by Bauer, Tal
He’d never realized how deeply Behroze loved Dawood. How completely, how totally. How all-encompassing that love was. Behroze, who was willing to turn his back on his culture, his life, his people, to come live with his Baba and learn how to live in a brand-new world.
How had he not seen it before?
He was a fool.
“You’re worried your Baba will be alone again? That we’ll be parted?”
“I’ve seen him without you. And I see how much he loves you.”
“My greatest fear,” Kris whispered, “is losing him again. I can barely stand to be apart from him for even the few hours I’m teaching. I came home early yesterday because I wanted to see him, and you, again. And…” He trailed off. He didn’t need to repeat the Pizza Debacle. “I missed you guys. I wanted to be with you. Both of you.”
“He lives for you—"
“—and you.”
“I know the root of my Baba’s soul. Yallah, I know him. I knew him in the night as the bombs rained, as Kandahar burned, as the world came down around us. As the mountains fell, as the guns fired for days on end. I know his prayers when he believed we would die. I know who he cried out for every night and every day in every prayer. I knew who you were ten years before I saw your face.”
Too much, too much. Kris hissed, boiling tears fracturing his vision, splitting Behroze into fractals as his eyes welled and overflowed. He covered his face with his hands, his body shaking.
“I don’t understand,” Behroze said, still in Pashto, “how you can love him as deeply as he loves you and not promise to be with him for eternity.”
Kris pitched forward, as if he was praying, his forehead digging into the carpet, and wept.
* * *
7
Vatican City, Rome
He could sense Alain in every atom of his being.
The burnt lightning, the oily slick snakeskin slipping down the back of his throat. The way every hair stood on end, prey’s signal that a predator was near.
But a wounded predator. The keening, the way Cristoph’s blood curdled at the low sound, told him as much.
“I don't know what to do,” Luca whispered, pacing Alain’s apartment hallway. He had a slash of blood across his face, weeping slowly from a cut on his temple, and dirt on his chin, his cheek. His eyes were wide, white circling the mahogany centers. Now his hands shook. Minutes before, he’d held his pistol almost to Alain’s head, saving Cristoph. He’d been made of iron then.
Now he seemed ready to tremble apart.
Cristoph tried to pick out the sounds from Alain’s grunts, the howls and lowing. There were words in there, guttural and choked, almost as if Alain didn’t want to be speaking. Like he was trying to force himself not to talk.
“Nequeo,” Alain hissed. “Nequeo…”
Cristoph wracked his exhausted mind as he watched from the bedroom door. Too much crammed in too short a time. It sounded Latin. I cannot. I cannot.
Alain writhed, sluggish and yet panicked, the frantic death throes of an animal caught in a trap. Blood struggled to ooze from the cuts on his face, the incubus’s attack. He didn’t have enough blood inside of him to live. He didn’t have enough to bleed out, either.
“Alain.” He stayed back, hesitating to cross where the light from the windows ended, where the line between shadow and illumination cut the darkness.
“Discedite a me!” Alain thrashed on the bed.
Cristoph’s mind called up the translation in fractured parts. Stay away from me. Why was Alain speaking Latin? It was the language of incantations and old spells, of bindings and ancient curses. But they didn’t use Latin outside of their work. He frowned. “Why?”
“Non possum moderare…” Alain strained, the words almost painful, pulled from him. He fell off the bed and lay on his back, gulping down breaths. His chest rose and fell, too fast, too frantic.
Cristoph frowned. He didn’t know that phrase.
Luca spoke behind him, translating. “‘I cannot control.’” He frowned. “Cannot control what?”
“Chain me,” Alain finally said. His voice was shredded. “Chain me down. I cannot control what I am. This darkness is rising inside of me. It’s trying to consume me!”
The lunar solstice. The rising darkness in Rome and around the world and the frenetic activity of the etheric. The vibrations of the darkest night of the year spread throughout the otherworlds like a struck tuning fork, stirring a fury within all creatures of darkness. Humans were immune to the shifts, the currents, the eddies.
Alain, vampire Alain, it seemed, was not.
“We don’t have to chain you—"
“Chain me!” Alain roared. He bared his razor-sharp fangs, each of them fully distended and curled over his human teeth. His yellow eyes bore into Cristoph, freezing him, turning his blood to ice, stilling all movement. “Chain me down! Before I hurt you!” His gaze shifted, turned from predatory rage to pleading. “I can’t hurt you,” he breathed. His words rasped against his fangs. “Please…”
“There’s silver chain in the armory,” Luca said over Cristoph’s shoulder.
“Go get it.”
* * *
Alain roared as they chained him down, his skin raising with welts and burns as they wrapped the silver around his wrists and then under the bed frame, restraining him in three loops around the frame and mattress. He writhed, screams turning to groans and then dazed grunts, his eyes unfocused, almost delirious. He panted, and his chapped lips moved as if speaking. Only harsh breaths passed his lips.
Luca took his pulse, pressing in and in on his skin until he found the faintest tremor in his carotid artery. “He’s barely fed at all. There’s almost nothing in him. His pulse is nearly nonexistent.”
Cristoph lingered over Alain, his fingers tracing lines up and down Alain’s forearm. This was not how he hoped to get Alain back into their bed. He’d hoped for happiness, affection, and smiles. Kisses and love. Not silver chains and the stench of death. Alain stank like rot, like something dead and left out too long.
It wasn’t only Alain’s turn. He was rotting from within. He was dying the eternal death, starving himself of blood. He hadn’t been feeding.
“He stopped drinking the Holy Father’s blood?”
Cristoph nodded. “Haven’t you noticed the rat population in the Vatican has declined?”
Luca turned away. He gazed out the window, his jaw muscle clenching hard. “The solstice is pulling on him. He’s not strong enough right now to fight the darkness. He’s trying not to give in, but…” Luca’s lips thinned. “Will he even survive the night?”
“Come with me,” Cristoph said softly.
He led Luca to the cramped kitchen, to the chipped countertops and the dingy wallpaper. Alain’s chest of artifacts sat on the table, left where Luca had rummaged through it when they stitched up Cristoph’s neck. Cristoph stared at the chest, the old wood, the ancient iron buckles, the broken leather strappings. What he’d need wasn’t in that old chest.
“What are we going to do?” Luca turned to him, his gaze bereft. Lost.
“Can you get one of the medical kits? One with an IV?”
* * *
An hour later, and it was almost like before. Luca hovering over Cristoph at the tiny kitchen’s table, needle poised over his skin.
This time, Cristoph was flexing, squeezing his veins until one popped out of his elbow. An elastic band restricted flow back up his arm, helping the veins bulge.
“Are you certain?” Luca asked for the fifth time. “What will Alain say about this?”
“He can say whatever he wants as long as he’s alive to say it.” Cristoph pumped his fist again. His hand was starting to tingle. “We’re not going to let him die tonight.”
“What if he doesn’t want to go on like this?”
“There are other ways to—to end it. But starving himself isn’t the right way. Losing to the darkness isn’t either.” He shook his head. “Come on. We need to get through tonight. Afte
r… Well, he can be mad all he wants. We can deal with it later. But if we don’t do this, he won’t be alive to be mad at us.”
Cristoph could feel Luca’s censure, his reservations, pouring off him like flood waters. Luca pursed his lips and scowled, but he slid the IV needle into Cristoph’s vein.
Dizziness hit Cristoph hard, too many nights spent racing around Rome, too little sleep, too little food. His blood seeped down the IV tubing and splattered into a waiting bowl, tiny plinks like raindrops on a metal roof.
“How much?” Luca asked softly as the drips turned to a stream.
“More.” Cristoph undid the band around his upper arm. The stream surged. His blood climbed within the bowl. “He needs more.”
The world spun, gentle gyrations as his eyelids grew heavy. Luca’s voice calling his name seemed far away. He grunted, trying to respond. Tried to blink. Tried to raise his head.
Slap. Luca’s open palm smacked him sideways. He jerked back. Luca had pulled the needle out of him, and the IV tube leaked blood as it lay on the table next to the half-full bowl. Warm iron and copper hit his tongue, the back of his throat. Human blood. His blood. He tried to stand.
Luca shoved him down. “Not yet. Sit.” He crouched in front of Cristoph and passed him a carton of orange juice, scavenged from his fridge. The expiry date had been two weeks before, and the taste of acid was sharp on his tongue, the burn of licking a battery. But he drank, and the world swam back into focus.
“That was too much,” Luca growled. “This is a foolish idea. You’re not strong enough for this!”
“What else do you suggest?” Cristoph rolled his head. “How would you save him tonight?”
Luca’s gaze slipped away. His eyes gleamed, reflecting the lights of St. Peter’s blazing against the blackened sky. The solstice was in full swing, the long hours of the darkest night burning onward. How much was happening out there? Were revenants rising, wreaking havoc? Were ghouls trailing behind nervous midnight strollers? The etheric pulsed with power, the veil at its thinnest. What was punching through? What were they missing, locked in their apartment with a dying vampire?
Who wouldn’t live through the night?
Alain, if they didn’t hurry.
He should be more worried about the innocents, the Romans who had no idea of the dangers. But wasn’t Alain an innocent, too, in a way? Wasn’t this, all of this, everything that Alain had become… Cristoph’s fault?
He shoved himself to his feet, bracing against the table as his knees wobbled. The wooden table legs skidded against the linoleum, a scratch that made him shiver. Luca’s hands were on him instantly, steadying his hips, his elbow. “You need to rest,” Luca said gruffly. “I’ll take it to him.”
“No. I should do it. If he reacts badly, he should take that out on me. Not you.” It was his idea, after all. “You don’t deserve his wrath, Luca. You’ve done nothing but help him, even when you had no reason to.”
Something shimmered in Luca’s eyes, an emotion that looked like guilt writhing beneath shame, beneath anguish, for a half breath. He stepped back, dropping his hands. “It’s my duty to care for the guards.”
“And you do it well.” Cristoph took a shaky step away. He kept his feet beneath him. Progress. Another step. And another. “Hand me the bowl.”
Luca hesitated, but passed it over silently. Warm blood sloshed, the iron tang, the wet heat rising and smothering his senses, his nose, his tongue, the back of his throat. It smelled like prey, like animal. Human. Animal. Food.
If the blood scent was this intense to him, how much more so was it to Alain?
He threw back his shoulders and limped to the hall, turning toward their bedroom. Alain’s howls, his keens, had quieted. Breathy, rasping pants, like desiccated parchment crumbling to dust, echoed. Dying wheezes, the shaking rattle of lungs struggling. Fuck. Alain had pushed himself too far, too hard. He’d deprived himself for too long.
Did he want to die? Or, not die. He was already dead—undead. Did he want to be unmade? Turn to dust and ash and dissipate into nothing, with only the memories of him living in Cristoph’s mind? What happened to a man’s soul once he turned undead?
What had become of Alain after the turn?
He couldn’t deny that there had been changes to the man he knew. Deep, everlasting changes.
Thoughts for later. Save his life now. Cristoph limped into the bedroom, the bowl in both of his hands.
He saw the moment Alain sensed what he held. Alain’s muscles went taut, every single fiber in the body straining against the looped silver chains. His back arched, and his jaw dropped, and his fangs curved from his gasping mouth. His eyes stayed closed as he hissed.
Cristoph sat beside him on the bed. The flannel duvet tangled in Alain’s legs, the banality of rumpled plaid at odds with a chained and dying vampire. Memories of the night they spent together flashed in his mind: Alain making love to him, unleashing a depth of passion that had shocked him. Alain had been a deluge, a flood that pulled him under.
He’d drown in Alain’s arms every night, if only.
His heart pounded. He held the bowl in both hands, poised over Alain’s open mouth. Barely alive, Alain acted on instinct, straining toward the blood and against the chains, ignoring the burn of his flesh against silver, the rot and singe that flooded the room.
Slowly, Cristoph poured drops of his blood onto Alain’s lips.
Alain lapped them up, greedy like an animal sucking the marrow off a corpse bone. His fangs bared again. He growled.
He tipped the bowl once more. A small stream of his blood rained down into Alain’s open mouth.
Alain lapped at his pouring blood, wild, feral in his feeding. He growled as he drank, his lips curving back, his fangs flashing.
Alain. He swallowed hard. I know you’re in there. I know you’re still you. And I still love you.
The bowl emptied. His weakened arms shook from holding it for so long. He tossed it away. It spun, rolling into the corner before tipping on its side.
Alain trembled, a tremor that ran through his body. His mouth shut, and his face pinched tight. His fangs retracted into his gums, revealing his blunt human teeth again. For the moment, he looked like he was only resting, maybe sleeping off a long night of drinking. Or nursing a migraine.
Cristoph stripped out of his filthy shirt and trousers and laid next to Alain. For one more night, they could at least lie together. One night where he could pretend they were still in love. His palm rested on Alain’s chest, over his heart.
He felt nothing beneath his touch.
* * *
“What have you done,” growled over his shoulder. Ferocity rumbled through each dark syllable. “What have you done?”
“Alain?” Cristoph tried to roll over. He was on his side, a warm body pressed behind him. It felt like Alain, smelled like him. The snakeskin, old dust, and graveyard stench that was his lover turned vampire.
Hands stopped him, forced him to still. An iron grip on his hip, another on the back of his neck. Pricks of pain lanced his skin around Alain’s hold. His nails, completing the long shift to talons, thicker and sharper than when he’d been a man. The points dug deeper into his skin, a firm grip around his spine, his neck. He’d wondered what they were for. Trapped, held down, he now knew.
“I was finally going to be free!” Alain hissed. “I would have relieved you of this burden! I would have shed this evil flesh and disappeared! Become nothing!”
Cristoph thrashed. What had happened to the chains? The silver that should have kept Alain bound for eternity? “I couldn’t let you die!” He kicked, his foot hitting Alain’s leg. It felt like hitting a steel beam.
Vampire strength. Renewed through feeding on human blood. He’d wanted to save Alain’s life, that’s all. Not turn him into a hulking monster.
“Do you know what you have done?” Alain’s talons broke his skin. Warm blood spilled down Cristoph’s neck. He jerked, fear spiking through him. Was Alain still in there? Or ha
d he crossed some impossible divide?
What had he done?
Alain breathed in, an open-mouthed, guttural moan. His lips landed on Cristoph’s neck, his tongue lapping at the spilled blood. “I swore,” he hissed, “I would never drink a man’s blood again. I swore it!”
Something of the man he loved was still there, at least, to remember his vow. “You were dying! I won’t sit back and watch that happen! I love you, Alain!” Cristoph swung wildly behind him, a blind punch.
Alain grunted. He ripped his lips from Cristoph’s neck, from suckling at his blood. He shoved Cristoph away.
Cristoph rolled to his knees and spun. He breathed fast, his naked chest rising and falling quickly. Before he’d laid down, he’d stripped to his boxers. He regretted that now. Nearly all his skin was on display, his panicked heart pumping his fevered blood beneath his skin’s surface. A steady stream trickled down his neck, over his collarbone, and down his chest.
Alain kneeled on the mattress, the remnants of the silver chains hanging from his wrists. They’d snapped, ripped apart by Alain’s strength at some point. His skin no longer burned. That stench of rot and seared flesh was gone. Instead, ozone crackled the air. A summer’s sky after a storm, the intake of breath before a scream.
Alain’s yellow eyes blazed. He held Cristoph in his stare, the force of his gaze stilling him.
Prey. Prey. He was facing down a vampire at full strength during the solstice. When the etheric was at peak strength. When the Veil was at its thinnest.
When Alain’s control was at its most fragile. When Alain was at the breaking point.
“I can feel you inside of me. Your blood,” Alain whispered. “I can feel your soul.” His stone-hard face cracked, shifting to torment. “Your skin was warded! I couldn’t have breached it again! Why did you do this? Why did you bleed yourself for me? Why?”
“I told you. I love you. And I won’t sit back and watch you suffer!”