by P. Mattern
“We already have,” I told her, knowing as soon as I said it aloud that it was the truth,”We just let humans THINK that they’re in charge. We use them as a food source, mesmerizing them, taking just small amounts of blood…we call it’sipping’, so that we don’t end up turning humans into immortals, or half-immortals, which is what Dhampirs are.
“Dhampirs are half castes, so we are discriminated against. Vampires see us as weak and diluted versions of themselves. We need very little blood to survive, we don’t need to hunt as vampires do. Many of us end up as slaves to vampires. Some of us are recruited by various organizations to hunt vampires. If you’re a dhampir it isn’t too difficult to pass yourself off as a vampire. I am exceptionally strong for a Dhampir and I can hold my own in a fight. I have vampire acquaintances that have no idea what I am!”
“Do you bleed?” Raven asked then,”Can you die?”
“Interesting question,” I told her, ”From what I’ve been told we can regenerate, or self-heal like vampires but not nearly as quickly. So if a wound was severe enough It could be fatal. Thank God we move quickly! We could avoid being wounded in most cases I think just because of our speed.”
“How do drugs affect you?” Raven asked,” I know that you’re not a drinker, Byron, but can dhampirs even get drunk?”
“It’s probable,” I told her,”I can feel a buzz when I drink a beer!
“But why are you asking all these questions?” I asked.
Raven gave me a penetrating look.
“Because of what you just told me, silly! “she answered.
“Anyway, I think we should celebrate…WAITER!” she called over to a man in the formal waiting attire required by the upscale restaurant, ”Two glasses of champagne! We’re celebrating this evening!”
She turned back to Byron, taking his hand.
“That was impulsive of me I know…but I wanted to celebrate our reunion!” she said.
Byron smiled as he reached for his wallet with his free hand. He was flush with both generous cash gifts from women and an advance on a modeling gig from the Romance Novel Publisher.
“I’ve got you Raven,” He said, disengaging from her momentarily and pulling several large bills from his billfold.
Just then the wind picked up and one of the fifty dollar bills flew off the table. Byron quickly placed a salt shaker over the money remaining on the table and in a flash moved so quickly that he managed to capture the errant bill in midair.
When he returned he notice that Raven had put the money away. He offered her the bill that was in his hand and popped it into her amazing cleavage.
“You know that I’ll be getting that back later, when I ravish you,” he told Raven, winking, adding earnestly,”I can hardly stand not to touch you. I can’t believe that I am finally here with you. And of course I’ve had an erection since I saw you from the back.
Raven…I still love you!” he finished. His eyes misted over as he stared at her beautiful face, which had lost much of it’s childish roundness and settled into the beautiful facial planes of a woman.
Raven lifted her champagne glass up and nodded at Byron to do the same.
“What should we toast to?” she asked.
“To US of course!” he told her as they clinked glasses.
They each took a long draught of champagne, and Raven hiccupped cutely and giggled.
“I’ve got a toast ,” she said, smiling, her eyes brighter than Byron ever remembered their being.
“Well let’s have it then!” he told her.
Raven raised her glass again, ”Here’s to the guy that gives me somewhere soft to lie and eats my pussy like pie!” she said a bit too loudly. Byron noticed a trio of older women frowning toward Raven as she finished.
“Oops!” Raven said giggling some more, ”Drink up Byron! I don’t want to be embarrassed all by myself!”
Instead of answering Byron drained his glass. As he set it down he grinned widely at Raven, thinking that he had never seen her so lovely. She was wearing a pearl necklace and the ring of luminescence around her graceful neck emphasized her fair skin and the high color in her cheeks.
But as he looked at her his vision seemed to double, and then triple her image. He shook his head to clear it, but was only partly successful”He was only seeing one Raven but her image was wavy as though he were looking through the bottom of a coke bottle at her…or through water.
“Raven I…” he started to say, but the edges of his vision were starting to turn gray around the edges, and he seemed to be having trouble speaking. Even though he was sitting down he had to hold onto the edges of the table to steady himself.
Raven’s voice seemed to come to him from far away. She got up and moved toward him, reaching into his pant’s pocket on the opposite side to retrieve his wallet full of cash.
“What’s the matter Byron?” she said in a soothing voice,”The Dhampir Gigillo can’t hold his liquor? Well that’s a damn shame isn’t it?”
Byron tried to move but felt as though he were paralyzed as he watched Raven shove the contents of his wallet into her bra and toss the empty billfold back at him.
Raven peered into his face.
“I have to confess that I slipped a little elephant tranquilizer into your champagne. I think you will pass out on the table. And then the restaurant will call an ambulance I think…that’s the way things usually go. You and I would never work out Byron…the bottom line is that we want different things. I whore myself because I actually love it…the money, the dirty feelings, the power that my pussy holds over men. I feel sorry for you, Byron, because you never got the big picture. Herb and Tansy are my real parents—ooh I can see the shock in your eyes! And Byron…you never loved me—you COULDN”T because you never even knew me. You were pretty and you were fun I liked riding your cock –but now I’m done!” she finished, picking up the table napkin and laying it over his head, which had fallen to the table as the drug overcame him.
“Now good night Byron…and goodbye!”
Byron squinted into the overly bright illumination that seemed to surround him. After a few seconds he was able to discern a dark cloud blocking out part of the too bright ‘sun’ positioned directly over him.
As he became more alert he realize that hovering over him were the faces of medical staff dressed in scrubs and wearing masks.
One of the faces pulled the mask that she was wearing down to her down to her neckline.
“Hello Mr. Chance I’m Dr. Patrice Fanlon. You’re going to be fine…we had to pump your stomach, technically called gastric lavage, to prevent your system from shutting down…you arrived here unconscious. From an overdose of PCP. As soon as you rest you will need to talk to the law enforcement officials…they will be interested in how you obtained the drug, since it is an illegal substance. What do you remember Mr. Chance?”
Byron felt as though his throat was painfully raw. His voice sounded to his own ears like a rasp.
“I was drugged,” he managed to get out.
The other masked figure.e lowered his surgical mask.
“That was a whopping dose you had,” he told Byron,”You were convulsing when they brought you in. We need to keep you under observation overnight.”
Byron nodded as he was wheeled down a long hallway past medical equipment and miles of dropped ceiling and green tiled walls. Soon he was left alone in a room hooked up to an IV.
Within five minutes he thought he’d regained his mental acuity. Sitting up he ripped out the IV, realizing too late that some kind of alarm had been set off by his actions.
Moving with speed that he had never realized that he possessed, Byron leapt out of the bed and after checking the hallway, decided to take a left. He noticed that he was bleeding and naked under a hospital gown. He took the stairwell down to the very bottom and found himself in a deserted maintenance area. Grabbing a pair of blue coveralls off a peg on one wall her quickly put them on. They smelled of grease and grime. He shoved his too long feet into a pair of ancient looki
ng work boots and exited through a ground level door that emptied onto an alleyway.
Once out into the fresh air he made a beeline to his apartment. His thinking was still fuzzy around the edges but as he glanced at the calendar with his appointments on it he realized that he was supposed to meet with a bigwig head of a well known men’s modeling agency.
He felt a pang in his heart over what had happened, but pushed it down easily. If Raven though her betrayal would level him she was sadly mistaken. Nothing could emotionally destroy him after the childhood suffering he had endured.
He had already been worked over by the best—his own mother. Nothing would ever be able to touch him like that first betrayal.
Within scant minutes, moving more rapidly than is humanly possible he was ready for his interview. He used Visine for his bloodshot eyes and flashed a smile at himself in the mirror before he exited, hailing a cab.
The building it dropped him in front of was impressive, but as Byron stepped into an elevator to the suite of the male model business called,”MENSCH ENTERPRISED INTERNATIONAL” he felt confident. His resume was in his Halliburton briefcase and he knew he would be signed.
The waiting room contained a few other males, all human, all ripped and handsome with commercial facial planes and the slight bearded look that was popular. Byron had barely taken a seat when his name was called by a snotty looking secretary. He was ushered into an office where an obese man with a pockmarked face and gray thinning hair looked him up and down and then gestured to a a seat.
“Sit down Mr. Chance. I’d like to check out your portfolio while you tell me a little something about yourself.”
Byron handed the professional portfolio over to the man and launched into a well rehearsed self promotional speech, listing all of his previous modeling experiences and finishing with his most recent work for the Publishing House.
“Well it certainly sounds as if you’ve managed to land some solid work,” the man said, looking Byron up and down and licking his lips as he spoke,”But that’s not what going to get you this contract…to get this contract, my boy, you are going to give me head. And if I like it…REALLY like it…the job is yours!”
Byron thought that he’d misunderstood Mr. Pallance, the ugly company owner sitting in front of him.
“Pardon?” he said, not understanding.
“Let me put it to you plain and simple gorgeous. You have the worst resume of anyone I have ever interviewed, but I am going to give you a chance to redeem yourself by blowing me…sucking my cock! If I like it—you’re in! If I don’t…well,you can join the rest of the wannabee male models.
And by the way,” the man added,”I like my balls sucked too!”
The better part of a minute passed as Byron stared at the man, his face expressionless. Too late Byron realized that the quiet but deadly rage that was welling up in his already overtaxed half immortal body was rising in a torrent of fury.
Byron’s first blow was hard enough to cause the man to fall over backward in his leather chair. Then Byron was on him again, silently, holding back his punches just enough so that the man wouldn’t die from the beating. The man started screaming but his first scream was cut off as Byron punched him in the face with enough force to knock him unconscious.
When he was finished, Byron allowed himself the theatrical finish of spitting in the man’s face, then gathered up his portfolio and exited the office, closing the door behind him and winking at the secretary as he went past her desk.
She rewarded him with a smile that showed dimples and a cute little gap in her front teeth that made Byron immediately want to go down on her.
That was the thing about human women. Each of them had their own unique beauty. It was a pity that most of them never understood how beautiful they were.
As the sun sat that day Byron sat in his convertible and squinted off toward the horizon. He knew he was finished in that town, and had better leave with a quickness and head to the opposite coast.
The question was, of course, WHERE?
As he looked down at the unfolded map in front of him, searching the Eastern coastline of America, a small dragonfly hovered over him. Byron was instantly intrigued. He had always loved dragonflies…so much so that he thought they might be his totem animal.
He watched as the dragonfly descended to a small dot about 800 miles from the East coast. It rested there for a few seconds, as if trying to capture his attention, and then flew off.
Byron glanced down at where it had landed.
“Fort Hunt, Indiana,” he mused,”Sounds about as good a place as any!”
Then he started his engine and peeled off onto the highway, the golds and purples and azure blues of the sunset beckoning him on into the future.
The end of
‘BYRON CHANCE:THE DARKLY EROTIC LIFE OF A DHAMPIR’
Byron’s journey continues in Book One of Full
Moon Series,”World of Azglen” on Amazon
