Here, In This Place

[ChrisGibson]

Sunny was going to say that he could easily follow him, but he knew what Crane wanted, and he wanted it too. They climbed inside of his very expensive car and in the belly of its rich interior, the silently sped down Rawlston Road back in Lassador. As they whizzed down the road, passing other cars and trucks, Crane not only never took his eyes off the road, put placed his hand on Sunny’s thigh, and Sunny, who felt himself stirring, cleared his throat, and then placed his hand on Crane’s knee. As Crane’s hand went up, it was like he dared Sunny to do the same, and by the time the car was at breakneck speed and shops and strip malls, new style churches and stretches of country road were only blurs, Sunny was gazing at the roof of the car, his eyes rolled back in his head while Crane worked him, and he pumped up and down on Crane in return. He thought about going to his knees for him, thought about how trashy that was, how he’d done far too much, wondered, as Crane’s fingers slipped down and made his eyes cross, where was the boundary of decency, and then gave way to the things the man was doing to him and let his hand rest limp between his driver’s thighs,

They drove through the north until they dipped south in an area Sunny knew nothing about, and then, in the deep night, they stopped at a truly desolute set of apartments across the street and entangled with a trailer park on one side and run down houses on the other.

“Stickney Avenue,” Crane said as they fastended their pants and he climbed out of the car, and rounding the door to let Sunny out.

Again came that curious feeling he was having a lot these days, where something that used to mean something no longer did. Like this was easily an area where he would have assumed he’d be taking his life in his hands to walk through, and yet now, as he passed crowds of hooded and hostile kids, he felt nothing.

“Listen,” Crane put a dinger to his lips, and he almost smiled. He was enjoying himself. “You have to listen.”

The hunger in him had turned into lust and excitement and even romance. He longed for Crane to touch him the way he had, he wanted to please him too. He was listening now, but by the time he heard it, he was following Crane, and he realized that no one could see them. They absorbed all light, and they were coming to an alley where five kids were kicking one into the ground.

“Show his ass,” the white girl leading them was saying. “Show is ass.”

She was gleeful and her hair was swinging, and the four boys were kicking the one on the ground over and over and then, just like that, Crane was there, and he had taken the girl and spun her around, and her eyes flew open and he lunged on her throat and the other’s screamed, running off. Sunny watched, at a loss while they all ran away, and by the time he really understood what had happened, the girl was dead in Crane’s arms, and the boy was still laying on the ground, hand over his head, bleeding.


Crane lowered the girl to ground and ran the back of his hand across this mouth.

“Alexander, my friend. What you just did is what the kids call an epic fail. Four people just got away.”

Crane was taking his phone out and he was saying, “I’m not reprimanding you, but that’s why you need a teacher.”

He stopped talking to report the beaten boy and the dead girl, and then hung up.

“I’ve never seen it done, and I just… you just killed her.”

“She was the ringleader. She would have gone on being a ringleader. That’s why I sought her. The others will drift into whatever foolishness they do. Maybe that’s why you let them go.”

Still talking like a teacher, Crane said, “In another time you would look at this boy and offer him the Gift, or you might simply kill him and finish the inevitable. But he is not as close to dying as he looks, so we wait for the police.”

Crane knelt down and put his hand on the boys head, whispering some words, then he said, “Well, we don’t wait for the police, Obviously. Come,” he said.

In the backrground they could hear a siren and Crane said, not terribly firmly or even a little worried, “Come.”

That night he taught Sunny, who was becoming more hungry, about listening for voices. They climbed up the side of a building and Sunny was surprised to learn he could climb like a spider. On the roof, under the moon, and amidst barking dogs and troubled sleep, he heard all manner of thoughts and finally his thoughts took him three buildings away where he saw a man crawling up a trellis. He didn’t do it with nearly the easy Crane and Sunny had crawled to this roof and Sunny could hear him saying:

“… Get that bitch. Teach that bitch to talk that way to me. Give her eighty year old cunt the shock of its’ life… Never see it coming. She’ll fucking feel it. If my dick doesn’t fuck her to death my knife will…”

“What are you waiting for?” Crane said.

Sunny Kominsky nodded. He vaulted from the roof of the apartment two buildings away. Even as the man’s fingertips touched the window ledge, Sunny, like a hawk, lit upon him and pulled him into the darkness, sinking his fangs into the fleshy throat. As they tumbled to the ground, the man made only the slight “oof” as strong fangs crushed his throat and Sunnys mouth, his own throat, the soft tissue of the inside of his mouth that was a small barrier between the blood vessels, filled with rich, evil blood, filled all of him, sent him singing. He clung to the man, bucking and bobbing. It felt like fucking. But at the moment near coming, Crane was there, beside him.

“No,” he said. “Loosen your grip, loosen, release your lower jaw.”

Sunny did, and as his body rocketed in climax, he felt a liquid spurting from his fangs, from his mouth, gloriously, and when it was done, he sank to his knees exhausted, with the body.

While Sunny knelt in a daze, Crane’s hand on his shoulder, the elder drinker explained, “That is ichor. The ichor is that by which we live and live forever, but in the end it must be replenished by human blood, which once it was. When we kill, when blood is restored in us, then the old ichor floods out. If it floods into the one we kill, he will become one of us, and that must not happen. If it floods out, it will dry quickly and leave no sign of itself.

“The ichor… makes us live forever, but it must be replenished every day? That makes no sense.”

“As time passes, it must be replenished less and less. A drinker of a sufficient age need hardly kill at all, but at this point, for you, it must be replenished nearly every day.

“I feel amazing.”

“Of course you do. You are a killer who has learned to kill.”

“What time is it?”

“Not quite four. The night isn’t young, but it isn’t entirely old.”

“I need to go back to Rawlston, to my apartment, to my friends.”

Crane nodded, standing up and holding out his hand courteously, as if a dead body were not stretched out before them.

“Let’s go.”

MORE SOON

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion! I am glad Sunny ran into Crane. He needed some help with his new life I think. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

All the ride back, Crane had set to the same thing as he had on the way there, his hand expertly working Sunny, its actions becoming more and more intense as the car accelated. Out the windows the strip malls and dullness rolled by and then disappeared as Sunny bucked in his seat and eyes rolled to the whizzing stars seen from the skylight over head, he moaned, then screamed, surprised to give up control, feeling his seed shoot out and out as his cock was grasped in Crane’s hand.
He came down slowly, amazed by the galaxy of his semen spurted over the dashboard and glove compartment of the expensive car. Crane, driving on, didn’t care, and half exhausted, shame all gone, Sunny slipped to his knees in the speeding car, and as Crane opened his legs, he unbuttoned his trousers, and with a relief, took his cock, large and thick, deep into his mouth. He sucked and sucked with quiet joy as they drove on in the night.

They came up the stairs slowly, kissing, their hands wrapped around each other’s necks, and they came into Sunny’s apartment like that, and then he said, “Can you wait a moment?”
“I can wait several moments,” Crane said.
Sunny kissed him and then went down the hall, stopped himself from knocking, and simply walked into Brad and Nehru’s apartment.
Nehru began screaming in a high pitch he refused to be embarrassed about later, and threw his arms around Sunny while Brad threw his arms around the both of them.
“David’s not here,” Nehru said.
“David? Why would he be?”
“You have no idea how worried we’ve been.”
“Maybe you do?” Brad said.
“Yes. That’s exactly why I came here as soon as I could.”
“David’s been staying in your room, but I think he’s with his girlfriend tonight,” Brad was saying as he went back into the kitchen. “I’ll make us a pot of coffee.”
“No,” Sunny said.
“Huh?”
“I have to get back,” Sunny said.
“Get back to where?” Brad said from the kitchen.
“Where I’ve been,” Sunny said lamely, “for the last few days. And back pretty soon, but I swear, in a few days I’ll be back.”
Brad was saying something, but Sunny saw the look on Nehru’s face and Nehru drew him into a dark corner of the living room.
“Alexander,” he said, almost sadly, holding Sunny’s face.
“What, Nehru?”
And he felt that curious feeling that he would never really feel again, save in the presence of a witch, the feeling of being seen, fully, by someone who was not a drinker.
With no fear, intimately, Nehru slipped a finger into Sunny’s mouth, and he nodded as it passed over a canine tooth that was much too long.
Sunny looked away from him.
“How did you…” Sunny began. “You read the journals. David…”
Nehru said nothing.
Sunny turned to him.
“I’m still the same,” he insited.
“No,” Nehru said. “I doubt that. But you’re still Sunny, and whatever you need, we are here for it.”
They were holding each other when Brad came back.
“Is it true?” Brad whispered.
Nehru nodded.
“Fuck.”
They were silent, and then Brad said:
“Well…. Whatever. It takes all kinds, right?”
At that Sunny burst into laughing and crying.
“Takes all kinds?”
“Yeah.”
“Look,” Sunny said, wiping his face, “Look, you guys are in danger if I don’t get back there. I’m going to get away from these assholes and then I’ll tell you everything. I made a friend tonight, and he’s probably going to help me, So… I love you guys but I gotta go.”
Brad gave him half a carton of cigarettes and said, “It’s not like it’s gonna kill you.
Back in his apartment, Sunny gathered clothes, and Crane said, “There isn’t really time for us. Not right now.”
“No,” Sunny put his hand in Crane’s.
“No, goddamn it, there isn’t. Maybe there shouldn’t be. I’ve been very free with my favors this year.”
“Really?”
“The two guys I just talked to? I sleep with them. I slept with a few people on my way here, one of my best friends before I left. And the last person I went to be with turned me into this.”
“Well, the world isn’t Sunday school and a free spirit should take as many lovers as he wishes.”
Sunny stood up and yanked a book bag over his shoulder.
“I was beginning to feel like a slut.”
“Put that word of our your mind. You are Aluka! Il bevitore di sangue! You leap through the air and deal death and bring life. You are a blood drinker. Such petty things have no place in your mind.”
Gabriel’s mad declaration rang through his mind when Crane said this, but Crane’s words filled him with strength, not the fear of madness.
“Will I have a place in your mind?” Sunny asked. “Will you wait for me?”
Crane kissed him lightly, and his dragonish eyes took Sunny in. A moment ago he had sounded like Gabriel, but there was little of the human in Crane’s face now.
“You and I, Alexander,” Crane said. “When I come for you,” he cupped Sunny’s buttocks, “we will be great lovers, Alexander. You. And I?”
They parted outside of the Blue Note, Crane headed for the expressway while Sunny headed down Rawlston Road. In his life he had felt many things, and in much of his life he had felt several feelings after or before sex. But tonight, as we went back to the people he despised and prepared to seal himself in a coffin till the next night, he felt what he couldn’t ever remember feeling before.
Sunny Kominsky felt that he was in love.


Orlando was walking up and down the living room, his heels clacking against the hardwood floor, and Chris Ashby was feeling what he rarely felt. Nerves. Impatience. As the dark skinned dark haired blood drinker, a magnificent, broad chested and high buttocked figure walked back and forth across the parqueted floor, Chris, tall, blond, pale, large nosed, larged eyed, with hard solid features turned to his dark shadow and closest friend, Lawrence Malone, the handsome Irish-Italian with his mildly sticky out ears and occasionally monkeyish expressions. The blue eyed and grey eyed men eyed Orlando and then each other, and Orlando continued:
“I have yet to reach Tanitha. I have heard nothing from her in all this night. Nor of Kruinh, And it is nearly morning.”
“Well,” Chris pointed out. He was in jeans and a grey turtleneck, looking very much like an Abercrombie and Fitch commercial for a Fall sale, “we actually can’t do anything until the sun is up anyway.”
Orlando eyed him balefully, and said, “That isn’t the point. We need to plan if we’re going to get this done.”
But it was then that they could hear the faint purr of an engine outside, and then the car stop in the carport, and after a short walk down the path that went to the front of the house, entered Kruinh Kertesz, master of the house.
“Kruinh!” Orlando nearly shouted.
“Kruinh,” Laurie said lazily, sliding from the table. He was, as usual, in fitted dress slacks that showed off his well made legs and buttocks, a fitted shirt that called attention to his shoulders and chest, “Orlando thinks it’s time to act.”
“Act?” Kruinh said, looking not entirely present, looking dazed and, Chris thought, happy.
Then he said, “Oh, yes, yes, the act!”
“Yes, Kruinh!” Orlando said. “The very thing we’ve been planning for months, For a year really, since those first attacks and Dan coming to us.”
But when Orlando said his name, he pronounced it the eastern way, “Croin,” and it reminded Kruinh of Sunny, for not wishing to burden him with a difficult or strange name, he’d simply given the English form of it, “Crane.”
“I,” Kruinh waved Orlando down while he yawned, “I’ve been up all night, and we were going to do everything tomorrow. Why, then, are you so insistent in doing it tonight?”
“Today,” Orlando said.
Kruinh reached into his breastpocket and pulled out a cigarette. He followed Orlando into the kitchen where he swore
“Good God! What the hell is that?”
The discolored dead body of a red headed young woman, her throat gnawed out, was lain across the kitchen table, and Orlando said, “That’s their new thing. And just a day after the boy, and also in Germantown. We know where they are. They’re getting bolder and bolder. If they draw attention to themselves, they will draw attention to—”
“Alright,” Kruinh waved Orlando to silence. “Alright, alright, you’ve made your point. “Or rather they have.”
Kruinh had killed that night and taught Sunny to kill, and both times they had left the body. Often as not a body must be left. But the savaged throat, the bloodless corpse, the piercing marks which looked like teeth, which were not disguised, were bad form. Any murder that anyone called a Vampire Murder was in bad form.
“How do you know we can do this quickly?”
“They are staying at a warehouse on Burgess Street past the old beer factory. Today is going to be seventy five and sunny. The next few days cloudy and cold. Rosamunde and her crew are asleep and well asleep by nine.”
Kruinh nodded, listening to everything Orlando said.
“Have you heard from my daughter?”
“I’ve called Tanitha several times,” Orlando said. “She’s nowhere to be found.”
Kruinh nodded.
“We can do this without her,” he said.
“In fact, I’d rather we did.”

MORE ON THURSDAY

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! I am glad Sunny saw his friends if only briefly. Hopefully he can break free and see them more soon. By the sounds of things at the end there is a bit of a war brewing. I can’t wait to read what happens next in a few days!

 

[ChrisGibson]

HAPPY HOLIDAYS IF YOU HAVE THEM, AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS IF YOU DON'T

WEEKEND PORTION
Rosamunde was sitting in a chair like a throne, and Carter, like a prime minister or, she sniggered, like a Queen, was sitting in a lower chair beside her when they heard the motor’s roar. Gabriel, who had been standing with his arms crossed over his chest, took a deep breath and Rosamunde said:

“Well, this is a relief. I was afraid I’d have to have Bartholomew kill his mother.”

As the motorcycle cut off, Rosamunde rose and told Carter, “Call Evangeline and tell her to leave that Blue Note place alone. She won’t be killing his friends there today.”

Sunny strode into the large hall, looking grand and glowing and Carter said, “You almost missed the sunrise.”

“Oh, I don’t think you were worried about that, Carter, old boy,” Sunny said. “I don’t think any of you was worried for my welfare at all.”

He smiled brightly.

“You’re wrong, Alexander,” Rosamunde said, striding past him and touching his shoulder.

“There is a strength in you.”

“Yes,” Sunny said.

“Still, it is a new strength. The rooster should not crow too loudly. Unlike the others, you have never tasted my strength. You have not drunk from me.”

“I’ve drunk from your brother,” Sunny said. “Many times. I cannot believe the quality of your blood is that much different from his.”

“Oh,” Rosamunde laughed, and there was a little mirth in it.

“There is a change in you.”

The other vampires, the boys there he had talked to on again off again, still looked scared, still looked like creatures half alive. Sunny understood the conundrum Rosamunde and Carter were in. They wanted strong drinkers, but how long would a strong drinker endure them?

Sunny saw Gabriel signal for him, but for once it was clear to him how much he despised Gabriel. He had learned to kill and he had met someone he wanted to spend a great deal of time with, and suddenly, spending the morning tangled in bed, sucking and being sucked on by Gabriel revolted him. Sunny ignored Gabriel’s eyes and went toward the row of coffins the others were climbing in.

Carter came toward him, catching him by the shoulder.

“Yes?” Sunny smiled at him, blinking in innocence.

“I do not like what has come over you,” Carter said.

“No?” Sunny said.

Sunny only smiled as he climbed into his coffin.

Had he known that he would never speak to Carter again, his smile would have been even wider.



He heard a thumping. In the dark there was thumping, and was it at the door? There was no door. No, there was the inside of this coffin. Someone was banging on it. Was it Rosamunde? Was it Carter? But should he not simply wake when night came? When had he ever had to be awakened? There was thumping again. There was screaming, and now a sharp rap over his head.

As Sunny pushed up the coffin lid, he saw Mitch on fire, dancing about like a whirling stick man in the sunlit streets. He saw Abel and Carl exploding into flame and follow the fire dance. Luke had leapt out of his coffin, and even as he came out the sun was scorching him, his hair blazing. There was a blond man cutting Nick down, and a dark haired man on Abel. There were hands on him as Sunny leapt out into the scorching heat. He lunged out, still strong with the feasting of last night, and took this attacker of his by the throat. Feeling the sun like a furnace, Sunny dragged his opponent under the shadow of an awning, and while this one tried to stab him, Sunny pushed up his arm and sank his fangs into his throat. He crushed his windpipe, and in his fury, rolled up his hand into a fist and then punched through the man’s chest. As he died, Sunny sank his teeth into his opponent’s throat and drained him.

He smelled smoke, understood it was his own flesh, could feel the back of his neck badly burned. Now he sensed others on his back in the empty street. No one was coming out to watch. Were the people afraid, or were there just no people here? God what a bleak area of Lassador they must have been in! And surely that was an abandoned building where they had been kept. The blond one and the dark haired one were coming for him. Sunny did a handspring and kicked the dark one in the face, and then sprang across the burning surface of the street on his red hands, and into the shadow of the building, their lair, haha, leaving behind the scene of burning vampires and open coffins. He came into the house where Carter, or rather Carter’s body was on the floor, and Rosamunde was trembling, and the man from the other night, the man Crane—Crane was holding Carter’s severed head, and now released it at the sight of him.

Crane… Kruinh, the vampire from Dan’s journal. Sunny had always assumed it was pronounced like it it looked: Kru-inn. There were others out there… enemies… Gabriel had said.

Sunny and Kruinh looked at each other, and in this moment, Chris Ashby, who had been chasing him, came back and wrapped his arm around his throat.

“Get the fuck off of me,” Sunny growled.

“He killed Orlando!”

“Christopher, let him go,” Kruinh said.

“What?”

“I do not need to repeat myself. You are not deaf,” Kruinh said. “Let him go. He will be the only one to be let go. And apparently he can fight. He is strong. He survived you and Lawrence.”

Laurie was coming into the old abandoned house now, and Kruinh said. “Lawrence, take Rosamunde with you. She must be dealt with. This is the last time she will do what she has done. Take Orlando’s body with you.”

“Orlando?” Lawrence began.

“He killed him,” Chris said, accusingly, pointing at Sunny.

“Is Orlando the fucker who was trying to murder me?” Sunny asked. “Because if he was, fuck him too.”

Chris snarled and stepped forward, but Kruinh growled, “Enough!” and everyone froze.

When they were all silent, Kruinh spoke.

“Orlando was of my sister’s clan, We all knew the risk. If you attempt to kill, you face being killed. No crime was done. For my sister’s sake I am grieved, but I cannot pretend private sorrow. Orlando volunteered himself for this, and he was always quick to kill.”

“Miriamne will not forgive this,” Chris said.

“Of course she will,” Kruinh dismissed this. “She knows the ancient codes even better than I.”

“Who are you?” Sunny demanded, looking down at Carter’s head. “What’s happening?”

“Those are both fair questions,” Kruinh said, distractedly.

“I… I made a great mistake. I really should have had them be on the outlook for you. How could you have been part of any other gathering but this one? I should have… I almost got you killed. Well,” Kruinh seemed distracted. “Come with us.”

“I’m not going anywhere with anyone.”

“You will,” Laurie growled.

Sunny hit him in the face.

“Stop being a bully,” Kruinh said to Laurie, who was picking himself off the floor and rubbing his jaw. “All I need you to do is take Rosamunde to Tanitha. She will do the rest.

“You’re right,” Kruinh said, turning to Sunny. “You shouldn’t have to come with us. I suppose you’ve earned that right. And much was done to you that shouldn’t have been done. But I would prefer it if you did come. At least for a little while.”

Sunny nodded. Kruinh was someone he instantly trusted, and the last time he had trusted a blood drinker—listen to him!—had been Gabriel.

“Gabriel!” Sunny said, looking around.

“Gabriel?” Kruinh raised an eyebrow. “My nephew?”

“Gabriel is your…? Rosamunde is your…”

Kruinh nodded and looked around the warehouse.

“I’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” Kruinh said, looking as awkward as Sunny would ever see him.

“Yes,” Sunny agreed, following him, “You do.”

 

[ChrisGibson]

In the hotel room, Chris Ashby held out a glass of water to Sunny and said, “Sorry about—”

“Trying to kill me?”

“Yes.”

Sunny took the water.

Chris held out his hand.

“What the hell is that?”

“A handshake. A peace offering.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Sunny said,

Sunny drank the water and looked to Kruinh. “Who the hell are you? You show up at my restaurant, tell me where I can feed and feed happy...” Sunny pressed past the time at Victor Terrace, the intimacies in the car.

“And then the next thing I know you’ve got these two assholes trying to kill me.”

“I would say it’s not as simple as all that except it almost is,” Kruinh said. “As I just said, I wasn’t thinking clearly or else I would have been on the lookout for you. I would have told Chris and Lawrence to save you. The way they were able to save—well, that’s another story. Drink your water.”

“You killed my…” Sunny began.

“Family?” Kruinh lifted an eyebrow.

“No, but… Those guys were as innocent as I was. And you killed them.”

“I read the thoughts of two of them,” Chris said. “They had taken to killing anyone in order to live. One killed a homeless girl last night.”

“So you killed him because… you enforce the law?”

“Not that law,” Chris said. “I’m just telling you, none of us is innocent. Not really.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Sunny said dismally.

“I will explain it to you, then,” Kruinh said. “And I do not expect you to respect the explanation, but here it is. I am a blood drinker. I am what you would call a vampire. As are you. Because Rosamunde and Carter took you and made you. That is a forbidden thing. We all, all blood drinkers, exist in houses, in clans, and each clan has a rule about how to kill, who can be killed and who cannot, who is allowed to make a new drinker and who is not. It stops us from murdering the whole world indiscriminately. A drinker at full maturity can go without killing for a long time, as I told you, but a young one cannot. If one does not kill—”

“They go mad,” Sunny said.

“Yes?” Kruinh looked at him strangely.

“It was done to me. I went mad and they … They made me do things,” Sunny said.

Kruinh nodded, and Sunny could tell that he was not the sort of person who pried.

“Also,” Kruinh said, “Only the head of a clan can make a new drinker. It is forbidden for someone not the head of a clan to make drinkers without the head of the clan’s permission. In the past, enemies went about dragging people off the streets, creating new vampire clans to rival their old families. Wars began this way. People unprepared, which are most people, were made into drinkers. Human life was wasted. And so now, if one attempts to create a renegade clan, then that renegade clan is destroyed and so is the one who made it.”

“That’s what you were doing,” Sunny said.

“Yes,” Kruinh said. “It is a hard law, but hard laws tend to be obeyed. Rosamunde is my niece, so I cannot kill her. She will be severely punished, but not killed. But she made Carter. Carter is no blood to me, so he is dead. And so are the others. Gabriel, when he is found, will be dealt with as well.”

“But you could kill me.”

Chris spoke now.

“No. You could give fealty to out house,” Chris said, “and then be part of us.”

Sunny looked to Chris, then looked to Kruinh.

“Ordinarily,” Kruinh said.

“That is… medieval.”

“But I am medieval,” Kruinh said. “Literally. And Christopher is over three hundred years old.

“However,” Kruinh said while Sunny absorbed this, “there are older laws. You have proved your courage, and your strength. You have proved your nobility. You survived two vampires older and stronger. I have no need for your fealty. But you must learn from me for a time. I must know you know the rules, know how to live, know our history, before allowing you to go out into the world on your own. You could be a danger to yourself as much as to others. As much as to us.”

Sunny understood this. When Kruinh spoke, he understood everything.

“Stay with us for a time,” Kruinh said.

Sunny heard Stay with me. Everything in his body vibrated with the words in his mind. If Laurie and Chris were not in the room, he would have gone immediately to Kruinh. He saw in his expressionless face, in his composed body and hands the same trembling. Could Laurie and Chris even tell?

Sunny only nodded.

Because he couldn’t say, Go to bed with me, he said, sullenly, “I still don’t think you should have killed them.”

“If I hadn’t, someone else would have,” Kruinh said. “If I had not taken care of it another clan or a member of mine would have, and it would have been my responsibility. And if I had not taken care of it or we had not, then they would have, in time, ruined themselves. One reason drinkers cannot be made… willy nilly” Kruinh seemed to be searching for the term, “is because most do not live very long. It is hard for a human to become a blood drinker. Most made die quickly, or at least in the first century. Most make a miserable time of it.”

Chris Ashby tried to speak again and hoped he wasn’t about to be sworn at once more.

“Stay with us,” he said. “Help us to help you not make a shit time of it, alright?”

Sunny was still angry with Chris, angry with Laurie, even a little put out by Kruinh, but these were people of a different kind than the ones he’d been with. They explained things. They forced nothing, and what was more, he actually felt free in their presence, truly like the thing he was almost becoming in the last few days. They wouldn’t stop him from going to Nehru or Brad or David. They wouldn’t hold his mother’s life hostage. His mother! Brad and Nehru! He had to tell them about the others on the hunt for them. He had to… be cool.

“Fine,” Sunny said to Chris Ashby. “Fucking fine.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! Happy holidays to you too! A lot of action in this portion and I enjoyed it! I am very happy Sunny survived it all. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was a great portion! Happy holidays to you too! A lot of action in this portion and I enjoyed it! I am very happy Sunny survived it all. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

Thank you Matthew. I hope you had a wodnrful Easter. I trust that I'll talk to you tonight. I suppose it's time to post some more

 

[ChrisGibson]

AND NOW BACK TO OUR TALE....
Sunny headed back to Rawlston on his motorcycle, and behind him drove Kruinh. Chris and Laurie were dealing with Orlando’s body and came last, in a truck. Almost as soon as they reached the downtown expressway, Sunny went north while they went south, and when they arrived, at last, back in Glencastle and walked into 4848 Brummel Street, they were surprised not only by Tanitha, but by the tall, pale and shocked figure of David Lawry.

“What the fuck is going on?” Tanitha demanded.

“I might ask you the same thing?” her father said, pointing to David.

“Detective David Lawry, sir, and there’s a naked dead girl in your kitchen.”

“I know that,” Kruinh looked at him and scowled. “Orlando brought her. That was Rosamunde’s work.”

“Rosamunde,” David said.

“You know her?” Kruinh said, then, “of course you do.”

Then, “Daughter, can you explain why an officer of the law is investigating our house?”

“He’s not an officer of the law.”

David opened his mouth.

“I mean, he is, but that’s not why he’s here. He’s my…”

“Say it,” David said.

“Boyfriend.”

“Was that so hard?”

“It’s not that it’s hard, it’s that its modern.”

“Say it again.”

Tanitha studied him, frowning until David smiled, and then smiling herself

“Father,” she said, “This is David Lawry, my boyfriend.”

“I see,” Kruinh said.

“So that’s where you were last night,” Laurie crossed his hands over his arms and leered.

“Shut up.”

“Not bad,” Laurie assessed David. “Guy’s so pale he looks like one of us already. Well, a white one of us. Uh, he knows right?”

“That you all are vampires?” David said. “Yeah.”

“Is nothing sacred anymore?” Kruinh murmured.

“Not much,” Tanitha returned.

“We went to destroy Rosamunde’s clan.”

“What?” Tanitha and David shouted.

“When Orlando showed us this girl, we knew we couldn’t wait any longer.”

“But you were supposed to wait longer!” David looked almost desperate.

Kruinh looked at him strangely.

“I had a friend in there,” David said. “We were coming to tell you that so you could save him.”

Chris, who was the most contrite looking of them, said, “David, I’m so sorry. We didn’t know—”

“You killed Sunny, you son of a bitch!” David rounded on Chris, almost wailing, and it was at that moment Chris, Laurie and Kruinh said, “Sunny!”

“Yes! He came to avenge his friends. He came to get to figure out everything. They were holding him hostage. He was my friend. He was the best guy you could ever know and you bastards, you fucking assholes just killed him because—”

“No,” Kruinh said.

David stopped, Tears were stranding in his eyes.

“What?”

“Alexander Kominsky,” Kruinh said with quiet joy, “is very much alive.”

David’s face changed. He looked like a gigantic little boy.

“He’s on his way to his apartment to tell his friends he’s alright.”

“His friends?” Laurie said, dourly. “so like now half of this county knows we exist.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Lawrence.” Kruinh said.

David, who really was a magnificent looking man, Chris and Laurie were thinking, swept up Tanitha, dipped her and kissed her deeply, his dark hair falling in his face.

“I gotta go!” he said, reaching for his keys.

As he ran to the great oak and glass door, Tanitha said, “Oh, David?”

He raised an eyebrow.

She smiled, and holding out her hand in a benign claw, she murmured: “Tazi kŭshta da bŭde vidyana zavinagi i nikoga da ne e skrita ot teb. Zashtoto si krŭv ot moyata krŭv!”[1]

David blinked, walked out the door, crossed the street, came back in and blinked again.

“How come it only half worked when I did it?”

“Because you’re not a drinker,” Tanitha said. “And also, because your Slavic pronunciation is for shit.”

“I love you,” he said suddenly.

“That’s the second time you’ve said that, David Lawry. I’m pretty sure I love you too.”

He beamed.

“Great,” he said, and then pulled the door close behind him.

She was still smiling, and the three men were still looking at her, grinning.

“Shut up,” she said, distractedly, and then she turned around and marched to the back ot the house.

“I have a Rosamunde to deal with.”

 

[ChrisGibson]

The castle rested high above the great green trees, its stone walls, square towers and turrets, warmed by the glow of the midday sun. Every tower was capped by a glorious deep red roof, as were the turrets and the blocky, homely collection of buildings that made Visastruta, a place out of a dream, or at least out of Tanitha’s. Beneath it, like sapphire spearheads the lakes glowed through the trees and the ancient cracks of mountains, and in it, through the ancient narrow windows, light shone on the raftered halls and the long corridors. Even now, as she marched with Rosamunde in chains, head hung, there was a strangely lightness in the heart of Tanitha Tzepesh Kertesz.

She had seen the hall she now walked into bright with torches, hung with banners of lords long gone, crowded with the glittering and the great. But now it was large and lit only by the white yellow of afternoon sun, a place of immense quiet and rest, once known to all, now mostly hidden from the world. At the end of the hall, sprawled across a great wooden throne, curling dark haired fanned about her face out,rested a woman of unaccountable beauty, honey skinned, wide grey eyes opening and unopening with a reptilian slowness, her long hands hanging to her side. She straightened herself now, and sat more erect, red lips curving into a smile.

“My favorite niece,” she purred in an old language between Slavonic and Greek, a language Tanitha never spoke but for here, “and my least favorite,” she regarded Rosamunde.

“Miriamne,” Tanitha said.

The older woman approached her niece and embraced her for a long time, kissing her on both cheeks.

“No kiss for this one, eh?” she said, touching Rosamunde’s cheek as the red headed drinker cringed. “No, not that sort of kiss. I hear that Orlando is no more.”

“Yes, Aunt.”

Miriamne nodded.

“I will take that loss deep into me, and I will feel it,” Miriamne said, clutching at a a plain black jewel that hung from a gold chain about her neck. “But not just now. Now is the time for joy.”

She called out something and three men arrived. They were in plain enough clothing and Miriamne said, “Prepare tea for the Princess Tanitha and for me. For the Lady Rosamunde, her punishment. Take her to the teething room.”

At this Rosamunde threw up her head and made a wild scream, but Miriamne made a gesture, and the scream died in the vampiress’s throat.

“Take her,” Miriamne repeated while Rosamunde was hauled away panicking, for her voice that was no more.

“Gabriel is still at large.”

“Let Gabriel alone,” Miriamne said in a low voice. “He was the weakest one of that family. He always followed whatever Rosamunde did.”

The two women hooked arms and walked from the chamber, Tanitha in a great blue satin gown she had changed into downbelow, and she said, “Aunt Rhodias—”

“Will keep silent. She should never have married that traitor, and if she was not going to contain her daughter, then she has no right to complain when we move in. Rosamunde has done untold damage, for one thing creating that bitch, Evangeline. Was Evangeline there?”

“We didn’t see her,” Tanitha said.

“I know she is your Christopher’s sister, and Christopher Ashby is and always has been a fine man, but one day you will have to kill her—”

“Most likely.”

“And when you do, I want her head in a box on my bureau.”

Out on the parapet they looked over the green valley and the deep lake.

“Mother says she misses the old days, but I think we have faired very well,” Miriamne said. “She does not understand, if we live in the past we become stone, and drinkers were never meant to be stone. We must move with the times. I think the castle is more pleasant now.”

“You don’t miss the balls, the pageantry, the lords and ladies?”

“The wars?” Miriamne said. “And the wars and the endless wars? No.”

Then she said, “I hear…. That my favorite little brother—”

“Your only little brother!”

“I hear Baby Brother has found love. Maybe?”

“A boy named Sunny. A mortal. Well, he was mortal, but he is newly made. So new. He’s only about twenty-three I think.”

“Well, your father is young.”

“He is not!”

“To me he is. And what about you, my dear?”

“What about me?” Tanitha demanded.

But her aunt continued to look at her and finally Tanitha turned away.

“Damn you, you old vampires!”

Miriamne threw back her head and laughed.

“His name is David.”

“Oh?”

“And… and you mustn’t laugh at me.”

“Why would I laugh at you?”

“Because of what I just said. Because… because David really is mortal.”

“No! But then…But then so was Peter.”

“Yes,” Tanitha said, looking away.

“Look, there is nothing wrong with loving a mortal, with loving anyone. You have a strong heart.”

“Peter would not be turned.”

“And this one?”

“I’ve never brought it up.”

“The good ones never want it,” Miriamne said.

“Aunt Magda...”

“Magdalena,” Miriamne nodded.

“She loved a mortal.”

“We all loved him. He was a great warrior, but it was plague that took him, And of course this was long before you were born. When he died, Lena lost her mind. She went mad for over a hundred years.”

“I’m not willing to be mad for a hundred years.”

“You’ve already lost so much,” Miriamne said.

“Mother was one of us, and still, she died,” Tanitha said. “So nothing’s proof against suffering.”

“Exactly,” Miriamne patted her niece’s hand. Anyone who had lived for centuries knew what loss was.

“How long are you here?”

“How long do you wish for me to be here?”

“I wish for ever, but I’ll take a few days.”

“Then a few days is what you get.”

“Shall we dine tonight?”

When Miriamne said dine, she always meant food, good restaurants. At her great age, the need for human blood was rare, and the desire moreso.

“We can go into Sibiu—you should see it now! Or take the plane into Bucharest.”

“I’m done with planes for the day.”

“We’ll have to take a plane to get to any of them.”

“Sibiu. It’s shorter.”

“Excellent.”

Miriamne looked up to a honey stoned tower across from them, with a great red mansard roof.

“You had better go speak to your grandmother.”

“Why doesn’t she ever come to see us?”

“She is suspicious of the New World.”

“It’s as old as any other part of the world,” Tanitha said. “Besides, Columbus has been dead for almost five hundred years, so you can hardly call it New by anyone’s standards.”

Miriamne barked a rueful laugh and said, “Try explaining that to a woman who still remembers the Roman Empire.”


MORE ON THURSDAY

---

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

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! I am a bit tired from work so while I enjoyed it I may have to reread to take it all in. I am glad is finally free. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, it's always here to be read. I hope you're feeling better now. This week I've ben sleepign at such strange times I miss messages to posts. The last two weeks have really been something for both of us I suppose.

 

[ChrisGibson]

When the plane came down at LIA two days later, Dan Rawlinson was glad to be back home. Myron was staying overseas a few extra days, and it seemed like he and Olivia might be having problems. Dan was concerned about that, but as the plane landed, and he came back to the world he knew, gladness eclipsed his sadness for his friend. Coming out into the well sized lobby of a not embarrassing airport, he was so glad to see two friends, Tanitha Kertesz and David Lawry, that it was a moment before he stopped, staggered and realized neither one of them had any business knowing the other.
While he looked from David to the smaller woman whose great hat brim with the brim of was covering half of her face while large shades hid her eyes, Tanitha said, “Much has happened since you’ve been gone
Dan looked from Tanitha to David and said, “Yes… I see.”

They had left the hotel in Lassador with Sunny’s promise to follow in a few days. Neither Laurie nor Chris said anything, but Kruinh had made one and was the maker of the maker of the other, and so he knew they were thinking Sunny had lied to them and gone his own way.
“Do you think I am stupid?” Kruinh said.
“Master?”
“Do you think after all my time my mind is slipping?”
Laurie had cleared his throat while driving.
“Kruinh, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
The vampire was seized with a sudden desire to knock Lawrence Malone in the back of his head and, probably, Laurie already knew this. They drove on in relative silence.
That afternoon, when Tanitha, David and Dan arrived back at the old Victorian, Dan Rawlinson was the first before Kruinh, though it was Tanitha who first embraced her father and then the others.
“So Rosamunde is put down?” Dan said, eagerly.
“She has been put down,” Tanitha said. “I placed her into the care of Miriamne, and I’m sure my aunt has been very creative.”
“And you ended the clan they had been making?” Dan said as if a bad weed had been dug out.
“Mostly,” Chris reported.
“Mostly?” Dan raised an eyebrow.
When Chris looked to Kruinh, whose face was impassive, and then told Dan everything about Sunny, Dan declared, “Well, that’s great.”
“How is it great?” Laurie eyed him with disgust.
“Because they were people just like us,” Dan said. “And in case you forgot, I was made by Rosamunde. I was made like that. And you were too, though you like to forget it.”
“I don’t forget anything.”
“Do you forget that you were made by a lesser vampire and should have been put down by the old laws as much as me, or tbis Sunny?” Dan said.
When Chris looked at him, Dan said, “I meant your sister who gave Laurie the death blow, not you when you saved him. But still, both of you are lesser vampires than Rosamunde.”
“Well,” Chris considered that before being insulted, “that is true.”
“We don’t even know if this guy is going to show or not,” Laurie said. “He could have given us the slip.”
“You absolutely do,” David, who had no care for Laurie’s fangs said. “He said he will, and he will.”
“Peace, David,” Kruinh, who had hung up his great jacket said, heading up the stairs, still well dressed, murmuring, “Lawrence, you’re just mad because he hit you.”
“I’m telling you,” Laurie almost stage whispered to Tanitha, “this guy has some sort of hold over Kruinh.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” Tanitha asked.
She reached up, tweaked Laurie’s nose, and then went to the kitchen, pulling David behind her.

Before sunrise the next morning, making its noisy growling entrance into the neighborhood of 4848 Brummel, came an old Harley Davidson, Easy Rider style, with the front wheel so far out it reminded Dan Rawlinson of a woman with outstretched legs, and off of it hopped a man in a studded leather jacket and dark shades, chomping gum as he came up the walk. He pulled off his helmet and he was great looking, great looking but in a funny way, sort of like Laurie, where you could see the traces of an individuality and ethnicity that made him more than common. His eyes were wide under a heavy brow, and his golden hair was curly and pale as he pushed it out of his face. He, Dan realized, wasn’t pretending to be anyone. As Dan opened the door, the newcomer looked mildly surprised.
“You’re Sunny!” Dan held out his hand.
“Oh, I hadn’t put it all together. Holy shit! But… I knew this would happen. I knew. There was something in you. I knew you wouldn’t stop.”
He threw his arms about Sunny like a long lost brother, and he whispered, “David stayed the night.”
Sunny burst out into a smile, which was the first time in a while he had, and when he did, Dan understood his name.
“I hope he and Tan didn’t keep you.”
“I’ve heard worst,” Dan said, smiling fiercely.
“And done worse. Com on in.”



“I had to do some of it on my own,” Sunny was saying when the others were coming into the kitchen. “I had to know I wasn’t completely helpless, and after all, how could I be? We being what we are?”
“But when did you travel?” Dan asked.
“I thought about testing out the sun thing, but I couldn’t do it.”
“I know!” Dan said.
“You can now, right?”
“I can now,” Dan was saying as Chris and Laurie entered the kitchen. “But it was a while.”
Dan realized that if he were newly made he would want to know how long a while was and said, “You have to be feeding all the time, and it actually took me about a year. I’m sorry about that. It drives some people crazy. As time goes by you can start testing the waters. Sort off like you did by showing up at sunrise, but…”
“And that actually means you’re pretty strong,” Chris added, holding out his hand.
When Sunny looked at it, Chris said, “There isn’t a way to make up for what happened, and if it happened again and I didn’t know you, I don’t know how the situation would have changed. I was there to do a job, Sunny.”
Sunny nodded, but still didn’t shake his hand.
“I’m understanding that,” he said. “I have done several jobs in the last few nights, and I know I probably saved a woman from being raped and strangled, and stopped a few other things from happening, but I also know there are some children who have no fathers and spouses who are now widowed.”
Chris nodded.
“Just understand,” Sunny continued, “I came because Kruinh asked me to, and if I remain with you all, then the day may come when I have to follow orders, or give them, and when they affect you, I will give as little apology to you as you are now giving to me.”
Chris nodded curtly. Here was no boy. He loved Dan but Daniel was still very young and of his world. Sunny was a man in the classic sense, old before his time, and now, having been made a blood drinker, he wasn’t even that.
He is here because he is in love with Kruinh, Chris understood. And Kruinh is in love with him.
Seeing the sobriety in Sunny’s ancient face, he understood how the two matched each other. He understood.

And Sunny understood. Kruinh would not call to him. He did not have to. Alexander Kominsky threaded through the many rooms of that house and turned to at last find, at the end of a dark and winding hall, a great oaken door. It was semi open and in the room beyond, the sun shone over the carpet of a library or an office, and at a great desk, Kruinh sat writing, his broad back to Sunny, and now he stopped as Sunny entered. Beyond them, Sunny saw the great bedroom, and presumptuously he crossed the room and unshouldered his small bag of things, placing it on the floor there. When he turned around, Kruinh stood before him, silent. The two of them looked on each other, and Sunny took Kruinh’s face in his hands and kissed him. Their heads, noses and lips were pressed together for some time, and then Sunny released him and knew that no one took liberties with this man the way he had.
“You’re home,” Kruinh said.
Sunny nodded.
“I’m home.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! I am really enjoying how this story is going. I hope you are enjoying your weekend and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

PART THREE



HOME AGAIN





“I really can’t see the bad part of that,” Avery Kominsky said when her son had finished speaking.

“Mom, did you hear ANY of what I just said?”

“Yes,” Avery said, folding her legs under her on the coach, and ashing her cigarette, “and the part about being abducted, and how they threatened you and almost killed me and your friends—that’s a bad part. And of course that they killed Blake. But as for you? The way things turned out? It’s really kind of awesome.”

“I’m a vampire.”

“Yes, I realize that, and I didn’t really know that shit was real. Obviously neither did you. But here you are, walking in the sun, surfing, looking great! Apparently you’re going to be twenty-three forever, and you’ve got a boyfriend. A rich one from the sound of it.”

Sunny tilted his head and looked at her.

“Do you not get that I kill people?”

“The bad ones,” she said. “I can’t imagine you going and hurting people just minding their business, or even people who were crabby because they were having a bad dad. And apparently that’s not something that happens. I mean, if it happened, we’d hear about it.”

“This is the weirdest and perhaps most disappointing response I ever expected from my own mother.”

“Alexander,” she said, and her voice changed.

“What do you want me to say? My baby was taken and terrorized and turned into something different. I now that. And for a time we were all in danger. But you rose above it. You rose above it and became something like a god. You’ll never be more than twenty-three. You’ll never be weak or old or need food, or apparently money. There are, I don’t doubt, many other hard things you will face. But all you can do is all you could ever do.”

She placed a hand to his cheek.

“Embrace who you are, and begin to love it.”



He hadn’t told anyone he was in town. Madema was beautiful, but it didn’t seem like home, except for his actual home, except for his mother. He had come in the late afternoon on his motorcycle. He’d traveled as soon as he could withstand the day, and in the evening he and Avery walked the beach and slowly the waves rolled to the sand, and then went out to the ocean again.

“You know what, Mom?”

She looked at him.

“The thing that scares me is you’re right.”

“Huh?”

“I… I’m not what I was, and that scares me. I’ll never really be a human being again and that is fucking scary. It really is. But… I love it. I love being what I am now, and I shouldn’t. I even love the kill, and I shouldn’t. I am so afraid that I’ll become something I don’t recognize anymore.”

Avery turned around and pulled him to her. He was bigger, but it didn’t matter, he placed his head on his mother’s shoulder as best he could.

He confessed, “I’m afraid I’ll become something you don’t recognize anymore. I couldn’t take that.”



“Do you want to see any of your friends?” Avery had asked him.

Sunny did not. What he was now was too different. His life was spent with people who drank blood and did not die, or did not die easily. He didn’t want to tell Sara or Jack or anyone. He wanted to be dead with them. He sensed that the day Gabriel had killed him, he had indeed died to them forever. But maybe the whole trip west to Lassador was a type of procession toward death. This world, warm and beautiful as it was, had not been enough. Surfing he came to that time where the wave curled over him like blue glass, sunstruck and heated by the near Mexican sun, and he was inside the womb of salt water. He was overwhelemed by the glory of it, and glad, because he had been afraid that now that danger came not nearly so easy to him, he would not love to surf as he had. But he had never been in danger, not really. For him riding the waves had never been about that.

“I want to take you with me,” he told Avery while they sat on the beach and sea birds squawked.

“I can’t stay here, and I don’t love the idea of you so far away.”

“You’d take me from the horror of seventy-five degree winter days and crystal waves?” Avery jested.

Here the sky was polished blue, and the clouds were thin, only the ideas of clouds.

“What’s it like in Ohio?” she asked.

“It’s winter in Ohio, cold and ugly as shit.”

“And you can’t wait to get back there,” she said.

“I—” Sunny started.

“Your life is there,” Avery said. “And you can’t wait to get back.”

“One day can I bring you?”

“To a house of vampires?”

“They will honor you, Mother,” Sunny said.

There he was again, speaking in ways he never had until months ago. The way Avery looked at him said that, so he didn’t need to.

“One day I will come,” Avery said. “One day I must. But not in winter.”

“Snow,” Sunny laughed. “I love the snow.”

Avery eyed her son who seemed the same in every way, but whom with only a tilt of her head, she could see had changed.

“Something tells me you can afford to.”

Winter had come early that year. While they sat in their large bedroom, Sunny watched great movie sized snowflakes fall to the ground in the white night. Getting out of bed naked while Kruinh watched him, he had crossed the room and opened a second door that led to a little corridor, and then he had opened it and walked out into the night.

While he stood in the backyard, the snow falling on him, he assessed the feeling of it. At last, when snow had piled like dandruff on his shoulders, Kruinh came out , as naked as he, the snow a contrast to his dark body coming from the dark house.

“How does it feel?” he asked.

The frozen ground on the soles of his feet, the freezing wind on his skin, the ice cold snow on his shoulders.

“It’s like the difference between drinking poison and… eating grape jelly,” Sunny said, turning to look at Kruinh.

“Before this would have killed me. It would have been unbearable. It would even be painful, the human body’s response to an environment that can kill. But right now… it’s just like something I’d rather not feel, or like how I don’t care for grape jelly but I can eat it.”

Sunny shook his head and put his hands in his thick, snow blessed hair.

“But it’s different from that too… Because I like this cold. I feel it, but… I’m not bothered by it. I used to love playing in the snow, but I’d have to go in afrer a while… It would be too much. Right now I’m feeling that it will never be too much.”

Suddenly, Sunny said, “Life is so wonderful. Really it is.”

The two of them touched hands and turned around, closing the door behind them.

After standing in the yard, feeling the snow fall on his skin, everything else had so much more feeling too, the softeness of the bed, the smoothness of Kruinh’s skin, the pressure of the great mattress, the blanketing of thick covers and the heat of Kruinh’s body. They made love slowly, but then they had made love several times, knew each other well, The touches of finger tips on flesh, lips pressed to lips said everything, spoke of how the night was theirs, and they might go out to ride the winds and find some unfortune soul, releasing its life under their jaws or, naked in this bed, surrender to each other jaws, savor the sweetness of taking blood one from the other, bite, drink, and fuck, entering and being entered one by the other.

When they had first had sex, Sunny was afraid of the noises he would make, but Kruinh urged him on, and vulnerable to him, was free with his noise as well. Now, in the wake of love, they lay tangled together and laughing like little children, Kruinh’s rising and falling chest pressed to Sunny’s side.

“The longer I am with you, the lighter I become,” Kruinh said.

Turning so that he lay across Kruinh, so that he could kiss his eyes, his nose, his lips, Sunny said, “The more I’m with you, the older I become. It’s a fair exchange.”

“Is it?” Kruinh said. “I’d hope it was, but somehow, being burdened with my centuries doesn’t seem like a fair exchange at all. When I taste you,” Kruinh murmured, tracing a finger over Sunny’s face, thrusting his fingers into his gold hair, “I taste sunlight on water, fresh air… palm trees.”

“Is that all?”

“No,” Kruinh said. “No, that is not all.’

Depression, abandonment, army trauma, sexual confusion, Sunny assessed, lingering memories of sexual abuse, old man fingers on him where they should never have been, things which he had buried until they had resurfaced in horrible ways. The bloodshare was the closest thing to mother’s milk drinkers had. In the bloodshare a mother or a maker passed their power, their years, their experience, even their personality to another drinker. As time went by, two very separate minds became yoked, could speak to each other at great distances. Two who were intense lovers barely needed to speak at all. One born to darkness, and attentive, bore many memories and senses of their mother, or their maker. A young vampire made by an old and powerful vampire quickly became older a powerful himself, and Sunny had been made by Gabriel who was not young, and not weak, wherever he was, and sustained every night by Kruinh, who was both old and powerful. The first time they’d made love and he felt Kruinh’s teeth sink into him, he had been surprised by the ecstasy of it, and only more surprised when his own teeth sank into Kruinh. A thrill ran through both their bodies, and the shuttling of flesh against flesh grew quick then quicker before they both exploded, quaking like teenagers.


MORE IN A FEW DAYS

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion! It was nice to see Sunny go see his Mum and have a very honest conversation with her. It’s also nice to read about him and Kruinh. I am enjoying this story a lot and look forward to more in a few days!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm glad the story is giving you pleasure. Sorry for not being much of a responder. I imagine its actually time to post right about... now.

 

[ChrisGibson]

That first morning, when Sunny had come to the house, and like someone hunting through a maze he had at last arrived at Kruinh’s room, the two of them stood together, face to face, pressed head to head and Kruinh murmured, “How is it possible? I feel like I’ve always known you.”

He kissed him so deeply in the quiet of that room, and Sunny had made sure the door to the suite of rooms was firmly locked. Kruinh took him by the hand, took him to the bedroom, and they shut that door firmly as well. He had pulled shut the curtains on even the hint of coming sun, and the two of them had sat on the bed, looking at each other, laughing. They kissed again, and lay across the great bed in darkness.

Hands opening, fingers touching like flower petals, kisses like mist fell upon Sunny’s skin. He felt bright, but he did not feel Sunny. He felt profound. He heard, running through his mind, Alexander, Alexander, Alexander, the name no one called him but Kruinh, coming with each kiss on his forehead, on his eyes, on his cheeks, his ears, in the soft pressure to his lips, on the fingers that removed his tee shirt and kissed his collarbone, kissed the place between his breasts, kissed nipples and the path to his navel, the fingers that made rivers of feeling up and down his sides, on his arms, made him aware of his whole body as he lifted his hips and let his jeans be pulled down. He wasn’t wearing underwear, Kruinh’s mouth took him so gently. He felt like he lay there for hours, innocent as creation, his body buckling and shaking, shuddering under the gentle pleasures Kruinh gave him. It was almost like he could see himself, and for once he rejoiced in his slender body, long, muscled limbs, strong thighs, his rounded buttocks, now cupped, gently entered by fingers, his growing penis, he rejoiced in the beauty of his young seeing it through Kruinh’s eyes, and closed his eyes and pleasure, feeling those fingers, that tongue trace the lines of his body.

He had moved across the room now to put away one last thing, so that Sunny watched the steady movement of his round buttocks. He turned to Sunny, studying him.

Come here, he called to Kruinh without speaking. He was compact and brown, full in thigh and belly, arms strong, and his penis stood like an ensign. It bobbed as he came into the bed with Sunny. Sunny felt so limp, so very spend by Kruinh’s gentleness, and Kruinh seemed so full, so ready, so wishing to fill, that Sunny pulled him into him, and lay eyes closed, gripping the mattress, rejoicing in being entered, entered, pressed, now fucked. It was like when Brad had done this to him, like and unlike. Sunny’s limpness became stiffness, the acceptance of his body because its own solidity pressing back. They became a new thing and Kruinh’s hands took his and clasped them while his teeth sank into Sunny and then they both shuddered, now truly one.

The sun was coming through the curtains when they both cried out almost screaming in triumph, shaking as they spilled over with relief. He was surprised when Kruinh threw up his head and screamed, surprising Sunny with the force of seed shooting inside him.

Sunny’s eyes opened to see his own penis, thicker, longer than it had ever been, jumping, twitching as the waves of more than pleasure moved through him and expelled themselves in leaping arcs that caused him to gasp as once, twice, three times, a fourth, he shot into the air, spraying his stomach and the bed sheets beside him, left wet now, and limp, incandescent.



“What are you?”

“I am a king.”

“A king?”

“Dan, you know Dan, Dan is my lieutenant. Christopher and Lawrence are generals. At the moment, Tanitha is my council though she is, of course, a princess.”

“You are king?” Sunny had said, “of the vampires?”

“I am king,” Kruinh had said, “of some vampires.”

And then he had said, “Aluka”

“Drinkers,” Sunny had said, and the word suited him. Vampire was a thing out of a bad novel…. Or rarely a good novel. This new reality of his was something different altogether.

At first he had not understood. It was not that he did not believe Kruinh, but there was no vampire kingdom on any map he’d seen. He assumed that Kruinh meant his home was his castle, and his kingdom was on 4848 Brummel Street. He should have known better, for with the blood share came memories pulsing through his body, sense memories of candlelit halls, elegant balls, beautiful men and women in rich clothing, nights where gondolas floated down canals, windows lit not only by stars but by the lights of palace windows across from them.



David said he had vacation time, and Tanitha said, “Well that is excellent. We will go to Visastruta.”

It was not quite winter yet, and Kruinh had said little about anything outside the household. In fact, they rarely talked of things which were not immediately before them. The household was made of David, Kruinh, and Tanitha. Dan had his own rooms and stayed between there and the apartment beside Brad and Nehru, and often Sunny did as well. Kruinh’s love was not a possessive one. At least twice a week, silent as bats, Chris Ashby or Laurie Malone arrived, but they lived in Chicago.

More than once, moving through the halls, Sunny had passed alarmingly old photographs of them both. He could tell the difference between an artful black and white and a hundred year old sepia print. In one, smoking, leg crossed over the other, nude, was Lawrence Malone, In a past life he must have been a model. But of course he was, if he hadn’t started out so very angry at drinker turned business man, a model would have been the first career he’d chosen for him.

“How do you get here?” Sunny had asked, once he was over his initial anger at them.

“We fly,” Laurie had said.

“You don’t mean take a plane, do you?”

“No,” Laurie said, while Chris shook his head.

Chris said, “We can show you. If you’d like?”

He would like, and together they climbed to the high rooftop of 4848 Brummel Street, looking over the neighbhorhood in the night.

“You’ve done it before, surely,” Laurie said. “If you’ve killed, you’ve done it.”

“I’ve leapt,” said Sunny. “From one building to another, I’ve leapt down a few stories.”

“Well, this is leaping,” Chris said. “Only…. You don’t stop leaping. Take our hands.”

Sunny was not afraid. He was constantly surprised by the things this new body could do. He was delighted when the leaping he often did, from the roof to the ground, from one height to another, became flying. Before the night was done they were quickly moving from one end of town to another.

“If you’d like,” Laurie said, “when we come back we can it to Lassador?”

Chris, looking very young and eager nodded his agreement.

They were trying to make peace with him.

We are family now. Had Kruinh said this, or had Sunny simply realized it, looking at these two men. These are your brothers.

Who on earth, aside from Gabriel and Rosamunde—wherever she was—knew what it was like to be him? To do the things he could, or the things he must do?



But before Laurie and Chris had come back, it was Dan who took him whizzing over the streets of Glencastle, wind ripping through him at amazing speeds as they bulleted up the highway and soared into Lassador. The whole of the great city with all of its skyscrapers and noise, lights and crime, crawling cars, silent neighborhoods, stretched beneath them, then things became quieter and darker, traveling east until they dived down on the Blue Note. Time would forever be different to Sunny now. He remembered everything, saw everything beneath him, and yet the journey from Glencastle to Rawlston had taken five minutes.

“And we can go even faster.”

“Laurie and Chris—”

“Are older and stronger than us. They can make it from here to Chicago in under two minutes.”

“I told them they could be the ones to fly with me through Lassador for the first time.”

Dan shrugged and grinned.

“They don’t have to know everything.”





The evening they had planned the trip to Visastruta, a luxurious red Bughatti purred up before the house and out of it, in immaculate white shirt and shades, stepped Lawrence Malone while, out of the other side, in jeans, turtleneck and Ray Bans, pale blond hair spiked, came Chris Ashby, the two of them looking like very rich boys or, as Kruinh put it, vampires out of an Anne Rice novel.

Beneath his shades, Laurie had only given Kruinh a bright, long grin.

“No…. flying?” Sunny said.

“It’s hard to fly with luggage, little brother,” Laurie said.

“Then… Visastruta… Flying?”

Tanitha was wrapped in a shawl with a great broad brimmed hat shielding half of her face while David took her hand.

“In a plane,” she said. “Like civilized folk. You can’t flap your arms around the world.”


MORE THURSDAY

 

[CharmedFan28]

Another excellent portion! It is cool to learn more about the vampires of this world. I look forward to reading about the trip they are going on. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Matthew, thank you for reading, for enjoying and for being the world's biggest fan. Here now, just for you (but also for whoever else is reading) comes the weekend portion!