“You’re wasting your time,” said Karl. “I just blew.”
The vampire didn’t respond but kept sucking. Karl could feel Vadim’s tongue sliding like a serpent over his shaft. And then Vadim grabbed his balls and started massaging them, producing a fresh river of pre-cum that oozed out of the slit in his cockhead. Vadim’s mouth turned into a vacuum, sucking hard at the clear gel that was leaking out, several times getting a little too enthusiastic and nicking the skin.
It was the tickling sensation at his balls that finally did it, that and the constant sucking. Against his will he blew a third, smaller load into Vadim’s hungry mouth.
Vadim looked up at him, grinning and licking his lips.
“Jasper may be clan leader, but I got the nectar,” he said. “And if he ever finds out, I will kill the boy.”
Karl stared straight through him. His lips remained together, though the small movement at the top of his jaw belied his calm exterior. The boy? Why did everyone refer to Daniel as the boy? He was thirty-three, only two years younger than he was. Daniel was slender and had smaller features, it was true. It was also true that his own muscles and body hair made him look more manly, perhaps older, but neither of them were boys. But one thing was for sure, if either Jasper or Vadim touched a hair on Daniel’s head, they would pay dearly for it.
Over the following days and weeks both Vadim and Jasper took every opportunity to drain Karl of his cum, both uttering threats against Daniel’s life if he told one about the other. Meal times were supervised, if not by Jasper or Vadim then by one of the underlings, younger and less powerful vampires who didn’t appear to have wings and could therefore wear a full set of clothes.
“You have cast a spell over me,” Jasper whispered into his ear. “I have to have you.”
“One day you will be mine and mine alone,” whispered Vadim.
Karl ignored both of them, keeping his eyes either closed while they violated his body, or directed at Daniel, whose touch he craved more than food or water. It pained him to see the look on Daniel’s face as he endured the sight of the vampires taking what they wanted from him.
“What can I do?” he asked once when they were alone.
“I know you can’t do anything,” Daniel replied. “I just wish it was me tasting your lips and sucking your cock. I miss you so much. It’s torture being stuck over here in the shadows.”
The words were like darts piercing his heart, but as Daniel had said himself, he couldn’t do anything about it.
One day Karl woke up and saw that Daniel was still asleep. In the semi-light and silence of their underground prison he stared at his lover and realised that Daniel had become someone he almost didn’t recognise. Tears welled in his eyes as he looked upon the withered features of his lover; he had turned to skin and bone. His ribs were showing and his skin hung like dough from his arms. There were dark rings around his once beautiful chocolate brown eyes and his breathing had become loud and raspy.
“What have they done to you?” he sobbed quietly to himself.
And when the door was flung open and Jasper walked in with the pitiful portion of food that was to be their breakfast, Daniel still didn’t stir.
“There’s something wrong with Daniel!” Karl cried out. “You have to take him down. Get him to a hospital!”
Jasper put the tray of food down and walked towards the limp body hanging against the wall.
“Ah yes,” he said. “This one is not long for the world.”
Jasper lifted Daniel’s chin with a finger, producing nothing but a low groan from him.
“What are you doing, you bastard!” Karl ranted. “Get him down. Get him to a doctor!”
Tears stung his eyes and twin rivers of snot ran from his nostrils. His cheeks burned from crying and yelling, and the nauseous feeling in his stomach was growing stronger.
“Help him, you bastard! Help him…”
Jasper looked across at Karl and again at Daniel, then in a flash he was at Daniel’s neck. His fangs pierced the loose skin easily, though finding the artery was more difficult. He punctured many smaller blood vessels, creating a bloody mess around the wound before finding what he was looking for. As Karl’s wails and cries filled the room, he drank thirstily, gulping down the fresh blood of a dying man.
“You dirty fucking animal!” Karl spat, his insults tasting of tears. “You cocksucking bastard! I’ll fucking get you for this. I’ll make you fucking pay!”
His words were nothing to the vampire. He watched helplessly as Jasper drank until the life force drained out of Daniel, turning the blood bitter and repelling the creature from taking any more.
“Bastard!” he screamed. “You fucking bastard!”
Vadim appeared at the door, a blur that materialised seemingly from out of nowhere.
“What’s all this shouting?” he demanded.
He looked across the room and had no trouble seeing Jasper emerging from the shadows, his lips and chin bloodied. A smile bloomed on his lips.
“I see you have had the boy. Well, if that is the case then I shall have this one.”
He flew at Karl, fangs exposed, claws extended. The look in Vadim’s eyes would ordinarily have terrified him, but for the moment he didn’t care what happened to him. If they killed him, he would join Daniel in some afterlife and then he would be happy. In this world, with these creatures and without Daniel, he could never be happy. Let them take his blood if that was what they wanted.
“That is not how it works!” growled Jasper, landing between Karl and Vadim. “You forget your place.”
“Which is interesting, considering how often you keep reminding me of it,” Vadim retorted.
Jasper backhanded Vadim across the room. But they were equal in strength and power. Both were ancient. Both had been created by the original vampires, so long ago in antiquity that they had forgotten their parents.
Vadim sprang to his feet, launched himself into the air, and struck Jasper feet first, sending him crashing into the wall. They moved with preternatural speed and Vadim had no sooner landed than he was upon Jasper, pounding him with his fists before gripping the clan leader’s head between his hands and smashing it into the stone wall.
Karl watched horrified, his tears slowing to a dribble, his face cooling as his mind was, for a moment, taken off the death of his beloved Daniel.
Jasper brought a foot up from behind and kicked Vadim with enough power to dislodge him. He was dizzy from Vadim’s assault but freshly fuelled by Daniel’s blood. He leapt to his feet, grabbed Vadim by the jacket, and rammed him against the wall with such a force that splinters of rock showered the floor. He pulled the groaning vampire back from the rock before slamming him once more into it. Again and again he used Vadim as a battering ram, creating a larger indentation in the granite with each impact. Finally, he felt Vadim give up the struggle and let the defeated vampire fall to the floor.
As he turned to leave the room he glared at Karl.
“That is why I am clan leader. And that is why he needs constant reminding!”
Karl let himself go limp. His wrists were red raw from the friction of the metal manacles against his bare skin. Every time he put any kind of pressure on them, they smarted. But now he didn’t care. The throbbing pain of his wrists was nothing compared to the pain in his soul. He stared at Daniel’s body and let the tears fall once again, though this time they fell in silence.
So consumed by his loss was he that he didn’t notice Vadim struggling to his feet. Nor did he notice the look in Vadim’s eyes as the creature stalked towards him. The first thing he noticed was the vampire’s hands on him, one hand on his shoulder and the other pulling his head to one side so that his neck was stretched taut. A glint of light on enamel and then a white hot pain as two fangs pierced his skin.
He cried out but his pain was of no consequence to the vampire who was feasting on the fresh blood pouring into his mouth. As Vadim drank at his neck, swallowing great gulps of blood, he noticed how light-headed he had begun to feel. His heart was racing, and for the first time since his capture he began to think about dying. The vampire had been about to attack him only minutes earlier, but only now as the creature was sucking the very life out of him did he think about his mortality. Suddenly he felt frightened and alone, like a child lost at the fair. If he’d had the strength, he would have struggled, for even though he knew he would soon be joining Daniel there was a part of his spirit that refused to go easily.
But then something peculiar happened. Vadim started regurgitating the blood back into the wound, feeding it back into Karl’s system, though now it contained the virus that swarmed in his own body.
At first Karl’s body was racked with pain. His muscles began to spasm and cramp, but as the virus took hold, mutating and multiplying inside him, he began to feel invincible. He felt a new strength returning to his body, energising and reinvigorating him.
Vadim lifted his head and wiped his mouth on the palm of his hand.
“Remember who did this for you,” he said smiling. “Remember it is I, Vadim de Bourneville, who has won the prize.”
And as his lips parted Karl could see how his blood had stained the vampire’s teeth and gums.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
But the vampire’s only response was a guttural laugh.
“Just remember,” he repeated before fleeing the room in a blur of light and shadow.
Karl brought a hand to the wound in his neck and was surprised to feel that the blood had already clotted, forming a scab. He felt his newfound strength surging through his body, tingling and tickling as it spread. His arms, which had previously been numb, were now pulsing with energy. Even his cock had grown to full mast and the shadows that had obscured his ability to see anything clearly seemed to hide no more secrets. He could see Daniel’s body as clearly as if the sunlight itself was bathing him in its glorious light.
The door to the dungeon opened and took Karl’s mind off the changes that were still going on within his body.
“I have had enough of games and petty jealousies,” said Jasper. “The time for that has ended.”
Jasper flew at Karl, pulling his head towards him, simultaneously stretching the far side of his neck taut and hiding the wounds Vadim had left behind on the side closest to him. Without hesitation he sank his fangs into Karl’s neck, puncturing the artery and sucking the crimson liquid down his throat, not once suspecting that his rival had been there just minutes before.
Again Karl felt light-headed. The room seemed to spin around him. He was at the centre of a maelstrom, and as Jasper drank at his throat the light and shadows became grotesque faces that leered at him from some other dimension. Throbbing. Pounding. His heart beat so fast that he was sure it would tear itself free from the ligaments that held it in place.
But as Jasper began to feed the blood back into him, adding his strain of the vampire virus to that which Vadim had already deposited, he felt his head pulse with a screaming pain. One virus battled the other, merging to become something else, something much more powerful. As the roar in his ears grew to a deafening level he lost consciousness, leaving Jasper to finish the transformation before stealing back along the corridor to join the rest of his clan upstairs. Undetected.
Karl regained consciousness some hours later, his eyes immediately detecting something moving in the corner. A rat. As he watched it, the rodent stopped and stuck its twitching snout into the air, sniffing. It let out a squeak of alarm and scurried off as fast as its legs would carry it. Karl snarled and wrenched his hands free of the rusty iron manacles. For a moment he stared at the marks on his wrists but wasted no time thinking about things that were not important. He was free, and in his soul he knew that he had greatly changed.
He walked over to where Daniel’s body lay. Rigor mortis had begun to set in and the pale body was now quite rigid and beginning to smell; the sickly sweet smell of death. Yet to Karl his beloved was still as beautiful as he had ever been. He lifted Daniel’s head up and pressed his lips against the pale purple lips he had kissed a thousand times before when they were fuller and pinker with life.
“Good-bye, baby,” he whispered, but this time there were no tears. He had moved on from tears. Now there was only hatred and anger.
The door to the dungeon presented no problem. He was able to easily rip it from its hinges, flinging the object of wood and iron over his shoulder. He walked along the corridor he had walked with Daniel many days before, climbed the stairs, and pushed the door at the top open with no regard for what might be waiting for him on the other side. He stepped out onto the carpeted floor, noticing how fresh the air smelt away from his stale prison cell. He took a deep breath and walked past the staircase and into the great entrance hall. A quick scan of the room told him that he was alone.
The large front door had been securely bolted against the world, but it took no effort at all to pull each bolt back, despite their size and weight. He flung the door open and at first the sunlight on his face was a welcome sensation. He smiled despite himself, lifting his face to its rays. There was still just enough human left in him to tolerate that small kiss of sunshine, but his joy did not last for long. The mutant vampire virus was still at work on the organs and systems of his body. The warmth of the sun began to burn and he noticed steam coming off his face. He slammed the door shut and patted his face with his hand. His skin felt hot and had just started to melt. But his first thought was not of his handsome face, but of Jasper and Vadim. His lip curled like a snarling dog’s when he thought of them, and he wasted no more time before flying up the stairs to where he suspected the vampires slept.