Issue 16 - August 2008

Kells by Jay Lygon Illustration by Shallow

My first real hunt, about two weeks after my death, changed the way I looked at Kells. With all his athletic skill, he couldn’t manage without fucking it up. Thirsting myself, and impatient, I left him lurking in the parking lot of a grocery store. My path took me to the meaner side of our streets. I walked aimlessly along a deserted boulevard with my hands shoved deep in my pockets. Broken brown glass and discarded cigarette butts were pushed into drifts along the uneven pavement.

I kicked a can across the sidewalk. Occasionally, I’d send the can hurtling against the metal grates covering windows and shop doors. As they rattled, I lifted my arms in victory and shouted, “Goooooooal!”

A piece-of-shit car made a u-turn and paced along behind me. I glanced over my shoulder at the driver. He had a hairy face and lips that were too wet. Security lights sent strange gold halos reflecting off his eyes, like a wolf or something, but I was no lamb. He opened the door. I got in. A couple of blocks later, I was face down in his crotch. His dick was huge. It was my first time going down on a real hard-on. What got me off was the smell of his blood under his skin, so I shoved his flabby thighs apart and pierced him with my teeth. His screams brought Kells running.

Kells always gorged on my kills. He swaggered in the sewer tunnels as we made the undercity our own. He wore velvet and lace. We didn’t need coffins, but he found one to sleep in. Our hidden apartment began to look like the set of a low budget horror flick. Kells could spend hours drifting his hand through the flame of one of the many candles that lit our lair, but couldn’t seem to rouse himself for anything fun. I couldn’t talk him into moonlit soccer games, movies, or even dancing at clubs. Addicted to Anne Rice books, he played the part of a vampire king. But the hunt was mine.

Even as a corpse, even though I hated him, I couldn’t stop aching for the heart sting he brought me. I couldn’t walk away. Maybe I was an idiot, or I was addicted to how he reminded me of life.

Used to be, when I caught a glimpse of Kells in the hallway at school, my heart flew high and slammed down low all at the same time. I’d hold my breath, trying to suspend time and make those moments drag out for eternities. My lips would tingle hot and itchy, my dick harden. He’d pass by. In a whoosh, I’d let the air out and suck it back in, drawing his scent deep into my lungs.

Kells was the guy who swapped dirty jokes with the coach at soccer practice while the rest of us ran drills. I worshipped him for that. Too cool for the room.

After practice, Kells would saunter naked through the locker room, dick bouncing, smooth white ass flexing with each step. Confident fucker. I admired that. I lusted after his big pink nipples; jerked off to fantasies of his muscled thighs.

By the end of the season, the rest of the seniors on the team had crossed that physical line from boys to men, but my Japanese/Caribbean bloodline kept my body and face freshman punk. I had to work my ass off to be on the varsity soccer team. No one talked scholarships. If I’d been taller, my relentless style would have gotten a lot more respect from recruiters.

When I heard Kells ask the coach to substitute me into an important game, I was so flattered that my face got hot. He noticed me. Tingly pride burst through my chest.

“Kobi knows how to take out their forward without getting caught,” I heard him whisper as he trotted near the coach on the sidelines. “We won’t get to State finals if we lose this game. Put Kobi in,” Kells demanded before he loped across the pitch.

When the assistant coach lifted the board with my number for the referee to see, I understood exactly what Kells wanted from me. He wouldn’t risk being thrown out of the game, but I was expendable. I was the assassin. Small, quick, vicious. I only got a yellow card warning. The referee didn’t want to believe I tackled with cleats up on purpose. I looked too innocent.

Every time we traveled for a game, I tried to sit close to him on the bus, but across the aisle so I could look at his profile. I prayed that we’d end up as roommates, we’d end up sharing a double bed, and in the ebbing night, maybe our arms would touch so that the heat of him could melt away my skin. Or maybe our legs would get tangled together. I wanted to feel his soft, even breath on my chest. Not sex. I just wanted to be with him. It never happened. Kells rigged the draw. Every time, he got a bed of his own in a room with his choice of friends.

Kells was cool; he was lazy. He was the golden boy; he thought the rest of us were idiots. He was perfect; I idolized away all his faults.

Our soccer team made State playoffs. The night before the game I couldn’t sleep – leg cramps – so I eased out of the hotel room, past the snoring chaperone, to walk it off. I limped into the hallway, stopping to stretch, gasping at the pangs shooting up my calves. When I reached the end of the hall, the door jerked open and I flinched. I expected someone to shout at me for waking them.

Instead, I saw a creepy, pale lady pulling on a chain attached to a collar on Kells’ neck. He had on leather cuffs and his dick was wrapped in rope.

“Gimme change for the machine,” he demanded over his shoulder. “I need something to drink.”

I froze. I’d seen his body a million times in the locker room, but somehow it was different with the collar. It was beyond hot. The palm of my hand burned to hold the end of his leash. Thinking about how I’d use it to yank him down to his knees, I just about shot my wad, and hadn’t even realized I was hard. I couldn’t stop staring at his dick. The head was bloated where it peeked out of the white rope.

The smell of sex clung to him. There were big, red bruises on his neck. For some reason, I felt betrayed. But damn, I was so fucking turned on. It must have shown on my face. When Kells turned and saw me, he looked in my eyes. Suddenly, he knew my biggest secret.

He laughed that stupid, dopey laugh of his, even dopier because he was wasted. “Oh man.” His giggles shredded me.

Biggest mistake of my life was letting him catch me looking.

The lady yanked him back by the chain. She reached around Kells to shut the door and looked at me with dead eyes.

My life was over. I knew it. Kells would tell the world that I had it bad for him. I slammed my fist into the wall beside the soda machine, and then again, and again, and again until the pain cleared my head. I realized I had to save my punches for the fights that were going to come. Two months until graduation. I had almost made it out of school without anyone guessing.

Imagine my relief the next day when Kells missed the team bus. He didn’t make it to the game either. Kells had us so convinced that we couldn’t survive without him that we were barely in the first half of the game. Somehow we came back to life, though, and won. Amazing.

Later, when the cops asked us who had seen Kells last, I let someone else pretend they had. I never mentioned the woman. Kells turning up would only make my life hell, I decided, and I was right.

A week after that, days before graduation, I ran into him as I walked home. It was late. I took the shortcut through the small business park. I sensed someone was near. It gave me the creeps. When Kells slithered out of a shadow, I was surprised and cautious and relieved and angry, all at the same time.

“Hey! Wan-ta-knob-me,” he taunted.

Shit. The fag jokes were starting already. He was wearing clothes that didn’t look like they fitted him. The jeans and t-shirt were smeared with dried dirt.

“People are looking for you,” I mumbled.

“Fuck ‘em.”

I almost asked, “Where’d you go?” but I didn’t want him to hear that it mattered to me.

By sunrise, everyone in school would know without a doubt that I was queer, so I kept walking. Knowing that he’d betray me, my cock still wanted him; my brain was a little more wary.

“Wanna suck it?”

That stopped me. I didn’t look at him. My eyes stared down at the metallic rainbow from an oil slick floating on top of a shit-brown puddle. The asphalt road chipped away in chunks around my feet. Blocks away, cars rushed across the bridges, fleeing the city because the sun was down.

“Come on, fag, you know you want it.” He moved faster than I expected and suddenly he was wagging his bound dick at me. He touched my shoulder. “But first, I want something. I need your blood, man.” His giggle was hysterical.

He didn’t want something from me; he wanted everything. Bastard. Evil piece of shit! As weird as it seems, even though I realized right away what he’d become, I wasn’t scared of him. I should have been scared of me. Even though he had strength and speed as a vampire, Kells was too fucking lazy to make his own kills. He came for someone he knew would die for a chance at him. For his cock, I gave him my life. Because I wanted it that bad.

I was numb with desire and hate for my weakness, but I kneeled in front of him. Even though I hated to unwrap him, I removed the binding on his cock. He looked at the falling rope, surprised, as if he hadn’t known it was there.

Kells smelled funky, like stale sex and earth. Underneath the wrapping, he wasn’t hard.

I had never given a blowjob before I gulped Kells into my mouth. Flat and flabby, his dick only moved when my tongue pushed it aside. There was a moment where I wondered if he was worth it. It wasn’t the fantasy I jerked off to. In my dreams, we were both hard. In my sweat drenched bed, I dreamed he had a hard-on for me. It was easy to push aside those doubts though as the blond curls of his pubes mashed against my nose and I smelled that boy funk on him that nearly made me shoot in my jeans.

After half an hour of fruitless licking and stroking, he smacked me, sending me flying. “That’s ‘cause I don’t like fags. You can’t even suck cock. What kind of faggot can’t give head?”

I hit the ground, breaking my nose. When I rose, wiping away the gush of blood with the back of my hand, I saw him staring at me the way he did in my wet dreams.

“I’m thirsty, Kobi,” Kells whined. Suddenly his old confident self, he flashed his white teeth at me. I was a goner. “Now it’s my turn. Come here.”

He had a death scent, stinking breath, a taint. The clothes he wore smelled of dark earth and decay. I closed my eyes and let him drain my veins. My feet went cold first, then my hands. I was freezing and his hands were colder, like the grave. I shivered. Lights flashed in the darkness behind my eyelids. My hands were prickly-numb but I tried to wrap one around his neck in an embrace.

Kells made growling sounds as he chewed the tendons of my neck and, God help me, it got me stone hard. My brain went foggy, and then light, and then it hurt, and the lights flashed faster behind my eyes and I wanted to groan but couldn’t. My body trembled. Inside my mouth, my tongue felt too big and the little blood I had left felt frothy. I opened my eyes. Kell’s head was so close, bent over me. “I love you,” I never got to say, and later was glad I didn’t, but my heart pounded loud in my hollow chest until emotion swelled to fill it, fill me.

I tried to stroke his sun-kissed skin but couldn’t lift my arm. Man he was hot, so damn perfect in every way, and I was close enough to kiss him. Close. My lips brushed his hair. Oh fuck, his eyelashes teased my throat. Even with my eyes open, lights flickered and flashed behind them. My brain was drowning in death. I saw black and oblivion. Oh god, Kells. I dreamed of him bound. My balls squeezed and warm jizz bathed my cock.

When I woke, I was in a drawer in the morgue. Kells didn’t come for me. I guessed he thought I was dead, but somehow I survived his feeding.

Took me about three days to find him. He didn’t look surprised or upset or even happy to see me. That was, until we got the thirst and went up to street level to find prey.

One night, he actually got up off his lazy ass and followed me up into the city. He wanted to grab a car and cruise.

“I want something cool, Kobi. No shitty Hondas.” He shoved at my back, forcing me out of our shadow. “Get me a Mercedes and I’ll let you suck my cock.”

That was always the bribe. He wouldn’t let me share the coffin with him and he barely spoke to me except to issue orders, but when he wanted something, he whipped out his dick.

“Let’s go dancing. I know a club I can get into.” I couldn’t get enough of the heat and the pounding of human hearts. Sweat-slicked boys grinding to techno drove me nearly mad with bloodlust, but it was so beautiful, that kind of pain. I rarely fed on the dancers though. I only wanted to be with them, feel their bodies writhing near mine, listen to the surge of blood, smell their arousal, taste their skin. Killing those boys would be like murdering fireflies.

“I told you, I don’t like those fag bars.”

I punctured my tongue with my fangs. One day soon, it would be bitter words instead of bitter blood in my mouth. “I know a place that’s straight. DJ sucks though. You want a girl?”

Kells spat. To my knowledge, he’d never been able to get it up after his death. He always blamed me, of course, but I would have been able to smell his come on the girls he lured into cars I stole for him. They weren’t able to get him off either.

Kells shoved me again. Mist glinted in the security lights like static in the air. Water trickled down my neck, soaking the tight shorts and shirt I lifted from a hustler in an alleyway. The clothes I died in went out of fashion a couple years back and I had to have the right look to bait my traps.

I had eternal youth, the kind that called like a siren’s song to the lowlifes. They seemed to assume that because I was part Asian, I was a passive bottom. Working a couple of blocks from the hustlers, I hoped to lure the really scummy guys who wanted a boy no one would miss. Nothing was better than whisky breath covering my face or an ashtray tongue licking the inside of my mouth. I loved cars scented by day-old burgers and floorboards that were carpeted in fast food trash. I jonesed for whip-skinny white weasels, those mean motherfuckers with greasy hair and fuzzy tattoos who pursed their pale, thin lips while they decided that I was as young as I looked. I needed the hurt they dished out, because it made it easier to believe they were the monsters.

Pickings on my streets were sparse after the cops pushed the flesh trade over the city’s border. I shadowed the hustlers at their new beat, but I wasn’t comfortable off my turf.

The first night in the new territory, I was dazed by a leather shop near my new corner. Ignoring the men who cruised me, I stood illuminated in neon pink and stared at the cuffs, collars, whips, and floggers through the window.

I got a hard-on that made me dizzy. My lips burned. The displays looked so harsh. I wanted to taste the metal cuffs and sniff the leather.

The big dude who managed the store opened the door and asked me to trick in front of someone else’s place until they closed for the night, but he said it in a nice, gruff kind of way, so I moved on. Every night, after the shop closed, I went back to press my nose against the glass. After that, my dreams about Kells had him on his knees before me. He’d look so good in a spiked collar.

“The BMW will do.” Kells nodded at a white car slowly prowling the rain-slicked street.

The driver of the BMW obviously hadn’t gotten the word that the vice cops had swept the sex trade out of our neighborhood. That hadn’t stopped it though. We just moved three miles further down the road. No competition from the breathers made it easier for me. If he wanted his cock sucked, I was his only choice.

I was about to step out into the light when my hair went stiff on the nape of my neck. Crouching suddenly, I fought the low rumbling at the back of my throat. The keen predatory sense of smell I had developed caught something out of place. My head whipped around as my gaze searched along the metal garage doors of the small machine shops in the business park.

“Only a 300, man. Cheap-ass bastard. At least it’s a convertible.” Kells sneered at the make of the car as he whisked water droplets off his velvet cloak.

Kells wanted to be fucking Count Dracula. Lace cuffs – god knew where he found his outfits—and he called me the faggot?

“Something is here,” I warned Kells in a barely audible voice, not even daring to move my lips. “Something.” I smelled musk and earth and death.

The BMW slowed down to look at me. The police were still doing sweeps, cleaning up the belly side of the beast. Both of us cautious of entrapment, both of us suspicious, the BMW driver and I locked gazes.

Kells pushed me out of our shadow. I gave the driver a look that either made him shit or come. Either way, he was done for the night. He sped past us.

“Ah fuck it!” Kells screamed at the brake lights.

I scanned the roofs. *Something*. I took a step towards the alleyway. I felt keen and on edge like I hadn’t in a long time, but Kells clamped his hand on my arm.

Being at the top of the food chain, there wasn’t much danger for us to face. I pushed the limits of our existence just to keep from going insane from the monotony. Exposing my hands and feet to pinprick sunbeams was the only time I felt the edge of thrill. Then, and when I hunted for me alone, not for Kells. When I was free of him I could slither and stalk and forget I was ever human.

“I want that car, Kobi.”

I yanked away from Kells’ pale hand. “Get it yourself.”

Kells glared at me.

Lately, I hadn’t been putting up with his shit. Lately, I made trouble over sharing my kills. Lately, I figured I had outgrown him, his Lestat pretensions and those velvet costumes.

The driver actually stopped at the sign at the end of the block. What a good citizen. So law abiding. His red brake lights left red smears on the wet asphalt.

“Kobi,” Kells whined, dragging my name out into three syllables. “I’m thirsty.”

In that moment, I knew I was over Kells. I couldn’t remember the last time I ached for his friendship, his approval, his body, his limp cock. He had me numb with familiarity.

My eyes scanned the dark around us. Nothing moved. “I have business to take care of.”

“Faggot.” He ran down the street, black cape flapping behind him. Figuring all eyes were on the idiot in dress-up, I sank back into shadow and skittered noiselessly through the office park. I wanted to know what the *something* was.

The hunt was on. Me versus the mystery. I climbed to the roofs and outran drops of rain, exhilarated at the rush. My sensitive ears listened for clues, but all I heard was Kells’ clumsy technique: brakes applied hard, safety glass punched, a man screaming.

Raising my nose to the air, I sought the elusive scent. Past the print shop, I caught a whiff. Sliding down the red bricks, my fingers curled hard into mortar, I went back to the street level. Caught another noseful, stronger. Cautiously moved towards it, stopped, stepped back, squatted down, and waited. My gaze slid right to left, fearing a trap. Crawling forward, I listened.

Water gurgled through a downspout. Dripping water hit hollow metal that vibrated on a frequency above normal human hearing. Other than the thirst, I hadn’t wanted something in a long time, and there I was, filled with a hunger to know. I drew the strange scent into my nose and crept forward another foot.

Avoiding the open, I slunk against the brick walls. Although everything was wet from the mist, there was also a large oval stain from a different liquid on the metal door of a wheelchair repair shop. The scent was thick there, almost a fog of male presence.

*He marked my territory.* Black fury settled on my brain. Even Kells wouldn’t dare spray musk in my hunting grounds. Not that Kells would understand what that was about. He thought we were elegant; I knew we were primal.

I pressed against the door, pulling my upper lip back and wrinkling my nose so that I could pull the stranger’s flavor over my tongue. It wasn’t enough. I had to know who violated my turf. My hands clenched into tight fists. Extending my tongue, I licked the door, tasting him.

He coated my mouth, made me wild. I wanted to rip out his fucking throat! I wanted to taste him fresh. I dragged my lips from the top of the stain down a long, solitary path, and kissed the pregnant drop that still hung at the end of the line. His piss burned the tip of my tongue.

I whipped out my dick and covered his musk with mine, spraying higher and wider. My stink filled the alley but didn’t entirely wipe his scent away. The challenge grated raw on my temper.

Kells no longer mattered. Yet, out of habit, I went to see how he got along. I swore I’d never hunt for him again. I had bigger concerns than a lover who never was.

The motor of the BMW was still running. Toxic clouds of exhaust puffed from the end of the tailpipe. That meant it was cold out. It didn’t affect me anymore, so I rarely paid attention to the weather.

The passenger door of the white car hung like a broken wing and the ragtop was ripped open. The body in the gutter was a mangled mess. Leave it to Kells to fuck up a simple snatch and suck.

Reaching into the car, I flicked the key, killing the engine. The trunk was tiny since the car was a convertible. Vowing it was my last time to clean up after Kells, I had to force the man’s head to his knees until something finally cracked and the body could be shoved into the trunk.

“I have him.” A male voice caressed my ear. I whipped around. “Your blond bitch.”

I laughed at the implied threat. “Keep him.”

My ears waited for the ping to return so I could echolocate the source of the voice. There was soft matter fifty yards away.

“I don’t want him either.”

I heard Kells grunt as he was thrown against a dumpster. Before Kells dragged his sorry ass off the ground, we were in motion, the other killer and I. My route hugged cluttered, dark spaces. Every light I saw, I broke. From the sounds I heard, he did the same.

He was good but so was I. We drew near and pulled back, our game of tag expanding out of the business park and flirting with the borders of the streets I called mine. At first I was pissed off at him, but then I realized I was having fun, the first time since death. Smiling, I thrilled at the competition.

Passing stores protected behind iron gates, I stole towards the bridge. At an intersection, I caught a glimpse of my prey. He faced the wrong way. He wasn’t that tall, but his legs were so lanky that he gave the impression of height. Probably pure Japanese, his hair was bleached and spiked. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. He spun, but too late.

The sound of his chuckle ran down my chest and to my groin. That caught me by surprise. I hadn’t felt horny in a long time. Suddenly my night was alive. I wrung mist out of my hair. Probing above my gums with my tongue, I searched for remnants of his flavor in my mouth.

He darted up a cinderblock wall; I ran at top speed for the freeway. Between impounded cars in a lock-up, I caught him again, that time brushing against his shoulder before moving past.

“Does that make me It?” His voice carried on private vampire frequencies.

“It makes you slow,” I taunted. On my next pass I swept his feet out from under him. Feeling his body collapse against mine, I got turned on. Muscle on muscle. Bodies pressed close. I ground against his thigh. He didn’t fight it.

“Follow me,” I ordered. Without checking to see if he did, I headed for the bridge.

Closer to the support trestles for the bridges, I heard traffic speed up freeway on-ramps, the meters gone green. Tires hissed over the damp pavement. Above the bridge, on each tower, a red light shone. At that height, the mist tightened into fog.

Scrambling over razor wire, I climbed the open ironwork. Upward, higher, until the concrete bed of the road was above my head. Birds, startled by my arrival, took flight into the dark. The noise of traffic was terrible to my sensitive ears, but I loved the view. I went there a lot, but I never showed it to Kells.

In the dark, the details of the city faded. All that was left was the lights, the smell of the distant ocean, and the stink of cars.

He grinned at me before gracefully draping over a girder. Every part of his body was lean and long. A small scratch of beard showed at the tip of his pointed chin.

“Kobi,” I offered my name.

“I know.” He grinned again. Sleek, hard muscled, he was something beautiful. “Lee.”

The past couple years my chats were limited to tricks and Kells. I lost the knack for conversation. “How long you been dead?” I finally asked.

He shrugged. “I lost track. Maybe seven years. You?”

“Lost count.” I didn’t admit he’d been dead longer than I had.

I gnawed at the rough skin around my thumbnail as we sat there. I needed something to do with my hands.

He slid his hand under his shirt and pinched his nipple in a slow roll. Even in the dark, I could see his muscled stomach and wanted to touch it.

“Watched you hunt over on Osage,” Lee told me. “Saw you working it.”

Suddenly, I was wary. I never knew I was watched. It seemed I should have sensed it. It never occurred to me that I was hunting in someone’s territory. I braced for trouble.

“Saw you in a club, dancing. I was going to try to pick you up, but I got close and realized you were like me. I followed you. Watched. You’re incredible. That blond bitch of yours is a disgrace though. Sloppy. No stealth.”

“Straight,” I blurted, a roundabout way of asking the question I wanted to. I stayed tense.

Lee’s head tilted back when he laughed, showing his throat.

The urge to lunge at him almost swept me away. I curled my fingers under the steel girder to hold back.

“Then why do you bother?” He gave me a sideways glance.

I shrugged. “Habit.” That was the best explanation I had.

“Cool sun tats,” Lee nodded at the burn marks on my hands. “Never seen anyone who could stand to do that twice, much less make designs.”

I glanced at my hands even though I already knew what was there. The sun tats started more like prison tattoos, small and crude, simple shit like teardrops. After a while, I got into designs like the henna stuff women from India put on their hands. I had to work the older, smaller scars into the bigger designs, but it worked. My feet designs weren’t done yet.

Lee raised his chin again and showed me his neck. I lanced my palms with my fingernails to make myself hold still. Inside, I was ready to knock him down and sink my teeth deep. I didn’t understand that rush of lust. Necks never turned me on before.

When I didn’t react outwardly, his eyebrows pushed down. My silences seemed to make him nervous. All the earlier bravado was gone. Lee lowered his gaze but sneaked glances at me and seemed to wait for me to do something.

Slow, I was so slow to catch on, but I didn’t know any other vampires besides Kells, and Kells didn’t go out of his way to turn me on. When Lee bared his neck to me the third time, I quickly pressed the flats of my teeth to his skin. It felt good, hot. My stomach muscles clenched in that good kind of way.

Lee’s eyes went dreamy. “You’re the greatest hunter I’ve ever seen.” His voice vibrated against my teeth. “How you play with them. You let those guys think they have you, and then suddenly, you have them, and they never even see it coming. You should see the look on their faces when you feed. Ah, so cool, like they’re having the best, longest orgasm of their life. No fear, just ecstasy. And then they start screaming; only they can’t make a sound because you’ve destroyed their throat. Totally lethal.”

It wasn’t like that. I let them have me. I liked locking my heels behind their necks as they banged into my hole. The warmth of their come in my ass was as close as I got to life.

“It’s so cool that you’re ridding the world of the creeps.”

Oh yeah, I was some kind of hero. There was no crusade; I hunted what came to me.

Lee leaned into my teeth. “Go ahead,” he whispered. “I’ll taste better than that lazy bitch.”

I never bit Kells. I never thought of it, but I never thought of him as my bitch either. I pulled back, not sure how I should do it.

Lee was hurt that I refused him. Not wanting to see that look on his face, I took his hand and brought the palm to my lips. His eyes widened. Suddenly, I knew how Kells saw me that night in the hotel. That terrible hurt, that aching hunger, the exposure. I never expected to see someone look at me like that, especially not someone as hot as Lee.

“I’ve seen lots of hunters. You’re the best. I know you’re tight with that other guy, but I’d serve you so much better,” Lee promised.

I could smell Lee’s hard-on, that whiff of man and lust.

Lee’s finger spliced open easily under my sharp teeth. His mouth opened as I worked my lips across it and drew it into my mouth.

His blood oozed over my tongue thick as come. His flavor blew me away. There was no drug like it, even when I was human. It felt like that moment when my balls tightened and every muscle in my body coiled behind my hard-on. I sucked deeper, pushing my tongue into the slit of skin. He shuddered and so did I, like my jizz was ready to explode out my dick.

“Um,” he hummed. “Ummm.” His free hand grasped his cock out of his pants. It curved up towards his belly, slender from base to head, but long. Thick veins bulged under his taunt, gold skin. Like me, he wasn’t very hairy.

“Stroke it,” I whispered.

Seeing his hand work his shaft was killer. He rubbed the palm over his head and then ran a feathery grip up and down so fast it was almost a blur even to my eyes. I spat on it for him, and his hand jerked quick near the head with a firmer grip.

My hand milked blood up his arm so that I could take more. The little taste was barely enough. Stars danced behind my eyes. The hot, thick blood coated my mouth. Oh fuck, that was great.

Lee groaned. His hand fell away from his cock.

I shoved back his head and forced my fangs into his throat. A spasm chased through his body. He came in warm gushes over my hand as I pumped his dick for him.

“Yes,” his sibilant sigh hissed like the wheels over our heads.

It built and built. The lights flickering on the edge of my vision, the warmth under my skin. My thirst was never so sated, and yet couldn’t be quenched. Lee’s hand touched my arm. I drew deep from his well. He tasted like dark kisses and sweat and feverish sex. Voices murmured in my ears, the sounds of men fucking. Every nerve tingled, and for that brief moment, I was alive again. A bubble of feeling welled inside me. My muscles clenched and then--. There were no words for the mouth orgasm that charged through my body.

Warmth spilled inside my pants.

I pulled out of Lee’s throat. His eyelashes fluttered as he moaned.

“Did I take too much?” I asked, suddenly afraid for him because he seemed fragile, like a human. I’d seen my kills like that in the moment before their life ended.

“It was worth it.” He smiled lazily at me. “You don’t have to worry. I knew you’d be ruthless. I wanted it.”

I didn’t mean to be ruthless. Kells wasn’t my bitch. Lee had me wrong. I shoved my wrist to his mouth. “Drink.”

“No. The bitch never takes from his master.”

My dick twitched. My dreams, my fantasies, all that black leather, sweat, and pain—but up until Lee told me, I didn’t have a name for what turned me on. In a rush, I knew who I was.

Lee was so light and frail in my arms. I touched his face, not afraid to be tender with him because he knew what I was and wanted me anyway. “Will you real-death if we don’t get you more blood?”

“I don’t know.”

He looked at me with such trust. Screwed. I finally found a guy that would be cool to hang with, and I fucking drained him.

“Was I better than your pretty blond?” Lee asked.

Kells? I wouldn’t know. “Yes. So much better,” I lied. I rubbed my face along Lee’s, leaving scent trails on his skin. Dragging my tongue across his throat, I bathed his wound.

Lee smiled and snuggled against my chest. I was younger, I was smaller, I was nothing, and he worshipped me. He was worth a thousand Kells, or at least worth trading for the one I was stuck with.

Fuck if that didn’t seem like a really hot idea.

“You’re so much better,” I promised Lee as I slid my hand under his shirt to pinch his nipple. “You have the hottest blood.”

I drew a fingernail against the thin skin at my wrist.

“No.” Lee tried to turn away.

“Drink. Obey me.”

Amazingly, he put his mouth to my wrist. Sucking, he made little sounds of contentment at the back of his throat. When I felt dizzy, I pulled away.

“Thank you, Master.” The adoration in his eyes went straight to my dick.

My fingers traced the healing wound on his neck. I’d seen a collar that would look so perfect on him. I could picture us in the clubs, torsos bare as we danced, the end of his leash in my hand. I was already hard again.

Grasping Lee’s jaw, I gave him my harshest look. “Don’t ever fucking mark in my territory again or I’ll bring you real-death.”

“I’m sorry. I just wanted to get your attention. I promise…”

My lips pressed to Lee’s to stop his babbled apologies. I licked my blood from his teeth. We shared it back and forth until the coppery flavor filled both our mouths.

“Let’s go find Kells,” I suggested between kisses. It was hard to talk. I loved Lee’s tongue deep in my throat.

I had a waking dream. Kells, subdued. Kells, bound tight in black leather and chains. Nude. Kells, squealing in horror as I fed from him. I planned to suck it all right out the head of his dick. Oh yeah. My heart flew high, but didn’t slam down low. I licked my lips. Kells.

Being part Romanian, Jay Lygon swore once upon a time never to have anything to do with vampire tales. Fate, or a lack of willpower, changed that. Jay has published over 40 short stories in anthologies such as Inside Him, Gods and Myths, Taste Test:Blue Collar, Toy Box: Floggers, and Torqued Tales. Jay’s m/m BDSM novels, Chaos Magic and Love Runes (Torquere Press) are available as e-books and in print. Free stories can be found on the internet at Clean Sheets and on Jay’s website, www.JayLygonWrites.com. 

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