by Todd Gregory
After half an hour of fruitless licking and stroking, he smacked me, sending me flying. “What kind of faggot can’t give head?” he shouted.
When I rose from the ground, blood trickled out of my nose. I wiped away the gush with the back of my hand. He stared at me the way he did in my wet dreams.
“I’m thirsty, Kobi,” Kells whined. Suddenly his old confident self, he flashed his white teeth at me. I was a goner. “Now it’s my turn. Come here.”
There’s no explaining why I went to him. He draped his arm over my shoulder, pushed aside my hair, and gnawed at my neck. My feet went cold first, then my hands. I was freezing and his hands were colder. I shivered. Lights flashed in the darkness behind my eyelids. My hands were prickly numb but I tried to wrap one around his neck in an embrace.
Kells made growling sounds as he chewed the tendons of my neck and God help me, it got me stone hard. My brain went foggy, and then light, and then it hurt, and the lights flashed faster behind my eyes and I wanted to groan but couldn’t. My tongue felt too big and the little blood I had left was froth. I opened my eyes. Kell’s head was so close, bent over me. I wanted to say “I love you,” but couldn’t, and later was glad I didn’t, but my heart pounded loud in my hollow chest while emotions overwhelmed me.
I tried to stroke his sun-kissed skin but couldn’t lift my arm. Man he was hot, so damn perfect in every way, and I was close enough to kiss him. Close. My lips brushed his hair. Oh fuck, his eyelashes teased my throat. Even with my eyes open, lights flickered and flashed behind them. My brain was drowning in death. I saw black and oblivion. Oh God—Kells. My balls squeezed and warm jizz bathed my cock.
When I woke, I was in a drawer in the morgue. Kells didn’t come for me. He probably thought I was dead, but he should have known I’d survived. After all, he did too.
It took me about three days to find him. He was still hanging around the business park. He didn’t look surprised or upset or even happy to see me, but he let me tag along with him. All night, he went on about his lair, so when dawn came, I followed him down into the culverts under the city that were used to drain rainwater into the bay. He had a place set up in a side channel that was blocked off, but calling it a lair was a bit dramatic.
Later that week, Kells found a coffin to sleep in even though he didn’t need it. It’s not as if we died during the day like I thought we would. It was more like being a nocturnal animal that stayed in a state of semi-slumber, although I figured out quickly that the part about sunlight was mostly true.
He kept dragging weird shit home until our hidden apartment began to look like the set of a low-budget horror flick. He could spend hours drifting his hand through the flame of one of the many candles he kept burning, but couldn’t seem to rouse himself for anything fun. I couldn’t talk him into moonlit soccer games, movies, or even dancing at clubs. Worse, he started dressing in velvet and shirts with lacy collars —and he called me the faggot?
The only time he wanted to go out was when we got the thirst and went up to street level to find prey. With all that athletic skill, he couldn’t manage hunting without fucking it up.
Impatient with him one night, I left him lurking in the parking lot of a grocery store. My path took me to a deserted boulevard. Broken brown glass and discarded cigarette butts were pushed into drifts along the uneven pavement. I kicked a can a couple feet ahead of me across the sidewalk. Occasionally, I’d send the can hurtling against the metal grates covering windows and shop doors. As they rattled, I lifted my arms in victory and shouted “Goooooooal!”
While I was doing my victory dance, a piece-of-shit car made a U-turn and paced along behind me. I glanced over my shoulder at the driver. He had a hairy face and lips that were too wet. Security lights sent strange gold halos reflecting off his eyes, like a wolf or something, but I was no lamb. He opened the door. I got in. A couple blocks later, I was face-down in his crotch. His dick was huge. It was my first time going down on a real hard-on. What got me off was the smell of his blood under his skin, so I shoved his flabby thighs apart and pierced him with my teeth. His screams brought Kells running.
After that, Kells didn’t even bother to hunt for himself. As the months passed, I was going out more on my own, so I was a little surprised when he started following me. He whined the whole time, but I tried to keep it friendly, as if he were invited along.
“Let’s go dancing. I know a club I can get into.” I couldn’t get enough of the heat and the pounding of human hearts. Sweat-slicked boys grinding to techno drove me nearly mad with bloodlust, but it was so beautiful, that kind of pain. I rarely fed on the dancers, though. I only wanted to be with them, feel their bodies writhing near mine, listen to the surge of blood, smell their arousal, taste their skin. Killing those boys would be like murdering fireflies.
“I told you, I don’t like those fag bars.”
I punctured my tongue with my fangs. One day soon, it would be bitter words instead of bitter blood in my mouth. “I know a place that’s straight. DJ sucks, though. You want a girl?”
Kells spat. To my knowledge, he’d never been able to get it up after his death. He always blamed me, of course, but I would have been able to smell his cum on the girls he lured into the cars I stole for him. They weren’t able to get him off either.
As dull as it was, that was my life. Then the cops decided to push the sex trade into a new neighborhood, seeing as how all these upstanding citizens were turning up dead with their pants around their ankles on our streets. I shadowed the other rent boys—the breathers, I called them—at their new hangouts, but I wasn’t comfortable off my turf.
The first night in the new territory, I picked a corner near a board shop. Ignoring the men who cruised me, I stood illuminated in neon pink and stared at the snowboards and gear displayed in the window. It made me sad to think of the shit I’d never get to do now that I was dead. Even if I could get the money together and figure out how to travel though, Kells would ruin it for me somehow.
The big dude who managed the store opened the door and asked me to trick in front of someone else’s place until they closed for the night, but he said it in a nice, gruff kind of way, so I moved on. Every night, after the shop closed, I went back to press my nose against the glass and figure out which skateboard I’d buy when I got some money together, until some guy would pull to the curb and call me over to his car.
Hunting wasn’t as glamorous as you’d think. Really, they came to me. I had eternal youth, the kind that called like a siren’s song to the lowlifes. They seemed to assume that because I was part Asian, I would be easy to smack around. A couple of real scummy guys even tried to kill me. Weird as it seemed, I got off on that. Nothing was better than whisky breath covering my face or an ashtray tongue licking the inside of my mouth. I loved cars that stank of day-old burgers and floorboards that were carpeted in fast food trash. I jonesed for whip-skinny white weasels, those mean motherfuckers with greasy hair and fuzzy tattoos who pursed their pale, thin lips while they decided that I was young enough for them. I needed the hurt they dished out, because it made it easier to believe they were the monsters.
Yeah, I was jaded as hell. At the top of the food chain, there wasn’t much to be had in the way of thrills. I’d even started exposing my hands and feet to pinpricks of sunlight to create sun tattoos. At first they were more like prison tats, small and crude, simple shit like teardrops. After a while, I got into designs like the henna stuff women from India put on their hands. I had to work the older, smaller scars into the bigger designs, but I liked the effect. It hurt like hell, of course, but I had to push the limits of my existence to keep from going insane from the monotony.
Yet some part of me stayed tender for Kells, or at least the version of Kells I had a crush on. The real Kells was beginning to get on my nerves. I avoided him more and more, but I guess he was afraid his meal ticket would disappear, so suddenly he decided we were best buddies and followed me up into the city. He wanted to grab a car and cruise.
“I want something cool, Kobi. No shitty Hondas.” He shoved at my back. “Get me something fast and I’ll let you suck my cock.” That was always the bribe. When he wanted something, he whipped out his dick.
Mist glinted in the security lights like static in the air. Water trickled down my neck, soaking the T-shirt I’d lifted from some place in the mall. The clothes I died in went out of fashion a couple years back and I had to have the right look to bait my traps.
“The BMW will do.” Kells nodded at a white car slowly prowling near us.
Anyone who regularly paid for sex knew the trade had moved three miles away, so the guy in the BMW was new to it. It would make it easier for me to pick him up, though. No competition from the breathers.
I was about to step out into the light when the hair went stiff at the nape of my neck. Crouching suddenly, I fought the low rumbling at the back of my throat. My keen sense of smell caught something out of place. My head whipped around as I searched the metal gates of the closed shops on the boulevard.
“Only a 300, man. Cheap-ass bastard. At least it’s a convertible.” Kells sneered at the make of the car as he whisked water droplets off his velvet cloak.
“Something is here,” I warned Kells in a barely audible voice, not even daring to move my lips. “Something.” I smelled musk and earth and death.
Kells pushed me out of our shadow. Since I couldn’t be bothered with a kill right then, I gave the BMW driver a look that made him shit, or come. Either way, he was done for the night. He gunned the engine and sped past us.
“Ah fuck it!” Kells screamed at me.
I scanned the roofs. Something was lingering on the edge of perception. I took a step toward the alleyway but Kells clamped his hand on my arm. My skin stopped prickling, but electricity washed through me. I felt on edge like I hadn’t in a long time.
“I want that car, Kobi.”
I yanked away from Kells’s pale hand. “Get it yourself.”
Lately, I hadn’t felt like putting up with his shit. Lately, I made trouble over sharing my kills. Lately, I figured I had outgrown him and those stupid velvet costumes.
The BMW driver actually stopped at the sign at the end of the block. What a good citizen. So law abiding. His red brake lights reflected as red smears on the wet asphalt.
“Kobi,” Kells whined, dragging my name out. “I’m thirsty.”
In that moment, I knew I was over Kells. I couldn’t remember the last time I ached for his friendship, his approval, his body, his limp cock. He had me numb with familiarity.
Something moved in the dark near us. “I have business to take care of,” I told him.
“You fucking faggot.” He ran down the street, black cape flapping behind him.
Figuring all eyes were on the idiot in dress-up, I sank back into shadow and moved noiselessly to the business park off the boulevard. Whatever the something I sensed was, it seemed to be back that way.
The hunt was on. Me versus the mystery. I climbed to the roofs and outran drops of rain, exhilarated at the rush. My sensitive ears listened for clues, but all I heard was Kells’s clumsy technique: brakes applied hard, safety glass punched, a man screaming.
Raising my nose into the air, I sought the elusive scent. Past the print shop, I caught a whiff. Sliding down the red bricks, I went back to street level, where I caught another, stronger nose full. Cautiously moved toward it, stopped, stepped back, squatted down, and waited. I slid my gaze right to left, fearing a trap. Crawling forward, I listened.
Avoiding the open, I slunk against the brick walls until I reached the metal back door of a wheelchair repair shop. A fresh, large, wet oval stain covered the lower half. The scent was thick there, almost a fog of male presence.
He marked in my territory.
Black fury settled on my brain. Even Kells wouldn’t dare spray in my hunting grounds. Not that Kells would understand what that was about. He thought he was fucking Lestat; I knew we were more animalistic than that.
I pressed against the door, my upper lip curling back so that I could pull the stranger’s flavor over my tongue. It wasn’t enough. I had to know who violated my turf. My hands clenched into tight fists. Extending my tongue, I licked the door, tasting him.
He coated my mouth, made me wild. I wanted to rip out his fucking throat! I wanted to taste him fresh. I dragged my lips from the top of the stain down a long, solitary path, and kissed the drop that still hung at the end of the line. His piss burned the tip of my tongue.
I whipped out my dick and covered his mark with mine, spraying higher and wider. The challenge grated raw on my temper.
One thing I’d learned over the years was that blind anger led me into trouble. I figured I needed to cool down a bit before I went after the fool who dared challenge me, so I went to see how Kells was doing with his kill. It was bound to be good for a laugh.
The BMW sat just past the stop sign. Toxic clouds of exhaust puffed from the end of the tailpipe. The passenger door of the white car hung like a broken wing and the ragtop was ripped open. The body in the gutter was a mangled mess. Leave it to Kells to fuck up a simple snatch and suck.
Reaching into the car, I flicked the key, killing the engine. Vowing it was my last time to clean up after Kells, I had to force the man’s head to his knees until something finally cracked and his body fit into the small trunk.
“I have him,” a male voice caressed my ear. I whipped around. “Your blond bitch.”
I laughed at the implied threat. “Keep him.”
“Dude, that’s not how the game is played. I don’t want him either.”
Kells grunted as he was thrown against a Dumpster. Before he dragged his sorry ass off the ground, we were in motion, the intruder and I. My route hugged cluttered, dark spaces. Every lightbulb I saw, I broke. From the sounds I heard, he did the same.
He was good, but so was I. We drew near and pulled back, our game of tag expanding out of the business park and onto the streets I called mine. At first I was pissed off at him, but then I realized I was having fun the first time since I turned. Passing stores that were protected behind iron gates, I stole toward the bridge. At an intersection, I caught a glimpse of my prey. He faced the wrong way. He wasn’t that tall, but his legs were so lanky that he gave the impression of height. Probably pure Japanese. His hair was bleached and spiked. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. He spun, but too late.
The sound of his chuckle ran down my chest and to my groin. That caught me by surprise. I hadn’t felt horny in a long time. Suddenly my night was alive. I wrung mist out of my hair. Probing above my gums with my tongue, I searched for remnants of his flavor in my mouth.
He darted up a cinder-block wall; I ran at top speed for the freeway. Between impounded cars in a lockup, I caught him again, that time brushing against his shoulder before moving past.
“Does that make me It?” His voice carried on private vampire frequencies.
“It makes you slow.” On my next pass I swept his feet out from under him. Muscle strained against muscle as we fell together and wrestled for control. I ground against his thigh. He didn’t fight it.
“Follow me,” I ordered. Without checking to see if he did, I headed for the bridge.
Traffic sped across the bridge. Tires hissed over the damp pavement. Above the bridge, on each tower, a red light shone. At that height, the mist tightened into fog.
Scrambling over razor wire, I climbed the open ironwork of the trestle until the concrete bed of the road was above my head. Birds, startled by my arrival, took flight into the dark. I went there a lot, but I never showed it to Kells. In the dark, the details of the city faded. All that was left were the lights, the smell of the distant ocean, and the sound of the wind.
The new vampire grinned at me before swinging his lean legs over the girder. A small scratch of beard showed at the tip of his pointed chin.
“Kobi,” I offered my name.
“I know.” He grinned again. Sleek, hard muscled, he was some
thing beautiful. “Lee.”
Since my chats the past couple years were limited to tricks and Kells, I’d lost the knack for conversation. I gnawed at the rough skin around my thumbnail as we sat there. I needed something to do with my hands.
He pushed up his T-shirt and pinched his nipple in a slow roll. Even in the dark, I could see his muscled stomach and wanted to touch it.
“Watched you hunt over on Osage,” Lee told me. “Saw you working it.”
Suddenly, I was wary. I never knew I was watched. It seemed I should have sensed it. It never occurred to me that I’d been hunting in someone’s territory. I braced for trouble.
“First time I saw you though was in a club. You were dancing on the edge of the floor, eyes closed, lost in the music. I was going to try to pick you up, but I got close and realized you were like me. So I followed you. Watched. You’re incredible. That blond idiot you hunt with is a disgrace, though. Sloppy. No stealth.”
“Kells? Yeah, he’s kind of a loser.” That slipped out before I could stop it, but once it was said, I knew that was how I felt.
Lee’s head tilted back when he laughed, showing his throat. The urge to lunge at him almost swept me away. I curled my fingers under the steel girder to hold back.
“Then why do you hang out with him?” He gave me a sideways glance.
I shrugged. “Habit.” That was the best explanation I had.
“Cool sun tats.” Lee nodded at the burn marks on my hands. “Never seen anyone who could stand to do that twice, much less make designs.”
I glanced at my hands even though I already knew what was there.
Lee raised his chin again and showed me his neck. I lanced my palms with my fingernails to make myself hold still because I was ready to knock him down and sink my teeth deep. I didn’t understand that rush of lust. Necks never turned me on before.
