danilo kept driving. After a time, he told me he was sorry for taking me there. “I didn’t understand how painful it would be for you.”

  “I’ve told you often enough.”

  “I’m sorry. But seeing it… I had to see it. It’s part of you, even if it’s a part you’ve closed off. I’d like you to see where I was born someday.”

  “Egypt?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  I touched his hand, then pulled back. “You know I’d love that.”

  “Then we’ll go.”

  “Next summer? I can’t go while I have class. Neither can you, for that matter. You have to teach, don’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “Are you teaching any advanced classes? I can rearrange my schedule and I could…”

  “No, nothing but intro courses this fall. In the spring, though…”

  “I’ll be in the front row. I’ll dust your erasers.”

  When we finally reached Pittsburgh, it was twilight and the rainstorm was just ending. There were a few flashes of distant lightning, but that was all. The city was quiet with that after-the-storm stillness, no one in sight, only the sound of water guttering its way through the streets. We pulled up in front of my place. There were lights on. Justin and Greg. I didn’t want to see them, either of them.

  “Come inside with me. I want them to see us kiss.”

  He smiled. “Just kiss?”

  “Yes, professor, just kiss. I have some modesty, after all.”

  “Pointless emotion.”

  He helped me carry my things inside. There was no sign of them; they were in Justin’s room. I put my arms around Danilo, and we kissed and held each other for a long moment. Bubastis came scampering out of the kitchen and rubbed against our legs, obviously happy I was home.

  Chapter Seven

  The fall term began. Some of the other students I knew made a big deal about not being freshmen anymore
. I had more substantial things on my mind.

  In some ways the new school year was much like the first had been. Classes—I had to take Economics, which I hated—studying and practicing, working out in the pool. But of course, it was different, too: I had Danilo.

  We had a practice meet against Villanova, and the three days I spent in Philadelphia, with no real contact with him, seemed endless. While I was gone there was another killing, another young man found dismembered, organs missing, an acting student this time. The killings were happening when I wasn’t around. I wasn’t at all certain whether to be grateful.

  The administration and the police finally realized that the only way to deal with the rising wave of rumors and fear was to issue warnings to students and staff that “there may be a serial killer” on the loose. FBI experts were on the case, constructing a psychological profile of the killer. Needless to say, nothing in their reports came close to the truth. But the campus was tense.

  Roland told me my pianism had slacked off during the summer, “You’re getting sloppy,” which was not something I expected to hear. Love is supposed to fire your art, not hinder it. But then I was still a boy in so many ways, still caught up in all the romantic patterns we’re taught to expect. I resolved to work harder.

  “Are you still determined to do the Chopin second again?”

  I told him I was.

  “It’s such a bear. It might be better to shoot for next year.”

  “I can do it, Roland. I know I can.”

  “Why don’t you work on something else, too? Some Poulenc, maybe. So you’ll have something else prepared. Just in case, I mean.”

  I knew what he meant.

  He also suggested I stop using my keyboard. It was a discussion we had had before. The touch of an electronic piano is nothing like the touch of a real one; if you get too used to it, your playing suffers. But there were so many times I felt the urge to play, to express what I was feeling in a concrete way. In the middle of the night, in the early morning hours, whenever I needed to release what I was feeling. The music department, like everything else on campus, got locked down. But I also knew Roland was right, so I decided to spend as much time as I could practicing at the department.

  When I told Danilo about it, he responded by giving me a set of keys to his house. “Play on the grand here whenever you like.”

  “I don’t want to bother you.”

  “You couldn’t.”

  “That sounds like a challenge.” I grinned.

  “Just once, young Mister Dunn, couldn’t you rein in your penchant for being annoying?”

  “How would you know it was me, then?”

  But the offer was made, and I was only too happy to take him up on it. His instrument was so much better than the ones for student use at the department.

  The first night I went there to practice, he came up behind me and put his arms around me. I felt his lips on my throat. Then the tip of his tongue.

  “Really, Professor, I thought I was invited here to study your etchings.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. But every time I see you, I…” He smiled sheepishly. “You’d think I’d be past this kind of thing.”

  “Is anyone, ever?”

  “I mean, at my age.”

  “Face it, Danilo. We swimmer boys are irresistible.”

  He laughed, tousled my hair and headed off to his study. I went back to the Chopin sonata. I was determined to get it right at the winter recital.

  Later, after two hours of only the slightest progress—I tended to be impatient with myself, in ways Roland found frustrating—I found Danilo on the leather sofa in his den and sat down beside him. In a moment we were snuggling.

  “I’ve been wondering…” I had needed to discuss something with him for weeks.

  “Hm?” He was busy nuzzling my cheek.

  “How can I explain to Justin what’s been happening to me—with us?”

  He pulled back from me. “That wouldn’t be a good idea, Jamie.”

  “He’s my friend. My best friend.”

  “That’s hardly the point. You don’t know you can trust him, not with this. He couldn’t understand. Even men like him, who share our bloodline, don’t understand much. Or just don’t want to.”

  “He’s my friend.”

  “I know. But really, do you think he could understand? How long has it taken you? And he seems so…” He let his voice trail off, not wanting to say anything insulting.

  “Dull? Yes.”

  “Let’s just say that analytical thought isn’t his thing.”

  “He’s a typical jock.” I saw his point. “It’s awkward, not being able to tell anyone about it.”

  He got up and poured us each a glass of red wine. “As I said, even men who have the blood frequently don’t understand, or don’t want to. Justin’s friend Greg, for instance.”

  He handed me my glass and I sipped. “You’re saying Greg is part of our bloodline too, that he is one of us? I never would have thought—” It caught me completely by surprise. “I thought he was too—”

  “Kings do have idiot cousins, Jamie.”

  We fell silent for a moment.

  “What about Roland?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then it’s not merely a matter of who you love?” It was an unexpected thought. I had taken it for granted that we were all, more or less…

  “It’s not that simple. As a mathematician might put it, we’re a subset.”

  “Oh.” The wine was good burgundy. Danilo always had good wine on hand. “So Jus shares our blood but he couldn’t understand. Does that mean you’re going to kill him and eat him?”

  He sighed an exaggerated sigh. “It’s just my luck, after 3,000 years, to fall in love with a brat.”

  “Danilo?” I had a sudden serious thought. “I thought Roland must have the blood. He seems to understand me so well.” They had met several times, briefly.

  “No. That, he could never understand.”

  “So it really isn’t just a matter of who you love?”

  “No.” He refilled my glass. “It’s about blood. It is both that simple and that complex. The ancient bloodline has been kept alive all these centuries. Sometimes in a more or less pure form. More often than you’d expect was possible. It is the driving force, the spark that made James I defend his love for Buckingham against their critics in Parliament. That made Camille Saint-Saens defy society and tell the truth about himself. That made Pope Julius III take the beautiful boy he fell in love with and make him a cardinal.” He paused for what seemed a long time. “But very often it is watered down, so to speak.”

  I sipped my burgundy. “I always knew I was different. Even when I was a kid.”

  He smiled. “Different from the people in Ebensburg? What a tragedy.”

  “Different was the only thing I knew how to be.”

  “The blood is the life, Jamie. And the power. You’ve read the Bible and the ancient scrolls. You understand that. You know the magic that lies in the organs of men who have been sacrificed. The Christians never… ” He shrugged and made a vague gesture. “They do not even understand why guards had to be put on the tomb of their Christ. The power in his body that had to be protected.”

  It was still another new thought. “Jesus Christ was…?”

  He nodded slowly. “You have seen the mention of his Beloved Disciple. And what do you think their holy communion commemorates?” He stopped and took a long drink. “The blood has kept me alive all these long millennia, so that I in turn could protect the bloodline, keep it vital.”

  I pulled his arms around myself, buried myself in them. “Like a dragon swallowing its own tail.”

  “You are the blood prophet, Jamie. The one who will revive the power, and the greatness.”

  “You keep telling me that. I don’t even understand how—”

  “You will. You’ve learned a great deal, very quickly. More quickly than most people are capable of. You will learn more.�
� He got up and refilled our glasses still again. “One day we will be able to proclaim our love to the world. And the world, or at least the part of it that matters, will honor us. As they did Hadrian and Antinous. As they did Alexander and Hephaestion.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted that. To be honored. It seemed so… I don’t know, undemocratic or something. “Danilo, will you stop these killings?”

  “I can’t. That would mean death. My own death, and perhaps even yours. A thousand generations of our fathers and brothers need us to justify them.”

  I put my head on his shoulder. Despite his warmth and his tenderness with me, I couldn’t help being a bit frightened by all of it. “Will you make me one promise, Danilo?”

  “If I can, of course.”

  “Promise me you won’t hurt Justin.”

  “We may have to.”

  “‘We? No, Danilo, I don’t think I could ever do that. Not to him.”

  For a moment neither of us said anything. Then, involuntarily I found myself laughing. “If you have to take someone, let it be Greg.”

  Danilo looked directly into my eyes and kissed me. Through the haze of three glasses of burgundy I wanted to put my mouth on every part of him, blood or no, killings or not. He inhaled the bouquet from his wine. “Greg is most emphatically one of us. But the odds that he would ever admit it or comprehend what admitting it means…” He smiled. “You could scan him with an electron microscope and not find a particle of understanding.”

  “Sacrifice him, then.”

  “I think,” he said, settling back beside me, “we can find more productive uses for him.”

  * * *

  Bubastis continued to grow, like the happy cat she was. There were no signs the incident with Greg had left any residual trauma, though she tended to hide when he was at the apartment. Intelligent creature. But now and then, every once in a rare while, she would wake from a sound sleep, obviously terrified of something. Dreaming. She would come to me, nestle in the crook of my arm and be calm again.

  Justin won the state title for the high platform. There was a lot of publicity, at least on campus. The local news programs did stories too, covering him as an Olympic hopeful, but they forgot about him pretty quickly. All the attention, all the cameras and reporters, made Greg stay away, which was fine with me.