I probably should point out that I'm not anti-religious -- every modern religion teaches peace and love, and the repudiation of hate. Unfortunately, there are preachers, rabbis, and imams who claim hate and fear to be the message of their god; and, even more unfortunately, there are people who believe them. So, I'm nowhere close to repudiating the God of Christianity in this story; but hate-mongers who claim to speak for Him are fair game.

This story is gay fiction. It is copyrighted and cannot be reproduced in any medium without my express permission. If you are a minor in your country of origin, don't read.

I have two other series running on Nifty: GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT appearing in the Incest folder and ILLUSIONS in the Beginnings folder. If these two stories don't give you enough hot vampires and mortals, Starbooks has just released my LOVERS WHO STAY WITH YOU, and that has 28 tales that'll have you offering your neck to the next guy who offers to lick it. <G> You can help Nifty by using its link to A Different Light Bookstore when ordering this book.

I'd love to hear from you -- tell me what you think of this story, Illusions, or Global Entertainment. Just please put the title of the story in the subject box so that I won't delete your message along with the rest of the spam I get. I'm at vichowel@aol.com

Dave MacMillan

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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I was watching Rastus Reed lick Paul's boot one second; the next, I was looking at broad shoulders covered by a shirt I was sure was Henry's. I glanced sideways and saw my lover transfixed by the preacher debasing himself. I looked forward again and saw the blond hair.

Sam!

Clothed! I couldn't believe it. I'd only seen him with clothes on once and that was last night. Forgetting the tableau before me, I took a moment to study him like this.

Sam Adams Taylor lost something when he put on clothes. He looked like any other teenager -- a good-looking one, but still a normal guy. I realized that he'd become something like a primordial element of nature in my mind. Something like the Greek god Pan -- always sex-incarnate with his hard dick exposed. I couldn't see the front of his jeans, but I was willing to bet he wasn't even hard.

Sam turned to me, a big grin on his face. |Even a mob can be turned into a herd of cows,| he said.

"You did this."

He chuckled. |Paul gave me the low-down on the Reverend Reed last night while you two were up in the bedroom.|

|We should have invited you to join us,| I projected at him, thinking that the nature of this conversation didn't belong out in public.

|No, you shouldn't have. You and Henry belong together -- as a twosome.|

|But you...|

|I have a whole mountain.| He smile and jerked his head toward Paul and the preachers. |Besides, I find I sort of like Paul.|

I stared at Sam in surprise.

|There's a lot of things he knows that makes sex a lot more interesting, Sammy -- more than just fucking. I like that, and I want to explore it a lot further than I already have.|

He frowned and looked over at Ralph studying him. "What?" he demanded in his mountain twang.

"You didn't...?" Ralph said.

Sam's eyes flashed and, a moment later, Ralph sort of slumped. I knew he was talking to Ralph telepathically. And Henry's father hadn't liked what he'd heard.

"Ralph," he said, keeping his voice low. "I know you wanted to help the family. I can see it in your mind. You're a good man for it. But those two ... Phredd and Butts planned this attack on Taylor Mountain to get the timber cheap. They were using you, Ralph."

Henry's daddy stared at Sam, his jaw working but no words coming out.

"Hewas a fucking liar, Ralph. Most preachers and deacons are. You want to help the family next time? You talk to Sammy and me -- stay away from self-proclaimed prophets."

"But Mr. Sam..."

"Just remember," Sam told him, "that a fool is soon separated from his money -- especially when somebody's thumping a bible while taking that money."

I heard a little pop. I started to turn my head back to where Paul was standing over Rastus, to see what was happening. Sam just disappeared before my eyes.

"Get up, Daddy!" Brenda screeched. "God's not going to let Satan beat you."

Brenda? What the fuck was she doing here?

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion after that. Paul's hand pressed against his head just behind the ear. Rastus Reed pushed himself up into a crouch. He stared at Paul as he began to collapse. Brenda stood right beside Paul and had a gun in her hand. The State Patrolman started toward them, pulling his revolver from its holster and speaking into a radio transmitter as he moved.

Sam stood beside of Paul, one hand going around his shoulder and the other tearing the front of his own shirt open. He pulled Paul to him as he bared it. I thought I saw him tear back his own skin as Paul's face neared his chest.

|Drink now!| he commanded and I heard his mental voice, echoing through my brain as it was Paul's.

"Jesus! That was powerful," Henry mumbled beside me.

I had to agree. Sam' mental voice had bellowed right through my brain. The church crowd didn't seem to have noticed it, but the Taylors sure had.

They were all staring at Sam.

Brenda turned to face me, a smile spreading across her lips. "You thought you'd destroyed him, didn't you, Satan?" she said as the pistol's muzzle began to swing through an arc toward me. "I know that Sammy's gone; but you can't have him, either. I'm going to kill him, so you won't."

The gun's movement was even more slow-motion than what had followed her shooting Paul. Slow motion or not, I couldn't move. I was frozen there and could only watch as she brought the gun around toward me and began to pull the trigger. I kept yelling at myself to get the fuck out of Dodge. Only, my feet wouldn't move.

The cop reached Brenda and grabbed her arm, pushing it and her hand holding the pistol down.

She looked at him in surprise. "You can't stop me now," she told him calmly. "I've got to kill Satan first." Her gaze fell to his hand holding the pistol pointing toward the road. "Let go of me please, officer."

"You're under arrest," the patrolman told her and moved his other hand down to take the pistol from her. I saw another patrolman running toward them.

I looked back to where Sam was holding Paul. They both had gone down to their knees and Sam was cradling Paul's face against his chest. It looked as if my neighbor was sucking Sam's nipple.

I saw the matted hair behind Paul's ear then and the trickle of blood running down his neck.

I gulped.

|Is he all right?| I projected hesitantly.

|He is now, Sammy. He's feeding.|

|Feeding?| I asked and studied them, trying to see more in the dim light.

|She hit him in the mastoid bone, Sammy. She'd killed him, but he wasn't dead yet -- now, he's not going to be.|

|You've made him into a vampire then?|

Sam smiled at me. |You've got Henry -- looks like I'm going to have Paul.|

One state cop was holding Brenda's gun by the barrel as he dropped it into an evidence bag. The second cop had pulled her arms behind her back and handcuffed her.

I smiled at Sam and couldn't believe how nonchalant I was being about this.

I mean, I had accepted that Sam was a vampire. Along with having the longest-playing dick in the world. I'd also accepted that he was my great-grandfather. It wasn't possible for him to be -- well -- evil.

But vampires were supposed to be evil. Look at Bela Lagosi and Christopher Lee. Along with Boris Karloff, they'd been enough to scare the piss out of me when I was a little kid.

And, now, Paul was one. My next door neighbor. A vampire.

He didn't look like one of those movie monsters -- not even like a gargoyle crouching on the edge of the roof of a church. If anything, he looked like a little kid cuddling up against his daddy. Well, a big kid actually. I mean, he was thirty after all -- and built. Still, I couldn't see him any other way than some little boy who'd just had the shit scared out of him at the carnival and his daddy was holding him and making it all okay again.

I'd been gazing at Sam and Paul for a few minutes. The patrolman left Brenda with the other cop and moved over beside the two of them.

"I called in an ambulance," I heard him whisper to Sam.

"He won't need it," Sam told him.

"He's dead?"

Paul sat up and smiled at the patrolman. "Naw, man -- the bullet just grazed my ear," he said.

Sam had said he'd taken the bullet in the mastoid, right behind the ear.

I moved closer and saw the back of Paul's head. It didn't look good with all that blood-matted hair. But it didn't look like he'd been shot in the head, either.

"You're sure you're okay?" the patrolman asked, and he sounded anything but sure. But, then, he'd been pretty close when Brenda pulled the trigger. He'd probably had his eyes on the gun, too.

Sam helped Paul to his feet, and he stood with just Sam's hand on his back to steady him.

He looked like my next door neighbor. He didn't look a thing like Bela Lagosi. He didn't look like a blond god, either.

Sam looked over at Ralph. "You and Henry help him to your car," he told him and waited.

|Come here, Sammy,| he said without looking at me.

I moved to stand beside him.

As Ralph took Paul's hand and began to lead him toward the line of Taylor men standing there, I realized that every Taylor had pointed his rifle or shotgun at the church crowd. Those guns were still pointed at live bodies. No wonder the church crowd wasn't moving.

The silence out at the intersection of Highway 28 and Taylor Mountain Access Road right at that moment on Sunday night was -- well -- pregnant. Hell! I could've cut it with a knife. I could also have heard a pin drop if one of the church ladies began to lose her hat. The church crowd had already watched the renown hatemonger cut down to size and branded as a faggot hiding deep in his closet. They'd dropped down from riding the rapture express to watching an episode of their own As The Stomach Turns.

Sam frowned and took a deep breath before facing the church crowd. "You folks go on home now." He smiled then. "If you learned anything from this revival," he called out to them, his voice carrying, "I hope it was to use the brains the Lord blessed you with. If you hear something that doesn't sound right, use that brain to look it over close. It probably isn't right." He started to turn. "Go home and thank God you haven't done something you can't correct," he told them again.

|That's the cue for us to walk away, Sammy boy.| he told me. |Don't keep pushing after you've got the wagon rolling.|