CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Ooh Evangeline is back! I can see the trouble coming already! It will also be interesting to read what happens with Loreal and Laurie. Great writing and I look forward to more in a few days! Have a wonderful weekend!
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The Old: A Night Novel
- Thread starter ChrisGibson
- Start date
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Oh, yes. This bitch is back, and she's full of trouble, but the trouble will blow the top of our head off when you find out. Maybe. I think. Please have a great weekend.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
CONCLUSION OF TEN
“I took Communion today.” Laurie said as he stood at Loreal’s door.
“I saw that,” she said.
Then she said, “I didn’t know that vampires went to church.”
“Long ago, when I was married, I went. I went because I had to. People would have wondered. But that was long ago. I’ve sat in churches, but I have not actually taken Communion in over a hundred years.”
“Then why did you take it now?”
“I don’t know.’
“And what does it mean?”
“I don’t really know,” Laurie said. “I just felt… compelled. It’s the strangest thing, isn’t it? All the people who talk about religion and belief and thou shalt and thou shalt not, and in the end these are just gestures ,a series of gestures and deeds and you don’t really know why you are doing them, where they come from, why you are moved to do them today and not tomorrow. That’s how it was for me. I just… I just did it.”
“I guess that’s why I do it too,” Loreal said. “Did it. Was expected to do it. They say every true witch has a religion which people see, and then the inner religion which no one sees.”
“Yes?”
“Though up until now I haven’t really learned much about that inner religion. And I’ve been kind of indifferent to the Church. Maybe when you took Communion you were answering something else. Answering the deeper religion. Maybe.”
Laurie looked away from her, down the hall, and she said, “Did I say something?’
And then he kissed her.
“You have sweet dreams,” he began.
But she kissed him back, and in the hall way, Laurie bent down to pull her toward him, and then looked around and they went into the bedroom, closing the door.
Laurie parted form her.
“What am I doing?”
“Kissing me,” Loreal said. “I’m not the brightest person, and even I can see that.”
Laurie bent down and kissed her again, turning her toward the door so he could press Loreal against him. He felt her hands on his shoulders and touching his face, and then he pulled away again.
“This is not the way it’s going to happen,” he said., pulling away, and then putting his arms at his side and breathing. “This is not the way.”
“I’m alright with it,” Loreal said smoothing down her blouse.
“I’m not. I’m not alright with going back to Lynn knowing we did what we were about to. I’m not alright with being with you and then leaving you and going back to Lynn.”
“Had you thought that maybe I’m the type of person who would be okay with that?” Loreal said. “Maybe I’m not as fragile as you think.”
“I don’t think you’re fragile at all,” Laurie said. “I just think I don’t want things to be like that between us. And I hope no one saw?”
Loreal raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t want to bring scandal to your name.”
“Scandal to…? Oh, goddamn, you’re… a classic.”
Laurie groaned, looking up to the ceiling, shooved his hands in his pocket and laughed.
Loreal wrapped her arms around herself, exhaling.
“Alright,” she said after a moment. “Alright.”
Laurie shook his head and blew out his own cheeks.
“I should go.”
“You’re going back to the city.”
“Yes. Do you need a ride?”
“That would actually defeat the purpose of… everything you’re doing right now. Wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Laurie shrugged. “I suppose it would.”
Seth knew he wasn’t alone. He took his time in pushing back the covers and rising to look up at his visitor.
There was a time when I would have been frightened, and that time would actually have been about a week ago, Seth Moore noted.
The man was standing there serene, tall and handsome man, almost like Kyle, but with no beard. He had dark wavy hair and a wolfish face, high cheekbones and greenish grey eyes. He was wearing a dirty old winter coat and Seth said, “Would you like to have a seat?”
The man cleared his throat and said, “Thank you. Thank you, I would.”
“You look so tired,” Seth said.
He had learned about this. Put all of your compassion and vision into this moment. Do not run from the moment. It is the actual moment you have worked toward. As you become more powerful, these moments you once ran from will become more frequent, not less. They will will become stronger, not fainter. Lewis had told him that.
“I am tired,” the man said.
“You’ve been running,” Seth assessed. “A long time.”
The man nodded. Seth had the feeling he might have been around fifty, even though he looked the same age as himself. Seth really wanted to get out of bed and hug him, tell him it would all be alright. But it was past that time now, and everything wasn’t alright, or else this man wouldn’t be here.
“I’m Seth,” Seth said by way of introduction.
“Nathan.”
“I want to help you,” Seth told him, climbing out of bed and sitting on the side of it. He was naked, but somehow this didn’t matter, and it seemed foolish to say, “Excuse me, could you walk out and let me put on some clothes?”
“Please,” Seth said, “Tell me how I can help you.”
“Right now,” Nathan said, “I just need someone to know I’m here. I saw the dead light in the window,” he pointed to the flickering candle, “and so I came. Also, as soon as I entered here, I understood other things. I understood that I was guided here. That you are a Dunharrow.”
“You know about us?”
“Yes,” Nathan said, “You are about to meet people I love. You are about to help them do what I could not. When you do, just be there for them.”
Seth nodded, feeling his brow furrow.
“And please,” Nathan said, “If you can, write your cousin Augustus.”
“Augustus?”
“Tell him it’s time to release what he has that is mine.”
The wind was howling in the trees when Lewis rose to leave Chris’s side, traveling down the steps to the living room. Something was waiting outside for him, and all through the day he had felt the presences, presences that had always come to him in winter. He cursed stumbling into a wall and thought how someone might have left a light on, and then went down the hall, past the large kitchen and to the back porch. Through the blowing trees the moon shone fitfully on the new white snow, and as Lewis gathered his robes about him, he saw, coming from the left and right, out of the wood, wolves, enormous, so tall that from toe to shoulder they would have been tall as Chris, and Lewis did not fear the beasts, but went out from the porch and down the steps to meet them.
They had, Lewis thought, the nobility and beauty and strangeness that, unlike many people, he assigned to dogs as much as cats. But their eyes held the cleverness and fire of a tiger’s, and they looked down on him, their hot breath making steam above his head.
Lewis spoke in formal tones.
“What hail, wargs?”
The first wolf, his mane white, opened his mouth and spake:
“Hard is it on earth,
with mighty whoredom;
Axe-time, sword-time,
shields are sundered,”
And then the other wolf, his main stained with gold and red brown recited:
“Wind-time, wolf-time,
ere the world falls;
Nor ever shall men
each other spare.”
Above them, the highest of the trees creaked with the power of the wind, and now the wolves raised their heads and sang, fairly howled:
Yggdrasil shakes,
and shiver on high
The ancient limbs,
and the giant is loose;
To the head of Mim does Othin give heed,
But the kinsman of Surt
shall slay him soon.
And as Lewis still shook with their words, the first wolf lowered his head till Lewis could feel his hot breath, see the shining teeth. He asked in a low voice:
“Do you know more than you knew before?”
When Lewis was climbing back into bed, he felt Chris’s arm around him, smelled the slight salt of his armpits, the warmth of his skin.
“You’re so cold,” Chris said. “What have you been doing?”
“Talking to wolves,” Lewis said as the wind howled above them, striking the house.
“What?”
“I will find the Maid. I will perform the ritual. I will become the head of the Clan.”
With Loreal out of the car, he drove at the break neck speed he only used with Chris, and once with Lewis, able to reach the city in an hour, able to dodge all approaching vehicles and all vehicles behind him with the sharp senses of what he was. He felt free this way, and he felt like he needed to get back to the city and back to sense.
He was knocking on Lynn’s door. She ws on the second floor and had come down the stair well to let him in. As he came through the door he kissed her and only as he parted from her, did she say, “I thought you’d stay there for the night. I didn’t know you were coming. How fast did you drive?”
“Do you want me?” he demanded, kissing her as he shut the door with his back and locked it. “Tell me you want me.”
“I do,” she was a little disconcerted by the hunger in his eyes, the set of his face, almost irrational, but she said, “ Laurie, I do.”
He pushed her against the door, searching under her robe for panties and finding none, he undid his belt and pulled down his trousers and his briefs. Lynn, started as, moaning deeply, he pressed himself inside, fucking her against the door. As he fucked her like a piston, grunting not speaking his head buried in her shoulder, her back pressed against the door, she was not entirely sure if she wanted this or not, if this was consent or conquest. She gripped his back and decided to give in, decided she liked Laurie fierce as he had never been with her before.
In her living room, they sat on the sofa, Laurie with a Scotch in his hand.
“I don’t like funerals,” he said. “I’m glad to be back. I’m glad to feel like myself again.”
He wanted to ask, “Are you alright?” he didn’t . He wanted to check for bruises, ask how she’d felt abot the strangeness of their encounter. Instead he chose to move past it, hoping they would go to bed soon, side by side, maybe make love in a more normal fashion. Maybe, possibly, she would take him the way he had taken her. Then they would be even.
“I knew I should have gone with you,” she said, pushing that familiar dark hair behind her back.
“But then if I hadn’t…”
She sat down on the carpet instead of the sofa, placing her elbow on his thigh, “I wouldn’t have had time to do research.”
“Research?”
“Yes,” Lynn said. “I was researching my family, and my city roots,”
And as Lynn sat there telling him, Laurie slowly sipped his Scotch and immediately stopped when Lynn said, “And her name was Catherine, and she had a brother named Patrick and a sister named Vanessa. And her mother, well, and this is just an old fashioned name you don’t hear anymore—”
Please God, no.
“Veronica. Wasn’t there a Veronica in the Bible? But anyway, and this made me think we must be distantly related, cause your family’s from Bridgeport too, right. Apparently my great-great grandfather’s name was Laurence Malone too. Spelled different, but isn’t that,” Lynn said, catching his hands, “amazing?”
“Yes,” Laurie said, when he remembered he’d been spoken too. “That really is something.”
Lynn got up and kissed him, sitting on his lap. He was sure now he had raped her, even if she didn’t know, and he was sure because right, now when she kissed him, he wanted to push her away. When she said, “Let’s go to bed,” he wanted to leave even as he nodded and got up with her.
“The most wonderful woman helped me find out all of this,” Lynn said as she unbuttoned Laurie’s shirt and kissed him at the center of his chest, ran her hands along his sides.
“She was much, much too beautiful to be working away in an archivist office. And her name, like something out of a poem… Evangeline.”
“Evange…”
“Evangeline,” Laurie heard Lynn say, as she pulled down his trousers and took his penis into her mouth.
“I took Communion today.” Laurie said as he stood at Loreal’s door.
“I saw that,” she said.
Then she said, “I didn’t know that vampires went to church.”
“Long ago, when I was married, I went. I went because I had to. People would have wondered. But that was long ago. I’ve sat in churches, but I have not actually taken Communion in over a hundred years.”
“Then why did you take it now?”
“I don’t know.’
“And what does it mean?”
“I don’t really know,” Laurie said. “I just felt… compelled. It’s the strangest thing, isn’t it? All the people who talk about religion and belief and thou shalt and thou shalt not, and in the end these are just gestures ,a series of gestures and deeds and you don’t really know why you are doing them, where they come from, why you are moved to do them today and not tomorrow. That’s how it was for me. I just… I just did it.”
“I guess that’s why I do it too,” Loreal said. “Did it. Was expected to do it. They say every true witch has a religion which people see, and then the inner religion which no one sees.”
“Yes?”
“Though up until now I haven’t really learned much about that inner religion. And I’ve been kind of indifferent to the Church. Maybe when you took Communion you were answering something else. Answering the deeper religion. Maybe.”
Laurie looked away from her, down the hall, and she said, “Did I say something?’
And then he kissed her.
“You have sweet dreams,” he began.
But she kissed him back, and in the hall way, Laurie bent down to pull her toward him, and then looked around and they went into the bedroom, closing the door.
Laurie parted form her.
“What am I doing?”
“Kissing me,” Loreal said. “I’m not the brightest person, and even I can see that.”
Laurie bent down and kissed her again, turning her toward the door so he could press Loreal against him. He felt her hands on his shoulders and touching his face, and then he pulled away again.
“This is not the way it’s going to happen,” he said., pulling away, and then putting his arms at his side and breathing. “This is not the way.”
“I’m alright with it,” Loreal said smoothing down her blouse.
“I’m not. I’m not alright with going back to Lynn knowing we did what we were about to. I’m not alright with being with you and then leaving you and going back to Lynn.”
“Had you thought that maybe I’m the type of person who would be okay with that?” Loreal said. “Maybe I’m not as fragile as you think.”
“I don’t think you’re fragile at all,” Laurie said. “I just think I don’t want things to be like that between us. And I hope no one saw?”
Loreal raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t want to bring scandal to your name.”
“Scandal to…? Oh, goddamn, you’re… a classic.”
Laurie groaned, looking up to the ceiling, shooved his hands in his pocket and laughed.
Loreal wrapped her arms around herself, exhaling.
“Alright,” she said after a moment. “Alright.”
Laurie shook his head and blew out his own cheeks.
“I should go.”
“You’re going back to the city.”
“Yes. Do you need a ride?”
“That would actually defeat the purpose of… everything you’re doing right now. Wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Laurie shrugged. “I suppose it would.”
Seth knew he wasn’t alone. He took his time in pushing back the covers and rising to look up at his visitor.
There was a time when I would have been frightened, and that time would actually have been about a week ago, Seth Moore noted.
The man was standing there serene, tall and handsome man, almost like Kyle, but with no beard. He had dark wavy hair and a wolfish face, high cheekbones and greenish grey eyes. He was wearing a dirty old winter coat and Seth said, “Would you like to have a seat?”
The man cleared his throat and said, “Thank you. Thank you, I would.”
“You look so tired,” Seth said.
He had learned about this. Put all of your compassion and vision into this moment. Do not run from the moment. It is the actual moment you have worked toward. As you become more powerful, these moments you once ran from will become more frequent, not less. They will will become stronger, not fainter. Lewis had told him that.
“I am tired,” the man said.
“You’ve been running,” Seth assessed. “A long time.”
The man nodded. Seth had the feeling he might have been around fifty, even though he looked the same age as himself. Seth really wanted to get out of bed and hug him, tell him it would all be alright. But it was past that time now, and everything wasn’t alright, or else this man wouldn’t be here.
“I’m Seth,” Seth said by way of introduction.
“Nathan.”
“I want to help you,” Seth told him, climbing out of bed and sitting on the side of it. He was naked, but somehow this didn’t matter, and it seemed foolish to say, “Excuse me, could you walk out and let me put on some clothes?”
“Please,” Seth said, “Tell me how I can help you.”
“Right now,” Nathan said, “I just need someone to know I’m here. I saw the dead light in the window,” he pointed to the flickering candle, “and so I came. Also, as soon as I entered here, I understood other things. I understood that I was guided here. That you are a Dunharrow.”
“You know about us?”
“Yes,” Nathan said, “You are about to meet people I love. You are about to help them do what I could not. When you do, just be there for them.”
Seth nodded, feeling his brow furrow.
“And please,” Nathan said, “If you can, write your cousin Augustus.”
“Augustus?”
“Tell him it’s time to release what he has that is mine.”
The wind was howling in the trees when Lewis rose to leave Chris’s side, traveling down the steps to the living room. Something was waiting outside for him, and all through the day he had felt the presences, presences that had always come to him in winter. He cursed stumbling into a wall and thought how someone might have left a light on, and then went down the hall, past the large kitchen and to the back porch. Through the blowing trees the moon shone fitfully on the new white snow, and as Lewis gathered his robes about him, he saw, coming from the left and right, out of the wood, wolves, enormous, so tall that from toe to shoulder they would have been tall as Chris, and Lewis did not fear the beasts, but went out from the porch and down the steps to meet them.
They had, Lewis thought, the nobility and beauty and strangeness that, unlike many people, he assigned to dogs as much as cats. But their eyes held the cleverness and fire of a tiger’s, and they looked down on him, their hot breath making steam above his head.
Lewis spoke in formal tones.
“What hail, wargs?”
The first wolf, his mane white, opened his mouth and spake:
“Hard is it on earth,
with mighty whoredom;
Axe-time, sword-time,
shields are sundered,”
And then the other wolf, his main stained with gold and red brown recited:
“Wind-time, wolf-time,
ere the world falls;
Nor ever shall men
each other spare.”
Above them, the highest of the trees creaked with the power of the wind, and now the wolves raised their heads and sang, fairly howled:
Yggdrasil shakes,
and shiver on high
The ancient limbs,
and the giant is loose;
To the head of Mim does Othin give heed,
But the kinsman of Surt
shall slay him soon.
And as Lewis still shook with their words, the first wolf lowered his head till Lewis could feel his hot breath, see the shining teeth. He asked in a low voice:
“Do you know more than you knew before?”
When Lewis was climbing back into bed, he felt Chris’s arm around him, smelled the slight salt of his armpits, the warmth of his skin.
“You’re so cold,” Chris said. “What have you been doing?”
“Talking to wolves,” Lewis said as the wind howled above them, striking the house.
“What?”
“I will find the Maid. I will perform the ritual. I will become the head of the Clan.”
With Loreal out of the car, he drove at the break neck speed he only used with Chris, and once with Lewis, able to reach the city in an hour, able to dodge all approaching vehicles and all vehicles behind him with the sharp senses of what he was. He felt free this way, and he felt like he needed to get back to the city and back to sense.
He was knocking on Lynn’s door. She ws on the second floor and had come down the stair well to let him in. As he came through the door he kissed her and only as he parted from her, did she say, “I thought you’d stay there for the night. I didn’t know you were coming. How fast did you drive?”
“Do you want me?” he demanded, kissing her as he shut the door with his back and locked it. “Tell me you want me.”
“I do,” she was a little disconcerted by the hunger in his eyes, the set of his face, almost irrational, but she said, “ Laurie, I do.”
He pushed her against the door, searching under her robe for panties and finding none, he undid his belt and pulled down his trousers and his briefs. Lynn, started as, moaning deeply, he pressed himself inside, fucking her against the door. As he fucked her like a piston, grunting not speaking his head buried in her shoulder, her back pressed against the door, she was not entirely sure if she wanted this or not, if this was consent or conquest. She gripped his back and decided to give in, decided she liked Laurie fierce as he had never been with her before.
In her living room, they sat on the sofa, Laurie with a Scotch in his hand.
“I don’t like funerals,” he said. “I’m glad to be back. I’m glad to feel like myself again.”
He wanted to ask, “Are you alright?” he didn’t . He wanted to check for bruises, ask how she’d felt abot the strangeness of their encounter. Instead he chose to move past it, hoping they would go to bed soon, side by side, maybe make love in a more normal fashion. Maybe, possibly, she would take him the way he had taken her. Then they would be even.
“I knew I should have gone with you,” she said, pushing that familiar dark hair behind her back.
“But then if I hadn’t…”
She sat down on the carpet instead of the sofa, placing her elbow on his thigh, “I wouldn’t have had time to do research.”
“Research?”
“Yes,” Lynn said. “I was researching my family, and my city roots,”
And as Lynn sat there telling him, Laurie slowly sipped his Scotch and immediately stopped when Lynn said, “And her name was Catherine, and she had a brother named Patrick and a sister named Vanessa. And her mother, well, and this is just an old fashioned name you don’t hear anymore—”
Please God, no.
“Veronica. Wasn’t there a Veronica in the Bible? But anyway, and this made me think we must be distantly related, cause your family’s from Bridgeport too, right. Apparently my great-great grandfather’s name was Laurence Malone too. Spelled different, but isn’t that,” Lynn said, catching his hands, “amazing?”
“Yes,” Laurie said, when he remembered he’d been spoken too. “That really is something.”
Lynn got up and kissed him, sitting on his lap. He was sure now he had raped her, even if she didn’t know, and he was sure because right, now when she kissed him, he wanted to push her away. When she said, “Let’s go to bed,” he wanted to leave even as he nodded and got up with her.
“The most wonderful woman helped me find out all of this,” Lynn said as she unbuttoned Laurie’s shirt and kissed him at the center of his chest, ran her hands along his sides.
“She was much, much too beautiful to be working away in an archivist office. And her name, like something out of a poem… Evangeline.”
“Evange…”
“Evangeline,” Laurie heard Lynn say, as she pulled down his trousers and took his penis into her mouth.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
A great portion! Laurie is leading a complicated life at the moment. I wonder if he will end things with Lynn and be with Loreal? I guess I will have to wait and see. I also wonder if Lewis will become clan leader. Top notch writing and I look forward to more soon!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Well, yes, Lewis does have a lot to look forward to, but Laurie's life is getting fairly complicated right now, too. What do you wish he would do? Who do you think is best Lynn or Loreal?
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I hope he gets with Loreal but it seems like that won't happen for a while if it happens.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Just stay posted. There're going to be some surprises and twists, but it'll all turn out right, sort of, in the end.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
E L E V E N
K I N
These visions are full of torment, and meaning of these images is dark to me.
-The Red Book
Seth woke up almost weeping. He lay in bed and realized as the night approached, that he was weeping, that tears were in his eyes and his body ached, and he lay on the bed and let himself cry until he was done, until he lay there, soft sobs done. And then he went to shower and bathe. He went into his room and changed into the usual clothes, dark trousers, white shirt, put on a tie, a light vest, trimmed the thin beard around his face, combed his gently curling hair. He came down into the living room where Owen was sitting, carefully turning over Tarot cards.
“I have to go,” Seth said. “I have to do something.”
Owen nodded to him.
“Are you alright?”
“I will be,” Seth said. “I will be well, or I won’t be anything at all.” Owen looked at his large old cards again, and then he got up and rounded the table to kiss his nephew on the cheek.
“Do what you must.”
Seth nodded, and headed to the door, as he left, Owen called to him.
“Yes.”
Seth turned around.
“I love you.”
“I needed to hear that,” the young man said. “I love you too.”
He didn’t wish to drive. In this cold early December night he walked down the street and around the corner to the El station. He climbed up the steps ot the platform and took the Red Line to the Brown Line and then got off and headed down one street and then the other before he came ot the old apartment building with the courtyard and let himself in through the security door. He took the elevator and went up to the fifth floor and then down the hall. He took the key and entered the studio and saw, in the moonlight, Lewis, sleeping there.
“Lewis,” he called.
But Lewis did not answer, and now Seth realized he wouldn’t have wanted Lewis to answer. Locking the door behind him, be began to remove his the vest, and then undo his tie. Now he slowly unbuttoned his shirt then took it off and next the undershirt smelling of his cologne. He lowered his trousers, then pulled off up his socks and lastly, Seth took his briefs and his sex sprang up out of them, like a diving board, like an eagle rising from its nest of soft hair.
“Lewis,” he called again, naked, and then he came to the bed and pulled back the covers to see Lewis naked, as he knew he would be, and climbed into the bed, pressing himself against Lewis, sighing with the relief of feeling Lewis against him, Lewis in his arms. Now Seth was stretching his limbs out, his cock was stretching with joy in being united to Lewis again, kissing him gently on the back of his neck, caressing him.
In his sleep, Lewis responded. Half asleep, Lewis ran hands over his body while Seth ran hands over him. Now, Lewis made noises of waking and woke up, half asleep, confused, looking at Seth’s round face, his brown fringe beard, his soft lips.
“Seth.”
Seth kissed him again and pressed himself against him,
“Seth.”
But Seth was already there, already kissing them, already warm and pressed against him, already welcome, and so Seth kissed him again, and Lewis’s suddenly aching penis pointed like a compass to is old lover as he drew Seth to him, restored to the lover he had been separated from for so long, restored to the other side of his magic.
This was not a dream. It was like a dream in the way that it passed over the normal stuff of life. Here, Seth was in all his warmth and need and love and endless understanding, endless soft touch, sweetness of skin, softness of hair, roughness of beard, desperation to kiss, and Lewis pulled Seth closer to him and buried himself in seth, wrapped his thighs around the man wrapping his thighs about him. They gave themselves up to every permutation of love. In desperate sounds as the night went on. Seth straddled him, riding him, pressing him to the end of their race, Seth’s head went into the air and then down, his nostrils widening and almost snorting with the striving. For the two of them orgasm was like a fever breaking. They collapsed together, holding each other in sleep.
Lewis never thought to send him away. Once, long ago, he had fled the strangeness of life, the strangeness of his family the morality or lack of morality in things. Now he did not. When Chris came home, without key, and entered the house, he stood there tall and white, blood around his mouth, teeth glinting in the night, eyes calm, unsurprised, and Seth pushed away the covers and came to him, naked, turned his throat to Chris.
Chris stooped down and Lewis, still connected to Seth, felt the pain of piercing teeth, the tasting of blood that lasted for only a moment.
“It had to be this way,” Seth said. “I ached. I lay in bed almost crying until I was driven here.”
Chris undressed and Lewis saw the two bodies, creamy and white together, one long and tall, one spare and his size, and he made room as Chris brought Seth to the bed, as he began to watch the vampire, who so hungrily made love to him, begin making love to Seth, as, inspired by passion, Lewis’s hands touched them both. Chris looked to him, drunken but not uncomprehending, filled with desire, and Seth looked to him with love. Their arms reached forward and brought Lewis in.
“What?” Chris lowered his shades as they sat inside the Ethiopian restaurant, drinking coffee. The snow fell outside as Chris negligently sprinkled salt into the black drink.
“I’m not going to say it again,” Laurie hadn’t removed the circular shades he wore.
“She’s your… But… it’s not possible.”
“It’s completely possible,” Laurie said. “And completely true.”
“But… how?”
“Very easily,” Laurie said, spreading out his hands. “As you remember. Step one: wife dies, step two: inconsolable you leave your children with her family. Step three: come back now and again. Step four: go into despair over the fact that your kids will die one day too. Step five: immerse yourself in all sorts of shit to forget they exist. Put them out of your mind, and out of your heart and go on with life. You have to, after all. Or else you would think, My children, the children I loved and who called me Papa are twenty when I still look twenty, are forty, are fifty, are sixty, are seventy are… possibly dead if not dead before. Surely I have grandchildren. Surely they are dead too. And so on and so on. That’s how it happens.”
“But what are the chances?” Chris sat back, stretching his legs, crossing his arms over his chest as he shook his head, frowning.
“Does it matter?” Laurie asked, desolately, “Does it matter what the chances are? It’s… I’ve been sleeping with my … Last night, after I knew it, I… we… it happened.”
“I hate to be the person who asks that irritating old question, but…”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Laurie said.
“There was a time when you were going to tell her what you were, who you were.”
“But this complicates matters.”
“A great deal.”
Chris took off his shades and his pale eyes went from one end of the table to the other.
“What does Evangeline have to do with this, though? What is she doing at all?” What is she doing with Lewis’s cousins? What is she doing with… with this business?”
“She doesn’t have to have master plan,” Laurie said. “She could just be here to fuck with us.”
“True, but to fuck with you so expertly, To know Lynn would be there. And… She couldn’t have made you meet Lynn. I wish I knew what was going on.”
“And you don’t know where Evangeline is?”
Chris shook his head.
“What about Lewis and Seth? Weren’t they tailing her or something?”
“All of their dreams led to the past.” Chris said. Then he said, “But of course.”
“Of course what?”
“Loreal?”
“What about her?”
“She would know where her sister Eve is. Eve would know, probably, what Evangeline was up to. She could find her.”
“That’s a lot of work.”
“Then maybe you don’t care that much,” Chris said,
“Really?” Laurie looked cross.
“If you don’t want to do anything.”
“It’s not simple like that,” Laurie said, leaning in. “Look, I kissed Loreal. And then I went back home and slept with a woman who I am in love with who turns out to be my great-great granddaughter, I kissed Loreal. It would have been more, but… we stopped it. So… things with Loreal are complicated.”
“Shit,” Chris said.
“Yeah,” Laurie said.
“I had sex with Seth last night.”
“What?”
“I had sex with Seth last night.”
“I… heard that.”
“When I got home he was in bed with Lewis.”
“What the—?”
Lewis didn’t hide it. Neither of them apologized or anything. I didn’t ask them to. Then Seth just got up and came to me. He offered his throat. I fed on him, and then we made love in front of Lewis. Then all three of us. That happened. And then we slept together.”
“This is… witch shit.”
“I guess it is,” Chris said.
“This is… everything happening to us is odd.”
“It’s not, though,” Chris said.
Laurie looked at him.
“My sweeping up floors as a janitor is odd. You managing hedge funds and driving fast cars, going to church in the afternoon is odd. Me, over three hundred years old, you nearly a hundred and seventy, with all the sins and eccentricities of our kind trying to pretend we’re normal people is odd. But we are undead immortals who feed on human beings and are tied up with witches and witches around or not, why would anything normal ever happen to us? That’s how I felt last night. There was this brief second when I was on the side of normal life, a normal boyfriend coming home to his boyfriend—which is not that normal either, no matter how much people try to make it so. And there was Seth who lives half way in dreams anyway, and it was like, But this is your world. Your world is outside of reality. It’s outside of the normal way of things. The whole time with Seth was like the first time with Lewis. It was like, as Lewis was there with us, watching, not judging, as Seth was giving himself to me I was being taken into whatever they were, and out of the false dream of what I had pretended to be.”
Chris shook his head. “I know it makes no sense.”
“It does,” Laurie said. “All I could think of when I was kissing Loreal, when I wanted to stay in her room and stay with her was… both times I left her, I wanted her so much, and I came home and I thought I could… take it out, that’s a bad way to say it, get rid of my lust with Lynn. But lust isn’t exactly how I feel with Loreal. I feel like every woman, including Veronica, I pretended with. I have to, and with Loreal I could just finally be myself, complete, not hide, not ….”
“Be afraid,” Chris said..
“Yes,” Laurie said, his elbows on the table as he folded his hands together. “
Be at home. Be at rest. Be the monster I am and not be afraid my lover will run away.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
So Seth, Lewis and Chris had sex? Interesting! Looks like Evangeline is trying to stir things up in a major way. I don't know what that means for Laurie so I guess ill just have to wait and see. Great writing and a great portion! I look forward to the next one! Have a nice week.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Right? All you can really say is interesting about that situation and all the situations because at this moment who can say where things are leading? Except we know Evangeline's long game must be a bad one.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
CHAPTER ELEVEN
KIN
CONTINUED
“It’s not about us,” Seth said.
He was sitting in Lewis’s apartment looking more sane and confident than he ever had. He corrected himself.
“It is about us. About you and about me,” he said to Chris, “but, what the three of us are does not come between what you and Lewis are.”
“I think I understand what you are saying,” Chris said. “It almost makes sense.”
“Love is private,” Lewis said. “The way we think of it now. You know, you’ve seen those shows and those movies. A man tells a woman, you and me against the world, kid. Some bullshit like that. Love is you and me, and that’s important, but its also not as important as you think.”
“The old ways are gone,” Seth said. “The old things are passing.”
“Like monogamy?” Chris said doubtfully.
“Not what I meant,” Seth said.
“Like clans,” Lewis said, “.Like families. We are forming the new house. The new family. And what are all clans and families founded in.”
“Love. Covenant?”
“Fucking,” Seth said. “Desire. The desire that welds all things together. In the Garden of Eden there was no desire, no need, nothing to be joined together. Out of it, in the world, Adam clung to Eve and so the human race was born. And then Lamech took two wives. So did Abraham. Jacob four. Desire.”
“Which of us is Abraham?” Chris wondered, “and which of us Hagar?”
“Maybe each of us at one time or another,” Seth said. “But I only say these things it to explain it all. Do you mind so much sleeping with me?”
Chris looked at Lewis, but Lewis seemed almost distracted.
“No,” Chris said. “But I feel that I should.”
“But we are what we are,” Seth said. “And even at this moment we are becoming stronger with each other, not weaker. So we ought to stay together.”
“That,” Chris said, “is the strangest sexual proposition I have ever heard.”
“But it not a sexual proposition,” Seth said, “Not strictly.”
He stretched his legs before him, folding his white sleeved arms over his dress shirt. “It is something else entire.”
“I must leave,” Lewis stood up. “We all must leave.”
“What?” Chris said.
“I’ll drive,” Seth said.
“You drive behind us,” Lewis said. “But, Chris, you may have to take me directly.”
The third candle, the pink candle burned in the round wreath and the vigil of candles was making its wheel to the fourth, the purple one before Christmas as the congregation sang:
Christ, be our light! Shine in our hearts.
Shine through the darkness.
Christ, be our light!
Shine in your church gathered today.
Longing for peace, our world is troubled.
Longing for hope, many despair.
Your word alone has pow’r to save us.
Make us your living voice.
Christ, be our light! Shine in our hearts.
Shine through the darkness….
Lawrence Malone sensed her at his side, sensed the end of his peace, the moment of escape from the questions in his mind and the lack of innocence outside this door, and he turned to see the blond woman, red lipped, white face, gold white hair pale as her brother’s.
Tantum ergo Sacramentum
Veneremur cernui:
Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui:
Præstet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui.
Her voice seemed as loud as anyone else’s though no one else seemed to hear it. He was used to this vampire trick, the same he and Chris used to have open discussions in public settings, but now another voice on his other side sang:
Longing for food, many are hungry.
Longing for water, many still thirst.
Make us your bread, broken for others,
shared until all are fed.
He turned to see Lewis leaning across him, singing into the terrified vampire woman’s face, and as she began to rise, his hand gently closed upon her wrist and he sang:
“Rwy'n rhwymo chi
Rwy'n rhwymo chi
Rwy'n eich rhwymo â rhwym y wrach
trwy waed i rwymo
trwy fyddaf yn rhwymo
Rwy'n eich rhwymo â rhwym y wrach.”
And as Evangeline had sung and none noticed, so no one noted Lewis, and Laurie, who had never heard this tongue and did not know it, nonetheless understood Lewis’s words clearly.
I bind you
I bind you
I bind you with the witch's bind
By blood I bind
By will I bind
I bind you with the witch's binding.
All around them Mass still took place, and all around them people rose for Communion. Lewis and Laurie rose to let the other people in the pew out while above them, in the loft, the choir continued to sing.
“Why are you here?”
Why, my lord, Aos Si, because your brought me,” Evangeline answered.
“Clever,” Lewis said, nodding his head. “But not amusing, my lady.”
Evangeline threw back her head and laughed. “I can’t see how it isn’t amusing.”
Chris rose to strike her, but Lewis said, “No. That’s not necessary. And she is your sister.”
“Yes, Christopher,” Evangeline drawled, and her accent took on a British quality that Chris’s did not have, and that Lewis realized, could never have been hers in life given where she came from and when. “It isn’t kind to strike your sister, and it isn’t right to sink into barbarity.”
“Lord Aos Si, would you like to know how it was that Chris found me? Found I was alive after long long years of assuming, nad possibly hoping everyone he had known was dead?”
“No,” Lewis said from the chiar where he sat, Laurie standing beside him, “That isn’t actually why you’re here.”
“Oh, my Lord—”
“And you oughtn’t call me lord,” Lewis said, “nnless you mean it.”
“Well,” Evangeline pretended to wither, “I suppose I’m not going to have any fun with you.”
“It’s doubtful.”
“Such is the way of strong witches.”
“Surely you’ve know strong witch’s before.”
“I have known witches. I have heard of you. “
“Heard of me?”
“Yes,” Evangeline said. “But I have never met you until recently, and I have certainly met none like you.”
“And how—please satisfy my curiosity—had you heard of me?”
“Oh, well you must understand that first time we met, I did not know who you were. I knew you were mighty in power, but who you were, I did not understand. Time taught me. Actually, listening to your kinswoman Eve, taught me. You are one of the Living Ones, one of those who come back into this world again and again. I have heard of you for centuries. You are Malachy.”
Lewis sat before her unmoved and then she said, “I had hoped that this might surprise you.”
“I see,” Lewis rose, “that though you call me lord and even mighty, you still do not really believe—”
“Oh, I do.”
“Then let us say, do not understand who I am,” Lewis said. “You see, my dear… sister I should call you, I suppose, I don’t have time for games and foolishness. We were going to look for you, but you brought yourself to Laurie today, and it was easy to find you then. Did you have to gloat? Did you have to let him know what you had done? Was it… that childish impulse that ;led you to Saint Patrick’s today?”
“My Lord—”
“Do not,” Lewis warned in a bland tone,” call me that…again.”
“It may have been that impulse,” Evangeline said.
“But what was the impulse that led you to so assist Lynn Draper in finding the archives on Lawrence and then led you to reveal to him his relationship to her. What were you hoping to achieve?”
Evangeline was quiet for a while, and she looked down at her lap from the chair where she sat, bound only by Lewis’s words. And then she looked up at Chris, and next at Laurie, biting her lips and smiling before she spoke.
“I wanted to see the look on his miserable face when he knew he’d been shooting loads into his granddaughter.”
Laurie leapt up with a growl, and his hands nearly went about her neck, but at that same time, Lewis’ palm went to her forehead and and he said, simply. “I will give you a last change to, of your own will, tell me why you have done this and what the nature of your business is with my cousin Eve.”
“Eve’s a real fun girl to hang out with and I think she has great hair, Mainly we’re just into beauty secrets—”
“Reveal,” Lewis commanded simply, his hand touching Evangeline between the eyes, and suddenly, her head went back and she declared in an almost staccato tone:
“The Sword is the tool of the Master, as the Bowl is the tool of the Maid. Augustus could never be Master but he knew without the Sword you could never be Master either.”
“We could make another sword,” Lewis said. “We could find another sword. It is a symbol.”
“No,” Evangeline continued, “that sword is enchanted twice over by five Masters and enchanted by Malachy. Only with that sword can you actually regain all of your memories, all of your strength and become Malachy again.”
“And how is that done?” Lewis said, evenly while Laurie and Chris looked to each other amazed, “or is that beyond your knowledge?”
“No. I learned from Augustus himself. The Sword and Crater act as a key. When the ritual of the Master is performed and the wine is poured into the bowl and when the Sword is placed into that bowl, then one becomes Master.
“Yes, I know. That is how it has always been.”
“But Malachy always had two loves. One of our kind and one of his own. Their blood or their seed must be in that bowl with the wine, not much, less that a drop, really. And the sword msut draw your own blood. When the the Sword with your blood is placed in the Crater with their blood or their seed, when you consume that wine at the ritual, in that moment will you become Malachy, not simply the one long gone, but all the lives that Malachy ever possessed. All other Masters before you, even the mighty Owen himself are simply placeholders for you until Malachy returns. This is why Augustus sought to take the Sword. The Crater he knew was beyond him.”
“But what about Laurie?” Chris demanded.
Evangeline’s face changed. She smiled up at her brother spitefully, and then spat at him.
“She’s under my bond,” Lewis explained. “Not yours. Sorry about that. Now,” Lewis turned ot her, “what about Laurie?”
“I wanted him to know that I had won.”
“Won?”
“:Yes,” Evangeline said.
“Please, dear Evangeline,” Lewis asked, “explain.”
“I am new to you,” Evangeline said. “But not to your family. I met Augustus, your… uncle?”
“He is my great uncle Owen’s great uncle so, yes,” Lewis said, “an ultimate uncle.”
“It was in the time that I came back into Christopher’s life. In the first time I met Lawrence. That was also when I met Augustus, for if you know everything else you know his life is long. He told me… many things. In fact, though Chris does not know it, I came to seek him because Augustus had already told me he was the vampirc lover, the necessary blood for the enchantment which would bring Malachy back into the world. But I learned also that there is a link, a link between your kind and my kind. What that link is—is closed to me except something called the Story of Lot.”
Lewis nodded, indicating Evangeline should continue.
“It is like the story from the Bible, but it is about our kind, the Drinkers. The story says that there was once a drinker named Lot, and he had two daughters, for you know we are capable of reproducing, The men produce mortals, the female drinkers produce born drinkers. Lot wed a mortal woman. She died, but seven daughters she left him, He did not understand that they were mortal, for this was in the early days of our kind. He wondered if their children would be mortal or if finally they would also be drinkers. He could not tell, and the daughters did not know either. One night the oldest daughter longed to give birth to a drinker to please her father, and so she intoxicated him and lay with her own father. So the story says, the next night the second daughter did so, and so on, all seven of them, and all seven daughters became pregnant by their father.”
While she told this story, Laurie frowned in disgust and Chris’s mouth was open a little.
Evangeline continued, “But the children born were mortal as anything. However, one by one, as time continued, these children proved to possess great powers, each child with one great power. Thus it was learned that for reasons unknown, when a vampire reproduces with one of his children, provided the link is not too distant, the union creates a witch of great power, and a witch born to darkness.”
“You rejoiced because Laurie happened to meet a distant descendant,” Chris said, looking at her in scorn.
“Not distant,” Evangeline said. “Not distant at all. And not by accident.
“Every step was hoped for,” Evangeline said, her voice now rising in rapture. Laurie, who gave the world two daughters and one son. Lynn traced her lineage through her maternal grandmother. But had she done a little more work she would have learned that Patrick Malone had seven children, seven Laurie! You had at least seven grandchildren, and one of them, a girl by the name of Nancy, who is very much dead and doesn’t matter… Let’s get back to Nancy Malone later. Let’s go to Vanessa.”
“Keep the names of my children out of your mouth.”
“Oh, please. You turned your back on them when the oldest was ten years because your poor vampire heart was broken.”
Evangeline continued. “Vanessa did well for herself in time. Married a man named Oliver Macready. She had several children, none of whom matter because of Robert Johnson. Not the Blues guitarist who sold his soul at the—”
“You need to wrap this story up,” Lewis said with the closest moment he’d had to losing his patiencc.
“Well, yes, you’re right,” Evangleine agreed.
“Robert Johnson had a daughter who is the paternal grandmother of your Lynn.”
“And this matters because,” Laurie said.
“Because Robert Johnson was adopted. He was the illegitimate son of the aforementioned Nancy, your granddaughter by Vanessa.”
“Oh,” Laurie said, hollowly.
“Yes,” Evangeline said, “and what is more, that baby was hidden away because Nancy had the misfortune to, from rape or genuine pleasure who can say, have a baby at the age of fifteen by her cousin, another one of Patrick’s children. So you see, Lynn is your great-great granddaughter , your three times great-grandchild twice over. In other words, her pedigree is so collapsed she is full of your DNA and now, you’ve been fucking her for months. You’ve been filling her with your seed, Lawrence.”
While Laurie glared at her, Chris said, calmly, “and so you’re here gloating about… hoping he’ll stay with her and get her pregnant.
“Oh, you’re a fool and a slow fool at that,” Evangeline said looking up at her brother. “But I can tell by the look on the good wizard’s face that he already understands.”
“Lynn is pregnant,” Laurie said.
“You could have told if you were paying attentuion. For us it’s simple. The blood changes. Had you been paying attention, you would have sensed the new life in her. The witch life.”
KIN
CONTINUED
“It’s not about us,” Seth said.
He was sitting in Lewis’s apartment looking more sane and confident than he ever had. He corrected himself.
“It is about us. About you and about me,” he said to Chris, “but, what the three of us are does not come between what you and Lewis are.”
“I think I understand what you are saying,” Chris said. “It almost makes sense.”
“Love is private,” Lewis said. “The way we think of it now. You know, you’ve seen those shows and those movies. A man tells a woman, you and me against the world, kid. Some bullshit like that. Love is you and me, and that’s important, but its also not as important as you think.”
“The old ways are gone,” Seth said. “The old things are passing.”
“Like monogamy?” Chris said doubtfully.
“Not what I meant,” Seth said.
“Like clans,” Lewis said, “.Like families. We are forming the new house. The new family. And what are all clans and families founded in.”
“Love. Covenant?”
“Fucking,” Seth said. “Desire. The desire that welds all things together. In the Garden of Eden there was no desire, no need, nothing to be joined together. Out of it, in the world, Adam clung to Eve and so the human race was born. And then Lamech took two wives. So did Abraham. Jacob four. Desire.”
“Which of us is Abraham?” Chris wondered, “and which of us Hagar?”
“Maybe each of us at one time or another,” Seth said. “But I only say these things it to explain it all. Do you mind so much sleeping with me?”
Chris looked at Lewis, but Lewis seemed almost distracted.
“No,” Chris said. “But I feel that I should.”
“But we are what we are,” Seth said. “And even at this moment we are becoming stronger with each other, not weaker. So we ought to stay together.”
“That,” Chris said, “is the strangest sexual proposition I have ever heard.”
“But it not a sexual proposition,” Seth said, “Not strictly.”
He stretched his legs before him, folding his white sleeved arms over his dress shirt. “It is something else entire.”
“I must leave,” Lewis stood up. “We all must leave.”
“What?” Chris said.
“I’ll drive,” Seth said.
“You drive behind us,” Lewis said. “But, Chris, you may have to take me directly.”
The third candle, the pink candle burned in the round wreath and the vigil of candles was making its wheel to the fourth, the purple one before Christmas as the congregation sang:
Christ, be our light! Shine in our hearts.
Shine through the darkness.
Christ, be our light!
Shine in your church gathered today.
Longing for peace, our world is troubled.
Longing for hope, many despair.
Your word alone has pow’r to save us.
Make us your living voice.
Christ, be our light! Shine in our hearts.
Shine through the darkness….
Lawrence Malone sensed her at his side, sensed the end of his peace, the moment of escape from the questions in his mind and the lack of innocence outside this door, and he turned to see the blond woman, red lipped, white face, gold white hair pale as her brother’s.
Tantum ergo Sacramentum
Veneremur cernui:
Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui:
Præstet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui.
Her voice seemed as loud as anyone else’s though no one else seemed to hear it. He was used to this vampire trick, the same he and Chris used to have open discussions in public settings, but now another voice on his other side sang:
Longing for food, many are hungry.
Longing for water, many still thirst.
Make us your bread, broken for others,
shared until all are fed.
He turned to see Lewis leaning across him, singing into the terrified vampire woman’s face, and as she began to rise, his hand gently closed upon her wrist and he sang:
“Rwy'n rhwymo chi
Rwy'n rhwymo chi
Rwy'n eich rhwymo â rhwym y wrach
trwy waed i rwymo
trwy fyddaf yn rhwymo
Rwy'n eich rhwymo â rhwym y wrach.”
And as Evangeline had sung and none noticed, so no one noted Lewis, and Laurie, who had never heard this tongue and did not know it, nonetheless understood Lewis’s words clearly.
I bind you
I bind you
I bind you with the witch's bind
By blood I bind
By will I bind
I bind you with the witch's binding.
All around them Mass still took place, and all around them people rose for Communion. Lewis and Laurie rose to let the other people in the pew out while above them, in the loft, the choir continued to sing.
“Why are you here?”
Why, my lord, Aos Si, because your brought me,” Evangeline answered.
“Clever,” Lewis said, nodding his head. “But not amusing, my lady.”
Evangeline threw back her head and laughed. “I can’t see how it isn’t amusing.”
Chris rose to strike her, but Lewis said, “No. That’s not necessary. And she is your sister.”
“Yes, Christopher,” Evangeline drawled, and her accent took on a British quality that Chris’s did not have, and that Lewis realized, could never have been hers in life given where she came from and when. “It isn’t kind to strike your sister, and it isn’t right to sink into barbarity.”
“Lord Aos Si, would you like to know how it was that Chris found me? Found I was alive after long long years of assuming, nad possibly hoping everyone he had known was dead?”
“No,” Lewis said from the chiar where he sat, Laurie standing beside him, “That isn’t actually why you’re here.”
“Oh, my Lord—”
“And you oughtn’t call me lord,” Lewis said, “nnless you mean it.”
“Well,” Evangeline pretended to wither, “I suppose I’m not going to have any fun with you.”
“It’s doubtful.”
“Such is the way of strong witches.”
“Surely you’ve know strong witch’s before.”
“I have known witches. I have heard of you. “
“Heard of me?”
“Yes,” Evangeline said. “But I have never met you until recently, and I have certainly met none like you.”
“And how—please satisfy my curiosity—had you heard of me?”
“Oh, well you must understand that first time we met, I did not know who you were. I knew you were mighty in power, but who you were, I did not understand. Time taught me. Actually, listening to your kinswoman Eve, taught me. You are one of the Living Ones, one of those who come back into this world again and again. I have heard of you for centuries. You are Malachy.”
Lewis sat before her unmoved and then she said, “I had hoped that this might surprise you.”
“I see,” Lewis rose, “that though you call me lord and even mighty, you still do not really believe—”
“Oh, I do.”
“Then let us say, do not understand who I am,” Lewis said. “You see, my dear… sister I should call you, I suppose, I don’t have time for games and foolishness. We were going to look for you, but you brought yourself to Laurie today, and it was easy to find you then. Did you have to gloat? Did you have to let him know what you had done? Was it… that childish impulse that ;led you to Saint Patrick’s today?”
“My Lord—”
“Do not,” Lewis warned in a bland tone,” call me that…again.”
“It may have been that impulse,” Evangeline said.
“But what was the impulse that led you to so assist Lynn Draper in finding the archives on Lawrence and then led you to reveal to him his relationship to her. What were you hoping to achieve?”
Evangeline was quiet for a while, and she looked down at her lap from the chair where she sat, bound only by Lewis’s words. And then she looked up at Chris, and next at Laurie, biting her lips and smiling before she spoke.
“I wanted to see the look on his miserable face when he knew he’d been shooting loads into his granddaughter.”
Laurie leapt up with a growl, and his hands nearly went about her neck, but at that same time, Lewis’ palm went to her forehead and and he said, simply. “I will give you a last change to, of your own will, tell me why you have done this and what the nature of your business is with my cousin Eve.”
“Eve’s a real fun girl to hang out with and I think she has great hair, Mainly we’re just into beauty secrets—”
“Reveal,” Lewis commanded simply, his hand touching Evangeline between the eyes, and suddenly, her head went back and she declared in an almost staccato tone:
“The Sword is the tool of the Master, as the Bowl is the tool of the Maid. Augustus could never be Master but he knew without the Sword you could never be Master either.”
“We could make another sword,” Lewis said. “We could find another sword. It is a symbol.”
“No,” Evangeline continued, “that sword is enchanted twice over by five Masters and enchanted by Malachy. Only with that sword can you actually regain all of your memories, all of your strength and become Malachy again.”
“And how is that done?” Lewis said, evenly while Laurie and Chris looked to each other amazed, “or is that beyond your knowledge?”
“No. I learned from Augustus himself. The Sword and Crater act as a key. When the ritual of the Master is performed and the wine is poured into the bowl and when the Sword is placed into that bowl, then one becomes Master.
“Yes, I know. That is how it has always been.”
“But Malachy always had two loves. One of our kind and one of his own. Their blood or their seed must be in that bowl with the wine, not much, less that a drop, really. And the sword msut draw your own blood. When the the Sword with your blood is placed in the Crater with their blood or their seed, when you consume that wine at the ritual, in that moment will you become Malachy, not simply the one long gone, but all the lives that Malachy ever possessed. All other Masters before you, even the mighty Owen himself are simply placeholders for you until Malachy returns. This is why Augustus sought to take the Sword. The Crater he knew was beyond him.”
“But what about Laurie?” Chris demanded.
Evangeline’s face changed. She smiled up at her brother spitefully, and then spat at him.
“She’s under my bond,” Lewis explained. “Not yours. Sorry about that. Now,” Lewis turned ot her, “what about Laurie?”
“I wanted him to know that I had won.”
“Won?”
“:Yes,” Evangeline said.
“Please, dear Evangeline,” Lewis asked, “explain.”
“I am new to you,” Evangeline said. “But not to your family. I met Augustus, your… uncle?”
“He is my great uncle Owen’s great uncle so, yes,” Lewis said, “an ultimate uncle.”
“It was in the time that I came back into Christopher’s life. In the first time I met Lawrence. That was also when I met Augustus, for if you know everything else you know his life is long. He told me… many things. In fact, though Chris does not know it, I came to seek him because Augustus had already told me he was the vampirc lover, the necessary blood for the enchantment which would bring Malachy back into the world. But I learned also that there is a link, a link between your kind and my kind. What that link is—is closed to me except something called the Story of Lot.”
Lewis nodded, indicating Evangeline should continue.
“It is like the story from the Bible, but it is about our kind, the Drinkers. The story says that there was once a drinker named Lot, and he had two daughters, for you know we are capable of reproducing, The men produce mortals, the female drinkers produce born drinkers. Lot wed a mortal woman. She died, but seven daughters she left him, He did not understand that they were mortal, for this was in the early days of our kind. He wondered if their children would be mortal or if finally they would also be drinkers. He could not tell, and the daughters did not know either. One night the oldest daughter longed to give birth to a drinker to please her father, and so she intoxicated him and lay with her own father. So the story says, the next night the second daughter did so, and so on, all seven of them, and all seven daughters became pregnant by their father.”
While she told this story, Laurie frowned in disgust and Chris’s mouth was open a little.
Evangeline continued, “But the children born were mortal as anything. However, one by one, as time continued, these children proved to possess great powers, each child with one great power. Thus it was learned that for reasons unknown, when a vampire reproduces with one of his children, provided the link is not too distant, the union creates a witch of great power, and a witch born to darkness.”
“You rejoiced because Laurie happened to meet a distant descendant,” Chris said, looking at her in scorn.
“Not distant,” Evangeline said. “Not distant at all. And not by accident.
“Every step was hoped for,” Evangeline said, her voice now rising in rapture. Laurie, who gave the world two daughters and one son. Lynn traced her lineage through her maternal grandmother. But had she done a little more work she would have learned that Patrick Malone had seven children, seven Laurie! You had at least seven grandchildren, and one of them, a girl by the name of Nancy, who is very much dead and doesn’t matter… Let’s get back to Nancy Malone later. Let’s go to Vanessa.”
“Keep the names of my children out of your mouth.”
“Oh, please. You turned your back on them when the oldest was ten years because your poor vampire heart was broken.”
Evangeline continued. “Vanessa did well for herself in time. Married a man named Oliver Macready. She had several children, none of whom matter because of Robert Johnson. Not the Blues guitarist who sold his soul at the—”
“You need to wrap this story up,” Lewis said with the closest moment he’d had to losing his patiencc.
“Well, yes, you’re right,” Evangleine agreed.
“Robert Johnson had a daughter who is the paternal grandmother of your Lynn.”
“And this matters because,” Laurie said.
“Because Robert Johnson was adopted. He was the illegitimate son of the aforementioned Nancy, your granddaughter by Vanessa.”
“Oh,” Laurie said, hollowly.
“Yes,” Evangeline said, “and what is more, that baby was hidden away because Nancy had the misfortune to, from rape or genuine pleasure who can say, have a baby at the age of fifteen by her cousin, another one of Patrick’s children. So you see, Lynn is your great-great granddaughter , your three times great-grandchild twice over. In other words, her pedigree is so collapsed she is full of your DNA and now, you’ve been fucking her for months. You’ve been filling her with your seed, Lawrence.”
While Laurie glared at her, Chris said, calmly, “and so you’re here gloating about… hoping he’ll stay with her and get her pregnant.
“Oh, you’re a fool and a slow fool at that,” Evangeline said looking up at her brother. “But I can tell by the look on the good wizard’s face that he already understands.”
“Lynn is pregnant,” Laurie said.
“You could have told if you were paying attentuion. For us it’s simple. The blood changes. Had you been paying attention, you would have sensed the new life in her. The witch life.”
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Evangeline sure doesn't mince words. Lynn is pregnant! I don't know what will happen next but I am very interested to find out. The Seth, Lewis and Chris situation is complicated. I hope they can find some way to decide what to do and make it work. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon! Hope you are having a great night!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
How do you feel about the turn the tale has taken? And about Laurie's business?
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I am liking where the story has gone but I feel a bit sad that Laurie got a family member pregnant.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
If you feel sad, just think how sad Laurie feels! Just to clarify, not simply a family member, but his great-great-great GRANDDAUGHTER. Ouch. And just think, Lynn doesn't even know.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
CHAPTER ELEVEN
KIN
CONTINUED
Chris stood beside Lewis, who was still sitting, and Laurie’s back was to them all, his hands gripping the windowsill as he stared out onto the courtyard.
“Goodbye for now,” Lewis said to Evangeline.
“Goodbye,” she said with equal courtesy, nodding, “to you and you also, Brother. And Lawrence.”
She bowed grandly and turned to leave.
“Shut the door behind you, please,” Lewis said.
She did and there was no sound of footsteps which told the vampires she did not trouble to walk once she was released.
“She’s been watching my family for a hundred years while I’ve been doing everything but.”
“It would appear so,” Lewis said.
“None of it happened by accident. She… bred Lynn into existence.”
“We don’t know that,” Chris said, but Lewis said, “It’s more probable than not that she did.”
“Laurie turned around and said, “And she wanted to be found.”
“She wanted to be found by you,” Lewis said, “Not by me. That’s where she failed, and mark my word, she has failed. A hundred years of planning, and now she’s failed.”
“You think?”
“You will have a child,” Lewis said, “and it will be witch born. That means nothing. She was hoping to raise up an anti Christ or somesuch. Had she not met me, she could have found some way to steal it, raise it, do something. Now all of her scheme is lost, and presumably Eve’s and Augustus’s too, and you get to have a witch for a child. The only problem you have is Lynn. Telling her.”
“Telling her?” Laurie said, grinning, but his eyes held no joy. “You make it sound so simple.”
“You’ve done simple,” Lewis said. “Simple was getting up and leaving your children after your wife died, and never considering what could have happened to your bloodline. For someone whose whole life is blood, that was actually pretty stupid. If I’d had three children over a hundred years ago, I’d wonder what dark haired Irish Italian wasn’t descended from me. Laurie, the time for simple is over.”
That night, when Lewis and Seth had sex, they were sitting on the couch and Lewis put his hand on Seth’s thigh, and then Seth put his hand on Lewis’s and Lewis moved closer. He began to massage Seth’s thigh, and then he opened up his trousers and started to stroke his cock through his underwear. Seth made a moan like a cat purr and leaned his beautiful head against Lewis’s shoulder, opening his mouth a little, his brown eyes half closed. His mouth reached up for Lewis’s the same time Lewis squeezed him, and when Seth turned and thrust his tongue in Lewis’s mouth, the flat of Lewis’s hand held Seth’s balls, hot and hanging.
Lewis went to his knees because he knew Seth couldn’t ask, and he pulled down his black pants and his black briefs, pulled Seth into his mouth. He was firm and heavy, large and growing larger.
“Lewis,” he moaned, stroking Lewis’s hair. “Lewis.”
They were both naked now, and moving to the bed, now laying themselves down and coming together like vines. Seth pulled Lewis’s face up. He loved him, had always loved him. He wanted his eyes and arms and lips, his tongue, his heart, his comfort. He wanted to look up at Lewis in love and pull his face down and kiss him, press his flesh against flesh that was, however distantly, akin to his own.
In the end he asked Lewis to fuck him, but this was easier said than done. They’d never done it before and so it was just fumbling around, but happy fumbling. Seth was so hard and Lewis had already come all over his stomach. They had stopped to relax and hold each other after this. Lewis took oil and rubbed it over Seth’s swollen cock. Seth knew just what to do, He fitted himself tightly between Lewis’s thighs and they glided together, each time Seth moaning in the shock of his pleasure.
“Caress my ass?” Seth begged.
He didn’t have to beg. Thin as Seth looked, he was well built with healthy thighs and buttocks that longed to be stroked, caressed massaged. Lewis had already eaten him out. He thrust his finger in the boy’s ass and massaged his asshole.
“Ohhh, fuck!” Seth cried, his dick jumping when Lewis did that.
So Lewis kept doing it, rubbing his hands up and down Seth’s back, caressing his shoulders, running his hands through his hair, pulling his face down to kiss him, running his hands back down.
“I’m about to…” he began, his voice shallow.
“It’s okay,” Lewis said, putting his hand on Seth’s cheek.
“But I’m about to…”
“Do it.”
With a relieved groan, Seth came, and Lewis felt the load, hot and thick between his thighs. He kept pressing his dick between Lewis’s thighs until everything was spilled out, and Seth came out, the length of his cock red and wet.
They lay side by side, chests heaving, bodies slick, and Seth grinned and looked up at Lewis in friendship. The two of them laughed, and suddenly Seth lay on his side and pressed his mouth to Lewis’s.
They dozed and it was not that Lewis didn’t love being with Chris, only that he didn’t think he would love being with anyone else, didn’t think the desire could awake again so quickly. He didn’t think that Seth, his cousin, who had been made into a little brother figure and then blossomed into a lover only to sink back to little brother status again, could awaken desire him him like this, that their bodies, side by side in sleep, could stir again so quickly and come back together, that his cock would rise and thicken and like a stiff compass, guide him back to the creamy limbs and smooth flesh of Seth, to Seth’s kisses and the heat of his flesh, the curl of his hair, the strangeness of his spirit that linked with his own, even in sex, even in the smell of sweat and must in this bed that still bore the scent of Chris and the lovemaking the three of them had as well.
He took Seth’s hair in his hands and pulled the boy’s face into his chest, wrapping his thighs around him while, on the side of the bed, he fucked Lewis harder and harder.
“Almost,” Seth panted, thrusting again, “there.”
Lewis ran his hands down the boy’s sweating back, and pulled Seth in. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth feeling Seth fuck him, feeling Seth deep inside of him.
“I’m gonna come…” Seth warned him.
Lewis had already come against his belly a few minutes earlier and now, with the last few thrusts, Seth made a staggering noise and moaned, “Oh—fuck—” as, pulling back from Lewis, he came, and then finished coming ,his damp head in Lewis’s arms.
Seth rolled over and the two of them lay side by side on the bed, gasping.
When Seth had finally caught his breath, he turned on his side and took the wet cloth from the little table at the end of the bed, wiping his chest, wiping the semen from his stomach while Lewis got up and went into the bathroom. Seth waited for the water to finish running and said, “Do you want me to tell you about the man who came to me?”
Lewis came out and lay on the bed beside him.
“Man?”
“He came before all of this. Before we made love again. He came after I went into the woods. He’s dead,” Seth said. “He’s a ghost.”
“And you’re not afraid?”
“No,” Seth said, sitting up. “I’m strong, Mase.”
“I know you are.”
“But I didn’t know. But I’m strong, and I’m a witch, and the things other people can’t see come to me. He said I had to send a message to Augustus. It was cryptic. I didn’t ask many questions. Just did it. And he said he will come around now and again. That he needs us. That we will meet very important people soon.”
Lewis laughed and Seth grinned sideways.
“What? You don’t believe me?”
Lewis pulled Seth down and kissed him on the mouth.
“I do believe you. I… just am happy to see you this way. In charge of yourself. Powerful.”
Lewis turned on his side and Seth ran a hand over his chest.
“I love looking at you,” he said.
“I don’t know why,” Lewis said.
“You’re amazing.”
“I’m middle aged with a pot belly.”
“That’s not that old.”
“I know it’s not,” Lewis said, brow furrowed. “But still.”
“I drew a picture of the man,” Seth said. “In my book. You wanna see?”
“Yes.”
Seth squatted on his hams to reach for it, and because he was beautiful and well built, cream colored with a broad back that went to a firm bottom, Lewis got up and wrapped his arms around him.
“He’s handsome,” Lewis said, looking at Nathan while his arms were still around Seth. “But sad.”
“Yeah,” Seth agreed, kissing Lewis’s hand. “So much sadness.”
“Will you stay?” Lewis asked him. “Stay with me and stay with us when Chris arrives?”
“I don’t like to—”
“Don’t say that. We both want you, and I think you want us too.”
While Lewis rubbed Seth’s wavy hair, Seth rubbed his cheek against him like a kitten.
“Then it’s settled, I guess,” he said.
“Yes,” Lewis said, rising, and climbing back into bed, “I believe it is.”
While he drove to Lynn’s apartment, he repeated to himself, “I will be a better man. I will be a better man. I will be a better man.”
But wasn’t he a good man? Wasn’t he always trying to do the right thing? But no, no need to clap himself on the back, and no, this was not the time to reassure himself of his goodness. Whatever good he had done in his life, over a hundred years ago, he had given his children into the care of their aunt and walked away from them never looking back, and now who knew how many of his descendants were out there? Well, he could figure it out, he supposed. But one was Lynn, and she was waiting for him, and he wondered, what would become of them? After all, what would their lovemaking be like once they both knew the truth? And what had it been like the night before? What would Lynn think? He parked before the two storey house, and without knocking went up the landing steps to her apartment, to where she had let him in several nights before, where he had taken her in full desire, but not fully unoccupied desire, for Loreal and Loreal’s scent and laugh and kiss had been in him.
But even as he climbed the stairs and entered the apartment, something was not right. He wondered, what had she done, had that bitch right away come over here, spirited Lynn away, planned to, like the dragon in the Book of Revelation, wait for the child to be born and then consume it? But even as he thought these wild thoughts, there was Lynn, sitting at the coffee table, and before her were manila envelopes and files and pictures, many pictures, and as he entered, she raised her confused face to him.
“Laurie,” she said, showing him his own face, a direct, dirty faced Vietnam vet with his round helmet half off his head, straps undone, holding his gun. Beside it was another, older picture of a Marine in dress whites, clearly, unmistakably in the year 1943, his arm around one of his colleagues, and then, again, at an Armistice Day celebration, for the very first Armistice Day, name written under his portrait quite plainly, Lance Corporal Lawrence Malone. Yes, he had stopped spelling it with a U by then. His one little way of saying he had changed. There he was again and, with no way to deny, looking tired, and dignified, but happy in themselves, sitting outside of a long gone house in Bridgeport, in their too large and not fitting Sunday best were Veronica and Laurence Malone with their three children, Patrick in a sailor suit and chaps, Vanessa and Catherine in their overdone dresses and hair of the time, of a time nearly one hundred twenty years previous.
Lawrence Malone did not know fear, not really. He’d been to war several times. He had vaulted from high buildings. He drove his car at sometimes two hundred miles an hour. To be a Drinker meant you knew no fear, or very little. But as he stood there looking at a century of himself looking back at him, and saw Lynn trembling with confusion, for the first time in longer than he could remember, fear was what was seizing him, shaking him, almost making him run out of the room.
“Laurie?” Lynn’s voice shook. “Please…. Help me understand.”
TOMORROW NIGHT WE WILL BEGIN THE TWELFTH AND FINAL CHAPTER OF THE OLD
KIN
CONTINUED
Chris stood beside Lewis, who was still sitting, and Laurie’s back was to them all, his hands gripping the windowsill as he stared out onto the courtyard.
“Goodbye for now,” Lewis said to Evangeline.
“Goodbye,” she said with equal courtesy, nodding, “to you and you also, Brother. And Lawrence.”
She bowed grandly and turned to leave.
“Shut the door behind you, please,” Lewis said.
She did and there was no sound of footsteps which told the vampires she did not trouble to walk once she was released.
“She’s been watching my family for a hundred years while I’ve been doing everything but.”
“It would appear so,” Lewis said.
“None of it happened by accident. She… bred Lynn into existence.”
“We don’t know that,” Chris said, but Lewis said, “It’s more probable than not that she did.”
“Laurie turned around and said, “And she wanted to be found.”
“She wanted to be found by you,” Lewis said, “Not by me. That’s where she failed, and mark my word, she has failed. A hundred years of planning, and now she’s failed.”
“You think?”
“You will have a child,” Lewis said, “and it will be witch born. That means nothing. She was hoping to raise up an anti Christ or somesuch. Had she not met me, she could have found some way to steal it, raise it, do something. Now all of her scheme is lost, and presumably Eve’s and Augustus’s too, and you get to have a witch for a child. The only problem you have is Lynn. Telling her.”
“Telling her?” Laurie said, grinning, but his eyes held no joy. “You make it sound so simple.”
“You’ve done simple,” Lewis said. “Simple was getting up and leaving your children after your wife died, and never considering what could have happened to your bloodline. For someone whose whole life is blood, that was actually pretty stupid. If I’d had three children over a hundred years ago, I’d wonder what dark haired Irish Italian wasn’t descended from me. Laurie, the time for simple is over.”
That night, when Lewis and Seth had sex, they were sitting on the couch and Lewis put his hand on Seth’s thigh, and then Seth put his hand on Lewis’s and Lewis moved closer. He began to massage Seth’s thigh, and then he opened up his trousers and started to stroke his cock through his underwear. Seth made a moan like a cat purr and leaned his beautiful head against Lewis’s shoulder, opening his mouth a little, his brown eyes half closed. His mouth reached up for Lewis’s the same time Lewis squeezed him, and when Seth turned and thrust his tongue in Lewis’s mouth, the flat of Lewis’s hand held Seth’s balls, hot and hanging.
Lewis went to his knees because he knew Seth couldn’t ask, and he pulled down his black pants and his black briefs, pulled Seth into his mouth. He was firm and heavy, large and growing larger.
“Lewis,” he moaned, stroking Lewis’s hair. “Lewis.”
They were both naked now, and moving to the bed, now laying themselves down and coming together like vines. Seth pulled Lewis’s face up. He loved him, had always loved him. He wanted his eyes and arms and lips, his tongue, his heart, his comfort. He wanted to look up at Lewis in love and pull his face down and kiss him, press his flesh against flesh that was, however distantly, akin to his own.
In the end he asked Lewis to fuck him, but this was easier said than done. They’d never done it before and so it was just fumbling around, but happy fumbling. Seth was so hard and Lewis had already come all over his stomach. They had stopped to relax and hold each other after this. Lewis took oil and rubbed it over Seth’s swollen cock. Seth knew just what to do, He fitted himself tightly between Lewis’s thighs and they glided together, each time Seth moaning in the shock of his pleasure.
“Caress my ass?” Seth begged.
He didn’t have to beg. Thin as Seth looked, he was well built with healthy thighs and buttocks that longed to be stroked, caressed massaged. Lewis had already eaten him out. He thrust his finger in the boy’s ass and massaged his asshole.
“Ohhh, fuck!” Seth cried, his dick jumping when Lewis did that.
So Lewis kept doing it, rubbing his hands up and down Seth’s back, caressing his shoulders, running his hands through his hair, pulling his face down to kiss him, running his hands back down.
“I’m about to…” he began, his voice shallow.
“It’s okay,” Lewis said, putting his hand on Seth’s cheek.
“But I’m about to…”
“Do it.”
With a relieved groan, Seth came, and Lewis felt the load, hot and thick between his thighs. He kept pressing his dick between Lewis’s thighs until everything was spilled out, and Seth came out, the length of his cock red and wet.
They lay side by side, chests heaving, bodies slick, and Seth grinned and looked up at Lewis in friendship. The two of them laughed, and suddenly Seth lay on his side and pressed his mouth to Lewis’s.
They dozed and it was not that Lewis didn’t love being with Chris, only that he didn’t think he would love being with anyone else, didn’t think the desire could awake again so quickly. He didn’t think that Seth, his cousin, who had been made into a little brother figure and then blossomed into a lover only to sink back to little brother status again, could awaken desire him him like this, that their bodies, side by side in sleep, could stir again so quickly and come back together, that his cock would rise and thicken and like a stiff compass, guide him back to the creamy limbs and smooth flesh of Seth, to Seth’s kisses and the heat of his flesh, the curl of his hair, the strangeness of his spirit that linked with his own, even in sex, even in the smell of sweat and must in this bed that still bore the scent of Chris and the lovemaking the three of them had as well.
He took Seth’s hair in his hands and pulled the boy’s face into his chest, wrapping his thighs around him while, on the side of the bed, he fucked Lewis harder and harder.
“Almost,” Seth panted, thrusting again, “there.”
Lewis ran his hands down the boy’s sweating back, and pulled Seth in. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth feeling Seth fuck him, feeling Seth deep inside of him.
“I’m gonna come…” Seth warned him.
Lewis had already come against his belly a few minutes earlier and now, with the last few thrusts, Seth made a staggering noise and moaned, “Oh—fuck—” as, pulling back from Lewis, he came, and then finished coming ,his damp head in Lewis’s arms.
Seth rolled over and the two of them lay side by side on the bed, gasping.
When Seth had finally caught his breath, he turned on his side and took the wet cloth from the little table at the end of the bed, wiping his chest, wiping the semen from his stomach while Lewis got up and went into the bathroom. Seth waited for the water to finish running and said, “Do you want me to tell you about the man who came to me?”
Lewis came out and lay on the bed beside him.
“Man?”
“He came before all of this. Before we made love again. He came after I went into the woods. He’s dead,” Seth said. “He’s a ghost.”
“And you’re not afraid?”
“No,” Seth said, sitting up. “I’m strong, Mase.”
“I know you are.”
“But I didn’t know. But I’m strong, and I’m a witch, and the things other people can’t see come to me. He said I had to send a message to Augustus. It was cryptic. I didn’t ask many questions. Just did it. And he said he will come around now and again. That he needs us. That we will meet very important people soon.”
Lewis laughed and Seth grinned sideways.
“What? You don’t believe me?”
Lewis pulled Seth down and kissed him on the mouth.
“I do believe you. I… just am happy to see you this way. In charge of yourself. Powerful.”
Lewis turned on his side and Seth ran a hand over his chest.
“I love looking at you,” he said.
“I don’t know why,” Lewis said.
“You’re amazing.”
“I’m middle aged with a pot belly.”
“That’s not that old.”
“I know it’s not,” Lewis said, brow furrowed. “But still.”
“I drew a picture of the man,” Seth said. “In my book. You wanna see?”
“Yes.”
Seth squatted on his hams to reach for it, and because he was beautiful and well built, cream colored with a broad back that went to a firm bottom, Lewis got up and wrapped his arms around him.
“He’s handsome,” Lewis said, looking at Nathan while his arms were still around Seth. “But sad.”
“Yeah,” Seth agreed, kissing Lewis’s hand. “So much sadness.”
“Will you stay?” Lewis asked him. “Stay with me and stay with us when Chris arrives?”
“I don’t like to—”
“Don’t say that. We both want you, and I think you want us too.”
While Lewis rubbed Seth’s wavy hair, Seth rubbed his cheek against him like a kitten.
“Then it’s settled, I guess,” he said.
“Yes,” Lewis said, rising, and climbing back into bed, “I believe it is.”
While he drove to Lynn’s apartment, he repeated to himself, “I will be a better man. I will be a better man. I will be a better man.”
But wasn’t he a good man? Wasn’t he always trying to do the right thing? But no, no need to clap himself on the back, and no, this was not the time to reassure himself of his goodness. Whatever good he had done in his life, over a hundred years ago, he had given his children into the care of their aunt and walked away from them never looking back, and now who knew how many of his descendants were out there? Well, he could figure it out, he supposed. But one was Lynn, and she was waiting for him, and he wondered, what would become of them? After all, what would their lovemaking be like once they both knew the truth? And what had it been like the night before? What would Lynn think? He parked before the two storey house, and without knocking went up the landing steps to her apartment, to where she had let him in several nights before, where he had taken her in full desire, but not fully unoccupied desire, for Loreal and Loreal’s scent and laugh and kiss had been in him.
But even as he climbed the stairs and entered the apartment, something was not right. He wondered, what had she done, had that bitch right away come over here, spirited Lynn away, planned to, like the dragon in the Book of Revelation, wait for the child to be born and then consume it? But even as he thought these wild thoughts, there was Lynn, sitting at the coffee table, and before her were manila envelopes and files and pictures, many pictures, and as he entered, she raised her confused face to him.
“Laurie,” she said, showing him his own face, a direct, dirty faced Vietnam vet with his round helmet half off his head, straps undone, holding his gun. Beside it was another, older picture of a Marine in dress whites, clearly, unmistakably in the year 1943, his arm around one of his colleagues, and then, again, at an Armistice Day celebration, for the very first Armistice Day, name written under his portrait quite plainly, Lance Corporal Lawrence Malone. Yes, he had stopped spelling it with a U by then. His one little way of saying he had changed. There he was again and, with no way to deny, looking tired, and dignified, but happy in themselves, sitting outside of a long gone house in Bridgeport, in their too large and not fitting Sunday best were Veronica and Laurence Malone with their three children, Patrick in a sailor suit and chaps, Vanessa and Catherine in their overdone dresses and hair of the time, of a time nearly one hundred twenty years previous.
Lawrence Malone did not know fear, not really. He’d been to war several times. He had vaulted from high buildings. He drove his car at sometimes two hundred miles an hour. To be a Drinker meant you knew no fear, or very little. But as he stood there looking at a century of himself looking back at him, and saw Lynn trembling with confusion, for the first time in longer than he could remember, fear was what was seizing him, shaking him, almost making him run out of the room.
“Laurie?” Lynn’s voice shook. “Please…. Help me understand.”
TOMORROW NIGHT WE WILL BEGIN THE TWELFTH AND FINAL CHAPTER OF THE OLD
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Lots going on in a great end to the chapter! Poor Laurie! I wonder what him and Lynn will do? Seth, Lewis and Chris seem to be slowly working things out but who knows where that will end up. I also sense that Evangeline isn't out of the picture yet so I would not be surprised if there is more trouble from her. I look forward to the final chapter and I hope you had a good night! Sorry I am posting so late, I had a busy day.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
WellI know all about busy days so, really, thank you for posting at all. There is a lot that's about to happen, chapter twelve will not be dull, that's all I'll say. And, by the way, if you are looking for more stories from all sorts of good gay writers (self humbly included) go over and support the GayDemon community. https://www.gaydemon.com/stories/ Have a great rest of your day. Cheers
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Thanks I will have to check that site out!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
T W E L V E
N A T I V I T Y
“… We are just as real as your fellow men. You invalidate nothing and solve nothing by calling us symbols.”
-The Red Book
In those last days before Christmas, Kristian Strauss headed across the campus of Wallington College with a brisk sense of satisfaction. All about him the campus was covered in white, and the old brick buildings rose up from the whiteness in solemn greeting, their steepled roves covered in snow, the great branches of the bare trees also caked in snow which, now and again, by the work of a small bird, shook down and fell on his shaggy almost tower of brown hair and made him laugh. His old professor shoes—this is what his sister called them—were almost soundless as he climbed up the steps into the damp alcove that surrounded Madeleine Hall, and then he opened the door and went up the steps into the old building, through its halls to the open door of a book crowded office with its paper strewn desk where Dr. Dunne was filling up a briefcase.
“Ah, there you are, Kristian,” Dr. Dunne said.
“Is this a stand up thing or a sit down thing?”
Dr. Dunne shook his head. “If you can’t offer a seat, what business do you have to ask someone to cross campus. Unless you’re out of time?”
Kris spread his hands out and sat down, spreading his long legs. He wore thin, checked pants, and his old jacket was open to reveal a white shirt and faded blue tie.
“You finished your grading?”
“Done and done,” Kristian said.
“And everything turned in?”
“Yes, Uriah,” Kris sat up. “What in the world is this about?”
“Do you have a few days before Christmas?”
“For?”
“I was wondering if you could accompany on a trip?”
“To? I mean yes. Wherever it is, of course I’ll go. But my fmaily’s expecting me for Christmas.”
“Of course,” Uriah said. “And my family is expecting me right now. Summoning me you might say.”
“That is… Now you’re just being weird.”
Uriah Dunne was the end of a long process by which Kris Strauss, an ambitious high school student who had hit a depression in his senior year, had ended up at Wallingtoin College, a good school, but not the Harvard he’d planned on. One semester Uriah had befriended him, and he had been amazed by this man’s knowledge and wisdom as much as by his compassion. It had been Uriah who had pointed him toward graduate school, made sure he had a tutor for the GRE and writteni the most glowing of his references, and when was done with his Masters work and not entirely sure about his PhD, it had been Uriah who had gently encouraged him to continue his thesis and come back to Wallington to teach. So when Uriah Dunne said, come you came.
“It’s only to My brother’s house,” Uriah said.
“Oh, well, the long tall man clapped his hands and laughed a little. “I love going to a big city. When do we head out?”
“We head out tonight,” Uriah said.
Kris nodded sharply.
“Excellent.” Then he said, “But why? I mean, why do you want me to go?”
“Because a long time ago you said you’d left the Church because the Church didn’t have answers. You said it wasn’t that you didn’t believe in other things and deeper realities, but that you didn’t think the Church had the key to them.”
“And then I said that my church was here. Was academia. This is my religion.”
Kris gestured about the room lined with groaning bookshelves and books stacked on top of each other or shoved into corners.]
“This isn’t enough,” Uriah shook his head. “You said you never wanted to get too comfortable.”
“And now?”
“You’re way too comfortable,” Uriah said. “We leave at eight.”
Lewis settles on his bed, waiting for Chris to join him. At last they lay down looking at the ceiling.
Lewis pulls down his shorts, and Chris runs his hand over them.
“You’re soft you know? So soft,” Chris breathes, pressing himself against Lewis.
Chris tugs down his own pants and then they pull off their shirts and lay together in their underwear. They lay side by side in the light of the room until, at last, Chris’s hands slip through the soft waistband of Lewis’s briefs and Lewis begins to stroke and massage Chris at the same time Chris touches him. They don’t look at each other, just at the ceiling, then at the blackness of their eyelids and nowCade rolls over to kiss him, and, at last, the underwear is gone and their limbs link.
Oh, he is soft, Chris thinks, oh his kiss is just what I wanted, oh I could gather him up and be in his arms and feel his body, these thick thighs, this soft, sweet skin, this warmth, oh God, the small curls, of cheeks not shaved for a couple of days, of those eyelids and the mouth, the generous mouth, oh, those hands up and down me.
And oh, the hair on his legs! So gentle, the perfect length of legs, the firmness of his ass, the dent in the small of his back, oh his back! Lewis gathers as much of him as possible between his thighs, pulls his face down to kiss him in the dark, to luxuriate in his kiss, in his kiss, in his firm kiss, in his tongue thrust into his mouth, in the thickness of his always spiky hair.
“I love you.”
“Be inside me,” Lewis says.
The whole apartment is quiet and dark. The only sounds are small, the small creaking and giving way of the bed, of small moans and gasps. If one was there to watch you could see them, burrowed into the corner of the bed like a balls Chris, white assed, on hands and knees, dark thighs gathered around him as he fucked Lewis.
“I’m about to come,” Chris told him. “I’m about to come.”
“Come inside of me.”
“Are you…?”
But Lewis was pulling him in, and Chris had not stopped and he could not stop, and his body froze, and then jerked. and Lewis felt him pumping, pulsing, felt the slick semen coming between his thighs, cradled Chris’s damp head to his, kissing his face, feeling his own hardness, knowing he would do the same to Chris before the night was over. He could not say he’d always wanted to do it because he could not say this was planned. He could not say he ever thought it would happen. Chris, gasping, separated from him, and they held each other, lying face to face, unable to speak.
He lifted his head quickly at the sudden appearance of a tall, dark haired man, pale faced, fierce, eyes glowing over his sharp cheekbones.
“Do you know who I am?” the vampire asked.
“No,” the man lied.
“Well, let’s just pretend that’s true. I am Lawrence Malone.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“No, that can’t be possible,” Laurie said. “You cannot possibly be pleased to meet me. “
The man said nothing, and Laurie said, “Would you be the one who came to one Lynn Draper with packages of photographs and records?”
“I… might have,” the man stood up, clearing his throat. “I am in fact. I am Theodore Coach. And yes. I did bring all of those files to your girlfriend. To your… whatever she is.”
“At whose command?”
“At the command of one Eve Moreland.”
Laurie’s face change, though the man could not tell what the change meant.
Then the vampire asked, “Did you know what was in those envelopes?”
The man seemed to be thinking about his answer, then a look crossed over his face and he said, “Yes, I do. Evidence of what you are. Evidence of what you had withheld from this woman.
“Look,” the man said, becoming suddenly bold with his new truth telling, “I know exactly what you are, and I know exactly what my mistress is, and when Eve Moreland or her grandfather asks me to do something I do it in gladness, and not even a blood drinker can—”
But before the sentence was out of his mouth, Laurie had lunged across the table and crushed the man’s windpipe in his jaws. It was impractical not to drink him, and as he did so, the man screamed, not from the pain of Laurie’s teeth, put from the fist, suddenly punched into his chest with vampiric strength, shattering his rib gage. As he died, Theodore Coach saw Laurie lift up his bleeding heart, saw his blood spurting all about the office, and all about the immaculate clothing of Laurie Malone, saw the vampire, like a mad man, biting into the living heart, draining it. What he could not have seen, being already dead, was the coup de grace, Laurie Malone’s strong hands, claw like, twisting the neck, ripping the head off and raising the shocked face of Theodore Coach to look down on the wreck of his erstwhile life.
N A T I V I T Y
“… We are just as real as your fellow men. You invalidate nothing and solve nothing by calling us symbols.”
-The Red Book
In those last days before Christmas, Kristian Strauss headed across the campus of Wallington College with a brisk sense of satisfaction. All about him the campus was covered in white, and the old brick buildings rose up from the whiteness in solemn greeting, their steepled roves covered in snow, the great branches of the bare trees also caked in snow which, now and again, by the work of a small bird, shook down and fell on his shaggy almost tower of brown hair and made him laugh. His old professor shoes—this is what his sister called them—were almost soundless as he climbed up the steps into the damp alcove that surrounded Madeleine Hall, and then he opened the door and went up the steps into the old building, through its halls to the open door of a book crowded office with its paper strewn desk where Dr. Dunne was filling up a briefcase.
“Ah, there you are, Kristian,” Dr. Dunne said.
“Is this a stand up thing or a sit down thing?”
Dr. Dunne shook his head. “If you can’t offer a seat, what business do you have to ask someone to cross campus. Unless you’re out of time?”
Kris spread his hands out and sat down, spreading his long legs. He wore thin, checked pants, and his old jacket was open to reveal a white shirt and faded blue tie.
“You finished your grading?”
“Done and done,” Kristian said.
“And everything turned in?”
“Yes, Uriah,” Kris sat up. “What in the world is this about?”
“Do you have a few days before Christmas?”
“For?”
“I was wondering if you could accompany on a trip?”
“To? I mean yes. Wherever it is, of course I’ll go. But my fmaily’s expecting me for Christmas.”
“Of course,” Uriah said. “And my family is expecting me right now. Summoning me you might say.”
“That is… Now you’re just being weird.”
Uriah Dunne was the end of a long process by which Kris Strauss, an ambitious high school student who had hit a depression in his senior year, had ended up at Wallingtoin College, a good school, but not the Harvard he’d planned on. One semester Uriah had befriended him, and he had been amazed by this man’s knowledge and wisdom as much as by his compassion. It had been Uriah who had pointed him toward graduate school, made sure he had a tutor for the GRE and writteni the most glowing of his references, and when was done with his Masters work and not entirely sure about his PhD, it had been Uriah who had gently encouraged him to continue his thesis and come back to Wallington to teach. So when Uriah Dunne said, come you came.
“It’s only to My brother’s house,” Uriah said.
“Oh, well, the long tall man clapped his hands and laughed a little. “I love going to a big city. When do we head out?”
“We head out tonight,” Uriah said.
Kris nodded sharply.
“Excellent.” Then he said, “But why? I mean, why do you want me to go?”
“Because a long time ago you said you’d left the Church because the Church didn’t have answers. You said it wasn’t that you didn’t believe in other things and deeper realities, but that you didn’t think the Church had the key to them.”
“And then I said that my church was here. Was academia. This is my religion.”
Kris gestured about the room lined with groaning bookshelves and books stacked on top of each other or shoved into corners.]
“This isn’t enough,” Uriah shook his head. “You said you never wanted to get too comfortable.”
“And now?”
“You’re way too comfortable,” Uriah said. “We leave at eight.”
Lewis settles on his bed, waiting for Chris to join him. At last they lay down looking at the ceiling.
Lewis pulls down his shorts, and Chris runs his hand over them.
“You’re soft you know? So soft,” Chris breathes, pressing himself against Lewis.
Chris tugs down his own pants and then they pull off their shirts and lay together in their underwear. They lay side by side in the light of the room until, at last, Chris’s hands slip through the soft waistband of Lewis’s briefs and Lewis begins to stroke and massage Chris at the same time Chris touches him. They don’t look at each other, just at the ceiling, then at the blackness of their eyelids and nowCade rolls over to kiss him, and, at last, the underwear is gone and their limbs link.
Oh, he is soft, Chris thinks, oh his kiss is just what I wanted, oh I could gather him up and be in his arms and feel his body, these thick thighs, this soft, sweet skin, this warmth, oh God, the small curls, of cheeks not shaved for a couple of days, of those eyelids and the mouth, the generous mouth, oh, those hands up and down me.
And oh, the hair on his legs! So gentle, the perfect length of legs, the firmness of his ass, the dent in the small of his back, oh his back! Lewis gathers as much of him as possible between his thighs, pulls his face down to kiss him in the dark, to luxuriate in his kiss, in his kiss, in his firm kiss, in his tongue thrust into his mouth, in the thickness of his always spiky hair.
“I love you.”
“Be inside me,” Lewis says.
The whole apartment is quiet and dark. The only sounds are small, the small creaking and giving way of the bed, of small moans and gasps. If one was there to watch you could see them, burrowed into the corner of the bed like a balls Chris, white assed, on hands and knees, dark thighs gathered around him as he fucked Lewis.
“I’m about to come,” Chris told him. “I’m about to come.”
“Come inside of me.”
“Are you…?”
But Lewis was pulling him in, and Chris had not stopped and he could not stop, and his body froze, and then jerked. and Lewis felt him pumping, pulsing, felt the slick semen coming between his thighs, cradled Chris’s damp head to his, kissing his face, feeling his own hardness, knowing he would do the same to Chris before the night was over. He could not say he’d always wanted to do it because he could not say this was planned. He could not say he ever thought it would happen. Chris, gasping, separated from him, and they held each other, lying face to face, unable to speak.
He lifted his head quickly at the sudden appearance of a tall, dark haired man, pale faced, fierce, eyes glowing over his sharp cheekbones.
“Do you know who I am?” the vampire asked.
“No,” the man lied.
“Well, let’s just pretend that’s true. I am Lawrence Malone.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“No, that can’t be possible,” Laurie said. “You cannot possibly be pleased to meet me. “
The man said nothing, and Laurie said, “Would you be the one who came to one Lynn Draper with packages of photographs and records?”
“I… might have,” the man stood up, clearing his throat. “I am in fact. I am Theodore Coach. And yes. I did bring all of those files to your girlfriend. To your… whatever she is.”
“At whose command?”
“At the command of one Eve Moreland.”
Laurie’s face change, though the man could not tell what the change meant.
Then the vampire asked, “Did you know what was in those envelopes?”
The man seemed to be thinking about his answer, then a look crossed over his face and he said, “Yes, I do. Evidence of what you are. Evidence of what you had withheld from this woman.
“Look,” the man said, becoming suddenly bold with his new truth telling, “I know exactly what you are, and I know exactly what my mistress is, and when Eve Moreland or her grandfather asks me to do something I do it in gladness, and not even a blood drinker can—”
But before the sentence was out of his mouth, Laurie had lunged across the table and crushed the man’s windpipe in his jaws. It was impractical not to drink him, and as he did so, the man screamed, not from the pain of Laurie’s teeth, put from the fist, suddenly punched into his chest with vampiric strength, shattering his rib gage. As he died, Theodore Coach saw Laurie lift up his bleeding heart, saw his blood spurting all about the office, and all about the immaculate clothing of Laurie Malone, saw the vampire, like a mad man, biting into the living heart, draining it. What he could not have seen, being already dead, was the coup de grace, Laurie Malone’s strong hands, claw like, twisting the neck, ripping the head off and raising the shocked face of Theodore Coach to look down on the wreck of his erstwhile life.
