Chapter Four
When the roasted meat had been eaten, they doused the fire’s remaining embers, then carried their bowls to the sea and washed them with sand and water. Smiling at Dagni, Alexandros handed her his bowl. She readily took it, and he kissed her on the cheek when she returned it to him clean.
The festivities over, everyone straggled up the hill for the path leading to their homes.
Alexandros and Iakkhos walked together until they reached the cypress grove. Just before they parted, Iakkhos stopped, hands on his hips. “Why do you do that?”
Surprised, Alex asked, “Do what?”
“Make Dagni think you like her by letting her clean your dish and kissing her.”
Alex grinned. “I greeted all the young women with a kiss on the cheek and hugged all the men. I showed no favoritism.”
“Sometimes, I’d like to rap you on the head. No, you greeted Dagni with a kiss, chose her to clean your bowl and kissed her again. You have so little understanding of the feelings of other people. It’s all about what you want. Dagni thinks you might love her.”
Little regard for others? Even when he was exhausted from working on the dromons, Alex helped his mother with the younger children. He had saved the money he’d earned from shipbuilding to buy the bracelet for her. He stopped, fists knotted at his sides, hurt replacing dismay over the criticism.
Iakkhos put an arm around his shoulders, giving him a quick squeeze. “Forget I said that. Just promise me you’ll quit playing sweetheart to a Dagni you do not love.”
Stung by even this comment, Alexandros pulled away, without forgiving Iakkhos. “Goodnight.”
Looking back as he entered the grove, his last glimpse was of Iakkhos, his head hanging as if dejected. Serves you right. I think you’re just jealous because you won only the discus throw.
The grove was unnaturally quiet. Recalling the night sky from the beach, Alex thought it darker than usual, but the stars weren’t visible from this shadowy stand of trees. He hadn’t gone far when the skin on his neck tingled and the hairs on his arms and chest stood up.
Alert to possible danger and remembering his father’s warning, he whirled around, his gaze sweeping the area. “Who’s there?”
The only answer was the sea breeze rustling the leaves.
Yet, Alex felt another presence. Someone or something was unwilling to show itself. Secretly drawing his dagger from its leather sheath, he held it hidden in the folds of his loose pant leg and continued his walk.
Greek men had fought in wars and uprisings since ancient times, and, although he’d never been in battle, he was, like all the village men, well skilled in the fighting arts. Although blessed with keen hearing and prepared to defend himself against animal or man, his steps quickened.
Relief rushed through him when he reached home.
§§§§
The alarming experience wasn’t repeated, yet all week he had the sensation of being watched. Every time he turned to check, Alex spotted nothing suspicious. He mentioned it one day to Iakkhos, their disagreement the night of the festivities forgotten.
“Oh, come on, Alexandros. You’re gorgeous. It must be some girl who likes you. Plus, a new load of travelers arrived at the docks, and you are the firstborn son of the most famous shipbuilder in the Empire. I’d watch you, too, if I was new and found out who you were.” After a pause, he asked, “Does it scare you?”
Alex shook his head. It was true that after the first nerve-wracking awareness, the sensation of being watched was not frightening. In fact, it warmed him pleasantly right between his legs. It not only felt good, it brought astonishing results when he stimulated himself in private.
§§§§
Three evenings later, he closed his father’s shop doors and headed for home.
“Alex…annn…dros.” The words were soft, sensual and soothing…spoken by a man.
“Who’s there? Do I know you?”
No answer.
He shrugged and walked home, avoiding the path through the grove and taking the one that paralleled it. The sound of his name had triggered a tingling in his crotch and a slight filling of his cock. He was also aware his body had reacted to a man’s voice, not a woman’s.
§§§§
When Alex closed the shipyard a few evenings later, he didn’t even blink when he found a man leaning against a huge cypress tree outside, arms folded. The stranger, who seemed familiar in a heat-searing, sensual way, was dressed in a long black coat embroidered down the front with gold and silver threads. He didn’t look much older than Alex, but the hair beneath his black velvet cap was silver blond.
“Hello, Alexandros,” he greeted in that same seductive tone in which he’d whispered before. “My name is Vlad. I have been waiting for you.”
Chapter Five
Alex walked up to the stranger as if drawn by a silken cord.
The man smiled. “I am Vlad,” he repeated, then cradled Alex’s face with cold hands and brushed his lips across Alex’s.
Sexual hunger flared in Alex well below his navel and he wrapped his arms around Vlad’s waist and pulled him forward as he opened his mouth and invited him inside. They almost devoured each other’s mouths with their tongues.
Alex let all the feelings wash over him. He didn’t hold back, nipping Vlad’s chin as he ground his cock against the superiorly large one he found beneath the heavy cloak. He rode the waves of sensation triggered by the stranger’s return rub. In a voice huskier than his had ever been, he begged to be sucked, begged for ass, and felt the man slip an arm under his knees and another around his back as he lifted him. Alex was not small, but this man almost ran as he carried him deep into the grove and laid him on a soft bed of fragrant leaves.
Alex started to remove his clothes, but a word from the fascinating stranger stopped him. He turned on his side, his head and torso propped on his hand and elbow, and watched. He felt his painful, aching cock drool with desire.
“Watch,” the voice said, and Vlad stripped. It was a slow, cock-waving, see-my-hole, bare-balls-flipping tease. Finally, he stood naked, his pale skin shimmering in the moonlight filtering through the trees.
Alex found himself naked without having removed a stitch of clothing.
“Come to me,” Vlad said, his sultry voice thick with need.
Alex crawled to the stiff cock jutting toward his face. Grasping Vlad’s icy buttocks to anchor them together, he sniffed the hairless groin and licked. Then he opened his mouth and sucked him in.
“Yes. Oh, yes! I knew you would be good.” Vlad moaned. Before he came, he grabbed Alex’s head and held it tight as he slammed into his throat.
Alex would have swallowed the spunk, but only orgasmic spasms came. There was no cum. Instead, an evil, fetid odor was emitted. It gagged Alex, who struggled to hide his reaction so he wouldn’t miss out on further encounters with this wild, sexually satiating stranger.
Vlad pulled him up and kissed him as his hands, fingers, and mouth explored Alex.
Alex’s head swam with pleasure and mind-blowing need. “You’d better hurry.”
Vlad laid him on his back in the dirt. “Put your legs over my shoulders.” He was already fingering Alex’s hole, leaning down to slaver slick, thick saliva over it. In contrast to the man’s cold body, his saliva singed.
Alex had never wanted sex so much. He would go insane if the man didn’t enter him.
Vlad grunted and shoved his cock inside, not waiting for Alex’s pucker to relax or the inner muscle to make room before he jammed it in.
The penetration was excruciating and painful, but the eventual pleasure of it was wildly stimulating. Alex grabbed his cock and stroked lightning fast as a big, icy penis drove in and pulled out, over and over.
Alex peaked fast, screaming Vlad’s name as he approached the edge.
Vlad leaned down to take Alex’s scream into his mouth. He pumped harder and harder until Alex thought Vlad might rip him apart.
They flew over the edge together.
Quiet now, they collapsed and slept briefly.
§§§§
Alex woke to find himself in his clothes. Vlad, also dressed, was sitting on a tree stump studying him.
“You were the one I’ve felt watching me.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes, ever since I have arrived, I have watched and waited for us to have sex together. I have never had a partner as wonderful as you. Come, my lover, I will walk you through the grove.”
“It isn’t safe.”
Vlad smiled. “With me, it will be. Trust me.”
And Alex trusted him. They walked hand in hand until Vlad released him at the end of the last row of trees with a final soft kiss, his lips bracing and cold against Alex’s warm ones.
“When will I see you again?” Alex asked.
Vlad’s smile was so radiant it almost glowed with pleasure. “Tomorrow evening? Here?”
Alex nodded.
“But we must keep our meetings secret. It would not go well for me if my employer knew.”
Alex agreed. He’d become greedy for anything Vlad did to him because his orgasms had been so powerful.
§§§§
The next evening, Alex ran into Vlad’s open arms and the foreplay began. This time, caught in the throes of coming, a sharp pain in Alex’s neck surprised him.
Vlad had bitten him! He was sniffing his blood and licking, cooing, “So rich and fragrant. So beautiful.”
Horrified and frightened, Alex cried, “You killed those people in the groves!”
“Only to drink their blood, my lover. Only to live.”
Alex struggled against the feel of his life’s blood being sucked out so this monster might live, but his climax struck like a thunderbolt. His seed was copious, followed by agony that seared and consumed him. He screamed over and over into the darkness, “Don’t, Vlad, don’t!”
When he eventually awakened, Vlad was sitting on a stump holding him in his arms and rocking them. His voice soothed. “I am your vampire maker, my beautiful lover. Now you are mine forever. I will teach you how to survive.”
§§§§
Alexandros Nicolaides was never seen again. His grief-stricken parents and friends assumed he had drowned in the Aegean Sea.
Chapter Six
One night, Alex watched from a small hilltop as Vlad attacked a man with inhuman speed. He drooled and crouched to pounce when Vlad ripped open the man’s throat and blood spattered his maker’s shirt. Vlad signaled, and Alex raced down to quench the searing pain of his thirst.
“Masturbate me?”
“Of course, love.”
Alex sighed with pleasure, his sex and bloodlust rising, as Vlad’s hand massaged his cock, which sprang to life the moment Alex’s mouth closed to drink. Once again, he experienced the powerful orgasms that happened only when he drank human blood.
They robbed the dead man.
“He has no use for these items,” Vlad said after Alex’s first lesson in hunting and attacking.
The logic of it was not lost on Alex, but it was one more descent into decadence.
In time, he grew to hate the savage thirst for blood that ruled his life and blocked his ability to walk in sunshine.
In the beginning of his ruined existence, he often drew near his parent’s home in the soft night and watched them sleep. He and Vlad were in Thebes as his mother’s name day approached, and on impulse one nightfall, he entered the shop of a jewel artisan.
The heavyset old Greek owner started. “We’re closed. I thought I barred the door.”
Alex smiled and locked the man’s gaze with his hypnotic one. “I believe you will be open to me.”
He bought an expensive necklace of amethysts set in gold filigree. Purchased, not stolen—because it would have dishonored his mother—and left the man alive with all his blood.
That same year, he discovered he could fly, and he flew to Athens. He had disappeared shortly after one of his mother’s name days, and tonight, he found her asleep after her celebration. Her face was covered with dried tears…because of him, he deduced.
He folded the necklace into her hand because she would recognize it as his gift, and know he was alive.
He could do no more than that.
Turning to leave, he saw his reflection in a piece of polished obsidian she used to check her hair. Stunned, he realized that becoming a vampire had changed his dark hair to blond and his brown eyes to the color of emeralds. Sickness rolled through him. Was there nothing left of the young man Elissa and Agathon had raised and loved?
After exiting the house, he slipped along the path to the groves. Horror struck him when he saw Vlad ready to sink his fangs into a boy.
“No! That’s my brother!”
Vlad turned, but Alex could see the bloodlust was too strong. Vlad would suck his brother dry.
He had no time to think, only to act. Before Vlad could move, Alex drew his knife and sliced the vampire’s throat, hacking to sever his head from his body.
His brother escaped.
Alex’s grief was profound, bloody tears streaming as he carried the pieces of his maker-lover to a bonfire set in the clearing. He cremated Vlad in the very spot where Alex had once danced and eaten with his friends.
An evil, fetid stench rose from the ashes; Alex vowed never to kill in order to drink blood again.
Over the centuries since, he’d survived being alone. He rejected animal blood because it made him crazy, but then found people who offered their blood for a price.
He only hoped he had become a decent being…for a vampire, at least.
§§§§
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
2016 AD
“Alexandros?” Hank’s voice pulled him back to the present.
He fingered the bracelet. “This was my mother’s. May I buy it from you?”
“My God. Of course. Take it. No charge.”
Alex smiled. “It would dishonor my mother’s memory if I did not pay you what it is worth.” He removed his credit card from his wallet and paid Hank what he would have gotten if he had sold it to someone else. “Now tell me about my assignment.”
“The prince of the Naples vampires has inquired about becoming a client. I’ve arranged an appointment for you to meet with him and his council there.”
Chapter Seven
Rome and Naples, Italy
2016 AD
Alex boarded the night train to Naples in Rome and chose a seat at the back of the car facing the door. To help hide his pale face, he pulled the collar of his suit jacket up before settling into the humming, slick sway of the brightly colored train, feeling satisfied at how yesterday had gone. After successfully delivering a grouping of matched diamonds and a remarkable ruby spinel to a new customer in Lyons, he’d flown to Rome today on the company plane.
The afternoon sky was thick with clouds, allowing him the rare treat of touring a little of the historic city. Dark glasses and a hat with a brim shielded him from any sunlight that could trigger a fatal allergic reaction. Now, he was on his way to his next appointment, and if all went well with his presentation of the company’s services and charges, Global Diamond Couriers would have a new customer.
It seemed to him that every European must be a smoker, and he was trying not to cough in the train’s tobacco-laden air when, two stops later, three young Italian men boarded his part of the train. They laughed and punched each other playfully on the shoulders as they presented their tickets. Two of the men were hairy and burly, also rough and uncouth. The third companion was not only slenderer, he was fitter and more cultured. Also, sensuality cloaked him like a seductive aura.
The hair on Alex’s arms and neck rose, putting him instantly on alert. He turned his head toward the window so his collar would more fully block his face from view, but he could still observe the men with his side vision.
He recognized only that one figure among the three. The man whose sensuality surrounded him, separating him from that of his comrades, wore his dark bangs
brushed loosely across his forehead above a finely sculpted Roman nose and expressive eyebrows. Alex noted the color of his eyes as the stranger appeared to glance casually over the passengers. Like those of most southern Italians, they were the rich brown of dark chocolate. In this case, their soft, languid gaze from the smiling face became deceptively sharp as they took in who was on the train.
Looking for me, Alex thought.
Still laughing, the dimples deepening on his handsome face, the man pushed along with the others, moving with ease, but with what Alex thought was easy stealth.
The men’s camaraderie didn’t fool Alex. They could all be a threat to him. He was strong and powerful, but three against one wasn’t good odds. He’d first noticed the slender, sexy one in the San Pietro basilica in Rome. As Alex had looked away from studying Michelangelo’s magnificent marble sculpture of Moses, he’d seen an Italian whose physique was less bulky, but far more appealing to him than that of the statue. He’d caught only a glimpse of a man in his early twenties as he’d disappeared behind a pillar.
Later, when Alex was ordering food in the Pizzeria da Buffetto that he would never eat, he had to admit being distracted by the same man’s incredible ass, temptingly outlined by the snug fit of expensive black jeans, as the man had turned quickly into a shop across the Via del Governo Vecchio and out of sight.
Ah, but this is your third mistake, my friend. In the basilica, I wondered whether you’d slipped away with deliberate stealth to avoid me. I detected no one following me as I visited other historic sites, but when I spotted you from the pizzeria, it seemed more than coincidence you were once again where I was.
And now, you are here…on the night train to Naples. You might as well have stood and announced I am the reason.
The man who pursued him joked with his companions, and their low, melodious voices were sprinkled with hints of laughter.
Alex tightened his jaw. Time to slip away.
A pregnant woman wrapped in a colorful paisley shawl entered the train behind the trio, and as they separated to let her through, Alex was the first to stand. Keeping his side to the men, he gave her his seat. Without looking back to see if he was followed, he threaded his way through the passengers who rode on their feet as they clung to straps hanging from a bar above them. He stepped into the next section of the train and worked his way to that door. As soon as the train braked in Naples, he was off. Walking with quick smoothness, he moved out of the light of the station and into the deep shadows of the empty Piazza Garibaldi.
Night Train to Naples Page 2
