by Todd Gregory
Each evening at dusk we would walk together, sometimes in silence but most often sharing tales of our previous lives, the life before we met.
Garcia looked to be a man of about forty. He was quite tall—more than six feet—and he was, as we said then, darkly handsome. We did not speak of such things as sensuality and virility in those days, but he was both sensual and virile and he exuded a palpable sexuality that was almost unseemly. It was only his casual air and his—I thought—pretense of not knowing he had this affect on others (for women were lured by him as well) that made it possible to even be in his presence.
Yet I was mesmerized by him and needed to be with him as much as he and my own work would allow. He was a cultured, well-traveled, and educated man, of course. An intellectual as well as a political vanguard, although we did not speak of politics much at Carville. His work, his paintings, were, even to the unschooled eye, remarkable. He had followed what would later become known as a neo-realist stance with his work. The sketches and preliminary gouaches that he did in his first days at Carville were stunning. They had both an epic quality and a tragic one, which imbued them with poignancy, but not sentimentality. I was in awe of his skill and talent.
I’m not sure what it was that Garcia was taken by in me. He was not shallow enough to have been merely attracted by my looks, although I knew I was handsome and false modesty in that regard would be a lie. And I had told enough of those.
I knew Garcia liked the look of me, of course. He’d actually said so in a strangely offhand manner when he had said one evening at Carville that I was far too attractive a man to have devoted myself to celibacy. To which I had blurted, unthinking, that I hadn’t always.
“Ah, women,” he had noted, nodding. Then I had said simply, looking directly at him with a boldness that shocked even me, “No. Not women.”
Garcia had raised an eyebrow and murmured something in Spanish, an idiomatic phrase I did not know, but which I presumed to be sexual in nature. It was then that our mutual attraction became apparent to us both and the game of sexual tension, repression, and ultimately, release, began in earnest between us.
I wonder if I would have run from Garcia had I known what he was then. I have pondered this over and over and can come to no honest conclusion. We were what we were: I an irrepressible sodomite and he a blood-lusting vampire. It would be impossible for either of us to change such entrenched identities. Surely I had tried to change mine and had been wholly unsuccessful. And once one has been turned to the lust for blood, one cannot switch off those desires. They are more than just mere wanting, they are need. Blood is more than sensuality incarnate—it is sustenance.
Each night Garcia and I had our walks around the grounds. This went on every evening for the first week. Then Garcia told me he needed to paint at that time, but I could either come by the rooms he had engaged as his studio and sleeping quarters or we could meet for a late supper and conversation in the refectory.
I had chosen supper at first. But on the thirteenth day I decided to go by his studio. He had previously shown me sketches which he had carried in a case on our walks. Now I saw the paintings—large, almost gigantic, canvases. Four different ones, each of them in varying stages of progress, which hardly seemed possible given he had been at Carville barely a fortnight. Tacked to boards near each canvas were sketches, an abundance of them. Some were of the haunting place itself, others of the denizens in various stages of their illness. There was a poignancy to Garcia’s interpretation that imbued me with respect for him. He had portrayed this place of horror as somehow ordinary—a world within a world where the creatures who lived here were as vital as in the world we knew outside this place. He had featured them engaged in normal daily tasks or in pensive contemplation. He had taken them from the realm of the reviled and resituated them as something other than the lepers that they were. There was no voyeuristic content here, only respect.
I was impressed by his work and told him so. I said he had humanized these women and men and that he saw them as I did—as merely people who had been dealt a grim hand not of their own choosing. I told him this was what I was attempting to do also, with my work at Carville. But that my work would leave no legacy of the lepers, while his would.
He had put down the brush with which he was painting and had turned to me, a look I could not discern on his face. At first I thought he was going to reach for me, as he had raised his arm and started to stretch it toward me. But then he turned back to the canvas. Yet I could tell he was holding something back. I simply did not know what it was.
Had I crossed some unknown or unknowable line with Garcia with what I had said? Our conversations to this point had veered away from Carville, from why I was there or even why he was. We had spoken very personally at points, as when I told him I had not always been a celibate priest. Somehow this current exchange—or rather my acknowledgments of how closely aligned I felt myself to be to the denizens of Carville, the lepers of which I was one but about which Garcia had no way of knowing—had taken us to a different level of intimacy.
I was overwhelmed then with desire for him, to touch him. As I watched the sinews of his back move beneath his linen shirt as he painted, I wanted to trace them with my fingers, my tongue. The desire was so intense that I knew I must leave or my celibacy would be at an end and who knew what scandal might ensue, even in this godforsaken place.
Garcia sensed the uptick in my pulse, the rush of blood. I saw his muscles tighten involuntarily. This time he did not turn when he put down his brush, but he spoke, his voice very low and deep, rich with the same tone that my former mentor would have when we were in his bed and he was directing me to accomplish some new and previously unmentionable act.
“We shall speak again, padre.” Garcia said this with a note of something I could not quite elicit. I knew I had been dismissed, but I knew just as succinctly that he would come to my room that night as he had before. The dismissal was temporary and more, I believed, to think and to decide what it was he wanted from me rather than to cast me out of his studio. This time, I felt sure, when Garcia arrived at my door, he would not hover and leave, but would come inside. And once there, stay.
I murmured a farewell and walked to the door.
“We shall see each other soon, padre. Biselo espera para verle.”
Did he know I understood what he said to me, that he could not wait to see me? Or did he think I was completely ignorant of his words, if not his tone?
“Espero que sí,” I responded. I hope so. Now there would be no doubt. I left the studio and walked toward my own quarters.
How long did it take before he was behind me, before he had me up against the wall in the semi-dark of what was now late evening, the gas-lit sconce flickering above us? How long before my cock was in his hand, his mouth was on mine and then his teeth were in my vein? How long before that first bite led us to my rooms and a night in which he drained me of everything and I gave myself over to him? How long before I was possessed by Garcia?
I warned him about the spot on my thigh. Unlike Nikolos, who must have been unaware of his lethal infection, I was not unaware. Garcia laughed a small, wry laugh and told me that there was nothing I could do to him. Rather it was he who was taking great license with me and I needed to know that once I crossed over—once he took me fully—I could not come back. The brink would have been passed once we had tasted each other’s blood and I had acquiesced to being his companion.
Yet warnings aside, acquiesce I did. How long had I restrained myself from my most degenerate desires? It had been nearly four years since I had come to Carville. There had been a few brief encounters in the Vieux Carré when I had visited my uncle in that first year. After that I had been too concerned with passing on the disease. I kept myself at Carville, not even visiting my uncle, and I kept to myself as well. The rosy spot that was the mark of my disease had gotten somewhat larger but had not spread elsewhere. I knew the disease moved slowly in some—that had been the case with Fath
er Damien. But I could not risk damning some other soul to my same hell.
That night Garcia said it would all be gone. I would never become that—leper—because now I would be this—vampire. How could I resist such a gift? How could I resist this man, this artist of the canvas and the flesh who promised immortality?
I knew I would, in the end, be damned. Can there be a worse crime than the apostasy of choosing man over God? And yet I chose and would choose again. For I was, from the day he arrived at Carville, possessed by Garcia. He was in my blood long before we actually shared blood.
In the years since, I have heard both men and women say that they would give their lives for someone, or that this person is “in their blood.” But really, can anyone know this without actually being asked to give their life, without actually sharing their blood? No, one cannot. And not everyone is ready for the test, ready to choose possession, ready to give one’s very soul to be the blood beat to someone else.
I know because I had not been ready the first time. My mentor—I still call him this because he primed me for everything: for my search abroad, for Nikolos, for Carville, for Garcia—my mentor had tried to take me to this same place, but although I wanted to stay with him, I was not prepared to give my life for him.
There are those—I am among them, I think, still—who view what I am as degenerate and damned. And yet I cannot, I would not divest myself of this life I lead with Garcia. I saw more than a charismatic and desirable man when he arrived at Carville. There was something inimitable in him that drew me from that first day when the nun had brought him round to me. And then that day, the end of the first fortnight, when I saw his work, his art. Then I knew that he had a soul still and that despite the dark road he had been brought to by another, he was still as much human as he was vampire.
*
That is my story, the tale of the leper priest turned vampire. Is it a cautionary tale? I cannot say, because at every caution I kept going forward, never looking back, never choosing to stop.
Am I still a priest? They say once a priest, always a priest, so yes, I am still a priest. I even still wear the vestiture, although I cannot be said to belong to any particular order as my age—or lack of aging—prevents me from being in any one place for too extended a period of time. But I still serve the sick and the poor as I have always done. I just serve them differently now. And with my companion, Garcia.
Quite a bit of time has passed since Carville. Decades, but not yet a full century. Garcia and I left there together when his work was complete. There is a portrait of me among the denizens there, a paean he felt compelled to paint as part of his homage to the work that was done there.
I realized soon after our first night together—the first of the nights in which he would turn me into what he was—that what had caused him, finally, to choose me was my commentary on his paintings. He told me that I saw inside him, that there was more than darkness, that there was still that shimmer of humanity that he tried to keep alight.
And so we have been together for these many years, traveling, working, and, as we must, killing. We took no one at Carville. None were well enough to be crossed over without living an eternity of horror. I had thought about Nikolos, but decided it was best for him to end his days as the Damien of Spinalonga, as I presume he did, eventually, and go on to his own manner of sainthood.
As for my mentor, I have no doubt that at some point our paths will cross again. There are not that many of us, really, despite the literature to the contrary. It is a surprisingly small group, given the six billion people out there from whom one can feed upon. Most, I have found, are not like us: They kill and have done with their prey with little thought to the humanity involved. I would not say we are better than they, of course, for we do still kill. But we choose our prey with care and in the parts of the world where we are more savior than savage.
At times I think that I should end this spree we are on, Garcia and I. That I should take his life as he sleeps and then sit in the bright sun until I am nothing but ash. But I cannot. That is the thing about possession. I am his, and in as much as he trusts me not to expose him or kill him, he is mine as well.
Garcia has said to me again and again, “Nada dura eternamente.” Nothing lasts forever. I always say the same thing in response: “Te amaré por siempre.” I will be yours forever.
And I shall be. Because Garcia is in my blood, forever.
Willing
Xan West
I slam him against the wall. Bring out my knife. Whisper words across his skin, the steel teasing, tempting. Kick his legs apart. The blade ripping through his shirt, tormenting, aching to slice him open. Up close breathing on his neck, teeth almost breaking skin. Step back slapping, leaving a handprint on his cheek. My knife at his throat. My hand covering his mouth. My eyes on his. Feeding on his helplessness. Feeding on his fear. A slow smile creeping across my face as I begin. My fist driving into his pecs. My gloved hand slapping his face. His nipple twisted between my fingers, hot under my teeth. Turned over, face against the exposed brick of the wall. My fist on his back, methodical. My boot ramming into his ass. My open hand menacing him with slaps. My cock throbbing hard as I press into him and bite down on his shoulder, holding back, yet feeding on his pain. I ride with him as I pull out my tools, laying into his back…until I am ready to thrust the pain home with my quirt. Driving welts into his back, we will soar together, gliding on his pain, his helplessness, my power, our pleasure. And when we are done flying, he will be on the floor at my feet, tongue wrapped around my boot.
It will do. The beast inside me calls for flesh, for pain. He is demanding and relentless and I barely keep him in check. It’s better if they choose it. Want it. It adds a certain something that is indescribable and yet has become necessary to the meal. So I keep him sated with sadism, feeding on fear and pain and sex and helplessness. Once, I was waiting for the willing. That illusive willing boy I might call my own. I no longer hope for him. He does not exist.
Now I find boys at the Lure. Boys like this one, who want to open themselves to my tools. But sometimes that is not enough to take the edge off. Sometimes it just stokes the hunger. When the urge for blood becomes incontrollable I return to Gomorrah, looking for those hungry eyes, the pulse in a boy’s throat that shows he wants it. It’s hard to keep a straight face here, amidst the pretenders, the elitist pseudo vampires, the Stand and Model version of SM, the Sanguinarium, the followers of the Black Veil. So it’s a last resort, this feast of image and fantasy. When the beast must feed and pain is not enough.
I stride to a shadowed corner and watch for food. The rhythm of the music brings a booming to my brain as my eyes slide along the flesh exposed, watching for that look, that swiftly beating pulse in his throat.
Whispers begin as I am glimpsed by the regulars, and I know all it will take is a crook of my head and a smoldering gaze. It’s too easy here. I am not seen. I am simply a fantasy come true, made all the more fantastic by my refusal to be showy in dress or demeanor. A growl of disgust rolls through me. I choose my meat, a tall broad-shouldered goth boy with long black hair and a carefully trimmed beard. I draw him to me, and lead him out to the alley. He thinks this is a quick fuck and drops to his knees. My hand grips him by that delicious hair and yanks him up, tossing him against the wall. I want to savor this meal. He needs to last.
I pull out my blade and show it to him. His eyes widen and he whispers, “My safeword is chocolate.” I am surprised. Most who frequent the fetish scene know nothing about real BDSM. That these are the first words out of his mouth shows that there may be more to this boy than I thought. I stand still, watching him. He is older than I had first surmised, at least twenty-four. The little leather he wears is well kept, his belt clearly conditioned and his boots cared for by a loving hand. He is motionless, knees slightly bent, shoulders back, offering me his chest. His pulse is not rapid, but his eyes eat up the knife and his lips are slightly parted, as if all he wanted was to take my blade down hi
s throat.
His brown eyes stay fixed on the knife as I move toward him. I tease his lip with the tip of it and then speak softly.
“How black do you flag?”
His eyes stay on the blade. He swallows.
“Very black, on the right, Sir.”
“Is there anything I need to know?”
“I am healthy and strong. My limits are animals, children, suspension, and humiliation, Sir.”
“And blood, hmm?” I am teasing. I know the answer. It is why I found him here, and not at the Lure.
“Oh please, Sir. I would gladly offer my blood.”
“Why?”
He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes a moment, and then opens them. The pulse in his throat starts racing, but his voice is calm and matter-of-fact. I tease my blade against his neck.
“I have been watching you a long time, Sir. I have seen how you play. I see the beast inside you. I know what is missing. Those boys at the Lure don’t know how to give you what you really need. They don’t see that they are barely feeding your craving, and not touching your hunger. The boys here don’t see you. They just see their own fantasy. They are simply food. I am strong, Sir. Strong enough for you. I can be yours. My blood, my flesh, my sex, my service. Yours to take however you choose, for as long as you want. To slake your hunger. I would be honored, Sir.”
I take a deep breath, stunned, studying him. This boy who would offer what I never really thought was possible. He has surprised me again. That alone shows this boy is more than a meal. He just might be able to be all that he has offered.
I almost leave him there. I am ready to walk away. Fear creeps along my spine. With the centuries I have lived and the things I have seen, this boy is what scares me. There is nothing more terrifying than hope. I rake my eyes over him. He is standing quietly. He looks like he could stand in that position for hours. He has said his piece; he is content to wait for my response. Oh, he is more than food, this one. What a gift to offer a vampire. Can I refuse this offering when it’s laid out before me? I step back, looking him over, and decide.