I was told about it by a guy in Amsterdam who I met in a Gay bar after I'd mentioned that I was leaving for Paris in the morning. Since I'd never been there before, I asked him if he knew of a good, reasonably inexpensive place to stay. He did. It was, he said, called the Hotel D'If, small, clean and central to everything in the French capital. And, he added, the hotel had this to recommend it: it was owned and operated by Gay men, dark men, he said, Mediterranean men with olive complexions and Middle Easterners with swarthy good looks.

At once I was interested. There were no men on earth who could turn me on like dark complected, well-built men with hairy legs and bearly contained lust smoldering in their deep, dark eyes.

My companion, who said his name was Marcus, looked me over. The expression on his face was one of wonder mixed with awe. I didn't understand that at all.

Certainly, I'm good looking. Without being vein about it, I am what anyone would call a hunk, the kind young man whose picture appears on posters, blond, blue-eyed, with an almost perfect physique. I'd had my share of appreciative looks before from men, looks full of longing and desire. But this was different. The way Marcus looked at me was almost worshipful.

Marcus ran an index finger down the cleavage between my pecs. "You'll like the Hotel D'If," he said. He tweaked one of my nipples. "You will be welcome there." He paused. "Very welcome, as a matter of fact." There was just a trace of a smile curling his lips as he ran the tip of an index finger down the vein in my right bicep. His finger moved slowly and he pressed hard enough to leave a white line on my skin. "So beautiful, so perfect," he said half to himself, but loudly enough for me to hear over the warring cacophony of music and voices that filled the place.

We talked for a little while longer, then I thanked him for his recommendation and left. But as I was going out the door, I stopped and looked back. Marcus was still standing by the bar, gazing after me with that same expression on his face. I shook my head in puzzlement and went out into the night.

The next day I took the train for Paris, arriving late in the afternoon, and went by taxi to the Hotel D'if. As Marcus had told me, it was a small place, located in the center of a narrow ally just off the Rue Madeleine. The single door was featureless, but there was a small sign overhead, one gray and weathered with age, on which I could make out the hotel's name.

Inside, was a tiny lobby with the desk at the end. There was a young man sitting behind it. He was Arab by the looks of him, darkly handsome with full lips hooded by a thin mustache. I asked him if he had a room.

He looked me over with a calculating expression in his eyes and said that he did have a room available. I asked the price. The price the guy quoted was amazingly cheap. I signed in.

"There's a party here tonight," he said. "It's all Gay. I really hope you'll come." There was an urgency in his voice, the kind of tone that might be used for an honored guest.

"Here in the lobby?" I glanced around. The lobby seemed far too small to hold any but a minimal function.

"No. Downstairs. We have a large basement. There's a special area there. Use the elevator. Things start at nine. Do come," he urged once more. "Food, drink. Our parties are the best in Paris. I can promise you that."

"Any dress code?" I asked. In the US, I wouldn't have asked, but for some reason I'd always associated Europe with a greater formality.

"Informal," he answered. "Jeans, a shirt, anything you want will be fine." I saw in his eyes that same look that Marcus had had: a mixture of wonder and awe, the kind of look someone might have when standing before something greater than themselves.

"You gonna be there?"

"Oh yes," he answered quietly and with respect. "I will be there." The tone he had and the expression on his face made me wonder if he was going to bow.

"Then I'll see you there."

He seemed very pleased by that.

I went to my room and took a shower. I was hungry. I thought about going out for something to eat, but changed my mind. It had been a long day and I wanted a nap. Maybe an hour or so, I told myself, but when I woke up, it was dark. I switched on the light. My watch said ten o'clock.

My first thought was that I was hungry, really starved, but I remembered. There was the party the desk clerk had told me about. He'd said there'd be food. I showered and started to dress, but stopped after I'd put on my shirt.

I'd been in a lot of hotels before. Always there's sounds. People coming and going, doors being open and shut, muffled voices sometimes from other rooms. There was none of that here. I listened closely. There was nothing to be heard, nothing, absolutely nothing at all. Even the sounds of traffic outside seemed to be stilled by a thick, total silence that seemed to have settled in like a fog; a silence so deep and heavy that it was almost palpable.

But what was I to think of that? Nothing, I decided. I finished dressing and left the room.

Ordinarily, hotel hallways are well lit, but not this one. There were only four little lights set along the walls. These were dim, no brighter than candles, making the space a mingling of shadow and light. There was something about it that was vaguely disquieting, but strangely sensuous as well. My nipples were fully erect and there was a simmering building in my loins. I thought about going back to my room and jacking off to get some relief, but decided against it. If I was figuring right, the desk clerk would be taking care of me alright.

I took the elevator down to the basement. When I'd ridden up in it that afternoon, there'd been a noisy clatter to it, but that was gone. Now it descended with no sound at all to betray its movement. The door slid open and I stepped out into a hallway as dimly lit and full of shadows as the one upstairs. There was one difference, however, instead of being carpeted, the floor was bare stone.

The silence was as heavy as before. There was no music, no voices, nothing at all to indicate there was a party going on. Was I early? I looked at my watch. It was eleven o'clock, just about time when things should be starting. I took out a cigarette and lit it. As I did, someone nearby cleared his throat and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

I turned abruptly. In the murky dimness I saw him standing about 15 feet away beneath one of the lights. From what I could see of him, he was young, late teens, perhaps, and of medium height. Where he had come from, I didn't know. I'd heard no sound of his approach, no footsteps on the stone floor, no door open and close. Admittedly I couldn't see much, but from what I could tell, there didn't seem to be any doors at all.

"You startled me," I said and went over to him. My footsteps sounded in the murky gloom.

He was darkly handsome, wildly so, with the smoldering good looks that seemed to simmer with bearly restrained sensuality. Yet, there was a becoming innocence to him too, along with a shy, boyish charm, that I could see in his deep, luminous eyes.

"Sorry," he replied. "I didn't mean to startle you." His voice was clear and boyish. His tone was almost contrite. "Could you give me a cigarette?"

I gave him one and lit it for him, thinking all the while how desirable he was. His short-sleeved shirt open down the front, and tight black shorts showed a tight, nicely defined physique. The desk clerk had been a turn on, but this guy went beyond that, far beyond that. Just looking at him made my nipples harder than before and threatened to turn the smoldering embers in my loins into a blaze that would engulf my thighs to fire.

"Isn't there supposed to be a party here?" I asked.

"Oh yes," he answered. He paused to smoke his cigarette, letting the smoke drift out through flared nostrils as he looked at me with fawn eyes. "You're very handsome."

"So are you." That was no lie. I thought he was gorgeous, perhaps the best looking man I'd ever seen. But there was something else about him too. The more I looked at him, the more I saw something very familiar about him though I was sure I'd never seen him before in my life. "What's your name?"

"Loki," he answered, taking a drag from his cigarette. "And your name is David." Before I could ask him how he knew that, he reached out a hand and pushed it gently against my crotch. Just that touch and I thought I was going to cum.

I wanted to ask him how he knew my name, but I could not. All I could think about was my blood-engorged cock that was pressing with an ever demanding urgency against my pants. Had I looked down, I was sure I'd have seen a growing wet spot.

"Let's go up to my room," I suggested.

He shook his head. "No. We've got to go to the party. We're expected. But after that . . ." He stopped and gave me a suggestive look as he ran the tip of an index finger down the cleavage between my pecs.

We put out our cigarettes, stubbing them out on the stone floor and started to walk slowly down the hall into a murky gloom.

He'd said we were expected, but expected by whom? I didn't know, nor did I ask. Perhaps I didn't care very much. This guy had me in his thrall.

Some 25 feet along, the hall began to curve. We stopped.

"Why don't you take it out," Loki said. His voice was almost a purr. "The scepter of your manhood should be exposed, have air. No one's around except me."

Spreading my legs slightly, I pulled my zipper down. As if it had a life of its own, my cock jumped from its confinement, sticking straight out. All I could do was look down in stunned amazement.

I've never had any reason whatever to be ashamed of my size. My uncut dick is a good eight inches long and thick. But now that had changed.

What I saw was a cock, my cock, that was now at least a foot long and thick as a bottle. But that wasn't all. The mushroom shaped crown was glowing, literally glowing red like a poker taken fresh from the fire, while from my piss slit hung a gleaming strand of crimson precum.

"The rod of your manhood," Loki said. His tone was hushed, almost reverent as he stretched forth a hand and laid it on the shaft. I gasped as my dick jumped, as if it was coming to attention at his touch.

"Kiss it Loki. Please. Suck on my big dick." I was so raging hot that I was begging him for relief.

He ignored me. "Take out your balls. I wanta see those big, hot nuts of yours."

I did what he wanted, but as I did, my balls seemed to grow. I know that's impossible, but they did until they were the size of small oranges. Like my cock, they were glowing red.

From a pocket in his shorts, he took out a slender silvery chain. With one hand, he took my nuts and pulled them down into their sack as far as they would go. As he did, my throbbing, oozing cock stood straight up. He wrapped one end of the chain around my ball sack and tugged on it a little. A long strand of crimson precum spurted out of my dick.

Using the chain as a leash, Loki led me by the balls on down the hall. The floor was beginning to sloop. The gloom deepened. My cock head glowed red as did my churning balls, as if they were made, not of flesh, but of burning coals.

On we went, going down, down, until again we stopped. He told me to take off my shirt. I did, dropping it to the floor. In what little light there was, I could see my big, erect nipples and see my muscled torso glistening with sweat.

My arms began to move as if someone was pulling them behind my back. My elbows and wrists touched. Try though I did, I could not free myself. It was as if I was bound.

"What's happening to me?" I demanded. "What's going on?"

"You'll find out soon," he answered. "Are you frightened?"

"No." I wasn't scared. I was mystified, yes, but more than that, I was horny, very horny. That doesn't begin to express it. The feeling coursing in me was a thousand times more powerful than just being horny. It was like the blood flowing in my veins had become a river of fire.

"Good," he replied. "You must not be afraid. It will all be over soon."

All I could hope for was that he meant that soon, very soon, I'd have sex with him, or with someone, anyone, even with myself. At that point, if I'd have seen a hole in the wall, I'd have tried to fuck it.

On we went until the hallway ended at a door. "The party's inside," Loki said. He pushed open the door and led me inside.

We were on a narrow balcony overlooking a vast rectangular room that looked for all the world like the interior of some great church. Countless candles blazed in sockets and chandeliers. Massive pillars formed a colonnade, holding up a ceiling that was lost in the dark. There were, however, no stained glass windows—or windows of any kind—piercing the walls.

At the far end of the room, there was an altar and behind that, a huge empty cross. There were people there, standing in front of the altar. How many there were, I couldn't tell, but I could see that they all had on long black robes with pointed hoods, the kind Medieval monks might wear.

Fear came upon me, cold naked fear. I tried to move my arms, but no matter how hard I tried, they remained firmly bound behind my back.

"You have to be presented naked," Loki said as he began to undo my pants.

"Naked to who? To them?" I nodded toward the black robed figures at the end of the room.

Loki made no reply. He stripped me down; shoes, socks, pants, until I was finally bare.

I begged him to let me go. I pleaded with him, but he paid no attention to me at all. He took the chain and with a firm tug on my throbbing nuts, he led me like the captive I had become, along the balcony to a narrow set of stone stairs at the end. These we descended to the room below.

As we walked along the colonnade, the black robed figures formed themselves into a crescent. I could see now that there were 20 or them, standing with pointed hoods obscuring their faces and their hands tucked into their full sleeves.

My muscles rippled as I walked. Sweat gleamed on my torso and beaded on my inner thighs. My cock head glowed with a savage brilliance as juice oozed out of the slit, covering the crown and running down my vein twisted, upright shaft. My imprisoned balls shown like two red lights, while my swollen nipples were so tender that I could feel the air move across them as I walked.

Never had I been so frightened but never, ever had I been so powerfully turned on. Fear warred in me with the all-consuming abandonment of white-hot sex. It was the fear that lost. All I could think of was how much I would like to strip Loki of the shorts he wore, kneel behind him and push my face into his bubble butt. Sucking out his sweet, young ass would be so good, so very, very good.

At last, about 10 feet from the others, we stopped.

"Welcome to the party," a male voice intoned, seeming to come from the figure in the center of the hooded group.

"Thank you," Loki replied. "I have brought my guest."

"Your guest is welcome," the voice said.

The hooded one, who I supposed had spoken, detached himself from the rest and walked over to where Loki and I stood. As he approached, Loki dropped my chain and stepped back.

I could not see either his face or body, but when he stretched out a bare hand and laid it against my sweaty chest, I thought I was going to explode. My nipples ached, my cock head gleamed brightly and spewed forth a stream of crimson precum, while my balls glowed with a throbbing heat.

The hooded one turned to the others. "He is worthy," he called out. An approving murmur arose from his 19 companions and Loki smiled.

"Worthy of what?" I demanded.

The man abruptly turned back to me and pushed back his hood and I saw that it was the desk clerk from the hotel. At the same time, his robe fell to the floor with a whooshing sound. Wrapped around his narrow waist he wore a strip of bright red cloth that was held in place by a large knot in front. He had a luscious, lithe physique, one that a ballet dancer might have.

In the meantime, the 19 others had disrobed as well. They were of all races, all young, good looking and well-built, and all were wearing red loin cloths with large knots in front. To my surprise, I recognized one of them. It was the man I'd talked to in the bar in Amsterdam and who had directed me to the hotel.

"My name is Djin," the desk clerk said. His hairy, nicely rounded thighs glistened as if they'd been rubbed with oil. His full lips looked moist. He laid a hand on the side of my neck. "Your body is so beautiful, a work of art." His fingers pressed into my flesh. "And so full of what we need." His eyes seemed to glow.

There was an answering murmur from the 19 young men, as again Loki smiled.

"Need? Need what?" My voice was bearly above a whisper. Every fiber in me was screaming for the relief that I knew Djin could give me if he wished.

"Your suffering," he answered. "And your juice."

Before I could ask what he meant by that, he turned to Loki. "We will prepare him now."

Loki picked up the chain that was wrapped around my ball sack. At the same time, two of the 19 left the rest and came to where I was. They were both Asian or of Asian descent, both with splendidly defined, marble-smooth physiques.

Fear gripped me now, a terrible, gut-wrenching fear that no feeling of sensuality could overcome. Suffering? They were going to hurt me, hurt me badly. Torture me? And my juice? What were they going to do? Drain the blood from my veins? Bleed me to death? Make me a sacrifice to their god? I begged and pleaded with them to let me go, but it was no use.

I was taken to stand between two of the pillars so that I faced the altar. My arms were loosened and metal cuffs were locked on to my wrists and ankles. The cuffs were attached to the pillars by heavy chains.

At Djin's direction, four of the young men approached me, each holding a small silver bowl. From these, they took warm, scented oil and begin to rub it into my skin, going slowly. Trickles of oil ran down my anal crack and my inner thighs. Drops of oil hung from my swollen tits. When they were done, my entire body glistened in the candle light.

Their massaging fingers and the warm oil made me so hot, so fucking hot, that all fear left me. All I wanted to do was explode, to cum as I had never cum before. But, as before, I could not.

When they had finished, Loki came to me. He had a bowl that looked like the others, but instead of rubbing me with the oil it contained, he reached up and poured some of it onto my head. The rest he poured out on my cock, starting down at my pubic hair and going slowly up the shaft to the crown.

Loki finished and stepped back, leaving me in a heat of sexual heat that all the waters of every ocean could not cool down.

I heard a clanking sound. The chains were moving. Somehow they were being pulled back into the pillars. This continued until I was spread-eagled, stretched nearly to the breaking point, stretched so tightly that the tendons and muscles of my proud physique looked like thick cord twisted beneath my skin, while my nipples and genitals glowed a fiery shade of red.

All of them gathered round me, all of them had whips, cat o' nine tails, vicious looking things with knots at the end of each long leather thong. By these whips, Djin told me, I was to be scourged, flogged twice by each of the young men who could hit any part of my body that they chose.

Forty lashes?! I knew I couldn't survive a beating like that. "Why, Loki, why?" I pleaded. "Why?"

With a look of deep compassion in his eyes, Loki came to where I was hanging, spread out. In one hand he held a white cloth. With it, he gently, almost tenderly, whipped the sweat from my belly, chest and brow.

"You must suffer, David. I wish it didn't have to be this way, but it does. You must suffer and spill your blood so that my people and I can have life. But after it is over, after it is all over, I can promise you this. You will know greater happiness and peace than few men have had before. Believe me. I'll be with you to assure it." With that, he stood on tiptoes to kiss me full on the mouth. After that, he stepped back, giving me an almost pitying look.

"Our food and drink," Djin called out, pointing at me.

These guys are vampires, I thought, demons from Hell!

He had no sooner spoken, than the beating began.

The first blow that struck me, hit high on my back. It came with such force that as tightly as I was stretched, I was pushed forward in my chains. Never had I felt such pain, searing pain, terrible pain, pain that went all through me and ricocheted like a molten bullet bouncing around in my brain. I didn't scream. My teeth were too tightly clenched. But when the next blow came, following hard on the first, I cried aloud, like a wounded animal screaming in the night.

On and on beating went on—and on, blow after slashing strike against me, slamming into my helpless, quivering flesh. I cried, I screamed with each terrible blow, trying vainly to twist, to writhe in my bonds, to turn, to somehow escape what I was getting, what I was forced to take. With each smashing hit, my whole body shuddered, my head shot back, my fingers clenched and unclenched.

Some of them hit my back, some beat me across the front. I could see the blood trickling from cuts in my chest, belly and ravaged thighs. My back, ass and the backs of my legs probably looked the same way, too.

But then a strange thing happened.

Mingled with the hideous pain, warm sensations began to flow over me, feelings I could only describe as sensual, so that the pain that racked me changed to became not pain only, but pleasure-pain. As the change took over, my hot cock throbbed and bounced with each slashing blow. Glowing red precum ran from my piss slit oozing out in ever increasing amounts, dripping in long strands to the floor below. I continued to cry out each time I was hit, but now, when my cries were more guttural, like those sounds that come at the height of red hot sex.

One of them approached me with cat in hand. He was darkly handsome with a well defined physique. "I'm gonna get your chest," he said.

I took in a deep breath, offering him my mounded pecs in silent, yielding sacrifice. He raised the cat. I saw his bicep bulge before he brought the whip down, slashing it across my chest.

Beat me! Oh, Christ, beat the living shit out of me! Don't hold back! Please, don't hold back! Hit me!

Thwack!

I glared at him. Do it, you bastard! Get my belly! Get that hard butt of mine, too! Beat it red! Beat it!

Thwack!

Another of them approached me, whip in hand.

I bared my teeth. I can take it, take anything you can dish out! Get my legs, hard! Beat my legs!

Thwack!

Aggghhh! Right across my thighs that time! Good!

Thwack!

That's It! Whip my hot young body! Make me feel it! Make me bleed!

Thwack!

You got my cock! Oh God, you got my cock. Great! Give it to me! Now, hit my balls! Slash into those hot nuts of mine!

"Aghhhhhhhhhh!!!!"

My beating was not done quickly, but took maybe an hour or more. Finally, though, it was over and they took me down. My head hung down submissively with my chin on my chest. My strong legs were so weak that I could scarcely stand. The chain on my balls was gone now, but I wondered. Were they going to put a collar around my neck?

I heard footsteps and raised my head. Through eyes made bleary with sweat, I saw Djin coming toward me. He held in both hands a cap, made of metal and glistening in the light with sharp points all over it, points like thorns, each one several inches long. Hands pushed me to my knees and twisted my arms behind me. Djin stood before him, muscled legs slightly spread and raised the cap above his head.

"No! Please, no! Loki!"

With a single downward thrust, Djin rammed the cap down onto my head, jamming the points into my scalp.

I reeled, screaming in pain, my cry reverberating throughout the vast room. Blood flowed in rivulets down the sides of my head and over my face.

Hands lifted me to my feet. Whips slashing against my savagely beaten ass drove me forward, where and how far, I didn't know or care. Blinded by blood and sweat, I was beyond all caring now. It was Loki who wiped the blood from my eyes so I could see what they had in store for me. To my horror, I saw the cross that had hung above the altar now lay flat on the floor. I knew then, knew with a terrible sinking feeling, that they were going to nail me to that thing!

They flung me down and laid me out on the rough hewn wood. My arms were stretched out along the cross piece and firmly held in place.

"Hold him," Djin commanded.

In the meantime, someone knelt behind me and wiped the sweat and blood from my eyes.

I looked to my left and saw—Oh Christ! It was a nail, a long nail. It looked like an old railroad spike with a wide, flattened head. While one young man held my arm, another put the nail against my wrist. I felt the dull point of the spike pressed down against my left wrist.

God Almighty, was this happening to me!?

"No, no, please!"

They seemed not to hear me.

There was a smashing hammer blow and the nail was driven into my wrist. I cried out and turned my head away.

Christ! Why'd the point have to be dull? Why couldn't it have been sharper? Oh please, NO!

I tried to twist, but could not. My legs were being held down tight.

"AGHHHHHHHHH!"

More hammer blows echoed in the room, blows driving the spike into my flesh and through it until my wrist was nailed securely to the wood. The tendons had been cut making my fingers curl in toward the palm. Blood gushed up around the head of the nail as I sobbed in pain and fear.

My right wrist was nailed to the wood.

The pounding, the incessant pounding of the hammer against steel, blows that fastened my wide spread arms to my cross. My cross! Oh God! It was my cross and I was going to have to hang on it! Why? Why? Why? Why were they doing this to me? Why did I have to suffer like this?

My legs were taken, pushed down hard, twisted manipulated. One was pushed against the upright and the sole of my foot was shoved flat against the wood. The other leg was bent at the knee and the foot jammed on top of the other. My thigh muscles bulged. Why did I notice that? I don't know.

A single long spike was placed against my top foot and driven in. Blow after cruel blow until both my feet were pierced through and the nail, like the two others, had been driven into the wood.

I was crucified.

Five of them took up the cross, holding it at an angle by the cross bar and dragged it back up the stone stairs to the altar. Each movement, each bump was an agony not to be described, a ravaging pain that drove all other thoughts away. Then why was my cock still stiff as ever? Through it all, all the intense searing pain, my dick never ceased being erect. Now it was as full, as bulging, as ever before with streams of red precum running down the shaft.

The cross, with my muscular young body nailed to it, was set upright at the back of the altar. My blood drenched toes were no more than a foot off the floor. As it was raised, I sank forward putting excruciating pressure on my wrists. The pain was hideous, as if every nerve was a fiery wire tunneled into my tortured flesh.

I had read about crucifixion. For some, like Christ, death came in hours, for others it took days, but however long it took, the cause was the same: suffocation. The victim would push himself up so his chest muscles could expand and allow him to breath. Shortly, however, the pain on his feet would become too great and he would lower himself again. This happened in a regular cycle until he had lost all strength. It was then that he would die.

Even now, I was gasping for breath. I pushed up on my feet and let out a strangled cry as pain, terrible, terrible pain shot up my legs. I could stay that way for a few seconds, only time enough to get a little air into my burning lungs, before the pain in my feet forced me to slump down again.

I'd read, too, that sometimes, to hasten death, the legs would be broken.

Would they do that to me; ram a board between legs and, with a heavy hammer, smash my knees, break my legs?

I look up to heaven and prayed that I would faint, but I did not.

Loki, Loki, why did you let this happen to me? Why have you forsaken me now?

Djin and the others were clustered together at the foot of my cross, looking up at my crucified form, but Loki was not among them. When I turned my head, through sweat-glazed eyes, I saw him, standing apart, gazing at me with an almost worshipful expression on his handsome face.

Drops of sweat beaded on my rock-hard nipples, hanging there for a moment before dropping to the floor. The stretched and twisted muscles of my shoulders and thighs felt like they were on fire.

"He is beautiful up there," I heard someone say.

"Yes," another agreed. "Look, see how his muscles are like cables beneath his skin. Look at how his skin gleams in the light."

Two of the young men came to the foot of the cross. They knelt and began to lick the blood that was dribbling between my toes. Two more came and, with long slender fingers, began to massage my aching thighs. At their touch, the heat in my cock surged in its intensity, my glowing balls felt like they were so full of juice that they were going to burst. I pushed up against the nail that pierced my feet, took in what air I could and let out a loud groan.

I looked down and saw Marcus holding a long, silvery knife. He was smiling in the eerie way I'd seen him do in the bar in Amsterdam. With the knife he slashed me, opening one of the veins in my right leg, just above the knee. My blood poured out and he drank. The others did as well.

All this time, Loki had stood apart. Now, when all had drunk their fill from me, he came to the foot of the cross, carrying in both hands a small silver bowl. The thought went through my fevered, pain racked brain that he had oil in the bowl and was going to rub me with it, but I was wrong. He held it up, placing it beneath my glowing cock head and, with one hand, began to stroke the shaft.

Five seconds, maybe less, and I came. Christ, I exploded! My cock shot out a great stream of cum, more than I had ever seen it do before. My whole body shuddered, pulling against the nails that pinioned me to the wood, and I cried, a strangled sound that started deep in my throat and bearly left my wide open mouth.

I came and came again. Each shot was so powerful that the force of it jerked my body forward, making the nails in my wrists and feet dig in deeper yet.

Once I read somewhere that an ejaculation produces only about a tablespoon full of cum. Not this time. I filled that bowl nearly up to the rim. I guessed it held about a cup.

Loki stood back and raised the bowl to his lips and drank down every single drop. Afterward, he turned to the others and called out with a loud shout, "It is finished! He is mine and I am his!"

Blessed relief came to me. Blackness descended and I felt no more.

When I came to my senses, I found I was in large and beautifully appointed room lying on an oversize bed. Sunlight streamed through the window. There was a sheet over my legs. Loki sat on the edge of the bed smoking a cigarette.

I tried to sit up and discovered that I could. I discovered too that all pain was gone.

"Loki," I demanded, "what . . ." I shook my head to clear it.

"It's okay, David." He gave me a lit cigarette and then, as I smoked it, told me this tale.

The twenty young men were vampires, Gay vampires. According to Loki, with one exception, the books, the movies and all the other tales about vampires had it all wrong when they depicted vampires as straight. There are no straight vampires, he said. While Gay people aren't vampires, all vampires are Gay.

Neither were vampires "the living dead," sleeping during the day in coffins full of dirt. They couldn't change into bats either, nor assume any other hideous shape. Vampires were beautiful creatures, handsome with splendidly defined physiques.

I thought that if Loki or any of the others I'd seen were examples of their kind, he was certainly right in what he'd said. Regardless of the torture that they'd put me through, they were each of them a Gay man's dream. No more was that true than of Loki himself.

Vampires, Loki continued, weren't human. Instead, they were created separately from humans as a distinct and separate race. Though they lived in the same space/time continuum as humans did, it was on a different plain. However, the two plains had various points of intersection. It was these points—singularities, Loki called them—that vampires use to enter the world of men.

I guessed that they came to fill themselves with human blood, but when I asked him about that, he said it wasn't so. Vampires, he told me, did need blood to survive, but they didn't take it from humans. Though they were feared and despised, they were no threat. Instead, they were the designated guardians of Gay people, come to earth to guide and protect. Though ordinarily, they couldn't be seen, there wasn't a Gay man or women, he said, who didn't have a vampire hovering about him.

"Some Gay people are sensitive enough to feel the presence," Loki said, " and know when they're about. Most Gays, though, the great majority, don't ever know they're there."

I was an example of the first kind of Gay.

He told me that he had been assigned to me before my birth and had been with me ever since. It was he who I'd felt with me when I felt most alone. It was he who I sensed was there when I went walking in the dead of night. It was he who had given me strength to go on when I thought I couldn't go another step. And it was he who had led me to come to Europe and to Paris, finally, to meet my destined fate.

My destined fate? I asked him about that.

Before he could answer my question, he said, I had to know that there were four great wizards in the cosmos. For reasons, he said, that I would learn later, the wizards hated the vampires and sought to exterminate them in an on-going and unforgiving war. The vampires had great power and, ordinarily, were able to hold their own quite well, but once, long ago, as humans judged time, the vampires had been betrayed by one of their own.

The result of the treason was that the vampires had been rendered nearly powerless. They had enough strength to maintain themselves, but that was about it. Even that power was steadily on the wane so there was great fear that if things went much further, the wizards would win and the vampires would be extinct.

In desperation, the vampires had appealed to the High Council of the Gods for relief. From the gods, they learned that there was only one chance for salvation—and the salvation of all Gay people. A prince would arise among them who was destined to be their sovereign lord. He would be mighty, a wonderful ruler who would restore their power and lead them in the war against the wizards until, in the fullness of things, victory would be theirs.

"And you are that prince," I said.

"Yes. I am that prince. But I couldn't just assume my station. If I'd done that, I would have been wiped out, destroyed by the wizards, none of whom wanted me around. No, to achieve my destiny, to save my race and lead it on to victory, I had to have the one power no wizard could resist."

I asked what that power was. He told me it was love. He quickly added, that it wasn't just any kind of love. The love he meant was the kind of love that existed between two beings who were meant for each other, two beings who shared a soul.

"You are that destined one," Loki said. "It was for that reason you were created and born on the earth. I watched over you and guided you and, in the end, brought you here. It was here that you would transcend your humanity. Here you would die as a human and be raised up as a vampire to join me as a savior of the race."

"Okay," I said, "but why the torture? Why the crucifixion—or did any of that happen at all?"

"It did happen, David, all of it. Look at your wrists."

I looked at saw the marks left by the nails. When he pulled back the sheet that covered my legs, I saw the scars in the tops of my feet.

"You were scourged and you were crucified," Loki said. "And you died on that cross."

I interrupted. "You mean I'm dead?"

"Do you feel dead? You sure don't look dead." He chuckled. "Anyhow, as to the why of it, your suffering and death were necessary—and that had to happen at the hands of the Vampire Lords. You had to suffer at their hands and yield to them your flesh and blood. But your sperm, they could not have. Only I could drink what makes you a man."

"And you did."

"Yes. Your sperm is food and drink to me, as mine will be for you."

"I like that."

He leaned back on his elbows and spread his thighs . "Drink."

And I did.