by Hal Bodner
“I’ll manage. Hair, please, monkey.” He sat down on the coffin lid so that Troy could easily run a comb through the tangled locks.
Concentrating on pulling the comb through a particularly difficult snarl, Troy commented absently, “Miss Thing called while you were asleep. You know, the ghoul?”
“Coroner,” Chris corrected. “Did she say when we could meet her?”
“Anyone who plays with dead things is a ghoul in my book.”
“Why do you always pick on her? She likes you.”
“No, she doesn’t,” said Troy seriously. “She thinks I’m brainless and flighty and immature.”
“But, ya are in that wheelchair, Blanche! Ya are!” Chris responded.
Troy glared at him briefly and with great dignity said, “I do that much better. Besides,” he added, “she’s jealous.”
“I think she’s over that,” Chris said. “So there’s no reason for you to start playing a scene from The Women, OK?”
“All right! I’ll behave!” Troy threw his arms up in an elaborate gesture of exasperation.
He patted an errant strand of Chris’ chestnut-colored hair into place. “We need to cut this, dear. I know how you love them, but ponytails are out of style again.”
“It’ll just grow back to this length,” Chris reminded him. “The way it was when I died.”
“So? I’ll gather the clippings,” Troy said, dramatically, “and wear my fingers to the bone, weaving them into one long braid. Of course, we’d have to live on a higher floor.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Rapunzle, of course,” Troy said, seemingly amazed that Chris hadn’t caught on. “It’d be romantic.”
“Troy,” Chris said, trying not to grin. “What did Becky want?”
“For us to meet her at some bar on Robertson at nine. I put new dirt in the bottoms of your sneakers.” Troy grinned.
“You may need it. Get this. The place is called The Abbey.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Troy and Chris arrived at The Abbey after a brief sortie into a bar called Hunters. Before Chris’s arrival, Troy had met someone who had suggested it as a place to find “action.” Upon entering the bar, he began to seriously doubt Troy’s judgment in the type of company he had been keeping since he’d arrived in Los Angeles. It was immediately apparent that the sexual favors of each and every one of the hard looking but nubile young men leaning against the bar clutching their beers could be purchased for the evening for the price of a few drinks, five dollars, and a pack of cigarettes. The ones playing pool, with their shirts either open or removed entirely, were undoubtedly more expensive; Chris figured a pool player might cost a potential buyer an additional two or three packs of smokes.
The bar was dark, filled with a murky, depressing mélange of smoke and sultriness. Half of the denizens wore expressions of thinly disguised lust; the other half barely suppressed the flashes of greed in their eyes. Each pair of eyes surreptitiously roamed the room, glances flickering quickly from one prospective contact to another. Chris, who had spent time in many a brothel in his day, couldn’t help feeling unsettled at the blatancy of the patrons’ behavior. The seediness of the place was overbearing, and Chris had the suspicion that, were he to touch anything, whether it was the scarred wooden bar top or one of the customers, his hands would come away feeling grimy and oily.
Troy, in his colorful vest and sagging pants, was doing a good job pretending to be oblivious to the sneers and nasty looks that his customary less-than-subtle behavior was drawing from the bar’s largely blue-jeans-and-T-shirt clientele. But from long experience, Chris could tell Troy wasn’t entirely comfortable in the surroundings either. Seeking to teach him a lesson concerning his choice of newfound friends, Chris deliberately delayed their departure.
It was a mistake. Troy, refusing to acknowledge that the place was anything other than what he’d expected it to be, began to drink—heavily. As he flitted about, wildly flirting with one hustler after another, becoming more outrageously campy with each one, the looks became nastier, the sneers more pronounced, until Chris feared that an “incident” was in the making.
After one exceptionally hirsute young man with bulging biceps backed Troy up against the bar and announced his intention of “getting a piece of some girlie-butt” Chris decided it was time to leave. The young man, however, had reached such a point of combined inebriation and belligerence that he was not so easily dissuaded. Bending Troy backward over the bar, he began to remove the blond boy’s vest and was making headway with the zipper of Troy’s fly—not that he needed to make much effort as Troy’s pants were practically falling of him already. Chris decided enough was enough.
“Excuse me,” said Chris politely, tapping the youth on the shoulder.
“Get fucked,” came the reply, and a bulging forearm caught Chris unexpectedly in the center of the chest, throwing him off balance. He staggered backward a few feet.
At about this time, Troy realized that his new friend was not so friendly after all, and had started to try to get up. Bent backward as he was, however, he had no leverage; his struggles were limited to his hands gripping futilely at the bar top while his feet vainly scrabbled for purchase against the floor.
“Perhaps you didn’t hear me,” Chris said mildly, approaching again. “I said ‘excuse me.’”
The drunk turned away from Troy for a minute. “Whadda you want?”
“If he wants to take those off,” said Chris, his pleasant tone barely hiding the steely determination underneath, “he’s quite capable of doing it by himself.”
Chris’s words penetrated the man’s alcoholic haze. Momentarily abandoning his assault on Troy, he turned so that he was facing Chris head-on.
“Oh, yeah?” he sneered. “What is this? Your boyfriend? Looks more like a girlfriend!” He laughed and was joined by the rest of the bar’s patrons, who were looming alarmingly close.
“As a matter of fact,” said Chris, feeling his age-old dislike of people who took advantage of those weaker than themselves surfacing, “He is.”
So saying, Chris reached out and, with a deceptively gentle touch, took hold of the bully’s right hand, which was still clutching the shoulder of Troy’s vest.
Troy did nothing to help the situation. Unable to see the gathering crowd from his prone position over the bar, he announced primly to the ceiling, “I think I’d like to leave now.”
The bully found this quite funny and, with a sweep of his free hand designed to shatter bone, he tried to break Chris’s grip. His arm met Chris’s with a sharp crack, a look of pain crossed his face and he looked down to see that Chris had not budged an inch.
Surprised, and no longer quite as amused, he tried again.
“Third time’s the charm,” Chris said, his tone not quite so pleasant.
The bully released Troy and rounded on Chris, both arms swinging. Chris deftly reached out and grabbed both of the youth’s hands. As shock crossed his face, the young man felt his arms being slowly pushed together in front of him as Chris captured both of the bully’s his hands in one of his own.
Chris turned to Troy, who was trying to pull together his disheveled clothing and to regain some of his dignity, and grabbed him by the front of his vest with his free hand.
“Apologize to the man for leading him on,” said Chris.
Troy attempted a look of indignant outrage; it was unsuccessful.
“Troy...” Chris began warningly.
“Oh, all right,” said Troy, grudgingly. He turned and, flashing his most gracious smile, said, “I’m sorry for being a tease.” He turned to Chris. “OK?” he asked haughtily.
“It’ll have to do.” Chris released both Troy and the confused bully, who immediately lunged forward only to be stopped just as quickly by Chris’s hand, the vampire grabbing his shirtfront and lifting him an inch or so off the floor.
“That will be quite enough,” Chris said mildly.
The bully burbled something—und
oubtedly obscene.
“Yes, I know,” Chris commiserated. “Sometimes those are my sentiments exactly. But after all, he’s mine. What can I do?”
The other hustlers in the bar kept their distance, unwilling to help their companion in his argument with these two young men who were surprisingly not as helpless as they had first appeared.
“I’m going to put you down now,” Chris continued. “And we are going to leave.” He looked full into the other’s eyes, catching his gaze with his own. “There will be no hard feelings. Will there?”
The hairy young man nodded, and Chris gently set him back on the floor. “That,” Chris added, grabbing a nearly full glass of scotch from Troy’s grasp, “will be quite enough for you, too.”
The bully, confused that someone who appeared so much smaller and less muscular had bested him, was not about to return to his companions to face their scornful sneers. Embarrassed and very drunk, he felt he had to do something to regain face. It was at this point that he made a potentially fatal mistake.
Reaching out past Chris, he grabbed Troy by the shoulder and yanked him backward, brutally slamming the blond boy against the side of the bar. Troy let out a small yelp when the edge of the bar top dug painfully into the center of his back.
“I’ll give you hard feelings,” he said. He pulled a switchblade from his rear jeans pocket and, clicking it open, held it up so Chris could get a close look at the light glinting off the blade.
The entire bar was silent as the man quickly brought the knife to within an inch of the hollow of Troy’s throat.
“If I give him back to you, he won’t be so pretty after I’m done.” He turned back to Troy, moving the tip of the knife in closer, just piercing the skin and drawing it slowly down the center of Troy’s chest, stopping only when it reached the top button of the vest. A thin, glistening line of blood began to well out from the shallow cut and Troy yelped again.
“Now you’ve done it,” commented Troy, almost sadly.
The bully simply looked at him, shocked that the overly feminine youth should be so calm with an open switchblade pointed at the center of his chest. Had he glanced at Chris instead, as the rest of the bar’s customers were doing, his emotions would have been quite different.
Every muscle in Chris’s body had tightened. His eyes, which had widened in surprise at the initial assault on his lover, had flashed anger and narrowed to mere slits when the knife first appeared. Everyone in the bar watched to see what he would do. Although most of the rest of the patrons were more than a little money hungry, none would have agreed to take the bully’s place at that moment for any price.
“You will take...” began Chris as his right hand shot out with lightning speed to grab the hand wrapped around the knife hilt, “your hands...” he continued as he slowly bent the assailant’s wrist backward, “...off him.”
A loud moan escaped from the hairy man as his wrist was stretched beyond its range.
“Or you will lose them,” Chris finished, and there was a loud snap as the stressed bones finally gave way.
The bully let out a bellow of pain as Chris released his hand. Troy quickly scrambled away and took up a position behind Chris, shielded against further assault.
The young man took a deep breath in preparation for another scream of pain; he never got a chance to utter it. Chris reached up with his hand and grabbed the bully by the throat, choking off any possibility of sound. Squeezing the man’s throat hard enough to hurt, Chris lifted him off his feet once again and brought his face to within an inch or so of Chris’ own.
“Do I make myself clear?”
Though his tone was calm and even, the threat beneath the words was unmistakable. He gave the bully no opportunity to answer. Instead, grabbing the young man painfully in the crotch with his free hand, he threw him with a seemingly effortless toss through the air across the room, where he landed flat on his back in the center of the pool table, totally spoiling the shot of the only person in the bar who was oblivious to what had been going on: The drunken hustler, overweight and past his prime, who had been trying to make an eleven-five bank shot combination into the side pocket. The other bar patrons blinked in disbelief.
Without giving Troy time to protest, Chris skillfully guided him past the gawking onlookers and out the front door of the bar onto the boulevard. Once outside, Chris took a deep breath and slowly counted to ten, hoping his rage would subside. It didn’t. He repeated the process several more times until he’d managed to calm down. Troy was, for once, wisely silent during this procedure. Finally, Chris felt the last vestiges of anger vanish.
“So much for being discreet,” he commented with forced humor and watched Troy’s expression as the barb struck home.
Troy, embarrassed and defensive about his behavior in the bar, was not about to let Chris have the final say. Rather than reply, he determined to drive himself on to more and more flights of outrageous activities. Chris, realizing that it was hopeless to argue with him when he was in one of his Diana Rigg moods, decided it would be easier to let Troy work off the excess emotional energy, even if it meant strangers might be targeted by his acid tongue, than it would be to risk a knock-down, drag-out rumpus in the middle of the street.
Troy was in rare form. He sauntered drunkenly across the street, in the wrong direction, amusing himself by making loud, bitchily clever comments about everyone they passed. He yelled, “Work it, girls!” to a couple of anemic looking male hustlers standing across the street in front of the Astro Burger diner. Chris, chasing after him, finally caught him and barely managed to keep him from running out into traffic, pointing at the two youths and screaming, “Blue Light Special!” at the oncoming cars.
Chris decided to walk to their rendezvous with Becky in the hope that the crisp autumn air would help clear Troy’s fuddled head. He prayed to whatever gods there were that, by the time they reached The Abbey, Troy would be sober enough to behave himself. In the interim, he would content himself with the pleasant anticipation of his hand smacking against Troy’s bare bottom when Chris finally got him home.
Chris got him moving in the right direction, once again. But the long walk dissipated Troy’s alcoholic haze only slightly. As they passed a bar called Rafters, Chris glanced in and noted it was empty except for the lone bartender at the far end of the bar.
“Wait here,” he told Troy sternly.
Troy blearily stationed himself at the door, leaning against the entrance and unbuttoning his vest to show his taut little torso to better advantage. “I’ll keep anyone from coming in,” he said.
“I’ll bet you will,” Chris sighed and went in.
He quickly checked the DJ booth and, seeing no one inside, was satisfied that the music was prerecorded. The bathrooms were both empty also. Confident that he shared the place only with the bartender, Chris approached him with a smile on his face.
“Hi,” the bartender smiled, wiping his damp hands with a towel. “What can I get you?”
“I don’t know. What do you suggest?” Chris put as much sensuality in his voice as his two hundred plus years of experience allowed.
The bartender seemed taken aback for a moment and smiled hesitantly, giving Chris a moment to examine him. He was tall and blond-haired with a slightly darker mustache and wore a pair of dark blue shorts cut off to reveal the swell of his lower buttocks. His yellow shirt, open almost to the waist, revealed a slim but well-muscled chest, obviously shaved. Chris noted with satisfaction the nicely defined bare arms and broad shoulders. Chris leaned forward over the service bar area.
“I said, what do you suggest?” Chris murmured seductively.
The bartender, leaning forward himself to catch Chris’s almost whispered comment, made the mistake of looking directly into Chris’s eyes.
Farther and farther over the bar he leaned as Chris artfully slipped his left arm around the bartender’s right shoulder, angling the mesmerized youth so that his throat was exposed.
Lapping gently at the fles
h just below and behind the bartender’s right ear, Chris closed his eyes, tasting the slightly sweet, salty flavor of the young man’s sweat. Slowly, gently, he sank the very tips of his fangs into the soft flesh, barely piercing the skin. As the first drops of blood flowed into his mouth, Chris rolled them around his tongue like a connoisseur savoring a fine wine, testing for impurities. There were none; the blood would be rich and sweet.
Maintaining the orgasmic sense of anticipation for a moment longer, and fully aware that at any second his privacy could be invaded, Chris sank his fangs deeply into the man’s throat and a burst of warm fluid flowed into his mouth and down his throat.
Barely two minutes later, Chris shuddered as with a post-coital chill and, sated for the time being, withdrew slightly from his still transfixed victim. Slowly he allowed several drops of his “special” saliva to fall from the duct glands just behind his upper fangs onto the two small wounds he had left on the side of the bartender’s neck. Drawing back, he watched as the small holes magically folded in upon themselves and scabbed over. Satisfied that within an hour or so there would be no trace of his stolen meal, he maneuvered the bartender from his almost prone position across the service bar back onto his feet and released him, both physically and mentally.
The bartender’s glazed eyes cleared, replaced with a look of confusion. “Huh?” he asked.
“I asked if you have a telephone in here,” Chris said patiently, hiding his amusement at the bartender’s befuddled state.
“Uh, yeah...I mean, no...I mean, it’s outside. By the...you know. Where you come in.”
“Thanks,” Chris said sincerely and made his way outside.
“Uh, wait!” the bartender called.
Chris turned and with polite interest asked, “Yes?”
The bartender seemed to struggle with his memory for a moment, bewilderment in his eyes. “I just thought, well...nothing, I guess.”
