by Greg Herren
I looked at the bronze sun on the ceiling and tried to imagine the real sun. Then I felt a drop of warmth on my lips. My tongue reached for it desperately. I barely tasted it. It was sweet and spicy and seemed to caress my tongue. I groaned as it electrified my throat. I saw that Favreau held his arm over my mouth; a small gash dripped blood onto my tongue. It took the little strength I had to grab the arm and pull the gash fully against my mouth. I sucked greedily at Favreau’s exotic blood.
My stomach burned from the liquid. I knew I was dying. Some dark being ravaged me from inside out. My own blood receded from my skin and veins like water from the shore, overtaken by the new, demonic blood. New knowledge filled me; Favreau’s memories, too. I was learning the truth of him.
In a garden of dark flowers and wet, black trees that oozed a clear, viscous substance lay a woman of extraordinary beauty. She was ravished again and again by translucent figures who howled and grunted. After each demon finished with her, a new creature emerged from her body, covered in black liquid and a film of thin membrane. The being inside the amniotic sac would burst into the dank air. The dark creatures of the world were brought forth: vampires, werewolves, walking dead, and devils incarnate. Lilith writhed on the ground, crying out, cursing God, her black hair in a spray around her like an obscure nimbus. The clouds above whirled in madness; a great lightning bolt struck the earth and scattered her grotesque offspring across the globe, and Lilith perished, and the demons screamed.
Upon the death of his mother, Favreau wandered the world. For centuries, he had the innocence of a child who does not know his mother, questioning his beginnings, yet killing men because his devilish spirit demanded the souls of humans to live, and his body the blood of men to survive. He soon lost all hope of discovering his identity but, millennia later, stumbled upon the civilization of men in Europe and made his home there.
It was in France that he adopted the name Favreau and learned to walk among humans and fool them with his deceiving powers. He fell in love with men and women alike but was drawn to the fragile power of young, beautiful men. He would get close to them, learn their histories, until his natural bloodlust overcame him, and instead of making love, he would kill and regret. His fury and malicious side were born with the death of Rocerres.
How he was enchanted by the boy with reddish hair. The innocent boy with the soft skin, who trembled at his every move, too precious for the world, too beautiful to play whore to the royal court of France. Favreau had meant for Rocerres to become a vampire, to spend the rest of eternity by his side, feeding on humanity until humanity’s end.
He had drained Rocerres of blood, but Rocerres still lived. He was as pale as the white cotton beneath him on the bed in Favreau’s manor. Favreau, convinced he was to lead a lonely life, had never made one of his kind before. His knowledge of creation was an instinct that only surfaced late in his existence. He knew that his own blood was a tonic for the dying. He was a fountain of dark, eternal life. Favreau bit into his own wrist, prepared to feed Rocerres and bring him into the macabre world of strange vision, preternatural power, and insatiable, unnatural hungers.
There was a rumbling outside the chamber door. Favreau whipped his head around and was face to face with two heavily armed and armored guardsmen from the palace. He threw up an invisible and impenetrable wall. The guardsmen’s armor clanged against the barrier. Favreau grabbed Rocerres’ limp body and fled from the room, bursting through the window, falling lightly to the ground. Rocerres paled, impossibly, even whiter than before. Favreau felt the hot blood-tears streaming down his face. He sobbed as he ran for the secret entrance to his own chamber. He burst into the room and laid Rocerres on top of the stone lid of the sarcophagus. Favreau sliced his wrist again, as it had already closed. He let his blood drip onto Rocerres’ blue lips. As the blood trickled into the slight opening of the mouth, a horrible gurgling sound came from Rocerres. His body heaved; his chest shot upward. He collapsed on the stone. Favreau gathered the auburn head in his hands and screamed into the night. His precious boy had died.
Favreau had taken Rocerres’ soul. He could assume his appearance and his voice at will. He had the boy’s memories. He fled from the tomb, furious at the human world and man’s mortality. He blamed one person for the death of Rocerres: Margaret de Valois. He would not seek his revenge immediately. In fact, more than a decade passed before he finally sought his justice. He had all the time in the world, after all. It was late one night, after Margaret had successfully carried out her own revenge on her brother and former husband and had been admitted back to Paris, when Favreau took her mortal life and gave her the life of a devil. Then he left her without explaining what she was or what she would have to do to survive. To the present day, he neither knew nor cared if she had endured.
I knew Favreau as I had never known anyone else. I saw everything he had ever experienced, thought, or dreamed. When my visions faded, I burst back to reality with a thudding in my ears and chest. I was covered in my mortal sweat, as one who is at the very fading end of his life. Yet I was becoming more alive as well. I still felt weak as I pulled the dark blood from Favreau.
He pulled his wrist from my mouth and stood over me, smiling. He backed away from the bed.
“I haven’t had enough,” I growled.
He laughed, as if I had told an evil joke.
“You will have to come to me,” he teased.
I pushed myself up with my elbows. My body felt lighter, as if I were only half attached to it. I gathered my strength and leaped from the bed. I landed only a foot from Favreau and collapsed at his feet. I gathered what could have been the last of my energy and made another desperate attempt. This time my hands found his shoulders, and with all my force and weight, I landed squarely on Favreau. He fell backward. On top of him, I instinctively went for his neck. I had new, sharp little fangs. They pierced his skin. I locked my legs around his hips and bit deeper until a gush of spicy heat entered my mouth. Favreau called out:
“Take me, my precious one.”
I let the liquid rush into me and burn me more, hotter and hotter. Favreau writhed beneath me. I began to suck so that the fluids pumped harder into my mouth. He maneuvered his arms beneath me and pushed. I was flung from his body. I landed, laughing, on the bed. I was thrilled and delighted. I knew that I was not fully made. I was not done. I had to have more. As I thought this, Favreau flew through the air. He tackled me on the bed. We wrestled amid the silk, satin, and velvet. We turned over and over until he surmounted my will. It was then that he dove into my neck with his sharp teeth. I wanted this. I needed it. He must have all of me. I let it happen but did not feel my death coming on as before. I was light-headed and lighthearted. As he pulled the blood from my neck, I reached out with my free hand and wrestled his wrist to my lips. I bit down. Our blood circulated from one to the other. I took him in until I could take no more.
We collapsed on top of each other. Our wounds healed as if they had never existed. I knew then that I was what he was. The world was altogether different. I could see the colors in the room as if it were daytime. The frescoed walls were more detailed than my mortal eyes could ever have perceived them to be. I saw the truth of this villa. It was not run-down, as I had thought when I was human. That had been a vampire’s trick. The manor was fully intact and well maintained.
I sighed, feeling a new kind of hunger. I was naked and newborn. I was taken by surprise as my body gave up its last mortal stand and released its dead organs. My heart still beat strongly. Favreau looked upon me as a father would look upon a son. He lifted me from the bed and took me to the bath.
He set me gently in the warm water that he drew into the bath, and sponged me as he had before, when he wore the mask of Rocerres.
Rocerres. In some way I had grown attached to that image, that being. Anger flared up in me as I looked at Favreau, who was looking at me. Bloody tears ran down his porcelain white cheeks. He smiled as well. I felt pity for him even as he infuriated me. I was to
o weak to do anything about it.
“Why did you come to me as Rocerres?”
“Because I am too frightening for mortal eyes in my natural state. We all are. You will find that if you stay in contact with one mortal man or woman for too long, they will soon hate and fear you. They won’t know why until they are in your grasp and you are taking their life from them.”
“Why have you not made others, aside from Margaret and me?” I asked as he finished washing away all signs of my human self.
“It is not something easily done. It is not easy to find a mortal who truly wants it. I have tried. The others went mad and burned themselves up in the sunlight. It was too horrible.”
Favreau had new clothes waiting for me in the room where the four boys had taken me. I slowly put them on. They seemed to have no weight on this new body of mine, but I could feel every thread of the woven cotton shirt and pants. I touched my own skin, amazed that it was becoming hard and slowly losing its color.
“You must feed,” Favreau said.
It seemed that even before he had finished speaking, the boy with the tattoo glided into the room. I could smell the blood pounding in his veins. My teeth ached for him. My cells cried out for the warm blood that mixed with Favreau’s in his veins. I did not yet know the mental tricks to call my victims to me.
I advanced toward the boy. He didn’t make a move to get away. He smiled at me; he invited me with his eyes. He smelled delicious. I let one hand rest on his muscular chest. The other I slipped behind his head, tilting it to expose the pulsing vein in his neck. I drove my teeth into his flesh. I could feel Favreau watching me, smiling when I took my first hot mouthful of the boy. The boy gasped as I sucked.
I was startled and pulled away when I began to receive flashes of his life. My desire for his blood overrode the shock, and I went back to the wound. I licked a stream of blood that had escaped onto his naked shoulder. I enveloped his wound with my mouth and sucked gently. I could feel his heart beating, slowing almost imperceptibly with each gush of hot liquid that filled my mouth and ran down my throat. My entire immortal body tingled with the new life it was receiving, and I realized that my victim was eighty years old. Favreau’s blood had kept him in the shape of a twenty-year-old. He had been taken by Favreau when his parents had perished in a fire. The last thirty years of his life were a blur. He’d been driven mad by his own existence. He was not vampire, nor was he human, and his psyche couldn’t bear it. He had become a simpleton, but he was still sweet and nourishing.
As his heart convulsed, nearing the end of his life, the blood tasted different.
“You must stop now, and let the body die naturally and release the soul. If you feed until your victim dies, that soul will stay with you. No good for immortals,” he smiled, proud of his fledgling vampire who had made his first kill. “Would you like another?”
I couldn’t deny it. I would. “Yes.”
“I think I will dine with you,” he said with a malicious smile.
The three remaining boys appeared in the doorway, entered the room, and stopped, all three standing in a subordinate manner, heads bowed and hands clasped in front of them. They were a sight to my new vision. Gorgeous specimens, they positively glowed. It was no wonder Favreau had kept them for so long, as one might collect dolls.
The boy with the ponytail saw his brother’s drained body and looked at Favreau with a scowl on his face. He broke from his stance and rushed at Favreau. With a ferocity that I had only glimpsed in Favreau’s memories, he grabbed the boy by the neck and lifted him off the ground. He gashed the boy’s throat with his teeth and pulled him close. The boy struggled and beat on Favreau’s back with his arms. Favreau pulled the boy even closer. The boy cried out, then went limp.
The other two boys gazed on, expressionless. I didn’t have Favreau’s rage. I merely held out my hand to the eldest of the boys. He took one gingerly step toward me. I pulled him gently against me and took in his deep brown eyes and his slightly musky scent. I flicked my tongue over his Adam’s apple and licked the skin over his pulsing vein. I gently tore open the skin. The blood trickled out. I sucked the small hole, teasing myself. He groaned in my ear. I bit down until he gushed inside me.
I could feel my preternatural strength grow stronger as I fed. When I finished with the boy, I moved to the last. I would not be able to finish him off. I’d had nearly enough and could take no more. My vampiric hunger was satiable, despite what I had always read and believed in my mortal life. As I took from the boy, I heard him gasp. Favreau took the boy’s wrist. We fed on him together, and as he took his last mortal breath, Favreau and I dropped him.
“You have fed well, my young one. Now come; the sun is almost upon us, and we can’t be found by its rays.”
I awoke the next evening in the cellar of the manse. Row upon row of vintage wine concealed the door to Favreau’s lair. A modest wooden door that mortals would regret opening was all that protected Favreau from the outside world while he slept the sleep of the dead.
I was immediately starved for blood and looked toward the exit. I heard Favreau rise from behind me and felt his eyes on my back as if they were two hot pokers. Already I despised him, yet I relied on him to teach me the ways of our kind. I then felt his hand on my shoulder. It moved down and around to clutch the gem, which still hung around my neck. He pulled the necklace over my head and held it in front of him. He kissed the stone, then spoke to it.
“You have brought me my greatest gift.”
I was not his gift. I had made the decision to be what I’d become. Hadn’t I? In truth, I didn’t really know, and it was far too late to puzzle it out, and I had only blood and flesh on my mind. I raced out of the cellar, ecstatic with my newfound supernatural strength and speed. I knew that I would never be a match for Favreau. He had millennia on me. He spoke as if reading my mind.
“I have not even begun to display my full abilities. I have no need, either. You will hunt with me.”
“I will do as I wish,” I braved.
Before I knew what was coming, Favreau’s impossibly hard fist glanced across my face. I flew back and through the wall of the hallway and landed in the foyer. I heard a snap, then felt the strange and immediate sensation of my vampiric blood gathering at whatever bone had snapped. I was instantly repaired. I rubbed my jaw, which still stung.
“You will hunt with me!” he roared.
Favreau disappeared for a few moments, then returned with the carved box in his hand. He wore a long black coat, looking every bit the walking myth that he was. I didn’t dare speak but followed him outside. He grabbed me roughly by the arm. He enveloped me in the coat and looked down at me. He smiled, and his eyes went soft. I was terrified by his emotional shifts.
We took to the air, Favreau holding my body tightly to his. I once again felt safe, and relaxed.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“You have a friend who I would like to meet someday.” Favreau held the carved box in front of me while he said this.
“Kyle?”
Favreau laughed. Then, to torment me further, no doubt, he shifted his form. I saw, for half a minute, the one I would love to have known: Rocerres.
When Favreau returned to his normal state, his sadness was written deeply on his smooth skin. He was mad, completely insane. He had been tormented for centuries by what I knew he considered his greatest failure: allowing Rocerres to perish.
Suddenly, we were on the ground outside a large white house. I was overwhelmed by the sound of voices and thoughts flying at me from every direction. I nearly doubled over. I adapted quickly, however, and instinctively filtered out the telepathic signals. I homed in on a strong wave of images from the house. I knew then that we were already in Westport and that in that house, on the second floor, Kyle was fast asleep. As I started to move away, I felt Favreau slip the carved box into my hand. I looked down at it, then at Favreau. The look on his face and his willful mind told me that I must take it. I hated that I had no con
trol.
I walked to the house. Kyle’s bedroom was on the other side of the French doors that led to a balcony, much like in my house in Irvington. I easily scaled the trellis and hopped onto the balcony. I moved to the window and peered in.
Kyle, in all his human beauty, was sprawled across a thin mat on the floor. Stacks of canvases three feet deep leaned against the far wall. He looked angelic. His full lips were parted slightly, and with my powerful hearing, I knew the sound of his breathing. I could read his dreams. He dreamed of Irvington with a yearning to be back there. It had not been such a long time, though much had happened to me to make me forget that it had been mere days since I last spoke to him.
I pushed the doors. They caved in easily. There was a crunching sound as I broke the lock, but Kyle was a deep sleeper. His dreams were a thick barrier separating him from the conscious world. I knelt beside him and stroked his head. He wriggled beneath my touch. His brow furrowed. Then, frighteningly for me, he opened his eyes and looked directly at me.
He smiled at me and spoke, “Roland.”
I said nothing as his eyes closed again. The smile remained on his face. He thought I was part of his dream. It was a good thing, too, because I would not have been able to control myself. It was something I did not expect. I wanted to tear into him, not caress him. I wanted to have his blood, his soul, racing inside my own body. My human side, though, did not want this. I stroked his head and kissed the soft space between his eyes. I feared what would happen if I set the carved box beside his bed, knowing that Favreau himself would call Kyle to the manse, to become his toy or a victim.
With more tenderness than I had ever displayed for Kyle during our human time together, I touched his face and began to push it away from me. He smiled yet again and moaned softly. His hand closer to me clutched my arm. He pulled me down, as if he thought I meant to kiss him. I did kiss him, lightly on the lips.
