Sins of the Blood: A Vampire Novel

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Odd that he hadn’t heard it through the door.

  A man stood in silhouette against the light. He was tall, broad-shouldered and dark. "Oh," he said, his voice penetrating even over the too-loud music. "You can find your way through the darkness." He stepped aside. "Welcome to the light."

  Ben hesitated. What was he doing here? Then the scents pulled him inside. His stomach growled, and his arousal grew.

  The man shut the door. A metallic thud that Ben felt rather than heard explained why he had heard nothing in the corridor. The entire upper floor had been sound-proofed.

  The man was tugging at Ben's raincoat. Ben let him pull it off.

  "London Fog," the man said. "It'll do, I guess."

  Ben turned to look at him. The man was tall and thin, with high cheekbones and bloodshot eyes. His lips were too red and his hair had the plastic look that some people achieved with too much mousse. He looked younger than Ben expected, someone in his early twenties, close to Ben's own age.

  "This your place?"

  The man laughed. His teeth were stained. "Should it be?"

  The man made Ben nervous. He backed farther into the room. People leaned against the wall, talking. Some smoked cigarettes. Others sipped wine. Ben could barely see the furniture, because there were so many coats, blankets and bodies covering it. He had been to parties like this in college, only the rooms didn't have original artwork on the walls and the stereo system was not so elaborate.

  The rich, iron smell drew him farther into the room.

  Between two couches, four naked women—one black, one Asian, and two white—and two naked men—both white—lay on mats. Their hands caressed their own bodies languidly. Occasionally, one of the dressed party goers would crouch over them, cup genitals with a free hand, or kiss their necks.

  Ben walked closer. They looked stoned. Their eyes were glazed, their mouths half open. The women were beautiful, their bodies almost too slender, their breasts full and rosy. The black woman attracted him most. He had never seen a black woman naked before, had never realized how the dusky color of her nipples accented her skin.

  "How long has it been since you've eaten?" The man had come up behind him. The press of the crowd forced the man's body against him. The warm touch of another being felt good.

  The music sent a pulsing through him. It took a moment for Ben to realize he was hard. And hungry. So very hungry.

  "I don't know," he said. "A few days, I think. Maybe a week. A hamburger. I had a date."

  "You had a —?" The words eased out of the man. Then he gasped, and laughed. "A virgin. My god."

  The music got louder, wail of guitars and the heavy pounding of the drums. Ben inched closer to the woman.

  "We have a virgin," the man repeated to someone else. The word spread with the drum beat: virgin, virgin, virgin, virgin. The man's hands slid around Ben's stomach, unbuttoning his shirt and holding him back at the same time. The touch felt good. Part of Ben's mind tried to pull away—he hadn't liked male touch before—but the rest of him kept straining toward the woman.

  Another man, older, with dark, almost black eyes, followed Ben's gaze. The man sat on the mat beside the black woman. He ran his hand up her sleek thigh, then stuck his finger inside her. She moaned and reached for him. The man ignored her.

  Ben's shirt was off. The man behind him ran his hand along Ben's hardness, and unzipped his pants, pulling them down. His penis bounced out, full and pulsing. He had never been naked in front of a crowd before.

  He didn't care.

  The other man pulled his finger out of the woman. It was covered with blood. He licked it off. "She's ready for you," the man said.

  Ben didn't care if she was. He pushed the other man aside, fell to the mat, and slid inside her. She was wet. Wet with blood.

  Blood. That was the smell. Blood. Like biting Candyce, and the warm fresh taste of her. He had forgotten how it tasted, how nothing had tasted good after that. He slipped inside the woman, moved against her, her breasts rubbing his chest. Around him, the virgin, virgin, virgin chant continued. An orgasm built, but stalled. He was hungry, so hungry…

  Finally,[C&F36] someone shoved him. He fell against her, his face lost in her neck. She had bite marks, and her skin was covered in blood. He licked it. The orgasm held. He had never been so aroused. He licked more, then finally bit her. The blood pumped into him as semen pumped out, and the orgasm seemed to last forever.

  "Enough," someone said.

  He kept sucking. Finally, something that tasted good.

  "Enough. She's mine. He'll ruin her. That's enough."

  Two strong hands pulled him away. He popped out of her, his penis covered in blood. His mouth was covered with blood, and so were his hands. Blood was matted against his chest.

  A woman ripped the cuff off her blouse and pressed it against the black woman's neck. The black woman's eyes were half open. "Again?" she whispered.

  He would have gone back if the hands hadn't held him in place.

  "Any more," said the man who let him in, "and you'll get sick."

  "Any more, and he would have killed her," said the man who had tempted him.

  "He's a virgin," the woman said. "Let him alone."

  The other party goers turned away from him. His pounding heart had slowed. He was coming back to himself.

  He had an awful headache.

  The black woman writhed on her cot in some kind of high he didn't recognize. The other woman had let go of the black woman's neck. The cloth still clung there, held in place by clotted blood.

  He had attacked her. She was in a stupor and he had used her like she wasn't real. He had —

  —sucked her blood—

  — and the thought made his penis bounce to life again. What had happened to him? Since that night with Candyce, everything had changed.

  "Feeling better?" his host asked.

  "I don't know," Ben said. He waved a hand at the woman. "I just—"

  "It's okay," the man said. "That's what she's for. She likes it. You gave her a high she can't get anywhere else. A virgin is the most potent. Not many cows get virgins these days."

  "Cow?" Steve had used that word. It made Ben uncomfortable. "You mean she's a whore?"

  "In a manner of speaking, I suppose you could use that term. Only she gets her drug fed directly into her veins. No money changes hands. Simpler that way."

  Her hand reached down to her crotch. She was having her period. The blood flow was too regular to be anything else. He got harder. He wanted her again.

  His host slid his hand down, and caressed Ben's penis. The touch made him squirm: the feeling was closer to pleasure than he liked. "You're young, boy," his host said. "That's good. But not tonight. Your body needs to get used to the changes. There's a shower down the hall. Use it and wait for me in the library. Steve never told you what was happening, did he?"

  "Steve?" For a moment, Ben had forgotten about him. He caressed his own penis. If only they would let him go. He would try one of the other women.

  "No, I can see that he didn't." The host snapped his fingers and a slender man appeared beside them. "Take our young virgin to the showers, and make sure he doesn't come out until he's pliable again."

  Hands gripped him and lifted him. He tried to pull away. One more time. Just once more. But the hands carried him out of the room, the smoke, and the incense.

  The hall was cooler and brought the stabbing pain back into his head. The lust drained out of him. There was a bitter, vile taste in the back of his throat. Already his mind was shoving the incident with the woman into the place it had shoved Candyce. He hadn't done that. It had happened to someone else. It hadn't felt good at all.

  He shook himself again. "I can walk by myself."

  "Don't try nothing." This man's voice was deep. He let go of Ben. Pain seeped into Ben's arms as the blood started flowing again.

  "What is this place?" Ben asked.

  "Mikos will answer your question after your shower."

>   Mikos. The man who had touched him. The man who had given him that woman.

  Suddenly Ben wanted nothing more than to get into the shower and wash the memory away. The blood had dried into a sticky mass on his chest, face, and hands.

  He glanced about for the door leading to the bathroom. The hallway was lined with oil paintings, most done by surrealists. He didn't get close enough to see if he recognized any names.

  The hall was wide, with gold fixtures. Antique-looking sitting benches, with ornate woodwork and thin cushions, lined the walls. Incense and cigarette smoke drifted in from the main room.

  The crawly feeling was inside his arms. He shivered, realizing that he was naked. "Where's the bathroom?"

  "One door down, to your right," the man said.

  Ben rubbed his hands on his arms and walked on the thin blue carpet. The man followed him.

  "I can go alone," Ben said.

  The man smiled. "I gotta see that you do."

  The hairs pricked up on Ben's arms. He found the door—white crème with an ornate gold door handle—and let himself in. A large smoking room with plush couches and easy chairs of flowered blue silk were grouped around glass tables covered with vases full of irises. Ben started to back out, but the man put a hand on the small of his back and pushed him forward.

  "Keep going."

  Ben moved away quickly. He didn't want that man to touch him. He no longer wanted anyone to touch him. The arousal that had built in him was gone, leaving an exhaustion he hadn't felt before. The carpet in here was a thick shag that soothed the bottoms[C&F37] of his tired feet. He opened the far door.

  The bathroom was the size of two of his old dorm rooms. A toilet and a bidet had their own alcove off to one side. A Jacuzzi bath dominated the center with two wine goblets sitting near the push-button water controls. Towels covered a nearby table. A vanity, covered with more flowers, and a hand-painted brush and comb set, stood across from the bath. Another door led to a shower the size of a walk-in closet.

  "There'll be clothes waiting for you out here," the man said, and closed the bathroom door.

  Ben swallowed, trying to get rid of the vile taste. In the room with the toilet and bidet, he found a sink, and drank water greedily. The minute it hit his stomach, he felt nauseated. The water didn't taste good. Only blood tasted good. He stopped drinking, and waited a moment before his stomach settled down.

  Something was odd about this room other than its incredible luxury. He scanned it, bare feet turning to ice on the smooth blue tile.

  No mirrors. No mirrors in the sitting room. No mirrors in here. Not even reflecting glass. The fixtures were made of a burnished gold. How did a man shave? He ran his fingers along his chin. Did a man have to shave? He hadn't in days and he had no whisker growth at all.

  What was happening to him?

  He sat on the cold side of the Jacuzzi bath and closed his eyes. Images of Candyce rose, her face flushed, eyes bright: the flush ran all the way to her breasts. The first time—the only time—they made love. He touched her all over, then buried his face in her neck—

  He opened his eyes. His penis was hard again. With a simple movement, he could be back out there, past the guard, to those women and try any of them. Any of them. It would feel so good.

  He gripped the cool edge of the tub, breathing heavily. He had made love to girls before, and each time it had gotten better, but stranger. His friends, at first any way, seemed to enjoy it more than he had: the simple touching, the feel of a girl's breast against his hand, a wet kiss. Each time, he felt a new power come into himself, and by the time he met Candyce, he loved to lean against a woman's chest, believing he could hear the sound of blood rushing through her veins. He wanted to slice through skin, feel the blood pulse, but he had restrained himself.

  Until Candyce.

  Since then, everything seemed different.

  He couldn't eat. He couldn't drink. His hearing had improved so that everyone's blood flow became audible. His sense of smell was so acute that he could scent someone with an open wound from three blocks away.

  He covered his face with his cold hands. They still carried that raw scent, and it made his mouth water. This thing was controlling him. With Candyce he had lost himself, and with that woman—

  He stood and climbed into the shower.

  For a moment, he stared at the controls. Buttons again, labeled "steam," "heat," "spray," and "mist." After he closed the door, a light blinked above a line that asked him to select temperature. Finally,[C&F38] he just punched "spray" and hoped whoever had set the water temperature before him had not left it boiling.

  The temperature light winked out, and water sprayed him, not from a nozzle, but from small holes placed all over in the shower itself. The water was hot, painfully so, but it cleared the blood off. The red swished down the white drain, reminding him of Janet Leigh's death scene in Psycho, black water swirling, swirling, swirling against porcelain.

  He grabbed soap and rubbed it all over his body. The sensual feeling was back. The thing he had never admitted to himself about Candyce was that he had never felt more alive, more in touch with his body, than he had with her. The same thing had happened with the woman tonight. What bothered him was that his body seemed to control him, but the others didn't seem to have that problem. Except the people on the mat. And Mikos had called them cows.

  Needles of spray bit into his shoulder, his back. The sensuality frightened him. But what if it didn't? What if he learned to control those increased senses? What if he learned how to have pleasure any time he wanted it?

  Perhaps, instead of letting his body control him, he could control it, and slip into the pleasure like some people slipped into an old pair of shoes.

  The blood was gone. He felt clean for the first time in days. He paused for a moment, unable to find the off button. Finally he hit spray again, and the water stopped as silently as it had started.

  He stepped out, grabbed a towel, and dried himself off. The nerves in his skin were more alive than they had ever been. Even the towel felt good. Yes. He could get used to this.

  He left the towel hanging over a gold burnished rack and opened the door to the sitting room. A long black kimono had been tossed across one of the chairs. No other clothes were in sight.

  The kimono was made of silk. He slipped it on. It slid against his biceps and moved with the contours of his body. Everything here was designed to make him feel good.

  He opened the door to the hall. The man was waiting for him. "Feeling better?"

  Better? He had never felt so good in his life. "We're supposed to go to the library?"

  "Yep. Looks like you're ready."

  They moved quickly down the hall to the end. The man opened the double doors with a flourish. They opened inward, revealing a room done in red carpet and mahogany. Books rose an extra level, and a thin balcony jutted out on each side. A fire burned in the fireplace on the far wall, and sofa groupings huddled in small alcoves. A large desk made of the same mahogany stood in front of the fireplace.

  His host—Mikos—leaned on the desk. Ben finally got a good look at him. Mikos was tall, with swarthy skin and thin features. Each strand of his black hair was in place. His dark eyebrows rose like wings above his eyes, giving him a foreign look. He had changed into a black sweatshirt and black jeans. The sweatshirt sleeves were pushed up revealing his wiry, muscular arms. "Thank you," he said, dismissing the man who had brought Ben there.

  The man bowed again—an odd movement that seemed less like a servant's and more like a supplicant's—and backed out of the room.

  The fire added only a minimal heat to the room. Ben's feet were cold by the time he reached the desk. "Okay," he said, clasping his hands behind his back. "That has to be the weirdest thing I have ever experienced."

  Mikos smiled. "We don't get many virgins at our parties. They're mostly for the old timers. You gave us a treat. Something we can remember. How the world was once fresh and young."

  Ben swallowed.
The coppery taste had left his mouth. "Who are you? Why did Steve send me here?"

  "You would have died if Steve hadn't sent you." Mikos crossed his arms in front of his chest and leaned against the desk. "Tell me about yourself."

  "Look, can we sit down? My feet are cold and I've been standing all day."

  Mikos' smile grew. He stood up, then walked around his desk. Behind it, two overstuffed chairs framed the fireplace. The room was bigger than Ben had originally thought. He sat in one of the chairs. The heat from the fireplace finally reached his toes.

  Mikos sat on the arm of the other chair. His body never appeared to be at rest. He would settle for a moment, then shift slightly. "Comfortable now?"

  Ben nodded. "It's better."

  "Good. Then talk to me."

  A flutter grew in Ben's stomach. "What do you want to know?"

  "I don't want games." Mikos voice had grown harsh. He took a deep breath, and the calmer voice returned. "I would like to know about you. I want to know what led you here."

  Ben had already told him about Steve, but Mikos didn't want to hear facts like that. Mikos wanted more. "I tasted blood for the first time last week, and"— he dropped his clasped hands on his lap to hide a growing erection—"I haven't felt the same since."

  "Last week?" Mikos stood and held his hands over the fire. The flames reflected through his long nails. "You have been different longer than last week."

  "No," Ben said. "I went to college and high school, and my parents were married my whole life. I'm about as normal as you can get."

  Mikos laughed. The sound reverberated in the large room. "Your favorite color is red. You like odd foods like haggis and Turkish blood soup. As a little boy, you got punished for biting. In school fights, you always felt better if you got covered with your opponent's blood. You developed a taste for red wine young, and while it made your friends drunk, it didn't affect you at all. You are drawn to women at certain times of the month. Your wet dreams are violent, and in them, you get more pleasure for the things you put in your mouth than the things you touch with your genitals. As you have gotten older, you have less tolerance for sunlight. Regular sex has never felt good to you, and the first time you truly enjoyed an orgasm was last week, with some poor unsuspecting soul."