by Todd Gregory
On the fourth ring, Darren’s answering machine picked up the call. Tommy waited impatiently for the message to finish, and once the beep sounded, he poured forth the information with a triumphant rush until Chris walked in with a man he recognized. The man in the photograph Darren had showed him and cried over. Roger.
Tommy quickly slammed down the receiver.
“So you called Darren,” Chris said. There was no recrimination in his calm voice. “Meet Roger, his battered partner. He arrived about a month ago with the same medical technician who found you.”
Chris brought Roger farther inside and shut the door.
“Show Tommy.”
Roger hesitated. Horrific shame and embarrassment danced in his still haunted eyes. He clenched tightly at the collar of his shirt in a futile attempt to keep under wraps the legacy of shame his eyes showed.
“Show him,” Chris said more gently this time. He reached out and lightly brushed Roger’s arm with his fingers.
“It’s all right. We still have some daylight left, and the blinds are closed. No outsider can see, but Tommy needs to see your scars for himself.”
Roger closed his eyes as he unbuttoned his shirt. Tommy watched in nauseous fascination as the older man’s blouse fell down past his shoulders and down to the floor.
Tommy could see Roger’s body had been firm and beautiful once. Somehow the firmness remained despite the patchwork of thin white scars where razor sharp teeth and fingernails had traced path upon path of vicious biting and tearing.
“The pain is fleeting,” Roger said. He smiled wistfully and began tracing a scar on his stomach. “Pretty soon all you live for is their drool upon your body as it numbs out the pain and replaces it with euphoria.”
His finger stopped at his left pec. A firm dark nipple should have been at the ragged scar tissue where his finger rested. Roger smiled at Tommy. “Do you remember the pleasure you felt after his teeth were inside your jugular vein? Do you remember wanting more? Begging for more?”
The memory of Darren’s incisors breaking into the skin of his neck flooded back to Tommy from the corner of his mind where he had buried it.
“No!” Tommy screamed. He blindly ran from the room, tears burning his eyes.
Somehow Tommy managed to maneuver through the maze of people and furniture and found the way back to his room. He ran into the small closet and curled up into a fetal position on the floor. The full memory of his time with Darren surged to the surface of his brain, and he bit deeply on his right hand to prevent himself from screaming in humiliated disgust.
Tommy knew he was no better than Roger, Chris, and all the other patients in the clinic. When Darren had slid roughly inside him, Tommy had begged him to nibble on his body again so he could savor the euphoria his drool offered. Darren had just bared his teeth in a tantalizing tease as each thrust carried his cock farther inside Tommy.
A comforting hand squeezed Tommy’s shoulder in reassurance. Startled, he cried out and scrambled away in terror, only to be blocked by the closet wall. Through tear-blurred eyes, Tommy saw Chris smiling sadly at him.
“It’s okay, honey,” Chris said as he sat down beside Tommy and brushed his hair off his sweaty forehead.
“It’s not okay,” Tommy bitterly cried. “You don’t understand. I told Darren the shelter’s address.”
The laughter in the older man’s eyes stopped Tommy for a second. Then he yelled, “Damnit! Darren’s coming here. He’s coming for Roger!”
“Tommy, oh Tommy, you’re not the first person who has been used by one of them. We’ve had moles before. The founders of this abuse shelter expected one or more vampires would attempt to reclaim a so-called loved one. We exist solely to break the cycle of abuse.”
“But he’s coming. I invited him here. I pleaded with him to come. No wall or door can prevent him from reclaiming me or Roger.” His voice shrank to a shrill whisper. “I don’t want him to touch me ever again.”
“Tommy, listen to me carefully. The sun has set and we don’t have much time left.” Chris pulled him off the closet floor. “Before the founders opened the doors to this shelter, they realized that there would have to be a shelter within a shelter. Darren can’t get to us in there because you haven’t invited him inside there, and we won’t let you. But we’ve got to leave now. Otherwise, no one will be safe from him.”
“It’s already too late. I’ve come back to reclaim what’s rightfully mine.” Darren grabbed Chris and pulled him roughly up from the floor. Tommy screamed and Chris shut his eyes at the sight of saliva dripping from Darren’s sharp incisors. “Where’s Roger?”
With eyes tightly shut, Chris struggled uselessly against Darren’s tight hold. “Go to hell. He’s safe from you!” he yelled.
“Why don’t I take you to heaven instead?” His tongue traveled up the length and breadth of Chris’s thick neck. Tommy watched in mute horror as Chris moaned in orgasmic pleasure and went limp in Darren’s arms.
“Where’s Roger?” Darren whispered in Chris’s ear. “Tell me where he is and I’ll give you another taste. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it.” He tickled Chris’s chin with the tip of his tongue.
Tommy regained a fragile hold on his terror and rose from the floor. “Leave him alone, you bastard.” He rushed him. Darren threw Chris aside. He hit the floor with a dull thud. Darren easily caught Tommy. Two harsh blows landed across his cheeks and pain surged anew in Tommy’s still bruised face.
“Tell me where Roger is, and it’s happy time for everyone. Otherwise…” Darren smacked Tommy across the face again.
“Tell me.” He raised his hand to strike Tommy again, but paused. “I see we have uninvited company.” Darren threw Tommy down and he landed on top of Chris. The older man’s body was still in the throes of orgasmic seizures brought on by Darren’s saliva. Tommy scrambled off Chris and dragged the unconscious man away as Darren turned to face whoever had been bold enough to interrupt him.
An orderly armed with a crossbow stood in the doorway. He fired as Darren dropped to the floor and rolled over to him. The arrow sailed uselessly into the far wall. He knocked the crossbow out of the orderly’s hand and grabbed him by the throat.
“Perhaps you have the information I need,” Darren said. He dragged the squirming man into the closet and slammed the door shut.
“Chris, please wake up,” Tommy pleaded in whispered tones. “We have to get to the shelter. Chris!” Tommy lightly slapped Chris’s face.
Tommy froze at the sound of clothes being ripped and a scream piercing the room. He watched helplessly as the closet door shuddered against the sheer force of the violent coupling on the other side.
The closet door opened and the naked orderly stood momentarily before he dropped. Blood gushed out of a large bite from his neck and oozed down his body. His eyes were dull. He was dead before he hit the floor.
Darren emerged from the closet and wiped the fresh blood from his lips and chin with a handkerchief he pulled out of his shirt pocket. He turned his attention back to Tommy and Chris.
“No,” Tommy whispered. With Chris in tow, he began to back away, but Darren walked over and grabbed him by the shoulders.
“I’m only going to ask one more time.” Darren’s hot breath stank of blood and his teeth scraped across Tommy’s left cheek.
“Darren, take me home. I want to go home.” Roger stood in the doorway. Arms outstretched, smiling.
“Later,” Darren whispered to Tommy. He let go of Tommy and turned his attention fully to his partner.
“Get away from him!” Tommy screamed as he cradled Chris once more, but his words had no effect. Roger hadn’t bothered to put his shirt back on. Smiling, Darren instantly went over to him. Roger smiled as he cradled Darren’s face in his hands.
“Give me just one more taste before we go home,” Roger pleaded.
As Darren closed his eyes and readied his teeth to strike on his neck, Roger removed a sharpened stake that had been taped to his back with electrical t
ape and plunged it into his back, through his heart.
Darren screamed in pain and outrage, but still managed to grab Roger. In a parody of a loving embrace sealed with a kiss, Darren pulled Roger forward and impaled him on the stake that was sticking out of his chest. “Taste me now,” he managed to rasp before embedding his teeth in his neck. They fell to the floor, dead.
Tommy closed his eyes. Bitter tears flowed as he rocked Chris back and forth. “It’s going to be all right,” Tommy told Chris. He wasn’t aware if the man heard him. “It’s going to be all right. We’ll go out in the sunshine together. Someday. I promise. Together.”
Tommy cried hysterically, hugging Chris tightly, as more orderlies rushed in.
Lifeblood
Jeffrey A. Ricker
Let’s get one thing straight: I never bit Darren. I never drank from him. I never tried to turn him into one of us.
I didn’t even think about it until the end.
If I’d offered, though, he would have said no, of course. I could have begged, but I think I’ve forgotten how to do that. I would have done anything Darren wanted. I would have walked right out into broad daylight if he’d asked me to.
Not that he would have asked me to do that. Not that it would have made any difference, either. Here are a few more things to get straight. Certain myths are true: We need blood to survive. We never age. We’re hypersensitive to the sun, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen one of us burst into flame. That’s not to say it’s impossible. The part about having no reflection is total bullshit. So’s the part about turning into a bat, a wolf, or a mist.
Right. I wish.
I met him in a bar. Like most other people there, I was looking for something to drink. I noticed Darren, who’d already had more than a few, was leaning against the bar, alone, and looked like easy pickings. Also, from the back, the other thing I noticed about him was the four-inch rip just below the left back pocket of his jeans. That, and his lack of underwear.
I leaned against the bar next to him and ordered a round. When the bartender slid a fresh Corona in front of him, Darren turned to me with a dopey, tipsy grin and lifted the bottle in a silent toast. This was going to be easy.
*
Drinking someone’s blood without killing them is delicate, tricky, but not impossible. It’s like two people pulling on opposite ends of a string. As long as you feel resistance coming from the other end, it’s okay to keep going. Once you start to feel the other side start to slacken, though, you have to stop.
If you can. Like I said, it’s tricky.
I make a point of trying not to kill them. Most of the time, I go for the ones who are really drunk or really strung out. (The latter can give the blood an odd flavor; it’s an acquired taste.) Once, I drank from a woman three hours after she ate a lot of magic mushrooms, and even I tripped for a little bit.
Every once in a while, you find someone who gets off on it. There’s one guy—I don’t know his name—who won’t let me drink unless I fuck him, and he makes me wait to drink until he comes. It sounds like the sort of thing I should pay for, but I think he’d be willing to pay me to do him, too (though I don’t think I was the only vampire he was spreading his legs for).
The thing that’s nice about that is not just the blood or the piece of ass. It’s that I don’t have to pretend. He knows what I am, and I don’t have to pretend to care who he is beyond that exchange. All I have to do is make sure he doesn’t die.
Sometimes I tell people the truth. They ask what I do for a living and I say, “I’m a vampire.” Usually they laugh, come back with something like, “Yeah, right,” or if they’re especially creative, “So how long have you been a lawyer, then?” Telling them the truth, I’ve discovered, makes any necessary lie a little easier to hide. I tell them I’m in investments and omit the fact that I’ve been compounding interest for over a hundred years.
*
By the time we left the bar, Darren wasn’t in any shape to ask questions. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in any shape to tell me where he lived, either. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem—just prop him against a wall, have a little drink, and then let him sleep it off in a bus shelter or on a park bench and wonder the next morning just how much he’d had to drink the night before.
Instead, I took him home. To my place. Which I’d never done before.
We vampires have a gravitational pull. I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s as basic to me as sight or smell. If I want someone near me, I just have to look at them and imagine it happening, and it will.
In Darren’s case, the attraction worked in reverse. I was drawn to him. He glowed, his magnetic appeal was as massive as the sun all of a sudden, and it wasn’t just the beer or the rip in his jeans or the smile. It wasn’t the conversation either, because he couldn’t put a subject and a verb together to save his life by the time I got him undressed and into bed.
And then I watched him sleep all night.
The next morning, when he finally woke up, I was still sitting in the chair by the bed, still watching him. I gestured toward a glass of water and a pill bottle on the nightstand.
“You probably have a headache.”
He ran a hand through his hair and sat up, smiling. “I never get hangovers.” He glanced under the covers. “Did we…?”
I shook my head. “You were really drunk.”
“Oh.” He looked around, maybe trying to find his clothes. I pointed to them, neatly folded on the dresser, but out of his reach.
“Would you like to get dressed?”
“Maybe in a minute. I’m embarrassed to say I don’t remember your name.”
“Michael.”
“Well, thank you for respecting my virtue last night, Michael. Where did we meet?”
“At the Loading Zone.”
“And what do you do in life as we know it?”
“I’m a vampire.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?” I nodded. He leaned forward. “Let me see your teeth.”
He made room for me to sit next to him on the bed. I tilted my head back a little and opened my mouth wide enough for him to see the canines. He leaned closer, then reached up toward my mouth.
“You mind?” he asked. I shrugged, and he gently grasped one of the canines between his thumb and forefinger and gave it a little jiggle.
“Well, it’s either real or some very expensive fetish dental work,” he said. We were now sitting with our faces only a few inches apart, and when he lowered his hand, I felt his breath against my cheek. I had no breath for him to feel. His hand grazed my throat on the way down. Fingers skidded across the buttons of my shirt until they came to rest on my thigh.
“I guess I should thank you for respecting more than my virtue last night,” he said.
I swallowed. Was this what nervousness felt like? I’d forgotten.
“Why aren’t you afraid of me?” I asked.
“Because you’re not going to kill me,” he said. “Why are you afraid of me?”
I almost laughed. “I’m not afraid.”
He smiled. “You’re a very bad liar,” he said, and lifted his hand to my chest.
And my heart beat.
A vampire’s heart only beats after he’s fed, and then only for a short time. But this time it kept beating as he pushed me backward onto the bed and crawled on top of me. This naked and perhaps still drunk man should not have had any of the control in this situation, but I was powerless beneath him as he slowly and deliberately removed my clothes, and for the next hour he made my heart beat in ways it hadn’t in decades.
Blood is like a magnet. It’s the most powerful force of attraction to a vampire. Like a law of physics, we must obey its pull. Darren, though, had the ability to rewrite the laws of physics. Whenever I fucked the nameless blood donor, my focus was always on the drink that came when he did. Darren made me remember what an equally strong imperative the sex drive can be. Thoughts of blood and drinking fell away from my mind as he lowered himself onto me.
Thoughts disappeared, period. If I needed oxygen, I would have been breathless by the time he came.
“If it weren’t for the whole blood-sucking thing,” he said, rolling over onto his back, “I would highly recommend everyone get a vampire lover.”
“Details, details,” I said, but I could feel the hunger rising in me. There were spare units in the fridge for cases like this, but drinking cold, old blood was worse than flat soda or a tepid martini. It was more like drinking sour milk.
“Does that mean I won’t see you again after this?” I asked.
The words were out before I knew I’d said them. He propped himself up on one elbow and looked at me skeptically. Skeptical is a difficult look to pull off while naked and messy, but he gave it his best shot.
“Let’s leave aside the question of why I would want to see you again. Why would you want to see me?”
I turned my gaze back toward the ceiling. “I don’t know, but there it is.”
He hmm’d noncommittally and hoisted himself out of bed. “Do you mind if I take a shower? I might be able to think more clearly without the spunk drying on my belly.”
*
Suddenly I was no longer at the top of the food chain. You know how tigers and lions never look like they have any fear in the world? That’s what it’s like for a vampire. You don’t worry about something eating you when you’re faster, stronger, and smarter than every other species on the menu.
At least that was how I felt until Darren zigzagged onto the list of specials. He was right that I wasn’t going to kill him, but I had no idea why. He was ripe for the picking, and he wasn’t afraid. I’d met others who weren’t afraid, the people who gave themselves to it willingly, but underneath their bravado was always an awareness of the danger. Darren, if he felt he was in danger, never let it show. And I would have seen it. I would have smelled the slightest elevation in his adrenaline, I would have detected the slightest of flinches when I touched him.