Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 08:53:25 EST
From: VicHowel@aol.com
Subject: Avengers 12-13 - Confessions of a Vampire

CHAPTER TWELVE

My eyes flew open and I was instantly awake. I saw nothing out of the
ordinary in my field of vision and that made me suspicious. I extended my
mind into the room, searching for what had awaken me.

Nothing.

I sat up in bed and Emil grunted as his arm fell from my chest.

The sound of thrashing about in the woods outside filtered slowly through
the balcony doors. I imagined myself at the louvered doors and gritted my
teeth at the discomfort I would feel when I was there.

Afternoon sunlight bathed my nude torso and I instinctively shrank from
its touch. The November afternoon sun would not harm me but its
brightness brought primordial instincts to the fore in me.

"What is it, Karl?" Tom called from the bed.

"A noise - something like a groan. Then I heard something thrashing
through the woods-"

"Another assassin, Liebchen," Emil grumbled. "Go back to sleep." I
grinned as he pulled a pillow over his head.

Tom was beside me. "We'd better check it out-" He faced me and grinned.
"Bat or wolf, Karli?"

"Wolf," I answered and was beginning to change as I bounded onto the
balcony and pushed off its flooring to clear the railing. Tom was with me
as my paws touched the frozen lawn of the Wansee house.

|Take care when you're in the woods. Valentin put out traps after the
American brat was shot,| I told him as we neared the first trees.

The world exploded around us. We were both thrown to the ground by a
blast of sound that was as solid as stone crashing down on us.

Jagged pieces of stone and wood rained down upon us even as I sought to
hear anything other than the harsh ringing of the explosion that stayed
in my ears. I yelped in pain as one and then another sliver of wood or
stone penetrated my fur and found skin. Whimpering, I began to pull
myself toward the shelter of the trees before I could again find my paws
and sensed Tom was doing the same.

I glanced back at the house as I made the woods. And stopped. Shock swept
over me as I stared at the destruction that had once been a beautiful
house.

The lake-side wing was collapsed. All three storeys. Joists reached
precariously into the air. The upper storeys lay flattened against those
beneath them. The foundation on that side of the house no longer existed.

I blinked. I had been there but moments before. So had Tom and Emil.

|Emil!|

I extended my thoughts out in search of his. And found nothing but Tom
doing the same.

Emil!

|Find the shit who did this, Karl,| Tom told me. |I'll find Emil.|

|Take him to the mausoleum. I'll find you there.| I knew what was
coming. A bomb blast such as ours brought the police and fire
departments. Investigators on top of investigators. A hurt vampire for
them to investigate was something I was uninterested in.

I loped into the woods, following the mortal spoor that wafted before me.
Harm me and mine? Someone would pay for this. Horribly. Even a civilised
man had the right to resort to senseless violence when the Hun was at his
door with a battering ram.

I avoided the traps Valentin had laid and rushed into the woods. I
smelled blood and sensed pain ahead of me and knew the creature I hunted
had been unlucky enough to find my servant's surprises. He would soon be
far less lucky than he could imagine. I felt no pity for him but looked
forward to what I would do to him. If Emil were dead . . .

 

 

Naked, Tom tore through wood and plaster in search for what had been
their bed. "Emi?" he called to the Swiss as he threw a wooden beam to the
ground beyond the wreckage of the house.

He sensed morbid curiosity begin to grow on the street beyond the house
as neighbours gained enough courage to come see what had happen. He
ignored it, single-mindedly digging into the destruction that held his
lover, tears threatening his vision.

"You can't be dead!" he growled as he found the dresser of their room
crushed under part of the roof. "It's no frigging fun - and it'd take
Karl and me years to find your ass!" Beside him, reaching into the
afternoon sky, were the pipes that had fed the shower. He turned and
attacked another part of the roof that now law across the jagged
splinters of the bedroom's floor. "Emil, where the fuck are you, boy?"

He saw one of the bed posts then and stopped. Immediately before him lay
half the plaster-covered ceiling and three consecutive beams with an
expanse of shingles from the roof still attached. The bed was flattened
beneath it. "Jesus!" he groaned as he tried not to imagine the Swiss
beneath the collapsed roof and ceiling.

He grabbed a joist and fought against the mass of the fragment of the
roof to which it was attached to lift it. "You better not be under here,
Emi!" he hissed as he pulled it upright and leaned it against what was
left of the outer wall of the room. "Shit! I wouldn't give even a
vampire a snowball's chance if he got hit by all this."

He turned back to where the bed lay buried under much of the ceiling and
grabbed the nearest supporting ceiling beam. Wood creaked as the piece of
ceiling began to move. Loosened plaster pulled easily from wood and
rained on the collapsed bed and flooring beneath it. He grunted as he
force the piece perpendicular and leaned it against the section of
roofing.

Tom turned back to the bed and stopped.

Emil lay in the pieces of plaster fallen on the collapsed bed. His eyes
opened and seeming to stare at Tom. Blood still seeped from his nose and
opened lips, forming trickles to the dusted sheets beneath him.

Tom grinned and knelt beside his lover. "You had me worried, asshole," he
breathed as he leaned toward the still man.

He saw the rib sticking out of the centre of Emil's chest then. His eyes
bulged and he leaned back on his heels. And stared. "Emil?"

He slowly found the nerve to reach out to the man's body then and
touched his chest. Instead of the solidness of a normal ribcage, Emil's
was pliable to the pressure of his palm.

He saw the blood-matted hair and the indentation along the back half of
his skull then.

"Emil!" he screamed, pulling his hand back and wiping the blood from it
on the sheets.

 

 

I was close. I smelled the man's fear but meters away and felt the pain
shoot up from his leg each step he took. Ah, little man, if you but knew
what pain waits you . . .

I broke through underbrush into a small clearing close to the lake. He
was sitting there, rubbing his leg. He looked up and stared at me, his
jaw dropping.

"Kaleb!" he grunted in surprise. "Nice doggy," he offered more gently in
German. His eyes darted about the clearing, searching for a human to
place with me. He should wish for a human. What he had moving toward him
on four paws was worse than any hell his religion could create for him.

The man was small and wiry. He stank of garlic and sheep. His black hair
was long and curly; and his short legs were bowed. He was swarthy and had
a nose which would have even an ancient Roman screaming for a plastic
surgeon. I had seen nothing like him in either Europe or America. My
curiosity pulled me closer that I might sniff him and know him better.

I knew better and that knowledge pulled me back into reality. We had yet
to find Emil. The Kriminalpolizei would very shortly be crawling over my
property on the Wansee because bombs drew every kind of police a society
could set up. There was no time to understand ugliness combined with
beauty in the same body.

Not now. Soon enough, though - in Flaming and at my leisure.

I pictured him in the kitchen of the farm house and myself as well. And
we were there.

I immediately took human form and ignored the shock that rounded his
eyes. "Valentin!" I commanded loudly. "Kommst hierein jetzt!"

My servant came running and skidded to a stop in the kitchen as he saw me
standing there nude. "Mein Herr?" he managed and I felt hundreds of
questions flood his mind, questions he knew he had no right to ask.

Lynda stormed into the room next and stopped, staring at my nudity. I
felt blood attempt to suffuse capillaries in my face that had not been
there in 125 years and blotched in embarrassment.

Jody was immediately behind her and I saw him grinning at me, his eyes
fastened to my ass.

My gods! Don't American women know what men look like nude? Do American
men think only of their sexual pleasures? I blushed horribly as only a
vampire can.

"Take this creature to the barn and guard him," I told Valentin. "You and
Jody here. Don't permit him from your sight." Neither man nor vampire
moved immediately. "Jetzt!" I commanded.

I rushed to our bedroom and picked pants, shirts, and shoes from the
closet without thought to colour. And, still nude, imagined myself back
in the woods beneath the house in the Grunewald.

Clothed, I stepped from the woods and crossed the lawn to what remained
of the house.

I climbed to where Tom knelt, keeping my eyes on him as I neared and
studiously avoiding his thoughts. Neither of us would simply remain
immobile unless what laid before us was bad. And I didn't want to know
that - not until I was confronted with it. If then. Unfortunately, I had
a very live lover who needed comforting. And who needed clothes for his
body, the clothes I carried in my hands. A vampire who was very probably
beside the body of our dead lover.

"He's dead," Tom told me without looking back at me, his voice lifeless
as I neared him.

"Is he decapitated or burnt to cinders?" I asked as I made my way through
the wreckage of our bedroom to the American whose soul I'd been bound to
since I became a vampire.

"His skull is crushed. His chest too. He didn't have a fucking chance."

I neared Tom and saw Emil. I studied our Swiss lover closely and saw the
broken ribs under the skin of the left side of his chest. Pulling my eyes
to his head, I saw the crushed bone of the back of his skull. Standing
beside the American, I sought any sign of Emil's thoughts.

And found nothing.

Far off, I heard a siren wailing our way. I looked down at Emil again and
turned to Tom. "We need move him, Liebchen."

"You got the bastard who did this?"

"Valentin guards him now. He can't even imagine what's in store for
him."

Tom nodded. "Where can we take him?" he asked and I knew he meant our
lover.

"The mausoleum?"

"That thing down by the water?"

"The police investigators shouldn't look there. If they should, you can
move him to the farm."

"Emil deserves more than an abandoned mausoleum," he mumbled.

"And he'll have it. But, there are the police coming-"

"Help me, Karli. I don't think I can do it alone."

I handed him his clothes and picked Emil up. And reeled from the dead
weight of his body. And imagined myself at the front of the mausoleum
with only the lake behind me. I felt Tom touch my thought and gain the
same image.

"Unlock it," I told the American as we stood before the stone house of
death, adjusting the weight of our Swiss lover in my arms and locking my
thoughts so I would not begin to think while I had inquisitive policemen
crawling about my property and into my life.

I listened to the locks tumble and fall away. I watched Tom push against
the door with his shoulder and listened to stone screech across stone as
the door slowly surrendered to pressure. And I did not think. I did not
allow myself to look again at Emil's face or open, sightless eyes.

"Shut it and put the lock back on," I told Tom as I searched the
darkening interior for a momentary resting place for my burden.

Across the building was an unadorned sarcophagus. Reluctantly, I carried
Emil's body there and laid him on it. "Dress," I told Tom over my
shoulder and was surprised at the huskiness of my voice. I pulled the
hands of the boy I'd taken from Zurich and normality to make into a
vampire onto his abdomen. I touched his cheek then - closing his eyes and
turning his head that it faced the ceiling above us.

"He's naked, Karl," Tom said quietly, his voice lifeless. "He can't be
left like that."

"No." I shuddered. "We'll bury him with all the love we have for him and
the grief of his loss - but, first, there's the police to answer and,
afterwards, the bastard who did this."

He nodded slowly, accepting my priorities. "I'll stay here, if you
don't mind - with him."

I turned from Emil and peered into the gloom at Tom. "He'll come to us
again - just as you did, Liebchen. We have only to wait-"

"Promise me you'll make that shit's death the most painful any man has
ever endured."

"If the police come here, take him to Flaming," I told him. "I don't
want them to know one of us is dead."

"And we don't want the questions that'd bring either, " he mumbled.

 

* * *

 

I felt as a criminal. The police detective made it abundantly clear he
suspected me of bombing my own house. The fire inspector seemed to think
the same thing. Policemen ranged across my lawn from street to lake and
into the woods. They demanded to know why I had set traps. Again, I was
made to feel suspected. They demanded to know if I were alone. And made
me feel a liar when I answered them.

The men who questioned me for three hours were young enough to have been
born after the war, to have grown up with a commitment to western
democracy. I never lost the image of them being of their fathers'
generation, however. They were as authoritarian as any who had ever
pledged allegiance to the mad corporal; they only coated their
interrogation with the pretence of my innocence.

I more than once had to remind myself of Jimmy Boyd, the FBI agent, who
had visited me with Lynda Renfroe and her family. He was as unfeeling and
suspicious as these German policemen were. He, however, knew what I was
and would not dare submit me to these men's interrogation.

I also had to remind myself many times I was denying Emil Paulik - both
his presence in this house and my grief at his death. I assured myself
many times these men would be more feeling if they were to know.

But that was one thing they could never know. Vampires were but myth, and
these men needed believe that still when they were through with me.

|They're gone,| I projected to Tom as I watched the last police car pull
away from the curb and turned to gaze at the darkened house I'd come to
love. Its gas and electricity now cut off that it would not be a danger
to the neighbourhood.

|Go on and check on everybody out at the farm,| he answered. |I'm going
to stay here with Emil a little longer.|

|You're all right?|

I had an image of his face nodding as I walked back into the side yard
and out of the sight of any neighbour still curious enough to be out in
the cold.

 

 

Lynda looked up from the table as I stepped into the kitchen. "Where are
your lovers?" she asked and I permitted myself a smile at how quickly she
had acclimated to teleportation and other things mortals hadn't believed
in for more than a century.

"Emil's dead. This creature set a bomb off at the house-"

She pushed herself from the table and came quickly to me, her face
facilely becoming a grief mask. "I'm so sorry, Prince Karl - to lose
someone you love like that-"

She paused just before reaching me, her face a sudden frown. "I didn't
think vampires could die."

"We die - too easily."

"How?" she demanded. "I've got to protect Jody-"

"Decapitation. Emolation." I shrugged. "Emil's skull and chest were
crushed by beams from the roof."

"No stakes?"

"No stakes," I answered and forced myself to smile. "And I can hold a
cross without it burning into my flesh."

She touched my arm and pulled me to her. "I'm sorry. He was a beautiful
kid," she muttered as she pulled my head down to hers and pressed her
cheek against mine. "He didn't deserve to die like that. He didn't
deserve to die at all."

"How's Ms. Nightwing?" I asked, changing the subject to something I was
willing to contemplate.

"She's eating up all the attention Jody and I are giving her." She
grinned. "She's still pretty shook up, though."

I pulled away from her. "I shall need Jody and Valentin to attend me."

"They're out in the barn guarding that Arab you brought home."

I frowned. "An Arab?"

"He looks like one. And treated me like shit - like they do their women."

I smiled at her. "I suggest you forget you ever saw him, Lynda Renfroe."

"Why on earth?"

"That way you won't have to remember him if someone comes looking for
him."

She stared at me. "You're going to kill him?"

"After I know who sent him and how to go to them that I may repay the
dubious honour they've bestowed on me."

"Jody's going to see this?" she demanded and I felt resistance growing
in her.

"He was present when the American who shot Tom and Ms. Nightwing died."

"I-" She stared at me.

"He fed on him."

"Jesus!" She shuddered as my words sank into her consciousness.

"Excuse me, but I have an interrogation to conduct." I began to develop a
picture of the loft of the barn in my mind.

"I want to be there."

I gazed at her. "It will not be pretty."

"So? I've got a story to write. Anybody in America with ties to Arab
terrorists needs his shit exposed for the world to see." She glanced down
at her hands, unwilling to meet my eyes on her. "I - I've also got to
understand what makes my kid tick now."

I nodded my acceptance of her explanation. "Feel free to join us then." I
placed myself in the picture of the loft I still held in my mind and was
there.

 

 

Valentin bowed as I jumped to the earthen floor of the barn. Jody nodded,
already accepting his equality to me. The murderer knelt with his hands
tied behind him and to his feet. His eyes followed my every movement as I
joined his guards.

"What do we have here?" I asked in German and nodded toward the bound
man.

"He has said nothing, mein Herr."

"He will." I smiled mirthlessly at the muscle man. "This shall become
extremely unpleasant, Valentin - would you rather return to the house?"

"You will kill him?"

"He won't just die - he murdered Emil."

"A just reward then." Valentin nodded. "I would return to the house, my
Prince - if you don't need me."

"Look in on our invalids." I remembered a fledgling vampire who should be
waking and famished. "And send young Johan to us."

Jody watched the man leave. "You sent him away?"

|This creature from hell has killed Emil.| I told him. |I intend to send
him back properly packaged.|

|And drained?|

I chuckled at that. |We shall feed tonight. Your mother joins us here for
the interrogation - and Johan.|

|Jesus! She's squeamish as shit!|

I smiled. |Then, she can faint. The straw is soft here.|

I stepped behind the bound man and glanced up at the roof to find a
support beam. "I would stretch our murderer a bit. Take a rope and tie it
to that rafter," I told Jody and bent to release the man's feet from his
bonds.

"What do you do with me?" the man demanded in heavily accented English,
twisting to watch Jody rise to the beams ten meters above us.

I met his gaze. "What is the punishment for murder in your country?"

"Death by hanging, infidel. But I have not murdered-"

"You have - someone I loved greatly. But I won't hang you - that's too
quick an end to you."

He stared at me, his eyes full of righteous anger. "Allah akbar!"

"You will know there's no Allah before you die," I told him quietly.
"And you'll beg me to end your pain long before I do."

"Jody!" Lynda cried from the front of the barn. "Get your ass down from
there!"

I glanced to where she stood and followed her gaze to the roof where her
son stood on air to tie a hank of rope to the beam.

"Ma!" he groaned.

I came to his rescue. "Ms. Renfroe, he can't hurt himself."

"You're sure?" she asked as she neared us.

Jody threw the length of rope to me and descended slowly to join us. He
grinned at his mother as he moved to stand close to me.

The boy would, at that moment, have done anything I told him - just to
prove to his mother he could. I didn't know whether I should be angry or
laugh.

Instead, I quickly untied the murderer's hands, pulled them over his
head, and re-tied them. My movements were a blur to the two mortals in
the barn and the man who'd killed Emil had no time for the slow synapses
of his mind to tell him he had an opportunity to escape.

I rose a meter into the air, pulling him by his bound hands with me, and
tied him to the rope hanging from the rafter above us.

"Demon!" he hissed in surprise as I lowered myself back to the
straw-covered ground. "A demon from hell!"

I smiled at him. "There's no more a hell than there is an Allah, little
man. And you'll soon learn the truth of that." I sat on a bale of hay
and watched his feet dangle centimetres from the ground, admiring the
discomfort my handiwork was already giving him.

Sinews cracked audibly in the silence of the barn as the man sought to
relax his muscles and he groaned. "Strip him," I told Jody and touched
the murderer's thoughts for the first time.

Hate coupled with unrecognised religious beliefs to swirl among his
surface thoughts. Killing an unbeliever was not murder. Killing a
declared enemy of Allah guaranteed sexual gratification throughout
eternity and in complete luxury. His mind already imagined his heaven.

Hate grew rapidly to blot out belief as Jody ripped his shirt from him
and began to pull his pants from him. He glanced at Lynda and his eyes
blazed. He was being demeaned before something unfit for anything but
carrying children. In the mass of hate and thin threads of fear that were
the man's thoughts as the young American vampire exposed him I sensed
what I would need to make death the thing to be feared thatI wanted it to
be for him.

Dear Vlad Dracul, whom I had hated since Bram Stoker published his
romance of him! That Roumanian Count of the 17th century Empire had
understood Muslims far better than the more enlightened men or - even -
vampires of later years. A demeaned body was not guaranteed a glorious
libido in heaven. A defiled body was forever denied all those volumptious
women craving the dead man's manhood.

Vlad Dracul had demeaned and defiled those Muslim Turks who dared invade
the Empire so long ago. He had had them stripped and impaled before
Castle Dracula for all to see. The ultimate homosexual rape - a sharpened
pole deep in one's bowels. Yes, dear Vlad, you understood. And I had but
to emulate you. Such a genius I could accept as a forebear.

No, little man, Allah was not about to welcome you with his arms open.
Not once I was through with you.

But, first, I would know who had bought your services. And who your
superiors were. That I might destroy your kind.

I dug into his thoughts. He stared down at me, his nudity before Lynda
forgotten as he realised I was in his head. He screamed his anguish. I
dug deeper.

He had grown to manhood in the Lebanon, in the ancient Philistine city of
Baal. He had joined Hezbollah before he became pubescent. He had learned
in the Irani schools which accepted boys from even the worst slums. And
the bearded, turbaned imani had taught him and his classmates to love
death. To dream of its kiss. A reward for terrorising sane people.

The man was barely literate - by European standards. His ability to think
was severely limited by the insane authoritarianism of Shiite fear and
hatred. He was a pawn sent to kill me because his teachers sold murder to
the highest bidder. He knew no one but the men who had taught him to hate
before anything else and convinced him that was the way of his god.

It had taken but moments to find among his thoughts images of his
teachers and the administrative building of his school. Soon enough, the
Islamic teachers of hate would find their way to their god earlier than
they had thought. I had what I needed from this creation of their hate.

There was left but the destruction of his dreams of heaven in the manner
that ancient defender of the Empire had provided me.

I turned to Lynda Renfroe and smiled. "I think it best you leave now."

She frowned. "I haven't seen you do a damned thing. The guy screamed a
couple of times." She glanced at the Arab dangling from the roof. "He
started sweating and his face twisted in pain. But I don't have anything
for a story."

"I read his mind." I shrugged. "I wasn't especially gentle."

"So, what happens next?"

"I doubt you want to know."

"You're going to kill him?"

"Yes. Slowly. Painfully. And your son and I shall feed on him before
he's dead." I saw the Czech youth enter the barn and smiled. "Your son
and young Johan shall feed on him. I'm going to bugger him as I tear his
guts out."

She stared at me in surprise that threatened to become anger. "Don't you
think with anything but your cock?"

I forced myself to smile in answer to her. "I try to. But this piece of
offal believes a defiled man cannot have heavenly harem girls craving his
manly prowess." I shrugged. "So, defiled he will be when he breathes his
last."



CHAPTER THIRTEEN


Tom knelt on the stone floor before the sarcophagus. His head was bowed
and his eyes closed as the gloom of the mausoleum became darkness.

Up at the destroyed house he knew Karl was answering the questions of the
police and fire investigators. In the woods behind the mausoleum, he
heard twigs snap and men call to each other. He was aware of the reality
that existed beyond the stone of the building, but it did not touch him.
He would not permit it to.

He and Emil drank coffee after class in a sidewalk cafe, learning to know
each other the first week he was in Zurich. While he struggled with
German, the Swiss was fluent in English - offering him a world strangely
like Baltimore and, yet, so different.

Emil who laughed at everything. Emil who was full of life.

Emil's eyes were red that night as he entered the apartment. "I'm just
pouf to him, Tom!" he'd groaned. "A rent boy for him to possess at his
leisure."

Tom knew the Swiss was selling himself on the promenade - like boys did
at Patterson Park back home in Baltimore. But he'd thought Emil was just
selling his cock, supplementing his student stipend. He hadn't once
thought his Swiss friend had turned his ass up for anybody, that he was
gay.

Emil was hurting as he explained Karl was the first man he'd given
himself to. That Karl was the first man he wanted. That Karl wouldn't
allow him to move in with him.

He'd gone with Emil to meet Karl. To be there for him that the Swiss
youth wouldn't surrender to the man he still loved.

And collapsed the moment he'd seen him standing in the open door.

Memories of Odessa and St. Petersburg swept through him. Memories of
Karl. Loving to the man Emil loved before the century began. The Cossack
sitting his horse at the bridge over the Neva. His sword sweeping down
upon him.

Collapsing again in Karl's home and waking to know he'd lived before
and lived now to love the blond Prince he'd made a vampire. But Hitler
was riding the German eagle and it soon held little Austria in its
talons. He and Karl helped Jews to escape Hitler's Anschluß and that had
brought the Gestapo after them.

Bullets tearing into his chest and death once again claiming him.

And, once again, Karl stood in an open doorway, looking back at him and
knowing him.

He'd fled. He was on a plane back to America the moment he could make
arrangements with his professors to finish his courses by post. Away from
Karl. Away from Emil. Away from the past they both represented to him.
Its homosexuality. Its immortality.

They followed him, of course. He'd known Karl would, but he hadn't been
prepared to find Emil sitting beside him in the Pavilion on Light Street
in Baltimore that night.

A thoroughly gay Emil. Comfortably so. And a vampire. Smiling at him.
Full of life. And ready to accept him as a lover because of his past with
Karl and its promise of the future.

Loving, dear Emil. Making fun of his refusal to feed on mortals.

Tom tried to smile at that memory. No more, lover, he told the dead
vampire lying before him. There's going to be more blood than even you
could imagine at your hungriest. These shits are going to pay for what
they did to you, even if I kill every frigging American to do it.

He had the memories of the first two assassins and the use of the house
in Washington. Tom MacPherson smiled. He was going to have Special Agent
James Boyd of the FBI helping him too. And he had the skinhead nest in
Berlin that had put the first piece of shit up.

Oh, yeah! Emil was going to be revenged.

 

* * *

 

He smelled the hashish even before he knocked on the door of the
fifth-floor garret in the southeastern quarter of the re-united city.

The youth who opened the door had an unkempt beard and smelled of
days-old sweat. He gazed at Tom suspiciously and did not move from the
entrance to the flat behind him.

"I have a small job-" Tom smiled at the man. "And you have the reputation
I seek."

The man peered at him another moment before opening the door wide and
stepping back to allow him to enter.

He had been invited inside. It was all he needed.

His hand reached out and grabbed the man's neck as the door shut behind
them. He smiled at the surprise on the man's face as his feet left the
floor. "The Americans who sent a farmer to you - who are they?" he
demanded.

The man grabbed Tom's arm as his conscious thoughts coalesced around the
question. "I can't breathe," he gasped, but Tom was following the
swirling thoughts.

The skinhead kicked blindly at his knee and struggled harder to push his
arm away as the vampire's fingers gripped his throat tighter.

He found a Washington, DC, number among the man's thoughts. And the
memory of a woman's voice. The man had spoken to her once.

There was nothing more that connected the skinhead to America. The memory
of a woman's voice and one phone number - one he already knew from his
last visit to this garret. He smiled at the man reddening face and closed
his fingers tighter around his neck. And watched the man die at the end
of his arm.

The skinhead's thoughts darkened as his brain began to die. He kicked at
Tom but feebly. His grip on his arm slackened. His eyes finally rolled in
their sockets and he was still.

"Pay back time, buddy," Tom growled and threw the body at the sofa across
the room.

He went exploring for the others - two more men and a woman lived here.
Three more Germans to be paid back. He moved further into the garret.

He found the two youths asleep in the first room he entered. They were
clothed and deep in poppy dreams. He studied them for a moment, fighting
the guilt that threatened him at what he knew he would do to them.

They were young. As young as Johan or the American boy.

And as deadly as any of the three assassins who'd already come after him
and the others. He smiled mirthlessly as he reminded himself of that. He
crossed the room to the bed quickly and knelt by the man closest to him.

He slowly slipped his hand under the man's head and brought his second
hand to grab his chin. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, he
snapped the man's neck, pushing his face into the pillow. He felt the
man's thoughts surge toward waking even as his heart fluttered and
stopped.

Tom pushed himself to his feet and circled around the bed to stand over
the other youth. He made the mistake of looking into the man's face.

He's so young!

He stepped back from the bed and glanced about the room, looking anywhere
but the bed and fighting his thoughts as they sought to accept the boy as
someone who should live.

Swiftly, leaving no time for continued debate, he reached down and
grabbed the youth by the neck. Refusing to permit himself to think of
what he was doing, he threw the man through the window behind him. He
relished the sound of breaking glass as the boy sailed through it and
grinned as he screamed as his body began to dive toward the concrete
below.

"Leave my lovers alone next time, shit!" he hissed and started for the
door and the girl he still had left before he moved on to America.

She lay naked, her legs splayed in obscene invitation, as he entered the
room. Her mouth gaped as he neared her. He picked up the pillow beside
her and grinned. "No time to take you up on the offer, bitch," he
whispered as he placed the pillow over her face and held it there as she
struggled against him.

 

* * *

 

Tom MacPherson stood in the bedroom of the house on "E" Street and smiled
as he looked at the bed. "We'll meet again, Liebchen," he mumbled
softly. "And have more good times than we did this time." Tears welled in
his eyes and he forced himself away from memories of Emil Paulik.

Emil was dead. And it would be another thirty or more years before he and
Karl would know the Swiss again. Christian hate and fascist bigotry had
caused that to happen. Nobody was safe from the lethal force of that
combination, not even the three of them.

There were only the paybacks left. The paybacks he could make to those
whose hate brought his lover's death. A lot of them, he hoped. Enough to
make a memorial of death so large crazy people would know from now on to
keep their insanity within bounds - at least, with him and his.

Jimmy Boyd, come to me! he commanded, broadcasting the thought through
the city. You know the way. Come. Now.

The FBI agent would think Karl was calling him - even if it was midnight.
Tom grinned at the surprise he expected to see on the man's face when he
opened the door. Surprise, Mr. Agent Man, we're gonna kill us some Nazi
pigs tonight. No trial, no jury - just the executioner himself and his
witness. And tomorrow night. And every night thereafter, as long as
there's still a pig left standing to teach hate.

He was humming as he left the room and started down the stairs. He might
not know where to find all these arseholes, but he had a top cop coming
to his door. Jimmy Boyd would find them for him. And witness their
executions.

"Wait a damned minute!" he growled as he reached the bottom of the
stairs. He stared at the door across the foyer from him. "The Black
Muslims are in on this shit, and Boyd's as white as I am. Shit! Neither
one of us is going to get through the door of one of those guys - not at
night."

He walked slowly to the sitting room in the darkened house and settled on
the sofa there. Who do I know that's black-? Tony! He's safe and he
won't freak.

He imagined the black man and projected a command to his mind. Come to
me.

 

 

"I thought the Prince called me," Special Agent James Boyd mumbled and
stepped back when Tom opened the door to him.

Tom grinned at him. "It's just me and I need what you know."

"Want to tell me about it?" the agent asked, overcoming his surprise and
stepping into the house.

"I'm going hunting. You're going to tell me where to find the game."

Jimmy Boyd stared at the young man and shivered. He knew all too well
what this one of the Prince's lovers was hunting and what he was going
to do when he had his prey cornered. He was sure this Tom MacPherson was
going to come out shooting like a frigging cowboy. He wished to God it
was Prince Karl standing in the foyer of this damned house now instead of
this American kid.

 

* * *

 

As mist, I seeped under the stone door of the mausoleum. I had little
time before dawn streaked the sky with her colours, but I would see Emil
again. I would be with him again - though the essence of him wasn't
inside this mausoleum.

I knelt before the sarcophagus upon which he lay as I had before the
altar when I still attended mass and believed the mystery of faith
overwhelmed reason.

I prayed in the Latin of my youth to the dead rabbi and the unhearing god
as I never had the two times I lost the men who were incarnated now as
Tom MacPherson. For Emil's soul. For his admission into the heavenly
host. For things I knew to be false. Yet, I prayed for them and believe
in them as I did so.

And I wept.

I knew now how much this young man meant to me. How complete he had made
me. How beautiful his love for me had been. A rose that fearlessly
bloomed alone in its own bank of snow. A love I would not know again for
decades - if ever. A void loomed before me - even with Tom standing
beside me. It was as much for him as for me that I wept.

"Emil?" I whispered in the silence of the stone walls that held me to
hear my voice. And his name. To see him smiling at me once again, his
arms again open to me. "Emil!"

Tears flowed from my eyes and I was unaware of them. I was silent and
mine joined the silence of the tomb to weigh on me. Memories flitted
across the screen of my thoughts and were lost as quickly as they
appeared.

"Sußer," I mumbled from the depths of my grief. "Dearest sweet one -
I'll always love you."

I felt dawn's fingers touch the walls about me and begin to warm them. I
pulled myself away from my memories of Emil Paulik. From my being with
him again.

I looked down at him as I pushed myself to my feet. And smiled. "You
wanted so to be as I am, Emi." My wrist came to my mouth and I bared my
fangs.

A blood offering was as good as any other when at the byre of a loved
one. I bit into flesh and opened my vein. And held my wrist to his lips.
"Drink, Liebchen, for it's a long rest you must take."

As I lay in bed alone and shut my eyes against the coming day, I knew I
must tend to the Swiss' interment when I awaken. As I began to slip into
sleep, I wondered where Tom had gone driven by his grief.

 

* * *

 

Goddamned brats! Why couldn't they sleep `til night like normal
vampires? Lynda Renfroe stood at the kitchen window watching her son play
what looked like a weird kind of leap frog with that foreign boy. One
would stand on one side of the barn and jump all the way over it to land
on the other one's shoulders.

At least, it looked like landing on the other boy's shoulders was the
purpose of the game. She wasn't about to ask what happened if one of
them fucked up.

It was one thing if it was just Jody fucking the foreign boy. It was all
right if that Hans stayed the pin cushion between them. But Jody bending
over for him?

She didn't want to think about it.

Lynda remembered she'd come into the kitchen to pour Barbara a glass of
water. She forced her thoughts from the boys out at the barn and started
down the hall of the farm house.

"There's nothing but aspirin in this house!" Lynda growled as she
entered the bedroom.

Barbara Nightwing smiled at her lover and took the glass and aspirin.
"Doodles, there was only one mortal here before we descended on the
Prince and his boys. And he grew up under the Russian occupation -
there's no telling what poor Valentin is likely to have around."

"A damned servant who speaks no English and vampires!"

Barbara looked up at the other woman, her eyes twinkling. "Doodles, are
you pissed about something?"

Lynda threw herself into the chair beside the bed. "Last night, Jody - he
drank that poor man's blood!"

"I think vampires are supposed to drink blood - that's what I've always
heard."

"Jesus! You should've seen him, Babs! He just hops two or three feet off
the floor - and stays there. Like there's no gravity or anything! And he
just moves in on that Arab's neck like he's going to nuzzle him. Only,
there's suddenly this blood spreading over the part of the man's neck
and chest I could see. Jody and that other boy - one on either side of
the man's neck. And the Prince fucking the bastard's ass. And he -
he's screaming."

"Jody?"

"No! The Arab. And that sick asshole of a Prince rips open his stomach
while he's humping him and the two boys are sucking blood out of him."
She shuddered and paled at the memory. "I mean, there's guts hanging out
of the guy's belly and Jody's still slurping blood from his neck."

"He was still awake?"

"Yeah. Shit, Babs, I thought I could handle this happy horseshit with
Jody being a little different - but that?

"And I'm pretty sure the boy's gone beyond just fucking that foreign
kid too."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I think he's letting that boy do him."

"Like we do each other?"

Lynda stared at the other woman. "Barbara Nightwing!"

"Are you saying it's all right for us, but not for Jody?"

"He's my kid-"

"You gave birth to him. But I've changed enough diapers I've got dibs
on him too. So what if Jody's gay? We sure are. Or are you trying to
hold him to a double standard?"

Lynda sat back in the chair and shut her eyes. "I - Everything's hitting
me at once-"

"Doodles, he's a good kid. So's that Hans."

"Yeah, but we don't know anything about him." Her eyes flew open. "Jody
could get AIDS or something from him."

Barbara chuckled. "I think vampires are sort of past that stuff,
Doodles."

Lynda pushed herself out of the chair and leaned over the other woman,
smiling down into her face. "I sure am glad you didn't go and get killed
yesterday-"

Her eyes rounded as she remembered what the Prince had told her. "That
sandy haired boy got it yesterday."

Barbara's eyes narrowed. "Who?"

"Emil, I think his name was. The Arab they killed last night, he bombed
the other house. I guess the blast killed him."

Barbara pushed herself off her pillow. "Jesus!" She pushed herself off
the bed and swayed. "You'd better help me, " she mumbled.

Lynda rounded the bed and took her arm. "Where are we going?"

"We're going to tell Prince Karl and Tom just how sorry we are about
their lover, Doodles - like normal people do when there's a death in the
family."

"But, Babs, it's not night yet - they may not be up."

"Lynda Renfroe," she fussed, looking up at the red-haired woman, "if our
two vampires can be up and rough-housing, Prince Karl and Tom are
probably up too."

 

* * *

Valentin herded the milk cows toward the barn and wondered if he was
still as safe as he'd been when it'd only been the

Prince and his lovers.

With them, everybody spoke German and the three vampires respected him as
the servant he was. Only, there was the American boy and, now, Johan as
well who were vampires too. The only people like himself left were the
American women. Even Johan was trying to speak English all the time now
he had the American to make love to him.

It wasn't he couldn't respect vampires. Or even homosexuals. If he
could work for Russians and perform his job correctly, he could do so for
anybody - even vampires and calamites. It was just - he glanced about
nervously as he herded the milk cows into the barn - the Prince was
considerate. Karl, Furst von Muribor, was a gentleman. He knew his
responsibilities to his servants. His lovers understood them too.

But the American was a wild boy. And Johan was trying to be everything he
was.

It wasn't that he didn't trust the boys. Not exactly. He just wanted to
know his blood would remain his own.

And he wished they were but normal boys. So young and schwule! A man must
think twice about relieving himself with such children about.

 

* * *

 

I heard them squealing beyond the house even before I could open my eyes.
I remembered Emil then and chose not to open them. He lay in the
mausoleum, he would never again lie beside me, snuggling against me. Not
the body I had come to know so well.

And Tom - where was he?

I sat up, forcing my eyes open upon another day. I sent my thoughts out
into the house and across the farm. To ensure we were alone. That we were
safe from yet another assassin.

I did not wish to see my guests. I wished for the normality of Emil and
Tom lying beside me, holding onto me and seeking a few more moments of
sleep. And knew I would never again have such normality.

I quickly showered, dressed, and returned to the mausoleum in the
Grunewald. Where there were no squealing children to disturb my pain. I
was alone with my memories.

 

 

"I'm getting bored," Jody Renfroe grumbled as his feet dangled over the
edge of the loft. He peered into the gloom of the barn at Hans Kys
sitting on a bale of hay below him.

"You would like perhaps to do something?" A smile formed across the
Czech's face as he began to fantasise undressing the American.

"I want to see the house in town. It's hard for me to imagine it blown
up. Shit, I thought that place was built more solid than Fort Knox!"

"Emil died there-"

"Yeah. I guess that's another reason why I want to see the place."

Johan projected himself to the edge of the loft beside Jody and sat
beside him. "What happens to our bodies when we die?"

The American glanced at the man he was now pretty sure he loved and
shrugged. "Hell if I know. In the movies, vampires just shrivel up when
they get a stake in the heart or sunlight hits them."

Hans' eyes grew large. "This is what happened to Emil?"

"Shit if I know!" He grinned. "Come on, let's go see." He fixed the
image of the lawn beside the kitchen in his mind and placed himself
there. He felt the Czech touch the image to know where to meet him.

"Jesus! That whole end of the house collapsed," Jody mumbled in awe as he
stared at the house.

"Do you think the Prince will have it rebuilt as it was?"

"I sure would." His gaze moved to what had been the far edge of the
house. "I guess he was still in bed when it happened."

"Perhaps enjoying what must follow good sex?"

Jody laughed. "Jesus! Hans, you've got sex on the frigging brain."

"It feels good-"

"So you tell me."

"You would like to find out, yes?"

Jody stared at the Czech in surprise. "You saying you want to dick me
too?"

Hans grinned. "I am told that, too, feels good."

The American shrugged. "Hell! Why not? Only-" he chuckled, "we aren't
going to have Mom or Barbara anywhere close when I let you between my
legs."

He glanced around quickly, his thoughts returning to the destroyed house
and the dead vampire. "Where do you think they put his body?"

Johan surveyed the property slowly. "There is no place but the house-" A
smile quickly enveloped his face. "There is an old mausoleum near the
lake. Perhaps there?"

Jody grinned and started toward the lake. "Let's find out," he called
over his shoulder.

"The Prince - if he is here and does not wish to be disturbed?"

"Hey! You knew this Emil guy, Hans. I even met him before that asshole
decided to shoot my guts out. We can pay our respects like anybody else."

"But if his body is all shrivelled up like you said they become-?"

Jody stopped and turned to look at the other boy. "That's just in the
movies, Hans! Nobody knows what happens to our bodies when we die -
except maybe Karl and Tom."

"I wonder if the man on the white horse came for him as he did you-"

"What man on a white horse?"

"Death, Jody. He was sitting his horse in your room and speaking with the
Prince when I arrived there from the grounds."

Jody stared at him and shuddered. "You mean death - like when you stop
breathing and die?" Johan nodded. "And it was a real man? Like you and
me?"

"On a white horse. He held a sickle in one hand too."

"Jesus! I'm glad I don't remember that." He shuddered again. "I must
have been real close." He snorted and his face became a grin. "Mom must
have had a cow. I wish I could have seen that!"

"She did not see him. He was gone but a moment after I entered your
room."

"Still - if she knew I got that close to going over . . . Wow! She'd
have had a whole herd of cows."