Author’s note: This piece contains an explicit sexual encounter between two male vampires, in no way, tethered to any particular event. Simply a vignette, if you will. You have been warned. *winks*

***

“One.”

The word resonated in my mind, a breathy statement which tickled my ear as Victor whispered it. Poised behind me, our bodies yet joined and the height of climax still a heady undertone between us, he issued the challenge in that simple declaration and the corner of my mouth curled in a smile. He threw the gauntlet down and I was apt to accept.

We started the night in something of a devilish mood. Just arrived home from a night’s worth of driving, we had built a full head of steam in the car. Glances exchanged. My hand running up his thigh and brushing his length as he struggled to keep his eyes fixed on the road. I felt the surge of lust through our blood bond and knew I had him right where I wanted him. Ever since the first time we slept together – the very first coupling which transpired between us – I became addicted to the way I could make him respond to my ministrations. Marriage and several months had done nothing to quell the urge.

Far from it. I was more and more apt to pleasure my lover with each entanglement which transpired.

The door had barely swung closed before he had me pinned to the wall, our mouths pressed harsh together and a series of rolling kisses being exchanged. I groaned the moment I felt his fangs cutting into my bottom lip and mine descended, adding to the mix of blood coating both our tongues. Taking hold of the lapels of his jacket, I thrust him from me and walked with him without breaking the kiss, inching the both of us closer to the bedroom. Victor’s hands ran along my back and more than once, we collided with a corner or two as we blindly fumbled toward our destination.

I freed one hand to open the bedroom door. From there, all bets were off.

The moment the door swung open, I shoved him back and further into the room. As soon as we were close enough, I threw him onto the bed and climbed on top, connecting our lips the moment I did so. Victor clutched onto me tightly, but I soon felt my shirt being tugged from my pants and his fingers dancing across the bare skin of my back. The touches provoked a growl and my hands set to work at once.

I parted the buttons of his vest and unthreaded his tie. His shirt became forfeit, though, as all my patience had been expended in keeping his tailored suit intact. Taking hold of his shirt with both hands, I gave it a hearty tug and listened to fabric rip and buttons pop with the effort. The moment his bare chest was exposed, I groped it freely, allowing my fingertips greedy purchase on his skin. Our lips ripped apart and my eyes drank from the sight.

Muscle and sinew. A dip where his abdomen and his hips met which seemed to provide a target toward my ultimate goal. I licked my lips and kissed down his neck, my sharp teeth scratching his flesh and causing it to weep crimson rivulets. I lapped up the blood and licked closed the wounds while listening to him moan and feeling him arch up against me. Our lengths brushed together and when his hardness impacted mine, I moaned and scarcely noticed my shirt rip open and Victor’s hands begin their own claim to their conquest.

I also had little time to react before I found myself on my back.

Victor climbed on top of me this time and eyed me hungrily. We exchanged several deep kisses before he pulled away and whispered, “Where are your knives, lover?”

The question sparked an immediate response. I shivered and regarded him through half-lidded eyes. “I do not know, lover,” I said, as a devilish grin spread across my face. “Perhaps I might tell you and perhaps I might surprise you.”

Victor growled. He reached down and unbuckled my belt, but once he unclasped the button of my pants, his hand did not fist my length. Rather, he brushed against it, teasing me while his eyes remained set on mine. I moaned and thrust upward, my body attempting to coax more contact in a response as natural as drawing breath for a mortal. My lover, however, refused to answer its call and I groaned while bunching fistfuls of the comforter beneath me.

Finally, I nodded. “The nightstand… in the drawer…” I grunted, hips undulating beyond my own volition.

Victor grinned. He climbed from on top of me to fish for one of many blades I kept within our house. While he did so, I kicked off my shoes and rid my body of any offending fabric keeping it from ultimate contact with my husband and bonded. By the time the bed dipped again, I directed my attention toward Victor and groaned at the sight before me. Completely naked as well, he had disrobed and held an unsheathed knife in his hand. He waved the blade around and my eyes rolled back as I knew what he intended to do with it.

His body slid against mine. My hands flew up and touched him, cupping his ass and thrusting upward again for friction. He grunted and for a moment, the contact almost deterred him from his mission. But then, he lifted from me and waited for our eyes to lock before lowering the blade slowly, pressing it against my throat. I muttered, “Oh… fuck… yes,” despite myself and was rewarded instantly.

The sharp knife cut into my skin. Blood wept from the wound and began running down my chest. Victor dragged the blade down from neck to shoulder and drank the crimson offering in a greedy manner, closing the wounds as he did so. My nails dug into his back and I felt them drawing blood in their own right, something which provoked a moan from Victor. He lifted up and once again, the knife cut into me, forcing obscenities to spill from my lips like a current running from a broken dam. The process continued until my body began writhing, hands groping, a litany of noises rising to the air, incense lifting from the altar of indulgence.

My reactions must have been too much for Victor to bear over time as the teasing turned deadly serious in a rapid fashion. He flipped me onto my stomach and I crawled onto all fours, knowing precisely what he meant to do and inviting him to do it. As he lined himself up behind me, he nipped at my shoulders. When he entered me in one solid thrust, the passionate pain caused light to dance before my eyes and I whispered his name with harsh undertones, following it up with a silent request. Gods, yes, fuck me, lover.

Whether or not I projected the thought, Victor complied. Our coupling fast and furious from the start, my hand slid in front of me for leverage while I felt him thrust, not holding anything back. One hand settled on my hip, but the other fisted my length and from there, it seemed to be a race to see how long we could hold out. I moaned and swore like a man possessed. He did the same, both in voice and in thought, and before long, I felt him swell and knew I could not bear repressing the climax any longer.

As he released, I did, too. For wave after endless wave, I tensed and throbbed and relaxed with one steady pulse after another. Our bond echoed a thousand sentiments which bled together in such an indistinguishable fashion, it seemed hard to unravel one from the other to give a name to each one. I felt love, passion, desire, devotion, and every other conceivable form of those emotions with others deeper than words could describe.

Finally, Victor kissed up my shoulder. His lips hovered over my ear and I heard the single word which determined the tenor of the entire night.

“One.”

***

I chuckled in a sinister manner. The moment he parted from me, I spun around and took hold of him, throwing him onto his back. His eyes widened with surprise, but then narrowed again as a devilish grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. Now, I pressed my body against his and looked down at him, framing him in my arms with my hands pressed against the mattress. He tilted his chin to regard me, his grin broadening as mine mirrored his. “Two,” I said and acted upon the dare with haste.

My lips claimed his, but moved immediately to his jawline and his neck. He moaned softly, but drew in a sharp breath when my fangs plunged into his skin and I began to drink. I knew what this did to him. His back arched the same way mine had and his hands gripped onto my arms tightly while I drew lusty swallows of his blood. I felt his length turn hard again and dig into me and my lips lifted so I could moan. The reaction inspired my cock to stiffen and for interminable moments, we ground against each other, a series of kisses marking the heightened need rising between us. Until it became more than I could bear.

My hands pushed at his knees and they bent without argument. I lined my length with his opening and this time, I entered him just as pointedly as he had me. He hissed with the entry, a sound which rapidly turned into a groan and inspired an, “Oh fuck,” from my lover’s lips. Victor opened his eyes to regard me.

I grinned and whispered. “How hard do you wish me to fuck you, lover?”

He moaned. “Hold nothing back, lover mine.”

A shiver shot up my spine and from there, I proceeded to pound into him with reckless abandon. He called out my name in a growl of desperation and pure, unadulterated lust surged through our blood bond, driving me past my senses. The pursuit of an orgasm was only offset by my body’s desire to draw out the erotic bliss as long as humanly possible. Until I warned, “Oh fuck, lover… I am going… to… oh fuck… yes…”

This time, the climax surged through us as though bent to rend us asunder. I did not relent in the intensity of my thrusts until he joined me in spilling over the edge and a violent shudder ran up my spine while the haze took me under. I can not begin to relay the various noises we both made as my mind became lost within the myriad of sensations which sprang to life between us. By the time I slipped from inside Victor, we both settled onto the bed together and spent interminable moments attempting to regain some semblance of lucidity.

I glanced at my lover and chuckled at the way he grinned at me. “Did I tire you out, my poet?” he asked.

My grin turned mischievous. “Never,” I said.

“Oh, good.” Victor licked his lips and raised an eyebrow at me. “Wish to attempt something different with me, then?”

I perked an eyebrow as well. He laughed and proceeded to demonstrate where his thoughts had wandered and I groaned as his mouth wrapped around my length while mine did his. “Three,” one of us said after we both came, although I could not be certain which of us said it first. Four was spent in the shower, washing up from the previous three encounters. We groaned and collapsed on the bed before five commenced. As both of us spent ourselves for the final time, we curled next to each other and chuckled.

My eyes met Victor’s. I grinned broadly. “Lover, I think now I can assuredly say you have tired me out.”

He chuckled and kissed me. “Shall we rest, then, lover mine, so we can dance in our dreams?”

“This sounds like a splendid idea.” Our arms wrapped around each other and in the embrace, I felt the familiar comfort of his closeness lulling me toward our daytime repose. “I love you, my maestro,” I whispered.

“I love you, my poet.”

I shut my eyes and breathed in deep, imbibing Victor’s scent and feeling the corner of my mouth curl in a sated grin. In the darkness, close to dawn, sleep began to take me under, but not before I heard my lover’s voice once more.

“Next time, we should try for six.”

Posted via web from from the poet’s pen

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Posted via web from from the poet’s pen

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This is Part Two of a three-part story told from Peter’s point of view.
For Part One, read Changes on the Wind – In Prelude
For Victor’s point of view, read Changes on the Wind – Uncertainty

***

I had come close to asking if I could call upon Victor the next evening when I stood at the door, watching him depart. The words settled on the tip of my tongue, but all I could manage to spit out was a simple question. Would he be occupied?

Not knowing if he sensed the hidden meaning written between the lines, I could not even interpret them if I had to be honest with myself. There were impulses wriggling underneath my skin, actions I could sense myself holding back without knowing what they might entail or why I kept them shadowed. A wall blocked revelation from rushing headlong into my consciousness, but heaven only knew why. I trusted Victor. I enjoyed his company. I wished to be around him when we were separated and felt happier when we were together. Still, something prevented me from adding everything together and staring eye-to-eye with the sum total of the equation.

Perhaps it was not knowing what he might be thinking. We were drawn toward one another – always had been, even when we stood at odds with each other. For being a telepath, though, I refused to read the thoughts of somebody I cared for to the point of preferring to wrestle with uncertainty than invade the sanctity of their private ruminations. “An out of practice telepath,” I murmured to myself as I sat in my chair, staring at the clock on the wall. Yes, I had been hidden in a closet for so long, I had nearly forgotten what I was.

I glanced down at the hand cradling a half-depleted glass of scotch. Foreign memories surfaced of when these fingertips illuminated with energy, when they caused other immortals to cower and burn with the sheer force of my will. Ever since Flynn came to the surface, though, I hid away from myself so much, I could not bring myself to regard my own reflection in the mirror of self. “I am father,” I whispered to myself. “I am brother. I am seer…”

“… I am vampire…”

The admission forced a shiver up my spine. I swallowed hard and closed my eyes. A whisper traced across my thoughts, but I shoved it back and drew a shaky breath. Opening my eyes once more, I tightened my hold on the glass and wondered if I was as much afraid of peeling back the layers for Victor as I was myself. I had no reason to; Victor had come to accept each and every thing I revealed to him about who I was. He neither blinked, nor cowered, and yet I kept the door shut, with the lock held firmly in place.

Perhaps because I feared what laid underneath.

“This is ridiculous.” My eyes flicked to the clock on the wall, seeing the hour hastening toward ten in the evening. I had not received a phone call from Victor and yet, I needed to see him. Why alluded me, but it became enough of a compulsion that I set the glass onto a table and ignored the unfinished liquor in favor of fetching my coat from the closet. During one of our conversations, I recalled him mentioning the neighborhood in which he resided and figured, should I be unable to locate his residence for myself, I could at least bring my Blackberry with me. Fetching it from the entryway, I slipped it in my pocket and set out to the streets.

Digging my hands in my pockets, I wove my way through San Francisco, not paying much attention to my surroundings except to use them as landmarks. I searched memories of conversations for a description of his house. Faintly, I recalled such mentions as the exterior of the house, the adjacent buildings, and other details which gave me more of a compass to go on. Within a half-hour, I found myself entering the community and after an additional fifteen minutes, located the residence which matched Victor’s description.

Approaching the entrance, I readied myself for apologizing to the occupant, should my recollections prove faulty. I drew a deep breath inward and knocked on the door, slipping my hand back into the protective folds of my coat pocket after doing so. The night stilled, the noise in the periphery drowned out by my own apprehension. The moment the door swing open, though, I was forced to smile.

Victor appeared in the doorway and the moment his eyes met mine, he mirrored my grin. “Master Poet,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

I chuckled. “Yes, I know. I did not give you much forewarning.” Pausing, I fished for how to explain my presence, not apt to confess I set out so deliberately. “I was out and happened to wander into your neighborhood.”

He peered over my shoulder, eyes scanning around the immediate area before settling on me again. “Considering I don’t see a vehicle, I will have to assume you walked.”

“Yes.” I freed a hand to run my fingers through my hair. “I do not drive. A long story, but I have very rarely indulged the practice for quite a few years.”

Victor nodded, his characteristic grin surfacing. “And at your plodding pace, I assume you could use a chance to get off your feet.” He sidestepped, freeing part of the entry. “Please, come in.”

“Thank you, brother.” Nodding, I entered, pausing a few paces inside to regard the interior. I slipped my coat from my shoulders slowly, my eyes skimming over my first glimpses of a house just as impeccable as the elder vampire who stood beside me. Yet, it still bore an air of hospitality to it. Much the same as its occupant. I heard music filtering from somewhere else in the house and basked in the tranquility such an atmosphere provided.

Glancing at Victor, I grinned. “I trust I am not interrupting anything important?” I asked, perking an eyebrow.

He chuckled and shook his head. “Not at all, brother. You caught me in a moment of enjoying an old past-time, actually. My business last night was finished without any trouble.”

“I am glad to hear that.” My smile broadened despite myself. I folded my coat in the crook of my arm. “What old past-time would that be?”

Victor led me toward the coat closet in the main hall. As I procured a hanger from inside, he gestured toward the source of the sound. “I believe I’ve at least tentatively mentioned my affinity for music?”

I slipped my coat on the hanger and secured it in the closet. Nodding, I followed Victor away from the entryway, my eyes still flicking about my surroundings. “You have mentioned it a few times,” I said. Finally, my gaze settled on Victor. “It is quite pleasant, actually. What piece is that playing?”

He raised an eyebrow, glancing away as he stopped to listen. “Mussorgsky. Pictures at an Exhibition.” He looked at me and grinned. “I understand his Night on Bald Mountain piece is more famous because it was used in a Disney movie. One of the odder things I’ve ever discovered.”

Victor punctuated his words with a chuckle. I could not help but to grin in response, imagining the elder vampire being familiar at all with such aspects of mortal popular culture. Still, the music dancing around us formed a soothing blanket of notes and I found myself unable to break eye contact with Victor. His chestnut-colored irises held me steady and I could not look away. Truth be known, I did not wish to. “I cannot say I am all that familiar with Disney movies,” I said. “At least not any longer. Just the same… I quite like this.”

Something about those last four words gripped me from the inside, coiling around my psyche and taunting me. Strangely enough, Victor did not blink and neither did he avert his eyes. Instead, the smile remained affixed on his face. I felt a pull which dissipated when he finally turned his head. “There is much more where this comes from, brother.” He stepped toward a corridor and angled his body in an unspoken invitation for me to follow, perking an eyebrow as a tentative glance rose to engage me before drifting away again. “I would enjoy showing you, if you would not mind indulging me.”

Nodding, I walked toward the back of the house with him. As Victor turned away from me, I settled a hand on his shoulder, answering a subliminal dare to make contact with him. My fingers lingered only for a moment prior to lifting, but by the time we emerged past the main portion of the house, I was forced to shove my hand into my pocket. A slight wave of nervousness settled onto me. “So, what do you mean much more?” I asked, perking an eyebrow as I continued to follow him.

Victor chuckled, but did not glance back at me. He led me to a short set of stairs and paused. “I think I shall let the room explain itself.” The staircase descended into a large room that encompassed half of the residence’s width. Grinning, he stepped aside, his eyes finally meeting mine expectantly as I stepped into the room. A piano sat in the center of the room, displayed prominently, with in-wall speakers which linked to a sound system playing the rich tones of a brass ensemble. Strings and woodwinds joined the symphony and I drifted inward a few paces further, surveying everything with my mouth hung slightly agape.

An assortment of other leather cases, zipped closed, rested on display shelves on the wall opposite the stereo. Atop a couch laid a collection of sheet music, scattered about as though Victor had been thumbing through it prior to my arrival. I heard him humming along with the music as I gravitated toward the piano and skimmed my fingers along the top. Turning, I regarded the elder vampire again. “You are quite the musician, are you not?”

He chuckled and nodded. “As I said, an old past-time.” His smile softened, eyes settling on me for a brief moment before glancing about the room. “My one great solace, music. When I bought the house, it was partly because I could envision all this in place.”

I nodded, directing my attention back to the piano. As my gaze settled on the arrangement of ebony and ivory, I lightly pressed a couple keys, my fingertips caressing each one in a reverent manner. They touched something sacred and wished to linger, as though they could express something with the instrument I could not otherwise. I regarded Victor again when I felt I could trust myself to do so. “I am soundly impressed, brother. I had always debated playing an instrument, but never could sit still long enough to appreciate them as I ought.” My fingers stroked the keys absentmindedly. I cocked my head toward the piano. “Might I trouble you to play something?”

A broad grin lit up his face. I felt a rush of warmth simply at seeing his expression and mirrored his smile. “No trouble, Master Poet. I would love to.” He seemed to wince at his words, but recovered before I could acknowledge the gesture as anything more than an afterthought. I lingered by the piano. Victor indulged in a deep breath before stepping around the couch to shut off the sound system. I watched as he strolled to the piano bench and settled into place. His eyes fixed on the keys I touched. I lifted my hand reflexively.

Victor’s gaze swept upward to meet mine. “Any particular request?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

I deliberated on the question all while staring at Victor. Something meaningful. My memories whispered a song I remembered from my youth, the notes forming the ghost of an echo inside my consciousness. I felt a soft smile settle on my face. “Do you know Clair de Lune?”

Victor nodded, grinning again. He broke the gaze by turning his attention to the keys before him, his hands lifting from his lap and settling atop the first chord of the song. Out of my periphery, I noticed his foot raise to settle on the proper tonal pedal and without a single sheet of music before him, Victor began to play. The first few notes emerged, both tickling a sense of bittersweet reverie and firmly planting me in the present. Another person might have heard a melody being played, but I felt it in the marrow of my bones.

His fingers lifted and settled on each series of keys as though painting a breathtaking landscape with music. I heard poetry and watched the piece flow through him, feeling as connected to him in that moment as I had ever been. Images without form tickled at me. Words without definition swept through my mind and the hand which had been touching the keys rested atop the piano out of a need to hold onto something. I felt both unsteady and enthralled; confused and yet, somewhere in the back of my mind, I saw each conversation and filtered through each look we exchanged, wondering. I could not bring myself to ask the question to myself, though, and the final notes resonated around me with my eyes still distant and my mind still a million miles away.

My gaze shifted to Victor with my head still swimming. The soft smile affixed on my face was met with an equally-gentle tone of voice. “You are… quite the maestro, Victor,” I said.

He chuckled lightly, yet Victor held perfectly still, frozen in position with me not flinching from the posture I assumed. The world seemed to pause for a few beats, communicating something unspoken toward which I remained daft. I could not ascertain what we were searching each other for, but the wall around my sentiments prevented me from piecing together what laid before my eyes. His hands lowered from the keys. “No one has ever called me as such before, but I thank you, Master Poet. From you that is high praise, and means a great deal.” Victor’s voice possessed the same subdued intonation mine did.

Slowly, he stood from the bench, stepping away from the piano while I remained standing beside it. Still, I watched him consider me as he slipped his hands in his pockets. “Thank you for indulging me,” he added.

I shoved my hands into my pockets as well, as though my subconscious found itself responding to a subliminal suggestion at seeing him perform the action. “The title is well-earned, Maestro.” I permitted myself a wink. “And it was no indulgence. It was quite lovely. I…” I hesitated, attempting to ascertain what I wished to say. I loved it? Yes, this was certain, but might be saying too much. I fought the urge to furrow my brow at myself. Why did I think that? Where had my mind drifted without informing me of its destination? I cleared my throat, my grin turning somewhat disarming. “I… have never heard it played in such a manner before. My mother used to play it all the time, but you… have a gift.”

Victor chuckled, his head dipping as his eyes lowered to the floor. He lifted his eyes back to mine, his chin rising as he grinned back at me, a hint of playfulness emerging in his expression. “I like to think as such, at least, but I admit, I no doubt have several centuries of practice over your mother.” The look on his face softened as it seemed he considered my words. “I did not realize she would have played, and that being the reason you chose the piece. It is one of my favorites.”

I chuckled in return. “Yes, undoubtedly for as much as she enjoyed playing, you would have quite a bit more practice.” His words resonated in my mind, though. One of his favorites. I had to nod. “It has remained one of my favorites as well. For many reasons.” As our eyes lingered in a gaze again, I forced mine to shift away, as though attempting to hide something from Victor which might have been patently obvious had I continued to regard him. I surveyed the collection of instruments. “You play all of these, brother?”

He nodded, turning to face the display. “Yes, to varying degrees of mastery. The piano is…” Victor chuckled. “Or, rather to say, I took to the piano best.” He glanced toward me, then stepped toward the shelves, removing one hand from a pocket to rest it on a leather case. “Clarinet.” It settled on another case beside that one. “Oboe.” He raised his fingers to settle on one the next shelf up. “Trumpet.” They then lowered two shelves down. “Bassoon.” Slipping his hand back into hiding, he moved away and regarded me again. “I could go through the list. Mostly woodwinds, as I’m partial to them. The brass are not my favorites, though I keep a trumpet for the odd times it strikes me to play.”

My eyes had followed the movement of his hand as he touched each instrument. Lost in wonder over the thought of one person having mastery over such a collection, I could yet hear the chords of the piano piece resonating in my mind and wondered if Victor possessed the ability to create such lovely music with each one. “Woodwinds…” I heard myself say distantly, the first word escaping my lips as was apt to at the moment. I glanced back at him and grinned. “I might have to continue showing up at your doorstep in order to hear you play each one.”

Victor chuckled, grinning. “Perhaps you can simply tell me the next time you are inclined to indulge me and I shall retrieve you rather than making you walk all this way.”

I held my smile steady, but surrendered to the notion of how often I felt inclined to call upon him. “I shall have to do so. I did not mind the walk in the slightest, though.” Inside my mind, I heard myself finish the thought. ‘Because it was a walk to see you.’ My eyes flicked to the instruments and my grin turned somewhat playful. “Perhaps you might coax me to take further interest in learning one of these myself.”

He did not respond at first and I feared glancing back at him, wondering why it seemed my mouth was running away on me. Swallowing hard, I felt an undercurrent settling and finally dared myself to make eye contact with him again while he looked lost in thought for interminable moments. Victor blinked several times and drew in a deep breath, flashing a subtle grin at me. “If you would be so inclined, I would hardly object, brother. I did not think you would be one to find an affinity in such things, so I confess, I rather like the idea.”

I nodded. My feet moved of their own volition, closer to where he stood while he continued looking at me. “Yes, I know, it is not the first thought one associates with me.” I punctuated my words with a chuckle. “I have actually fancied the notion on and off the past few years especially, I simply did not know where to start.” Pausing just shy of Victor, I pointed toward the array of instruments. “What would you suggest, Maestro, if you were to recommend one to me?”

He stared, unmoving for what seemed like an eternity, eyes fixed on mine and lungs filling slowly with a deep breath. A shiver ran up my spine completely bereft of the assassin when I caught the way he looked at me, but Victor averted his eyes before I could react further. “For you, brother?” I watched his gaze shift from one instrument to the next and linger on the wall. He hesitated, then turned his head to regard me again, looking somewhat apprehensive. “Strings,” he said. “A violin. The movement of a bow across the frets is something akin to the mastery of a sword. I would say it would be almost natural for you.”

I perked an eyebrow, but glanced away, eyes distant as I considered the recommendation. A smile touched the corners of my mouth. Inside my mind’s eye, I saw the fluid motions of a bow dancing across the strings and saw myself holding one, with Victor standing close by, watching me play. Some euphoric surge of happiness accompanied the picture. I regarded Victor with a soft expression. “That… actually sounds rather tempting, I must say. Do you happen to know how to play one?”

Victor nodded, with our eyes locked again. He grinned. “I do. Not as proficiently as some, but well enough.” He raised an eyebrow. “Would you consider having me teach you, brother?”

My smile brightened despite myself. “Brother, I would be honored if you did.” I chuckled. “So, you can play your instruments for me and teach me the violin. I think this sounds rather pleasant.”

Victor laughed, nodding in return. “Very pleasant. There might be hope for you yet.” He winked.

“Perhaps. I almost believe it when you say it.” My grin turned coy. “I knew the term maestro came to mind for a reason.”

His eyes lingered on mine. I could have been mistaken, but it seemed as though his shoulders lifted a fraction of an inch, his expression softening a minuscule amount. The corner of his mouth seemed to curl an extra millimeter upward and it was the first moment of our many locked gazes that night where I desperately wanted something. Distantly, I realized what it was, but I could not look away. Fortunately, Victor simply nodded and said, “You are the wordsmith, Master Poet. So, I am hardly surprised you came up with something apropos.”

Moments elapsed without anything happening, either of us acting upon whatever impulse had woven us together and sucked us into its gravitational pull. I managed to look away and we drifted apart enough that the temptation waned and normal conversation took over as much as possible. An unmistakable tension settled on the room which strained the normal tenor of our banter, but not enough that either of us seemed apt to acknowledge it.

Victor drove me home some time afterward. I parted company with a smile and a ‘see you soon’, but walked up to the house feeling much more unsettled than I had been prior to departing. As I slipped my key back into the lock, I found myself asking what in the heavens was happening to me. My sentiments crowded in on me and started to gain an unmistakable form, something I found myself having to confess with brick by brick of my wall crumbling right before my eyes. My thoughts drifted back to the gaze exchanged which seemed rife with electricity. What had I wanted?

I wanted him to kiss me. To close the gap and press his lips against mine. I drew a shaky breath as I opened the door and slammed it shut behind me. My coat flew off and landed on the floor, my keys shoved into my pocket with me nearly collapsing into my chair. When had this happened? When did my heart begin to slip into the ether and set its sights upon my best friend?

I shut my eyes and sighed. I could not be the only one. The attraction buzzing between us jumped from one body to the other and back again, and yet I did not know what Victor might be thinking and had not reached the level of urgency where I could even justify reading his mind. This marked uncharted territory for me. Never before had another man done this to me and yet, something seemed so right about it.

“Utter nonsense,” I murmured to myself and rose to pour myself a drink. I passed out on my bed some time later with the debate still unresolved within me.

The next evening, I rose and paced the floors, tempted to indulge in a hunt, but not wanting to move for fear that I might miss Victor. John perked an eyebrow at me on more than one occasion, but I ignored him in favor of setting out to Nocturnal Embers after a few hours had elapsed. My Blackberry sat dormant in my pocket. I could not bring myself to using it. Instead, I returned to the house and whittled away the hours until settling in to sleep for the day.

The next evening was much of the same. By the third night, I felt the familiar ache of needing to feed and knew if I did not answer it soon, there would be hell to pay. Just as I finished buttoning my shirt, I saw my Blackberry buzzing on my dresser and perked an eyebrow as I strolled over to retrieve it. Victor’s number flashed on the screen and had I a pulse, my heart would have leaped at seeing it. I immediately pressed the call button. “Hello, brother,” I said, bringing the phone to my ear.

Victor hesitated for a moment, then said, “Hello, brother. How does the night find you?”

I shrugged, attempting to sound nonchalant. “Well, for the most part. I have simply been meandering about the house, attempting to settle on what to do for the evening.” Pausing, I perked an eyebrow. “How does the night find you?”

He exhaled a shaky breath. “Well, although I’ve had a frustrating evening.” He paused as well. “I was actually thinking about indulging a hunt, brother, and thought I would see how you felt about joining me.”

“I was actually planning on much the same thing.” I grinned, resting a hand on top of the chest of drawers as I leaned against it. “You should know I would hardly refuse to accompany you.”

“Yes, I know. It is…” Victor trailed off for a few seconds. “Brother, I have a question for you. Have you ever indulged a bit more in your hunts?”

“Indulged?” I asked furrowing my brow.

“Yes.” He chuckled. “Are you in the mood for a little seduction to find our meals this evening?”

I blinked and then suddenly realized what he meant. Flashes of my days as an assassin resonated within me, those times when I would seduce and lure away my victims to indulge in them, both body and blood. A shiver of a different sort traced up my spine and for a moment, I debated whether or not I could partake of such a thing without it affecting me adversely. The debate provoked a soft sigh. Why could I not indulge in such matters without fear of the assassin?

‘What am I? I am vampire, that is what.’ I nodded in a resolute manner. Victor had to be the most self-assured, confident vampire I knew and such a thing often made me jealous. To indulge in the hunt without fear of losing one’s soul. To embrace that which made us what we were – immortals – and not be consumed by it. I wished to learn this more than anything else in the world. Victor might have offered to be my teacher in the matter of music, but tonight, I wished a different instruction from the maestro.

“Yes,” I said, not knowing how much time had elapsed. “Yes, it has been a while, but I used to partake of such a thing rather frequently.” My smile turned a trifle more sinister than normal. “You wish to indulge in a bit of mischief?”

I could almost hear the grin across the line. “Yes, brother, I think mischief is the operative word.”

“Come by and pick me up. Heaven only knows I could use it right now.”

Victor heartily agreed and we both hung up. A few minutes later, the doorbell rang and I spirited out the front door without much of a farewell to John. Instead, I walked side-by-side with Victor to his car and climbed in, exchanging a devilish smirk with him before we set off toward downtown. Not much discussion transpired en route, with the exception of Victor admitting he had been preoccupied with the political arena the past couple of days. “You could say that was what provoked the hunt,” he said as he turned into a parking garage.

I nodded slowly, acknowledging the sentiment with as much understanding as I could impart. I confessed toward moments when the inclination to shred apart humanity became more pointed than others, without acknowledging their usual source. Victor smiled softly in recognition, then asked if I was ready before opening his car door. I nodded and followed him, assuming a place by his side again as we strolled out onto the street.

The city bore a distinct hum to it, with a thousand pulses resonating in the area surrounding us. I felt the light chill of a breeze blowing past and exchanged another smirk with Victor as we crossed the street. One of the larger nightclubs in the area laid in front of us, rife with possibility and causing an ache to infect me from head to toe. I held back my fangs while we glamored our way past security, and stood at the edge of the room, surveying the crowd gathered with my hunting partner.

I inhaled deeply, savoring the scent in the air; humanity laid before me, yet I beheld it in a much different manner. Something hearkening back to my earliest days as a vampire. I recalled seducing my prey, yet the notion was such a distant recollection, it tempted me to curse my youthful moral wrestlings. The finer pleasures of being an immortal laid nearly spread before me and the word seduction resonated within my mind, forming a siren call. I glanced at Victor. “It has been a long time since I have tasted wanton lust in their blood. As I recall, this is a feat very easily accomplished.”

Victor grinned in a devilish manner, his eyes glinting as he nodded slowly in response. “Yes, lust is quite simple to entice, brother. I think the pair of us will manage to find something for both our tastes.”

Nodding in response, I drew another deep breath inward, shivering as I caught a tendril of Victor’s scent in the process. I tried my hardest to conceal the reaction it inspired while we strolled deeper into the recesses of the club, yet my fangs almost descended of their own volition. Swallowing hard, I cast a quick glance at Victor, then redirected my attention to the mortals engaged in their various pursuits, attempting to redirect the fledgling temptation toward a victim. We paused beside the dance floor and I stepped closer to Victor. “Lead the way, dear brother,” I whispered.

Inhaling again almost became my undoing. Victor’s scent seemed to break through any other in the crowded room, with a worse form of temptation than even the pulses thudding around us. He glanced at me and must have read the drunken expression on my face, for he smiled and flashed a hint of fangs. For a moment, I thought he knew the object of my attention, but he motioned for me to follow as though sensing my need being much more a need for blood. I strolled beside him willingly, yet my eyes continued gravitating toward various parts of his anatomy. His neck. His shoulders. His arms, torso, and…

I lifted my gaze before it could descend below his belt.

We swept past a few mortals dancing, two vampires who might as well have worn the robes of death and been its dark harbingers. The lights were dim and colored beams flared down from projectors in the ceiling. The room bustled and as I forced my eyes away, I caught sight of humans flocking by a bar. A set of stairs led to a lounge area. A few mortals conversed while seated on plush sofas. Doors led to back rooms, but the selection on the floor seemed ample enough. “Do you see anything which strikes your fancy?” I asked, risking leaning closer to Victor again.

He paused and skimmed around the immediate area with his eyes before stopping. I watched his gaze settle on a human and the wicked grin emerge anew. “I think I just did.”

Turning my focus in the direction I saw him looking, I regarded a redheaded woman not too far away, dancing with a brunette I could only ascertain was her friend. Both women slender, they bore curves in all the correct manners and were indeed an intoxicating sight to behold. I saw Victor lick his lips from the corner of my eye and shivered again, wondering if half my problem was being away from the attentions of a woman for so many weeks. I perked an eyebrow at myself.

I could allow the denial to persist for another evening, I supposed.

While Victor’s eyes continued drinking from the sight of the redhead, I regarded the other woman and admired her from head to foot and back again. Firm breasts, long legs; yes, she inspired a glint of lust in my gaze and I was all too willing to use her for those ends, knowing how rapidly I was unraveling otherwise. “Yes, and with a companion,” I murmured only loud enough for the elder vampire to hear. “How quaint and convenient.” The corner of my mouth curled upward as I rifled through her mind. “Oh, her thoughts are sinful, brother. Her companion’s as well. They came out tonight desiring a bit of action.” I turned to look at Victor. “What do you say we give it to them?”

A flicker of something I could only define as unadulterated desire crossed Victor’s eyes as we regarded one another, yet I could not be certain if my words or the convergence of our gaze again prompted it. I ignored the part of me which seemed intrigued at the latter and mirrored the wicked grin which spread across Victor’s lips. “I think that sounds like a marvelous idea, brother,” he said. “Perhaps we should go introduce ourselves?”

“After you,” I said, extending a hand pointed toward our would-be conquests.

Victor nodded. We both crept up on the women and within seconds, both surrendered willingly to us, held in our thrall with their bodies’ reactions bereft of thought. Hands traced across scant clothing and warm flesh and for a while, Victor and I seemed to be lost in the moment, indulging the beginnings of debauchery in such close proximity to one another. With the women there, it kept our desires focused and as we lured them away, we glamored another security guard past his watchful eye and into a private room.

I groaned the moment the door closed and the brunette threw herself into my arms. Fangs descending, I kissed her hard and deep and sank into the impulses throttling through me.

A shiver assaulted me at once. I ignored the faint whisper of my alter ego while pressing the stranger against a wall and allowing my hands a much more sensual exploration of her body. As I kissed down her neck, I stole a quick glance Victor’s way and watched him dispatching of his victim’s clothing, his hands and mouth very similarly occupied. My eyes rolled back and I stole a quick taste of my conquest, listening to her moan in response to my ministrations.

It did not take much to push me over the edge with her.

Clothing fell with haste, my suit jacket and shirt landing atop the blouse she had already shed. Her short skirt lifted. The moment my pants joined the other discarded garments, I wasted no time in throwing her down and entering her in one solid thrust. She worked me to a fever pitch and the conjoined sounds of moans and groans from the activities in the other side of the room built a frenzy from which I could not descend. Climax transpired within moments and my teeth sank into her neck only seconds after I felt her clench around me.

Her blood rich with lust, it flowed freely into my veins and my eyes shut as I relished the feed, the taste of endorphins saturating the viscous liquid pouring down my throat. I moaned sharply, but pursed my lips again around the bite marks, imbibing swallow after swallow until I felt her pulse begin to wane and the hands clutching onto me relax before they fell limply by her sides. Pulling away, I slipped from inside her, issuing a few steadying breaths. My eyes shut. I remained in the same position for interminable moments, attempting to catch my bearings and push back the assassin. I almost had Flynn subdued. He retreated back a few solid paces. But then, I heard something which knocked my focus completely to hell within seconds.

A moan of completion. My eyes darted to Victor and the redheaded woman with whom he had been occupied. He drank from her neck as well, his skin bare and nothing hidden from my vision as I took in the sight of him. A lean body, the sinews of his torso marked with toned muscle across its topography. My fangs remained down and in that moment, I wanted him as I had wanted nothing else before.

I saw myself ripping him away from his conquest once he finished feeding and pressing against him. Lips meeting lips, fangs cutting into each other while we explored each other as we had the women we claimed. Topping to the ground. Driving teeth into his neck. I heard him moan and groaned as well as I felt myself beginning to lose control.

Kneeling on the ground in front of the now-dead body of my victim, I could not take my eyes off Victor.

‘Well, is that not a curious thing, seer. When did you drift toward the other side of the fence?’

No. Not Flynn.

Not now.

I clenched my eyes shut, obliterating the mental image while covering my face with my hands. Inhaling sharply, I shook my head. ‘Damn you, assassin. Now is not the bloody time.’

‘Oh, I think this is a splendid time, boy scout. My, my, look what you have managed to do without my prompting.’

I shivered. ‘Yes, I am enjoying being a vampire for once. You should be grateful.’

‘I am tickled. Utterly tickled. And with a companion. Might I introduce myself to him?’

‘No.’ I gritted my teeth. ‘No, you leave him alone or so help me, I shall find some way to end you, Flynn.’

‘Ending me would end you, too. What a conundrum you face.’

Swallowing hard, I forced my eyes open, staring off toward the other side of the room. ‘I promise you, it shall be worth it. If you scare him away…’

‘You shall do what?’ He laughed in a mocking manner. ‘Are you infatuated, seer?’

The question caused me to blink. Victor pulled away from his victim and I was forced to glance down toward the floor.

‘Well? Are you?’

I rubbed my face with my hands and sighed. ‘What I am is none of your business, assassin. Now crawl back into the hole from where you came.’

He snickered, but retreated into the shadows, leaving me shaken in more than one manner. I felt Victor’s gaze settle on me, but refused to look at him, not wanting him to know I had just stopped my alter ego from emerging right in his presence. Beyond that, though, I heard Flynn’s question echo in the stillness of my thoughts and issued several steadying breaths as I denied the answer to that question. I knew, though. Without speaking the words, I knew exactly where the truth of matters laid.

Coming to a shaky stand, I gathered my clothing and attempted a disarming grin for Victor’s sake. He appeared puzzled, raising an eyebrow at me with a solemn gaze issued toward me. It made me ache to see him look so lost, but I could not bring myself to discussing the matter with him. Not yet, anyway. I needed to get home and do a sizable amount of thinking.

I slipped my pants on and kept my shirt untucked after securing the buttons closed. Threading my arms through the sleeves of my suit jacket, I slipped on the shoes I had discarded at some point during the fracas and ran my fingers through my hair. Victor spoke at last, stating it would be a good idea for us to dispose of the bodies and I nodded in agreement. We set to the task in silence, and with the same tense quiet, we wandered back to his car and secured ourselves inside.

The journey home was strained, at best. Victor turned on the radio, in some effort to drown out the deafening sound of our thoughts as it seemed we both wrestled with what to say to one another. He cleared his throat reflexively when we were halfway to my house. “Did the hunt bother you, brother?” he asked.

I had been looking out the window, but with the question, I shot my focus to Victor and shook my head. “No,” I said. “Heavens no, not at all. I quite enjoyed myself, actually.”

He nodded, but frowned as his eyes remained fixed on the road. “Did I…” The question trailed off before he could finish it.

I perked an eyebrow. “Did you what?”

He sighed and shook his head. “Nothing, brother. I don’t wish to pry.” Victor glanced at me and grinned, but even the grin looked somewhat forced.

Frowning in response, I considered him and fought the urge to groan at myself for wishing to keep my silent ruminations hidden. He was floundering. I had no need of reading his mind to know what Victor was thinking as I stared at him. My mind felt too chaotic, though, to offer him the type of reassurance I would have liked. “I had a good time tonight, brother. Honestly, I did.”

Victor’s grin became more genuine. He parked the car in front of my house and nodded, shifting slightly in his seat to line me in his sight. His eyes traced across me and I looked back at him, fighting the urge to do something. Touch his face. Kiss his lips. Whisper to him gentle reassurance that somehow, some way I would figure things out and be able to converse with him more freely. Instead, we sat in silence until Victor nodded. “I did as well. Take care, Poet. And thank you for the company.”

I nodded slowly. “I appreciated the company as well, Maestro.” The term of endearment slipped as the only comfort I could provide before I opened the car door and slipped out from the vehicle. Pausing a moment to study him, I finally averted my eyes and shut the door, not wishing to make matters worse with half-baked thoughts and trite platitudes. My hands slipped in my pockets and a casual gait marked my path back to the door. Behind me, I heard his car drive off, leaving me standing on the stairs by myself. As I turned my head, I watched the taillights drift farther away, until he turned and disappeared altogether.

With a sigh, I finished ascending the stairs. The air around me became heavier, the world duller once again. I paused in front of my door and slipped my keys from my pocket, but then remained standing there, holding them in my hands.

I could produce my Blackberry and call him. I could run after him. I could scream out to him the very words I could not bring myself to uttering for myself. Instead, I dismissed each notion and finally unlocked the door, not slamming it shut this time. Not even slipping off my jacket before I settled in my seat. Instead, I stared off into the distance, eyes on the clock, listening to the steady ticking as though it would be enough to drown out my thoughts. Truth be known, I knew nothing could now.

I had crossed the path of no return. The rest would be inevitable.

Posted via web from from the poet’s pen

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Posted via web from from the poet’s pen

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A heavy rain descended on the streets of Berlin, a wet chill working its way into the marrow of those pedestrians unfortunate enough to be caught in the deluge. The slick streets reflected illuminated lampposts; cars speeding by displaced water with their windshield wipers swinging like a metronome keeping time with the rhythm of life. For several months, it seemed neither sun, nor moon, shone the same way it once had, but that could have been Karl Wagner’s perceptions conspiring against him.

Either that, or he had been working too hard lately.

Digging his hands into the pockets of his heavy, wool trench coat, Karl continued walking toward a large estate nestled deep in the heart of the city. His cheap, brown loafers splashed in puddles, soaking his feet while a sigh escaped his lips. It produced a billow of steam which mingled with the rain. As Karl lifted his eyes from the dirty sidewalk to the wrought iron gates protecting the largest vampire nest in Berlin, a frown tugged at the corners of his mouth. It might have only been months, but it felt like years since the world was the way he remembered it. He feared it would never be the same way again.

Karl couldn’t be sure when it started, because the earliest reports all formed a steaming pile of conjecture on his desk. It wasn’t until an injured seer sat across from him weeks later, cigarette dangling from his shaky fingers, that Karl realized some of the rumor was truth. “They were old vampires,” the seer said, his hands continuing to tremor, his emerald eyes wild as they took in everything and nothing all at once. He drew from the cigarette again. “All congregated together. I swear one of them resembled a vampire I shot through with my crossbow five years ago, but that’s impossible.” A wild laugh escaped his lips. “Vampires don’t coming back from the netherworld. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, right?”

The thirty-five year old sorcerer frowned, assuring the younger man that vampires, in point of fact, did not return from the grave no matter how old they were. As the next few nights passed, however, he found the limits of his imagination being tried. Another seer carried in on a stretcher screamed of the world ending. His watcher’s body had been found mutilated three kilometers away. Spray painted on the wall next to where her broken, bloody remains were deposited was the ominous message, ‘Though many died, many yet remain. The Grim Reaper awaits.’

The Supernatural Order began to panic.

Never, in recent history, had they faced such a surge in antagonistic vampire activity and with each wave of death came the call for all available personnel to report to Europe before the situation got out of hand. The full might of the Order descended on the continent like a flock of eagles with wings spread in valiant glory, bearing weapons and wielding supernatural powers. Karl himself a sorcerer, he looked at each young, eager face with jaded eyes, imagining one of them sitting in his office, a cigarette shaking in their hand and a story of the dead walking drifting past their lips.

One night, Karl did the unthinkable. He left the office with little more than the coat on his back and walked up to the gates of the oldest vampire coven in Berlin.

Karl had nothing rehearsed when he approached the front doors, escorted on two sides by vampire guards who glanced at him every thirty seconds as though this was some kind of a joke. Karl shot them a half-hearted smirk and took a deep breath, entering the halls and gazing at the largest collection of immortals he had ever seen under one roof. Flanking a long corridor, they watched in solemn silence while Karl marched the entire length of the house, toward the back where the master’s private quarters laid. He felt each set of eyes along the way.

The guards looked him over one final time before opening the door and motioning for him to enter. Karl nodded, hands digging into his pockets and his heart racing with sound and fury while he stepped into what could only be deemed the lair of the enemy. The door shut behind him with eerie finality. Karl swallowed hard and walked a few paces further into what appeared to be a comfortable office, bereft of windows, but lit with a sparse collection of lamps and lined with bookshelves.

Standing beside one bookshelf was a tall man with hair so blond, it almost appeared white. His blue eyes scanned the spines of volumes, one hand lifting toward Karl with one finger held aloft. “Hold, one moment please,” he said. “I am looking for something.”

Karl raised an eyebrow and nodded, walking toward a desk. The moment his hand settled on the back of one chair, the vampire standing by the bookshelf interrupted him. “No, one of the other chairs. There is a cravat of brandy on the table if you would like to pour yourself a drink.”

“Very well.” Karl glanced at the other side of the large room, seeing a couch and two brown, leather chairs separated by a table. Situated on the table was a crystal cravat and two matching glasses. Karl strolled past a floor lamp en route to one of the chairs and settled into it, reaching for the brandy and filling the glass two fingers full.

He swirled around the contents, eyes fixed on the amber-colored liquid before tipping it back into his throat. The moment he lowered his hand, though, the tall vampire appeared before him, causing Karl to jump from the sudden appearance. The look in his eyes unnerved Karl. There was curiosity present, the rest of his body still while his gaze raised and lowered, studying Karl from head to foot. Finally, the vampire extended his free hand, the other hand wrapped around a old, leather-bound book. “Simon Kaufmann,” he said. “I am the master of this coven.”

“Karl Wagner.” Karl touched the cool hand, shaking with a firm grip before pulling his hand away.

Simon nodded, walking to the free chair and settling in it. He placed the book beside him on the table and leaned his elbow on the armrest. Karl remained silent, regarding Simon while the coven master spoke. “Herr Wagner, I have to say that in my four hundred seventy years on earth, I have never entertained a member of the Supernatural Order in my private quarters.”

Karl blinked. “How did you know I…” His words ceased abruptly when Simon raised an eyebrow at him. Karl nodded. “The eyes give it away.”

“They do, indeed.” Simon’s brow relaxed, a grin surfacing. “I found it alarming when my second-in-command came to me, telling me one of the ‘green eyed demons’ found himself on our doorstep. When he told me you said you come in peace, I thought you might possibly be asking to be turned, but I can clearly see this isn’t the case now.”

The chuckle sprang from Karl’s lips before he could stop himself. He forced himself to regain his composure, drinking back another swallow of his drink. “No, no…” He shook his head. “Not here to be turned, Herr Kaufmann.”

“Simon. And don’t worry.” Simon’s grin broadened. “I wouldn’t have turned you anyway.”

“Comforting to know.” Karl finished his drink and set the empty glass on the table. His fingers itched for a cigarette, but he forced himself to refrain. “No, I’m here on personal business, so I don’t even come representing the Order.”

“Oh?” Simon settled back in his chair and folded his hands on his lap. “Why do you find yourself here tonight, then, sir?”

Karl indulged in a deep breath before sitting back in his chair as well. He glanced away, then looked at Simon again. “My people are dying,” he said. “Brave young men and women who have had nothing but respect for the natural order. I report directly to one of the elders on the Berlin council and oversee the seers we send out into the field. Something is happening and I want to know what.”

“Something happening?” Simon tilted his head, examining the mortal spellcaster again. “Explain, if you can.”

Karl nodded, another draw of air settling in his lungs for lingering seconds, expelled once he had enough chance to organize his thoughts. “There are more vampires causing trouble than usual. The men and women on the field have been seeing strange things and there have been haunting messages left with the corpses of our watchers.”

“And you come to me wanting to know if I have any idea why these things are happening?”

“Yes.” Karl frowned. “I’ve been unable to figure out what could be behind this. Rumor has it this is happening across Europe.”

A frown settled on Simon’s face. He looked away, his eyes focused on the other side of the room for what seemed like interminable minutes before his gaze settled on Karl once more. “I say this to you only because I, too, respect the natural order. One does not live as long as I have without realizing the way things are and the way things must be.” He nodded, an eyebrow lifting again. “Have you heard of the dead walking? The spectres of vampires visiting from the grave?”

Karl blinked, then nodded in response. “Yes,” he said, his voice a whisper. “How did you know… ?”

“I, too, have heard of this.” Simon paused as though orienting his thoughts. “Several other masters around Europe have been having similar problems, demands being exacted to aid these other vampires, threats when one refuses. Sometimes only reports of encounters with olden ones or ones known to have been killed.” He sighed. “I didn’t want to believe it and neither did so many who have brushed shoulders with this phenomenon, but if they are causing trouble with the mortals as well… .”

“Where did they come from?” Karl sat straight, leaning his elbow on the chair’s arm rest. “Does anyone know?”

Simon shook his head. “You would have to ask the vampires causing trouble themselves… and I would wish you luck in that endeavor.”

Karl nodded, sitting back in his seat again with a frown. His eyes traced across Simon, a fledgling notion springing to life the longer he regarded the aged vampire. Karl knew when he walked up to this building that night, he was risking both his life and the distinct chance he would be turned away from their doorstep with a laugh. That he hadn’t been threatened might have been a miracle, but the fact that he was speaking so candidly with a vampire – a vampire, for the love of all things – left him with a distinct sense of awe. He raised an eyebrow, his posture relaxing a little. “Whether… or not this is the dead walking or the coming of the apocalypse, I must admit I’m very… surprised that a vampire would refuse to help a vampire.”

An instant smile surfaced on Simon’s face, followed by a hearty laugh. “Herr Wagner, while we care for the plight of our own kind, we don’t necessarily accept everything they do. I, like you, don’t know whether to believe these are creatures who were brought back to life, but as I told you before, I respect the natural order. I as much care about it as I do the well being of the vampires under this roof and would not help anybody trying to disrupt it.”

“So then, the question remains,” Karl said, a pensive look in his eyes, “Who are these vampires causing such a stir and what is it they want? If this isn’t every vampire in Europe, we have to be specific about who we target.” His gaze returned to Simon. “We have to find the source.”

Simon nodded. “And you… might find others willing to help you,” he said. The look in his eyes remained grave. “Other vampires. Other covens being troubled by this phenomenon themselves. Be careful who you trust and you could foster talks between your kind and mine for the first time in centuries.”

Karl raised an eyebrow. Simon grinned at the response. “Think about it, Herr Wagner.” Glancing at the table, Simon plucked the book from where he laid it and extended it toward the mortal spellcaster seated before him. “A gift of good faith, my friend. I have responsibilities I must see to, but so long as you continue coming in peace, you may continue asking me questions. You might find our two worlds are not so different at all.”

The book found its way into Karl’s hands just as the vampire master stood. Simon strolled toward the doors of his private quarters while Karl remained seated, eyes tracing over the cover and recognizing the English title printed on the front. A Tale of Two Cities. “Thank you,” Karl said, looking up, but the surrounding room was now empty, as though the wind picked Simon Kaufmann up and dispersed him to the four corners of the world. It might have, for all Karl knew. The universe as he knew it had become completely redefined.

Karl returned to the darkened confines of his small office that evening more confused than he had been before. It suddenly seemed like he was asking the right questions, though. No more than a few days later, he approached the Berlin council with an idea. “Why don’t we find the covens we know to be in keeping with the natural order… and request their assistance? Offer to assist them in return?” he asked. He scanned across each skeptical face. “Why haven’t we before now?”

Nobody had a viable answer to the question. In fact, each elder looked, one to the other, for some proof such a thing had happened and everything went horribly awry as a result. As Karl Wagner stood his ground, he saw seven befuddled expressions glancing back at him when nobody issued any such argument. “You mean to say this vampire master spoke freely with you, without any threat of harm?” one female elder asked.

Karl nodded. A reluctant smile surfaced on his face. “He gave me a book and told me to be careful who I trusted. But he seemed more than willing to share information.”

The council members nodded. The female elder spoke again. “Then, I grant you permission to continue your talks with him. We will explore the possibility of speaking to other willing coven masters.”

With that, the meeting adjourned. Karl returned to his office and spied the book situated at the corner of his desk. Picking it up, he began to read, thankful for his fluent English as he thumbed through page after page of nineteenth century prose. By the time he went to bed, he felt settled enough about the situation that he slept his first sound sleep in what felt like an eternity. The next day dawned with the promise of peace on the horizon.

Peace, however, was to be fleeting.

At first the concept caught fire and ignited across Europe. Members of the Order, from seers to spellcasters, convened with other coven masters and elders who were once regarded enemies and nothing more. Karl returned to Simon’s coven several times over many weeks and one time in particular found himself relaying favorable reports to the vampire with whom he had started to forge a friendship.

Simon grinned. Standing on a ladder in front of one tall bookcase, he rifled through each treasured volume and recited a quote. “So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it.”

Karl recognized the words from the book on his desk and grinned. “You love your literature, Simon,” he said.

The vampire master chuckled. “Books are history, even the fictional accounts. They are time frozen in the form of words.”

“I suppose you are right.” Karl sighed, sitting at the edge of Simon’s desk, looking up at him. “Never, in my wildest dreams, did I think there was any chance our races could convene together under an olive branch.”

Simon nodded slowly. His facial expression sobered. “Sometimes, it is far easier for foes to remain foes even when they forget the reasons why. I’ll make no excuses for my kind; we deserve the strong arm of the Order from time to time. I cannot begin to tell you how hard it is to oversee one coven full of immortals and keep them in line. An entire race…” Simon tsked and directed his attention toward Karl. “When things are running as they ought, with the spellcasters doing their appointed tasks and my kind minding the natural order, there is harmony. When either becomes too incensed with power and blindness, then all the world suffers for it.”

A frown settled on Karl’s face. Never before had he thought of what happened when the Order itself stepped out of line. Raising his hand to his head, he scratched his scalp and nodded. “I suppose the natural order does suffer when the spellcasters themselves are out of line.”

“When either of us forget our place, there is disorder. Man or vampire.” Simon sighed, brushing his hands off on his pants before climbing down the ladder. He alighted onto the floor and strolled closer to his desk. “This is why our races never speak. One or the other refuses to see the blood on their hands.”

Karl snickered. “Blood. Ironic.” Nodding, the slight curl of his mouth evened out. He looked away. “I hadn’t ever thought of it that way, Simon.”

Simon remained silent for lingering moments. Karl glanced back at him, raising an eyebrow at the vampire’s stillness. His eyes appeared to be distant, someplace decades and miles away from there. “So many of us fail to, Herr Wagner,” Simon said, speaking just above a whisper. He sighed, his gaze returning to Karl. “What matters isn’t how many of us fail to think of it, but how many come to realize it themselves.’

“Perhaps.” Karl sighed. “But is it the fault of the ignorant when so many conflicts might have been resolved had they come to understand the truth sooner?”

A soft smile touched Simon’s lips. “It isn’t the fault of the ignorant for not knowing what never has been taught. It is, rather, the fault of the learned for not teaching them.”

Karl chuckled. “Perhaps so, Herr Simon.” Situating both feet on the ground, he grinned. “I should get back to my office. I’m behind on my paperwork and the elders get irritating when things aren’t done in a timely manner.”

Simon chuckled. “Good night, friend. I hope your reports continue to be favorable.”

“So do I.” Karl nodded respectfully to the vampire master and turned for the doors to his private quarters. Rounding a corner, Karl dug his hands into his pockets and strolled for the exit, exchanging glances and pleasant words of departure with each vampire he passed along the way. ‘Who would have thought, truly, a mortal spellcaster could stroll through an entire coven without so much as an ill glance directed his way?’ He chuckled. The world seemed on the verge of a revelation and there he was, standing on the front lines to witness it all.

With a smile and an a whistle on his lips, Karl walked to the Berlin offices of the Supernatural Order and approached the front doors. Whimsy left its mark on each footstep and coated his fingers as he swung open a glass door and took his first few steps on the tiled floor. The moment the door swung shut behind him, though, the weight of the world came crashing down on to his shoulders.

The office was a flurry of activity. Karl raised an eyebrow. Everywhere, there were personnel running this way and that, each focused on a task as though the coming apocalypse had been announced while Karl was away. He stood frozen in place, eyes tracing across several seers who were armed to the teeth, swords, bows and stakes adorned on their person and a litany of watchers shuffling around beside them. Karl swallowed hard, his heart sinking. One seer raised his head from its bent position and looked at Karl, daring him to engage him in conversation.

Karl inhaled deeply and strolled to the seer, his feet suddenly feeling fifty pounds heavier than they had mere minutes ago. His facial expression turned serious, his eyes never leaving the seer the entire trek from front doors to halfway down the corridor. “Why are there so many of you here?” Karl asked once he was within earshot. He stopped just shy of the seer.

The seer furrowed his brow, brushing aside his long, black coat to reveal a sword by his side. He slipped his hand into a pocket. “You don’t know?” he asked. “Haven’t you been told yet?”

“No, and I will have somebody’s job before the night’s out for this.” Karl folded his arms across his chest. “Tell me, since I seem to be the last person to know.”

The seer sighed. He looked away, toward a dark-haired woman Karl could only assume was his watcher. “The London office demanded all of us return to our home councils. Several seers have been sent from the smaller cities with more promised on their way. The situation has become dire.”

Karl blinked. “I wasn’t aware the situation had changed at all.”

“This was just decided upon last night by the High Council.” The seer sighed and looked back at Karl. Karl saw genuine fear in his eyes. “The covens are turning against us. We have been given orders to infiltrate each coven and demand the capture of their masters and any antagonistic immortals they might be sheltering.”

“What?!” Karl struggled to maintain his composure. “You’ll start a bloodbath that way. You know these creatures do not take kindly to ultimatums, guilty or not.”

“Yes, but they’re going to have to comply. We’ve been given clearance to execute anybody who stands in our way.” He furrowed his brow. “I’m surprised nobody has told you about this.”

“As am I.” Karl’s eyes became distant, thoughts swirling around the impossible notion that such a heavy-handed order would go unannounced to him. He oversaw the seers and was the one responsible for knowing where each man on the field was at any given time. The more he turned around the absurdity in his mind, the more his stomach sank, until one of the council elders emerged from an office and shot Karl a look of distrust.

Karl frowned. ‘They think I’m aiding and abetting the enemy. That’s why nobody has told me.’ He waited for the male elder to nod respectfully and disappear into another room before his eyes shot to the seer. “Come with me to my office and explain the situation to me.”

The seer nodded. Together they strolled down the corridor, the vampire hunter sighing and glancing around before lowering his voice a few octaves. “As I said, the vampire covens have been turning against us. The London office says several people have died following false information leading to traps set by the vampires themselves. Dark magicians hiding in shadows. Someone even claims they were being coerced to turn immortal before they managed to escape.”

“Coerced?” Karl frowned. “That’s impossible. Everyone knows a coerced conversion always leads to disaster.”

“I know, but some have disappeared, so these vampires might even be from the other bloodline.” The seer frowned as they paused by the door to Karl’s office. Karl fumbled for his keys while the seer continued. “We’ve never had to deal with the Lamiae before. Many of us are afraid of what might happen.”

“The Lamiae are not behind this,” Karl grumbled. “Any fool with eyes can see this. Dark magic brought some of the olden ones back to life and now the olden ones are toying with us. Just like they promised they would.” Producing his keys, he pinched the correct one in two fingers and slid it into its lock. With a hearty twist, the lock disengaged and Karl had the door opened before tugging the key from the lock.

He flicked the lights on and walked over to his desk. “Doesn’t anybody read my reports? I told the London office what information my talks with the Revenir have yielded. A prominent coven master in Berlin has verified reports of immortals labeled as deceased being reanimated somehow and causing trouble within the covens themselves. Carting immortals away and coming in with both guns blazing isn’t going to scare whoever’s responsible out of hiding. In fact, this is probably exactly what they want.”

“You might be right,” the seer said, his eyes transfixed on Karl as Karl walked around his desk and fell into his chair. He rested his hip on the corner of Karl’s desk. “But these are our orders, direct from the London office themselves. And they have clearance from the United States. Anyone suspected of using dark magic or aiding those responsible for killing members of the Order are to be killed, regardless of which bloodline they belong to or how innocent they claim to be. The coven masters are our primary suspects, especially ones talking with members of the Order.”

Karl’s gaze shot to the seer. Immediately, he thought of Simon Kauffman and couldn’t help but summon an image of the man bound in silver shackles, being beaten and interrogated while claiming innocence the entire time. He would be killed and his coven dismantled until the seers were certain none of the others were housing enemies of the Order. ‘This is wrong. This is all wrong. We’re sponsoring genocide. That’s the end of all of this. Genocide. When we have always been careful who we killed and why. How could they be so foolish? The Lamiae, the Revenir, both targets when none of us know who these creatures are causing this trouble in the first place, or why for that matter.’ Still, he remembered the look shot to him by the male council member. Karl frowned. ‘They don’t care because it’s all the same to them. Wicked beings – vermin needing to be exterminated.’

Slowly, Karl’s eyes skimmed across his desk until they came to rest on the leather-bound book given to him by the vampire master. He sighed, insane notions slipping into his consciousness, but ones he couldn’t ignore. Karl couldn’t stand by and watch this, washing his hands like Pontius Pilate. ‘Heaven forgive me, this is going to mean my death.’

Karl looked at the seer and nodded. “Yes,” he said, softly at first, until his words gained more conviction, no matter how fabricated the sentiment was. “If London and Seattle think this is the best course of action, then I suppose there isn’t anything any of us can do to change things.” He sighed and took the book in hand before settling back in his chair. His fingers slid along the spine idly, his eyes drifting away. “Somehow, I knew we were on the eve of destruction when all of this started. I suppose the last few weeks have been the calm before the storm.” He took a deep breath and stood. “Excuse me, if you will, sir.” Karl held up the book. “This was given to me by the vampire master I have been meeting with to gain information. If this is to be his last night on Earth, I think he would like to have one of his prized volumes back.”

Karl walked to the door. The seer followed. “I can’t let you go alone,” he said. “I will accompany you.”

Huffing a sardonic chuckle, Karl looked at the seer. “Regardless of our orders, I can assure you this master isn’t one you’ll have problems bringing in. He hasn’t lifted a hand against me.”

“No.” The seer frowned. “I apologize, but I need to also make sure you don’t intend to warn him.”

Karl fought hard against the scowl which wished to surface. Company men, all of them, regardless of their misgivings. He couldn’t blame the seer, he had once been like them, no matter how jaded he had become. “Very well,” he said. “You will come with me.” He forced a grin on his face, knowing it probably screamed of bitterness. “Keep me honest, if you must.”

The seer nodded. Not a single word was exchanged between the two men as they left the office and strolled onto the streets of Berlin, headed for Simon’s coven for what would be Karl’s last meeting with his new friend. As they approached the door to the coven, it swung open and a perplexed guard studied Karl, then glanced at the seer standing beside him. “What seems to be the problem, Herr Wagner?” he asked.

Karl sighed when the brown-haired vampire looked his way again. “Please summon your master. I only need two minutes with him, to return something of his.”

“Very well.” The vampire shut the door and slipped inside the confines of the coven estate, leaving Karl with his guard and the silence of the night. Within a few minutes, the door opened again, and this time Simon appeared on the other side.

“What is it you wished to return to me?” the vampire master asked, offering the seer only a quick glance before looking to Karl once again.

Karl extended the hand with his book toward Simon. “I needed to return this to you, Herr Kauffman. If you could please take it so I can be on my way?” A frown tugged at the corners of his mouth when he saw the way Simon regarded him. Karl fought hard to figure out how to send a warning to Simon, but what could escape the notice of the seer? If he knew English, Karl would be unmasked and even if he didn’t, he would at least be wise toward the covert message being relayed. Karl frowned, then decided upon the only course of action he could conjure.

At once, his eyes met Simon’s. Karl’s thoughts summoned a whisper he hoped the seer would not pick up with his telepathy.

“Get out of here immediately. Your life is in danger.”

Simon blinked, then nodded slowly. Confusion filled his eyes, but his gaze indicated he received the message loud and clear. “Thank you, Herr Wagner, for returning my book to me.” A melancholy smile surfaced. “You know how I like my books.”

Karl smiled in much the same manner. A quote straight from the book in his hand drifted past his lips. “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.”

“Yes, it is.” Simon nodded, taking the book in hand, both men clinging onto it for a few lasting seconds as though exchanging a handshake. “Good evening, Herr Wagner. I hope to see you again soon.”

Karl nodded, but said nothing else. As the door shut, the night seemed to swallow him whole, Charles Dickens his only companion as he stared at the closed door before him.

“The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far we are pursued by nothing else.”

‘Here comes the storm,’ he thought to himself. Then, Karl Wagner turned and walked into the cold embrace of Armageddon.

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The evening started as most did for him. After a shower and a fresh change of clothing, his fingers raked through the hair of the woman he kept as a pet. Her gaze met his expectantly – a pretty little blonde thing he picked up in Texas (fuck, but those women were feisty before they were broken) – and a sharp moan punctuated the prick of his fangs into her throat. Mitch only stole a few sips from her, but he knew the day was coming soon when he would have to end her. Her large, brown eyes indicated the lights were on, but the resident was vacating the building.

With a sigh, Mitch settled into his chair, noting how quickly it seemed those pets met their expiration date. The vampires of his bloodline – the Lamiae, according to the Supernatural Order – often supplemented kills with quick feeds and the keeping of pets. The problem being that feeding from a human too often eventually reduced them to a mindless zombie. Granted, he had held onto this one longer than her predecessor, but even the strongest of mortals could not avoid the inevitable. And Mitch had no desire to blood bond with her to keep her rational beyond a few additional feedings.

Other than that, things seemed to be quiet. Mitch reclined his leather office chair and oscillated from side to side on it, pivoting this way and that while his feet remained planted firm on the floor below. His eyes scanned across the pictures hanging on his study walls, seeing visual reminders of a long, accomplished life. A landscape of Britain reminded him of where he had been born and the painting of Austria served as a recollection of the first nest he oversaw. Prints of Romania, Hungary, and Germany each placed markers on one rung after the next up the political ladder. Mitch turned to face the large windows overlooking Portland, Oregon, seeing the lights of downtown from his posh penthouse. One step further, and he would be a king.

If the current one ever abdicated, that is.

A cold, cruel grin curled the corner of his mouth while Mitch’s thoughts ran wild of further conquests and loftier titles which might await. Granted, the current monarch had only ascended to the throne a few decades prior and kings and queens could retain their power for centuries if they could manage to beat back the long list of rivals who often amassed. Assassinations were commonplace, but Mitch feared none of that. He knew how to force his opposition to crawl before him, was ruthless enough to demand they lick his polished black dress shoes. For years, he had managed to keep his bloodline underground despite the explosion of the Internet into the public consciousness. It was his idea to employ human hackers in the quest and other kingdoms knew by now they had him to thank for remaining underground.

Needless to say, it would prove to be useful when he made his next vie for power.

A phone rang, breaking Mitch from his thoughts and directing his attention to the black piece of plastic situated at the corner of his desk. Reaching for the receiver, he lifted it and brought it to his ear. “Mitchell,” he said simply, the only greeting he ever offered those who called.

A shaky breath preceded the sound of the caller clearing his throat. Mitch resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Nothing annoyed him more than the sound of a nervous mortal. “Um, Mitch,” a male voice said, “This is, um, Len… Len McAlister. I… uh…”

“Len, would you care to inform me why you are on the phone with me rather than doing the job we are paying you to perform?”

“Well, that’s just it, I…” Len paused. He sighed and cleared his throat again. “We have a situation you should know about.”

Mitch glanced down at his free hand, focusing on his fingernails. Idly, he picked at a piece of dirt under one of them. “I’m waiting, Len,” he said, not bothering to mask the irritation in his tone of voice.

Len failed to respond. Mitch summoned a mental image of a deer caught in the headlights and fought the urge to be the one about to hit the pitiful creature with the full force of a Hummer. “Uh, well, we have a video,” Len finally said. “A video w-which is giving us a little bit of a problem.”

“When the fuck did I become technical support?” Mitch asked. “If you have a video, pull the damn thing from the Internet. Did you wake up this morning with a diminished IQ?”

“Well, that’s just it.” Len’s voice gained more confidence. “We’ve been trying to pull it, but it had a bitch of a firewall protecting it and… and Phil, you see, he tried a DDoS, but apparently it’s not just on one server, or two for that matter. This website’s being hosted on several servers and the video’s already been up for longer than a few minutes.”

Mitch sighed. “Would you care to translate that into something other than your confounded techno-babble?”

“Basically, this fucker’s not going down without a fight.”

“Then bring it down, Len.” The cadence of Mitch’s voice remained cool; unaffected. “Fight or no fight.”

“But… um… what if it’s already been downloaded, Mitch? What the fuck are we supposed to do, then?”

“Well, I would hope for your sake it hasn’t, but it is only one video.” Mitch grinned. “Your kind are ignorant little ants who hate anything interrupting your menial marching orders. Get rid of the video. Destroy it and the little ants will think whatever they watched was nothing more than a hoax.”

“Well, alright, but you should know something about this video, Mitch.”

Mitch raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair. “What would that be?”

Len drew another shaky breath. “It’s high definition. Better quality than any video I’ve ever pulled down from the ‘net before. A-a-and it’s of an attack. Two of you guys feeding on a woman with it pausing as she screams. As far as ugly videos go, it’s pretty bad.”

“Which sounds like little more than a well-produced horror movie,” Mitch said, but he couldn’t control the downward turn of his facial expression. A fledgling form of dread knotted his stomach and for a moment his ironclad resolve sustained a wave of turbulence. Mitch recovered, speaking his next statement as much to himself as to Len. “It doesn’t matter what they captured or how well, your kind want to believe it is a hoax and this is precisely how it will be taken. That being said, I want it removed immediately. And heads will roll if it isn’t.”

Mitch hung up the phone without so much as a goodbye and reclined in his seat once more, but the frown remained a fixture on his lips. They were used to dealing with amateur photography – grainy pictures taken from cell phone cameras or jostling video captured from the shaky hand of a mortal, with cinematography reminiscent of the Blair Witch Project. Mitch himself reviewed every video pulled from the Internet and none of them ever impressed him much.

A high definition video refusing to be plucked from the public eye? Something was rotten in the state of Denmark about this one.

The phone rang once more. Mitch nearly jumped at the suddenness of this one and whipped the receiver into his hand while barking out his traditional, “Mitchell.” So help him if this was Len again. He would tear the mortal’s limbs off himself.

“Mitchell…” The moment his name resonated in his ears, Mitch closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. Queen Cassandra’s voice could only be described as the sound of condescension in its purest form, bottled and poured into every word she uttered.

Mitch brought his hand to his forehead. “Yes, your majesty?” he asked, sighing. One more rung and she would be the one licking his shoes.

“Not pleased to hear from me, darling?” She huffed a chuckle. “Consider the feeling mutual. Would you care to explain to me what the hell is happening?”

“If I had the foggiest idea what you were…”

“There are videos flying around the Internet and every other monarch in this area has been calling all night asking if you fell asleep at the switch. I don’t have to remind you, do I, that our position is due greatly because the other kingdoms offer us money for their continued protection? They want to know if one of my dukes has somehow become impotent.”

Mitch’s eyes flew open. He furrowed his brow. “Videos? Plural?” He laughed. “There’s one video I’m aware of and we have a team of people working to bring it down from…”

“There are videos. Multiple. Don’t insult my intelligence, I know because my email exploded with forwarded emails containing links to these damn things. Perhaps if you could take a break from having your pet mortal give you a blowjob, you might see this for yourself.”

Mitch blinked. Turning his focus toward the laptop at the center of his desk, he slid a fingertip across the touchpad and watched his email pop onto the screen. A page’s worth of new messages screamed at him, each sender marking the subject line with some cry for help, often in all-caps. Mitch clicked on one. His eyes scanned the body of the email, then settled on the link to a video directly following the frenzied message. Directing his cursor there, he pressed a button and watched a browser window load.

“Mitchell…”

“I’m looking now,” he said. His eyes remained fixed on the screen as an unfamiliar website loaded and the video began to autoplay. A female vampire filled the small box, grinning in high definition clarity at a man lost in her thrall while she circled him. Her fangs glistened, the tips stained crimson while the mortal drew haggard breaths throughout the course of her examination. Mitch brought his hand to his mouth, leaning his elbow on his desk as he watched.

“Drop to your knees,” the vampiress said, holding out her hand and pointing toward the ground. Her eyes never left the mortal man.

He did as directed, crashing to the concrete below, matching her gaze measure for measure. Mitch noticed the fang marks on his neck, weeping blood onto the collar of his shirt.

The vampiress grinned. “Very good, little boy. Now, beg me to keep you alive.”

At once, the man burst from the glamour, indicating the vampiress herself had to have broken it to allow the man to comply. A sob rose from his throat, his eyes becoming glassy with tears as he commenced a fevered plea for his continued existence. Mitch frowned. His kind could be cruel, as he himself admitted, but those times were few and far between as they often preferred the taste of lust in their victims’ blood to the potent scent of fear. It seemed the type of video one would take for blackmail, although he couldn’t figure out for the life of him who would release the damning evidence first without issuing a demand.

“There’s something wrong about this,” Mitch said, speaking for the first time in minutes.

Cassandra groaned. “Yes, darling. It’s still on the fucking Internet, that’s what is ‘wrong’ about it.”

“No, no, there’s something more.” Mitch hit stop on the video and pivoted his chair away from the laptop. Switching the receiver from one ear to the other, he sighed, using his now-freed hand to rub his eyes. “This is the kind of thing I’d expect to see if we failed to pay somebody off. Have there be any attempts at blackmail?”

“Do you think I know?!” The queen’s voice raised a few octaves. “I certainly haven’t seen any on my desk and you know how we handle such nonsense.”

“Then somebody else has a debt.” Mitch scowled. “I’ll kill the bastard myself when I get a hold of them.”

“You have bigger fish to fry. Pull these videos immediately before somebody gets the idea they might be real. We can deal with whoever is responsible later.” The line went dead as Cassandra hung up and Mitch sighed before lowering the receiver back onto its cradle. His eyes returned to the monitor, his elbow resting on the desk’s surface again as Mitch rifled through the remainder of his inbox. Watching each video linked to in each unique petition for assistance, Mitch swallowed past a lump forming in his throat. These videos were all too bloody consistent.

All of them were crystal clear and all of them showed the Lamiae at their worst. Bereft of those times when the vampires would pleasure their victims or only drain a sip or two before erasing the memory of their encounter, they were all gristly caricatures of his brethren, indulgence which contradicted how careful to remain inconspicuous most vampires of his bloodline were. The quality of the video diminished only when security cameras capturing feeds in parking lots or at the back door of some establishment found themselves the featured pieces. Too many all at once. Something wasn’t right about this, indeed, and Mitch had lived long enough to recognize an attack when he saw one.

Surely it couldn’t be the…

Mitch cut off the thought the moment it surfaced. For nearly twenty years, the Lamiae had been in talks with their offshoot bloodline, young upstarts fashioned only a millennia ago who looked just like their elder compatriots with a few distinct features. They couldn’t be photographed; had no reflections and often got themselves into more trouble than they were worth. Mitch couldn’t deny, though, these were brothers and sisters and when their battle with a group of mortal spellcasters spilled onto the Lamiae’s doorstep, two bloodlines who often ignored each other to the point of downright ignorance started sitting at the table together. Mitch himself attended one conference in particular and worked with a coven master before being summoned to the United States.

“Are you bastards selling us out?” Mitch murmured underneath his breath, his frown becoming more pronounced. One portion of his brain knew this to be ludicrous, while a much more paranoid segment of his mind feared it could be possible. His eyes shifted to his phone again as his hand raised to close the lid to his laptop. His fingers settled on the receiver for lingering moments before lifting it again.

He punched out a number from memory and listened as one ring followed the next. It had to be close to dawn, if not past, but the fortunate thing about somebody like Simon was that his bloodline were not dead to the world the same way the Lamiae were. Mitch sighed while waiting for somebody to pick up. After several rings, the line clicked over to voice mail.

Mitch listened to the message being rattled off in German and switched his thoughts from English into Simon’s native tongue. As the tone sounded, Mitch spoke with a flawless accent, “Simon, das bin Mitchell Livingston. Bitte, rufen Sie mich schnell. Ich benötige Ihre Hilfe. Danke.”

With a sigh, Mitch hung up the phone and reclined back in his chair. Shutting his eyes once more, he touched the side of his face and attempted to clear his thoughts, not wanting to believe either his bloodline could be so stupid as to anger the wrong people or the other bloodline would be so foolish as to cross the Lamiae. Still, something didn’t add up each time he attempted to solve the riddle. Perhaps a piece was missing and perhaps there was an angle he hadn’t considered. Whatever it was, Mitch knew two things for damn sure.

For one, the first shots had been fired in a full-scale war.

And secondly, Mitch would come out on top somehow. However he needed to manipulate this, Mitch planned to have his position intact and his political aspirations just as firmly footed, possibly with the coveted kingship he wanted landing on his lap when all was said and done. He opened his eyes and indulged a deep, steadying breath. Nobody made a fool out of Mitch and lived.

His eyes drifted toward the doorway to his study. A cold, calculating smile surfaced on his lips once more. “Oh, Katie?” he called into the other room. The tips of his fangs descended, making his grin appear all the more wicked. “Come here, please. Master is hungry again.”

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- “Dog Days Are Over” by Florence + the Machine

The black, polished shoes produced a perfect squeak as they shuffled down the corridor, a single sound bouncing from one wall to the next in the empty thoroughfare. Where ordinarily, there would be scores of people walking this way and that, headed to the various departments of these hallowed halls, tonight was different. The body of people typically assembled were already in a meeting room, sweating over coffee and cigarettes and Mark Johansen was running late.

In their long history, the Supernatural Order had faced world-ending situations before. The splintering of bloodlines which formed the vampire faction they hunted in the first place almost provoked a giant cluster-fuck which ended life as they knew it from their very inception. That had been a millennium ago, roughly. Back when humanity still believed in magic. Sorcerers, witches, and warlocks dotted the landscape of the Dark Ages and one magician in particular drifted further into the darkness, looking for immortality. That was the first time vampires learned to wield magic themselves. The genesis of a war.

Not that they ever told anybody but those in their employ about the other bloodline which existed, the older one the Order never tangled with except on very rare occasions. Or that there was much of a difference between the vampires humanity still denied existed in its blanket of blissful unawareness. Ignorance an intoxicant with the populace drunk on its spell, oh vampires had been around for more than the millennium the Supernatural Order existed, but they hid the truth like they hid every other truth from mortals who no longer believed in magic.

The time for ignorance had ended, though. The war had entered Phase Two.

Mark sighed, rubbing his temples which already ached from the hours he spent at the computer searching every viral video on the Internet. Hours spent squinting at hazy, amateur photojournalism, watching one video upload only to disappear moments later. The vampires had gotten good at their game. Money Mark couldn’t even begin to fathom was being funneled in the effort to keep their anonymity intact, by the other bloodline which could be captured by photography. The one the Order had not cursed. “Fucking smart, you sons of bitches,” Mark muttered as he turned and approached the door to the meeting room.

His hand hesitated. Then it wrapped around the knob and twisted. The door swung open and Mark entered to voices already raised around him.

Nobody paid any attention to him as he shut the door and pressed his back against the solid piece of wood separating him from the empty corridor. Mark stole a moment to survey the group gathered. The conference table populated by representatives of each job description the Order boasted of, bright green eyes blazed fury from each haunted face he scanned. The trait as important as their still beating hearts, each emerald gaze belonged to beings who could obliterate each other merely with a thought. Psychics, all of them, and Mark could only claim to be a scholar, somebody not often gifted with the powers the other members of the Order needed on the front lines.

A tall, wiry Asian man stood from his seat and pointed at a short, fiery woman standing across from him. His lips hurtled accusations of ineptitude, while strands of hair flew from the tight bun fixed on the back of the woman’s head, her finger pointing back at her verbal sparring partner. Mark recognized the man as being a seer, the Order’s vampire hunters with the most power to boast outside of the High Council’s elders board. Undoubtedly, the woman was his watcher, an assistant and sorceress who accompanied each seer on their missions.

Mark shifted his focus away. People he recognized as being spell-casters, leadership, and fellow scholars seemed unable to break away from the heated exchange to so much as offer Mark a passing glance. He cleared his throat once. When this did not produce the desired result, Mark pushed his wire-framed glasses further up his nose and yelled, “Hey! I have the results of the Internet scan!”

At once, a hush settled on the room. The eyes of no less than thirty people met Mark’s and suddenly, he felt like a small fish in a tank full of piranhas. Mark coughed and found the person he reported to, the highest ranking scholar in the Order’s employ. “Cynthia, it’s as we suspected. The vampires have gotten smarter.”

The middle-aged woman bore more lines on her face than a haggard chain smoker, which the frown touching the corners of her lips only accentuated. Her gaze turned from annoyed to inquisitive within seconds. “What did you find, Mark?” she asked, lifting an eyebrow to punctuate her question.

Mark sighed. He jerked at his collar. “Well, I spent the better part of the day on Google, YouTube, and every other site you can imagine and…” He lifted his hands, his shoulders rising in a shrug. “… They have a lot of fucking money. That’s all I can tell you. The few I caught went up in smoke within a minute, sometimes less.”

“Fuck.” Cynthia produced the expletive without apology. Leaning against the conference table with both hands pressed against the mahogany wood, she shook her head and lowered her gaze toward the polished surface. “Nothing? You mean to tell me there’s not a goddamn thing?”

“No, nothing.” Mark frowned. “Like I said, they’re getting smarter. They have to have a team of people being paid to do nothing but kill videos all damn day.”

“Well, there goes that idea.” The new voice entering the fray belonged to Spencer Phillips, another vampire hunter who Mark recognized as being one of their master seers. Barely into his thirties, his sandy brown hair already boasted of a few gray streaks Mark could only assume were caused from stress. Spencer threw up a hand and looked at Cynthia. “I don’t know what the fuck you thought spending all that time would accomplish. I’m telling you, we need to move in and blow them the fuck away. The gloves are off now.”

“Blowing them away isn’t going to solve anything.” Cynthia lifted her eyes to regard Spencer. “We still have the natural order to protect.”

“Fuck the natural order!” Spencer’s hand formed a fist, which struck the table in a hard blow. “They’ve already fucked it all to hell by consorting with the other bloodline. That’s conspiracy and we need to end this now. You know damn well what could happen if both of them learn how to wield black magic.”

“It’s all our damn fault.” Mark’s eyes shifted to the new speaker, a man remaining seated Mark couldn’t name by sight, but knew to be an elder’s assistant. The assistant sighed, looking from Cynthia to Spencer. “We’re the ones who provoked them to start talking in the first place after the massacre in Europe twenty years ago.”

Spencer pointed a finger at the assistant. “That was no massacre, and may I remind you, we lost one of our master seers due to that whole debacle. We could have fucked them over a hell of a lot more for massacring us in the first damn place.”

“Bullshit!” The assistant stood. “I was there, remember?” He pointed at his chest. While his lips read of bravado, the tremor of his hand suggested otherwise. “I saw the way we sliced through vampires like fucking butter, not even giving two shits about which bloodline they belonged to. Yeah, we were hunting the antagonistic bastards, but we took everybody else down with them and no doubt, all of ‘em thought we were hunting them down to extinction.”

“Fuckers all deserve to be exterminated.”

“The natural order, Spencer.” Cynthia stared down Spencer with the sternest gaze Mark had ever seen her muster. “Try to kill them all and the scales will find a balance. Do you want us all to be fucked?”

“I think we’re going about this the wrong way.”

Mark hardly realized the words came from his lips until he heard the way they settled across the room. So used to stifling his opinion, Mark didn’t even believe himself when he realized he spoke his thoughts out loud. As such, the remainder of his thought locked up somewhere between his lungs and vocal chords.

Nobody spoke. Mark’s eyes shifted nervously from one face to the next, waiting for somebody to say something more intelligent. When his gaze settled on one man in particular, Mark couldn’t help but to swallow hard past a lump forming in his throat. The intimidating figure rose to his feet, and everybody else gathered looked at him, sitting as though receiving a silent cue.

Mark glanced at the others, then back at the imposing figure. His hair and beard fully colored white, Wallace Alexander would never claim to being the head of the Supernatural Order, but he might as well have been. His family were bred and born for this purpose, to serve as leadership, and Wallace himself remained the last of his generation in the Alexander family. His son already sat beside him on the Order’s High Council and bore an air of royalty much the same as his father. The heir apparent of a king.

Wallace stared down Mark. “Sit, Mr. Johansen,” he said, his voice low, yet booming. “And tell us how we’re mistaken.”

Mark studied the chiseled features of the elder, looking for a sign of whether the man was pissed or pleased, but his face hinted at neither. Mark sat in the closest vacant chair and adjusted himself within the plush leather before clearing his throat and speaking. “Well, we have a problem, there’s no doubt about that. Spencer…” Mark glanced at the master seer upon speaking his name. “… Is right that the two bloodlines talking could lead to mixing. Hell, this is why we’ve been calling these meetings in the first place, if I’m not mistaken.”

Wallace settled back into his chair. He folded his hands on the table top and nodded. “Yes, although I highly doubt any of us need a reminder of this fact, Mr. Johansen.”

Mark felt his face become flushed, but struggled to retain his composure. “Yes, sir, my apologies. But still… I think we’re losing sight of the big picture.” This time he fought against the compulsion to allow his gaze to stray. His eyes remained settled on the elder seated before him. “Cynthia’s right that going in with both guns blazing is going to backfire in our faces. If the two bloodlines assemble, they’ll go after us and I don’t think we can manage an onslaught of vampires all descending on Seattle and London. You know as well as I do the London office is understaffed as it is.”

A cough broke Mark’s focus to the one issuing it. Mark frowned in an apologetic manner at the female elder representing the London High Council before glancing back at Wallace. “Hell,” he said, continuing. “We have a pretty hefty staff and we’d all go down in a blaze of glory before taking a few down with us. We just don’t have that kind of firepower.”

Wallace frowned. Mark gulped silently at the shift in Wallace’s facial expression. “Which is why the Council neither consents, nor condones, the idea that we should enter into mass genocide,” Wallace said. “What happened in Europe still haunts the Order and the Council has no desire to revisit this strategy. Which is exactly why we assigned you and every other scholar in the Order with the task we set before you.”

Wallace raised an accusatory eyebrow at Mark. Mark nodded. “I know, sir. You asked us to find evidence that humans were becoming more aware of vampires in their midst and I know I thought it was a smart idea to try and use these videos and articles as blackmail to keep the Lamiae in check. The problem is, both sides have a heavy amount of resources they’re pouring into the effort to stay underground and they’ve bought out more people than we can begin trying to outbid.”

Mark paused, indulging in a deep breath and exhaling it slowly, his eyes drifting away before returning to Wallace. Wallace continued staring, his frown relaxing as though he plucked the next thought from Mark’s mind and was coaxing him to speak it out loud. Mark nodded in silent acknowledgment, then glanced at each face gathered in the meeting room. “Using the information and technology modern day has given us is a good idea, but I think we’re going about this all wrong. Instead of looking for information other people are gathering, why don’t we…” Mark paused, hesitating. He swallowed hard, forcing the words out. “What if we… planted information ourselves?”

“What?!” Spencer stood, glaring at Mark. “That’s idiotic. If they’re killing the information others are providing, what the fuck do you think they’re going to do with anything we…”

“Spencer.” Wallace looked to the master seer and scowled. “Sit and hear Mr. Johansen out.” Wallace waited for Spencer to nod and settle into his chair again. Then, he looked at Mark once more. “Mr. Phillips does have a point. How is this going to work in our favor?”

Mark allowed the corner of his mouth to curl in a coy grin. “We can buy people off, too, can’t we? I know it’s underhanded, but all we need are a few reporters in a few major markets and some hackers stopping the people pulling videos from the Internet. We won’t be able to stop everything, but if we stop enough of them, the videos will spread faster than the vampires can put out the fire.”

Cynthia leaned forward in her chair. “Mark,” she said. “If we sponsor that kind of information leak, then we’ll have more on our hands than a little blackmail. This could prove the existence of vampires enough to out them altogether.”

“Is that so wrong, though, Cynthia?” Gaining confidence, Mark lifted an eyebrow at his superior and mirrored Wallace’s posture, folding his hands together on the table in front of him. “I mean, for a thousand years, since this Order has been in existence, we’ve been spending a lot of our resources on keeping all this information from the public while failing to see the one massive weapon we have against the vampires themselves. They don’t want to be outed. But times have changed and even they have to know this sort of information leak is inevitable. Especially since the Lamiae can be photographed.”

“Then how will leaking information help?” the sorceress who had been arguing with the Asian seer asked, breaking into the conversation. “If they already know it’s inevitable, won’t they be prepared to handle this?”

Mark shifted his focus to her. “The sheer fact that they’re still trying to prevent it from getting out there suggests they’re not ready for this.” A shit-eating grin surfaced on his face. “Think about it this way, they’ve got to be pouring millions of dollars into keeping their anonymity. Millions. And who can blame them, really? Picture them trying to explain how they get their food, trying to launch a P.R. campaign costing them millions more claiming they don’t kill people or some shit like that. If we force them to deal with this, then watch… I bet you one month’s pay check the Revenir will scatter and disown the Lamiae. They have an even worse P.R. nightmare on their hands. Black magic and slaughtering humans?” Mark whistled. “I wouldn’t want to be the one trying to explain all of that.”

His words were followed by a deafening silence. Mark’s confidence threatened to flood out of him like a tidal wave at seeing the lack of response, until Wallace Alexander cleared his throat and broke the quiet with a question. “How… difficult would this be to accomplish? Do we have the kind of staff we’d need to see this through?”

Mark’s eyes returned to Wallace. “To spread the information, yeah, although we’d need a few more computer savvy people to block the vampires’ attempts to take down the videos we submit. But a few scholars could be reassigned to forging information and maybe the seers and some of the watchers could provide us with some high definition videos of the vampires feeding and glamoring humans so we could build a case against them. From there, I don’t know how you’d go about bribing a few reporters, but all you need are some articles in the New York Times or Washington Post to throw the Associated Press into a tail spin.”

A silence settled on the meeting room again, but this time Wallace Alexander began to smile and in his grin, Mark saw a fledgling form of deviousness which might have alarmed him if he wasn’t busy feeling pleased with himself. Wallace nodded. “I think we have a working idea, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s reassign our personnel and see if this concept holds any merit.” Wallace grinned especially at Mark. “Good job, Mr. Johansen. Finally, somebody with a brain steps up and gets the juices flowing in this dusty, old establishment.”

Mark smiled and continued smiling while the others gathered began to discuss the ins and outs of making his idea come to fruition. While the zealous junior scholar had thrown a card onto the table the Supernatural Order seemed bent to play, little could he have realized that in that moment, the world had already shifted on its axis.

What followed would change life as he knew it. And it all started with the Internet.

***

“Whiskey tango foxtrot…”

The words pierced what had otherwise been a silent room, causing Phil Jenkins to turn his attention to the man seated beside him. Thin, with long, unkempt hair, Len McAlister was the epitome of a computer nerd, from the thick-rimmed glasses situated over his eyes, to the messy shirt littered with stains from their fast-food dinner. Phil, a much more portly fellow, blinked several times in rapid succession at his partner. “What the fuck was that?” he asked.

Len didn’t answer. Instead, his eyes remained fixed on the computer monitor in front of him, fingers pounding the keys of his keyboard in a harsh manner, as though they were fighting him. He shook his head, mouth hanging agape. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“What?” Phil lowered the soft drink he’d been nursing since five o’clock that evening and brushed off his hands before wheeling his chair closer to Len’s terminal. He craned his neck for a better view. His eyes widened as he studied Len’s screen. “Is that what I think it is?”

Len nodded slowly. “Yup, it is. High def, I’m not shitting you, and I can’t hack this motherfucking firewall to save my life.”

“Let me see that.” Phil assumed control of the keyboard as Len slid out of the way. Len’s eyes remained fixed on the monitor, his pulse quickening as he watched his friend hit all the same keystrokes Len attempted no more than a few seconds prior. Phil frowned a few attempts into the effort, grunting as his fingers paused for a moment. “Gonna have to take down the whole fucking server.”

Len raised an eyebrow. “A DDoS? We haven’t had to do one of those before.”

“Yeah, but this is a persistent motherfucker.” Phil sighed, raising his hand once to rub at his eyes before settling it back down atop the keyboard. “And this fucking video’s been up too long as it is.”

Nodding, Len watched, his hands knitting together as he watched his friend pull out what they considered the ‘big guns’. After all this time, video after video pulled down with all the finesse of a virtuoso handling an instrument, the brute force solution seemed like bringing a bazooka to a blade fight, but they’d worry about that later. Time was of the essence and every moment wasted was another moment this thing could be captured and saved on someone else’s computer. Len breathed a sigh of relief. At least they had some solution to this problem firewall, excessive or not. He glanced away, allowing his heart rate to settle again, until Phil said, “Shit. Motherfucking shit on a shingle, holy mother of fucking hell. No.”

Len winced as the litany of blasphemous profanity spilled from Phil’s lips. Turning his gaze back to the monitor, he saw the video mocking them, two of the best computer hackers employed by some of the wealthiest beings on the planet. “What is it Phil?” he asked.

“It’s back. Dammit to hell, it’s back.”

“What do you mean, back? Didn’t you take down the IP?”

“Different IP.” Phil paused, as if for impact. “Different server.”

“Different…” The word trailed off as Len watched Phil continue working, keystrokes pounding out a fevered tempo of desperation before each time he hit enter. One IP would fall, but it almost seemed like two more stood in its wake and beads of sweat began collecting on Phil’s forehead, running down his neck. Finally, Phil pushed away from the terminal. His palms touched his knees and trembled where they sat.

Phil Jenkins and Len McAlister stared at the screen for long moments, both of them eyeing the time elapsed as though studying the countdown to their own demise. Finally, Len swallowed past a dry throat and frowned. “This is serious. I’ve got to call Mitch. He’s not going to be happy, but he has to know.”

Phil nodded, swallowing as well, his eyes closing while he muttered underneath his breath. No, Mitch was going to birth small kittens and if there was one thing Phil had learned over the last three years, it was never to piss off a vampire. His lids lifted to eye the mocking video one more time.

One hand raised and one finger clicked the left mouse button, starting the playback once again.

A young woman holding a purse screamed as two creatures, moving faster than light, descended on her and captured her in their embrace. Both shared a hearty laugh over her pleas for mercy, one whispering that it would all be over in a few seconds. White fangs glistened in the moonlight and crimson red flowed from her neck and wrist when they bit in. Phil winced when the woman screamed one final time. The video ceased a few frames into their feeding, remaining frozen on the image of unadulterated terror contorting the victim’s face.

“Holy Mary, mother of God,” Phil whispered to himself. “Please don’t let this hit the torrents. This is going to spread like the fucking Bubonic Plague.”

Next Part

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It seemed almost magical.

I recall driving up to the resort, fresh from a five hour flight with Victor behind the steering wheel, leading us through winding paths toward our destination. As the snow appeared into view, I marveled over it, grinning at my soon-to-be-husband and making an offhanded comment about snow angels. The corner of his mouth curled upward. He countered with what precisely we would be doing on the ground if such a thing were to transpire.

Needless to say, the shiver running up my spine, then, had nothing to do with the temperature.

This time, though, I slipped my hands inside the pockets of the wool trenchcoat I wore, as though I could sense the chill the same way our mortal son could. It was not lost on me how long it might be before I saw him and his sister again. When we yet lived in San Francisco, I said goodbye to them, not knowing what the future held as Victor and I left for Las Vegas. While our plans to globetrot were delayed then, we now held the tickets to verify our next destination would be Europe. In another continent. Heaven only knew what would change between now and the next time I saw John and Lydia.

Victor spoke my name, breaking me from my thoughts.

I shifted my focus to the man I just married, and could not help but to grin when our eyes met. He smiled in response. “Are you ready to depart, lover?” he asked as his hand touched the handle to the driver’s side door.

I nodded. “Whenever you are, maestro,” I said, winking and studying Victor for a few lingering moments before opening the passenger side door and slipping inside. Within moments, we found ourselves nestled in the confines of the Mustang we rented, en route to the Reno airport. The soft melody of classical music streamed from the radio’s sound system and for a short time, I became lost in the notes and measures being played. Until Victor spoke again.

“Is everything alright, my poet?” he asked, glancing at me quickly before focusing on the road once more.

The question itself might as well have been a formality. My lover and I could sense nearly every sentiment not being blocked from the other through the ties of our blood bond. My own powers provided a psychic link between us and Victor had the ability to borrow my talents if he wished to read my mind. Still, I much preferred it this way at times; speaking our concerns aloud rather than taking verbal communication for granted.

“For the most part,” I said, punctuating my words with a smile. My hand reached for his leg on impulse, seeking the comfort of touch. “Simply pensive, but not in a bad way.”

“Anything you wish to talk about?” One of his hands lifted from the steering wheel, finding mine. Our fingers intertwined.

I looked toward the car in front of us, making out the taillights of Robin’s rental somewhere on the winding road ahead of us. As I began to speak, my thoughts took form, some of them the content of a conversation we had engaged in earlier that day. I had showed him a photograph of Monica and the children I held onto for fifteen years, taken during my brief years spent in mortal form. A necklace belonging to Monica was brought to me by Robin as well when he joined us in Lake Tahoe. I relayed to Victor my intentions with both items of nostalgia.

Our conversation drifted into thoughts about the past.

The photograph and necklace had been in storage for eight years. Relics of another life, I once cared very little for revisiting those years, as the thought alone would often threaten to consume me with melancholy. Eight years were spent in Philadelphia, helping Robin manage his coven, my duties enough to occupy my attention with the day-to-day problems of nesting with thirty vampires. On occasion, however — when the nights were bereft of activity — I would take long walks. My mind would stray toward what drove my family apart.

In my darkest thoughts, I can imagine what it would have been like had I kept the photograph especially on display. Rising night after night with a constant reminder of what was missing in my life staring me in the eyes. A spouse with which to share my life. Being able to hold John and Lydia and watch them take their first steps; watch them form personalities of their own. They were five and three when I had to leave. Fifteen years flew by, like the passing of the wind upon the desert sands.

Had my life been left to this emptiness, I can imagine my years as a vampire might have been short. The next time fate knocked on my door, demanding I become the seer again, I might have become reckless on purpose, to see how long it took before a sword pierced my heart and rendered my form to ashes. As it was, I struggled to maintain some semblance of composure, fooling the world into thinking I was a calm, settled immortal.

Fate, however, had other plans for me.

In the present, I smiled at Victor, pausing for a moment to look at him and whisper my love for him. The grip on his hand tightened and my lips produced the next line of thought which held me soundly in its throes.

***

My mind strayed to the past year. Within the span of these short months, everything transformed into the reality I now inhabited. I met Celeste and only weeks later, a young lady mustered the courage to come knocking at the coven door, requesting to speak with me. By the night’s end, my now-grown daughter wound up tight in my embrace, both of us compensating for years lost within the span of hours. I began to believe the miraculous was not finished with me, after all. What followed only reinforced that conviction. My son, John, turned eighteen under the Philadelphia coven’s roof. Now a young man, he resembled me as though a twin carved from my very DNA, his personality reminiscent of the woman I said goodbye to all those years ago.

Some time after this, a roller coaster ride of sentiment swept me along for the ride of my life.

I left Celeste. I left Philadelphia, with Lydia and John in the able hands of their Uncle Robin as their caregiver while I journeyed to California. The trip intended to help me clear my thoughts, I operated under the guise of assisting local covens as an adviser while spending most of my time mired in the tumult of love lost, found, and lost again. The most cunning psychologist could not have told me just what this vampire’s heart was seeking. A companion, this much was certain, but under what form remained to be seen.

I bounced around in fruitless pursuits. I returned to Philadelphia, then ventured back to San Francisco again with Celeste and the children. The entire episode threatened to rip apart my sanity, especially after Lydia fell sick while yet in Philadelphia and had to be turned. The world drew in a deep breath and exhaled a mighty wind of change, reinventing the entire landscape of my life. I failed to make sense of most of it while lost in its manic throes. It would not be until some weeks later that the world finally made sense.

He was waiting on the other side.

***

I squeezed Victor’s hand, feeling the ring recently placed on my finger. My smile turned soft and memories spilled out as though given the stage for their proper deference. I relayed to him thoughts of our first encounters and we shared a laugh over the sheer irony of it all.

***

Had any creature or mystic of the mortal world informed me one day Victor and I would be married, I would have deemed them a lunatic and doomed them to a life of insanity. We nearly came to blows in one of our first conversations and a thorn stuck in my side from that point forth I could not pluck out. I wanted to hate him. The more I learned of him, however, the more I lamented the fact that circumstance prevented us from being friends from the start. When I returned to California, the grand humor of the cosmos reunited me with my one-time rival. Only this time, things were different.

Within a matter of weeks, he came to live with Celeste and me. A nest formed from the unlikely threesome, with a strange attraction to Victor rising to the surface I could neither deny, nor bring myself to fully realizing. As we lingered in each other’s presence, though, I felt myself become more drawn toward him. The first time I kissed him, my psyche shook. My soul quivered with the realization I had fallen in love with him. The depths of this would be plumbed more as weeks turned into months.

I remembered visiting Victor in Las Vegas after a few days spent apart from him. At the time, I wanted to run into his arms and kiss him, losing myself within the embrace while clutching him tight against me. It was the first time I understood how much he meant to me; how much being away from him pierced my heart. From there, the love we fostered rapidly turned from flame to conflagration.

Not much later than this, he asked me to run away with him.

Two weeks later, we pulled up to his residence in San Francisco and the next day, I woke to find myself lying beside my lover as the next phase of our life commenced. I recalled walking around the spacious house in wonder, aware now it would be Victor and me together, inseparable for the remainder of our eternal existence. The surreal met with the delightful; the stress of the preceding weeks broke like cloud parting, permitting the moon to shine once more. As I skimmed a hand over counter tops, furniture, and any other surface I could touch, I confirmed to myself this all was truly happening.

I felt the same the first time I woke with him in Las Vegas, and each night afterward settled me into this life, while speaking in louder and louder tones that my soul and Victor’s had become completely entangled. I recalled the look in his eyes when he asked me to marry him and flashed forward to the gaze we shared as we exchanged vows.

***

Stealing a glance at the ring on my finger once more, I spoke the words I once penned about my eternal companion.

Everything was different, and everything was blessed.

We pulled into the Reno airport as the bout of nostalgia came to a close and exchanged a kiss before getting out of the car. As I plucked our suitcases from the trunk, I paused to pass one to my lover, then stole a glance toward the heavens while setting out for the terminal, hand-in-hand with Victor. A silence settled between us, both of us lost possibly in the same train of thought. I stared at the passersby and stole a quick glance at our children as John, Lydia, Robin, and Delilah strolled beside us through the airport.

It seemed the world came full circle in that moment, the past meeting with the present, with the future lying in wait before us. Lydia and John would return to California with their uncle, and whatever laid in wait for them would find them whenever the time was right. We would see them again, this much was certain. I needed no visions of the future to verify this in my mind.

Victor and I were headed to London, to sojourn a few days before catching a flight to Rome. I looked forward to the journey with eager anticipation. Yet, one thing remained to be done before I could board the plane.

We reached our gate and regarded our family, both of us smiling and exchanging our goodbyes. After parting from embraces and accepting kisses and well-wishes, I held up a finger and asked Robin to stop before leading the others to the gate of their departure. He perked an eyebrow. “What is it, dear brother?” he asked.

“I have something to give the children,” I said, placing the bag in my right hand onto an adjacent seat and lowering the one slung around my shoulder to the floor. Unzipping the first bag, I extracted two gift-wrapped packages, handing one to John and the other to Lydia. They glanced at each other. Lydia nodded her head, indicating John should open his first.

He shrugged and peeled the wrapping off quickly, reminding me of a child on Christmas morning.

As he extracted the photograph, I smiled on impulse and watched as he ran a finger across the glass protecting the picture. The frame not its initial home, I reserved the original encasement for a photo of Victor and my wedding and chose a new frame to house this picture. John stared at it for a long, lingering moment, then looked up at me. “This is us and Mom?” he asked.

I nodded, the smile remaining a fixture on my face. “Yes, it is,” I said. “The only one we ever had. It was taken just before we all were separated. I have kept it with me all these years and wish for you to have it.”

John nodded in response, his eyes settling on the image again before returning to mine. “It’s awesome. Thanks, Dad, I really appreciate this.” He reached forward, hugging me tight, and in the embrace I read all the sentiments a young man had trouble expressing. He held no memory of his mother. I only hoped this would fill the space where a void lingered.

I patted his back twice. “You are very welcome, John.”

He pulled away. I thought I caught a glisten in his eyes as he looked at Lydia, telling her to open hers now. A much smaller package, it rested in her hand without much evidence of what laid underneath. I watched as she turned it around once and peeled back the wrapping with much more care. She opened the lid to the jewelry case with an air of reverence. Lydia stared at its contents before asking what it was.

I plucked the necklace from inside the case, helping her fasten it around her neck. “This belonged to your mother,” I said. “She wore it for a long time for protection, and then as a memento of our first days together.” When Lydia turned to face me, I grinned. “I thought she would wish for you to have it. I am only sorry I did not give it to you sooner.”

She looked up at me, an expression on her face I could only read as wonder. Her hand lifted slowly, her fingers touching the pendant as though attempting to memorize it by feel. Two hearts, with a thorny rose engraved on top, were covered by her hand and her eyes became distant in thought for interminable seconds. I smiled softly when she looked at me again, and held her tight when she wrapped her arms around me.

The kiss placed on my cheek emanated a warm sensation even when she stepped back and nodded at me. “Thank you, Dad. Really. This is…” She paused to lift the pendant to her line of vision. Then she looked at me again. “… This means a lot.”

“You are very welcome, my dear,” I said. Lydia and John exchanged a quick glance before my eyes found Robin. I nodded with a smile.

Robin smiled back and clasped Delilah’s hand in his. “Come now, let’s make our way to the gate before boarding starts,” he said, addressing the brood around him. I chuckled as he winked at me, then watched with Victor as our family strode away from us, fading from our sight before disappearing altogether.

Victor’s hand reached for mine and our fingers laced together once more. I looked at him, my smile brightening. “I love you, my maestro,” I said.

He nodded, mirroring my grin. “And I love you, my poet.” Our lips touched in a tender kiss and it seemed that everything surrounding us faded for just a moment, long enough for me to see the overarching topography of the world in which I live. It remained little more than background noise even as we waited for our flight to board, and continues to be somewhat muddled in the distance compared to the link I feel with the man sitting beside me on this plane.

There are many things about the future I can guess, some things which time itself will not erode no matter how many years drift past. There are, however, the variables of existence which none of us can foresee and yet, for the first time in my short years, I neither fear, nor dread, the concept of the world shifting while I stand still. As I look out the window beside me, seeing a view of London tease us with the first place we shall encounter in our travels, I cannot help but to be excited for tomorrow.

Change affects us all. And having somebody to walk beside makes all the difference in the world.

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I blink a few times and fight the urge to draw my knees up to my chest.

Clenching my eyes shut, I attempt to remove the mental images from their unending loop within my thoughts, but blinking only brings them back in much more solid clarity. I see it happening all over again, the chilling music being played as imminent doom comes upon the one I recognized the moment the second part of the dream commenced. My eyes open and I sigh. Yes, the first part had been a warning. And yet, I continued to dream.

My hand coasts through the wet locks of brown pasted against the sides of my head. As I pull it away, I look at the fingers stained with red and glance at the man resting beside me, seeing him yet lost within the repose of slumber. I remember dancing with him, laughing with him until our laughter turned to clothing shed and found us spilled on the bed, sharing pleasure and then, sharing rest. We drifted to sleep far earlier than normal, both of us exhausted after being up the better part of the day making wedding plans.

The wedding. Saturday. I was going to have to face Robin and not tell him what I saw within my dream. A shiver ran up my spine from the base of my back to the tip and forced me out of bed before I succumbed to the urge to wake Victor. Not that I thought he would care, in fact, I knew his arms would be around me within seconds, clutching me against him to offer me comfort. I was not ready for comfort yet, though. First, I had to make sense of the maniac circus show I had just witnessed.

My feet led me to the bathroom. I shut the door and switched on the light. The man staring back at me in the mirror looked even paler than usual and the blood sweat shed in the throes of sleep stained the sides of my face with a ghastly contrast of crimson against ashen white. Scared. I had fed recently with my lover, so fear was the only thing which could have made me appear to be so ghastly. “A shower,” I murmured, watching my reflection mime the words I spoke. Even the miracle of seeing myself in the mirror could not help.

I turned from the looking glass and turned on the shower, as hot as I could stand it.

The water stung when it hit my skin, but in time I found myself standing underneath the spray, attempting to get warm again. It was as though a chill had settled in my bones and could not be chased away by the heat of water or the constant attempts to rub my arms which commenced, even after I dried off and walked to the closet to throw on some clothing. I pulled a pair of boxers and a pair of sleeping pants from one of the drawers. When this did not help, I plucked the shirt I wore the night before from the chair it had been tossed on and slid my arms into its sleeves.

Within minutes, I found myself sitting in the study, staring at the laptop open before me.

This time, I did draw my knees up to my chest, watching the operating system load and feeling something like a man lost in time and space. My eyes shut and the images played out again. I saw them with as crystal clarity as I had witnessed them the first time around.

The first portion of the dream, walking around an unfamiliar house, speaking with Victor as he accompanied me through each room. What we spoke of, I could not remember. The mundane, perhaps. It was familiar conversation, revisited roads, spoken between us as though a well worn path and yet, one which brought us comfort to travel down once more. As I entered one of the rooms, however, the sound of my lover’s voice was drowned out by a strange cacophony which ripped me from where I stood at the same time.

Suddenly, I found myself standing in the sunlight, a chilling thought in its own right for a vampire to behold, and yet the sun’s rays did nothing to me as they normally might have. Instead, I looked around to see people gathered around me, all possessing familiar faces which caused my brow to knit as I studied each face of each soul who passed. I saw my deceased mother. My father, my aunt and uncle, all strolling past, looking at me and yet, not reacting to my presence in their midst. People I recognized as being my grandfather and grandmother on my mother’s side.

At once, the sight of Wilhelm Fiedler caused the sound of piano music to play within my thoughts.

I jarred myself away from the image and back into the room with Victor.

He furrowed his brow at me when he saw the expression on my face. “Lover?” he asked. “Is something the matter?”

I shook my head, but not to answer. Rather, I did so to attempt to reacquaint myself with my surroundings. “No… I do not know,” I said. Glancing at him, I looked away again at the unfamiliar room surrounding us. “I went somewhere for a moment there.”

“Where did you go?” When our eyes met once more, I saw confusion written all over his gaze. “You never left here.”

“But I was some place else, I saw it clear as day.” I drew a shaky breath, seeing windows and only darkness on the other side, surrounding us on three sides with the doorway to the rest of the house behind us. “I was with my dead mortal relatives. I could see them and hear them and they saw me.” I shivered and settled close to Victor as he wrapped an arm around me and comforted me. He promised he would hold me for as long as it took for me to feel calm again. Unfortunately, I did not have the chance to relish his solace for very long.

As though sweeping me from one portal to the next, the entire scene around me transformed. Victor no longer accompanied me and even I felt somewhat disconnected from the scene playing out before me, left only to observe and nothing more. My eyes settled on a man, standing next to a woman as they conversed in light hearted banter. He looked familiar, but I knew I had never seen her before and listened intently the moment she spoke her name aloud.

“It’s Celtic,” she said, flashing a smile, the words following the declaration of her name. She repeated the pronunciation of her surname and chuckled when the man parroted it back in such a flawless manner.

Robin. My stomach sank when I realized the man I found myself staring at was none other than my brother himself. He wore a striped dress shirt and a suit vest with a pair of linen pants and the way he smiled at the girl suggested interest, but no desire to pursue her much beyond some friendly banter. She was mortal and he, obviously a vampire, and yet the disconnect and lack of flirtation did not deter the girl from producing a pen and scribbling on a card. She presented it to him and winked, then walked away without a second glance.

I watched him turn the card around in hand and sigh, shaking his head. Her name, her phone number, written out in flawless caligraphy with such speed given over to the task of penning the words, I was forced to wonder what manner of writing instrument would produce such craftsmanship as quickly as I saw her write it. For some reason, this prompted me to glance around and survey my surroundings. The resulting scene prompted me to furrow my brow as I beheld a startling contrast.

The large rooms all wood paneled and bearing the resemblance of a place time forgot, I could also sense the future touching its seams and radiating through its windows. When I gazed at the windows themselves, I nearly jumped backward in shock as sunlight greeted me for the second time in so many minutes. Yet, I sensed no alarm when I gazed at the patrons of this place, from human or vampire alike. Glancing around at the beings before me, I saw nothing but relaxed faces and jovial discussions being exchanged by people who might have been strangers, but hardly acted as such.

The question remained… what was this place? And how was the sunlight failing to burn the vampires I sensed around the room?

The answer to the second question was not entirely apparent, although something whispered in my thoughts that we were several centuries in the future, and the answer might have had everything to do with the windows. The answer to the first question came more readily. I stood in the midst of a library, or an archives of sorts, for while the barest touches of future technology were apparent, there yet remained books on shelves and archiac trappings of olden forms of recording information. I studied it for a while until the scene changed once again.

I found myself yet in the archives, standing by Robin as he glanced up from a book in time to hear somebody screaming. Darkness reigned on the other side of the windows this time, indicating some hours had passed, and the chill of foreboding settled heavy on my bones while I looked with him and realized we both heard more than the shrill terror of a woman in trouble resonating around us. I watched my brother place his book down slowly and caught him taking a deep breath as though aware of what was about to transpire.

The body of the girl he spoke to earlier flew through the room, landing only feet away from Robin, broken, bloodied, and violated. Robin’s eyes turned wide and he yelled out before reacting further. “Everybody, to the basement!” he shouted. “Right now, if you want to live.”

The patrons scrambled to their feet. They rushed toward the back of the large room, some tripping over desks and chairs and others avoiding them deftly if not hurdling them altogether. The small congregation of people ran to the stairs and started to descend, led by Robin, who glanced around en route to the basement and stopped the procession dead in its tracks. The eeriest music I had ever heard in my life emanated from the floors below and my brother’s face turned white at hearing the macabre symphony before him. “Upstairs. Now,” he whispered, issuing the contradictory order.

“Defend yourselves as best as possible.”

I shivered with his final words and watched the brave entourage of two dozen or so people turn back and dash up the stairs with more speed than they had descended. Immediately, the vampires of the midst collected books and cards, throwing everything they could at a crowd of creatures I could not place, but knew were evil the moment I laid eyes on them. They possessed human form, but whether or not this was an illusion remained to be seen. They could have even been immortal for all I knew. I was far too focused on what transpired to question the matter in much depth.

Chaos broke out amongst the lot of them. Some enemies fell, but some patrons fell beside them and Robin rushed to find whatever might be used as some form of weaponry. Before he could lay hands on a single weapon, though, I watched him turn and freeze in place. He whispered something in his native tongue and braced himself as though for impact.

I had startled myself from the vision by this point, but the damage was already done.

Dead. Gone. I was certain of it. I had just witnessed my older, regal brother’s demise.

The chill settled in my bones caused me to clutch my knees that much tighter while my mind returned to the present, my eyes focused on the computer before me through the haze of unshed tears. I needed Victor, I knew this much. I needed my lover to wrap his arms around me and help me make sense of this all. But first, I needed to record just what I had seen, lest one detail of the dream be lost to faulty memory.

Shaky and uncertain, I finish my composition now. Fates be damned, it has been years since such a dream has plagued my subconscious. Have I visited this demon upon us by using my powers more often? Or will I need my powers for the days which seem ahead of us; tumultuous days which might claim the people Victor and I care about the most? I did not see the death blow, this much is certain. But I swear I felt its sting before I woke for good.

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***

I thought something seemed peculiar today, when I finally decided my skin might rebel against my body if I did not answer the pressing need for a shower. Not that the compulsion for a shower was in any way strange, but when it led me to kiss Victor’s shoulder and inform him I would return shortly, I could not help but to pick up on my lover’s demeanor and perk an eyebrow at it. Nothing alarming about his posture rang warning bells of caution within my mind. No, instead there was an aura I could not quite place a finger on emanating from him, leading me to wonder just what the devil might be circling through Victor’s mind.

I could have easily read it, but I made a promise to myself when he and I first became lovers that I would never abuse my powers in such a way. I preferred to hear his thoughts aloud; to listen to his voice inflection and immerse myself within the soothing warmth of the tenor of his speech. And I knew he needed the sanctuary of private ruminations as much as I did, to sort through things without the eavesdropping of his psychic paramour.

It did not stop me from being curious, however, and after asking him once if all was well, I accepted the pleasant smile and the nod as a sure sign nothing pressing held Victor within its throes. The sight of his smile caused me to smile as well and before I knew it, I found myself in the bathroom, turning on the water and letting the area surrounding me fill with steam. I stretched out the remaining tension from sleep out of my muscles and stepped under the stream, allowing the hot water to rain on my head before I set about the task of washing up.

I had my hair lathered with shampoo when I heard the sound of footsteps and found my thoughts drifting back to Victor. Memories of recent days played across my mind like notes of music dancing to a melody and brought with it the familiar shivers my lover always seemed to inspire. I recalled walking to the bathroom and the half second pause as my hand touched the doorknob, temptation tickling at my subconscious with the desire to ask if Victor wished to join me. Something stopped me, an inclination as queer as the sense emanating from my lover before I departed his presence.

Shaking my head, I rinsed the shampoo from my hair. I fetched a washcloth and the soap, lathering my body next and continuing to allow my thoughts to drift.

Inside my mind’s eye, I saw what usually transpired whenever I did coax him into the shower and could not help but to close my eyes and attempt to relive the feel of his body, slick with water, sliding against mine underneath the stream. The heated kisses which often made the temperature around us that much warmer and the taste of his blood, running like rivulets down his neck as I drank from him. I could hear his voice as though his lips were pressed against my ear, whispering the moans of pleasure and the sighs of contentment which made up the peaks and valleys of our episodes with one another.

Drawing a deep breath inward, I rinsed the soap from my body. Shutting off the water, I stepped out and reached for a towel, drying off before wrapping the towel around my waist. The sound of footsteps moving away from the bedroom caused me to perk an eyebrow and grin. For a few lingering moments, I considered pursuing the owner of the footsteps, but turned first toward the mirror, following the compulsion to complete my grooming rituals before seeing to my lover.

I approached the mirror, reaching to wipe the condensation from the glass. Furrowing my brow at the faintest embers of something trying to emerge on the other side, I could not help but to smile, but not at the normal thoughts inspired by the taunt of shadows in the looking glass. Rather, the sound of piano music commencing in another place within the house drifted into the bathroom and before I could reach for a razor, I found myself locked in an unrelenting thrall. Yes, possibility was a welcomed thought and a brighter prospect than ever before. Reality, however, became the more pleasant notion, the longer I thought on it.

Reality, with all its promise spread across the horizon of eternity, painted across the landscape in vibrant tones and infecting each note and measure of the symphony of life. Rubbing my hand across the stubble on my chin, I struggled with a silent debate, wanting to drift toward the sound of the piano rather than finish all my rituals, enticed by more memories; dances shared, humming with my lover, noses brushing against noses while we swayed to the melody. Before long, the temptation became too much and I walked out to the bedroom, turning for the walk-in closet where my suits hung.

Passing by the bed, though, the sight of something in my periphery caused me a moment’s pause.

I backtracked and turned to face it, furrowing my brow.

The sight of a dark case resting on the freshly-made bed proved to be a strange contrast to the comforter spread out underneath it. I studied it, trying to recall if it had been there before I disappeared inside the bathroom. In the background, the piano music continued unabated while I walked closer to the bed, eyes set completely on the case while a thousand notions cycled with a million theories attached to what the devil this could be. Its placement deliberate, I did not sense myself violating any privacy in resting my hands on it. In fact, it seemed to be calling my name.

The smooth material on the outside of the case felt pleasant to the touch and I permitted myself a few moments to run my fingertips across it before finding the zipper and dragging it open. Lifting the lid, I took a step back when I spied what laid inside the cushion of soft, maroon-colored velvet. My smile brightened at once.

A violin. I folded my arms across my chest and cupped the side of my face with my hand while a delighted chuckle escaped my lips. My gaze caressed the sight of the instrument, admiring the quality, studying the wood’s grain and tracing across each string before I could not hold back the compulsion to handle it any longer. Stepping toward the bed once more, I reached for the violin, gently plucking it from its resting place and lifting it with both hands with all the tenderness of lifting a child. The light weight settled in my hands, as though I was always meant to hold it.

My fingers skimmed across the wood. I plucked the strings lightly, relishing the sound they made, while recalling the first time I ever discussed instruments with my eternal companion.

***

I nodded at Victor, lost within the thought of the last time I had been to the symphony with my brother and several others from our coven. “We listened to a selection of classical music,” I said. “I wish I could recall the who’s or even the period for you, but I cannot. You would have loved it, though.” Grinning, I shut my eyes. “The strings and horns in perfect harmony with woodwinds and percussion. Staring as a whisper and building to a crescendo.”

He smiled at the expression on my face. “There might be some hope for you yet, brother,” he said, chuckling, “At least as far as appreciating music goes. Did you ever play? I know it’s common now, for children in school to at least attempt an instrument.”

Lifting one eyelid to regard my lover, a smile crept at the corners of my mouth. “I attempted the piano. My mother enjoyed playing from time to time and I took lessons.” The recollection caused a frown to replace the grin I had been entertaining. I opened both eyes. “I wish I would have taken it more seriously.”

I do not know if he sensed the reasons why, the fledgling compulsion burning within me to immerse myself within the music and look for him inside the notes. How close I felt to him when listening to the music he enjoyed. How much I found myself enjoying it as well. The chords struck within me, both for him and the melodies of old.

Victor laughed. “You have plenty of time to learn. A distinct advantage.” He nodded. “There are several vampire musicians that I know who are attempting to reenter the public spotlight. Some of them have instruments dating back to the times of the original masters.”

“What could you see me playing?” I asked, smiling.

He tilted his head to consider me. “Hmm. I suppose I should ask first what type of instruments you’re partial to. I’m a woodwind player at heart.” Victor paused, lost in thought for a moment before speaking again. “For you, I would say strings. The movement of a bow over the frets is something akin to using a blade. It would probably be almost natural.”

I grinned, straightening my posture on the chair where I sat. “Hmm… I could play the violin, then. I do confess, I have always wondered at those able to play them with proficiency.” My gaze turned more deliberate. Searching. “Tell me, though. If I learned, would you play pieces with me?”

“Of course, brother,” he said, grinning broadly. “I’m a decent study at several instruments, my favorite being the bassoon. It actually would compliment a violin rather nicely.”

My smile brightened. “I like this prospect, then.” Standing, I walked close to him, eyes fixed on the sight of the man I was becoming more and more enthralled with as each day passed. “I have never attempted to play a violin, though. I might need your help to grow accustomed to the practice.”

His head inclined in acceptance. “Of course. I know enough to get you started, and can easily teach you the basics of music besides those centered around the instrument.” Victor’s eyes met mine, a slow smile spreading. “I rather like the idea of us creating music together.”

I nodded. My smile turned to mirror his. “As do I.”

***

Now that I found myself holding the instrument in my hands, the rush of euphoria could not be paralleled. I spent a few extra moments handling it, studying everything from the frets to the shape of its body before I placed it back into its case and stared at it a few moments more. I touched the bow and pictured the dance engaged in each time I handled a sword. I could not help but to be all the more taken by the comparison Victor made between the bow and blade all those weeks ago. My eagerness to lift the instrument and play with proficiency reminded me of a distant echo; of handling the sword for the first time, wanting to command mastery of that which I held.

The sound of the piano knocked me from my thoughts.

Turning my head to gaze at the open doorway, I smiled and nodded to myself, ending my entranced appreciation of the violin long enough to close the case and dash into the walk-in closet for something to wear. Within moments, I was adjusting the cuffs of my shirt and sliding the tails beneath the waistband of my pants. Closing fastenings and buckling belts, I at least found myself in enough order to walk out to the hallway and follow the siren song of ivory keys to where the piano was situated.

My hands found Victor’s shoulders, which ceased the play of music and left us surrounded by the echoes of the piece he played. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I held him tight and the silence formed its own cocoon around us, enclosing us within the love we share with one another before I sat beside him on the piano bench. He looked at me, his brown eyes searching and I responded the best way I knew possible.

Leaning forward, I touched lips with him softly before sinking into a deep embrace for several lingering moments. I felt him kiss me back, our eyes both closed while my hand lifted to touch his face, sliding back to his neck almost to hold him in place for the time being. One kiss rolled into the next, flowing unabated, until I forced myself away just enough to touch noses with him. My eyes remained closed, but I felt his open to study me again.

“Did you find a surprise, lover?” he asked.

I grinned, my delight unable to be contained. “Yes,” I said. “You would never believe what happened to me when I got out of the shower. There was this rather pleasant piano music which led me out of the bathroom and when I emerged from within, I discovered somebody had placed something on the bed.”

We exchanged a chuckle. Our lips met in another kiss, lasting for the briefest of moments. “I take it you like it?”

I nodded. “It is perfect, lover. Absolutely perfect.”

We smiled and from there, the words of love and adoration continued, being passed one to the other with equal measures while I fought hard against the urge to continue kissing him. Thoughts of the future play yet within my mind, with the comfort and excitement of all things waiting for us out in the world.

No matter what, we shall always have our music and have each other. And quite frankly, I cannot wait to experience each and every blessed day.

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