by Jade Astor
“You need not regret either your curiosity or your skepticism. Both are signs of an alert mind. How could I object to that? It is precisely what poor, dear Gregory lacked.” Zachariah lifted his head from his fist and opened his palm in a gesture of invitation. “We can do this your way. Ask me anything you like.”
“All right. Um ... so you really believe you’re a vampire?”
“Yes. In fact, I know I am. You are mistaken that it is merely role-playing, though I admit we all play roles from time to time. Humans more than vampires, perhaps.”
“Okay.” Brandon hardly knew what to make of that answer, but he pushed on. He knew from psych classes in college that there was no way to talk people out of delusions they were convinced of. “How old are you?” he settled for asking next. That was a good, all-purpose question that could go in a number of ways, some of them non-controversial.
“Young men always ask that. Of course, they probably ask it of the humans they are interested in also. Age means so much to mortals, doesn’t it? I suppose that’s understandable, though.” He paused as if thinking the matter over. Brandon wondered if he was trying to come up with a plausible story. “As it happens, I am a mere youth as vampires go. I assumed my current state in the early 1980s. It’s a long story involving a European tour, a little-known monastery in Italy, and a five-hundred-year-old abbot with a cure for any terminal illness you can name. However, I will not bore you with details you are not yet ready to absorb.”
Brandon gaped. He had he no idea what to ask next. Zachariah did not seem at all concerned by his silence, though.
“You think I’m mad, no doubt. Very well. I expected that. Perhaps I could give you a brief demonstration of my powers.”
“Uh, yeah—I guess that might help.”
“See? You do believe, at some level, that I am capable of doing what I say.” Zachariah smiled. “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you. I’ll simply play with your memory a bit. You would agree that such a demonstration would go a long way toward verifying my claims?”
“It might,” Brandon agreed. “Though I know about the kinds of tricks phony psychics and people like that use. Sleight of hand, cold reading, that sort of thing.”
“I have no need to employ such crude forms of deception. Look into my eyes and you will see why.”
Though hesitant, Brandon lifted his chin. His tentative gaze slowly merged with Zachariah’s more intent, almost fiery stare. Gradually a hazy feeling came over him, as though he were intoxicated. But he hadn’t drunk a thing!
“Don’t look away,” Zachariah urged him. “The experiment is not yet complete.”
Oddly, while Zachariah spoke, Brandon felt his vision grow hazy. Soon he seemed to be watching Zachariah through some kind of gauzy curtain. The more he blinked, the thicker and more opaque the material grew.
Just for a moment, he closed his eyes to get his bearings. Darkness overwhelmed him, though he found that he was not afraid. He drifted along as though he had fallen into a peaceful sleep.
The next thing he knew, he was in an apartment. It was weirdly decorated—no windows that he could see, lamps emitting bluish-black light, weird sculptures and paintings crowding the walls and corners. Some were abstract, and some depicted men in various states of undress. Some featured lots of red paint that glowed in the strange light, suggesting blood. Brandon’s mind whirled until he spotted Zachariah standing next to him. Finally, things began to fall into place.
“What happened?” He could not remember getting drunk or even having a drink at all, but that must have been the case. “Where am I? Did I pass out?”
“You’re at my home. I told you I would give you a brief demonstration of my powers. Now do you believe me? That I am what I claimed to be?”
Crossing the room, Zachariah reached up and hit a switch. A panel slid back and a window seemed to appear out of nowhere. City lights glittered against a starless, pitch-dark horizon.
Brandon walked to the window on legs that shook. He recognized the east side of the city. The landmarks suggested that they were not too far from the bar, but far enough that he should have remembered making the trip.
“How did we get here? Did we ... um ... materialize or something?”
Zachariah laughed. “Car. I am not a superhero, my dear boy. Far from it. I’ve simply wiped your memory ... as I promised to do.”
Brandon swallowed. The front of his forehead throbbed. His body felt weak and he yearned for Zachariah to hold him ... take him. Possess him. The need was so strong it made him feel disconnected from his own mind for a moment, as though he were dissolving in a torrent of pure emotion.
Hastily he shook his head to clear it. “Are you going to kill me?” he asked with a strange lack of fear.
“Of course not! Why would I?”
“Well, you said you were a vampire. I thought you’d want to ... you know, drink my blood.”
“I do.” Zachariah’s expression grew serious. “However, I can control myself. Tonight, I will be content with some less invasive forms of pleasure.”
Stepping toward Brandon, Zachariah caught him by the shoulders and forcibly turned him so they faced each other. Then he bent forward and kissed him—hard, long, and lustfully. At one point Brandon felt the scrape of sharp teeth against his lower lip and experienced the warm tang and metallic taste of blood on his own tongue. The dangerous feeling excited him. He responded with an enthusiasm that woke his entire body. Every nerve in his torso tingled, especially the ones between his legs. He groaned with need against Zachariah’s urgent probing.
To his despair, Zachariah ran his tongue over Brandon’s mouth one last time and moved away.
“Very well. We’ve had enough excitement for tonight. The demonstration is over.” He took a cell phone from his pants pocket. “I’ll call you a cab.”
“No,” Brandon said, his stomach twisting in anger and frustration. The yearning he had experienced before turned painful the moment Zachariah’s touch had dropped away. He felt as though someone had hauled off and punched him. ..shamed him. He knew he had to get out of this place. “I’ll walk.”
“Walk? Dear boy, you can hardly stand. Don’t worry, your need for me will dissipate once you are physically removed from my presence. It takes a while, but you should be fine by morning.”
Unsteady on his feet, Brandon lunged for the door. Zachariah reached out to steady him. He evaded the outstretched hands. “Don’t bother! You’ve had your fun with me. I don’t know what you did, but it’s time to let me go.”
He stalked out of what luckily proved to be the front door of Zachariah’s narrow, brick-front house and hurried down the street. Though Zachariah called after him, he kept going. His cheeks burned with shame. The game had gotten the best of him, and he didn’t like it one bit.
Before he’d gone even a block, a cab pulled up beside him. “You Brandon?” the driver shouted from the rolled-down window. “Hop in. Ride’s already paid for.”
He paused. Getting into the car was probably a bad idea—and it was definitely giving in to Zachariah’s sick control fetish, but hand it was late, and cold out, and he doubted he could find his way home on foot. Sighing, he opened the back door and crawled inside.
As the car moved off, he glimpsed a pale face in the shadows beside Zachariah’s house. It flashed by too fast for him to recognize anything but a brief impression of wide, glaring eyes ... and possibly a strangely spiked hairstyle with a dark stripe in the middle.
Brandon shivered as the driver hit the gas and carried him toward safety.
Chapter 4
Brandon had a hard time getting through work on Monday without talking about his unnerving but nonetheless amazing adventure. Bringing up the Underground Lounge in front of Chuck would have given the entire game away, and even hinting to Leverett that he had sneaked a look at one of the personal responses would probably have been enough to get him fired. Despite how little the job paid, he literally couldn’t afford to take that risk.
; Instead, feigning near-disinterest, he sorted out the mail that had accumulated since Friday and put the new personal responses in the appropriate cubbies. Three more letters had arrived for Zachariah, he noted. This time, with Leverett and Chuck at their desks in the next room, he didn’t even look at anything beyond the box number.
As if sensing his thoughts, the two of them began bantering with David about the infamous vampire ad running in their current issue.
“Did anyone really answer that?” David asked no one in particular.
“Don’t kid yourself,” Chuck scoffed. “The fetish ads always get the most responses. Long walks on the beach were dead and buried with the twentieth century.”
“Kind of like the vampires themselves,” Leverett said, causing Brandon to blush as he bent over a stack of bills. “Anyway, it’s too cold for long walks on the beach now. Uphill treks with snowshoes will be the best they can hope for pretty soon.”
That was true, Brandon thought with a grimace. Riding his bike in the cold was getting more problematic every morning. He had to look for that car within the next month or so, another reason he was determined to hang onto his job.
Around noon, when David and Leverett had gone off on their lunch breaks, Chuck wandered into the mailroom while Brandon stood stuffing envelopes with Rainbow Rag flyers. He bent down, pretending to browse through the outbox.
“I had a great time Friday night. I hope you did, too.”
“Yeah,” Brandon said, taking care not to meet his gaze. “Thanks for the meal. I appreciate it.”
“I enjoyed hanging out with you.” Chuck abandoned his pretense of sorting papers and grinned. “I get the sense there’s a lot more to you. A lot we could make use of here at the Rag. You can’t be a mail clerk forever.”
“I’d like to think so,” Brandon said, returning his smile.
Cheerfully, Chuck sauntered off and left Brandon to his work, which now seemed even more dull and mindless beside the prospect of assisting on a real interview. The only drawback was Chuck’s obvious interest in him, which Brandon couldn’t picture himself returning in more than a friendship capacity.
On the other hand, Chuck was certainly the safer option of the two currently open to him. Though Zachariah had never left his thoughts for a moment since that night he’d fled in the taxi, he couldn’t forget how glibly he had taken over Brandon’s body and mind, only to let him crash and flounder in a burning heap of emotional wreckage. Exactly how Zachariah had done it he still wasn’t sure—hypnosis or drugging seemed the most likely means—but beyond that, such tactics couldn’t be psychologically healthy.
As the sun went down, Brandon began to experience an odd, tingly sensation in his limbs. His stomach tightened when he looked out the window and saw Zachariah approaching from the darkened parking lot.
Instinctively he shot a glance into the main part of the office. Luckily Leverett was at the desk in the far corner, absorbed in reading something, while Chuck and David were nowhere to be seen.
Before he could prepare himself or plan out what to say, Zachariah was at the window. In the end, he settled for simply pointing to the row of mail cubbies with a scowl. “Got a few more letters for you today.”
“Thank you.” Zachariah took the letters and tucked them inside his coat. Brandon noticed that he didn’t bother to examine them first. “I didn’t come for mail. I came for you. I had hoped we might be able to talk privately.”
“Oh? Why?”
“I think you know why. I promise you, I mean you no harm. Please give me a chance to prove that. May I take you home?”
Brandon shrugged in a show of indifference. At the same time, it was nearly impossible for him to pretend he didn’t care about making amends with Zachariah. In fact he had never cared about anything so much in his life. “Not necessary. I have my bike.”
“It’s dark and windy. I can put the bike in my car.” Zachariah raised an eyebrow. “You’ve seen my home, you know, so it’s only fair I see yours now.”
“I have another fifteen minutes before quitting time.”
“Very well. I will meet you outside.”
Brandon hadn’t meant to agree to the meeting, but Zachariah had, and now he couldn’t see any easy way to get out of it. Still, he could avoid making himself the subject of office gossip. He held up a hand to stop Zachariah as he began to turn away.
“Wait. Let me ride my bike around the corner to the convenience store. That way the guys here won’t see us. You know, best to be discreet. People talk.”
“Indeed they do.” Zachariah’s lips twitched in a smile. “In quarter of an hour, then.”
At five, Brandon said his goodbyes to his coworkers and went outside to grab his bike. The chill in the air bit at his skin as he pedaled down the street to the convenience store and turned into the parking lot. Zachariah was waiting with his car backed into a discreet spot near the dumpster. Without a word, he popped his trunk and got out to help Brandon load up his bike.
While they lifted it, Brandon glanced up and thought he saw Chuck’s car drive past, with Chuck looking at them out of the driver’s side window. He wasn’t sure, though. After everything that had happened over the last few days, he was so frazzled emotionally and physically that he might well have imagined it.
With the bike wedged into the back of Zachariah’s sleek black sports car, they started off and merged into the quitting-time traffic that had begun to clog the city streets. Brandon gave directions, but Zachariah seemed barely to listen. All the same, moments later they pulled up in front of Brandon’s boarding house.
He didn’t bother to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “You have to be invited in, I assume. Isn’t that the way it works in the movies?”
“In the movies, yes, but in real life it’s just a matter of manners. I hope you will invite me in because you want to.”
“Okay, so come on in.”
Zachariah waited while Brandon locked up his bike on the porch. Then, side by side, they walked up the steps of the big Victorian house that had been converted into smaller living units to rent to students and other underemployed tenants. Brandon found himself embarrassed by the peeling paint, the rotted timbers holding up the porch, the scarred front door with the rusted-out old-fashioned doorbell. When he was alone, he seldom noticed such things. With a guest—especially one with Zachariah’s impeccable taste—every flaw stood out.
“Sorry the place is such a dump,” he mumbled as he took out his keys.
“No worries. Houses like this are a testament to the scholarly dedication of the students in any college town. I lived in equally modest surroundings when I was a callow undergraduate. Compared to some of the places I have lived, a home like this represents unheard-of luxury.”
“I’m not a student anymore, so I ought to do better. Well, maybe one day I will.” They trudged up the creaky stairs. With every step, Brandon wondered if he had made a terrible mistake in bringing Zachariah home. Yet that old and by now familiar craving for his presence wouldn’t allow any other choice. “My room’s right up here.”
Again wincing at the modest furnishings, he opened the door and showed Zachariah into his small studio apartment, fashioned from what might once have been a larger parlor or sitting room. He motioned him to the only chair, intending to take a seat on the bed himself, but Zachariah remained standing, inspecting his surroundings. Brandon assumed he was fighting back his distaste.
“I only graduated last year,” he said defensively. “It’s hard to get started in life these days. Not a lot of jobs out there—not that I would want to do, anyway.”
Zachariah looked at his overstuffed bookcase and nodded in apparent approval. “What do you wish to do with your life?”
“I hoped to get into newspaper work. Not the kind I’m doing now. Real writing. Feature stories, you know.”
“I have known a great number of writers in my life, some quite successful. I have even bitten a few you might have heard of. For the sake of discretion I will n
ot reveal their names, but I do enjoy conversing with them. One gets a unique perspective from such men.”
While Brandon mulled that over, Zachariah finally moved to the chair he had offered earlier.
“But enough of all that. Let us get down to business. As I’m sure you have guessed by now, I’m sorry I frightened you and took advantage of you as I did. It wasn’t my intention. I simply got carried away by the drama of the situation.” He held out his palms toward Brandon in a gesture of surrender. “Melodrama is one of my faults, I fear. I have an unfortunate theatrical bent I try not to indulge too often.”
“Well, you don’t owe me any explanation. I wasn’t all that frightened, and I realized later you were just playing tricks on me. So forget it.”
“Tricks? No. My purpose was sincere. I did want to show you my powers and convince you of my true identity. I admit I went about it the wrong way.”
“You didn’t really convince me of all that much. There could be other ways for you to accomplish the same effect, though. Hypnosis, for example. Mind-altering substances.”
“I have no need to do that. And you drank nothing at the bar. Neither did I. Poor Gregory had indulged a bit, I fear, but I could do nothing about that. It was one of the reasons he and I did not mesh. Drunk and drugs hold no charm for me, even imbibed at one remove via the bloodstream. I prefer to keep my mind clear and focused when I take my pleasures.”
Brandon blinked. He hadn’t expected Zachariah to put things quite like that. Instinctively he lifted his fingers to his lower lip and rubbed the spot Zachariah’s pointed teeth had punctured. He remembered how it had felt to share his blood when they had kissed. He knew Zachariah had noticed the almost electrical charge as well.
“I can understand that,” he muttered.
“Do you? I’m not convinced—not yet. I took advantage of your curiosity, Brandon. I let you into my world without preparing you or myself, for that matter. I shouldn’t have done that. I also placed you in danger. I’m not sure you realized how much.”