Masters of Midnight

by Michael Thomas Ford

  “Look at me.” He does, his eyes shadowed with fear and ardor. Now I dig in my fingernails and watch as pain transfigures his face, pain replaced by wonder, accompanied by a groan of gratitude. Bending forward, I nuzzle his neck, lick his chin stubble, then part his lips with my tongue. “You like it rough, don’t you, Childe David?” I growl, slowly twisting the hard nubs of his nipples. “You’re going to hurt tomorrow,” I promise, “but that’s what we both want.” He groans again, more loudly, and, despite himself, pulls away.

  I slap him. Just hard enough to shock. “Oh, we haven’t even begun,” I promise. “By the break of day we’ll have found your limits, little Hercules. But for now let’s keep you quiet.”

  From the pile of laundry I retrieve a grimy sock. “Stuff this in your mouth,” I order. His hand shakes as he takes it from me. He swallows hard, drops his eyes in shame, then, hesitating only a second, he obeys.

  Beautiful. White fabric of the sock against the dark shadow of his beard stubble. I cup his chin and raise his head till our eyes interlock. Robbed now of speech, his moist surprised eyes are doubly expressive, full of what might pass for worship. “Do you like that?” I ask quietly. He nods slowly. “I’m guessing an aficionado like you has several lengths of cotton rope within easy reach of the bed. Show me now. It’s time you were restrained.”

  The drawer of the bedside table is stuffed full of the familiar paraphernalia of sacrifice. What is it about leather, metal and rope that lends a sense of the sacramental to my feasts? Another question without answer, for eroticism is as much a mystery as aestheticism, its proper twin. I only know that I savor the struggles, the helplessness of my lovers as much as I savor their blood. “Let me see your beauty broken down,” I hum the Leonard Cohen song, uncoiling some rope, “as you would do for one you love.”

  Angus, tonight I will forget you.

  David does not struggle. He’s been dreaming of such a night for a long time. No resistance as I tightly knot his wrists behind him, slip off his jeans and briefs, then stretch him out on the bed and knot his ankles together. Now I strip to the waist, sit on the bed’s edge and simply watch him, sipping the remainder of my Scotch. His chest rises and falls rapidly, his eyes silently ranging over my muscles, chest pelt, Thor’s cross necklace and tattoos. I run my fingers across his torso and down his belly; I grip his penis, which bobs and drips with excitement. He shudders and bucks, and I pull away. “Oh no, not yet. We have all night.” I smile, lifting him to a sitting position beside me. I face him, and gently undo the leather cord about his ponytail. The dark hair falls free about his shoulders. “You look like Christ,” I whisper, kissing his gagged mouth—taste of sock-musk, scent of whisky. When I lean his head against my left shoulder, I feel a few tears trickle down my tattoo, the face of the Horned God. Moonlight pools on the hardwood floor at our feet. My fangs lengthen and ache.

  I want to live this again and again. How I pull his head firmly back by his long hair and lick his neck, restless tides across an eroding beach, my hard fingers again roughly worrying his nipples. How he winces—that delicious muffled sigh—as I sink my teeth.

  Mead: think of it. A rich red mead. An intoxicant made from honey. Sweet, but edged with rust, the rough edge of mortality. My mouth is the goblet. I drink to the gods of this earth, to the dark places of fern and larch, the thick heather, the Highland streams purling over time-smoothed stones, to moonlight streaming over his loins as he sinks back against me, faint.

  Only a little from the neck. Now I’m licking the sweat which runs down his sides—sweat even in this chill room—and now I take his nipples into my mouth one by one. Licking tenderly, then biting down again, hand over his groaning sock-stuffed mouth, taking mouthfuls of his blood, oh-so-carefully. Childe David. This one is too sweet to kill.

  I take a break, leaving him bound on the bed. He rolls over on his side, to take the weight off his aching wrists. Beyond our high window, fog has rolled in again, and I watch it smudge the firth’s far shore, swallow the spring stars. Behind me, David groans and pants. He’s struggling a little, trying to work his wrists free. Far too tight.

  Rolling him over, I slap his buttocks hard, again and again, till the whiteness—of California’s white peaches, of bee-tormented apple blossom, of the flower of the bloodroot, oh the bloodroot, blooming in the early West Virginian spring—till the smooth curved whiteness flushes with my handprints. Handprints in prehistoric caves, like an illiterate’s autograph: I was here. Then slowly slipping inside my spit-wet finger, sinking my fangs into the reddened cheeks of his ass. I draw in the blood long, goblets full of it. It is so hard to stop, breaking the waxen cloisters of the cells one by one, coaxing out the nectar. Only centuries of hard-won knowledge make me withdraw my fangs in time. Unnatural, really, like pulling out of a man before you explode. But a boy so beautiful: I cannot help but care for him. Weak but thankful, for me he will greet the dawn.

  Again I roll him over, slide another finger inside, and now I cover his drooling cock with my mouth, sliding along its stiffness for only a few seconds before tilting my head and breaking the skin with one fang. He shouts as best he can, slams his loins against my face, and—oh, blessed amalgam, the Hunter’s gift—floods my mouth with the mingled tastes of semen and of blood. Gulping lava, oak embers, liquid moonstone.

  When his pants subside, I move to untie him, but he weakly shakes his head. Understanding, I lift him just far enough to pull back the covers—he’s shivering again—and slip him between the sheets. Pulling off my boots and jeans, I slide in beside him, cupping his smooth back with my hairy chest, his smooth buttocks with my hairy groin. With one hand, I push the sock a fraction deeper into his mouth; with the other, I tug absentmindedly on his nipples. After such rigorous abuse, they’re no doubt on fire by now, but how I love to torment a pair of hairy tits which already ache. He groans—his cock’s hard again—and grinds his ass against my crotch, but if we were to start again, I would surely kill him. It’s all I can do not to drink from the fine muscles of his shoulders. “No, no. No more, novice knight. Sleep,” I urge, and soon he does.

  So warm, the human form. I might as well be curled up by the great fireplace in our family castle on the Isle of Mull. Tonight the flickering hearth I drowse beside is his heart.

  Damn you, Angus. Let me love this moment, this bound boy sleeping beside me, his life and death entirely in my hands.

  Well before dawn, the birds begin. A warning I have noted for many years. And dawn comes soon in springtime Scotland, so far north we are. I am kissing the back of David’s neck when he wakes. It is still too dark for him to notice that the silver in my black beard has been replaced with a touch of red. In Gaelic, Derek means “the red-headed one.” It is a name I grow into when I feed, when my several centuries, so eager to catch up with me, for a time give up the chase, when the heat of a youth gives my youth back to me.

  Gently I tug the sock out of his mouth. He licks his dry lips, works his aching jaw, then looks up at me with silent happiness. “Derek. It’s been so long since . . .”

  “I can tell.” I smile. “I’m delighted to have been your Beltane priest.” Rising, I loosen the ropes about his wrists and ankles, just enough for him to free himself when I leave. “I’ve got to go,” I explain, pulling on my clothes, “and you need to sleep.”

  “Will I see you again?”

  “I meant to stay in Scotland longer; there was someplace in the Hebrides I wanted to go, but . . . I don’t think I can go there now. I’ve got to get back to the States instead. But yes, eventually, you will see me again. For now, sleep, and we’ll meet in your dreams.”

  I bend to kiss his brow, and his breath goes deep with sleep. I have that power. No need for him to see me leave the way I most enjoy. From the deep flannel pocket of my Inverness coat, I retrieve a ruby and place it on the bedside table. Then I open the window, lean over the sill, and shift.

  Were David still conscious, he would see my edges shimmer and dissolve, the gray silhouette o
f my form smudging as if enveloped by the firth’s incessant fog. He would see that gray outline disperse, trail through the window, a sentient mist, and recoalesce in midair.

  Yes, of course, a huge bat, condor-sized. I have confused many night-wandering biologists who search their brains, their taxonomies, trying to explain that wingspan. Conspicuous, yes. Back home in West Virginia, hunting season would prove to be a major annoyance if hunters stalked by night. The few who’ve peppered me in dusk’s first violet have soon, shrieking fools, borne my weight on their backs.

  Tonight I skim over the firth—there is time yet. Nick, that big stupid boy, the one with the thick arms and military crewcut, the one who tried to charge me when we first met, Nick waits for me in Holyrood House, waits to hide me in that long-abandoned tower room. He likes his back flogged, and he is, he boasts, a master at constructing afternoon teas. How he will pine when I return to Appalachia, my adopted mountain home. How shallow will seem his days. Perhaps Her Majesty will soon return to Edinburgh and give him something interesting to do. Perhaps she will appreciate his watercress sandwiches.

  Licking my teeth, I savor David still. The musk of his cock and ass, the salt of his armpits, blood and semen. Salinity come so far from Mara, the Mother, the sea. Tomorrow he will wonder at his weakness, will marvel at the bruises my teeth have left on his neck, nipples, buttocks and penis, will bear them for days like royal purple, a warrior’s badge of pride. I have turned endurance into celebration, Angus, this night of May Eve, so far removed from your death. But now, before I sleep, as I soar above Calton Hill and dip about the tower of the Tolbooth Kirk, I owe it to you to remember. My memory is your cenotaph.

  The local Christians said the standing stones were haunted, which was fine for Angus and me. Such folklore meant that no one went there, meant that we could meet amidst the stones, celebrate the Old Gods without disturbance, celebrate our love.

  I’d known Angus McCormick since childhood. He and his family, members of our clan, herded their cattle and tended their sparse crops near that end of Mull closest to Iona. Iona, where the old kings were buried, where Columba landed, determined to see no more of Ireland, and began to spread his pestilence throughout the Highlands.

  Well, I’m being unfair. Those early Celtic monks were gentle souls, I gather, but by the time I came of age in Lochbuie, in the early 1700s, Christianity was as narrow and grim in Scotland as it is in much of Appalachia these days of the early 21st century. My grandmother, who taught me the old faith, also taught me to hide it. The witch burnings were not at all remote, and to this day, on Edinburgh’s Castle Hill, I leave roses by the memorial built to remember those burnt at that very spot.

  And I knew to hide as well my feelings for Angus. God, how handsome he looked, striding behind the plow in spring, picking berries with me in midsummer, practicing our swordplay, or lounging in the blooming heather of early autumn. Behind that rough exterior was the kindest of hearts.

  If you find a white sprig of heather amidst all the purple, you will have great good fortune, they say. I had found my white heather, that first night we spent together. Huddled in the barn, we curled close in the hay, in the dark, while cold rain—those incessant rains of the Hebrides—dripped off the eaves. What began as a shared display of battle scars became what we’d both guiltily dreamed of for years.

  “Here, beneath my ribs. Feel,” Angus invited me, gently taking my hand and pressing it to his side. He was always braver than I. “And here, across the right thigh.” With shaking hands I touched him, with strong hands he peeled off my kilt. At last, as the storm crashed outside, at last I could run my fingers over his red-gold belly hair, his beard, the thick muscles shaped by hard farm work.

  For many years of shared adventure, we’d managed to conceal our passion from others, politely shrugging off our parents’ pleas to wed local lassies. After such sustained luck, perhaps, that Beltane night of 1730, Angus and I were overconfident, a little drunk on mead, slipping from Castle Moy, my family’s ancient seat, and heading for the standing stones.

  It was a beautiful night, a night far too lovely for death, for what un-moored soul could leave that soft wind off the loch, the scent of early flowers, the circling stars? Amidst the stones, stripped to nothing but our kilts, about a small flickering firepit we called air, fire, water and earth. We felt the gods inside us, the mating of heaven and earth, the coming of summer. In the wet grass, I knelt before Angus, choking and gasping beneath the folds of wool as he hammered my face, his red curls flaming against my mouth. In the wet grass, he shouldered my legs and rode into me hard, just as the gods are said to couple on that night.

  The small warning sounds that would normally make us start apart were drowned by our groanings. And then they appeared in the firelight. They’d followed; they’d watched it all. Enemies of Angus’s father, an old quarrel. Shouting Bible verses, they surrounded us. One excuse would have been enough for them: witches celebrating the Sabbat. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” But one man riding another? “Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind!” Our dirks were out of reach; there were too many of them. I felt a boot in my jaw, another in my belly, and then a blade in my ribs, a blade in my back.

  The fire had died to gray-ashed embers when I awoke. Between my shoulder blades and ribs, deep wounds throbbed. Angus lay naked at the foot of one stone. I crawled to him, gasping. I shook him, pressed my lips to his, to the deep slashes in his sides. The streaks of dried blood were dull black in the starlight.

  “He is dead,” said a voice, “and soon shall you follow him.” I turned, none too quickly, for the pain of my wounds made me faint-headed. A shadow stepped from behind the stone. The silhouette of a warrior, in great kilt, with long hair and a bushy beard, old-style claymore hanging at his side. “Yes, boy, you are dying.” Boy? I thought stupidly, I am thirty, I have fought many battles. Fought many battles with Angus by my side.

  Angus. What could this stranger do for me? “Go away, old one.” Dazed, I turned from him. Gingerly I touched my side, felt the blood patiently welling, then lay beside Angus, stroking his mud-caked hair. Light began to fill my eyes, as if the stars had descended and had begun to hive about me. It was harder and harder to breathe. Vincere vel mori. To conquer or die, the family motto. Dying beside a man I’d loved so much would be fitting, I thought, kissing Angus’s closed eyelids. My only regret would be that his murderers would go unpunished. What pleasure could be left for me now on this earth but driving my claymore through their hearts?

  “I can give you the power to survive this, Derek. I can give you the power to take your revenge. Will you come with me?” Oh, hell. I rolled over and looked up at him. “How do you know my name? How do you hear what I think?” He bent over me. In the dark I could see him smile, I could see his white teeth. He stroked my chest, pushed the black hair out of my eyes.

  “Will you come with me?” he asked again. I nodded. What had I to lose? Bending, he lifted me, my proud warrior’s bulk, as if I were insubstantial and hollow-boned as a bird. My head fell against his hard shoulder, he kissed my brow, great beard tickling my cheek, and carried me off into the dark.

  Nick does what I tell him, in return for regular abuse. Tomorrow he will deal with the details, canceling the trip to Mull. He grows petulant, knowing how soon I will return to America. In the few minutes before sleep comes, I slap him around and briefly feed on him, which proves sufficient distraction for us both. If I cannot gather the courage to return to Mull, I decide, as I crawl into my coffin this morning of May Day, I will taste Edinburgh’s delights a bit longer.

  Angus, heather grows over your grave, there in the Maclaine cemetery above the loch, where all my family rest. The gorse grows golden on the surrounding slopes, sheep amble across the country roads, waves roll with a deep susurrus up the long slope of the shore. I do not need to be there to know these things. I should have been buried beside you.

  Instead, I am here, in Canongate Kirkyard with this nervous boy. I’
ve ripped open the front of his black T-shirt and maneuvered him against the graveyard’s high wall. He’s beginning to realize he’s in danger, that I’m far stronger than he. I can smell his sweat. Within the minute, I will taste it.

  Ensign Ewart’s was crowded, as usual. I allowed myself a pint of heavy, just to look normal. The guitarist was singing “Barbara Allen.” Oh, sad, the sort of song they love back in my West Virginia mountains. “From his heart grew a red, red rose.” Well, I had a true lover’s knot in mind, watching one tall young man getting drunk at the bar. One beer after another, a thirst to match mine. The night was hot for May, and the black T-shirt he’d no doubt carefully picked earlier that evening was doing its job, nicely highlighting a keystone-tapered torso and tribal tattoos spilling down his arms. Scruffy punk. Pierced eyebrows. Head shaved smooth, face clean-shaven save for a thick tuft of hair jutting just beneath his lower lip. The sort of edgy beauty that exudes arrogance, the sort I love to conquer, the kind of pride he’ll soon regret.

  It took little effort, a few glances over the vague maelstroms of tobacco smoke, to get his attention, to touch that place in his mind. Easy with the cocky and overconfident. Hubris, they should know better. But then most grimy pierced street punks don’t read Aeschylus.

  Now he’s thinking twice about having offered me a cigarette, having followed me out, followed me down the long ramp of the Royal Mile and into the dark and isolated realm of this cemetery. His eyes skip from my smile to the graveyard’s entrance. A goodly ways away. He licks his incongruous Cupid’s bow lips. The tatters of his shirt hang from his waist like a storm-torn black flag.

  “This is the grave of Clarinda,” I explain, momentary tour guide, pointing to the plaque with its pretty silhouette of a woman’s head. Before the grave, red roses are blooming profusely. From one stem I pluck a long thorn.