by James Brock
I won’t say that it just became easy for me to deal with or believe. I’m the kid who thought everyone was as rich as us until I was about ten. Uncle took me to the baaaadddd side of town in Miami to clear up that little misconception. This one would need a little more convincing. Oh I didn’t want them to go lie in the sun or show me their fangs, which woulda been cool shit-seeing the fangs, not the sunbathing/shriveling/screaming. But this was calling for suspension of belief as I knew it. And so far Ash had NOT been able to rule out the existence of Santa Claus so…
As with everything else in my life I adapted. Hey I was ADOPTED, ORPHANED and lived a GAYED THE FUCK UP home life while going to boarding school-which was so homophobic (and homoerotic) that you were considered queer if you wiped-so trust me, I knew how to make some personal adjustments. This one was just a little BIGGER than Edgar Walker calling me names. The VERY same E.W., btw, I later ran into in a gay bar in New York who begged to….well it is my honor as a gentleman not to tell you what Edgar begged to do there in the middle of that packed dance floor, which made it clear that his ideas about homosexuality had CHANGED somewhat since our days at Union Hall together.
Oh and yeah, there was ONE more big act in the Theatre of Vampire shared with me there in Ash’s perfectly appointed living room that evening. I know what you and everyone else in the world know about vamps-they wear opera capes and suck your blood and turn into bats and fly away. Well guess what, there was yet another little twist-a-roonie.
“No, we don’t turn into bats but some of us do fly. I’m what we refer to as a Leatherwing,” Ash said.
He might as well have given me that little piece of information in Klingon.
“He doesn’t know what that is Ash,” Ty said, a sneer on his lips and a trace of superiority in his tone. Bring it on Count Chocula, bring it….I thought.
“Easier to show you.”
Moving behind the sofa Ash eyed wall to wall then unbuttoned his shirt. Well, he’d had my attention before but now REALLY had it. Shrugging the crisp white dress shirt over his shoulders he tossed it onto the sofa and turned around, his torso was ripped and cut-muscle corded around muscle on his lean frame-I had no idea if the muscles came before or after the vamp turning and could have cared less. Ash was hot, old vampire or not.
I’d seen Uncle’s buddies do full blown drag shows in our living room. I’d watched a frat brother screw two sisters in the bed next to me when he thought I was asleep. I’d even made a little armature porn movie a few years back and seen it posted on the internet. I was young but had seen some stuff, done some stuff. I’d made out with an A list movie star at a….well, you know where I’m going with this so I’ll just say that no matter what I had seen or done what happened there in Ash’s living room was the cherry topping to the sundae of my life.
Ok so first I was just fixated on his body, then felt my jaw start to drop as just above his shoulder blades two bumps started to raise. Nothing red or bruised like, just two bumps, which then depressed and turned into dimples, the dimples depressing down farther and turning into holes (no blood!) that opened up, about four inches in diameter on his back. The holes were then filled with what looked like dark, thick poles which SHOT up out of his body, the hard rods going about six feet up then laying nearly flat, expanding across the open space Ash had assessed before starting this part of the show. The thick rods extended, stretching and growing until they had formed, for want of a better description, a bat wing like structure. A suede like material scrolled down over the bony form, as the wings came to life, “skin” fluttering as it attached to the bone or whatever the fuck it was.
The great sail like things shuddered, shimmered and flexed in the soft lights of the room, I could feel the air stirring as the wings, well that IS what they were, fluttered. There was a small hook at the top of each of the joints that stretched like a thin finger seeming to test the air in the room before curling into a comfortable position at the top of each joint.
My face had flushed then gone pale again as Ash stretched the span then slowly folded them in and turned back toward us. Nothing in the room had been touched by this new feature of his, no lamps swept over, urns crashed to the floor. I looked at Ty, who was smiling a real smile of happiness.
“That still astounds me after all this time,” he said almost reverently.
“You mean you don’t have….,” why couldn’t I bring myself to say the word WINGS? Butterflies, dragonflies, bumble bees and 747’s all have them. Penguins and ostrich and humming birds; bats and beetles most ducks and now I had just learned some MEN (well dead-like men) have them.
“No. We don’t know (there we go again with the “don’t know”) how many there are. How many have we met over the years Ash, six, seven including you?” Ty said, Ash nodding yes, the huge furl of (material? skin?) now pulled into compact bundle’s as he came back around the sofa.
“Can I touch them?”
Oh C’MON, YOU SO would have asked too!
Ash just grinned.
Reaching out I smoothed a hand down along one of the skeletal bones, an erotic tingle moving up my spine at the feel of the warm, soft living flesh-it was NOT suede indeed. It was as much a part of Ash as his smile, eyes and hair. The wings responded to my fingers, wrinkling and writhing, not in a bad way, it was comforting, exciting and scary all at the same time.
“Show him,” Ty urged. In all of the years I had been around Ty we had never had a connection like the one we were having; fun! Ash moved to the French doors (real French doors, made for an estate in France in the seventeen hundreds, not a Home Depot named door) and opened them. He maneuvered his walking with the wings as easily and with the same casual grace of his usual walking.
Leaving the doors swung open inward Ash stepped onto the patio, Ty and me following close behind. The giant wings slowly stretched again, going to full capacity, translucent against the lights of the garden the huge span took on a reddish glow; I could now see the network of fine veins carrying fluid from Ash’s back over the skeletal frame. He fanned the air, even the smallest movement of the wings scattering a debris of twigs, leaves and dirt around the expansive patio pavers. The wings flapped gently several times then with three powerful pumps Ash was lifted up, soaring immediately above the tree tops and disappearing into the night. I stood with my mouth hanging open, Ty next to me smiling. Wordlessly we waited, then suddenly felt a gust of air and Ash soared silently down in front of us, coasting in, the wings pulled back against billowing sheets of air he dropped to his feet, muscular chest tracked with rivulets of sweat, but he was grinning as if he had won the Triple Crown.
“Is it exhausting,” I asked with a nod toward the sweat tracks.
“Just the opposite, exhilarating!” he replied, the wings retracting against his body as he turned and reversed the process of bringing them out, the huge furls pulling in, rolling up and disappearing back down into his, well, back.
“Some show huh!”
“Well not as colorful as some of Uncle’s shows but right up there,” I returned as the three of us went back into the house. Seems once someone has told you they FEED ON THE BLOOD OF LIVING BEINGS the acceptance of HUGE WINGS is kinda par for the course.
Re shirting, much to my sadness, Ash sat back down. The tracks of sweat gone. no shower needed.
“What else can we tell you,”
Wow, that opened up a whole realm.
Where do dragon’s REALLY live? How high is the sky and why is it blue? In the Dick and Jane series of primers “Spot” the dog seems to be some kind of spaniel. Springer? Cocker? Who trained him? Father, Mother? Was there an unseen Grandparent who had a hand in that?
Well Ash opened up the Q & A session and as I was the lone audience member….but I knew better than to be flip with him so kept it real. As real as this topic could be.
“The feeding, where do you get…,” I trailed off. I mean I had SEEN Ty in action but perhaps that was an abnormality. Perhaps there was line of frozen blood goods in my gro
cers’ freezer I had just been OVER LOOKING.
“Sorry to say it’s easier today. Back in Ty’s day the puritans started keeping records so we took as few as we could, often surviving on mice and rats. As cities grew we just stayed more around port towns where there were sailors and as indigent populations grew feeding has just become easier. We avoid anyone who has had too much to drink because that effects us as well.”
“But when you are having sex the feed is the best….,” Ty said, his erection visible through the tight jeans he wore. Ash shot him a look, then without looking at me let his eyes fall to the floor, signaling for the young stud to continue. My education would not be lacking.
“Everything is engorged and easy, they even find it sexy-you are with a hot guy, making out, touching, feeling then when you make the first bite it is so fast and you are both so turned on that they usually just pass right out in ecstasy.” I thought he was going to cream his jeans during the description. I could tell by Ash’s silence that he had been down the same route. “Then once you start feeding it becomes like every other time, but fuck it is hot in the first moments!” Ty finished.
Awkward silence followed by my next question, which you KNOW I had to ask. I didn’t want DETAILS but the curiosity was there.
“So what about sex, I mean just sex…,” the two vampires grinned at each other.
“It’s a good thing,” Ash replied.
“If you want a demonstration I’ve always thought you were passably attractive,” Ty leered with enough emotion for me to understand that they still had certain human capabilities. I wanted to call him out on his rather backhanded compliment but thought better of it in this setting. For the record, though, I am an attractive and sought after lad who had JUST completed another season on the swim team, long and lean at just a hair under six feet tall I am smooth and muscled up thanks to the swimming and time in the gym, I have hazel colored eyes and blond hair that is usually referred to as “dirty blond” because it is so varied. In other words I am a hunk and while I know it I try to remain modest.
I’m RICH too. Sorry, don’t usually throw that in. Just stating fact because anyone who knows me will tell you that I am also nice. I date in my economic group generally because, well, the guys DO tend to be hot and they are not freaked the fuck out when I bring them back to LH. I have dated all kinds of guys though; taller than me, shorter than me, older, younger and with LOTS of family dough-re-mi and a few who lived in trailer parks. You can’t judge books by their (hot!) covers as in the case of our friend Cole Harris from a few pages back. And NOW I am saddled with the even more pressing secret (getting Bruce Wayne Batman crazy here now, huh!) that my next door neighbors are a couple of centuries old VAMPIRES who could each model for Playgirl.
Just looking at them I knew they had done it but would never cop it to me.
And they had.
The new world didn’t offer much in the way of easy sex (or life) for that matter, and had had certainly not fed on Ty just because he was attractive. Turning him, well there had been a little of the attraction thing Ash wrestled with on that. He’d had several lifetimes of amazing sex with all kinds of men; warriors, pirates, noblemen and peasants. He did not feed on all of them but did know that sex while feeding was mind blowing-if what he had living in his skull was even a mind any more. Still he refused to put Ty through that.
Ty had been turned for several decades, the revolution was over but the Civil war had not begun, and during that long period of quiet it had happened. Late one night after feeding on a rummy who had been sent out of his own village Ty began teasing Ash, darting his tongue up and down the column of Ty’s neck as they both giggled, the wine in their systems letting them lose their usual mentor/mentee relationship.
The teasing went on until Ash leaned finally leaned in, spreading his lips over the younger vampires neck and slowly deploying his fangs until they were sunk all of the way into Ty’s neck, the young vampire softly hissing as Ash stroked his hands down over the length of his body, unbuckling, tying and fastening the clothing he was wrapped in until the tall young vampire was naked and his muscle corded body fully exposed. No slouch in the cock department as a human Ash noted that being turned had given the young man even more in the department of dick, the thick shaft throbbed as he writhed, a thick line of slick, clear pre come was oozing out of the head.
“Roll over,” Ash had hissed, slowly retracting his fangs as Ty silently did as requested, pushing the hard globes of his ass up into the air.
Clumsily, the rum till having a hold, Ash mounted Ty, plunging his own experienced cock deep into his sexy protégé, Ty moaning and pushing up to match his every thrust from below.
“Fuck me, FUCK ME!” the young blood sucker howled. slamming his ass up as hard as he could. Before Ash could warn him he yanked his dick free and came, his hot slashes of jizz streaking up over Ty’s back as the young vampire below him came at the same time, his own load puddling on the thick quilt they were on top of.
They had spent several more days having intense sex, taking turns plunging their fangs into each other. Fucking, kissing, fanging-by the end of the week Ash realized that the relationship was not going to turn into a love scenario and that the younger vampire would always need more so he ended it but they were both glad Ash had been the one to introduce Ty into the physical part of vampire intimacy.
I didn’t know any of this of course but was starting to bone it up a little with all of that sex talk so moved the topic like a chess piece.
“How do you know how few other Leatherwings there are and why can’t Ty fly?”
“We don’t know. Between the two of us,” he said with a nod toward Ty, “that is just how many we have seen or encountered. We don’t know why some like me can fly and some like Ty can’t. We all, other than that, seem to have the same kind of strength. And hunger.”
The questions continued far into the night, until it was time for them to go feed and for me to go back to Lavender Hill and ponder what I had learned.
Ash and I began having long serious talks about my future and the future of my estate. While I didn’t have to DO anything it just also was not in me to have Uncle’s playguy life. Well I COULD have but Uncle HAD given me a sense of duty and responsibility and I would rather have been dead myself than to have disappointed Ash. So after some months it was decided that I come aboard at the Conner Foundation. They needed a daytime “face” in certain areas and I would be able to help Ash as needed.
Which brings us back to the charity function Ash was dressing for when I got him out of the state of the art with-a-fucked-up-electronic-system chamber he slept in.
“You have to go Ash,” I stated.
“We’ll just fund the whole project,” he wheedled.
“That is not how funding works and you know it.”
“Alright, but make certain Ty has assignments to fill his time while we are gone. Boredom is his biggest enemy. And why is my number one assistant wearing what appears to be only a towel to work?”
“Got lucky,” I muttered as I hurried back down the hallway to the suite I used in his house before he could ask any more questions. The blond was gone so I gathered the used clothing and towels of the day and escorted them properly to the laundry chute then dressed.
I hated it when Ash caught me like that so before I dressed I again called the designers service about the electrical work to be done on the chamber. I wasn’t going to be his little human alarm clock for the rest of my life. I was good at being his Renfrew, the little electrical snafu aside, and liked that I got to be home yet still contribute in ways other than just writing checks.
The project he was referring to was part of a global relief effort seminar being held on a cruise ship leaving from the port of Miami in a few days. The Connor Foundation was a major sponsor and I had my hands full enough with just the arrangement of Ash’s care and feeding without being taxed with Ty sitting as well but it all went with the territory. The seminar at sea was arranged so
the diplomats would have uninterrupted security, some island stops had been arranged where their safety could (reasonably) be assured and a week of heavy duty work on board where they were captives in a way would get a backlog of tasks accomplished. Ash did not need to micro manage every project but he knew without a firm hand on the tiller that the progress of some of the more delicate missions could slow down to a halt or near it.
I had already arranged for our plane (I know it sounds pretentious but it is the way we roll) to deliver a sleep vault (we like that term SO much better than “casket”) similar to the one he used at home but without the faulty electronics to the ship. Ash had over the years developed a cadre of loyal workers who would do anything he asked (and in some cases like me, ANYTHING) day or night. Many of them were men and women down on their luck, and with a simple helping hand (to a blood sucking undead, go figure) had devoted themselves to Ashford Connor. The HUGE salaries, bonuses and other perks and bennies all making up and more for having to deal with Ty sometimes.
Slipping into his jacket Ash absently patted his pockets to see if he had forgotten anything, then satisfied he was good to go he called goodnight while heading down to the garage. I had moved back in his library to pick up some signed paperwork on the desk when there was sudden movement by the double doorway and Ty appeared, skin tight rock star approved jeans slung low on his near nonexistent hips, a size too small Ed Hardy T shirt stretched over his chest.
“Hey Sailor boy,” he said with a leer, “how’s your cruise coming?”
“It’s not mine, it’s a company thing and if you wanted to be part of the company you could come along,” Ash and I both had offered Ty positions with Connor-he could contribute as much as he wanted time wise, or financially for that matter. Ash had been purchasing stock in Ty’s name for as long as stock had been issued, establishing his own wealth. Instead Ty chose to party and club and make general mischief. His main source of helping society were his chosen feeding source; Bad boys. The badder the better for Ty.
