Contains language, allusions to violence, torture, nonconsensual sexual contact, dark themes. Please note that the views of these characters certainly don't always match my own.
Prologue
2000
In the tunnels beneath Manhattan, in the midst of a Hosting of historians, a Camarilla Cleopatra explained the story of Nosferatu and Arikel thusly:
"Every Nosferatu has a favorite story - I'd love to tell you mine. The Toreador have a rather fascinating tale about our kind, one that's supposed to explain why the two clans despise each other so much. It's said that before Nosferatu was cursed by Caine, he was beautiful; the Degenerates of Clan Toreador believe he even fell in love with an Antediluvian named Arikel. When he was made hideous, he was so ashamed that he could never show himself to his true love again.
"Nosferatu, in his rage, hunted his own childer and forced them into hiding, but Arikel celebrated the Embrace of her childer and taught them to revere beauty. Nosferatu's lost love, Arikel, created the Toreador, and apparently, they've pitied us ever since. Isn't that beautiful? I heard this story from a rather handsome storyteller, and he still repeats the story faithfully to me each night. You see, I've nailed him to a cross in my haven and kept him fed with my vitae every night. He will love me forever, as Arikel and Nosferatu never did."
Part I: A History
2000
Their last conversation ran thus:
"I'm off to Manhattan for the next week or three," Charles Leonard announced after they woke that night. "There's to be a Hosting. A historians' convention. All manner of stories to tell."
"Oh. Take me with you?"
"You know they wouldn't appreciate your talent. They simply can't see past appearances."
David lifted his head and managed to push himself up by maybe the thickness of a fingernail. "Please? I won't leave, I promise."
Leonard crouched beside him, toying with his hair. "Of course you wouldn't. Still, no." He had a reputation to consider.
Now he was squirming best as he could around the nails that transfixed his limbs. "I'm going crazy in here, Leo, please -"
"I'm not enough for you?"
"No - yes - I just - just - you're enough, I mean, you're more than enough, a lot more than enough, but you're leaving and you won't be here and I - I -"
"My dear, why don't you think of it as a test? A way to show how faithful you are." Though truth be told it wasn't much of a test, because - to take just one incidental reason - there was nobody for him to be unfaithful with except perhaps the blood doll. "And when I return, I'll tell you all the stories I've heard. Doesn't that sound lovely?"
"Yes," he hurried to say. "Yes, it sounds lovely."
"Now, would you tell me that one again, for the road?"
He nodded and told the same story he'd told every night for the last three years. Not a hint of a resigned drone now - his voice swooped about in dramatic throes, dropped to the murmur of the final words. When it was done Leonard trailed a finger along his face. "I'm sure they'll adore it."
"Thank you. I love you."
"Of course you do," said Leonard, and opened a vein in his wrist. A nip of his own tongue followed by a long Kiss in twice the sense had all the trappings of what they'd both used to be, but he'd found veins more practical for shifting vitae in volume. He decided against direct contact this time. The Kiss felt all well and good for him, but he couldn't help but regard it with some amount of suspicion. Not that he feared diablerie at this point, but having his blood sucked out felt altogether too pleasurable to subject himself to at whim. "Now, would you...?"
David arched up again, lips parted. Together they had it down to an artform that would never be on display at Elysium. Leonard's aim was impeccable and his target caught the steady trickle with a modicum of dignity. When they were done Leonard sealed the cut and dabbed up a stray drop from the corner of David's mouth. David sighed and lay back on the cross, half-contented, though fragments of mute fear remained in the set of his mouth and at the back of his half-lidded eyes.
"Jonathan will take care of you while I'm away. You like Jonathan, don't you?"
"I like him a lot." The pretty lie tripped right off his tongue. There might not be infighting per se, they each had their niche, but Leonard knew they certainly didn't like each other.
"Now don't get carried away with him."
"I won't. I promise."
A mundane kiss goodbye, then, and Leonard tasted remnants of his own blood as he scoured David's mouth. After three years and a steady diet the shudder of revulsion was almost gone. "I'd rather you didn't pine too much," Leonard told him, climbing off and making for the door out of the back room. Jonathan had his gear ready; all that was left to do was sling it on and leave the haven to properly start the journey to Manhattan.
"I love you." Leonard let himself look back. David had lifted his head again, as far as he could, to keep watching Leonard from the floor where he lay half-crucified. "So much."
Leonard turned away and closed the door behind his back.
2000
It wasn't his favorite story, the one he told Leo every night. His favorite, David supposed, was the story of Arikel's painting, because even though it ended with the painting destroyed and Caine's curse levied there was still the hope in the part of the painting that Caine hadn't seen. That one bored Leo, though, and he was sarcastic about it. David didn't like that, but he didn't want to argue. So on those nights when Leo wanted him to choose a second story himself, he didn't choose that one.
Lying on the floor was much better than upright. Of course he didn't need to breathe anymore, so suffocation wasn't a problem, but his arms would wrench and after a while he could barely take in or let out enough air to talk. That was why Leo would always let him down eventually, to tell the night's story if nothing else. The cross hadn't been upright for a long time now so he supposed he was becoming ungrateful. Leo liked him upright -
"It's a better motif, isn't it? More symbolic. I know you love your symbolism. You deserve to be shown off, don't you?"
- but he'd made this concession he hadn't needed to. It was another reason for David to be grateful.
He wasn't shown off to anyone besides Leo and Leo's ghoul, Jonathan. No one else came in the room where Leo kept his treasures, and he wasn't about to leave it.
"If you were to wander, I fear you'd never come back. I wouldn't blame you, my dear, if you ran off after the first decent face you caught sight of. I'm not much competition, I'm well aware."
He would come back, he'd insisted time and again. He just wanted... he wanted...
"The minute you stick your head out, your sire will be on it. Do you think he could understand what we've made for ourselves? He'll think it's foul play. How else could I win someone as lovely as you?"
He hardly ever thought about Andrea di Cesare. It was one of those things he set aside long ago, better not to consider to keep things smooth. When Leo asked him he thought about it just enough to imagine his sire's face at the news and to agree that no, he couldn't possibly understand.
Besides, it was much safer here. Straightforward. It was worse out there, said Leo, because they still pretended there was nothing wrong.
Strange, he still thought sometimes, how his world had grown small in two great leaps. It started with the Embrace leaving him the nighttime, and now it was down to this room and Leo. But then both occasions had opened new vistas, so given time he supposed he could learn to be content with this.
Meanwhile, though, he was bored. It sounded awful but there it was. He twisted his head about, craning his neck, in the hopes that he could distract himself for a time in another piece of Leo's collection.
"Some of my clan give up. They reject everything beautiful just because they can't be. Personally, I think that's their loss, don't you?"
1996
His name was David Flavian. Degenerate, novelist and would-be Noddist, primogen's childe and darling of the moment. When he was asking after translations of the Book of Nod, Finn passed him on to Nell and Nell passed him on to Leonard. "Sorry about that, Leo," she said when she tipped him off, not sounding particularly sorry. "'Least he's not too big of a prick as they go. Bit sweet, bit stupid. Almost think he's got to be hiding something but, Tories, you know. Throw him a bone, would you?"
When he first met Leonard he didn't survey his surroundings with contempt but rather with the fascination of a tourist in the Third World looking at quaint local color. With Leonard himself, in the absence of illusionary masks he seemed to concentrate on adjacent items like the top button of his battered overcoat or the point in the air just above his hat, with occasional furtive glances up or down. He spoke easily, strewing false modesty with a generous hand. "I sound awfully silly, don't I?" he would say, to head off accusations of such at the pass, and he would smile, and Leonard would find himself saying that of course he didn't, do go on.
"Of course I take creative license," he said. "Like in my last book - do you want a copy? They sent me a bunch." And Leonard agreed that he would like a copy (to laugh at if nothing else). And the next time they met David brought along two novels and an anthology. Leonard read them and laughed at them because they were so cheerful, so earnest, all the shadows and heavily-veiled allusions to bloodsucking (so veiled that the creatures in some of his stories were the fictional bastard children of werewolves of all things) just window dressing. The mirror-twin of Hannah Wheatley romance. He stashed them in the back room, amidst the chipped crystal and the armchairs scratched up by divers pets and those things there was nothing wrong with except to the critical eye of someone with nothing better to do than throw things away.
And then there was the time Leonard agreed to meet him in a swankier venue for the latest trade - some dark little club with live music. He could do favors for such a good customer, even if such an obnoxious person. He enhanced his mask with a good chunk of blood for the occasion, working off an old photograph he kept inside a broken music box, and was rewarded by David going into a trance at the sight before realizing who was underneath.
"You used to look like that?" he whispered later, when they were seated against the wall, shy of a corner (Leonard knew that people watched corners).
Leonard nodded.
"That's terrible. Not the looking, I mean. I mean the used to."
"It builds character."
"Well," said David in a tone that Leonard would've described as thoughtful if he didn't know better, "on the inside you are one of the loveliest Kindred I know."
"You're only saying that because I'm not myself, aren't you?"
"It's true."
And it was true, to him. Not for him the greased flattery from behind a hand holding in the vomit, not for him the catty jabs. He had his tricks of the tongue but they were entirely superficial. He was so sincerely stupid, Leonard thought, that he believed his own pretensions, so sincerely stupid that Leonard couldn't look away.
"It's got to be awful," he said, gesturing with his glass half-full of some newfangled cocktail. "I don't think I could've taken it. You must be so strong."
"Oh, don't underestimate yourself," said Leonard, and imagined how his flesh might twist, his bones warp, his smile collapse in on itself, though unless he crossed paths with a Tzimisce he was safe from that particular fate.
Later that night David whispered, leaning over the table, "My sire told me a story about Arikel and Nosferatu once - um, is there another name for him? It sounds kind of odd now that I say them together. Doesn't match."
"Can't say so." After scores of centuries and as many layers of obfuscation it was pointless trying to pin names on antediluvians, thought Leonard, but let him sling them around if he liked.
"Anyway, it's supposed to explain the differences."
"Besides the obvious?"
"Um, yeah, besides the obvious. More like - like differences of opinion." They would like to believe it was something set in stone from the days of Nod rather than admit they were insufferable in their own right. "I was wondering if you know one like it too. You know, over there."
"Why don't you tell me, and we'll see."
David leaned even closer and whispered inches from Leonard's face. "Well, what he said was once Nosferatu used to be beautiful..."
And so it went. His hands fluttered. In the half-light he looked half-alive and made it look easy.
"... in the day they slept entwined in the same crypt. In the night they drank from one another, and with these drinks they were bound so firmly that they imagined it would last forever..."
Leonard kept looking at him.
"So he drove his childer away, into the deeper dark," he concluded minutes later, "Arikel, though, celebrated when each of hers rose from death, and taught them to celebrate, to delight in the beauty of things. And she taught them a way to be at peace with the human and the Beast - the way she tried to show Caine once. That's why we're lucky. I mean. Well. It's what he said."
"Fascinating. I can't say I've heard it before."
"At least not the part where we're the lucky ones?"
"Oh, I don't know about that part," said Leonard. "I'm rather sure I've heard that somewhere, at least."
David laughed behind his hand, with at least enough sense drifting around inside the hollow of his head for the sound to carry the slightest nervous tremor. "It's only one point of view. So what do you say about that kind of thing? I mean, if you say anything. I guess not everyone's as - well - as interested."
"We say plenty of things. Remind me to tell you one of them sometime." And with that Leonard made his excuses - he still had to find a way to make up for the blood expended on keeping up appearances.
He got the blood from a young man leaving the club, who he left passed out in the narrow gap between buildings. For a few moments struggling in the dark he thought he might have made a mistake and grabbed David, which would have gained him maybe an indignant look and definitely a third of a blood bond (unless the blood was so sickly sweet that immediately he'd vomit back into that face, and oh the indignation that would get).
2000
Jonathan's blood didn't compare but if he tried sometimes he thought he could pick up hints of Leo's, mingled with it, and he savored that. He also knew that sometimes Leo drank from Jonathan, in a perpetual cycle, so there was another thing he could try to recognize.
He licked the wound on Jonathan's wrist closed when he was done. Jonathan, once recovered, wiped off David's face and left, pulling the string to put out the lightbulb as he went. David wished he wouldn't do that. When the door was closed there was nowhere for sound and light to come in. There was nowhere to look but inside-out. And inside there were so many pitfalls. There were so many locked doors that he could forget why they were locked and try to open them.
Sometimes Leo was the one to tell him stories. He whispered them so soft that even right next to David's ear they were almost lost. David remembered most of them being first told in a time he'd carefully locked off. What filtered through from then was fragmented to match - newly-Embraced fledglings tangled in inextricable knots, never-seen phantoms stalking the depths of the earth. Most of it was enhanced later, the blanks filled in.
A story that wasn't: "Once there was a man, why don't we call him Charlie, who got everything he wanted. Then one night, while Charlie was out looking for something else to want, he met someone else who looked as handsome as he was. They went into a back alley together and they... they lived happily ever after. Happily ever after. Now will you be quiet?"
1997
Early in the new stage of their relations, soon after the third drink, David had if not snapped at least bent considerably. With Toreador vitae already laying indelible claim to his body, it seemed only his mind was left to buckle and collapse and twist around these new facts of his existence. For a time he did this with alacrity. Leonard would sleep in the room, sit by him on the floor or stand before him at the wall, and David would beg him to leave or to stay and Leonard would speak of whatever crossed his mind. At this point he finally told him a little of what the Nosferatu said among themselves.
Once, in search of variety, he'd embarked upon an especially familiar plot. David, lucid enough to realize where it must be headed, went into hysterics. Leonard, not in a mood then to push him and not exactly relishing the tale of dead Charlie himself, had settled for another rumor of the Nictuku, which calmed David somewhat. Maybe it gave him hope that he'd escape through Final Death when one night they came for Leonard.
Even then, at some point every night David had at least enough composure to accept Leonard's blood, enough to tell the story - sometimes twice in a night when he lost track. Leonard kept the lighter in a pocket but never had to bring it out again.
Sometimes in those nights Leonard listened to the ragged whimpering, the delirious mantras of pleas, remembered his first nights below, and found himself imagining what it would be like to sire someone himself, or even to bring someone down and let David do it. Such a family that would be. He'd been sure he'd have a family once - it was the done thing, and it wasn't as though Charlie Leonard would have had any trouble finding an available woman.
Really, he told himself, there was no comparison. It was the same face in the mirror, when all was said and done, and the mind reassembled itself in reasonable fashion.
1998
A year after coming down, David got a new shirt. He knew it had been a year because Leo told him while he stammered thanks.
He hadn't changed clothes since his arrival. This wasn't the issue it would have been for kine, but a layer of miscellaneous grime had still accumulated, especially on his shirt. There were holes front and back on the left side and the collar was stiff with old bloodstains. Leo had said he could cut it right off if David wanted, but David wanted to keep it as long as there was nothing else. Now that there was something else, Leo even agreed to take the nails in his wrists out for as long as he needed to put it on.
At first he continued to lie there, unsure of how his arms were supposed to move, until Leo cleared his throat. His wrists throbbed as he pushed himself into a sitting position, made more awkward by the way his legs stayed folded to the side. He reached up and began to fumble with the buttons. After a while Leo began to help, straddling his legs and working from the bottom. Their hands met just below David's collarbone. Then Leo peeled the old shirt away from his shoulders and down off his arms.
When it was clear David's arms came up again to cross his chest. He ducked his head. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so self-conscious in quite this way. Maybe when he met Andrea - but that was long-faded. He stared at the vanishing marks on either side of his wrists - he'd been healing them without thinking and now he was hungry, distinctly more than usual now that he drank from Leo like clockwork. It made him feel even stranger.
"What is it?" Leo pressed the new shirt onto him. "Do you like what you see?"
He shook his head, mute, and hurried to put his arms through the sleeves. The fabric was dark blue, soft. He used one hand to hold it closed in front and the other to push the gleaming buttons through the holes. Halfway up he realized he was off by one button and had to begin again. He could feel Leo watching all the while and ducked his head lower.
It was something he would have taken for granted a year ago. A year ago he would have had a whole closet to rifle through at his leisure. And now it was a prize to be able to sit up and wear one without bloodstains on the collar... it was such a superficial thing, really, to fixate on. He wanted to do something of his own now. He wanted to shunt them both away from thinking of his failings. He wanted to show that he really was grateful for such a prize.
He put his hands on Leo's shoulders, then, and pressed their mouths together. He realized only after the fact that he'd closed his eyes. He didn't dare open them; it might botch things. He was ashamed again that that was even a possibility.
He had no idea how long they remained that way. He worked forward with his tongue and Leo's mouth opened just enough to allow it in. He felt his hands move inward, resting on either side of Leo's neck - and he imagined, then, bringing them around his throat. Imagined twisting just so. Imagined the crack. Imagined jamming his fingers into Leo's eyes. Imagined tearing out his throat, drinking him to nothing, swallowing his soul... What was wrong with him?
He barely noticed when Leo kissed him back, then moved his own hands, pressing David back onto the cross, opening his arms, folding back the cuffs of the new shirt (so considerate of him), prodding his wrists to rediscover the right spots. He should have known this would happen, thought David, regretting the waste of blood. He stared at the ceiling and tried not to cry out when the first nail went back in between his armbones because he'd caused enough trouble already. What was wrong with him?
1997
He took up one of the pieces he'd collected in the back room, a porcelain bowl with a chip on the rim he thought would be to David's taste. David held it with ginger fingers and examined it from all angles, distracted if not entranced entirely. When the stake slid between his ribs his hands twitched open and the bowl smashed against the ground in the alley. If it had been a story, there probably would have been a symbol in there.
The stake didn't come out until everything was nailed down and bolted in place and left for a few nights for blood to run low, because security won out over Leonard's desire to hear him scream. Until then he peered in nightly to check that David still hung immobile. The bare feet, he thought, were a nice incongruity to the tableau; he'd taken off the shoes and socks before nailing them.
When the night came Leonard balanced on a chair, drew the stake from David's chest, and tossed it to the side. David's extremities twitched. His mouth opened and closed in silence. Thus reminded, Leonard stepped down and engaged the jerry-rigged apparatus to lower and turn the cross. Level on the floor, David squirmed and exhaled.
"Leo?" he said at last, disbelieving. Disbelieving, maybe, that the Leonard hiding beneath three coats and a fedora and the Leonard hiding behind a mask was the same Leonard that stood over him now. Maybe his mind had been paralyzed with the rest of him, so that it took until now for him to start thinking it over. "This isn't funny, you know."
"I wouldn't say that."
"Okay. Okay, it's very funny, ha, ha. You made your point. Come on." Leonard kept his feet, hands folded behind his back, and watched him start to catch up. "Come on," he repeated, grabbing at the very tips of straws. His eyes were glazed bright blue. "Let me up."
For a few dizzying seconds this made more sense than it ought to. Then Leonard remembered and turned to look to the side of the room, and the way the feeling popped like a soap bubble once David's face was out of view confirmed his suspicion. He turned back with care, delving into a pocket. "I don't believe I made my point."
David stared back at him and Leonard continued to watch the progression of expression, imagine the gears turning. Perhaps it was a risk to keep looking as David tried to exercise his Presence, but he knew what he was up against (not much) and considered the risk acceptable.
"Look. Leo. You don't really want to do this, do you?" He clearly knew the answer. "What's the point? If you just let me go now we can keep it between us -"
"We can't." Elysium chatter had it that di Cesare was climbing up the walls and he was almost tempted to visit Elysium just for the sight. Leonard would be more worried about coming under scrutiny if David hadn't had such an active social life, apparently based off of being harmless and readily soaked for favors. He wouldn't have been able to keep it up much longer, thought Leonard; Jyhad would have rolled over him and his pleasant idiocy. Really, he was doing him a favor.
"I was after a copy of the new translation. I didn't tell anyone before because I didn't want to be embarrassed if I didn't find it. Which I didn't. Complete wild goose chase. Come on, please. My arms hurt."
"How about the rest of you?"
"Leo. Leo." He began to twist about again. "Please. What do you want?"
Leonard was only too happy to show him. David didn't reciprocate this happiness, not when Leonard dropped down and aligned their bodies together, their faces nearly touching. Instead he cringed, trying to retreat into the wood beneath him, eyes shut, pretty face contorted with disgust (because when it came down to it he was a Degenerate, he was like the others). Leonard put a hand beneath his chin, tilting it up, and wondered if he had looked like that once.
"I've been thinking of that lovely little tale again. The one about Arikel and Nosferatu. But oh," he asked, with perfect consideration, "aren't you hungry by now?" And he began to chew on his tongue.
It didn't take David too long to realize and panic. "I'm sorry," he started to babble, eyes flying open, as Leonard got a good flow going. "I'm sorry. Sorry. Please - please don't, I'm sorry, please -"
He stopped and closed his mouth as Leonard's covered it. That posed little barrier when Leonard forced in his tongue. He wasn't worried David would try to bite; that would make things even easier. David seemed to know this as well. Instead he shuddered and writhed underneath him, shut his eyes again, gagged, tried to push back Leonard's tongue and spit back the vitae that made its way into his mouth. Leonard didn't need to worry about coming up to breathe and so stayed there, the hand under David's chin spreading out to encompass the lump in his throat, until he was sure that David had swallowed - marked by a movement in the throat and a choked sob, because David could guess very well what would happen on the night after, and the night after that.
He sat up, atop David's legs, and waited.
"You're sick." It sounded paltry, as though David thought it needed to be said but didn't know how to say it with the requisite force.
"So I've been told. There was something else I wanted from you."
"Like what?" Judging from the pause, it seemed to take a great effort of thought for him to come up with what he flung out next. "My face? Are you missing yours?"
Just like the others - that made things easier. "I already have that. What I'd like now is your tongue."
"Then cut it out already."
It really was funny watching him pretend at being a Brujah. Or maybe pretending to be a hero in his own story where it all would come out all right after a dab of cathartic suffering. "You work with words and you can't understand a little figurative language? I'm not sure of all the details of that little story. I'd love to hear it again."
"Tell it to yourself, you fucking sick bastard."
"You're so much better at it, though." He reached back into a pocket and brought out the cigarette lighter, preparing himself. He had some obvious advantages where the lighter was concerned, but that didn't mean he could be utterly cavalier. He used his other hand to delve again, coming up with half a pack of cigarettes.
David's eyes were still closed. "You might want to look now," Leonard told him. "I want to give you fair warning."
He counted to ten, braced, and flipped the lighter open. It was quite an old model and the flame came up immediately. David jerked slightly at the sound. Leonard brought up a cigarette and waited for it to catch; once it did, he closed the lighter and set it down within reach as the cigarette continued to burn. He inhaled a few times; no sense in too much waste. Perhaps it was the smell that finally prompted David to look. When he did, the bravado dissipated posthaste as he stared upward into the glowing ash and the rising strand of smoke with Rotschreck building up behind his eyes.
"If you'd rather, of course - " Leonard plucked it from what was left of his lips and began to bring his hand forward. " - there is your face."
He continued to stare, and Leonard began to wonder if he'd overdone it, frightened him into paralysis in lieu of the impossible fight or flight. When he was contemplating whether it would be more or less helpful to grind it out on David's cheek David began to babble again, and some of the words in the torrent sounded gratifyingly familiar.
"Please slow down." Leonard withdrew the cigarette several inches. "Would you begin again?"
David began again. This time it wasn't particularly engaging, but Leonard still pulled the cigarette further back and when the tale was finished he extinguished it on the concrete. It couldn't be helped that David's hands could no longer flutter quite as they had.
"Thank you," said Leonard, with some light applause for good measure. He retrieved the lighter and climbed off, ready to get the cross back up. He started hauling.
"Leo, please..."
Leonard paused.
"Why? At least tell me..."
"Certainly. Let me tell you why." He resumed his maneuvering. "Because you are an arrogant child and you've only been coddled and encouraged by the like-minded." The cross jerked upright, followed by David's choked yowl as all was dragged down again by gravity, arms parting ways with sockets. "Some of us would've been happy to educate you while you were breathing, but since a Degenerate snapped you up they think it's settled. I happen to disagree. Do you still happen to think you're lucky?"
At this point the incoherent choking that had started halfway through his diatribe finally gave way to speech between gasps as David found the energy to push up on his feet, give his lungs a chance to deflate. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Fear, choked-back fury, but not pity. No more pity.
"You said that before. Are you sure you know what it means?" He secured the bolts. "Stop crying. You're not human. Don't fool yourself."
1997
It was the second night with the stake out, not that there was much difference. He was trying not to cry. There was already plenty drying sticky down his face and neck - he needed all he could scrape together. He'd already spent as much as he dared on the strength to pull loose, but he couldn't counter the strength used to drive in the massive nails. He remembered far more than he wanted to of that.
He almost couldn't stand the temptation to drop into torpor, but he needed to stay awake in case there was an opportunity. Besides, Leo would probably kill him once he went catatonic and wasn't entertaining anymore. If he gave up he had no chance. He had to remember that even while his body wanted to cut its losses - even when part of him insisted it was better to die here than live here.
Disgusting. Sick. Who was supposed to be the degenerate? Andrea told him not to lord it over Nosferatu - told him they were ill-starred enough already. And he'd listened, and he'd always tried to be polite. He wasn't some shallow poseur, assuming the worst from an ugly face. Hadn't it made perfect sense that someone so fucked-up on the outside would have good insides to balance?
He wasn't crying anymore, at least. He was too angry now for that. Maybe frenzy could do what conscious effort couldn't. Maybe he could even kill Leo the next time he came in. Drain him dry. Only then he could be the one in trouble and that wouldn't be fair at all. And if he killed Leo he'd probably be stuck.
He tried to focus past the hum of pain. If he couldn't escape then there had to be at least some way to make this easier. At least until the third drink. Maybe then he wouldn't care anymore -
That was it. Two could play that. He probably couldn't make a complete blood bond with the chances he had left but if he could sneak it in twice maybe that... maybe that could at least help...
His teeth weren't jagged as Leo's but he still had fangs. He worried at the inside of his mouth, careful not to overdo it, until he could taste his own vitae. Now that he knew he could do it, he sucked the wound closed and began to go over the searing details of the last time. He had to be ready for the next.
When the next time came he bit the same spot once he knew what was coming. He knew he couldn't force Leo's bloodied tongue back into his putrid mouth, but in the motions of trying he mingled his own blood with it. He wasn't sure whether it made its way all the way down Leo's gullet as it needed to, but he could hope.
1997
The first thing he said after the third drink was "I still fucking hate you," as if saying so would make it-keep it true. A lost cause; it was ebbing fast even as he spoke.
"I must say, I'm rather hurt." And he waited.
After a while David began to cry again. "Don't do that," Leonard advised him, dabbing it up. "It's a waste of good blood." David cried harder. "For God's sake."
"Hate you - hate you -"
"For God's sake." He began to brush a hand through David's hair, winding a dark strand around a finger.
The next time David spoke, when the night was nearly over, he said "I'm sorry I said you were sick." This time Leonard could tell he meant it.
"Don't worry your pretty head," said Leonard.
Some nights later he drifted out of a delirium long enough to say "I love you."
"Likewise," said Leonard, for the look on his face.
1999
He held off on telling Leo for a very long time. Even when he remembered he'd tried to do it, he didn't know if it had worked and surely Leo wouldn't be happy to know about it. There was even a phase when he thought about trying to complete the blood bond, so he'd be sure that Leo loved him just as much. But he remembered a little of how afraid he'd been and thought no, it would be wrong.
Then he thought, he shouldn't have secrets from the one he loved. He had to show all of himself though it shamed him.
Leo wasn't as angry as he'd been afraid he would be. He laughed and said "Well, don't try again."
"I promise."
"Now why, you silly thing," said Leo, leaning closer, "would you think I needed encouragement to fall for someone like you?"
1999
Even if he tried it, thought Leonard, it certainly hadn't worked. How could it have worked? He would have noticed.
"Someone like me?" David whispered.
"Aren't you accustomed to being loved?"
His head tilted to the side. Leonard watched the fall of his hair, the movements of his eyes, the slight shifts in his face and in a body that still remembered how to move at a wider range than it was now allowed, along the bent length of his legs and the outstretched length of his arms. In a bolder mood David had asked him not to put up the cross anymore. Leonard hadn't seen why not.
"I guess so," said David after a while, looking fretful. "But why would they?"
"Isn't it obvious?"
"I guess it is. But that - that's not a very good reason, is it? You'd know better."
Sometimes Leonard wondered. "You are quite handsome on the inside."
"Not that much," David objected.
He could no longer absorb thick layers of flattery with but a token bit of modesty before accepting it as his due. These nights he was always ready with doubts. The secrets to his contentment were puzzles Leonard found intriguing to solve.
"It can't be that hard to find someone with a brain. Who isn't so shallow. Who can be what you deserve. Why me?" Leonard lay down atop him and he blinked rapidly before forcing his eyes back open, trying to prove he could look Leonard in the wreck of a face it had taken months for Leonard to look at voluntarily (his sire had delighted in ambushing him with mirrors). "I can't even - if you knew what was in my head right now..."
He put his head over David's shoulder, turning to speak beside his ear. "I rather think I know enough."
"Really?"
"Of course. To take only one reason," because one reason at a time was better, he'd found, than a multitude, "I know you know the most fascinating stories. And you tell them so well. Would you tell me that one again?"
"All - all right." A pause. "Once, before Caine cursed him, Nosferatu was beautiful..."
He seemed to have relaxed by the end of the latest recitation. Leonard encouraged this with little murmurs, a stroking hand that he barely flinched from. "You've taken quite a journey, my dear, all for the better." A Kiss atop a kiss, tonight. David opened his mouth readily, sighed with pleasure at Leonard's ministrations, gradually participated himself, sucking at Leonard's tongue for the trickle of vitae. Another good sign as this puzzle went; it meant he was at that ideal high point between the long-gone defiance and slack, abject submission.
"I do love you." He'd said it so many times that Leonard had categories for it. They ranged from frantic desperation to be believed and to believe himself - the tone he might have said it earlier tonight - all the way to this peaceable statement of fact. "I won't ever stop."
Someone told him that and meant every word, thought Leonard, pleasantly fuzzy round the edges. Someone would tell him that in perpetuity. "I know."
He put on the face. He did this once in a long while, as a treat. When David was agitated he would protest further that Leonard didn't need to do that, that his awful biases didn't call for accommodation; now he just smiled, accepting it. This was how Leonard was sure he was getting it right.
He didn't bother getting up. They both slept on the cross that day.
2000
A lurch and a concerted effort to lose his nonexistent lunch and everything spiraling on a greased slide to hell. He thought he might have screamed for Leo but there was too much else roaring in his ears to be sure; at some point, whether it actually got out or not, it turned from screaming for to screaming at.
He regained his senses some time later and turned his head uselessly in the dark, taking stock. All extremities still attached; he could move his fingers and toes, if not by much. Hungrier than usual. Had Jonathan come in tonight yet? Or would it be last night, now? And Leo...
"You sick bastard!"
Unless Leo had been off at his historians' convention for a year and a day, he was probably dead. Good. That was good. Because Leo put a stake through his heart and shut him away down here and forced him into a blood bond and kept him for... two? ... three years. Half of his time as Kindred spent crucified, doing nothing but parroting that story to satisfy Charles Leonard's twisted whims. Bastard.
Leo's death didn't pull out the nails. He had revelations but nothing to do with them. His best chance was Jonathan. It wasn't a very big chance, but it was there. In the meantime, as ever, he could only wait and think.
He'd had some idea of what to expect before it happened but how could he have thought that way, felt that way? How could his mind (his heart) have been so contorted? It was beyond comprehension.
What was worse, he found, was when it began to seem almost comprehensible. When he thought back and Leonard's face seemed it might have something beautiful hiding behind it besides the mask of what-once-was that he sometimes put in front of it. When he thought further back and was nearly embarrassed by the glamour of his charmed unlife, praised for being, praised for creating, surrounded by other corpses draped in loveliness.
No. Oh, no. No. He couldn't think that way. Nothing was making him feel anything like that anymore. Actions trumped words and within actions putting nails in his wrists and vitae down his throat certainly trumped the way Leo would pet his hair and kiss him like he meant it and -
And of course he hadn't meant it. It was David's own blood that made Leo act that way. He shouldn't get credit for what David had to trick him into. And as for that, he didn't need Leo's laughter and dismissal for forgiveness. He didn't need forgiveness at all. He just needed out.
And he wouldn't cry. Anything he should be upset over was three years old by now. Waste of blood.
Part II: A Romance
A night later the door began to edge open, letting in the light beyond. Eventually it grew wide enough for Jonathan to pass through, carrying a toolbox. He pulled the lightbulb string and his feet made long scuffing sounds as he made his way across the room.
"Hello?" said Jonathan.
"Hello."
"Any idea what happened?"
"I think he died."
"Oh." Jonathan sat next to him, rolling one sleeve up and down. "Well." He seemed to digest this for a while. David didn't think it was worth the risk to push him. It paid off when he rolled up the sleeve again and said, "How about I take the edge off and then I can see about pulling these railroad spikes?"
He didn't think he was about to go into a frenzy, but he wasn't the one at risk of having his throat torn out if he did. He nodded and Jonathan offered his wrist again; he went further this time, but made himself stop because if he went too far now the irony would be supreme. As it was Jonathan swayed and pressed a hand to his head but muttered when he caught whatever look was on David's face that he'd be all right in a bit. For a vestige of peace of mind, David decided to trust his judgment by dint of experience.
For some reason he still remembered Leo's blood as tasting better. He hoped this wouldn't be a problem later.
"How much time do you have?" he asked after a minute.
"The next drink was supposed to be in a week." Jonathan opened the toolbox and began to rummage. "There's a pint in the fridge in case he got held up."
"Well, that's good," said David, and decided again not to push it.
Jonathan came up with some piece of hardware which he viewed with skepticism. He glanced over to David. "Did he ever take them out?"
"He used his fingers."
"Damn it."
But nothing better presented itself, and Jonathan hooked the tool into place around the bit of metal sticking out from David's right wrist. "Ready?"
"Go ahead."
The ensuing yank was more than enough to disrupt the status quo of the nerves in David's arm, reminding them there was metal through his wrist. Jonathan fell back when he screamed, and the tool slipped off. Clank.
Jonathan regarded the tableau. "... sorry."
"Don't be."
"Um. Valium doesn't work on you, does it? Got a couple bottles. Only expired for a month."
"Not directly."
"Shit. So what if I went and doped up someone..."
"You really don't need to do that."
"Okay." He looked relieved. "Mind if I get something you can, um, bite down on?"
"No, go ahead."
Jonathan rummaged in the room and eventually found a hand towel which, stuffed in David's mouth, at least ensured the screaming over the next while didn't deafen Jonathan as he worked. And at least Leo's blood made Jonathan strong enough that it didn't take too long. Eventually, the last nail came out. David remembered how to sit up and did so with care, then coughed out the towel. "Thank you."
Jonathan looked down and swept the nails together. "No problem."
Now came standing. David swung his feet off the cross onto the floor, braced himself with his hands as he waited for the punctures to heal, pushed up, and promptly collapsed to his knees. He contended with this as Jonathan retrieved items stuffed in various corners: his shoes and socks, keys to the car and the condo, a wound-down watch, and a wallet emptied of cash but with everything else intact (though the credit cards would have expired by now). It surprised him that Leo had kept them, but then again he'd owned all those things for some time and if someone else had happened to come upon them they might have made fodder for Auspex.
"Here, let me help." When David turned to look at him he added quickly, "If you want."
He wanted. He climbed to his feet with Jonathan bracing him and managed to stay upright. Half-stabilized, he took a few trembling steps, limping in a circle, before sitting down on top of a metal-bound trunk. He pulled on the socks and slipped into the shoes. Watch on his wrist, wallet and keys in opposite pockets. Then he stood again and Jonathan guided him out the door into what looked like the living room of Leo's haven.
David tried not to look around too much here - why should he care about the traces? But his glances still took in the refrigerator, the computer, the battered sofa with a blanket and a raincoat tossed over it. Jonathan let him down on the sofa for a moment and went over to the refrigerator to retrieve a bottle of Coke and half a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. Then Jonathan stared inside a while longer, maybe at the pint of blood, before closing the door with some force. He stuck the Coke and sandwich inside the deep pockets of the coat before putting it on. "Want me to take you up? Way I know comes out behind this burger place with a pay phone." He pulled up the hood of the coat. "I can lend you a few bucks. You can call, um, whoever."
"Yes. Please."
"I'm taking the long way," Jonathan explained as he locked the door of the haven behind him. David half-stood beside him, leaning against the wall, trying not to think about the slime beneath his hand. "There's the others running around on the fast ways and I don't know how they're going to take this. Okay?"
"Okay."
Jonathan guided him for the next stretch through the dim-lit tunnels, until David gradually relearned the trick to walking, shrugged loose, and started following close behind Jonathan along the cement walkway. Jonathan took the twists and turns with assurance. It seemed uncanny to David at first, but then again he knew most of the streets uptown about as well; it depended on what was worth knowing.
So Jonathan had been at this for a while. Almost definitely longer than David had been here; he thought he remembered Leo talking with him on the first night, but he'd been zipped into a body bag at the time and enough about that.
Jonathan had his own place aboveground; Leo would call him in whenever he wanted something from housekeeping to blood. Jonathan had to be bound, of course, but David didn't know much about what else went on between the two; when they talked they usually did it in another room and they didn't often leave the door open. When he was in the room Jonathan tried to pretend he wasn't there. David returned the favor. Maybe Jonathan assured himself that Leo surely liked him more than the guy he'd nailed down (because it was easy to figure that wasn't a token of esteem) even while David assured himself when he thought about it at all that Leo surely liked him more than any kine.
So why was Jonathan helping him now? If it was helping; he might even be leading him deeper into the sewers for all he knew - but then there wouldn't be a reason to let him up or even to give him more blood, was there?
Maybe he thought David might take him in, now that Leo was gone.
He considered the idea. He hadn't had a ghoul before. When he was sharing Andrea's haven as a fledgling there was one who lived with them, Isidora, and a few more who were always dropping in and out. They were mad about Andrea to a man or woman, though some fell all over him more obviously than others, and they were very polite to David once they were introduced. Because, he could realize now, they knew Andrea liked him and what better way to get on his good side? Andrea usually had them in one at a time, preferably while Isidora slept or ran errands. Considering the things he'd said to each of them, and the things they said back, David could guess why. How many most treasured people could one man have?
David hadn't wanted to go that far with anyone yet. He'd built up a decent list in his address book, and when they were otherwise engaged he'd hit the Rack - starting with the bars and clubs he went before his Embrace, though he had no problem with women when the situation called for it. He'd start the Kiss anytime from in the middle of restroom quickies - when they were too occupied with other sensations to notice - to, those times they went to motel rooms, after his partner did the stereotypical roll-over-and-doze-off. What they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. Anyhow the places he'd look for that weren't the places he looked for hunting. Feeding on people you cared about in that kind of way was a problem, so Andrea said. It wasn't a progression, it was different categories entirely.
He'd imagined finding some true love or another, someone to sweep off into the night to vows so passionate a blood bond would be a redundancy, accompanied by an orchestra and the liberal scattering of petals, rice, etcetera. Maybe the Embrace, some night. He hadn't been able to imagine someone looking at him the way a ghoul would have to look at him without looking back the same way - couldn't imagine people caring about him in that kind of way without caring back. Andrea said this was an endearing sentiment, but he was fairly sure Andrea drank from Isidora so Andrea's sentiments were probably different.
He could be sure Jonathan was reliable, if a bit scraggled. Maybe he'd clean up well, and the source of vitae might make a difference too. Andrea's ghouls had all been good-looking. Sure, David thought he could get to really like him, at least.
Jonathan broke the silence. "Heads up. Or down. There's crawling."
They proceeded through the next, much smaller tunnel nearly on their stomachs, and David tried to ignore the steady buildup of filth. The burger place would have a restroom. If it was open he could wash his hands there, at least, and dab at his pants.
"It's funny," Jonathan called over his shoulder, "I don't think I ever caught your name."
"It's David."
"I'd say nice to meet you, but... David Flavian?"
"Yeah. Um. How'd you guess?"
"Um. Leo had the books lying around."
"Oh. And you're Jonathan."
"Jonathan Watkins. There, we're even."
"Got it." They proceeded. "How much time before sunrise, about?"
A shifting up ahead; probably Jonathan checking his still-working watch. "Mm, five-six hours. It's winter up there."
"Okay, thanks."
"No problem."
A yard down the tunnel, he started to wonder how old Jonathan was. He didn't look much older than David, but that wasn't a big hint. It couldn't hurt to ask, he decided. He just had to be careful, because Jonathan could still leave him down here if he were so inclined. "How long were you...?"
"Hm? Oh, I think... almost nine years."
"Nine?" He shouldn't be so shocked, he realized a second later. After all, Isidora had been with Andrea for more than thirty.
"Yeah. Nine." He stopped.
"Hey," David called after a minute, as softly as he could manage. "Hey, um..."
"Oh." He resumed his forward crawl. "Sorry."
"Are you -?"
"Fine. I'll pop some iron later."
He stopped again near the end of the tunnel. He said, quite conversationally as David was about to call out again, "Fuck him."
"Yeah," said David after another minute. "Fuck him. Except I'd really rather not."
"Goddamn fucked-up sonofabitch all he got off on was sucking blood and pumping ego."
David hesitated. "Right."
"I'd been at a party. Took a shortcut through an alley, I didn't watch enough horror movies, I guess. And he pulled me down there and stuffed me with blood and waited for me to get... get vampire Stockholm Syndrome or whatever the hell."
"Blood bond. It's called a blood bond."
"Nine years. Fuck."
Another long silence. Then Jonathan clambered out of the tunnel, David hastily following in his wake. Jonathan gave him an anxious look when they were both out; David looking anxious back didn't seem to help. Time stretched yet again. He scrambled for something to say, came up with "Can we go now?"
Jonathan nodded quickly. "Sure. Sure. Let's go."
"Okay, we're about halfway."
David nodded. In the interim he'd been rethinking making the offer - or rather, accepting the offer he'd thought Jonathan was going to make, because now he was much less sure Jonathan would make it.
But making the offer. He could do that, couldn't he?
He wouldn't be like Leo. He'd be good, he'd be kind. He wasn't a sick monster, kidnapping and enslaving at whim. If he was handsome on the outside it didn't follow that the inside was rotten - he already knew the inverse didn't apply. Should he blame himself because Andrea found him before someone like Leo or Leo's sire did? Of course not!
There were all these complexes he had to get rid of. All these thoughts he had to rethink. He'd had to make himself believe those things to cling to a pretense of sanity, to convince himself that he could love and did love someone like Leo. Now he could say without reservation that he hated Leo with a passion. Now he could get rid of those doubts and go home.
Besides, what else could Jonathan possibly expect from him?
"So," said Jonathan, continuing to walk, "how long've you been, um, a vampire?"
"Six years. By the way..."
"Yeah?"
"Just so you know, the polite word's Kindred."
"Got it. Sorry, I'm kind of spotty about this. Pretty much need-to-know."
"Have you met any others or just him and me?"
"A couple. Lady called Nell. And her son, what was his name, Finn. Know them?"
David wondered if they would think he was poaching. Screw them if they did. "Yeah. Nell's Finn's sire, not his mother."
"Sire. That means she made him a va - Kindred?"
"Exactly. You heard he was her childe, right?"
"Hm. I guess I did. And I heard them talk about someone else. Red?"
"Red?" He thought back. "Red's the Nosferatu primogen. The eldest in the clan in this city."
"Nosferatu's the clan, right?"
"Right."
"You know, for the longest time, I didn't know there was any other kind. Not until, um." Until I showed up, thought David. "So what's yours?"
"Clan Toreador."
"I've got to ask. Is bullfighting involved?"
He was on half a roll now. It was getting easier to remember his first year, its long nights of sitting with Andrea, being educated. "As a metaphor, maybe. Bloodshed as an art form. Killing with style. I haven't killed anyone," he hastened to add. "It's not a perfect comparison. We're about art, beauty - making it, celebrating it." Jonathan made a noise of acknowledgment. Not quite knocked off his feet, David noted with some disappointment. "My sire chose me after he read my first novel."
An impressed noise this time, to his gratification. "Were you... how did you..."
"He wrote me a letter, then I wrote one back, and so on. And then we met in person. Every week for a few months. It was wonderful. And then, when he was absolutely sure, he told me a little bit about what he was, just enough to be informed, you know. He asked me if I wanted to be Embraced. To be Kindred. I said yes and here I am." Though he'd skipped quite a few of the steps leading to the here.
"What would've happened if you said no?"
"Sorry?"
"I mean, hypothetically. 'Hey, I like sunbathing. I like chocolate. I like fucking. So I'd rather not, thanks.'"
"Well," David answered after a too-long while, deciding that mentioning he could still go through the motions of sex and taste chocolate if not digest it (it was a knack he had) would be splitting hairs, "he knew I'd say yes before he asked, of course. He's more than four hundred - he knows how to read people."
"Oh," said Jonathan, sounding too-perfectly neutral. "I guess that makes sense."
"Almost there."
"Oh. Great." It sounded limp and he tried to give it the enthusiasm he knew it deserved. "Really, it's great. Thank you."
Jonathan delved in the pocket of his raincoat as he walked. "You know where you're going?"
"I've got a pretty good idea."
He came up with a wallet, opened it, and began to take out bills. "Well, that's good."
"Yeah."
They rounded a corner. Jonathan pointed. "Up that ladder. It comes out behind a dumpster. Take a right for the phone." He held out a fistful of bills and coins in his other hand. "If whoever's tied up, cabs'll stiff you something awful but the buses run for another hour and the 63 goes right across town, so you can at least get closer before you have to get pricey. Hope this is enough."
David took the money. "Buses. Got it. Thanks again."
"Um, the burgers aren't that bad either, if you're into that. They do them rare."
"I'll keep that in mind." Puddles of cow blood probably weren't worth it.
"Well, bye."
"Thanks," he said again, and then, "Wait."
Jonathan stopped with the wallet halfway back in his pocket. "Yeah?"
"Where do I send the money?"
"The money?"
"The money you just lent me."
"Oh. That. Um. Don't worry about that. I'll find you."
"Okay." David didn't think he would. He wasn't particularly inclined to rejoice about the little windfall, because it didn't make any sense. "But why?"
"Why what?"
"Why did you do this?"
"What do you mean? It's only, what, thirty -"
"What was the point? What do you want? Why didn't you leave me there?"
The silence spun out so long that David thought about bolting up the ladder before Jonathan decided to take it back. Before he could say "Yes indeed, I don't know what I was thinking, back you get." David still didn't have that much blood in him, and the closest he'd had to a fight was fencing lessons.
"I didn't think I needed a reason. What I would've needed a reason for would be leaving you. And I didn't have one, so here you are."
"I don't understand."
"Okay, okay, you want one, let me get one. He said you were his toy, or pet, some crucified parrot thing, yank the string and it talks. When he was planning he called it Operation Polly."
"Polly?" David echoed, and knew how stupid he sounded. Knew how stupid it was that he actually felt something like hurt to hear it. So Leo was a sadistic ass who wanted to dehumanize him - quelle surprise!
"Or maybe Pollyanna. He said - he said he'd make you crazy for him just to see you dance to it, just to watch you try and be good enough to make him happy. Then later he decided it'd be even more fun to pretend he felt like that too." Jonathan's arms windmilled. "He got off on fucking up your head that way because it was too late to fuck up your face like his did."
It only confirmed what he already knew, because it was something to say either way, to keep a jealous ghoul happy. To reassure him that of course those other declarations of you-are-the-one-and-only didn't really mean anything...
"He got off on the power trip. Because he knew you'd never look at him if he didn't make you look."
"But I did look at him," David didn't say, and he didn't say "I thought he was beautiful inside. I thought he was my friend. More fool me."
"And then, I guess, he croaked, and when he did things snapped and it hit me all the rosy shit I'd been imagining for nine years, well, it was rosy shit. I don't even swing that way. He did that and it doesn't take a genius to figure he did that twice. I used to feel a little sorry for you even back then but I'd tell myself it couldn't be that bad, because if Leo did it it had to be okay, but then it hit me it was that bad. It was worse.
"What kind of creep would leave you there after that? Not this one."
"Oh," David said at last. And he thought then that as little as Jonathan knew, it might not have occurred to him what would have to happen next. It hadn't quite occurred to David before this. Not in so many words. All he'd done was assume. He did that a lot. "What... what do you think you'll do now?"
"Dunno. Most of the other... Nosferatu didn't seem that bad when I ran into them before, but Leo didn't seem that bad once I got, what did you say?"
"Blood bound." Nell and Finn hadn't seemed that bad, Red seemed surly at the brief Elysium appearances but little else... but Jonathan was right, Leo hadn't either.
"Blood bound, right. Does that always happen?"
"With ghouls? Yeah, pretty much. They usually get their blood from just one Kindred so it happens inside of three months. Less time if they get it more often. But it's not... it's not always like this, you know."
"God, I'd hope not. Hey, is this permanent? I mean, if I go cold turkey do I get better or do I shrivel up and drop dead?"
"I think you'd be okay. You haven't been on it long enough to kill you from all that time catching up. But I'm not sure. I've never heard of a ghoul that, um, quit."
"Not even in the tabloids?" He nodded. "Neither've I. It figures. People don't all decide by themselves not to talk about this stuff because it sounds nuts, do they?"
"They probably don't. It's called the Masquerade." He could remember a time when it sounded so picturesque, some game with ballgowns and ruffled cravats and, of course, masks, which would come off at midnight. Grand prizes.
Jonathan hmmed and paced a small circle. He was probably thinking that if he knew then what he knew now, he would've had an excellent reason for leaving David. "Was that why you asked? About why?"
"I guess. I thought, well, you might want... But you didn't."
"Er, yeah. I'm sure you're a great guy, but..."
"Yeah. I know. So I wondered."
"I was thinking I'd pack up and hop the next bus to Canada. Not that simple, right?"
"Right. And you might want to stay away from Montreal. I've heard it's full of Sabbat."
"I've heard them tossing that word around. That's not good, is it?"
"It's not."
"Damn. How about Mexico? Anything to watch out for down there?"
"A whole lot more. Unless something big's happened. It always could have."
"Damn. Are there v - Kindred everywhere?"
"Pretty much. Except Asia. There's something else there already - we call them Cathayans. From Cathay, you know, old word for China. Don't know much about those. And most of the countryside, the wild, places like that. A few Gangrel there, that's another clan, but mostly it's werewolves."
"Have you ever actually met a werewolf?"
"No, apparently they're homicidal maniacs." He'd written his novel before he knew they existed, let alone anything about how they were, and he'd kept continuity in the short stories afterward.
"Okay, gotcha."
"Though..."
"Though what?"
"I don't know."
"You can't just throw out a line like that and leave it hanging, you know that, right?"
"Guess so. Well, they can't tell you're a ghoul," David sounded out, as it unfurled in his mind. "Kindred can't. Not right off, not most of them. Not if you're not obvious. So maybe even if you did go to Montreal, the Sabbat'd only get you by chance. Not sure how big that chance is, mind."
Jonathan considered this. "Obvious like juggling mopeds or something? Not that I've tried."
"Like that. Or if you went to a reporter. Like in Hannah Wheatley."
"She found Jesus, you know."
"Did she?"
"Yup. He was under the sofa cushions or something. She had a press conference last year. Said no more vampire books. Kindred books. Whatever."
He'd read and reread Wheatley's first vampire trilogy in high school and college. He could remember his ritual: evening, homework done, stretched out on the bed, one hand holding the book flat on the pillow. He'd gotten cover blurbs from her (he remembered the words "whimsical," "enchanting") and he'd been so excited to hear it the first time that his agent took a step backward as if afraid David would kiss him. He'd met her in person at a party in '95 (or '96?) and come away confident he'd made it. "Funny how things turn out."
"Leo said maybe she bumped into a real one in a dark alley."
There followed maybe ten seconds in which they glanced around the tunnel in such a way as to consistently skim over the figure standing opposite. Then David said "Who knows. Maybe she did. But you get my meaning, right?"
"Yeah. I get you. So..."
"Um." As though if he slammed the barn door now he could still catch half a fleeing horse.
"So, if I don't tell, then..."
Here it was. "Then I won't tell, either?"
A quick firm nod. "Deal?"
"Deal." He was out of practice and his hand flopped in Jonathan's grip, though the strength of Jonathan's might have compensated.
"Okay," said Jonathan, gesturing toward the ladder again, "let's get you home."
Jonathan went up the ladder with him and said goodbye behind the dumpster before climbing back down. It was all quieter than David might have expected.
He bought a burger after all so he could use the restroom, scrubbing without much enthusiasm now that he had a mirror to see how pointless the effort was and to understand the apprehensive looks from the waitress. He thought of trying to strike up a conversation, but wasn't sure if that wouldn't just turn her image of him from a homeless man to a homeless creep. Besides, he couldn't find much enthusiasm for making the attempt, even if he might get more blood out of it. Once he was back in his element, maybe, cleaned up and wandering the clubs... it would help if he could think of one where he hadn't rendezvoused with Leo.
He couldn't find much enthusiasm for a charade of eating either, so he sopped up the stray cow blood, settled the bill, and went to the pay phone, where he waited until he was sure he could remember Andrea's number before he put in his first quarter.
A woman's voice. "Hello?"
"Is... Isidora? It's David."
He was starting to doubt the connection when she whispered, "Oh God."
"Look, I just wanted to say -"
"Andrea!" he could hear her muffled shout. "The phone, it's David!"
A flurry of footsteps, then, followed by Andrea's voice, rich with centuries of accent that less than a hundred had yet to erase. "My God," he echoed. "David?"
"Yeah. Yeah. It's me. I just wanted to let you know I'm -"
"Where are you?"
He glanced back toward the street signs to the right. It took too long for the letters to resolve into intelligibility.
"You must tell me. Where are you?"
"Cedarhurst," he read off at last, almost tripping on his tongue. "And Twenty-Sixth. I was just going home and I wanted to -"
"Stay there, understand? Dora -" A burst of something unintelligible by distance, probably an exchange with Isidora, and then Andrea was half-shouting back into the receiver, "We'll be there presently," and then the dial tone. David listened to it for a while before hanging up and walking for the bus stop.
Stupid. Stupid! How could Andrea be so sure it was him? Or even that he had any control over what he was saying? For all he knew he could be racing right off into a trap. Leo could've pulled a trick like this any time he wanted -
David sat on the bench at the bus stop and looked down one end of the road at a time, unsure which direction Andrea would arrive from. He counted off the seconds, lost count twice before giving up. When the car came, a new one, he didn't realize who it was until it stopped in front of him and he recognized Isidora in the driver's seat. She stared and then smiled and began flapping her free hand toward the backseat, obscured by tinting.
Naturally Andrea was there, and opening the door only confirmed it. He'd been planning how he'd slide in as easy as he had for so many nights before, but the leather of the seat and Andrea's designer suit pulled him up short. The idea of dirtying that as well...
"David, please, come in."
He came in, sat down, closed the door, reached for the seatbelt, and then let it slide back when he imagined how it would feel to put it on. He thought he could make out a smear on the buckle where it brushed against his sleeve. Everything was so close in here. He wasn't sure whether that was reassuring or claustrophobic.
Andrea touched his shoulder and he jerked against the door before settling, abashed, back into the seat. The car began to move. "Would you tell me...?"
David told him in the broadest strokes, the flattest of facts. Halfway through he realized he was rubbing his wrists - this was preceded by realizing that Andrea was looking at them, and looking appalled. He talked on into Andrea's silence.
"Then the ghoul came in," he said. "Leo's ghoul. He let me up. And I..." He stopped. "Then I..."
A look of understanding, then, and Andrea reached out to him again, his fingers skimming over the filthy sleeve. "Such things happen."
So then David flew into a frenzy and drained him dry: that was what Andrea thought he understood. He didn't even have to tell a story about this - there was already one ready for him. Let it stand. Jonathan had promised not to say anything, but he had promised the same because he couldn't rely on everyone else to believe Jonathan. "I thought," he mumbled, "he wanted to go with me. He was... the same thing happened to him, you know."
"Consider that now, at least, he is surely better off than he would have been with that vile..." Andrea gestured as if trying to shape his words, then spat an abrupt and ferocious smattering of Italian that hadn't been covered in the genteel subject matter of David's textbooks. "Were the others aware of this? I know they do share their -"
"Not that I know. I didn't see them."
"Rest assured, I will have words with the primogen." David wondered if that was supposed to make him feel very much better. "You'll stay at my haven today. I insist. Isidora, can you get him something decent?"
"Of course."
"There's a guild ball scheduled in two nights. Can you attend?" He sounded almost anxious.
"Yes." No point in putting it off. The sooner he got back to normal the better. He knew everyone who'd be there. Why should he be scared of them? Besides that he could guess, now, what might be behind them.
"You have no inkling how glad I am to have you again."
"That makes two of us," said David, letting his head drop sideways, and let Andrea make whatever story he would of that.
Epilogue
2001
Flat facts: last year the heart of subterranean Manhattan abruptly caved in, leaving a lot of rubble and one autarkis by the name of Emmett who now handed out tales of other autarkis taking revenge for... imperialism or something of the sort, and to this end collaborating with Nictuku (which he hadn't actually seen, but then who had?). That autarkis was now parked in their warren. He'd found and taken up Leo's old haven for his stay, which seemed apropos. Nell and Finn had already done salvage on it, Finn had decrypted the hard drive, and now Nell passed along some of the dirt on it, mingled liberally with dirt of her own.
"Of course the primogen had a shit fit," she said. "Red did great damage control but he never was quite convinced we weren't in on it. 'Course it was convenient that Leo ashed, but that meant he wasn't around to be guilty, to kick around. He didn't kick us around, quite, but things got chilly. Too bad, we had some nice arrangements going before the bad apple turned up. His kid's still up there to this night." That sweet stupid kid, and maybe there wasn't so much of either anymore. "Stays away from us now."
If he ever came closer Nell wanted to find out, just for closure's sake because it wasn't as if she couldn't guess, what he'd done with the ghoul's corpse.
These nights David kept the lights on in every room in the condo. Definitely wasteful, but it was one of those things he could overlook. He did make a few vague gestures toward conservation in that they were fluorescent and on a timer to turn off at nine AM, when he was safe from knowing there was danger.
Andrea had had someone clean out the accumulated dust before he moved back in. For some reason this disturbed him, reinforced the crazy idea that he'd stepped out for three years' revelry with the fairies while only five minutes passed in the normal scheme of things. What kind of fairy would Leo be, he wondered, and stifled a stupid laugh at the stupid thought.
An hour's typing on the new computer, per his schedule, before he drove to Blue Variation on Canterbury to start hunting. The lights in the Blue were theme-tinted and shifting but copious. No fumbling in dark corners, no writhing silhouettes on the dance floor; that had lost its appeal. He bought his first drink and it wasn't halfway finished before someone else bought his second, no one he knew, who said he was in the city on business. He looked like he might have been born in the same year as David, who was more aware now of being left behind. He guessed the awareness would grow and peak and taper over the next few decades. Decades!
They got down to it in the men's room. He'd just latched the stall when his companion slammed him against the divider and began kissing him. The world spun away and, slackened, he began to slide downward, held up by the other's arms.
Another club, closed now, one of those that thought ambiance meant bartenders resorting to crude Braille to tell the difference between bottles of grenadine and King beer. The band churning away. Thinking, between pulses of illumination, God who's that? Wondering, would Leo mind if I got dinner while we're at it? Would he mind less if I shared?
Lying there hanging there pinned up by his wrists waiting for the voice still so cultured, the face that if only he could appreciate it was so beautiful sobeautiful sobeautifulbeautiful -
Tongue sliming around in his mouth. Hand mauling his fly open, jamming itself down his pants, no style at all. That was what brought him out of it, told him it was all right to bite down. The man gasped, once in stifled pain and again as the Kiss bowled him over. Once he had his fill David licked the wound shut and elbowed his way out of the stall while the man, dazed, took his place leaning against the divider. No one else at the moment so he hurried to lock himself in another stall at the end of the row. Inside, on his knees, he regurgitated his two mudslides. The newly-acquired blood didn't go with them, at least.
Waste, he thought, staring at the swirls in the toilet bowl. Starving kids in Romania who would murder for a drop of that Baileys you callously puke, you coddled degenerate - and he laughed until someone rapped on the stall door.
No prior engagements, no Guild meetings to drift around. So after checking the locks, taking a look in the corners, it was back to the computer. His agent had been more than a little exasperated with him for dropping off the face of the earth, but David had assured him he was getting back on his feet. He'd sold a short story to the New Yorker just last week. There'd been a block for the first few months - so much time in the rut of Leo's favorite story, he guessed. But once the block broke, he'd been glad there was a warranty on the keyboard.
He had to take special care now about the Masquerade, make especially sure nothing too reminiscent of reality crept in. Each Monday he earmarked a block of time to devote to revision and self-censorship. Artistic freedom could be argued in an arena with less in the way of lethal penalties.
What if Finn and Nell and Red recognized what he'd slipped in? Height of arrogance to think they'd bother reading, childish to play at this, but it helped get the words on the page. Leo had told him those stories. He'd gotten something, after all, out of it.
Revision would come later. For now he transcribed the sentence he'd scrawled in the notebook lying open beside the keyboard: "These monsters who wander unseen beneath the earth, only absence marking their passage - these twisted creatures who wear such fine masks - these predators who hunt and torment us with impunity - what phantoms hunt them?"
He looked this over and keyed backward to insert two words. "These predators who hunt and torment and enslave us -" He looked up into the wide mirror set up behind the desk, as though there was any reason to suspect something there. He'd moved the mirror after he moved back in, though he knew a bit of obfuscation would render it useless. Sometimes it was nice to have a false sense of security.
Please, admit it, my dear, this is a pretense to look up and admire yourself every five minutes.
Nell and Finn weren't that bad as far as he knew. He reminded himself this wasn't about Nell and Finn, technically. It wasn't about Leo. It wasn't even about the childer of Arikel and Nosferatu. And yet.
He deleted and enslave, put it back. Checked over his shoulder in case of marauding Lasombra. Deleted beneath the earth. Looked between the words on the screen and his reflection; he thought it was starting to go pale. Only natural. He hadn't seen the sun in - he wanted to say three, but of course it was going on seven years - let alone gone out to tan.
Tweaked further: "These monsters who wander unseen, unnoticed - these twisted creatures who wear such fine masks - these predators who hunt and torment and enslave us with impunity - what phantoms hunt them?"
He frowned at the paragraph, still dissatisfied, but decided to carry on with that as it was. He could always change it on Monday.
End
Further Notes:The unnamed originals for David Flavian, Charles Leonard, and Hannah Wheatley are all from the revised Clanbook Nosferatu. The "prologue" is taken nearly verbatim from the sidebar entitled "A Romantic History." Ms. Wheatley's original appears as the framing narrator for the "stereotypes" section and is, I think, rather thinly veiled. So as not to cast aspersions on anyone (and the timeline doesn't match anyway)...
Jonathan Watkins is derived from a concept that appeared in the "how to get blood" section of Clanbook Nosferatu. Emmett is a solidly canonical character who (you guessed it!) shows up in Clanbook Nosferatu.
Part of David's version of the story comes from another sidebar story on the same topic (with less crucifixion) in the first edition of Clanbook Toreador. I haven't found a canon source for the story of Caine cursing Arikel but have decided that if it's bumming around the Internet so much I might as well use it. If it's flagrant lies, I claim artistic license.
If you happen to decide to leave a comment (and any kind would already be awesome!) one area I'd particularly love to hear about is any thoughts on how I handled the character of David, since when I was writing he seemed like a type that can easily go horribly wrong.