Blood Sacraments

by Todd Gregory

  “That is not how it works!” growled Jasper, landing between Karl and Vadim. “You forget your place.”

  “Which is interesting, considering how often you keep reminding me of it,” Vadim retorted.

  Jasper backhanded Vadim across the room. But they were equal in strength and power. Both were ancient. Both had been created by the original vampires, so long ago in antiquity that they had forgotten their parents.

  Vadim sprang to his feet, launched himself into the air, and struck Jasper feet first, sending him crashing into the wall. They moved with preternatural speed and Vadim had no sooner landed than he was upon Jasper, pounding him with his fists before gripping the clan leader’s head between his hands and smashing it into the stone wall.

  Karl watched horrified, his tears slowing to a dribble, his face cooling as his mind was, for a moment, taken off the death of his beloved Daniel.

  Jasper brought a foot up from behind and kicked Vadim with enough power to dislodge him. He was dizzy from Vadim’s assault but freshly fuelled by Daniel’s blood. He leapt to his feet, grabbed Vadim by the jacket, and rammed him against the wall with such a force that splinters of rock showered the floor. He pulled the groaning vampire back from the rock before slamming him once more into it. Again and again he used Vadim as a battering ram, creating a larger indentation in the granite with each impact. Finally, he felt Vadim give up the struggle and let the defeated vampire fall to the floor.

  As he turned to leave the room he glared at Karl.

  “That is why I am clan leader. And that is why he needs constant reminding!”

  Karl let himself go limp. His wrists were red raw from the friction of the metal manacles against his bare skin. Every time he put any kind of pressure on them, they smarted. But now he didn’t care. The throbbing pain of his wrists was nothing compared to the pain in his soul. He stared at Daniel’s body and let the tears fall once again, though this time they fell in silence.

  So consumed by his loss was he that he didn’t notice Vadim struggling to his feet. Nor did he notice the look in Vadim’s eyes as the creature stalked towards him. The first thing he noticed was the vampire’s hands on him, one hand on his shoulder and the other pulling his head to one side so that his neck was stretched taut. A glint of light on enamel and then a white hot pain as two fangs pierced his skin.

  He cried out but his pain was of no consequence to the vampire who was feasting on the fresh blood pouring into his mouth. As Vadim drank at his neck, swallowing great gulps of blood, he noticed how light-headed he had begun to feel. His heart was racing, and for the first time since his capture he began to think about dying. The vampire had been about to attack him only minutes earlier, but only now as the creature was sucking the very life out of him did he think about his mortality. Suddenly he felt frightened and alone, like a child lost at the fair. If he’d had the strength, he would have struggled, for even though he knew he would soon be joining Daniel there was a part of his spirit that refused to go easily.

  But then something peculiar happened. Vadim started regurgitating the blood back into the wound, feeding it back into Karl’s system, though now it contained the virus that swarmed in his own body.

  At first Karl’s body was racked with pain. His muscles began to spasm and cramp, but as the virus took hold, mutating and multiplying inside him, he began to feel invincible. He felt a new strength returning to his body, energising and reinvigorating him.

  Vadim lifted his head and wiped his mouth on the palm of his hand.

  “Remember who did this for you,” he said smiling. “Remember it is I, Vadim de Bourneville, who has won the prize.”

  And as his lips parted Karl could see how his blood had stained the vampire’s teeth and gums.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  But the vampire’s only response was a guttural laugh.

  “Just remember,” he repeated before fleeing the room in a blur of light and shadow.

  Karl brought a hand to the wound in his neck and was surprised to feel that the blood had already clotted, forming a scab. He felt his newfound strength surging through his body, tingling and tickling as it spread. His arms, which had previously been numb, were now pulsing with energy. Even his cock had grown to full mast and the shadows that had obscured his ability to see anything clearly seemed to hide no more secrets. He could see Daniel’s body as clearly as if the sunlight itself was bathing him in its glorious light.

  The door to the dungeon opened and took Karl’s mind off the changes that were still going on within his body.

  “I have had enough of games and petty jealousies,” said Jasper. “The time for that has ended.”

  Jasper flew at Karl, pulling his head towards him, simultaneously stretching the far side of his neck taut and hiding the wounds Vadim had left behind on the side closest to him. Without hesitation he sank his fangs into Karl’s neck, puncturing the artery and sucking the crimson liquid down his throat, not once suspecting that his rival had been there just minutes before.

  Again Karl felt light-headed. The room seemed to spin around him. He was at the centre of a maelstrom, and as Jasper drank at his throat the light and shadows became grotesque faces that leered at him from some other dimension. Throbbing. Pounding. His heart beat so fast that he was sure it would tear itself free from the ligaments that held it in place.

  But as Jasper began to feed the blood back into him, adding his strain of the vampire virus to that which Vadim had already deposited, he felt his head pulse with a screaming pain. One virus battled the other, merging to become something else, something much more powerful. As the roar in his ears grew to a deafening level he lost consciousness, leaving Jasper to finish the transformation before stealing back along the corridor to join the rest of his clan upstairs. Undetected.

  Karl regained consciousness some hours later, his eyes immediately detecting something moving in the corner. A rat. As he watched it, the rodent stopped and stuck its twitching snout into the air, sniffing. It let out a squeak of alarm and scurried off as fast as its legs would carry it. Karl snarled and wrenched his hands free of the rusty iron manacles. For a moment he stared at the marks on his wrists but wasted no time thinking about things that were not important. He was free, and in his soul he knew that he had greatly changed.

  He walked over to where Daniel’s body lay. Rigor mortis had begun to set in and the pale body was now quite rigid and beginning to smell; the sickly sweet smell of death. Yet to Karl his beloved was still as beautiful as he had ever been. He lifted Daniel’s head up and pressed his lips against the pale purple lips he had kissed a thousand times before when they were fuller and pinker with life.

  “Good-bye, baby,” he whispered, but this time there were no tears. He had moved on from tears. Now there was only hatred and anger.

  The door to the dungeon presented no problem. He was able to easily rip it from its hinges, flinging the object of wood and iron over his shoulder. He walked along the corridor he had walked with Daniel many days before, climbed the stairs, and pushed the door at the top open with no regard for what might be waiting for him on the other side. He stepped out onto the carpeted floor, noticing how fresh the air smelt away from his stale prison cell. He took a deep breath and walked past the staircase and into the great entrance hall. A quick scan of the room told him that he was alone.

  The large front door had been securely bolted against the world, but it took no effort at all to pull each bolt back, despite their size and weight. He flung the door open and at first the sunlight on his face was a welcome sensation. He smiled despite himself, lifting his face to its rays. There was still just enough human left in him to tolerate that small kiss of sunshine, but his joy did not last for long. The mutant vampire virus was still at work on the organs and systems of his body. The warmth of the sun began to burn and he noticed steam coming off his face. He slammed the door shut and patted his face with his hand. His skin felt hot and had just started to melt. But his first thought was no
t of his handsome face, but of Jasper and Vadim. His lip curled like a snarling dog’s when he thought of them, and he wasted no more time before flying up the stairs to where he suspected the vampires slept.

  It was difficult to know what time it was. The vampires lived only by the constraints of daylight and night. The windows had all been boarded up so there was no clue from outside. But one thing was for sure, the sun was out, and if what he’d heard about vampires was true, they would all be resting now.

  He stole along the corridor, taking care not to make the slightest noise, though he knew from experience that if the vampires were awake they would soon sense him the way they seemed to always know what had been going on in the dungeon. He opened one door after another, observing that the vampires slept not in coffins, as was the popular myth, but in great four-posted beds; a habit left over from a time when they had been human.

  But how was he going to exact his revenge on them? Could he simply smash a window and let the sunshine pour in to do its work? That would work for one of them, but the howls of pain and the noise of the commotion that followed would draw the others. Then a thought occurred to him. He need not get rid of the entire clan, just Jasper and Vadim. They were the ones he wanted to destroy. They were the only ones that had to suffer for what had happened to Daniel. The others he would subdue. He might even decide to stay and become clan leader. There were so many things to think about, but he would ignore them all except for thoughts relating to avenging Daniel’s death.

  As he made his way down the corridor, past paintings of ancestors, some dead and some forever trapped in a limbo between life and death, he noticed a coat of arms at the end of the hall. Beneath it, one crossed over the other, was a sword and an axe. It seemed fortuitous that he should find such objects when his very thoughts were of destroying the two vampires who had destroyed his lover. He flew to the end of the corridor, colliding gently with the wall; his powers were not yet fully under his control. The sound was no more than a dull thud but he took the time to stop and listen for signs of anyone stirring, hearing nothing but sounds of sleep coming from within the upstairs rooms. Safe in that knowledge, he reached up and unhooked first the axe and then the sword.

  He opened the door closest to him, pushing it ajar just enough for him to see inside. The space beyond was dark but for the sliver of light that filtered in around him. Still it was enough for him to see that hanging upside down from a rail attached the ceiling, in the manner of the ancestors, was his first victim, Vadim. His great wings were wrapped around him so that only his pale head was visible. His feet were great claws that gripped the metal rod, locked on by a temporary paralysis that was triggered by the sleeping mechanism in his brain.

  Karl crept up to the sleeping vampire and with one swing of the axe had his head off, sending it flying across the room where it hit the skirting board with a crack. Vadim’s body began to convulse and the great wings flapped frantically, but the claws of the vampire’s feet stayed clamped to the rail so that the body swung back and forth in a frenzied swinging motion. Streamers of blood splattered the floorboards and wallpapered walls.

  Wasting no time, Karl ran across the hallway to the other bedroom which he suspected was Jasper’s. He burst into the room just as Jasper, awoken by the commotion in the other room, was unfurling his wings. He leapt at the clan leader, both hands swinging, but Jasper was too fast. As Karl took another swing, the vampire kicked the axe out of his hand with a force that spun him around on the spot. The vampire then levitated and swooped down, tearing three lines across the width of Karl’s face with his yellowed claws.

  “You bastard!” he snarled. “I’ll kill you if it’s the last thing I do.”

  Karl staggered back against the door, which he slammed shut and locked. It was only a thought but he wondered why the vampire didn’t keep it locked. Yet he had no time to ponder such trivialities. What did he care? He was grateful the vampire had been so careless. Jasper launched himself at Karl, though this time he was ready for him, swinging the mighty sword and slicing a great hole in the sensitive membrane of the vampire’s wing.

  But the battle had not been won yet. Karl bounded across the bed, landing with bent knees and ready for another assault.

  “You’ll pay for this!” growled Jasper, fingering the split in his wing before running at Karl with claws extended and fangs bared and gleaming.

  Karl stood fast. Even when the vampire lowered his head, ready to ram Karl into the wall, he stood fast. It wasn’t until he could smell Jasper’s foul breath that he stepped to the side, brought the sword down on Jasper’s neck, and severed his head from his torso. The head bounced into a corner, where it spun for a while and then settled, while his body smashed through the thin wooden boards at the window, through the glass and out into the bright light of day where it disintegrated into a ball of flame before it reached the ground below.

  Still, neither death brought Karl the feelings of satisfaction or elation he’d been anticipating. The deaths of Vadim and Jasper would not bring Daniel back. He was alone now; more alone than ever before. He could never go back to his family, nor see his friends again. He was a creature of the night now. He could only move in darkness, forever exiled from the warmth of the sun and of family.

  The other vampires, who had been awakened by the noise, were banging and clawing at the door. A fist came through the thick wood and a beady black eye peered through, followed by a scream as a beam of daylight found it. More screams followed as other vampires peered through into the light-filled room to learn what had transpired in their leader’s sleeping quarters.

  Karl unlocked the door and stepped out into the corridor. The throng awaiting him scratched and bit at him, a welcome he had fully expected.

  “Wait!” he shouted, his voice deep and commanding.

  He darted into Vadim’s room, retrieved the head, and marched back out again holding the dripping body part high.

  “This is Vadim. The rest of him lies in there,” he said, gesturing with his head. “Jasper has been destroyed.” He tossed the head through the open door of Jasper’s room where it landed and burst into flames. He pulled the door shut after him. “I have destroyed your leaders, so I suggest that if you want to keep your heads, you listen to me.”

  The snarls and growls slowly died away.

  “I have no love for you, in fact you disgust me. But as I have lost all that I love and have nowhere else to go, I am prepared to make my home here.”

  “And what makes you think that we won’t kill you in your sleep?” asked a handsome young vampire.

  Karl lifted up a hand, fingers clawed, and immediately the man gripped his throat. As Karl brought his fingers together, the young vampire gasped and scratched at his throat to remove something that wasn’t there.

  “Before your clan leader and his second died they gave me a powerful gift, one which I could use to destroy any or all of you. Don’t test me, for I promise that you shall lose. Further to this power, I have with me hatred. I will not tolerate the slightest disrespect from any one of you, for it will please me too much to end your misery.”

  He could not say where the words were coming from. They poured from him like water over a cliff edge. In truth he didn’t know exactly what powers he had, though it was true he had powers he didn’t yet know about. Every now and again he became aware of something else he could do, be it hear the dull noise of his clan’s thoughts or smell the blood as something living meandered by outside in the daylight.

  He released the young vampire from his psychic grip.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Samuel,” replied the vampire, rubbing his reddened throat.

  “Samuel, why don’t you show me to your room? The night is still a few hours away and I am tired.”

  Samuel escorted Karl into a room two doors down as the others melted back to their chambers.

  “Now, Samuel, before we go to sleep how about you come over here and show me how well you can suck my co
ck. There could be benefits for you if you do it well enough.”

  Samuel, realising that he had the opportunity for something great, took Karl’s cock and kissed the fleshy cockhead. His tongue circled the glans once, twice, and then he took the entire organ into his mouth.

  Karl closed his eyes. There was a vague memory of someone else doing this, someone he used to care about, but his thoughts were cloudy and it could have all just been a dream.

  The Morning After

  Lawrence Schimel

  The best sex I’ve ever had in my life has always been with men in the few hours after their having been bitten by a vampire, and this morning was no exception.

  Luckily for my sex life, Stefano, my current boyfriend, works as a cater-waiter specializing in only the most elite vampiric soirées. He’s a toothsome morsel if I say so myself. His job consists of walking around the party dressed in a tiny black thong and large black boots, his oiled body gleaming in the candlelight to show off his chiseled musculature. He doesn’t carry a tray. When a guest wishes a drink, Stefano tilts his head to one side or the other and bares his neck.

  When he’s working, Stefano always carries with him a list, which serves two purposes: on the one hand, it is the record of how much he’ll get paid for that night, depending on how many clients he’s served. But most importantly, it’s a historical record as well, since he began this job; a second drink by the same vampire is far more expensive than a first. And a third is, of course, forbidden, lest he lose his humanity and cross over to the undead side.

  That morning when he came to the salon, he was still human, and his human urges were raging out of control.