by K. Z. Snow
He tried not to think. He didn’t bother looking back. Yet he knew Adin was behind him. When he got to his flat, he simply went inside and stood helplessly for a moment, not even capable of deciding which direction to move in—go to bed, get a drink, or head for the toilet and puke his guts out.
Softly, Adin entered the apartment. Jackson heard the door close. He hadn’t even had enough presence of mind to shut it after he’d come in. Off to his left, he saw Adin walk to the couch and sink onto it.
Jackson moved in the opposite direction, to the kitchen. He poured himself a neat shot of Daniels and tossed it back as he stood over the sink. He still didn’t know what to do with himself. He couldn’t stay in the damned kitchen all night.
Ambling toward the dining area, he sat at the table and dropped his head to his hands. His mussed hair was damp where it met his forehead and temples. He’d been sweating.
“When I woke up,” Adin said in a monotone, “it was just there.”
Jackson didn’t lift his head. Instead, he closed his eyes. It. The hunger.
“I knew right away,” Adin went on. “My body felt sandblasted.”
Finally, heavily, Jackson looked up. “Why didn’t you turn to me?”
“Because of your reaction earlier. You used to be able to accept me this way. Now you can’t.”
“Everything’s changed since then,” Jackson murmured. They weren’t lovers before. How Adin satisfied his bloodlust was his own concern. “I haven’t so much as thought of touching another man since we—”
“I know.” Adin’s forearms were on his knees, his head hanging. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “You can’t imagine what this is like for me. It’s as if I woke up into a nightmare.”
Jackson’s heart still ached, but now it had begun to ache for Adin, too. He looked beaten and dazed. He clearly had no control over what was happening to him.
“Would you have fucked that man when it was over?” Jackson asked. The words alone were like pottery shards in his throat. He knew Adin had to have sex with his host after he fed. The need was hardwired into him. Or had been.
His head moved slightly, back and forth. “No. I couldn’t have.”
“Something would have happened, though. I know how it is for you.”
Adin looked up. “Why are you doing this? What do you want me to say? That he would’ve sucked me off? Yeah, okay, that’s probably what would’ve happened. In fact, he wanted to do it right from the start.”
The admission triggered an eruption that likely was inevitable. Jackson pushed away from the table so forcefully, two chairs toppled over. Blind with a grief he didn’t understand yet thoroughly despised, he stumbled down the hall to the bedroom.
“Jackson!”
Before he could get to the bed, Adin was reaching for him. He turned into Adin’s arms without thinking. The hug was crushing. Jackson squeezed his eyes shut. But he couldn’t let go. He couldn’t let go of his thoughts or his feelings or his lover’s tormented body.
Adin petted his hair. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. Please.”
Their lips met. The kiss was hot, savage.
“Do you still need to feed?” Jackson asked hoarsely.
“Yes. You’re the only one I really want.”
“You mean, my blood.”
“No, you. All of you.”
The open-mouthed kiss went on as they tumbled onto the mattress and tore off their clothing. They sat facing each other, legs bent around hips. Adin’s eyes were an opaque indigo. Bright rings rimmed his irises. The rings glowed red.
In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes? Jackson was transfixed. He couldn’t have quelled his arousal if he’d doused himself with ice water. No matter how dreadful this development or how odious he found his own vulnerability, he couldn’t resist this man. Could never resist him.
Adin caressed his face. “This might hurt,” he said. “I think…I think I’m a cruder version of what I used to be. I don’t know why.”
He lifted his hand and studied it. Before, it was the nail of his little finger that grew. And it became, like a glass splinter, the perfect instrument for sliding rapidly through flesh and muscle and into blood vessel walls. Now, it was the nail of his forefinger that had altered most obviously. It looked razor-sharp, but it was more a fine blade than a needle.
“Do it,” Jackson whispered.
The nail hissed across the right side of his chest. Jackson winced as a cry knotted in his throat. The incision was indeed cruder than the neat punctures Adin used to make. It felt like a fiery chasm. Still, acute excitement welled with the blood. It shot from the cut through Jackson’s nervous system. A gleaming crimson thread crept down the rise of chest muscle. When it reached his nipple, the bud tautened. Jackson’s breath caught. Just anticipating the press of Adin’s mouth made him dizzy with desire.
Adin made a sound of brutish lust and triumph as he lowered his head. His tongue flattened against the blood-streaked nipple and pulled firmly upward in a languid lick. The feeling was piercingly exquisite. Shuddering, Jackson gripped Adin’s hair. Plush lips closed over the gash.
Heat. Such intense heat. A shattered mosaic in Gauguin colors, coursing through his body. He was dimly aware of his head falling backward, his mouth falling open. The pulling at his chest created its own current, a purely aphrodisiac current that blazed into his lower abdomen and lodged, dense and throbbing, in his groin. His cock felt packed with steel; his skull, with looping velvet ribbon.
Uncontrollably, his hips began an ejaculatory buck. But he didn’t come. He couldn’t, until Adin was finished drinking. Still, those brilliant shards of heat bloomed like orgasmic flowers within the marrow of his bones. No feeling in the world could compare to this. None.
His body felt weightless, its definition blurred. Like the first time he offered himself, he’d become a drifting mass of sensation.
The suctioning at his chest began to slow, became weaker. As Adin finished his feed, the cut started to throb. Its pulsations matched the throbbing in Jackson’s genitals. He needed release. The sounds that came from his throat carried the agony of his cresting arousal. His balls felt like fists.
Adin lifted his head and sighed deeply. His lips looked slightly swollen and obscenely sensuous. Jackson’s cock began to drip. Instinctively, the two of them slid into a sixty-nine position. It was awkward, not good for either passionate or careful lovemaking, but they were well beyond making love.
Each man fiercely gripped the other’s turgid cock. Their sucking was more desperate than Adin’s careful draw of blood, but finesse didn’t matter now. They both craved relief.
After only a few deep pulls by that deft mouth, Jackson exploded into climax. His cum seemed to spew like a geyser. Adin, too, came quickly and hard. An image of that buff young man sucking Adin off flashed through Jackson’s mind, as painful as a blast of bright light. A roar of rage nearly tore from his chest; he stifled it into a groan. Tears rose in his eyes. He swallowed them away.
Rolling onto his back, Jackson threw an arm over his face. The euphoria he’d experienced was gone. Whatever was left in its wake was soul-draining.
“I don’t want this for us,” he murmured, his voice still thick with emotion.
His relationship with Adin was fulfilling enough without the bloodletting. And Jackson couldn’t bear the thought of his lover finding pleasure through anyone but himself and Celia. It didn’t matter that pleasure was part of any routine feed, if such an activity could ever be called routine. The necessity of sex for Adin as a vampire didn’t blunt the bruising impact of the act.
Adin sat on the edge of the bed, his back to Jackson. “I don’t want it either,” he said. “I want us back the way we were.” He turned enough to run a hand down Jackson’s thigh. “I don’t want to lose you. I couldn’t stand losing you.”
Again, Jackson’s eyes stung. He was sick of feeling so damned fragile. “I don’t want us to lose each other.”
It
was time.
* * * *
On the Threshold
Shebra’felime
No beings save the Creators and the Shebra’felime can venture through the Microcosm without aid. Therefore, I was sent.
“In native” means, for a Felim, adopting the form of a species indigenous to whatever plane, planet or place the Felim must temporarily inhabit. On earth, that species is almost always Homo sapiens. Slipping on a human body naturally entails an alteration in the Felim’s mode of perception.
I at first found the human mode, with its complex interplay of five physical senses as well as complex anatomical structures, cumbersome and confusing. The human body and its senses can invite both extreme discomfort and extreme pleasure. It took many instances of being in-native for me to become accustomed to this dichotomy and to learn which situations would prove least assaultive and most enjoyable.
Smell proved a difficult sense to accommodate, and I was often tempted to block it. This would not have been wise. Every mode of perception is a pathway to insight, and it is imperative each Felim acquire a full understanding of its wards.
Sight, however…what a delight! I’ve yet to tire of gazing upon things and people. I still enjoy riding shapes with my eyes, exploring textures, wallowing in colors. Earth’s environment is abundantly intricate and does not allow for visual boredom. I am always looking, looking…
The construction of humans intrigued me from the start, certainly because my wards have always been human and, as a result, I’ve often had to adopt their form. Although the distinctions between ugliness and attractiveness, deformity and normalcy have never concerned me, I eventually came to recognize those distinctions. This did not begin to happen until I had been in-native a number of times. Now, I am occasionally struck by a particular creature’s appearance.
Such happened when I first saw my ward, Jackson Spey, and again when I saw the photographs of Adin Swift tucked among Spey’s books. I found them both quite arresting.
As a human female, I had not only become familiar with Spey, I had liked him a great deal and for a number of reasons. That was not necessarily a negative development. In fact, a sense of protectiveness toward one of its wards enhances any Felim’s performance. Without such a sense, a Felim might not go beyond the basic requirements of its position. And that could quickly place a ward in danger.
Swift, I am yet in the process of discovering. From the moment I saw his photographic likeness, I admired the pure, still beauty of his face, as cool as a mask. It was subtle in expression yet rich in detail. Later, as I hovered in Spey’s home, my presence undetectable to any human, I began to admire those lush details.
Although Swift’s emotions run deep, he rarely displays them in a dramatic fashion. Only the most turbulent feelings—rage, gnawing frustration, grief—noticeably disrupt the perfect pattern of his features. Spey, on the other hand, believes he is composed, but he gives more away more of himself than he realizes.
I, like all of my kind, am not prone to the impulses and emotions that drive so many living creatures, regardless of realm. We Felime are systemically devoid of any instincts save the ones that allow us to carry out our duties. But assumption of an animate, physical form invariably comes with surprises. Preferences, affinities, and aversions develop. Urges clamor for attention. Pleasure and pain, satiety and deprivation are felt, sometimes keenly. Such assaults are fleeting, but they take place nonetheless.
So, yes, I had fallen prey to certain human weaknesses. In the process, though, I had learned a great deal about my soon-to-be ward and his associates. This knowledge would be of help both in drawing him into the Prism and serving him once he was contained.
And he would be contained. It was inevitable.
Chapter Twelve
Ivan nearly fell on his ass when he stepped into the living room. Bad enough he’d felt someone or something in the shower with him and thought he’d glimpsed a translucent shape wavering within the spray. Now this surprise.
“Jesus, how did you get in here?”
His heart continued to jig as he tied the bathrobe more securely over his belly. He swiped his hands over the sides of his head. Rivulets of water still trickled from his fringe of hair, making him even more jumpy when they wormed down his neck.
Mikaela stood beside the cocktail table, the fingers of one hand splayed just above the Prism. She looked like she either was about to grab it or was trying to levitate it.
“Hey, don’t touch that!” Ivan barked, lurching forward.
Wearing the barest hint of a smile, Mikaela took three measured steps backward. She still stood between the sofa and the cocktail table, which was too close for Ivan’s comfort.
Darting wary glances at her, he looked for the tea towel he used to cover the crystal. It was on the floor. Bending over with a grunt, making sure to keep his rear end turned away from the unexpected visitor, he snatched up the towel.
“How the hell did you get in here?” he repeated, draping the linen cloth over the Prism.
“You should keep it covered with silk,” Mikaela said. Her voice was just as drifty as the look on her face.
It occurred to Ivan that she’d snapped. Miki had always struck him as a half-bubble off plumb. He did a quick, surreptitious scan of her hands and clothing to look for any sign of a weapon, but there was none.
Her face looked a little fuzzy. After a hard, squeezing blink, Ivan refocused on her. “I always keep my door locked,” he said, still trying to get an answer.
More questions rapidly piled up in his mind behind the unsolved mystery of Miki’s entry. Where had she been? Why couldn’t Christy get in touch with her? How did the Prism get uncovered, and what was with that comment about the silk cloth?
Just as Ivan was about to start grilling Mikaela, his cell phone sent out its robotic version of Bach. He nervously looked around for it.
Kitchen counter.
Ivan scurried toward the kitchen, grateful only a partial wall separated it from the living room. He sure as shit didn’t want to take his eyes off Mikaela for more than a few seconds. Just as he reached for the phone, it fell silent.
Cursing, he trundled back toward the couch. This time he did lose his balance to shock. “Who…who the fuck are you?” he forced out, his voice pared to a thin squeal.
The young woman who sat in his leather recliner was quite pretty—more of a looker than Mikaela—and nicely put together. Sylph-like, Ivan thought, except for that noticeable rack. He wouldn’t have minded her presence in the least…if he had some goddamned clue who she was.
“I’m Celia,” she said. “I live with Adin.”
Gaping at her, Ivan curled one hand over his forehead. With the other, he groped for the couch to steady himself. “And who the sweet shit is Adin?” He managed to drop to a sit after maneuvering around the couch’s broad arm.
The woman smiled. “Ask Jackson.”
Ivan’s heartbeat faltered. “Spey?” he whispered.
“Yes. Tell him I’m looking for Adin.”
“Excuse me, but I…don’t stay in touch with Mr. Spey.” Ivan’s forehead was so crimped from bewilderment it had begun to ache. “Uh, where’s Mikaela?”
“She’s around,” the woman said.
“Where? Around where?”
“Here.”
Ivan’s gaze jerked over the visible portions of his apartment. No Miki. Either she’d slingshot herself into the bathroom or she’d left. Squinting, he studied the front door. It looked securely locked.
When his eyes shifted back toward the recliner, he almost slapped himself to see if he was really awake.
The blonde sylph was gone. In her place sat the statuesque, mulatto form of Angelina Funmaker.
Ivan extended an arm, palm out. Shaking his head, he breathlessly uttered a diced-up laugh. “Okay, Spey, what the fuck are you up to now?”
“Jackson isn’t here,” said Angelina. She not only looked like a ship’s figurehead, she had all the affect of one.
&nbs
p; Ivan lifted the forefinger of his outstretched hand and moved it back and forth. “No. No-no-no. Don’t tell me he’s not behind this. I know my place doesn’t have some goddamned cat door I’ve never noticed. And if it did, women sure as hell wouldn’t be lined up outside, waiting to crawl through.” Ivan looked frantically around his living space. “Spey?” he shouted.
“He isn’t here,” Angelina repeated. Her figure partially dissolved, then morphed into the Celia woman, then faded again and morphed into Miki. “Jackson doesn’t know what’s going on here. He’s at home.”
“Get out,” Ivan whispered, eyes wide. He tried to come up with some Latin banishment phrase, but his mind was like a log jam.
Fumbling up from the couch, he went over to his chrome and smoked-glass desk and grabbed the address book that lay in one corner. It would take too long to dick with his computer. Hands trembling, he flipped to Spey’s number and pulled the land-line telephone toward him.
Ivan damned well knew magic when he saw it. And he knew Spey could perform sophisticated projections, altering his astral self as he chose. No other Adept Ivan knew of could do such things. No other Adept Ivan knew was a wizard.
The figure in the recliner had settled into Mikaela’s form. And there it remained, still as a stone.
From the cocktail table, Nezrabi’s Prism sent needles of colored light into the room. It seemed to pulse with each ejected beam.
The thing was uncovered again. But no one had gone near it.
* * * *
Jackson held the phone away from his ear right after he answered it. Someone was hollering at him. Peering at the nightstand clock—it glowed 1:58—he was about to disconnect when he recognized the voice.
“I’ve had it with you, Spey! I don’t know what your goddamned game is this time—”
“Calm down, Ivan.” Jackson tried to keep his voice lowered. He glanced at Adin, who slept soundly beside him. Feeling a spring of mixed emotion, he let his hand lightly graze the mussed curls of Adin’s hair. They gleamed like threads of satin in the moonlight.