seen as not quite nice, really, as they are greedy for heaven, even
while they experience the joys of earth.”
Adin considered this. “I have to wonder if Bran is special
somehow even among his kind. The fact that he has powers, but
not the first clue what it all means, indicates to me… I don’t know
what, it’s playing hide-and-seek somewhere in my imagination.
Boaz said the changeling process turns a supernatural child into a
human. What if it isn’t the original nature of Bran that’s at issue,
for example, he isn’t valuable because he’s a specific otherworldly
entity or a changeling human, but maybe…”
“His value lies in the fact that he’s neither.” Donte frowned.
“You realize you said otherworldly entity with no hesitation at
all?”
“He isn’t human.” Adin turned to find Donte gazing at him
thoughtfully. “Oh, you mean it’s odd that I don’t question it
anymore?”
Donte rubbed his hand across Adin’s back. “That saddens me
somewhat. As if I’ve taken something innocent and—”
Adin ignored him. “I wish I knew why he was so valuable.
What do you suppose Harwiche believed Bran could do for
him?”
“I don’t know. What does he do?” Donte asked. “Have you
seen anything out of the ordinary?”
Adin chuckled. “Little prick was in my head all the time, but
I hardly think anyone would pay for that. Vampires can do that.
He could see my dreams, comment in my thoughts. At the time I
thought it was as if he…” Adin frowned.
Donte skimmed a hand over Adin’s shoulder and down his
chest. “What?”
“This morning I had the rather fanciful notion that maybe he
could search my memories and play them for me. As if I were a
jukebox. Like he could figure out my greatest hits.”
Vigil
57
“Yes?”
“Yes, and he could screen them with intense clarity. It was
almost as if I could relive them. He seemed to be searching my
‘face file’ this morning when I woke up. They were all flashing
past like—”
Donte’s hand stopped moving. “Is there a reason anything
you know—
anyone
you know—could be harmful to you?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Adin switched off the computer and
stood, enfolding Donte in his arms. “There is nothing in my past
that Ned Harwiche would pay to find out, if that’s what you’re
thinking. Certainly anyone who wanted to hurt me could find
an addict to do it for a few hundred bucks, if that much. I think
Bran just wanted to get to know me. Whatever it was, he’s gone
now, and he’s Santos’s headache, or Harwiche’s or yours, but I
refuse to tell you about that until later...” Adin fished around his
case for his toiletry kit and tossed it between the pillows on the
bed.
“About that? About what?”
“About the fact that after today you will probably, in Boaz’s
words, want to have me flogged. As if that was anything new.”
Adin crawled onto the bed.
“You said my headache, Adin.” Donte followed him. “What
headache?”
“Later.” Adin helped slide the jacket off Donte’s shoulders
and unbuttoned his crisp cotton shirt. “No tie today, how very
informal. Were you heading out for a swim?”
“Very funny, I was relaxing at home.”
“Ah. And you didn’t pack the dressing gowns. Didn’t want to
sit around in your shirtsleeves like a wanton?”
“Stop making me sound like a gothic novel,” Donte told him.
Adin located Donte’s belt buckle and undid it without taking
his eyes from Donte’s. “Don’t knock it. Fully half the reason I
love you is because of your tailor.”
Donte’s expression softened. “Still love me?”
58 Z.A. Maxfield
Something about the way Donte asked made Adin’s breath
hitch. “You must know I do.”
“When you’re next to me, I can feel it.” Donte pulled him
close. Adin didn’t resist. “I can see it in your eyes and smell it on
your skin.”
“Donte.” Adin smiled into Donte’s neck.
“Then you leave and it’s complicated by time and distance and
mortality and—”
“I’m here now,” Adin breathed, pulling his shirt off over his
head. Donte’s fingers worked the fastenings on Adin’s jeans and
soon they were naked, skin-to-skin, and tumbling into the narrow
bed together. “You’re magnificent, Donte.”
Donte loomed over Adin, who lay on his back against the
pillows and smiled up at him like he was a god. “No, you are.
Mio meraviglioso amore. Il mio cuore è per te, caro. Per sempre.
”
My heart
belongs to you for always
.
“
Tu sei la mia vita, Donte, la mia anima.” You are my life, my soul.
Adin felt his face heat. “Which is ironic really, given that you’re
undead, but there you have it.” His lips curved in a smile of
welcome, and Donte hungrily found them with his own.
Adin drowned in all the things his senses told him. Donte’s
skin was soft, velvety, and cool beneath his fingertips and where
it pressed against his own, he smelled like cigars and croissants
and coffee and tasted of lime and some elusive Middle-Eastern
spice, cardamom maybe, but savory. Like a cardamom pod and
the bittersweet peel of oranges.
“Donte,” Adin whispered, “
lover
.”
Donte lifted Adin’s leg, nudging and bumping him until Adin
could feel Donte’s cock gliding along in its own slickness over his
perineum.
Adin’s eyes closed. “
Oh
.”
“Must I beg?” Donte asked, but Adin could see he was teasing.
“Must I ask permission to enter, as if I were a vampire standing
in the doorway of your home?”
Vigil
59
Adin felt around over his shoulder and was only a little
frustrated by the fastening on his case. He pulled out a bottle of
lube and Donte pursed his lips.
“If I believed you packed this just for your trip to Paris, I’d
be concerned.”
Adin nipped at Donte’s chin while Donte slid a slick finger
around his puckered entry to prepare him. “I knew eventually
you would lose interest in even that most exciting of all undead
pastimes—gazing into the dark by yourself—and come to me.”
Donte sank into Adin with a sigh they passed between them
through kisses and the soft sounds of pain and pleasure. For
Adin, the challenge was always how to get closer to Donte, how
to be absorbed into Donte’s skin, so he wrapped himself around
Donte’s body and hung on, lurching into a kiss. Hands grasped
his ass as Donte’s feet found traction, allowing him to drive into
Adin again and again.
After a time, Donte’s strokes were so fast and short and hard
that Adin could barely breathe around the panting half breaths
of air forced out of him. He hardly had time to drag air back
into his lungs while Donte drilled and held him, punished and
cherished him all at once. His head spun. He wondered how he’d
ever thought he could live without it – even for a short time.
“Ah, Donte
.
”
Low, throaty groans signaled Donte was on the edge of
release, and Adin was with him on the precipice, his heartbeat
waiting, his nerves thrumming eagerly.
“
Donte
.” The world tilted and slipped and slid away from
Adin as if Donte were rising into the air with him in his arms,
taking flight, into perfect, heartbreaking, starry black skies. Adin’s
cry was both strangled by emotion and smothered by Donte’s
mouth, which captured his surprised gasp as his heart seemed to
burst from his chest.
“
Voglio restare per sempre con te, caro, almeno puoi pensarci?”
I want to be with you forever, will you think about it
? Adin squeezed
his eyes shut and clung.
60 Z.A. Maxfield
Adin woke briefly to see Donte slip out of their room. He
didn’t need the windows of the room unobstructed to know that
it was night. Donte hadn’t fed from him since the day before, and
he was no doubt going out to find sustenance. Adin rolled over,
content to rest, to let the languor of their lovemaking and his
sorrow at their inability to find common ground with regard to
immortality, drag him back for some much needed sleep.
“I never could understand why these numbskulls swim here at this time
of day,” Adin’s father said as he set up the tripod. “Think we’ll get lucky?”
“This fog should burn off.” Adin had been more interested in the coffee
his father bought him, even though he’d filled it with cream and sugar so
he could drink it without making faces, than the photography part of the
outing. “What is it with you and that boat? We’ve been here every weekend
this summer and you still don’t have the picture you want.”
“Mind your manners Adin. The lady is a
ship
,” Keene Tredeger teased.
“I freely admit I’m obsessed by it.”
The Tredegers, father and son, peered through the fog at the Balclutha,
the three-masted, full-rigged beauty that was part of the Maritime Museum’s
collection. If the moisture burned off enough, his father would try to get a
picture of her, caressed just so by the early morning sunlight. As if the sun
would ever shine over San Francisco Bay in the morning. He said he knew
what that picture would look like when he got it and until that day, their
Saturday mornings would be spent in the aquatic park trying. Adin went
with him, mostly for the coffee.
Adin shivered from what seemed like glacially cold, damp air that lay on
them like a blanket. San Francisco was like London, only without the charm
of age and the patina of empire to hold his interest and get him past it.
“I do not know what you see in this place.”
“That’s because you’re a snob, Adin.” Keene’s voice was amused. The
elder Tredeger practically threw Adin a treat whenever he exhibited his
disdain for the commonplace, so naturally, he’d grown to be a quirky little
thing. “Your mother loves it here. I’ve never seen her so happy. It makes me
a spectacular hero in her eyes to have brought her home to stay. Your sister
Vigil
61
loves her new school, you are doing well, given that you’re unhappy to be here,
and I have the Balclutha, 301 feet, 2,650 tons of emotional satisfaction. I
have never loved anything non-human this way. It’s positively obscene. I’m
assuming it’s a midlife crisis and someday soon we’ll grow apart.”
Adin said nothing.
“You do like your school don’t you?” When Adin grimaced, his father’s
eyes twinkled. “Middle school has to be one of Dante’s levels of hell. Level
8, I think, the Malebolgia. But you seem to have achieved a singular level
of mediocrity in your first quarter grades. Perfectly suitable for a boy in the
pit of despair.”
“Actually, middle school is more like Delacroix’s painting The Barque
of Dante, a horrible boat, ferrying you between elementary and high school,”
Adin muttered. “Complete with shit that tries to drown you, and the floating
bloated corpses of those who have gone before.”
Keene frowned. “Adin.”
“It’s not that it’s not a good school,” Adin muttered. “I get okay grades,
people are nice.”
“But you don’t fit in?”
Adin closed his eyes and shook his head. “Not really.”
“You miss Edward?” Keene asked. “You two were thick in London. It’s
hard to leave your best mate when you move.”
“I know. We e-mail. We wouldn’t have gone to the same school anyway,
he would have been sent to prep school and I…”
“You are an American boy whose mother wants him by her side until
he’s ninety.”
Adin bit his lip and rolled his eyes. “I get that, yes.”
“I needed to bring her home, Adin. It was my responsibility. She was
afraid.”
“I know.”
“The world is changing.” Keene took a sip of his own coffee. “Sometimes
I think it gets smaller and angrier every day. Can you imagine the nineteenth
century when that ship was built? You’re a young man, barely fourteen—
your age—and you step aboard the Balclutha with nothing more than a
62 Z.A. Maxfield
canvas sack with a change of clothes, a pocket knife, maybe a tin whistle.
Everything you know about where you’re headed comes from the images you
hold in your imagination and what you can see off her bow: the horizon, in
all directions, limitless space, endless possibility, and the great unknown.”
“Mother says you grow more and more like a PBS documentary every
day.”
“I know that. I believe I mentioned I’m obsessed.” He looked back and
saw the shroud of fog still clung to the object of his desire.
Adin laughed when two of his father’s students—attractive college
girls—jogged by in short shorts, giggling.