by Bauer, Tal
The city lights beyond the alley barely reached into the narrow alley. They moved in near-total darkness. Cristoph tried to look everywhere, peer into every shadow. Luca was a shape beside him, an outline. He heard Luca’s breath shudder, heard him click on his flashlight and hold it beneath his pistol. The beam broke apart on snowflakes, turned their world to fuzz, like an old TV set tuned between stations.
“Do you smell that?” Luca whispered.
Roses and rot. Honey, but too sweet. Grave dirt and death. Something that hadn’t been buried and had been left to turn for a day too long. A bouquet of death trying to mask itself with light. Cristoph had smelled it before. “The incubus. It’s near. Be careful. Don’t trust what you see.”
What would Luca see? Who was the person he wanted most in the world? He’d never known Luca to even hint at a romantic life or take a sexual interest in anyone or anything. He was a closed book, locked tighter than the Vatican’s secret archives.
“I can see you…” A voice, deep and growling, rasped from the darkness. Heavy. Masculine. Purring. “Can you see me?”
Movement. Snow swirling. The voice came from behind them. “I know what you want.”
Luca hissed and spun, circling, searching. They stared down the Tiburzi, their weapons raised. Every hair on Cristoph’s body went stiff, electrified.
Warmth poured down his spine, slithered inside his bones. His cock stirred. Shit, too close, the incubus had them in his range. But where the fuck was it?
Yellow eyes glinted, appearing in the haze. Snow seemed to shift away from the lines of a creature, a man standing in the middle of the road. He smirked, his thin and bloody lips spreading. A curved fang gleamed.
Luca gasped. “Alain?”
Fuck. The incubus.
Snarling, Cristoph lashed out, aiming dead center for the creature, for the incubus wearing Alain’s face. He fired, three rapid shots, their bursts cracking the stillness. The incubus leaped away, but not before one of Cristoph’s shots slammed into its shoulder. Bronze light burst from its shredded form, the illusion of Alain ruined.
Another snarl, much closer, from right behind them.
Cristoph whirled. Were there two creatures? He raised his weapon alongside Luca, cursing, his eyes wide, panic making his blood sing.
A second Alain leaped over their heads and crashed into the bullet-shredded incubus, ripping him from the darkness and throwing him to the snow-covered street. Bronze light erupted from slashes and tears in the incubus’s body, Alain’s imposter-duplicate. Howling, the incubus tried to fight back, tried to claw at Alain’s face. His talons, replicas of Alain’s, slashed through the true Alain’s face.
Cristoph watched, frozen. Luca stood immobile beside him, his jaw hanging open. His hands trembled, the pistol quivering. Cristoph guided Luca’s hands downward, lowering his aim. “That’s our Alain. That’s him.”
Pale, Luca nodded, watching as Alain—their Alain, their vampire—swung his arm, talons on his fingers fully extended, and sliced into the incubus’s neck. His claws dug into the incubus’s skin, bronze light washing Alain and the alley and Cristoph and Luca in burnished light.
The incubus writhed, screeching, pinned beneath Alain’s attack. Alain grit his teeth, his full mouth of fangs exposed and gleaming in the glow of the incubus’s death throes.
A jerk, a grunt, and Alain sliced clean through the incubus’s neck. Its head rolled through the snow.
For a moment, it looked like Alain himself had been beheaded, the incubus still wearing Alain’s face.
The moment passed. The head shattered into a burst of light, a miniature supernova that winked out of existence as if it had never been. The body vanished, too, the mimicry of Alain bleeding into light and shadow beneath their real Alain’s deadly crouch.
A breath later, and they were alone in the street, facing Alain—their real Alain—as he kneeled and stared at his fully-extended talons.
“Alain?” Cristoph holstered his pistol and crept forward. “Are you okay?”
Snarling, Alain swiped at him like a cornered lion. His yellow eyes flashed. He backed away, his fangs bared. His wild gaze darted around the street before finally settling on Cristoph.
Panic burned from him. Panic and naked terror. “Help me,” Alain croaked. His voice sounded like it hadn’t been used in days, brittle and broken as ancient paper. He held out his shaking hands, wrists together like he was begging to be cuffed. “Help me.” With his full mouth of fangs extended—curved fangs spearing through his gums and fully covering his human teeth—he could barely speak.
He’d never seemed so animalistic, so wild. Cristoph’s heart hammered.
Luca skidded forward and grabbed Alain’s hands, holding them in both of his own. “We’re here, Alain. We’re here.”
Luca’s words spurred Cristoph on. He followed. “Anything you need. Tell us. We’ll help you, always.”
The radio in Cristoph’s ear crackled. Angelo. “What’s going on? We heard gunshots! Report, dammit! Where is my officer?”
He turned away, pressing his hand to his earpiece. “We’re good. We got the target.”
“Where’s Calipari?” Angelo barked. “I’m sending in my men!” From either end of the street, shouts and stomping feet, Angelo’s officers running through the snow.
Cristoph spun back to Alain. “People are coming.”
“I’ll get him out of here.” Luca guided Alain to his feet, holding him close and wrapping his arms around Alain’s shoulders. Alain—too proud, too strong, vampire Alain—leaned into Luca’s hold. His sulfur gaze burned into Cristoph, raw desperation slamming into Cristoph’s gut.
Luca guided Alain into the shadows, slipping through a tear in a chain link fence surrounding an overgrown tennis court and an overgrown neighborhood garden. In seconds, they were gone. Cristoph watched them flee, holding on to Alain’s frantic gaze until the darkness swallowed the last of his fevered eyes.
“Over here!” Angelo’s gruff voice shouted down the road.
Cristoph jogged to Angelo’s side as he dragged Calipari from behind an abandoned, snow-covered car. “Get the medics from the ambulance! I’ve found him!” He shoved two of the officers away, pushing them back down the street to the perimeter.
Blood oozed down the side of Calipari’s face. He groaned as they rolled him to his back. “He’s alive,” Cristoph said.
Angelo pressed his fingers to Calipari’s neck. “His pulse is weak.”
Cristoph unwound the charm from his palm and wrapped it around Calipari’s wrist, tucking it under his jacket sleeve. The officer groaned again, shuddering, but his next breath was stronger. Cristoph traced a rune of healing on his palm, and then a line of banishment runes up the back of his hand and over the charm.
The two officers skidded back to their sides, three medics in tow as Cristoph finished and stepped back. They worked fast, taking his pulse and his blood pressure and pressing an oxygen mask to his face. “Get the stretcher!” one called. “We’ll take him to Salvator Mundi.” The closest hospital, on the Janiculum above Trastevere.
“Will he be all right?” Angelo helped the medics back to the ambulance, guiding Calipari’s stretcher over the snowy cobbles. Cristoph followed.
“He’s not going to die. But that looks like a bad head wound. We’re doing everything we can for him by getting him to the hospital as fast as possible.”
“Hopefully it’s soon enough.” Angelo glared at Cristoph.
“Did you guys do it? Did you get the Trastevere Vampire?” one of the medic’s asked as they loaded Calipari into the ambulance.
The media had seized on the drained corpses, the bodies emptied of blood and left on the streets, and had nicknamed the supposedly human killer the Trastevere Vampire. If they only knew. If they only ever knew. The name set Cristoph’s soul on edge, made him grit his teeth, curl his hands into fists and bite back his curses. Alain’s face swam in his mind. Alain, smiling, happy, before—
Alain, melancholy, angu
ished, so full of rage and trying so desperately to keep his distance.
Alain, terrified. Alain, begging for help, his talons, his fangs, fully extended. His vampire side, fully exposed.
“Yeah, we got him,” Angelo said, nudging Cristoph. “Vatican police here took him for questioning. Some of those victims were priests.”
The medic nodded as if that made sense. He climbed into the ambulance after Calipari was secured. “Sir? Room for one more.”
Angelo brushed past Cristoph, knocking him backward, and followed the medic into the back of the ambulance. “Feel free to share your information, Mr. Hasse,” Angelo growled. “Ideally before someone gets hurt next time.”
The ambulance door slammed in Cristoph’s face. A blare of the siren, and then they drove off, moving through the crowd of police and officers on Angelo’s’ detail, still holding the barricade at both ends of the Tiburzi. Angelo would keep the scene closed until his hand-picked team had swept the street sometime later, possibly even morning.
He certainly didn’t want Cristoph around for that. Or maybe even ever again.
Tipping his head back, Cristoph sighed as he stared at the black sky, the glow of Rome reflecting off the low-slung clouds. Get back to the Vatican. Get back to Alain. Take care of him. There was nothing more to do for Angelo or his men. It was time to take care of his own man. Vampire.
He headed back to the Vatican, climbing the streets of Trastevere to the Janiculum, the hill over old Rome and Vatican City. St Peter’s hung in the gloom, like a battered gilded butterfly pinned to an iron sky.
His thoughts wandered back to the street, to the incubus springing out of the darkness. Twice now he’d faced down an incubus, a demon of seduction and temptation that revealed the inner yearnings of a person’s soul. Each time, they’d taken Alain’s form. The first time, he hadn’t known, hadn’t been prepared.
This time, he’d shot at Alain.
His stomach churned, and he barely made it to the side of the walkway before hurling. How easy had it been to pump three bullets into the demon who looked like Alain?
Could he ever shoot the real Alain? Could he ever kill the man—vampire—he loved?
What if one day he had to?
He stared over the city, his eyes unfocusing as he let St. Peter’s eclipse the night in a smudged golden haze. His mind unspooled, thoughts and memories playing over themselves, Alain and him from a year before, the days and nights that seemed endless, happenstance and life with no consequence.
How like a child he’d been. Stamping his feet that Alain didn’t pay attention to him. How did he ever even earn Alain’s second glance, what with the truth of the world Alain lived? Compared to wraiths and revenants and vampires, Cristoph Hasse didn’t rate a moment of Alain’s time.
Yet here they were.
And no matter what the world had thrown at them, Cristoph’s heart still beat for Alain. It was still Alain’s face the incubus demon wore. The reflection of his deepest desire, his heart’s yearning.
Though—
Cristoph frowned. He pushed back from the bridge. If he’d been close enough to become snared in the incubus’s lure, close enough to smell its deathly taint, close enough for the incubus to map his soul, his yearning… so had Luca. Luca had been beside him, right beside him.
Incubi were solitary hunters, and they preferred to hunt lone prey. For the killing strike, an incubus needed to isolate their victim, to truly hone in on the soul’s desire. Interrupting that could unravel an incubus, unleashing uncontrolled, competing desires that could rip the demon to shreds as it tried to be every object of desire at once for multiple targets. Aside from keeping distant, hunting incubi in teams was the best way to shatter their thrall.
Shouldn’t the incubus have shifted, then? They’d interrupted his killing strike on Calipari. Shouldn’t the incubus’s form have shifted, trapped between the two of them? Shouldn’t it have picked upon his deepest yearning and changed into Luca’s deepest desire?
Who was it who Luca craved and loved?
Why had the incubus only worn Alain’s face?
* * *
He found them both in Alain’s apartment, next door to Luca’s in the bachelor’s officer wing of the Swiss Guard barracks. Alain huddled in bed, shaking, his fangs gouging the skin around his lips. Luca stood back, looking like all he wanted to do was run. Run away or run to Alain, Cristoph couldn’t tell.
The slash across Alain’s face was an open wound, the skin separated, tissue and muscle exposed almost to the bone. The edges of rot clung to the bloodless tear, as if a corpse had been sliced open on an autopsy table.
Cristoph frowned, crouching in front of Alain as he peered at it. “Shouldn’t that heal? You’re supposed to be able to heal from minor wounds.”
Alain shuddered and looked away. He faceplanted on the bed and gripped the sheets. His fully-extended talons sliced through the linens and gouged the mattress. Alain groaned. He snuffled at the sheets, at Cristoph’s pillow, and his hips began to rut.
“Vampires’ accelerated healing is directly related to their feeding.” Luca swallowed. “They need blood to live.”
“Alain.” Cristoph reached for his lover, one hand hovering over Alain’s shoulder. “Have you been feeding?”
They’d never discussed it. After his turn, Alain drank blood donated by the Holy Father, but he’d stopped, and refused to say why. How he survived for months since, Cristoph didn’t know. Was he feeding on strangers? Was he drinking human blood? Or was he making do with scavenged animals, feeding on rats and cats and what he could find on the edges of Rome? Cristoph had his suspicions.
“I can’t,” Alain hissed. With his fangs fully extended, his voice was raspy, sibilant, even demonic-sounding. “I can’t trust myself. Not now.”
“What do you mean?” Luca slid closer to the bed, one hand resting on the edge of the mattress, fingers stretched toward Alain’s taloned hand.
“The solstice,” Alain groaned. “I can barely control what’s inside me. What I crave. The darkness. The madness. There’s something inside me that is trying to get out. The the scent of blood, and I go mad!” He pressed his face into the pillow again, screaming.
“What about an animal? Can we find you a substitute?” Luca asked.
“Animal blood makes me sick. I usually suffer through it, but now—” Alain carved twin gouges down the mattress as he howled into the pillow. “I can smell you. I can smell you both.”
“Alain—" Cristoph laid his hand on Alain’s shoulder.
“Don’t touch me!” Alain roared. In a moment, he grabbed Cristoph’s hand and pulled him down, pushing him into the ruined mattress and straddling him. He yanked Cristoph’s hair, pulling his neck to the side and exposing the stitches Luca had sewn. He bared his fangs, keening, his whole body shaking as he hovered over Cristoph.
Desperation warred with shock, with visible heartbreak as Alain froze. “You warded against me.”
“We had to.” Luca’s voice was ice cold. Cristoph squirmed, trying to free himself. His gaze darted to Luca.
Luca had drawn his pistol and aimed at Alain, square between his eyes. His hands didn’t shake this time. “Back up, Alain. Get off him.”
Alain collapsed and curled into himself. His eyes squeezed closed as a low keen rumbled out of him.
Luca grabbed Cristoph and hauled him off the ruined bed, shoved him to the bedroom door.
“Please,” Alain called. “Please. Tie me down! Restrain me with iron and silver. Don’t let me hurt you!”
* * *
5
Manama, Bahrain
Area code 313.
Adam blinked. The cell phone in his hand kept ringing.
Country code 1. The United States. Area code 313.
Detroit.
How many years since anyone from Detroit had called him? He didn’t even know the people there had his cell phone number. It wasn’t the same one he’d had when he left years ago.
Finally, he slid t
o answer before the call rolled to voicemail. He didn’t say anything.
“Hello? You there? Adam?”
Every muscle in his body went rigid. He closed his eyes. “Hey, Jon.”
Silence. “It is you. I… didn’t know if what they told me was true.”
Adam didn’t say anything.
“You live in Saudi Arabia now?” Disbelief poured from his brother’s tone. “That’s what he said, but I didn’t really believe him.”
“That’s what who said?” Who had given his brother his number? Who even knew how to reach him? He could count on one hand the people who knew where he was.
“Some guy from your old unit. Mom and Dad got your stuff, you know. From when you were discharged. They wanted to know why you were discharged and why you haven’t called them about it.”
“I haven’t talked to them in years. Didn’t think telling them I was leaving the Marines was the way to change that.”
“So you left, then? You weren’t thrown out?”
Adam snorted. Same old Jon. “Despite what you may think, I actually did all right in the Corps.”
A beat. “But Saudi Arabia?”
“I spent a long time in the Middle East. I’m comfortable here.”
“Your buddy said you’re… married?”
"I am."
"But I thought—"
"Yes, Jon. Yes. I'm still gay."
Again, silence. "I thought you might have hooked up with some Muslim. They cut gay guys' heads off over there, though. I've kept an eye on the news over the years. I always thought… You know. I was always afraid one day it would be you.”
Adam blinked. Down the hall, Faisal prayed in their home’s prayer room. Sun streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the pool deck and the yard. The dented gold hookah was still outside, lying where Doc had left it.
Where the afternoon light hit their dining room wall, the shahada glittered in gold thread on a woven burgundy tapestry. Vases from the Abbasid dynasty clustered in a corner.