by Todd Gregory
For a split second I worried that I might overload, that my brain circuits would fry—this was forbidden for a reason—but then I realized I could not only contain all of this but also there was room for even more, and I felt myself rising in the air, floating.
I opened my eyes and saw that some of the witches had already collapsed, their dead bodies sprawled on the lawn, while the others who still lived, who I was still draining, were standing but their bodies were twitching, and I felt myself float back down to the grass as, one after another, their lifeless shells fell to the grass.
And I looked down as both Blaine and Robert came at the same time, both of their sweaty bodies convulsing, their voices mingling in a howl.
Again, I felt the hunger convulsing me. The power needed to be fed.
And below me were two humans.
I stepped over the lip of the pit and landed beside the two former combatants as gently as a feather.
Blaine looked up at me and smiled. “You were in the bar the other night,” he said. “I waited for you to come back, but you didn’t. Didn’t you like me?” He pulled his dripping dick out of Robert and stood up, watching me.
“Of course I liked you,” I replied, beckoning him to come toward me. He did, and turned his head, exposing his neck and the juicy jugular vein.
“Feed from me, my master,” he whispered.
So, the spell he’d been under hadn’t been completely broken.
Nico said I was a god, and I certainly felt like one. I felt like I had the power to destroy worlds, that if I wanted to I could split the world in half and send the two pieces spinning off into the great void.
And again, I felt the hunger.
I bent down and bit into his neck, and his body quivered as his blood began flooding my mouth.
And I heard the unmistakable sound of a car pulling up to the front of the house. The engine shut off and doors slammed.
They were here.
I licked Blaine’s wounds and they closed. He smiled back at me, his eyes partly closed from the feeding pleasure.
As I watched him, his eyes seemed to clear as he came back into himself. He shook his head and said, “Where . . . what . . . where am I?” He looked down at himself and over at me. “What the hell—”
“It’s a long story, Blaine,” I said wearily. “But we need to get out of here.” I gestured to Robert, who had gotten to his feet and was staring at him, his mouth open.
“Are you—”
I put one arm around Blaine and the other around Robert. I coiled my legs and gave a little hop. We rose out of the pit effortlessly and landed next to where Lorenzo’s body lay. I looked down and felt a little sick. Lorenzo’s body was dried and desiccated, like a mummy lying in its tomb for thousands of years.
“My God,” Robert whispered, looking around at the corpses, “what happened here?”
I closed my eyes and imagined the bodies disintegrating, turning to ash, and the ash being caught up in a breeze that carried it all down to the river, where it would wash out to Lake Pontchartrain and eventually the Gulf of Mexico.
I felt incredibly tired.
“Cord! Cord, are you all right?”
It was Jean-Paul.
I took them both by the hand and walked with them up to the veranda. Their eyes were wide open, and I knew they were close to going into shock. All of this was too much for their brains to handle. When we reached the veranda, Blaine whispered, “What the hell are you?”
I’m a god, you foolish mortal.
I sat down on a chair, exhausted. I felt like I could sleep for a thousand years. But they needed clothes, so I focused what little energy I had left and wiped the memory of almost everything that had happened from their minds and sent them up to the room where I’d been with both of the twin witches to get some clothes. “And hurry.”
Obediently, they went into the house.
The door had just shut behind them when Jean-Paul and Clint came around the corner. As little as two days ago, I would have been glad to see them. Now I was just tired and didn’t care.
I didn’t care that Jean-Paul didn’t love me the way I wanted him to. I didn’t care about anything anymore.
“Cord?” Jean-Paul knelt next to me, his brown eyes full of concern. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “I destroyed them all,” I said, the effort almost more than I could handle. I tried to summon the power inside, but it didn’t respond. I was a god, but even a god had limits, apparently.
Just minutes before, I had felt like I could destroy the world.
Now I was so tired I could barely keep my head upright.
“There are two humans inside the house who have to go back with us,” I managed to say. “You are going to take us back to New Orleans?”
They exchanged a glance, and Clint said hesitantly, “Humans ?”
“It’s fine,” I replied, and heard them coming down the stairs. “They’ll be here in a second.” My eyes closed as I heard the back door open.
Jean-Paul picked me up in his arms, and I was aware he was carrying me around the house. I could hear Clint talking to Blaine and Robert.
I heard Jean-Paul saying, “It’s okay, baby. I’m here now.”
The last thing I heard before losing consciousness was him telling Clint to burn the house down.
And then everything was blessed darkness.
CHAPTER 16
I do not know how long I slept, but I woke to the sound of rain on the roof of the SUV and windshield wipers going back and forth in their monotonous rhythm. I could also hear the even breathing of Blaine and Robert. I opened my eyes.
I was stretched across the second seat of the vehicle. Jean-Paul was driving, and Clint was sitting in the passenger seat, looking out the rain-spattered window. I sat up a bit and could see that we were on the causeway bridge, somewhere in the middle of Lake Pontchartrain. I turned my head, and in the far backseat the two shirtless humans slept, cuddled comfortably together.
I felt recharged, revitalized—everything within me in balance. The power was still there, but it also rested, dormant until it was needed again. I swallowed. As much as I would like to believe the entire thing had been a dream, it wasn’t.
I now had the power of a god.
I closed my eyes and gently probed inside Jean-Paul’s and Clint’s minds. They had no idea what had happened to me, no clue what I’d done to the coven of witches. I saw the entire thing again through their eyes—finding me on the back veranda of the house, no witches anywhere in sight. The torches still burned around the pit, and when Robert and Blaine had joined us, Jean-Paul had scooped me up and carried me because I was too tired, too drained to stand, let alone walk.
And Clint had set the mansion of the twins ablaze before we drove off into the night.
I was more than a little afraid. I remembered the intoxication of absorbing the witches’ power, sucking their essence dry and killing them. I didn’t understand the power I now possessed, but one thing I was certain of: The witches had made it clear that it was forbidden and had been for millennia. I didn’t quite understand everything they had said or that I had gleaned from their minds, but I knew that the Nightwatchers wouldn’t approve of my new power—and neither would the ruling Councils.
It would make no difference to them that I’d destroyed a coven of rebellious witches who’d wanted to create a new world order, no matter who or what had to be destroyed in the process. It wouldn’t matter to them that I’d had no choice in any of it—from becoming a vampire to being Sebastian’s victim and the twin witches’ to being fed Nico’s blood.
I was an abomination and would have to be destroyed.
“I won’t go down without a fight,” the voice whispered inside my head again, “and the cost of destroying me might just be too high for them to pay.”
I shuddered.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a god, wasn’t sure that returning to New Orleans was a smart move. I might be able to keep all of this a secret—the
powers, the blood of the witches, the ability to drain power from witches—but somehow, I had a feeling Nigel would be able to tell.
I would not be the kind of god Nico and Lorenzo had wanted me to be, the kind Sebastian would have been had he succeeded in his plan.
I’m kind of like Superman, only I need to drink blood.
I laughed out loud before I could stop myself.
“Oh, you’re awake now, are you?” Clint turned and looked between the two front seats at me. “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” I said carefully.
“We were worried about you,” Jean-Paul said without taking his eyes off the bridge. The rain was coming down in almost continual sheets, and he’d slowed down. I didn’t see any taillights ahead of us, and there were no headlights behind us. “You can’t trust witches.”
No shit, Sherlock, I thought, irritated, and looked back out the window. “How did you know where to find me?”
“As your maker, I can always find you,” Jean-Paul said with more than a little arrogance. “As soon as Nigel called me and let me know you’d disappeared, Clint and I were on the next plane to New Orleans.” He reached over and patted Clint on the leg.
I knew that tone, and I took a deep breath as I kept the anger down. It was that same patronizing you’re-just-a-child tone that used to drive me crazy when I was with him. I was tempted to read him the riot act—you didn’t teach me anything, why did you deliberately keep me ignorant about everything, I could have been killed, and you let me go off on my own, knowing full well I was easy prey for witches or rogue vampires—but knew it would accomplish nothing. It would only further convince him he was right, and I would be damned before I would give him that satisfaction.
“Besides, it’s all settled, now that we’ve found you,” he went on, his smug tone making it clear he thought they’d rescued me. “There won’t be any more of this ‘on your own’ nonsense. You belong with us.” He glanced at Clint. “We’ll be leaving from here to head to Ibiza for a few weeks. Remember how you always wanted to go to Ibiza?”
I closed my eyes. The old me would have jumped at the prize and everything would be forgotten, everything forgiven like nothing had ever happened in the first place. It was embarrassing to remember how easy I’d been. No wonder he thinks I’m a child—all he had to do was dangle a present or a surprise in front of me and I’d be happy all over again.
“Doesn’t that sound good?” Clint said in a wheedling voice similar to the one my mother had used when I was a child to get me to eat spinach. “Ibiza! All those beautiful European men, and you know they have the best dance music on the planet. Won’t that be fun? We’ll dance all night and sleep all day, just like old times.”
I could feel him looking at me, and I opened my eyes. He was frowning, and I knew he was trying to read my thoughts and couldn’t. He was confused.
“I’ve changed a lot since I last saw you.”
He looked startled, and I smiled back at him.
“When did you learn to hide your thoughts?” Jean-Paul asked, and I knew Clint had ratted me out telepathically. “You shouldn’t be able to hide your thoughts yet; you’re too young. And you . . . you can’t hide them from me.” I could hear the doubt in his voice. “You shouldn’t be able to do that.”
“I shouldn’t be able to do a lot of things,” I replied, slouching down into my seat again and closing my eyes. “Wake me when we get into the city.”
I didn’t sleep, though. I didn’t need any more rest. I just didn’t really want to talk to them anymore. I didn’t want to talk to anyone—besides Nigel, that is. I would be frank with him, would tell him the truth about what had happened, what I had become. Somehow, I knew I could trust him. He might be a Nightwatcher, he might be as old as the earth itself, but I knew I could tell him everything, and it would be fine.
As the SUV clicked off more miles, I thought about Jean-Paul. Seeing him again had been nothing like I’d imagined. I had hoped he would come after me when I left Palm Springs and had really been disappointed when he hadn’t. A part of me had known he wouldn’t—I was merely a toy whose luster had dimmed for him, and I would never be anything more than that. There would always be a link between us, because he had made me, and he had shown me a world I’d have never dreamed of back when I was human, beating off at night in the empty showers at Beta Kappa. Even had I come out of the closet, told my parents, dealt with all that bullshit, I would have never gone to all of those gay party weekends all over the world. I would have never lived on South Beach, looking at all the beautiful men, shopping at the exclusive shops, doing the designer drugs, and having the time of my life. I wouldn’t trade that time for anything, and I wasn’t going to rule out never going to the White Party or the Winter Ball or Black and Blue ever again—but for now, those things held no interest for me. Jean-Paul had shown me what it was like to be gay, all the possibilities the world held for gay men.
But I wasn’t just gay. I was also a vampire, and it was past time for me to know what that meant as well.
I was actually more than a vampire. I possessed more power than any other vampire—maybe. There was so much I didn’t know, that I hadn’t even been aware I didn’t know, for so long.
As for Jean-Paul, it didn’t hurt anymore that he didn’t love me the way I wanted him to. He would never love anyone that way. It had nothing to do with me. And that had really been the core of everything, hadn’t it? I thought the problem was me. It wasn’t and never had been. I’d been too young, too new to life and love and relationships to understand that.
But now I did. Sure, Jean-Paul would always be able to get to me, get under my skin, but wasn’t that the way it worked with family?
“We’re almost there,” Clint said as the SUV turned down St. Ann Street. It was still raining, and Jean-Paul pulled over to the curb just across the street from the Rawhide.
“Why are we stopping here?” I asked.
“This is where our friends in the back get out,” Jean-Paul said.
I felt a pang of disappointment, but I knew it made sense. I’d developed a soft spot for both of them, but it was best I never see either of them again. Their friends and loved ones were no doubt terrified and worried about them. I heard them stirring, and I looked back over the seat.
They were both such attractive men, and both had bright futures—as long as they never knew anything that had happened to them. I focused on them and commanded them to get out of the SUV. I added another command that once the SUV pulled away from the curb, they would forget everything.
“Okay, guys.” I smiled at them. “Time to go.”
They climbed out onto the street, and I waved good-bye to them before the door closed. As we drove down St. Ann, I looked back at them on the sidewalk. It was raining, and they had no shirts, no shoes, nothing. They looked disoriented, but I knew they’d be okay.
At least they’d be able to return to their friends and family.
“How’s Jared doing?” I asked when we rounded the corner at Royal and Orleans.
“The mess you created?” Jean-Paul replied in the voice that always got under my skin. I fought the urge to smack him on the back of the head.
“I didn’t create that mess,” I replied. I could feel the anger building, and sure enough, there it was, the power, wanting to get out, unleashed. “Jared and I both were being manipulated by witches, so no, it’s not my mess. I was involved, yes, but I didn’t ‘create’ the mess.” I struggled to not lose my temper, to keep everything under control.
“It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t left Palm Springs.”
“It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t turned me into a vampire.”
“ENOUGH ALREADY!” Clint roared. “You two sound like a couple of bitchy schoolgirls, and I’m tired of listening to all this bullshit, okay?”
Neither of us answered. He was right, of course.
The old me, the person I’d been before leaving Palm Springs, would have argued with him, tur
ned it into something more than it was.
Really, it was a wonder Jean-Paul hadn’t killed me.
He found a place to park just past the house, and when he was finished parking, I got out and stood on the wet sidewalk. I hugged Clint when he got out, long and hard, and whispered in his ear, “You’re right, and I’m sorry. I was always kind of a brat, wasn’t I?”
He looked startled at first and hugged me back. “I never minded, really. I loved having you around, and I’ve missed you.”
I looked into his eyes and knew he was telling the truth. I felt a pang. Clint had loved me, truly loved me, from the moment he had first seen me on the street during Mardi Gras. I might have shared Jean-Paul’s bed (most of the time), but I was just a passing thing for him and would never be more to him than that. He felt a responsibility to me as his maker, and I was sure he did want me to come to Ibiza with the rest of them.
But Clint had always loved me, and I’d never seen it. He’d never said anything to me about it, all that time. And even now, I wouldn’t have known, or seen it, if I hadn’t become something else.
I kissed him gently on the mouth. “Thank you for everything, Clint,” I whispered as Jean-Paul came around the corner of the car. “You were always there for me, and I’m sorry I never realized until now that—” I broke off.
Sometimes it’s better not to say the words.
I hugged Jean-Paul, which startled him. He froze for a moment before relaxing and actually hugging me back. “I’ve missed you,” I said, and I meant it. I was done with the games, done with childish things. “And I’m sorry I left the way I did. It was wrong, and I’m sorry.”
He kissed me on the cheek. “I’ve missed you, too, boy.” He pushed my head to one side teasingly.
But I won’t be going to Ibiza with you.
I climbed the steps and unlocked the front door of the house.
Rachel was seated at the piano, and Nigel was on the couch, reading a magazine. They both looked up when I walked in, and Nigel smiled, clearly delighted to see me. He got up and gave me a hug. “I knew you’d be okay,” he said in my ear, and then put his hands on my shoulders and examined my face. A smile played at the corners of his lips. “We have a lot to discuss, don’t we?” One of his eyebrows went up.