In the Mind of a Vampire

Christian

“What ever is your name, gorgeous?” I mutter sleepily beneath my breath, stretching out on cheap, stained sheets with that satisfying soreness in my anus and lower back already, unfortunately healed. I shouldn’t be allowing myself to drift off here, into a full, deep slumber. It’s safer to sleep in a coffin, especially in a city like this, run by powerful, sanctimonious lunatics with consecrated weapons. My sire showed me how to ward the things. We have no power to set foot in a church or a person’s home without explicit invite, but they in return have no power to disturb our rest. Speak the proper words and no one save the resident sleeping inside can open the crypt. You can’t even torch the thing, cannot lift it from the spot where it rests, and it doesn’t need to be a full, authentic coffin either. Any four-walled chest with a lid will serve and keep a vampire safe and snug until the sun sets and our power and strength returns.

I refuse to secure any such sleeping box. I cannot stand confinement. After being buried for so long… powerless, trapped… I need open air and freedom. I don’t care if that comes with the constant threat of death. I laugh in the face of persecution. I am sick of hiding from Father Sicillio and his ilk. The church has no power over me. I am going to destroy them. However many men they send to flush me out of this most pleasant basement suite in this long abandoned hotel…

Will they send anyone at all? I can’t quite make up my mind. That broad-shouldered, dark-eyed dream of a young enforcer certainly seemed conflicted after taking me up on that offered hate fuck. He looked straight up ashamed, and he might be headed straight to confession… Which means more hunters and exorcists will be headed here soon, before day’s end even…

“But confessing his sins will invite most unfair reprisal and ‘corrections’ onto himself,” I sadly reflect, mind flashing to a far distant memory: being prayed over by a monster whose love turned quickly to violence when he realized the truth of his ‘perfect’ son’s nature, the golden boy revealed to be a deviant…

I block away the memories and I focus back on whatshisname, my newest, most dashing conquest...

“He’s not going to tell,” I murmur beneath my breath. Still, it was stupid of me to just let him leave like that. I should have followed through on my instincts, kissed my blood into his mouth, and made of him a proper thrall…

I dreamed I did just that, and little changed about our evening together. The conflict faded from his eyes though, and he became more forward, most desperate to please… Not nearly as fun as a wild and passionate enemy. Still, he stripped for me without even being told, and the way I pictured that tanned, toned body… I could hardly refuse him. It is better like this, both of us completely bare before he drives that long, thick and most impressive dick right up between my cheeks again, and he let me kiss him this time. Then he got down on his knees…

The door of my hideout creaks open again, and I think for a bracing, exciting moment that my dream is about to be made a reality. My hunter’s come rushing most desperately back to my den, begging for another, much longer indulgence… My eyes flutter open and disappointment strikes like an arrow, deflating my pent-up breath with a long and irritated sigh. It’s not him. It’s not even that charming, blushing waiter I picked up after his shift and took a taste of in that alley, right before a much more appetizing you-know-who came wandering along.

It’s fucking Daniel, rushing over uninvited. Again.

“Master,” he breathes, sinking down at my bedside and kissing my hand.

I roll my eyes, snatching it back. “For the last time, do not call me that.” I rub a hand over my face, still feeling groggy and disoriented. “How early is it?” It feels like the middle of the afternoon. What a fucking indecent time to be disturbed.

“Maybe two? Three? I don’t know. I just…” He clutches at my hand again. “I had to see you again, sir.”

“This is not the bloody military,” I grate, staring down at that wide-eyed, freckled face in sleepy displeasure. I really did think he was cute, before he drank some of my blood and became absolutely insufferable that is. “You know my actual name, so use it,” I tersely demand.

“I haven’t a right to speak your name,” he gasps, hovering his fingers right by my lips, straining to reach out but fearful to even touch me like that. “Your glorious, most sacred name…”

“Be silent already and let me sleep!” I groan, snatching back my hand a second time and putting my back to him.

“Yes, master. I’ll be here when you wake. Whenever you’re ready. However long I have to wait.” He means it, and he’s still kneeling on the cold, cement floor. He’s going to wreck his knees and be limping like an arthritic old man by the time I stir.

The least he could do is stretch out beside me. We’ve already fucked, over a dozen times since I arrived in this horrid, dank city. “Get into bed,” I murmur, patting the space at my back.

He scrambles to his feet, and I hear his belt slithering off, bits of clothing flying off and thumping to the floor in scattered, unceremonious heaps. He climbs under the sheet, pressing up behind me and running his hand over my chest, and down between my thighs-- I instantly catch his wrist. “I am exhausted, and I am trying to sleep,” I acidly remind him.

“Of course,” he whines, pulling back. “These filthy hands do not deserve to touch you, but you can have my body, my blood…”

Shit. This is why I never let mortals ingest my blood. It causes this bizarre… attachment, an irrational devotion and loyalty, and even if I never command them to do anything, they act like self-enslaved stalkers, shaking addicts most desperate to please their master and get another hit. That is what it means to be a thrall. The more they drink, the worse it gets. I stopped giving Daniel here my blood right after that first mistake of a lip-biting kiss. Weeks without a second dose, and he is still not getting better. He is in fact getting worse. He follows me around and pressures me until I lose patience and send him away. He comes back within a matter of hours, and yeah, I need to eat something. I’m not going to starve myself, so I give into his advances and drink from him.

Still, he really should have regained his sense of self by now… Then again… I’ve been letting him go down on me, pretty frequently. He begs for the ‘privilege’ and… Those certain other bodily fluids seem to be having a similar effect to my blood, steadily deepening his deranged devotion to his ‘master’. Maybe the hunters are right and we vampires really are diseased, and dangerous. At least swapping spit alone has never appeared to induce these effects… I really will have to experiment more and make sure of that though.

I get up out of bed and start to get dressed, far too agitated to attempt for a third time to return to my most pleasant dreams. Daniel keeps hovering at my back, and the smell of his sweaty, shaking presence, trying to help me into my jacket… It’s making me all the more hangry. I pull him to my chest and take a savage, single mouthful from his jugular, as he shivers in delight, licking at my flesh in turn.

I break away. “Stop doing that,” I hiss, pulling back my head. “Go back home and visit your sister. She is going to be worried about you.”

“I love you,” he whines.

“I know.” I sigh. “And for what it’s worth…” I smooth a hand over his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“You never need to apologize, mast--” My eyes darken with rage, and he catches himself, giving a nervous swallow. “Christian, most glorious Christian.” I roll my eyes in exasperation. That obtuse embellishment is little better. I rather hate flattery. I have had far too much of it, and it is worst when it is not just lip service. When it is heartfelt, crazed devotion… It leads people to do the worst kinds of things.

“Just do your job, Daniel,” I sigh, running over the plans again in my mind and knowing I cannot afford to set him free fully, not now. I vow to stop making him worse though. He is eager and good, still cute, and I will strive to treat him well as I use him.

“Yes,” he gasps, clutching all the tighter at my arms. “I will not fail you. Not ever.”

“Good. And…” I sigh all the harder, searching his eyes. “If I said I was… spending my nights with someone else… Would that make you upset?”

“I love you,” he repeats, eyes fixed and feverish.

“So… yes? That was wrong of me?”

“No, you could never be wrong!” He drops to his knees, clutching at my thighs. “I love you, but I know I am not worthy to be your one and only. You deserve any prize that catches your eye. You deserve many servants.” He pauses, staring hungrily at my crotch, with fingers already picking at my zipper. “But let this servant do his part…”

I slip away in an instant, heading for the door. “No. No more of that. Not from you.”

“Christian--” I close the door on him before he can say anything further to upset me. His every word is upsetting, his maddened tone, his fixed, fervent stare…

Since I was born I have been worshiped – placed up at the head of a practical cult… A cult that has now seized hold of this entire city, with its long-reaching claws stretching all the way to Washington.

I need to break that system. I need to set things right, but as I wait for the sun to finish sinking, all I’m thinking about is my desire to set free a single individual: repressed and shamed and struggling… “I still don’t know your name,” I murmur, but I should not seek it any further. I am an obvious danger to him, and if he is not ruined in my control… Then he is a threat and a wrench in my plans that I will need to fight in earnest.

“But that look in your eyes…” It wasn’t just longing, that first minute we met. Even in the rain-blurred darkness I could clearly trace the tears. He didn’t need ‘atonement’. He was drowning, and he needed help. I could see that suffering, and I wanted… “Who the hell knows? I’m not a saint anymore,” I mutter to myself, pacing the stairwell like an animal caged. “I’m the demon sent to drag you all to hell: Renata, Sicillio…”

I keep listing off the names, every one I know to still be living. I may not be able to set foot in that church, but I can lure them out or those consecrated walls, and put them in reach of bloody retribution.