Here, In This Place

[ChrisGibson]

WELCOME TO ANOTHER WEEK!


On Saturday I go driving by myself. I’m never by myself. I go all the way south to Glencastle, and I am thinking, though at the time I wouldn’t admit it to myself, that maybe this time, by myself, I’ll be able to find that house again. I don’t say anything to anyone, but I think of what Myron might say, You know the mind can play tricks. Maybe you wanted to see that place so bad that it’s in your head that there was such a place. Maybe it was just a dream. And the truth is, as I go up and down the street, unable to find that house where I met Kruinh and Tanitha, it’s definitely starting to feel that way.







They’ve played at the Grey Note. They’re high on the music and applause. It makes up for the lack of money, and the truth is, working for Myron’s family pays well. He’s never seen so much money and he’s never had so much fun.

“Can we get you guys a drink?” the girls ask, and Jack and Nick are all for it, and Myron nods shyly and pulls Dan over.

Dan doesn’t remember much of the conversation, just the dizzying attention paid him by college Freshmen, and that Gretchen has left him. Eventually Jack and Nick are gone with the other girls, and Myron and Dan are just sitting there drinking with the red head. It’s late and the bartender says so, and Myron says, “I guess it’s time to get home.”

He’s the responsible one, and he says to the redhead, even though he and Dan are still in high school, “Are you cool to drive, or do you need a ride?”

“Oh,” she says. “I was just going to walk back to my dorm.”

“Well, we can’t let you do that?” Dan isn’t sure if he says it or Myron, but they are both in agreement.

“We’re going to drive you back,” Dan says.

“You boys are gentlemen,” she says. “Gen-till-men.”

She laughs and touches Myron’s lips. “What’s your name.”

Myron says, “It’s Myron. And this is Dan.”

They have to turn around and go back to Lassador after this, but it hardly matters, and it’s nice to see Rawlston by night, to see the college they might end up going to.

“My grandma went here,” Myron says.

“Myron, come back here,” the redhead says after a while. Cynthia. She was Cynthia.

A little drunk, Myron says, “Alright,” and tries to climb back and tries again before Dan stops the car and Myron says, “Ah, yeah,” and then unbuckles his seatbelt and climbs out of the passenger seat, opening his door to climb out, and leaving Dan alone in the front.

He can hear them making out and fooling around as he drives, and he clears his throat as they approach the main gate of the college.

“Uh… where do I go now?”

But she and Myron are well into making out, and finally Cynthia says, “You wanna just drive around?”

“Yeah,” Myron says breathlessly, between kisses. “We can drive around a bit.”

Dan’s face is too red to look back, but he’s the chauffer now and not entirely sure what’s going on in the backseat as they drive away from the college, toward the country where the grasses are high.

“Do you wanna fuck me?” Cynthia asks Myron.

Dan stops the car squarely on the side of the road and turns around, and Myron’s pants are half down.

“I’ll do it with both of you,” she says.

“Dan, can you get out the car for a bit?”

Dan’s too surprised to do anything but he finally gets out of the car, too hot for his feelings, his ears and his flesh burning, his head whirring. He’s seen Myron have sex, but it was only for a second and with his girlfriend who he loved, not with some slut they met at the Grey Note. Myron’s not like this. He’s in youth group. He’s a straight A student. A straight A. He’s a good guy. They’re good guys. This isn’t them. The windows are steamed up and the car is shaking back and forth while Myron is fucking this girl in the backseat of his car, Dan’s car.

When it’s over, Dan stands half out of his body and Myron staggers our of the car, buttoning his pants. His hair is a mess and his face is red. The car door is open into darkness and Cynthia is in there.

“Are you coming, Dan?” she says.

Her voice calls from the dark, “Myron says you’re a virgin. Come on, let me change that.”

Dan isn’t in a place to refuse. Myron is the person he respects most in the world and Myron touches him on the back and says, tenderly, “She’s waiting for you. Dan. Go in.”

Dan does, and Myron closes the door behind him. The space is hot and the smell is strange.

“Dan,” Cynthia says, sounding strangely tired, almost drugged. “Dan.”

Her skirt is up and her legs are open and there is only darkness behind them and she says, “Take off your pants.”

He does. In his head he keeps hearing a distant voice that says, We’re the good guys. We don’t do stuff like this. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.

He pulls down his underwear, but his shirt is long and so she reaches under it, and when she touches him, it’s the first time he’s really felt his penis, the first time he’s felt it be this swollen thing, sensitive to the touch, curving, growing, hard, wet with the trickle of semen, wet with whatever she’s got on her hand while she’s massaging it, stroking it, pulling it, someone else’s hand on him for the first time.

“Come on,” she says, her hands on his ass, pulling him inside of her.

“Oh, God,” she murmurs, or is he murmuring? It feels, despite everything, so good. He’s always wanted this, Her hands are so tender up and down him, and it feels so good. He shudders. It feels so good to push and push into her, and he wants to keep doing it, but he’s slow about it, wanting to be gentle and then her hands are up and down his back and she’s saying, “Don’t be gentle. Just do it.”

And so he starts to do it and he can feel her thighs around him, pulling him inside of her and he can hear himself growling between his teeth and she is laughing and calling: “Fuck me! Do it harder.”

They’re both breathing hard together and it’s the most amazing thing and then Dan is surprised and cries out while he comes.



This thing, this odd way in which his first time has occurred is probably the reason he goes looking for Tanitha and Kruinh the next day. He and Myron don’t talk about this after they’ve dropped her off and are getting ready to get back in the car. Dan needs something to say, needs to clear his head.

“You know what I’m thinking?” he says to Myron.

“Huh?’

“I’m thinking of just not going to college and staying here doing music.”

But Myron is angry for some reason. He’s going to be angry for a few days and hard to talk to for a while. There is going to be a little wall up between them for a while.

Myron just looks at Dan witheringly.

“That’s really stupid.”




Dan Rawlinson is past jealousy. He’s a little confounded because the band never took off. They tried for years, and it seems like he might want to settle into his father’s plumbing business, and put this music to the side. Myron never agrees when Dan suggests that, but then Myron is working with his family still. The only thing he ever says is, “Dan, you could come in on the business.”

That seems like the ultimate failure, to take charity from Myron’s family. Myron went to school and graduate school to do what he does, to really do… he isn’t exactly sure what Myron does. But it’s something smart people do and something Myron had always planned.

And then Myron’s got the good home and the wife and kids, and Olivia’s great and the kids are adorable, and sometimes it sort of hurts that his best friend is so successful, and it sort of hurts to be hurt by it. That isn’t right. It’s not gracious.

When he has a beautiful girl on his shoulder, or better yet, when they are together, really together and it seems like real life is going to start, like it felt with Eileen, none of that matters until it ends and Dan feels like shit all over again.

 

[ChrisGibson]

He felt like shit that night when Two and the Band had finished their set. Rick and Jack were long gone, and now they had Craig and Angelo. Eileen had been a singer in the band, Eileen, who had his engagement ring, Eileen whom he had looked at houses with, Eileen whom he had found in bed with Craig.

So Craig was just business, He was fulfilling his part of the contract and getting the fuck out of the club without looking at Dan, and he knew he had to stay till they found another member. This was a business. They weren’t the most important band in the world, but they made money. People expected them to be a full band that rose above its personal bullshit.

“That was a great set you guys played,” the redhead said to them.

“Oh, thank you,” Dan said.

“Especially you.”

She smiled at him. He needed a smile.

“You look like the saddest man in the world,” the woman said. “Let me get you a drink.”

Dan shrugged and said, “Okay, but I have to get the next one.”

“We’ll see what happens.”

They drank for a while, and Myron was with them, but in the end he squeezed Dan’s shoulder and said, “I’m about to go.”

“Oh, goodnight, Myron.”

The red haired woman’s voice was lush. Dan couldn’t place her accent, tell exactly where in America it was coming from. For a moment he thought it was almost as if she was making a generic accent up.

Before Myron departed, Dan whispered to him at the door, “I think…. She wants me to go home with her.”

Myron smiled warmly at his friend.

“I think you should, Dan. You deserve a little happiness.”

“I’d be happy if I still had my fiancé.”

“Fuck her,” Myron said with more heat than he’d intended.

“If you can’t have happiness the way you want, at least have some attention you deserve.”

He made a little phone gesture with his hand.

“Call me in the morning.”

The woman is glorious. She smells like… Dan isn’t quite sure what she smells like, but honey is there, and he knows he’s going to bed with her. She has the most lustrous, thick red hair and green eyes, and she tells him, “I’m staying at the Midland Hotel. I’m visiting family.”

Dan has only passed the Midland Hotel on Bancroft, tall and elegant, one of the oldest hotels in the city, and here he is in a lobby looking up at the second floor through a wraparound gallery, and there are marble arches under a vaulted ceiling. He’s trying not to grin like a rube, and she’s laughing and kissing him on the cheek. They’re going up in an elevator, and he cannot believe his good fortune. Maybe things are getting better after all.

They have another drink and she makes a bath, and they make love in the bath, and while Dan remembers what it’s like to be with a woman who isn’t Eileen, she drains the tub and they move to the shower and from the shower to the bed.

She is running her hands over his body. He is gently sucking her lips, kissing her nipples, taking his tongue up and down her soft skin, creamy skin, flesh like ivory as she laughs in exultation. When she touches him it’s like the first time in a long time he’s really felt his own penis, the first time he’s felt it be this swollen thing, sensitive to the touch, curving, growing, hard, wet with the trickle of semen, wet with whatever she’s got on her hand while she’s massaging him, stroking him, pulling him, someone else’s hand on him for the first time in a long time.

“Come on,” she says, her hands caressing his ass, pulling him inside of her.

“Oh, God,” she murmurs, or is he murmuring? It feels so good. He’s needed this. Her hands are so tender up and down him, and it feels so good. He shudders. It feels so good to push and push into her, cock encompassed by this moist heat, and he wants to keep doing it, but he’s slow about it, wanting to be gentle, there are vague memories of another red headed girl, a backseat of a car long ago, but not far away. And then her hands are up and down his back and she’s clutches his shoulders and growls into his ear, “Fuck me.”

And so he starts to fuck her, and he can feel her thighs around him, pulling him deeper inside of her, and he can hear himself growling between his teeth, and she is rejoicing and calling, “Fuck me! Fuck… me. Harder… Do it… hard.”

They’re both breathing hard together and his heart is pounding, his whole body is pounding, and then Dan is surprised and cries out while he comes. Somewhere along the line, sex with Eileen became tame. Maybe that’s why she started fucking someone else. Dan keeps slamming into his new lover, exhausting himself, surprised at his shuddering body, his aching balls, and at how long his body rocks on this orgasm, how much he spills, when fingernails, sharp in his back, draw blood, become as insistent as claws. He answers with a harder thrust as she pulls his face down and suddenly the gently nipping teeth prick, clamp down into his throat, and in an agonizing, strangling moment everything changes as, at the last of his coming, his body reeling from orgasm, he is turned around and feels the insistence of the fangs. His body convulsing with death and a terror that has replaced pleasure, fire filling his arteries as life and strength drain away, teeth buried his his throat, his body thrashing, blood being rapidly sucked from his vessels, Dan knows….

Tanitha and Kruinh… They were vampires.

This woman is a vampire…

He knows…

I… am dying.


MORE IN A COUPLE OF DAYS

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! It’s fascinating hearing Dan’s history, especially how he became a vampire! Seems like there is more and more to discover and I am enjoying it a lot! Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, hopefully there is always more to discover, and I'm so glad you're into it. There will be more tomorrow. I think. Hopefully the story just gets bigger and bigger

 

[ChrisGibson]

Daniel Rawlinson had come into his second birth screaming, and there were hands on him, holding him down as his veins pounded with a burning fire and his heart raced. His body was at once more hungry than it had ever been and stronger than he’d ever known. He felt its strength in the resistance of stronger arms.

“Are you simply going to stand there?” A man’s voice demanded, “or are you going to help?”

While he struggled, only dimly remembering what had happened before he’d lost consiousness, the red headed woman, now in a long gown, her hair swinging free down her back, looked upon him with a wicked smile. He’d never thought that wickedness was a real thing, and then, lifting the back of her hand, she savagely smacked him and he knew no more.



When he woke, the man was there again, and he said, “Listen to me, she likes to see suffering in the new ones she has made.”

“Who are you?”

“I am Carter,” the man said. He was of average height with a sharp, thin face, brown hair, ordinary enough looking, “And she, your maker, is Rosamunde.”

“I’m so thirsty,” Dan grasped at his throat. “I’m so thirsty. Please… Can I have some water?”

He was hungry now, desperately hungry, and not that stomach hunger, but the deep body hunger where temper flared and wooziness began, where your stomach meant nothing. But the thirst was greater.

“Water…” he rasped. “Please.”

There would be time to think of everything later, but this came first, and the man called Carter, unsmiling, stood up and rolled up his sleeve placing his wrist in Dan’s mouth.

Dan did nothing and Carter said, “Drink already, before she comes back. It’s as I said, she likes for her men to suffer.”

“I’m,” Dan said, spitting Carter’s wrist out though, for some reason he wanted it, “I want… Water..”

“Don’t be stupid” Carter said. “If you know what she is, and how could you not by now? Then you know what you are.”

He did, he realized, and as Dan realized it, horror crept over him. He had died. It was not untrue. He had been killed by a vampire and now he lived again. Carter pressed his wrist to Dan’s mouth and said, “Drink.”

The moment his jaws sank into Carter’s wrist was the most joyous moment he had ever know. It was the moment of becoming absolutely himself, of quenching hunger in a way he’d never done before. There was not even taste in his memory, simply fulfillment, simply drinking and drinking like drinking light until Carter said, “Enough,” and then, again, “Enough!” sitting back.

“It’s not enough,” Dan said, licking his lips and lying back, panting for more.

“Of course it isn’t. You would have to kill me to have enough. You will have to learn to kill.”

Dan Rawlinson realized before he understood what he had been told, that he was naked, and lying on something like a table. He looked around and started. There were other bodies.

“We are in a mortuary,” the man said simply. “Stenger and Stenger’s. Germantown.”

Dan turned his face in horror from the man who lay on the tray not far from him, and Carter said, “Why are you horrified? A few moments ago you were as dead as he is. You were not merely sleeping. You were a corpse, my good Daniel. Have been one for the better part of a day.”

Dan nodded and he felt, suddenly, wise. There was no time to be scared. There was only time to learn, and certainly to not let on how much he learned.

“Who made me?” he said. “Who is she?”

“Rosamunde Court,” Carter said. “And you are part of her court now. She will tell you all. She has come to the land of Ohio to meet her uncle and his court and defeat them. You have been enlisted to her side and, I believe, will make a very good soldier.”

Dan was going to leave it alone, but chanced one more question.

“And who is her uncle? Another vampire I assume? I just… didn’t think of vampires as having family.”

“Drinkers,” Carter corrected. “And I doubt you ever thought of vampires at all. Her uncle is the Lord Kruinh. He keeps a house on an ancient site of power in a town now called Glencastle. With his bitch of a daughter, Tanitha. But soon all shall be set to rights, and you will be one of those who help set it.”





“I chose you because you longed for death and your old life was at an end,” she said.

---

[1] “This house be forever seen and never hidden from thee. For thou art blood of my blood.”

 

[ChrisGibson]

Rosamunde lay on a great chaise lounge piled high with cushions in a richly appointed room. For some time she or better her servants, had dug a tunnel into the morgue of Stenger and Stengers and kept apartments underground and in the old building next door. When it was time to leave this land, she would take them down and be on her way, but right now, in the land of night, amidst curtains and stain glass Tiffany lamps, she lived in luxury.

“I know I am not wrong,” Rosamunde said. “I have a feeling for such things.”

She said she always had this feeling. That she had made a few drinkers before, but now she would make a large household of them. She even said that this was not normally done, but there was no time to waste. She had made Carter.

“But he wanted it. He was done with his earthly life. You were done, but you didn’t know it.”

“How do you know I was done?”

“You said it. You talked freely. You came to me willingly, more willingly than you know. Eileen cheated on you with Craig. Myron was so successful and had a family. He made life work. You’d been trying for almost thirty years and it still wasn’t working. You were done with that old life, so I gave you a new one and for that,” Rosamunde bowed her red head in humility, “you are heartily welcome.”

He could scarcely believe her, but rather than be enraged, he listened to everything she said. He learned how, like Carter, and like Martin the other one who was out now, he would go out and kill every night and return in the day. If her expectation that he return at the end of the night seemed far fetched, then he had to account for the fact that he would not be able to survive without killing or in the daylight, Young drinkers were like children, and the only hope for them at the beginning was other drinkers.

Graciously, like a queen, she allowed him to drink from her. He was still naked and had not even noticed it.

“Leave, Carter,” she told him and Carter did.

“You may come to bed with me,” Rosamunde said,

Looking back it only seemed practical that he obliged her. He spent the rest of the night learning the intensity of vampire sex, expending his fury on her, and they passed out toward the morning.

“Carter was never a very good lover,” Rosamunde murmured, stroking Dan’s hair.

“You are handsome and wild, and you will do quite well. Tomorrow night you will go out on the hunt, and learn how good the true kill feels.”

As he fell asleep he knew he’d loved the sex. He knew he’d had sex with women he didn’t particularly like before and he knew he had gained, by fucking her, something like trust. In that vampire night that was the day, he fucked her several more times, understood what he would understand later which was that, even though she had killed him, he was hypnotically attracted to her. When he left that night, supposedly to go on the hunt, he knew he could not come back for the simple reason that if he stayed he would be her slave and forget himself entirely.



The flaw in Rosamunde’s plan was her great confidence. The next flaw was that she had no idea that Dan knew Germantown, or that he could walk the next seven blocks to Myron’s house. Myron’s wife was as excited to see Dan as Myron, and they both loaded him down with questions.

“Are you in trouble?” Liv demanded, looking at him.

“Yes,” Dan said, “but I won’t be if I can just get to Glencastle before the night is over. I left my car at the Midland Hotel.”

Myron and Liv were not the sort of people to ask wearisome questions, and Liv pointed out, “If you left it there, then it’s been towed, and we can figure that out later. Myron, take Dan to Glencastle.”



Myron questioned nothing. The kids were curious, but he just kissed them on the heads and said, “Later. Daddy loves you.”

When Myron said, “Is this something to do with that girl?” all Dan said was, “Yes.”

“She’s not dead is she?” Myron asked levelly, as they zoomed down Buren, headed for the state road.

“No. But she’s bad news, and… there’s really only one way I can do anything about her.”

Myron nodded, rubbing his finger under his nose and squinting into the night.

“I got you, buddy.”

Dan had a sense that, as they were approaching Brummel Street, Myron understood something of what Dan was trying to do, that he remembered that day almost fifteen years ago when they had tried to find that house. He didn’t know how many times Dan had looked for it on his own, and right now Dan thought, I need you, I need you to be here, and then he was surprised by the ordinariness with which he saw, between 4846 and 4850, a tall purple Victorian, its lights on through the bushes and trees. 4848 Brummel.

“Thank God! Wait for me,” Dan said, and Myron, who did remember not being able to find this house, nodded and watched as Dan ran up the path.

He banged on the door rapidly, and it was opened by a tall, brunette vampire with dark Mediterranean features and wide dark eyes, a look of both concern and suspicion on his face. Dan stood blinking at him, and he said, “Can I... help?”

Then… “Who are you? I know you are not human.”

“I’m as human as you,” Dan said. “Please, I need Kruinh or Tanitha.”

The elegant vampire who looked as if he was on his way to a business meeting eyed him cautiously, but said, “Come in.”

Dan was aware of Myron outside waiting when this austere vampire closed the door, and he wondered if Tanitha and Kruinh would even remember him and then, moments later, Tanitha came down the stairs into the foyer, her shawl wrapped around her but her eyes were wide as she looked Dan up and down.

She flung out her hand and terrified Dan, pronouncing, “Tazi kŭshta da bŭde vidyana zavinagi i nikoga da ne e skrita ot teb. Zashtoto si krŭv ot moyata krŭv!”[1]

And then she said, “From now on this house is always open to you, Daniel. What has happened to you? You have been…” she came nearer, passing the other vampire, and grasping Dan’s chin, “made.

“Who did this?” she wondered. There were, after all, not that many vampires.

“Rosamunde—”

Before he could say more, both she and the dark haired vampire hissed, and Tanitha swore, “Kuchka ot yamata na ada!

“Lawrence,” Tanitha said, her voice regaining some of its composureas she spoke to the elegant man, “take Daniel upstairs and get him a room. Daniel, did you come with that man waiting outside the house?”

How had she seen that? But nevermind.

“Yes.”

“First tell him you are with us now. That we will take care of this business. Oh, that whore, I will rip her fangs out with my bare hands,” Dan heard Tanitha saying as he went out of the door, but even as he told Myron that he was safe and that he would tell him all later, he knew he would only tell him some of it, and when Dan was walking back up the to the house, he was still surprised that 4848 Brummel remained and would continue to remain in his vision, and never be hidden from him again.

“Dan,” the tall, brunette business vampire offered his hand as Dan closed the door behind him, “you can call me Laurie.”

He placed a hand on Dan’s shoulder.

“Let’s find you a room.”


END OF PART ONE

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion! Dan is learning just as much as we are about his new in a way life of being a vampire. A great conclusion to part one and I look forward to part two!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes, Dan is learning about this whole new, and so far unpleasant world! Thanks for reading. Glad you enjoyed.

 

[ChrisGibson]

THE WEEKEND IS UPON IS, AND SO IS THE WEEKEND PORTION!
David Lawry went to the record shop that day, and his chief reason was because it was there. He figured he liked music enough, and he needed a thing. Reading wasn’t going to be his thing. He didn’t know a lot about books. Sports wasn’t really his thing either anymore, though he did keep his membership to the health club and exercise regularly. Music could very well be his thing.

The shop was down the street and around the corner from him in that cute downtown that he had promised himself he’d make more use of, and when he pushed the door a little bell jingled, and there was a cat in the window, so perfect, just the kind of place a person was supposed to hang out. And there was even had a phonograph, and vinyl was coming back. He felt odd in the front of the shop, overly exposed, and so he went to the back where the shelves were high and there nearly ran into a woman.

“Pardon me, ma’am!”

“I’ll pardon you if you never call me ma’am again,” she said.

She was the most striking woman David had ever seen. In a younger, dumber time he would have noted firstly that she was Black, and in the back of his mind he’d always thought about dating a Black girl, but that drifted away because a side from her small size, there was little of the girl in her. Deeply, darkly brown, and slim wasted, high breasted, she seemed taller the more he looked at her. A wealth of lustrous black hiar fell straight and heavy down her back, and she was wrapped in a shawl wearing high boots and a fashionable dress, fashionable, Who besides your grandmother wore a shawl, and what woman looked good in one? But she did, in the world wore shawls? What she may have thought of him was hidden by the great broad brim of her hat, tipped over the eyes that winked up at him, like those of a Siamese cat, wide and startling and blue. All the wrong questions rose in David’s mind. Not a one of them didn’t sound racist.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked, taking all the effort from him.

“I… I ah, actually don’t know what I’m looking for.”

“No?”

“I don’t know anything about music at all.”

“So, you’re just hear to crash into women?”

She was smiling at him.

“Only the beautiful kind,” he said.

“And I’m the beautiful kind?”

She was still smiling, but now he realized it was the way a cat smiled at a mouse and he felt foolish increasingly foolish as his palms sweated.

“I’m just an idiot,” David said, and she bursts out laughing.

“Well, idiocy is sometimes the best place to start,” she said, taking him by the hand, and saying, “First, let’s get you out of the folk music section because I don’t think you wanted to hear music from medieval Romania.”

“Are you kidding?” David said, “Medieval Romanian music is all I listen to.”

“And Russian Orthodox chants?”

“All about the chants.”

“You’re very cute,” she told him.

Her hair, the way it swept along her back like a black river, like… David was not a poet.

“You don’t strike me as a Purcell kind of person,” she murmured, touching her chin while she gazed at an album cover.

“Not everyone can be.”

“I think we can just walk you back to Smashing Pumpkins.”

“You listen to Smashing Pumpkins?” David said.

“What did you think I listened to?”

Her eyes and open lips waited for him to speak, and David said, “Well….. you’re a classy lady. So like…”

“Classy lady music?”

“Yeah. Like…. I really don’t know my music.”

Then David laughed and shook his head.

“I am…. Not good today.”

“Not good at hitting on me?”

“God, you’re….. You’re seeing through me a little bit.”

“Yeah,” she said, “Tell me about it at lunch.”

David grinned at her.

“Tanitha,” she said. “Tanitha Tzepesh. Spelled with a T, but sounds like Zepesh.”

“That’s an interesting name.”

“I think it’s Romanian.”

“You’re… Your father’s Romanian.”

“My family’s a lot of things, but since you’re trying to find a way to figure out these eyes and this face—”

“No!”

“White men are very transparent. And since you’re probably wondering if all this hair is mine—”

“Stop!”

“You stop,” Tanitha almost purred, seeming very unfazed by him, “You may have guessed that my family comes from many places. Now, we’ve patronized this kind man’s store, so why don’t I buy this CD for you, and you buy me lunch, and we can talking about everything else over a nice meal?”





“So, this is the one thing I know,” David spread his hands over the food. “Music, not so much. But food.”

“Indian was a good choice,” Tanitha said, lifting the large piece of naan and tearing it in two before dipping it in the chutney.

“I come from up in Lassador, and they have all these Middle Eastern restaurants. Lebanese mostly. I never tried them when I was growing up and so, finally, when I was living in Michigan, I did. I went a couple of times and I realized something.”

“Which is?”

“If it’s not King Gyro and those little spinach pies, I’m not sure I’m that interested. I also learned that to me, Middle Eastern food if just Indian food they forgot to add the flavor too.”

Tanitha covered her mouth, laughing, then said, “I’ll make sure to only whisper that next time we pass the Lebanese place of Calhoun Street.”

“Maybe they’ll prove me wrong,” David said, scooping up more rice and the red butter sauce on his fork.

“Possibly.”

“We can figure that out on our next date.”

Tanitha blinked at him

“That was very forward of me,” David noted. “Also, are we on a date?”

“Let’s call it a date,” Tanitha decided, spearing a particularly tasty piece of chicken.

“And now, why don’t you tell me how you got here?”

“To Glencastle?”

“Well, I know how you got to to this restaurant, David, so yes.”

“I ah… I’m a detective. Not like a Sherlock Holmes one, but a police detective. And I was working in Lassador and got burnt out.”

“I can imagine Lassador would burn you out.”

David nodded.

“You familiar with it?”

“It’s the nearest big city, so yes.”

“The crime is bigger than the city,” David said.

“Watching the news makes me shake my head and be grateful to live here.”

“And I was up to my neck in it. Day after day.”

David grey quiet and, elbows on the table. He folded his hands.

“The truth is I had a break down. A serious breakdown..”

Tanitha made no noise. She said nothing. She just nodded and looked at him… not even with sympathy.

“I commited myself. I was in a psych ward. I needed to get better. I had seen too much. And then I came here.”

When Tanitha said nothing, David smiled and said, “So now you know I’m crazy.”

“I know you’ve seen things,” is what she said. “And that you had the sense to know your limits. There’s nothing crazy about that, David. And it would be evil of me to mock it.”

David Lawry felt chastened at the same time he felt respected.

“The only thing I feel bad about,” David admitted, “is I was so ashamed… of losing my mind… I was seeing someone, seeing the woman next door. And I just ran away. I never spoke to her or explained anything. That doesn’t sit right with me.”

“Then make it right,” Tanitha said.

“You mean go to Lassador?”

“Yes.”

“And tell her I’m sorry?”

“Yes.”

David nodded after a moment.

“It’s sort of one of the only things I’ve thought about.”





Before they parted, Tanitha frankly asked, “What’s your number?”

As David told her, she took out her phone and dialed it, and David’s phone began ringing. He pulled it from his side pocket.

“And now you know that is me,” she said. “So when you’ve apologized to this woman, then you can call me up and let me know how it went.”



David Lawry did not want to get ahead of himself, it was only that, as he went back through his memory he could not remember a time he had been in love before, a time when he had looked with anticipation to picking up the phone and calling someone. That night, when he returned home he even felt a little foolish for this, wondering if the afternoon had been a dream, of if he had imagined something with this woman, this TANITHA that had not really been, but he sat on his couch, eager and nervous, feet pulled under him and he called her, and almost instantly she answered, and there was that voice, light and deep at once, welcoming.

“David!”

“Tan… Tanitha.”

“Tan,” she said. “I like it. I like it when you call me that.”

“I thought it was too forward.”

“No.”

“I mean, I don’t really like most people calling me Dave.”\”

“Well, you aren’t a Dave. Not really. You’re definitely a David.”

“That’s what I keep telling people.”

“Ah,” she said, “but what you called to tell me…?”

“Is… I did go up to Lassador. I did it. It was good. To say what a nut I’d been, how sorry I was, how ashamed I was, and that was why I left. She was good about it.”

“Do you think you all will get back together.”

“Uh… “David said, remembering his time with Claire, but choosing not to dwell on the memory, “it wasn’t that kind of relationship. I’m not sure it was…. Founded in health.”

Tanitha laughed pleasantly, “I’ve had a few of those.”

“Besides…. I did it so I could tell you I did it….. so we could go out again.”

“Well!”

“I mean I needed to make things right with Claire, and you really seemed to want me to.”

“I did. I wouldn’t have gone out with you if you hadn’t.”

“But you will go out with me now?”

“I certainly will.”

“And this time a proper date. One at night.”

“Oh,” Tanitha laughed so deep in her throat it was almost a gurgle, “Night is my favorite time.”


HAVE AN EXCELLENT WEEKEND

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! I am glad Dave ran into Tanitha and is going to make things right with Clare. It seemed like that chat with Tanitha really helped. I hope he sees her again. Excellent writing as always and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, all I can say to what you said is : "Yes. Yes. Yes."

 

[ChrisGibson]

WELCOME TO ANOTHER WEEK

Sunny woke up long enough to be aware of his surrounding, be glad of them, and go back to sleep. The open window, the whir of the air conditioner and the soft blanket made the perfect weather, and he hugged the pillow as he pressed his body against Nehru’s and his back into Brad, feeling the tall man’s arm encompass them both.

He had worked late last night. They all had, and so he knew there would be no getting up early this morning. Sometimes you just wanted this: sleep and closeness. Despite what Sunny had thought of Ohio, these days he was glad he had come.

As he had told David, and David had learned, Sunny was not the kind of person to sit around thinking about doing a thing when he could just do it. While he had read Dan’s journal, he looked for work, but it was early on when Daniel said something about 4848 Brummel that Sunny realized:

“They’re here.”

The vampires were right here, or at least some of them were. He even had an address. He found Brummel Street and rode his motorcycle up and down it, unable to find 4848. But that was what Dan’s journal had said. Ah, but this was unhelpful. It was like writing that the Easter Bunny lived in an invisiblbe house on Fill in the Blank Lane, and then going to that street, seeing no house and saying, well there’s your proof.

Sunny had parked the bike, and and gone walking up and down Brummel as if that would help matters. Traveling slower would show him the house. It didn’t and he rode back to Dave’s apartment, but Dave was at work.

Work? Well, he needed to work, and if he worked here, then he wouldn’t meet the people who had changed Dan or killed Blake. No, these folks here, in a house he couldn’t find, seemed to be Dan’s friends, seemed to be against this Rosamunde and her group. Dan had awaken in Stenger and Stengers in Germantown. The murders had occurred at the university a mile or two up the road from there. The people he was looking for, they were in Lassador. So that was where he would work, and he would get out of David’s hair, not that David complained, but he had certainly not planned to have a twenty two year old beach bum living with him.

He and Dave had gone up to Rawlston and that night His Daughter Charlie was playing bluegrass and while they drank, Nehru said, “Well, Dan’s gone for a while.”

“Where?”

Nehru shrugged.

“He does his thing. We haven’t seen him in weeks. You can stay in his place if you wish.”

“I’d say you could work here,” Brad said, “but people should never work where they shit—“

“Isn’t that—“

“Trust me,” Brad said, “I know what I mean. Port Royal down the street needs a server if you’d like. I’ll call the manager, it would your’s by the end of the day.”

“How much is the apartment?” Sunny wondered.

“Get this, guy,” Brad said. “Dan’s paid up till next year, so I guess that means for you it’s free.”



So he would not work in Lassador, but this was close, and he preferred Rawlston anyway. His very first night at Port Royal he’d returned to the apartments over the Grey Note as the place was shutting down. Nehru was already upstairs, and the clippers were out.

“I cut my son’s hair,” he said.

Taking his hand through his thick golden locks and lifting them up, Sunny said, “Do you think you could cut mine, too? Maybe?”

And so, patiently, slowly, Nehru had cut off Sunny’s hair and was buzzing it when Brad came up, stretched, yawned and said, “It’s nice you have your own place, but why don’t we all take a shower and go to bed like a junior back of sardines?”



In the dark semi morning they laughed and whispered while they made love.

“Mustn’t get too loud for the kid…. “

“But he’s no stranger to noise. No need to be soooo quiet.”



Sunny called home to let his mother know he’d found a place. He called her every night. After all, each was all the other had. He had reported to her that he was gay now, that he’d found this and it was easier than anything else, truer. The bit about vampires he kept to himself.

“I think I’ll just stay out here for a while. Our here its nicer than I thought,” he said. “And I need a change.”

“You think you’ll be gone long?” she kept her voice neutral. She had missed her son, but she wasn’t the kind of person who wouldn’t want him to have his adventures.

“Not too long,” he told her. “No matter what happens.”

As much as he loved his mother, and as open as they were, he said nothing about his sex life, and he certainly said nothing about the nights he spent in Brad and Nehru’s bed. He didn’t really know how to talk about it. Sex was never fun to him. The word fun was lighthearted. It was for sitcoms and foosball. The level of naked intensity which he’d always encountered in the bedroom, but especially with other men and definitely now with these two, was the opposite of lighthearted. Their words were lighthearted, their invitations, the way Brad and Nehru conducted their lives and opened up their home to hospitality. But their discussions about life, about poetry or music, philosophy or politics, were rarely lighthearted and what took place in the night, hands clasped, bodies shaking, perspiration dripping down the forehead, making a line for the nose, finding the place of absolute O, intense bliss in the other, was nothing like lighthearted.

Early one morning, while the kid slept in the room down the hall, the three of them lay shaking, chests heaving, sweat drying from their bodies, gently caressing each other in the wake of one climax and on the way to another.

“I feel like…” Nehru murmured while Sunny lay in his arms, “every time we do this, we’re discovering something. It’s like reaching a place I’ve never been before.”

Sunny did not ask what that place was as Nehru stroked the waves of his now short hair. His eyes followed the hair up Brad’s chest, watched Brad looking up at the ceiling in a daze, smoke from his cigarette rising from his volcanic nostrils.

“Why name it?” Brad whispered as if reading his mind. “If Columbus had just discovered San Salvador instead of trying to call it India and giving it a story, America would be a very different place.”

Deep inside Sunny, his ass ached from Brad, and his orgasm had come with Nehru. When Nehru stroked him, it moved all through his cells, and when Brad spoke, it seemed to rumble in his rectum.

“So what… if everytime we fuck we go to a different country?” Brad said.

“We fuck it up in the naming.”



Sunny agreed with that because he knew he had come here for a reason, and yet every day he went to work at Port Royal and every night he came back to this apartment showing no signs of learning anything more about Blake’s killers. Indeed the whole idea of Blake began to fade, and Dan—who was off on tour—seemed to be a distant memory, a story, really.

Brad and Nehru were open people. They always invited, never forced, and many nights were asleep or still downstairs when Sunny came home. Tonight they were up and Sunny showered and came over and then, as if they were any lovers, they stripped and went to bed falling into sleep, and Nehru said, “We should say a prayer or light incense or something.”

“Prayer’s good,” Sunny said. “I was never into it. I never got religion.”

“Well, I think prayer is good too,” Brad said, “but I think Nehru’s talking about that kid they found near Germantown.”

“In Lassador?”

“Yeah,” Brad said, turning on his side.

“He was only about twenty-three, I think,” Nehru said. “Throat crushed.”

“I heard no blood.”

“From where,” Nehru asked Brad.

As Sunny went rigid Brad said, “I can’t remember—”

“Probably heard it from one of those strung out fuckers in His Daughter Charlie.”

“Maybe,” Brad allowed, waking from his half sleep. “But if it’s true then that means the Vampire Killer’s back.”

“Well fuck vampires and fuck vampire killers,” Nehru said and turned to go to sleep.

But Sunny could not sleep.





I am a forester of this land
As you may plainly see,
It's the mantle of your maidenhead
That I would have from thee.






“Ohhhh!.... Ohhhh! Oh, my God! Oh my God. Fuck! Fucccck!”

The bedroom window opened to unmown grass and a half empty parking lot, a safe space for screaming. Sunny had been gripping the window ledge, but gave up and simply laid over it, moaning and shouting while Brad fucked him.





He's taken her by the milk-white hand,
And by the leylan sleeve,
He's lain her down upon her back
And asked no man's leave.



With me roo-run-rority ri-run-rority ri-no-ority-an.



At first he’d worried about the kid on the other side of the apartment, what he would hear, but if Brad didn’t care, if Nehru only lay half awake and half interested, he’d take it. He’s asked for this. He had lain tenderly curled in Brad’s arms just a half hour agp, and Brad had been stroking his hair, kissing him, telling him he seemed troubled, asking what he could do.

“Fuck the shit out of me,” Sunny said. “Be rough as possible.”

He knew at first Brad was reluctant. Brad was a tender lover, a tender man, someone who made love alongside his husband while they sang to you.



He rode and she ran
A long summer day,
Until they came by the river
That's commonly called the Tay.



It had taken a while to get here, where he lay against the window and Brad, tongue between his lips, grasped his hips and kept slamming into him like a piston. When Brad finally came, Sunny turned around and they had a gentler sex on the carpet beneath the window, and then Sunny shuddered and sighed while whatever had been deep in him rumbled out and spilled across Brad’s chest.

“I needed that,” he murmured. “God knows I needed that.”


MORE LATER

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! Sunny sure is enjoying his new home. I am glad he has made friends and getting by the looks of it great sex. Sorry I didn’t get to this portion till now. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Don't be sorry. It just means I don't have to post tonight. And apparently, I turned around and went back to sleep

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT SUNNY HAS A CLOSE BRUSH WITH DANGER THAT YIELDS NEW ADVENTURE....
The sun on his back and then heating up half his body, he rode to Glencastle that afternoon. Part of him thought about riding through Lassador, but he was very much on a mission, and besides that, Sunny was sure he would see Lassador soon enough.

When he arrived at the police department, David actually embraced him.

“You look different,” Sunny said, sitting down. And then he said, “You met someone.”

David blushed, “Maybe. But that’s not why you came.”

“It’s not,” Sunny said.

“You heard about the guy who was killed.”

“I did. I just want to know—”

“Bloodless, toothmarks, and its all being kept under wraps.”

“Shit,” Sunny murmured.

“Yeahhh.”

Sunny nodded and David said, “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

“Whaddo you mean?”

“You came all this way—”

“And you told me to stay out of it.”

“But I don’t know if you can,” David said. “I don’t know if you have it in you.”

“Well,” Sunny said after some silence, “Do you have a plan?”

“My plan would be to find Dan again, but you said his group was on tour.”

“Yeah.”

“He goes on tour the moment you move in. That is….”

“Bullshit.”

“I was going to say convenient.”

“It’s something,” Sunny said, sinking low in his seat. His asshole ached. It throbbed from Brad and he flexed, enjoying the pulsing ache.

“I’m about to go to lunch,” David said. “I’ll treat you.”

Sunny knew that David would try to talk him out of doing anything. Sunny had very little idea of what he would do, but he knew that should an idea come, he’d have to go through with it.





Sunny was off work early that night, and earlier he’d gotten a call from Nehru asking if he was coming home. Nehru of the tender voice and tender hands. Nehru who was more than the other half of Brad, who made him feel such things simply by speaking. Sunny longed to go to him and the apartment and join the company that he and Brad so openly made for him. But he knew the feeling that had been upon him all day could not go away until he did what he found himself doing, which was going in the opposite direction of the Blue Note and the Expressway, and heading west, where Rawlston petered out and an almost countryside began, where there were long, split level houses and subdivisions with no sidewalks and kind quiet people and where, when he turned south on Bancroft Road, he soon enough knew he was back in Lassador.

By the time he’d crossed the bridge into downtown he knew he’d been on the road a long time, probably close to an hour and he had the old leaded feeling this city gave him. He wished he’d taken the expressway, except he would never have known where to get off. Here were the tall almost abandoned buildings, the shadow of the Amtrak station in the background, and now he was coming down Buren and turning into Germantown. Taller than the houses were the old factories and taller than them was the hulking shadow of a spired church. At last he rumbed up to Hall Street, with a McDonalds and Burger King down the road, where the steps to the huge church lead up to great doorways like caves, and Sunny parked, putting his keys in his pockets, glad to be on his feet again, glad to be, at last, where he had vowed to be.

Now that he was here, he wasn’t sure what to do. Later he would wonder if what he was doing was offering up himself. In the most normal of times, being on Hall Street past midnight, just walking up and down it, was a dangerous enterprise. He left the broad street and went walking along Dimler, past the other building that must have belonged to the church. There was the school. Maybe that right there was the convent.

And then he heard the scream. He was torn between terror and joy. It did not ring through the night. It exploded, done nearly as soon as it began. Slowly, Sunny resolved to go in its direction, not to run—that would be foolish—but to approach it quickly, for foolish or not, this is why he had come. Even as he traveled in the direction of the scream, he thought how he had never asked Dan the best way to face these people, and of course, Dan would have said: no way at all. When Sunny asked himself if he was sure which direction the scream had come from, he knew he was trying to make himself fail, and the refusal to fail brought him to where a dark haired man sped around rhe corner and nearly crashed into him.

“Excuse me!” he said, staring at Sunny.

Sunny, momentarily shocked, shook his head.

“I heard a scream,” he said.

“Yes,” the man said. His face changed. He seemed almost Sunny’s age, a boy really, and he looked mildly troubled.

“You heard it?”

Sunny nodded.

“I didn’t think anyone would hear me.”

“It was you.”

“I…” the dark haired boy hung his head, trying to laugh. “I’m embarrassed to admit it was me.”

“Who were you running from?” Sunny said, And, “We should probably get off this street.”

“Yes,” the boy said. “Yes, you’re right. Where were you coming from?”

“Hall Street,” Sunny pointed up the quiet tree lined block they were on to traffic lights in the distance.

The boy nodded and they began walking toward the late night bustle.

“By the way,” the young man said, “I’m Gabriel.”

“Sunny,” Sunny offered.

“You’re out late,” Gabriel said. “Like me. I guess you could say we were both looking for trouble.”

“I probably was,” Sunny admitted.

“Yeah,” Gabriel went on in his light voice. “I can’t get to mad. After all, it’s almost like anyone up this late is looking for trouble.”

“I was trying to figure out what happened to a friend,” Sunny said, taking a chance. After all, if Gabriel had just screaming for no reason, or for a reason different from what Sunny sought, then he was still no closer to what he was looking for.

“He died in an odd way. Killed out here. A few other guys our age were killed like that, and a few days ago, someone else was killed like that around here, too. So… since the last time these folks went around taking guys from the same area, I thought maybe if I looked here…”

“You think those guys were going to kill me?” Gabriel’s eyes went wide.

At the same time Sunny was scared for Gabriel, he was glad to be on the right track.

“Yeah, Gabriel, I think they were.”

“I… They had me against a wall, and… this is the weird thing… It was like this asshole was trying to bite my neck.”

There it was. Sunny would never have said it outloud. He would have been taken as a nutjob. But Gabriel had said it, and Sunny said, “Those are the tolks, and I’ve learned a little bit about them. I’d like to get as close to them as possible so I can stop them.”

“Sunny, that’s really stupid.”

Gabriel looked straight at Sunny. They were coming closer to Hall Street now.

“These people are… dangerous. You don’t want to get closer to them.”

“I do,” Sunny said. “I want to get close as I can.”

“So you can do… what?” Gabriel looked at him seriously.

“So I can…”

“Look,” the dark haired boy said, “where’s your car?”

“That bike over there is my car.”

“That’s… beautiful actually. But how about you put it in my truck and I take you home. For the good turn you did me. Maybe you can even fill me in on what you know and I… can dissuade you.”

When Gabriel said it seriously, Sunny was moved, and also tired of driving, but the way in which Gabriel looked at him made Sunny think what a goodlooking guy he was.

“I live in Rawlston.”

“I don’t live nearly that far,” Gabriel said. “I’d be glad to take you home, but… you’re welcome to say with me tonight.”

Sunny felt closer than he ever had to getting what he wanted, and there was an open invitation in Gabriel’s eyes.

In a moment they had loaded his bike into the bed of the truck, and the fear of the night both of them seemed to have, melted in the cab, hands in each other’s hair, the two boys made out until Sunny whispered in his ear, “Take me to your place.”

MORE SOON

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! Just what I needed. Sunny is looking for trouble but I am glad all he found was Gabriel. He sounds like an interesting character. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was a great portion! Just what I needed. Sunny is looking for trouble but I am glad all he found was Gabriel. He sounds like an interesting character. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

And it looks like he may have helped someone else out. I'll be posting tomorrow night, and we'll see what comes of this new thing.

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT A CHANGE IS GONNA COME

Gabriel only lived a few blocks away in a stylish modern apartment on a quiet little street where there seemed to be no danger at all. Gabriel was easy to talk to. Sunny opened up to him about everything, life in California, the Marines and how he had loved his friend Blake who was quiet and calm and now that he thought about it, most likely gay. He talked about how he had crossed the country, yes, looking for what had happened to hi friend, but also because there was something he was missing, and he didn’t know what it was. Sunny loved Brad and Nehru, but he had never been able to tell them everything. Brad had just texted, and Sunny replied that he was safe. For their own safety, and Dan’s, he had said nothing about the journals and now, with Grabriel, who had been pursued by the same thing he sought, Sunny opened up about Dan, his journals and David, and Gabriel shook his head, looking afraid, but had said, “I want to not believe. But after what I’ve seen, I sort of have to.”
Gabriel had half a bottle of wine and a little bit of pot, and after both were consumed, they began making out on the sofa and all the fear and tightness that had been in Sunny rolled away. Gabriel took him by the hand and led him to the messy bedroom of a twenty something who, even now, pulling off his sweater and unbuckling the belt to his jeans, hadn’t planned on bringing anyone back tonight.
“Oh, God,” Gabriel murmured.
They were good to each other. Sunny was a tender kisser and now their tongues touched and for the longest time they stood half dressed in each other’s arms, kissing gently, hands lowering to caress each other before at last they went to the bed and began slowly to undress. There was no hurry. It had been late when they met and was later now, and no one had to be anywhere.
The gentle lovemaking grew fiercer, and it was different from being with Nehru and Brad who were almost like teachers or older siblings. Part of him wondered if he was cheating on them. No, but that was foolish. They would want him to find his own happiness. And maybe Gabriel was it. This was how it was with Jack or Mitch, another boy, just learning, a mirror image of embraces, kisses, shocked entrances and raptures that lasted through the rest of the night. Perhaps the energy of the sex came from the joy of being left alive when so many had not been. When Sunny thought they were done, they began again, and then again and then again, and now they lay together in the bed heaving, Sunny on his back and Gabriel on his side, curled close to him.
“Oh, Sunny,” Gabriel murmured, stroking his hair, and kissing him softly, encircled by Sunny’s arms. Gabriel was so warm, so comfortable and so smooth that for a moment Sunny completely missed the next thing he said:
“I was thinking about killing you, but I’m glad I didn’t.”
By the time Alexander Kominsky understood what Gabriel had said, the young, dark haired man, the warm and beautiful boy he was lying with said, “It is, in my mind, the biggest crime to waste blood, and I had already eaten, hence the scream. So I wondered what to do with you. Letting you go wasn’t an option, no. And then you knew too much. But the thing is, you see the thing is, you have heart, Alexander Kominsky, you’re a real prince.”
Sunny was gauging how long it would take for him to get to the door and out of the apartment, and thinking these were probably not real options, but instead he said:
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about what you need to understand now and forever,” Gabriel’s voice had become only a little firmer.
“What we just did was no joke. I wanted us to make love. I wanted it. Just like you. I…. it’s stupid to say I’m in love with you—as stupid as it would be for you to try to run,” Gabriel said as a very firm grip, a throat crushing grip came to Sunny’s neck.
“You’re here because you don’t belong in the mortal world. You belong with us. You will be,” Gabriel said, “with us.”
Parts of Dan’s journal went through Sunny’s mind. Rosamunde, and the seduction of the bed, and why had he managed to forget those things, and he wasn’t terrified while Gabriel kissed him gently. He almost invited the mouth sucking on his throat that had sucked on his throat before. He would have been embarrassed to start screaming and running, only he had no idea how much the bite would hurt, or how, when it began to hurt it was because he was already half drained, or of the strange burning, through his arteries and veins of this new fluid or of the coming weakness, the heaviness, in Gabriel’s surprisingly strong arms, and at last… the darkness.




They lay face to face, side by side, still almost touching. Beyond the heavy curtains of David Lswry’s bedroom, the first traces of morning could be seen.

“The first time,” David almost whispered.

“First time?” Tanitha sounded sleepy. Her sleepiness made him drowsy too.

“That you have stayed till dawn.”

David yawned as he smiled, and Tanitha smiled too, pressing her back to him, burying her face in her pillow, as his fingers lightly tangled themselves in the wealth of her dark hair.

“Well, I imagine,” her voice came muffled from the pillow, “this calls for some celebration.”

David wasn’t sure how serious she was, but because she had come closer, he drew closer.

“I suppose we could go out for breakfast if—”

“Either one of us felt like getting up and getting dressed to go to breakfast?”

“Yes,” David admitted. “There is that.”

“Or,” Tanitha continued, “we could cook breakfast here—”

“If either one of us was a cook.”

Tanitha turned around stretching, thrusting her arms out like a cat.

“I’ll have you know I am a very good cook.”

“You are?”

“Just not when I don’t have to be. And certainly not at seven in the morning.”

Some time passed, and beyond the curtain there was a hard orange glow to the sunrise.

“I was afraid,” David said.

Before Tanitha could ask of what, he said, “Of being with you.

“Being with anyone, really,” he continued while she turned to look at him.

“It has been so long. And… my confidence hasn’t been where it was.”

Tanitha never spoke to fill space, but her eyes said everything, and David nodded to the only poster on his wall.

“The knight,” Tanitha acknowledged.

“Sir Lancelot,” David said, “who I admit I don’t know much about. Just… He looks a bit like me, reminds me of me. How I’d like to be. Protecting people. Dashing. Kind of a hero.”

“I think,” Tanitha spoke slowly, her hand, delicate and deeply bronze, caressing his very long fingers, “that is exactly what you are. A good man, with the gentlest touch.”

“I lost my mind, Tan,” David said. “Last year I went crazy. My mind cracked, and I feel so fragile, more fragile than I ever felt before. When I fell on my face and started screaming there was nothing heroic about that.”

He was surprised when suddenly Tanitha began to laugh. It was not loud, and somehow, it was not mean. It was low in her throat and continued one and on and finally she said, “You should read…. You should read more. Or know more, at least.”

“Eh?”

“Lancelot loses his mind.”

“What?”

“The greatest knight in his world, when his world grew to much he lost his mind. But he did not have the grace or sense to check himself into a hospital, he just went mad and ran around howling in the forest for years and years.”

David propped himself on his elbow, listening.

“Eventually, through the love of others, he regained his mind, and lost the shame he had.”

“I never… I never heard that story.”

While David sat up, still thinking, Tanitha turned around and pressed herself deeper into the blankets, and into his arms.

“You should read more,” she said.

MORE NEXT WEEK

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion and change certainly did come! Gabriel certainly turned out to have a big surprise for Sunny. I am enjoying this story a lot and it never fails to surprise me. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes, well let Gabriel teach us all a thing or two about trusting people we meet running out of alleys at one in the morning