Spirit Sanguine

by Lou Harper

  “What is it, pet?” Harvey asked.

  With a minute move of his head, Gabe indicated the direction. Harvey took the lead, but instead of heading straight that way, he wound their way around the rows of jingling machines till they had a good view of the group of vampires.

  Two of the men had their backs turned, but across from them sat a sturdy blond vampire with jaws like a bulldog—he was the one who ruffled Gabe’s senses. A blonde flanked him on either side. They were definitely female, yet with their wide shoulders and thick arms, they didn’t look half as feminine as Harvey.

  “Maybe they were bodybuilders before they got turned,” Harvey whispered to Gabe.

  “The blond man in the middle—he’s wrong,” Gabe whispered back.

  “Like the others?”

  “Not as strong. Let’s get closer.”

  Harvey sashayed to the bar, with Gabe following half a step behind. By luck, a couple of seats opened up close to their targets. When they sat, Harvey leaned close and whispered “Look,” into Gabe’s ear. While Harvey played the role of sexy siren to the hilt for the bartender, Gabe took a visual sweep of the group. Now that he could see them from a better angle, he realized one of the other men was Hector.

  Hector wore his face in an emotionless mask and showed no recognition when their eyes met. Next to him sat a vampire Gabe had never seen before. Gabe would’ve remembered—the guy had dark and dangerous good looks.

  Two girls of the pretend-vampire variety rounded up the group. Dark-and-handsome was engaged in a conversation with one of them. The other girl loudly giggled at something the blond vampire had said. Both girls appeared to be rather drunk.

  “Here you go.” Harvey nudged a tall glass full of red liquid in front of Gabe.

  Gabe took a sip—he tasted cranberry and pineapple but no alcohol.

  Harvey draped an arm over Gabe’s shoulder. Their pose conveyed casual intimacy, but Gabe knew Harvey pricked his ears to catch conversation from the nearby table, the same as Gabe concentrated to pick up anything he could with his own senses. And he did—some of the vampires around the table were getting hungry. The skin at the back of Gabe’s neck prickled as if someone was trying to stare a hole into it. From the corner of his eye, he could see Hector stand and saunter to the bar with a few empty glasses in hand. The vamp stood next to them and motioned to the bartender.

  While waiting for fresh drinks, Hector turned to Harvey. “You’re from the convention?” Nothing in his tone gave away the fact they’d met before.

  Gabe watched Harvey give Hector a radiant smile. “Yes, pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

  “Would you two like to join us? We already have a couple of your brethren.” His gaze flickered on Gabe and rested there for one heavy beat.

  “We’d love to. Right, pet?” His words sounded more like a statement than a question, but Harvey’s eyes flashed questioningly at Gabe from behind the black lace.

  Gabe nodded.

  “Oh, by the way, I’m Hector.”

  They shook hands. “That over there,” he said, motioning toward the blond vampire, “is Aleksi. With Frida and Greta. The two young ladies introduced themselves as Cinder and Lucinda.”

  Gabe stared at Hector, waiting for a sign, any sign, but Hector remained the perfect image of a stranger. Obviously, he could role-play too.

  “And who’s tall, dark and handsome?” Harvey asked.

  “That’s Ilario.”

  The bartender placed the drinks in front of Hector, who paid and took them to the girls. Harvey and Gabe followed. Hector wrestled another table and a couple of chairs closer for them. There was a round of greetings, although Aleksi didn’t stand or offer his hand. Frida and Greta, on the other hand, each held Gabe’s hand longer than necessary. Their interest in him was easy to notice, even without his special senses. However, he was not their only object of interest. Next to Frida sat one of the girls, Cinder—and Frida took every opportunity to touch her. The buxom twenty-something girl had shoulder-length dark hair with red streaks in it. She giggled a lot. Both girls did.

  While Gabe did his best to stay in the background and observe, Harvey fell into an easy conversation with the others, especially Cinder and Lucinda.

  “Ooh, what you got there?” Cinder asked, pointing at the ink lines on Harvey’s arm.

  “Sandy Baker’s signature,” Harvey explained.

  “Cool, you could get it tattooed.”

  Lucinda leaned over her for a better look. She even brushed her finger over it. “Maybe she’ll get famous one day,” she said.

  “Yeah, it’s not like having Christen Solberg’s signature, right?” Harvey agreed.

  “Who?” asked Gabe.

  Harvey shook his head. “He plays Morgan the sexy werewolf.”

  “Mmm…Morgan,” Cinder and Lucinda moaned in unison.

  The chatter veered to the discussion of Morgan and then other alluring members of the TV show. It had a large cast. The main input from Frida and Greta was prompting the girls’ talk. Not that they needed much prompting. Aleksi made the occasional slimy innuendo that seemed to amuse Cinder and Lucinda to no end. Hector made sure they never ran out of booze.

  Sitting so close to Aleksi made Gabe’s skin itch. The guy being a sleaze ball didn’t help. The way his gaze crawled over the two drunken girls would’ve been considered indecent in a cathouse.

  Aleksi beamed his lecherous smile at the girls. “So, are you bloodthirsty vampires?”

  “Very.” Cinder bared her fangs and hissed. Lucinda followed her example. Seemed like they sported the same kind of fangs Gabe had—only he’d removed his hours ago.

  Aleksi leaned over the tiny table and took a hand from each of the girls into his own. “If you get hungry, you can suck on me all you want.” His voice oozed with the crude double entendre.

  Gabe wanted to gag, but Cinder and Lucinda shrieked in delight.

  Aleksi flashed his greasy smile around the table. His gaze landed on Harvey. “How about you, do you suck too?”

  Gabe felt the spike of Harvey’s annoyance, but didn’t see the slightest trace of emotion on his lover’s face. “No, I only dress up as a vampire, sorry.”

  Everyone around the table knew the statement to be untrue, except the two drunken pretend vamps. Gabe knew Harvey said it as a joke to rebuff Aleksi’s tasteless flirting.

  Aleksi didn’t slow down so easily. “I’d love to know you out of your costume.”

  Gabe wanted to wipe the smirk off the face of the slimy bastard.

  “You’d be disappointed. I work at a library—very dull, I’m afraid,” Harvey said, sidestepping the latest innuendo too.

  Aleksi’s leer didn’t falter. “You’re too pretty to be a librarian.”

  Gabe was visualizing his fist smashing into the vampire’s face. Harvey must have picked up on it, because he put an arm around Gabe’s shoulder.

  Aleksi’s eyes flashed. “A wholesome boyfriend you have. He must be a real treat.” With that he turned his attention back to Cinder and Lucinda.

  The bodyguards, though, they kept eyeing Gabe as if they were of the same mind as Aleksi about Gabe being a treat.

  “So where are you from?” Ilario’s question came unexpectedly.

  “Wade and I are from San Francisco,” Harvey answered for both of them.

  Ilario gave a nod of acknowledgment. He had handsome, vaguely Latino features, with an added hardness that lent him an air of severity.

  “How do you like Vegas?” he asked.

  “It’s very different. Like the whole town is partying 24-7.”

  Aleksi cut in. “Speaking of partying, why don’t we move this one to higher grounds?” His lips twisted into the shape of a smile—at odds with the coldness of his eyes.

  The rest of his entourage took his words as an order and all gathered up. Harvey and Gabe followed suit. Hector offered his arms to Cinder and Lucinda. Neither of them looked like they could walk straight without help. Gabe didn’t much like it and tried to catch
Hector’s attention, but the vampire took no notice of him.

  Gabe had figured already that the glitzy hotels and casinos on the strip had a side most visitors never saw. You needed a substantial crew and infrastructure in the back to keep the front working. It didn’t come as a surprise that there were also areas accessible only to a privileged few. Greta’s key card opened an unmarked door and gave access to an elevator requiring the same card to operate. They disembarked into an underground passage tall and wide enough to drive a car through.

  Aleksi walked up front with Greta and Frida flanking him. Behind him, Hector practically carried the two unsteady girls. Harvey and Gabe followed, with Ilario bringing up the back. A couple of huge guys guarded the doors at the end of the tunnel. They not only let them through without question, but even held the doors open. Another elevator shot them back up to the twenty-seventh floor but in a different hotel. A much more exclusive one, from the look of things.

  Two vampires guarded the suite outside and two more waited inside. Gabe looked around—the entryway was bigger than the whole apartment he shared with Harvey in Chicago. Beyond that lay another, even bigger room, complete with a half-circle brown leather sofa big enough to seat twenty, facing a fireplace, a wet bar, more sofas, chairs and assorted furniture. And that was only the beginning.

  Gabe took his coat off and draped it over a chair. “This place is huge.”

  He meant his words only for Harvey, but Hector overheard. “Six thousand square feet. Pool room, media room, sauna, Jacuzzi and a terrace. I forget how many bedrooms,” he said.

  Hector went behind the bar. He lined up several glasses in front of him and half filled them with ice.

  “Don’t you think those girls have had enough to drink already?” Gabe asked.

  “It’s not for them.” Hector took a bottle of red liquid out of the minifridge and poured a generous amount into the glasses. “Some genius came up with this. They call it Sanguine.” He poured a couple of types of alcohol and fruit juices into the glasses. He placed one of them in front of Harvey. “Try it.”

  Faking perfect ignorance, Harvey took a sip, then produced a surprised reaction that sounded convincing even to Gabe, who knew better. “It tingles!” Harvey had said the exact same thing when he’d tasted Sanguine in the Nightcrawler in Chicago months ago. “Does it get you drunk?”

  “Sadly, no.”

  Not sure if he could keep a straight face, Gabe turned his back to them. The rest of their party was haphazardly arranged on the half-circle sofa. Aleksi was making out with Cinder, while Frida and Greta had their hands all over a punch-drunk Lucinda. Ilario sat slightly aside with a studied look of disinterest plastered on his face.

  “Is the cocktail called Sanguine, or the special ingredient?” Gabe heard Harvey ask.

  “Both, I think.”

  Gabe turned back to see Hector arrange glasses on a tray.

  “Do you often have parties?” He kept his voice low, even though the other vampires were too busy to pay attention to him.

  “Every weekend.” Hector picked up the tray and carried it over to the others. He motioned for them to follow.

  Frida and Greta grabbed a glass each, but Aleksi stood and walked out of the room. Gabe took a seat, and Harvey wandered around the room, supposedly to admire a painting on the wall. However, he wandered the same direction Aleksi disappeared to.

  A few minutes later when Aleksi reappeared, the sense of wrongness Gabe got from him was even stronger. The way Aleksi put his arm around Harvey also made Gabe grit his teeth. Aleksi’s hand slid low on Harvey’s hip, holding their bodies flush.

  “I hope it looks as expensive as it was,” he said, looking up at the picture.

  “You have an amazing place. I’d love to see the rest,” Harvey said, slipping out of Aleksi’s embrace.

  Aleksi caught him by the elbow and pulled him back. “Later. It’s feeding time.”

  He steered Harvey back to the sofa.

  “We all share here. What is mine is yours,” he said, making a sweeping gesture of the two drunk girls. “And what is yours is mine,” he added, focusing his eyes on Gabe.

  Gabe saw the blaze of anger in Harvey’s eyes the moment he felt Harvey’s emotions wash through him, and he realized how dangerous their situation was. Aleksi was probably high but most certainly used to getting his way. Frida and Greta now stood behind him, fangs bared. Gabe didn’t expect help from Hector either. Going along was the only way out. It was only blood, he told himself.

  He could let the two vamp bitches bite him. It wouldn’t be like with Harvey, wouldn’t give them daylight powers, and they would never share his dreams. Only Harvey could. Because those so-called side effects of whatever connected them were not something to worry about, but a gift.

  Gabe stared at Harvey, willing his lover to understand, to stand down, while this realization blazed through him. Harvey seemed to catch at least a little. Black eyes flashed behind the lace, but Harvey’s self-control held.

  Gabe rolled up his shirtsleeves and held his arms out. Aleksi stepped back with a satisfied smirk. Frida and Greta closed in on Gabe on two sides, each taking one of his wrists. Somewhere on the sofa Aleksi was feeding on one of the girls, but Gabe couldn’t say which—his eyes were locked on Harvey.

  Familiar tingles raced through Gabe as Frida and Greta first bit him. He didn’t want to feel the sensation, not from them. He tightened his jaws and concentrated on feeling Harvey instead. The tingles gradually subsided.

  Finally getting their fill, the blondes let him go. Losing interest in him, they turned their attention back to the girls. Aleksi, on the other hand, had his eyes trained on Harvey. Gabe didn’t like this one bit. Neither Aleksi nor his two bodyguards seemed to have realized Harvey wasn’t a woman. If the truth came out, the situation could turn ugly fast. Gabe couldn’t even pull a macho-male card to claim Harvey exclusively his. Vamp cards trumped his. He wondered if they’d be allowed to leave if they tried.

  Rescue came from an unexpected source. “I must show you the view from the balcony.” Ilario’s words were those of a polite host, but the tone of his delivery made it clear he didn’t mean them as mere suggestion.

  “That would be lovely,” Harvey agreed icily, letting Ilario guide him across the floor. Gabe followed close behind them. He felt light-headed but he knew it would pass.

  The night skyline looked okay. The Strip, with its gaudy buildings, was a right spectacle, but in Gabe’s opinion the view didn’t come even close to the sight of Chicago at night. However, he kept his opinion to himself.

  “You can see the Bellagio’s water fountain from here,” Ilario said, pointing. “There’s a light show every fifteen minutes till midnight. Too bad you missed it. It’s quite a sight.”

  The somber vampire suddenly playing the role of the tour guide didn’t make much sense to Gabe. He could sense Harvey’s unease too. They wandered to the far end of the balcony.

  “You must see this.” Ilario ushered them inside.

  “Umm, fascinating,” Harvey uttered at the sight of the huge round bed and the mirrored ceiling above it.

  Gabe had never seen such whorehouse chic before either.

  “I like to watch.” Ilario’s voice grew even stronger and more emphatic.

  “What?” Harvey and Gabe snapped their eyes at him.

  Ilario bowed his head as he pointed two fingers at his own eyes and then one up to the mirror. The message was clear: a hidden camera was watching them. Of course! Gabe wanted to slap himself for not having considered the possibility before.

  “You will indulge me.” Ilario put a heavy hand on each their shoulders. He flashed his fangs for emphasis.

  Gabe surreptitiously brushed the back of his hand against Harvey’s arm. He meant his touch to be reassuring but also to remind Harvey not to do anything foolish. It worked.

  “I just need to use the bathroom for a second. This stuff runs through me.” Harvey lifted the cocktail he was still clutching in his hand. The
ice rattled.

  “Be quick,” was Ilario’s brusque response.

  While Harvey was out of the room, Ilario dragged a chair into the middle of the room and seated himself in it. They waited in an uncomfortable silence. Harvey came back with a determined look on his face. He roughly pushed Gabe down on the bed and straddled him. Holding Gabe’s head down by the hair, Harvey leaned in for a hard kiss that made their teeth clink together. Normally, Gabe got a kick out of Harvey’s occasional aggressive moods, but there was only one way he was able to perform under the circumstances. He tilted his head sideways, offering his neck.

  “No,” Harvey whispered.

  “You have to.”

  Harvey glared back angrily, but then bit him and drank him deep. Gabe now opened himself to the familiar excitement—his body reacted to the thrill coursing through it. He’d needed this so much—the enhanced sensations had him focused on Harvey and kept him from doing something very stupid, like attacking Ilario with his bare hands. Even if he wasn’t already weakened by blood loss, that wouldn’t have been smart.

  Harvey rubbed Gabe’s erection first through the layers of clothing. Then he freed Gabe’s cock and took it into his mouth. The thought of others watching them flickered through Gabe’s mind, but he forcefully shoved the image away. Instead, he focused on Harvey and the physical sensations their bodies created.

  Aside from Gabe’s exposed groin, they were both still fully clothed. Sitting up, Harvey repositioned himself. As the skirt hid what was really going on, he slowly lowered himself on Gabe’s cock. He felt slick but very tight—he must have used his trip to the bathroom to quickly prepare himself. It took long seconds before Gabe was fully sheathed. They moved slowly at first, with Harvey setting the pace. Gabe placed his hands on Harvey’s thighs under the layers of the skirt, stroking the hard muscles through the soft silk. It was over pretty fast, but for once, Gabe didn’t mind that at all.