Tainted

Channeling Morpheus: Tainted Jordan Castillo Price All rights reserved.

Copyright ©2008 Jordan Castillo Price

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ISBN: 978-1-60521-075-9

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Editor: Margaret Riley

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Channeling Morpheus: Tainted Jordan Castillo Price Vampires agree that vampirism must be spread through sex, because if a bite on the neck could turn someone, the world would be overrun with legions of bloodsuckers by now. So Wild Bill’s been careful. The last thing he’d want is to turn anyone. Especially his boy toy. Despite Wild Bill’s caution, Michael’s looking pale and thin… more so than usual. He wears it well, just like the leather jacket, the black-dyed hair and the eyeliner. But for someone as starved as he is, food should hold more of an appeal. And is that a preternatural grace Bill detects in Michael’s movements?

Chapter One Heartless, soulless, generic and commercial. You gotta love these “big box” stores. I’d never set foot in one until I had a someone other than yours truly to look after. Never needed to. As long as I had enough smokes to keep me busy and a warm­ blooded meal ticket nearby, I was happy enough with the clothes on my back. The homicidal eye-candy I’d hooked up with had more needs than I did. Like food. Pens and notebooks. Somewhere to eat and sleep. And do the nasty. So I bought us a van. That’s how it all starts, I guess. You let something stick, and the next thing you know, you start accessorizing it. I pulled a card of earrings off a revolving rack full of shiny, shiny trinkets. Not bad. “I’m taking this,” I told the clerk behind the counter, who smiled and gave me a finger wave. I tucked the earrings into my pocket. Handbags. Slippers. Pantyhose. Sunglasses. I pulled a pair of cheap plastic shades off the display and tried them on. Thankfully the notion about vamps not casting reflections is just a weird idea someone dreamt up after chugging too much absinthe. How else would I be able to pick out a decent pair of shades if I couldn’t make sure they looked good on me? But of course they did. I snapped the price tag off and put them on. Better. The hyper-bright fluorescent lighting had really been doing a number on my impressionable retinas. Hats. Wallets. Scarves. I stopped and stared. Some of ’em were grandma-scarves, sure. But some of ’em were slinky and long. I took a black one, pulled off the tag, looped it around my neck. Nice.

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I sniffed the air. Lots of humans teeming through the store, even at quarter to ten. Despite the smorgasbord of scents, I zeroed in easily enough on the one I wanted. Michael. He stood at a glass countertop shaped just like the jewelry island, except this one was full of cameras and phones, and other little gadgets I’d never heard of, and had no desire to know what they did. I unwound the scarf from my neck and wrapped it around his. Not only would he feel less self-conscious about the series of thin, neat cuts I’d left on him with my trusty flip-around knife, but he’d give Marc Bolan a run for his money in the jerk-off fantasy department. I’d refrain from telling him that, since given his age, I couldn’t hope for anything more than a blank stare in return. He leaned into me, pressed his side against my side. “Look.” He pointed at a plastic rectangle. “Yeah?” “It’s a computer.” “It is?” It was the size of the cigar box I kept my paintbrushes in, back in the Dark Ages. “If I had one of those, I wouldn’t need to spend so much time at the library. We could park outside a coffee shop and I could hop online.” I was probably giving him the same look he would’ve given me if I’d told him he’d pass for a member of T-Rex. “So get it.” He went real quiet. “It’s almost thee hundred dollars. Plus tax.” I squatted and pressed my nose against the glass. I didn’t understand money at all. Smokes had gone from a buck twenty-five a pack to six, while computers had dropped from five grand to a lousy three hundred -- plus tax. Good thing I never had to pay for anything. I’d get taken for a ride, for sure. There was a kid in a blue polyester vest behind the counter who’d been doing his best to look close and available, but also courteous and unobtrusive. He wasn’t too successful. Mostly he looked awkward. “Gimme one of those,” I told him. “The pink

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one.” Because if a computer company was ridiculous enough to make a paperbacksized laptop in pink, how could I not get that one? “Ring it up however you need to. We’re taking it.” He pressed some keys, scanned the box, and gave it to me. I handed it to Michael. I could tell he wanted to whisper some token protests at me, but he also wanted his new toy badly enough that he knew better than to complain about it. When he finally did find his voice, he said, “We should probably get a car charger.” Ah, the joys of capitalism. We grabbed a charger and a case, then hit the makeup counter and the pharmacy -- and no, we didn’t just get condoms. Well, I did. But Michael wanted shampoo and a new toothbrush and all that other day-to-day junk that people who have houses fill up their rooms with. I added some hair gunk to his basket. When in Rome… Last but not least, we swung by men’s wear. “Get some jeans,” I told him. “I think you went down a size. Not that I mind being able to pull ’em off without undoing them.” A yuppie couple pushing a cart full of disposable diapers glared at us. I winked at them, but then I realized I was wearing sunglasses and they couldn’t see it. Michael blushed -- I could smell his capillaries engorging -- but he knew better than to tell me to keep it down. Smart kid. If those vanilla beans thought it was shocking that I pulled down his pants, I could really curl their toes by telling them about how we fucked. Because we’d been doing that nearly every waking moment for the last couple of weeks. “Stop staring at them,” Michael whispered. He tugged at my jacket and I dropped eye contact with Yuppie Dad. The guy was stubborn. I imagine he would’ve made a good vamp hunter, if he hadn’t gone for the Subaru and the 2.5 kids and the split-level ranch in the suburbs. Once Michael was sure I wasn’t gonna cause a scene, he drifted over to the stacks of jeans. He hiked up his shirt and pinched off the waist of the pair he had on. He could

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fold out a good three inches. I hadn’t realized he’d gotten that thin -- surprising, given how many of my brain cells were dedicated to every naked inch of him. I picked up my shades and squinted at him. A few cuts peeked out over the top of the black scarf, and a couple of accidental fang-marks, too. His skin was translucent. My teeth ached to fit themselves over the small, round bruises. Michael held up two pairs of jeans and scowled. He didn’t have to be so picky. If he grabbed a few likely pairs, one of ’em was bound to fit. But then I’d have to wait until we got out of the store to have him. “You’d better try those on,” I said. I hustled him over to a fitting room. “We’re closing in about ten minutes,” said the girl in the blue polyester vest behind the check-in. Her eyes were puffy. She was clearly up way past her bedtime. I pulled my shades down and looked at her over the top. “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll see ourselves out.” She resisted me, but just for a second. She was young, and she was tired. And she really didn’t care what we did one way or the other, as long as she didn’t get blamed for it. “I can do this mys --” I shoved Michael into a stall and stepped in behind him, and closed and locked the door. Mirrors, all around us. I watched Michael double-check my reflection. He had to have a vamp-bullshit list as long as his arm by now, a tally he’d pieced together by watching me. Maybe he’d type it up on his little pink computer. I backed him into a mirror. “This is gonna be good.” He made one of his precious sounds when I took him by the jaw and kissed him hard. They undo me, those sounds of his, tiny things while his heart flutters like a sparrow’s, and I could squeeze him until things shattered inside. I didn’t do that, of course. But I could. Break him up and suck out the marrow. He tore his mouth from mine. “No one can see. Right?”

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I glanced at the wall-mounted mirror. One-way glass. Behind it, a security guard. I wondered if I could vamp him through the glass. Why not? I stared hard where his eyes would be, even though I could only see his outline. Watch if you want, I don’t give a fuck. But leave us be. Time would tell if he got the message or not. Or maybe people boinked each other in the fitting rooms all the time, and it was like a bunch of free porn to him. Heck, maybe he’d get into the spirit of things. Whack off while we screwed. I liked the idea of that. I pressed my face into Michael’s long hair. My lower lip found his ear. I traced his earlobe with my tongue. “Are you hard for me?” He nodded. I jammed my hand down the front of his jeans. They were way too loose, but they gave me plenty of room to angle my strokes just the way he liked ’em. “Aw, hell yeah.” I jacked him through his boxers and his breathing went cockeyed. Michael draped his arms around my neck and arched against me. He buried his face in the crook of my neck and I lost myself in his breathing, the stuttering stop-start that promised I could have him shooting a load in two minutes flat, if I wanted. Or I could make him ride the knife edge all night ’til he was pleading with me to let him come. I let go of his hard-on and grabbed a fistful of his jeans. “Don’t…” Too late. The belt loop, pocket, and the side seam that connected them tore away, and the front fell open. I dropped the handful of denim and rivets. “They didn’t fit anyway.” I sank to my knees and pulled down his underwear and what was left of his jeans. His cock pointed right at my mouth. Hard and red. Flushed with capillaries. And webbed with fat blue veins. Arteries too, deep under the surface. The whole works throbbed in time with the beat of his dark little heart. “Uhn.” He strained to keep quiet, but he couldn’t quite manage. I gave his helmet a spit-polish, tasted salt. I glanced in the mirror, wondered if it was tacky to

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wear shades while I blew him. Tacky or not, we looked damn good together, him and me. He grabbed me by the hair and urged me on, and I gave him a long, deep suck. Pulled off. Said, “Don’t let the mirrors go to waste. Open your eyes and watch.” I grabbed him by the pelvis and tilted his hips. Once he had a prime view of what I was doing, I reached between his legs, knuckled his balls forward, and treated them to a nice tongue bath. And probably the angle gave the security guard a sweet show, too. Whatever. “My God. I see your fangs.” Kink, or cold shower? His pulse and breathing ratcheted up, maybe excitement, maybe fear. Words crackled out of a small speaker set into the drop-ceiling. “kzzzt… closing in three minutes… to the register… pfft…” “I guess we’d better get this show on the road.” I rifled through the blue plastic shopping basket and found a box of condoms, a bottle of lube. “Here?” “You gotta see yourself peak while I’m buried in your ass. At least once.” He untangled the shreds of his jeans while I wrapped my meat and greased it up good. I backed him into the corner and kissed him. His lips parted. Our tongues slid together. Kissing was tricky with him. It wasn’t bad enough that he led me around by the cock with his bedroom eyes and tight little ass. When we kissed… He slid his tongue over one of my fangs. I tasted blood. I forced myself not to suck it. I didn’t want to drink here, in front of the security guard. Fuck? Sure. But slice my boytoy open and feed off him? Come on, I’m not a circus sideshow freak. If I couldn’t drink Michael, not then and there, I figured I’d better fuck him. I reached down and hooked a hand behind his knee, grabbed his leg and parked his foot on the changing bench beside us. I ran my hand up the back of his thigh, his ass. Perfect position.

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He rested his forehead on my shoulder while I lined up my cock. “Watch,” I told him. I could see the back of Michael’s head, the ghostly shape of the security guard beyond, but if I looked at the angle where the mirrors met, I could see my bare ass flexing over the jeans around my thighs as I prodded Michael’s hole. I pushed in. Heaven. Michael ran his palms over my ass. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m always right.” Which is a bald-faced lie, but I couldn’t resist saying it. “Love your ass.” I pushed in, set an easy rhythm. I almost thought he was gonna say something else. Love…you. He refrained. This time. It’s dangling there over me by one thin hair like the Sword of Damocles, and it’s only a matter of time before he’s tipsy, or he’s overtired, or he peaks too hard, and he comes right out and says it. I don’t know what I’ll say back. Words are useless that way. I don’t think there’s a word for everything he makes me feel. So far I haven’t figured out a way to combine love with scared, and fucked-up, and invincible. We locked eyes in the mirror. He clung to me, one hand threaded through my hair, the other clutching the shoulder of my leather jacket. He was right. My ass did look pretty damn fine working my cock in and out of him. It’s the ass of a twenty-threeyear-old. Even now, decades later. “Touch me.” His voice was breathy in my ear. I wedged a hand between us and pumped his cock. The leg he stood on trembled, and the mirrors flexed slightly under my palm with each thrust. He pulled my ass cheeks apart. I watched in the reflection of our reflection as his fingers dipped into my crack, petted my hole. The double reflection messed with my head, since it seemed like it should be a mirror image, but it wasn’t. Whoever was getting his hole diddled, that stranger with the young, pale ass, was facing the same way around as me. I flexed my knees and the muscles in the doppelganger ass bunched and released. “Drink me,” said Michael.

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I shifted my focus to the guard behind the mirror. Not jacking off. Just watching us. “Chill out, Jabberwocky.” “Bill… Please.” “Later.” I whacked him off faster, adjusted my angle and tried to hit the high notes inside him and stop his begging. Michael’s leather jacket squeaked against the mirror. His breath huffed out in a gaspy moan with every thrust, and judging by the way he tensed up all over, he was starting the climb. Without me. Damn. A tiny cut, a few sucks, and I’d be right there with him. And he’d love it. I let go of his cock, grabbed his hair two-handed, and crushed our mouths together. He knew what to do. He sliced his tongue deep on my right canine, and sweet, sweet blood filled our mouths. I didn’t mean to take much. I never mean to. Michael pulled me against him and fucked himself on my cock, and I felt the hot wet spatter on my stomach, smelled the scent of his spunk, his blood… The floodgates burst open. Fireworks exploded. The earth moved. Our mouths slid apart. Michael was shaking. I held him up, wedged between my cock and the mirrors, but I was lightheaded and loopy, too. I blinked and made sure the security guard was still there, because if ever there was a chance for a human to sneak up on a vamp and nail him with a pointy twig, it’d be right after the bloodsucker shot his load. It took me a second, but I pinpointed the guard. Good, he was still back there in the magical dark land beyond the looking-glass. But I was beginning to doubt I’d vamped him. He stood and approached the mirror. I shifted my gaze from his outline to my own reflection. My shades were slightly crooked. A carmine smear streaked my face, lip to cheek. I pulled out and turned away, and tried to chafe off the red. I glanced up at another mirror. Couldn’t help it. They surrounded me. At my back, Michael slid down the glass and landed on the changing

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bench. His mouth was bloody, too -- but it hadn’t smeared halfway across his face like it had on mine. With his dyed black hair and thick eyeliner, it looked more like a fashion statement. “Get some pants on,” I said. “I want to hit the road. And I’m dying for a smoke.”

Chapter Two You can’t beat the Midwest for truck stops. I would’ve thought I’d miss city living, but who needs it? As long as we stuck to the interstate, we had it made. Michael put the van in park, in that self-conscious way of someone who doesn’t know the dashboard very well yet, and looked up at the diner. “Wireless. Yes.” Even Mikey thought so. The doors slid open and a thin haze of smoke greeted us. Too rural to even have a smoking ban in effect, even better. Michael slid into a chipped plastic booth. I nudged him over with my hip and sat next to him. He glanced at the opposite side, which was conspicuously empty. But he didn’t tell me to go and sit there. I stretched my arm over the back of the bench and toyed with Michael’s hair. He hunched. He wasn’t used to letting his rainbow freak-flag fly. If I were still human, I might’ve toned down a little bit, too. But I wasn’t human, so why should I? A thin guy in a grease-covered apron and a baseball cap that was older than Michael came out from the kitchen and looked at us. His eyes narrowed for a second… and I think that what with the MTV and all, he wouldn’t have given us a second glance, even with me in my safety pins and Michael in his eyeliner, if I didn’t insist on sitting right up against my trophy boy. And leering. Chill, I told him with my eyes. The last thing we want is trouble. “What’s tasty on your menu?” “Pork chops. Chipped beef. Corn muffins. Bacon burger.” “Okay, that. And a coffee, lots of cream. And a big tall water. And… the pie’s fresh?” He nodded. “Pick out a couple good slices. No, three.”

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He walked away without writing anything down and disappeared through the swinging door that led to the kitchen. Michael had his ballerina-pink computer cracked open before the door swayed to a halt. “Which football team were you planning to feed?” I pulled the ashtray over and lit up. “Variety is the spice of life.” I smoked while he tapped at the tiny little keys. He’d been riveted on that thing all week, but I still couldn’t shake the idea that it was just a pink plastic toy, connected to a little-kid Internet. Could he really track down homicidal vamps on a teeny tiny computer? Probably so. He’d found Marushka on a dilapidated computer at the public library. He’d found Ambrose Gray. He’d also found me when I was hiding out in Minnesota -- though I’m not homicidal. Just a vamp. Finding Ambrose had been the most lengthy travail, two years in the unfolding. I was quicker to peg, mostly because I’m too enamored of my own name to swap it out for a spiffy new identity. And Marushka was a fluke, a pattern he’d stumbled across while he was reaching for me across the World Wide Web. Or had finding her really been a fluke after all? What if Mikey was getting better at reading all those zeroes and ones, and before I knew it, he’d set a course to carve another notch in his belt? I got off on giving him presents, and My Little Computer was a great big hit. But I wasn’t so sure it had been a good idea. The cook brought out our drinks and a basket of corn muffins. Michael ignored the food. His eyes were glued on the screen. “That smells pretty good,” I said. The keys clicked. I finished my smoke, drank some water, chewed an ice cube. I’m sure Michael could tell I was staring hard at his profile, but he was the picture of focus. Tap-tap-tap. I ran through another smoke, the rest of the food came and sat on the table untouched. And finally he sighed and sat back against the booth, blinking his eyes like he’d been in a trance. “Can we stay in a motel today? With wireless?” “Maybe. If you eat something. ’Cos I can guarantee you, it’s a bitch to find jeans in a 28 waist, and that’s where you’re heading if you don’t up your intake.”

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“I’m not really…”

“Try the pork chop.”

Michael sighed and pushed Pinkie to the side, against the chrome napkin

dispenser and the kitschy ketchup and mustard bottles. He pulled the plate toward him and cut into the meat. My mouth watered. He took a bite, chewed slowly. I’d expect a little more enthusiasm from someone as starved as he looked. “That smells all right,” I said.

He shrugged.

“You’re not on a hunger strike or anything, are you?”

“Huh?” Michael blinked, then turned toward me. “Starved” looked damn good

on him. His skin was luminous, and his eyes shone. I reminded myself that he’d look just as tasty if he were well-fed. “Bacon burger’s getting cold. Think of all the poor kids in Mogadishu.” He picked up his coffee and sipped. The coffee was only so-so. I’d smelled better. “Eat something, Twiggy.” “I guess I’m not hungry.” “Pretty please?” I pulled my arm from the back of the booth and slipped my hand under the table. He slammed his knees shut when my fingers eased between his thighs. “It’s kind of difficult to focus on food when you start doing that.” “For my benefit. A little vicarious thrill. You don’t have to clean your plate. Just bite into it. Chew it up. Swallow it. A bite of everything, that’s all I need to see.” Michael glanced at me sideways with his kohl-rimmed eyes, and started turning the giant burger around as if he couldn’t quite figure out how to pick it up. He hefted it carefully, and bit in with his blunt human teeth. I smelled the acid snap of tomato as his incisors bruised its tender cells, tinged with the vinegar of a nearby pickle slice, ripple cut, naturally. Cheese -- cheddar? No, Colby. And beef, seared to perfection.

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The burger smelled droolicious, for maybe two seconds. Then my stomach turned, as my gut insisted that cooked flesh was poison, completely and utterly inedible. If I spoke, I’d probably upchuck. I cleared my throat into my fist and took a deep drag of my smoke to flush the scent of sizzling meat from my airway. “Sample the pie.” I stroked the inseam of his jeans. “For me.” Meat-borne revulsion aside, watching Michael eat was such a turn-on that I couldn’t even wait to find a motel. He hardly had time to snap shut his magical pink toy and pull the AC adaptor from the wall before I dragged him bodily to the van. I was rock-fucking-hard, to the point where I walked funny because my cock was trapped down one pant leg, throbbing against the denim. I didn’t bother unlocking the driver-side door. I went right for the back, and had to restrain myself from tearing the doors off their hinges. Michael looked back over his shoulder at the glowing diner windows. “Maybe we should go park somewhere el --” I shoved him in face-first. Putting in that air mattress had been a stroke of genius. I didn’t recall which one of us had thought of it. It hardly mattered. We were so synched up now that we operated on a hive mind more often than not. Michael rolled onto his side. A strand of long hair was caught in his eyelashes, his mouth. He snagged it out with his forefinger. “We just ordered fifty dollars’ worth of food and left it sitting on the table. What if they come out here looking for us?” “They’ll get over it.” Probably. If not, I could always have another eyeball duel with the cook. “Kitchens throw away all that and more, each and every day.” I dove in after him, bounced, thought for a second that my teeth might puncture the air mattress, send it spinning around the back of the van. No such fireworks, though, not tonight. Michael rolled and grabbed me, pulled himself up against me and fit the two of us together. Our bodies meshed, like always. Our legs intertwined, and my junk settled alongside his, mostly-hard and constrained only by the fleeting strength of brass zipper teeth and the dubious power of faded, threadbare denim.

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“You feel so good,” he said, mostly. My mouth pressing on his smothered the end of the sentence. Tongues, wet… and holy hell, he tasted like peaches and nutmeg. I grabbed him hard and pulled. I think it was the sleeve of his jacket I’d gotten hold of, dragging at it like that was any way to get his clothes off. But the taste of peaches had me tearing at him like a fucking animal. He undulated and shed the jacket snakeskin-wise. Our kisses went sloppy and my mouth slid from his, over the rasp of his five a.m. shadow, his hot throat, scabhatched with thin brown lines I’d been marking with my knife to count off the times we’d fucked. It was some kind of record for me. Had to be. I’d always managed to drive away the ones I liked when I was human. And I never let ’em get close to me after I was turned. Until Michael. He worked his fingers under my T-shirt, ran them up my ribcage. I peeled his shirt up. We were a tangle of arms and jersey knit for just a second, and then his chest brushed mine, skin on skin, him hot and me tepid. I’d really need to gorge on some hapless bystander’s blood to match my body heat to Michael’s, and he’d know it if I did. So I left myself a little hungry these days. ’Cos I’d discovered things that slaked my appetite a hell of a lot better than human blood. He pushed me onto my back and straddled my thighs. His fingers were quick on my belt. He bent and kissed my stomach as he bared it, trailed his mouth over my hipbone, my thigh. I covered my dick with my hand and moved it to the side so he could tongue all the nooks and crannies that wouldn’t turn him. I was pretty sure it was safe for him to lick my shaft, too. But I didn’t want to chance it. I might get all carried away and stuff myself straight down his throat. And that wasn’t gonna happen, not on my watch. His tongue slithered down alongside my nutsack. I took a fistful of his hair and wound it around my fingers, reveled in the feel of his head moving down there while he tongued me. I was already stiff. I pumped myself a few times, felt the silky glide of

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his long hair trailing over my hard cock. He cupped one of my nuts in the curve of his tongue, sucked gently. What little blood was in me rushed down to my groin. His mouth left me deliciously, throbbingly hard. It always did. And I always got off now, sometimes twice in a night. Maybe more. Outside the van, the air had a bite to it, enough to turn ear tips red and nipples perky. But inside, the air was warm and close, and thick with the smell of our bodies, moist with our quick, constant panting as we struggled to breathe through all the gasps and hisses that accompanied the nerves we hit on one another. I made one of those long, drawn-out gasps when Michael turned his head and raked his teeth over my inner thigh. “Jerk off against my cheek,” he said. His voice was soft. His breath tickled my nutsack. I handled myself slowly, stroked my cockhead through the webwork of his hair. His breath was hot and moist against my balls. He played his tongue over me like he was writing me secret messages. When he spoke, his words chilled the wetness his tongue had left behind. “I wish I could taste you,” he said. I shivered. “It’s jiz. It’s no big deal.” He looked up at me from between my legs, all dark eyeliner and pretty. “Just once.” “Not happening.” He sighed, and smiled, and dragged his tongue along the edge of my pubes. “I’ll bet you taste good.” “It’s jiz,” I repeated. Jiz is jiz, after all. I reached for my jacket and pulled out a rubber -- with mouth-numbing spermicidal lube -- before he fixated any harder on eating my spunk. I handed it over. “Here. Wrap it up.” Michael shed his jeans and motorcycle boots in one purposeful shove. He was naked as fast as I was, even without the help of my vamp reflexes. He straddled my thighs again and had my dick wrapped and ready in one continuous motion. “Show me how you grease your ass,” I said. He blushed, and his

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cheeks blazed with sweet capillaries. He did it, though -- reached over and pumped a nice squirt of silicone into his palm. He watched me watching him as he slipped his hand down between his legs, stroked his own hole. “Finger fuck yourself,” I told him. He blushed even brighter, but tilted his head back and stared me down while he sank a couple of fingers into his own tight hole. In and out. “Now light me a cigarette.” Michael’s fingers glistened with lube. He found my open pack, fumbled with it, lit me a smoke with the scowling concentration of someone who’s never mastered the timing of the lighter and the inhale. He turned the cigarette around and placed it between my lips. The cigarette had a couple of wet finger marks on it. I took a long drag. I was so fucking hard for him. “Stroke yourself while I watch.” The blushing ebbed, which was too bad, ’cos it smelled incredible. But Michael was happy to play along, now that he’d figured out the game. He gripped his cock loosely and stroked his thumb over the ridge. “What else?” “Your nipples. Touch ’em.” He was jerking off with the lube hand. He brought the other hand to his mouth and made a big show of sucking his fingers wet for me. He tossed his long hair so that it fell over his eyes, and gave me an eyeliner look through it. Then he rolled his nipple between spit-wet fingers. My cock throbbed with the urge to sink deep inside him. I needed him so bad, I couldn’t even go on pretending to be in charge of the show. I crushed out the smoke and gestured for him to mount me, and he came forward, one knee, then the other, his perfect nakedness stretched up over me. I touched his concave belly where the new, short hairs cast shadows, that luscious treasure trail that led down from his navel to the cock he’d been stroking for me.

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Michael reached back so he could slip his hand between his legs and line me up. I tried to etch it into my head, the image of him stretched so perfectly, his body a textbook example of proportion and grace. He grabbed my stiff dick and sank onto it. “Fuck, yeah.” He didn’t say anything, just smiled down on me -- beatific, perfect, my sweet angel of death. And he breathed. Fuck, how he breathed. Subtle muscles rippled in his stomach as he started to move, a slow, easy fuck, more of a gyration. He flexed that long, lean body of his, bent forward, planted his hands on my hipbones, and caught his tongue between his teeth in concentration. Up, down… grind. My hips bucked up. His cock slapped my belly on the down stroke. Stiff, always stiff, ready to go whenever, wherever. I ran my palms up both his thighs, which were prickly with the growth of new hair, then teased his balls with my fingertips. The point where our bodies met felt steamy. “I haven’t cut my tongue on you tonight. Not yet. I don’t think it’d hurt anything, if I swallowed your come,” he said, more breathiness than actual voice. He was still chewing on that? Here I thought I’d succeeded in distracting him. “Not risking it.” I sank my thumbs into his inner thighs and arched my back, pushed myself in deep. Found a good angle, did it again. “Stomach acid would take care of it.” I flicked my hips up hard, and he gasped. “Listen,” I said, “Just ’cos fire looks pretty doesn’t mean you’ve got to try and hold it in your hand. You don’t even know what turns people, do you? Is it a virus? A bacteria? An alien string of DNA? You don’t fucking know. So don’t tell me about stomach acid.” He leaned forward and his long hair framed his face, shadowed his eyes. His palms slid up my body and he fixed on my nipples. My arousal ratcheted higher as he squeezed and rolled them. Merciless. “That’s shit-science anyway,” I said, “and you know it.” Maybe a stint in a veterinary clinic and some library research were all the training he’d had, but he still

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knew his biology. “You get how all those cells and molecules work, better than me. You’re practically pre-med.” “But I hate having this barrier between us.” “Your blood’s in my veins, kid. That’s as close as we can get without organ transplants.” Michael squirmed on me and clenched his body. I used to think lube was overrated, but now that we had a decorator pump-bottle conveniently situated right in our mobile lair, I had to admit -- the additional glide gave him an edge in the fucking department. Or making love, as he calls it, this thing we do to forget who we are, what our lives have been up to this point. “I’m just thinking out loud.” Right. He’s always thinking. That’s the problem. He stretched down and brushed his mouth over mine, followed it with a small, wet nudge of his tongue. Peaches. He stayed hunched over me like that, and slid up and down. His stiff cock rubbed my belly, and I arched my back to give it more friction. He gasped. The scent of him welled around me. It was like getting laid in an orchard. I pried one of his hands off my nipple, interlaced my fingers through his. He did the same with our opposite hands and pressed his whole body into my belly and chest. He settled his scruffy cheek just under my collarbone and sighed. We rocked together like that for ages. It lulled me into a fugue state, and I halfdreamt that I was lying in the sun under a tree with fallen peaches all around me, overripe, fermented, practically rotten, their fuzz burst and split in places, swarmed with buzzing hornets and crawling with ants. Michael’s fingers squeezed mine so tight that I smelled them bruising, and his breath caught, stuttered. “I’m coming,” he whispered, and I closed my eyes and breathed the scent of his hair, his maleness, his bruises, the salty peak where his body let go and his seed surged through him, spread over my belly. His pulse pounded, and his whole body throbbed its sweet release.

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Channeling Morpheus: Tainted

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I dropped his limp hand and stroked his hair. He breathed, and gave a small shudder. “I want to go to Madison,” he said. A road trip to Wisconsin. And probably not for fireworks, beer and porn, like I had way, way back when I was still a sapling, in Rockford. I sighed. The travel plans were too specific to be meandering, post-coital thoughts. Which meant he’d been turning it around in his head for a while. “Okay,” I said. And I was glad it was my dick inside him and not the other way around tonight. Because I had no doubt he would’ve felt me clench up. He’d found another victim. Already. I knew getting him that computer had been a bad idea. Michael gave a little grind that made my urge to shoot my load clash with the dread of knowing that I was starting to play an active role in his killing spree, and I decided I should probably reserve all my mental energy for the conversation he seemed determined we have. I could get off some other time. I eased myself out of Michael’s ass. He shuddered again. “There’s a researcher there. He could tell us, I think.” “Tell us what?” “What makes a vampire.” Just peachy. My stomach turned. I rolled him off me, then pulled off the rubber and chucked it into a plastic bag full of candy bar wrappers and used wet wipes. “Wild Bill?” I lit a cigarette and let the smoke sting my eyes while I pulled on my jeans. I didn’t suppose I could get out of visiting Doctor Nosferatu, not even if I suggested a detour to Disneyland. So we might as well get it over with. I wondered if Michael wanted to talk to him or kill him, or both, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask. “You didn’t finish. Why’d you stop -- are you mad?” I shook my head. I wasn’t mad, but I also wasn’t in any mood to play Let’s Explore Our Feelings. “If we hit the road, we can make Peoria tonight.”

Chapter Three As a fellow bloodsucker, I should’ve felt comforted by the windowless warren of labs where this doctor of Michael’s slept all day and played with blood all night. But I didn’t. The building was old, and post-war depressing. The walls were painted battleship gray, and the overhead fluorescent tubes buzzed. The whole place smelled of mildew and bleach, and unwashed undergrads. The doctor himself was immaculate in a starched white lab coat, his back to us, holding up a vial of blood to the light -- as if he’d smelled us coming and had taken the opportunity to strike a dramatic pose for our benefit. “You must be Michael Davies,” he said, without bothering to turn around and look. “Yes. Thanks for meeting with us.” He did face us then, and Holy Baby-face, he’d been even younger than me when he’d gotten himself turned. But he was older than me now, way older. I scented it on him strong, the fresh-dug earth smell of vamp. The doc was tall and slim and auburn-haired. He seemed like he might’ve been freckled once, but now he had a pallor like buffed ivory, cool and flawless. The complexion contributed to his not-of-this-world look, but the Clark Gable hairstyle and high-waisted trousers probably had something to do with it, too. Eventually I’d look as dated, blend with humans as poorly as he did. It was only a matter of time. Maybe I was already just as cliché. I jammed my hands into my pockets and pressed my jacket to my body as if someone were trying to take it away from me. “I suppose you’re the cryptic ‘Wild Bill’ of no last name.” And he had a problem with that? I narrowed my eyes.

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“James Harman -- currently, at any rate. Blood disease is my official specialty. I run my own clinical trials, as well. Discreetly, of course.” He fit the tube into a rack of other tubes, all of them three-quarters full of blood. I swallowed a rush of saliva, and a hunger pang jabbed at my gut. “Charmed.” He looked me up and down in one quick glance, Michael too. Then he pulled a little electronic device out of his lab coat and started tapping at it with a black plastic toothpick, as if he couldn’t spare his undivided attention to us for even a minute. Some kind of computer? And here I’d thought Pinkie was high-tech. “Your email said you had some questions regarding the condition?” “Condition?” I said. “Were you gunning for the understatement of the year award?” “You want to think of vampirism as a contagion? A disease? Be my guest. It’s all semantics. I’ve been able to continue the leukemia research I started in 1947. Some of the physical side effects of vampirism are inconvenient, but overall, I’m pleased with the results.” “You vamped yourself,” I blurted out. He smirked, and kept on tapping on the little computery doo-dad. I wondered how he’d react if I snatched it away from him and stomped on it. But he was older than me -- faster, and probably stronger, too. I decided against provoking him and getting my ass handed to me in front of my impressionable human boyfriend. A final couple of clicks, and he deigned to look up at me. “As you can see, I’m a very busy man. So if you have questions, I’d prefer to dispense with the pleasantries.” Because he was so stinkin’ pleasant. I nudged Michael with my elbow. “We drove all the way here. Ask.” “Well… it’s just that… it doesn’t make sense to me. Vampirism, what causes it, how it’s spread. Is it like HIV? Or hepatitis? Is it even bloodborne at all?” “It’s not a virus. More of a mutation. A trigger cell imbeds in the host, and under the right circumstances, replicates itself. Incompatible structures die off, new organelles and structures take their places.”

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Maybe Michael understood that. What I wanted to know was, if I was a mutant, why didn’t I have X-ray vision and a cool spandex costume? Doctor Friendly turned back to his test tubes. I glared at Michael for dragging us all the way here. Michael looked at me for a long moment, doe-eyed, incredibly young, then gathered his courage and spoke up. “What carries the trigger cell to the host?” The doc glanced up, but kept his body hunched over his gear, so we wouldn’t get the impression he was willing to talk to us any more than he absolutely had to. “Bodily fluids. Saliva, predominantly.” Michael gasped. And then the implications sank into my thick skull. Not only did the two of us swap spit every chance we got, but he slit his tongue open on my canines and invited the nasty vamp cells into his fragile human bloodstream with open arms. Every fucking night. “So, what about feeding time?” I asked him. “Vamp saliva, human blood. That’s all it takes? ’Cos as far as I know, I’ve never turned anyone.” Harman set down his rack of test tubes, tweaked them carefully so their labels were all perfectly aligned, and looked at us -- Mikey, then me. “The trigger cells activate in the presence of basopressin, which would only be secreted in the case of shock due to extreme blood loss. It’s the body’s way of trying to keep blood in the brain, but essentially, it shuts down the kidneys. So if you haven’t been glutting yourself, I can’t see that you need to worry about it. Assuming that you’re trying to prevent transmission.” While I tried to fit the twenty-five-cent words together into a mental picture, Michael answered for me. “That’s right.” Doc Harman rounded the table and looked down his nose at Michael. He was a shade taller than the two of us, and when he moved, he used an elegant glide that made him seem way scarier than your typical college geek. Scarier than me, even. He’d been a vamp so long, he must not have even remembered what it was like to trip over his own feet.

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Channeling Morpheus: Tainted

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Harman hooked a fingertip through the slinky black scarf before Michael’s hands could flutter up to cover his throat. “Steady, repeated exposure without the presence of impaired kidney function. If you haven’t developed the condition by now, then you’ve manufactured antibodies. Assuming every one of these incisions was a separate incident, you’re immune by now.” “You sure about that?” I did my best to sound casual, though I doubt if anyone bought it. “He seems a little thin lately.” Harman tilted his head. To a human, it would’ve looked like he was thinking. But it didn’t fool me. He’d taken a whiff of Michael. “Anemic. An over-the-counter women’s vitamin with iron should help him regain his appetite.” I stifled a laugh, only I knew damn well it wasn’t funny. This whole time, we’d been meshing my tainted fluids with Michael’s, thinking that everything was fine, as long as we were poster children for safe sex. What if there was no such thing as baso­ whatever, and I’d been turning him, slowly but surely, this whole time? I realized I’d gladly kill someone for a drink. And the ability to keep it down. Michael’s scent changed, sharp, and then acrid. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. Sweat beaded his upper lip. He wiped at it with his cuff. “You got a test for these antibodies?” I asked. “Certainly. We’ll need to draw some blood.” I looked at Michael again. He was paler than usual. “Is there a restroom I can use?” Harman gestured toward a door, vamp-handed, and totally oblivious to the fact that he no longer moved like a human. “Through there.” We both waited until Michael was gone, and when I spoke, it was so low it was practically subsonic. “We don’t need to do a test, do we?” Harman shook his head. “You should be glad. Most vampires don’t have the patience to nurture a proper companion, and end up transmitting the condition.”

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Channeling Morpheus: Tainted

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I might as well let him think I’d done it on purpose. But the idea that we’d been playing with a loaded gun the whole time had me totally and utterly spooked. Michael came out of the bathroom. He’d been in there less than a minute. He smelled like tap water, chlorine and a subtle hint of mineral. His hairline was damp where he’d splashed his face, probably to keep from hurling, or maybe fainting. “You want to do those tests,” I said, “and then we can hit the road? The good doctor can send the results to your… computer. Right?” “Don’t bother.” Michael looked at Harman, hard. “How would this resistance manifest?” “Negative effects? Sensitivity to light. Loss of appetite. But the advantages should far outweigh the disadvantages. Your strength and endurance will be higher. Your body will heal more quickly, age more slowly. And if you have a taste for a little blood…” He shrugged. “It can’t hurt to try it.” “Hold on,” I said. “You make him sound like a full-fledged vamp. I thought you said he was resistant.” “No, no, of course he’s not a host. He can eat and drink and function during the daytime, and he doesn’t have to subsist on blood. His organs won’t be altered. But this resistance, the product of exposure, gradual and subtle… it does have its perks.”

Chapter Four Michael walked out through the student union toward the lake. He covered the ground in big, hasty strides, and I followed. The bell tower ticked off the wee hours of the morning. A chilly wind had kicked up off the water, and only a few kids lingered at the outdoor tables on the patio, finishing their beers, sealing their agreements of who would bunk with whom tonight, and who would go home alone. A single pier jutted from the shore, and Michael marched onto it with such purpose, I was almost worried he’d keep on going until he pitched off the end. Except I knew he wouldn’t. He’s a survivor. I paused at the foot of the pier. The idea of plunging into the water, being surrounded by all that cold, dark wetness, chilled me to the bone. I hadn’t been near anything deeper than a Jacuzzi since I’d been turned, and I suspected there might be a nugget of truth in the old yarn about vamps not crossing water. Michael strode out to the edge of the pier and hugged his leather jacket around his narrow waist. Even through the fishy-marine scent of the lake breeze, I could smell his heart breaking. I should probably just go. Leave the van to him as my parting consolation prize. Sorry I screwed up your life… but look on the bright side. At least I taught you how to drive. I stepped onto the pier. It felt solid. Mostly. But I had a sudden, visceral understanding of the expression “weak in the knees.” Holy hell, the other end of the pier was twenty yards off. I’d never make it. “Michael,” I called. “C’mere a minute.” He ignored me. I looked to either side. The pier was wide enough to hold picnic tables. It wasn’t as if I was at risk of falling off, even if I did happen to topple over without provocation.

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Channeling Morpheus: Tainted

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Still, I barely resisted the urge to crawl. I inched forward. One plank. Two. Three. Four. “C’mon, kiddo. Let’s talk.” The wind picked up Michael’s hair, sent it streaming to one side in an indigo-ink wave. I staggered the final few steps to a picnic table, then clutched at the top in hopes of getting my sea legs. Bad idea. The table rested on uneven planks, and the whole thing rocked when I threw my weight on it. I froze to the spot, heart pounding. I thought that maybe closing my eyes would help. It didn’t. I squeezed the table too hard and a pointy hunk of fiberglass broke off into my hand. I wondered if I should offer to impale myself on the fiberglass shard, but the damage had already been done. Erasing myself wouldn’t change the fact that I’d half-turned Michael. Besides, I’m a survivor, too. “Come back to the van. We’ll find a motel. With wireless.” His white fingers poked out from beneath the sleeves of his jacket where he hugged himself. If I really focused, I could hear his heart beating. Or maybe that was mine, pounding out the moments leading up to my watery death. Michael turned. In the moonlight, his pale beauty shredded me. It must have been his heart I sensed. I didn’t see how mine could keep going in the face of what my body’s chemistry had done to his. He approached carefully, one foot in front of the other. Graceful. Vampishly so? Hard to say. He’d always moved well. My eyes combed him, and I ached to rush up and close the distance between us, tell him how sorry I was… but I couldn’t bring myself to let go of the broken table. How was “sorry” gonna cut it, anyway? The words were so tiny I couldn’t get hold of them. It was like trying to pick up gravel. You said you were sorry when you puked a bottle of tequila onto someone’s bed. Not when you half-assedly turned them because you couldn’t keep your tainted spit to yourself. Michael stepped up to me and stared into my eyes. He reached for my face and stroked it -- a melancholy graze of the backs of his fingers. I wanted to grab him and hold him, but I couldn’t bring myself to let go of that damn table. And more than that, I

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couldn’t deal with it if I tried and I felt him pull away. He spoke first. “I guess I’m stuck in vampire limbo now.” I almost said it anyway -- I’m sorry. And I would’ve meant it in the fullest sense of the word, not that I felt sorry for what had happened, but that I was a sorry excuse for whatever the hell it was that you could call me. But I didn’t get a chance to say it. Michael’s lips were on mine, and his tongue slipped into my mouth, grazed my teeth, my fangs. I shut my eyes, even though it would cost me to do it, and I let go of that picnic table -- with one hand, at least -- and slipped my arm around Michael’s shoulders. He threaded his fingers through the gel-stiffened strands of my hair, and his lips made the shape of my name against my mouth. “Wild Bill.” I held him tighter, screwed up my courage, and forced myself to let go of the fiberglass. I slid that hand around his waist. I always thought of Michael as fragile, merely human. But he must’ve felt me trembling, and he held me up against the sway of that pier, and the buffeting winds -and, hell, the rotation of the world on its drunken, skewed axis. I let him hold me, and kiss me. And when we’d swapped a bunch of spit, even now, with the full knowledge that it’d been robbing Michael of his humanity all along, the few remaining insomniac students gathered on the shore to whoop and titter at us for giving ’em a big gay spectacle. Michael took his lips from mine and leaned into me with his forehead. “I guess we’re lucky Doctor Harman isn’t tenured in the Bible belt.” He acted like he was kidding around, but I’d tasted all the flavors of regret too many times to be fooled by a forced smile. The students scattered when we turned to face them, snickering all the way back to the dorms. I stuck to Michael like a barnacle until my feet touched terra firma, and then we made our way back to the van in silence. I climbed into the driver’s side and lit up a smoke. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Michael stare at my hand. He made sure my eyes were on the side view mirror

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as I eased out of the parking spot before he spoke. “How do you feel about what Harman said?” “No idea. I came of age when men smoked Marlboros, before all that New Age, touchy-feely stuff was in vogue.” That drew an exasperated sigh, and I felt slightly guilty for reveling in my powers of deflection. But only slightly. “Let’s stay in the van tonight.” I flicked my cigarette butt out the window. “Okay.” We drove along the isthmus. Streetlamps lit the van’s interior in a slow strobe. Michael pointed at a curved strip of grass and sand with an empty parking lot following its contour. “Let’s stay there. On the lake.” My nuts tried to crawl up inside my body. I shifted in my seat. It didn’t help. “It stinks like algae and dead fish.” “We’ve been landlocked since we crossed the Mississippi. I just want to sit by the water and watch the sun rise.” Sounded like the date from hell to me -- both water and sunshine. But it seemed like I should endure a single sunrise for him -- as much as I could take until I fled into the van, anyhow -- given that he’d already paid for my companionship with a contaminated bloodstream. We parked the van and hiked along the grass, me with my smokes and Michael with a blanket we’d borrowed long-term from a Best Western in Iowa. He stopped on the grass, thankfully, far enough from the edge of the water that I couldn’t feel it beckoning me to a watery grave. He snapped the blanket open and reclined on it, propped up on both elbows, gazing out over the blue-gray strata of rock, water, sky. I squatted on the edge of the blanket and lit a fresh smoke from the butt of the last one. Neither of us said a word. I smoked long, deep drags. The cigarette burned down toward my fingers, and I reached for the pack again. “Stop chain smoking and lay with me,” Michael said. At least he still wanted to touch me. I eased up beside him on one elbow and toyed with the hem of his T-shirt with my free hand. “You felt okay on that pier?”

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Channeling Morpheus: Tainted

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He looked at me sideways, with his eyebrows knit. “I don’t follow you.” “The water. It didn’t feel freaky or anything?” “We weren’t in the water. We were on the pier.” This was Michael-logic. I should have seen it coming. I eased my hand under his T-shirt, found the shorn hair stubs under his navel, and worked them back and forth under my fingertips. “I had an ugly vamp moment back there. So I don’t see moonbathing on the beach appearing on our summer itinerary.” Michael turned to look at me full-on, and I had to look away under the intensity of his gaze. “You know, that’s the first time you’ve ever told me anything about being a vampire.” Good thing I hadn’t been looking him in the eye. The full force of that word made me cringe. “Whoop-de-doo. I deserve a medal. Now let’s change the subject. That guy Harman was a prick and a half.” “He offered me a scholarship.” Fuck. When? Probably through e-mail. That fucking pink computer. For all I knew, Harman was typing the invitation up right in front of me on his PDA-thing, trying to whisk my “companion” away from me right under my own nose. “And a position as a lab assistant.” Harman had been able to turn everything topsy-turvy on me twice in the very same night. What would it take to get Michael to add him to the kill-list? No, not really. Okay. Maybe. “What did you say?” “I don’t want to settle in one place. Not right now. Not until I decide how I’m going to deal with my family.” I told my heart it could start beating again. “But once you mail out the letter from Camp Grenada… what then?” Michael lay back, tucked an arm under his head, and gazed up at the pre-dawn sprinkling of stars. “If I could prevent vampirism from spreading accidentally, maybe that would be more productive than finding bad vampires and stopping them.”

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Channeling Morpheus: Tainted

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Stopping? Nice euphemism. “And then there’s the cure. It would be a big deal to be part of the team that discovered that. Even if it was never publicized anywhere.” A whooshing sound in my ears brought me around to the fact that I’d stopped breathing. “He’s working on a cure,” I said flatly. “Yeah. He’s testing his latest leukemia cure on vampirism. Some bone marrow drug.” A cure. A powdery tint appeared in the sky along the horizon, and a cold lake breeze carried the scent of dawn across the water. My heart hammered in my chest at the idea of me watching a full sunrise without turning tail and running for shelter. “Harman didn’t seem like he wanted to be cured,” I said, when I remembered how to make words again. Michael slipped a hand under my armpit, pulled me against his side, then snuck his fingertips down the waistband at the back of my jeans. His skin felt hot against mine. “Not for his own personal use. He’s happy to have more time to devote to his research. But if he finds a cure -- and decides to publicize it -- maybe he can go public with the ‘condition,’ and then he won’t have to waste time going into hiding and changing identities every ten years.” Michael’s eyes were heavy-lidded and his voice was soft. The normal lassitude of human sleep was washing over him. The sickening torpor of vamp sleep would hit me soon -- fifteen minutes from now, maybe twenty. I could fight it, but it would be no walk on the beach. Or… it would. For a vamp. “If Doctor Nosferatu does find a cure, he can patch you back up.” Make it like our fluids never mingled. “Me?” Michael blinked as if it would help him wake up some. “I’m no vampire. I’m just resistant.” I thought that was all he had to say on the matter, but after a long pause, with his voice whispery-soft, he added, “I’ll never be a vampire.”

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Channeling Morpheus: Tainted

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That was one way of looking at it, I guess -- if you really wanted to cut me a shitload of slack. Some people see the glass half-empty. I saw Michael as half-turned. “Anyway,” he said, “I wouldn’t settle down anywhere unless you were up for it, too. Would you be able to do that -- stay in one place for a few years? Would you even want to?” As if it even mattered where we were, as long as he was there. “I’ve never thought much about it.” “So you’re not saying no.” His fingers brushed over the divot beneath my tailbone. “You know you’re freezing, don’t you?” I shrugged. It suited the poet in me to starve and freeze. “Drink me. Deep. Enough to warm you up. I know, you can’t do it every night. But just tonight.” I watched an airplane far overhead dragging a vapor trail behind. I followed it until I could see him watching me from the corner of my eye, waiting for a reply. “You’ll miss your sunrise.” “There’ll be another one tomorrow.” “Drink me” was never simply an offer of blood. It meant “Take me. Use me. Make love to me.” I’ve never been one to refuse an invitation, but still, a nagging doubt lingered. Maybe I thought that Michael thought he knew what he wanted, but really, it was all a psycho-boy headgame he was playing with himself. His fingers dipped lower, and he shifted against me. Even over the lake breeze, I smelled the musky hint of his arousal, and sensed his blood starting to surge down to his groin. My physiology answered his, and all my below-the-belt body parts started taking an interest in the proceedings. Maybe we were just a couple of big chemical cocktails, him and me. I should ask him how he rationalized so well. Because then I could blame everything on biology. Only I think rationalization is one of those innate things that’s near-impossible to teach someone else, more of a talent than a skill.

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Channeling Morpheus: Tainted

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Michael sat up and held his hand out to me. “Come on,” he said. “We don’t have much time.” Hadn’t Harman said Michael would live longer, thanks to my inadvertent infusion? Maybe we did. I let him lead me back to the van, where he stripped down to nothing and laid himself out on that air mattress like a virgin sacrifice. His ribs showed where they didn’t used to, but only rock-star chic, nothing too alarming. A shadowy shape outlined the spot where his pubes would grow in. There was a long red scab there, just above the thigh, where I’d drunk from the thin-skinned hollow of his pelvis. And a few more on his legs. I took care not to cut him anywhere he’d need to bend, or anywhere that might chafe -- because, heck, it was a guilty enough pleasure without making him cringe when he walked. But his neck, by far, bore the brunt of the attention I gave him with my knife and my teeth. Both sides were layered thick with bruises and hatch marks. My breath caught at the sight of him. “Where?” I said, sandpaper-mouthed, nearly choking on the word. He cocked his head to the side, stretched that long, pale, damaged neck out for me to plunder yet again, and gave me his most scorching eyeliner look. “You know where.” I pulled my clothes off and tossed them aside. Dawn crept closer -- I could feel it even through the metal walls of the van -- but that only leant a sense of urgency to spice things up. “I can’t wait to feel you come inside me,” Michael said, dreamy-voiced, and still innocent, despite all the evidence of my constant use and abuse. I dug through the crap that had accumulated beside the mattress: a half-empty carton of cigarettes, some dirty T-shirts, the box the little pink computer came in. I set my knife, closed, on the mattress beside us. Then I found the lube and christened us both. Michael slid his long legs around my waist and stared me in the eye, unblinking. “The sun’s almost up, isn’t it?”

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Channeling Morpheus: Tainted

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“Don’t worry. We’ve already got this down to a science.” The slippery, hot feel of him, skin-on-skin for the very first time, sent a surge of hunger through me that would probably carry me straight through dawn, anyhow. “Aw, hell yeah, you feel incredible.” He stared me in the eye while I pushed in. His lips parted, and he gasped. “Drink me.” “Lemme get a few good strokes in, first.” That tiny little latex barrier shouldn’t have made that big a difference. It never had when I’d been human, anyhow -- though maybe I was usually three sheets to the wind, so I wouldn’t have known the difference. But now? Damn, now I felt like I’d crawled inside him and inhabited his body. Blood, bone, sinew, vein, the thrum of Michael’s pulse swept me away with its vital rhythm. I groaned and buried my face in the crook of his neck, and let my hips do the work without any help from my poor hijacked brain. Michael made a soft noise of pleasure and dug his nails into my back. “I’m close already,” he breathed in my ear. “Please drink me. Please.” A vein pounded under my cheek -- a good vein, not too big, not too dangerous. Michael arched against me and gulped air. “Bill, yes, Bill…” I turned toward the vein and tongued it. I could taste its sweetness right through his skin. I slammed into his ass with quick, sloppy strokes, a greedy rhythm that did more for me than it did him, because he was already riding the edge, and anything at all could tip him. He dug his nails in hard. A bead of blood slid down my ribs. The smell of it made my teeth throb. “Do it,” he begged, and everything went starry as he clenched up hard as he could to stop himself from coming so he could wait for me. A losing battle, but he seemed determined to try. He crunched when I bit him, and damn it all, my neck had made that very same sound in the jaws of Ambrose Gray. Michael’s orgasm seized him and he howled, and thrashed, and slammed his body against mine like he could come forever.

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus: Tainted

- 38 -

Blood filled my mouth fast. I swallowed, and swallowed again. His flailing abandon was contagious. I gave in to the hot red delirium, and we rode the wave together as one symbiotic pair, wet on wet, and spasming with pleasure ’til our muscles burned, and the sensation grew too exquisite to bear. I wrenched my teeth from the meat of his shoulder and rolled off him, trailing wetness everywhere. The sound of his breathing filled the van. I was stunned, and floaty. Eventually, he summoned the strength to move, just one hand. He found my fingers, and squeezed them. His hand was sticky with my blood. “Oh my God,” he said. I would’ve asked him if he was okay, but I could feel the steady thrum of his heart, and it assured me that he’d be fine. Not that we could go at it like that every day, of course. But once in a while. The combination of a killer orgasm and a killer sunrise knocked me for a loop. I felt the energy drain from me like I’d slit my wrists in a tub of warm bathwater. I groaned into the air mattress. Michael peeled himself up from the bed long enough to find the blanket and tuck it around us. He pressed himself against me, prickly legs and all, and settled his face alongside my cheek. “Wild Bill? Are you still awake?” Daylight made everything slow and leaden. Vamps feel so vulnerable and sick when the sun is high that it’s just easier to sleep it all away. It is physically possible to stay awake, but who’d want to? I grunted. “I’ve never felt anything like that.” “That makes two of us.” He wrapped an arm around me, slipped his fingers between me and the mattress, and cradled my bare ass in his hand. His skin was still warmer than mine, but the difference wasn’t quite as dramatic now that I had a little something in my stomach. “Does it hurt?” I asked him. “I guess. But I don’t care. It was worth it.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus: Tainted

- 39 -

I wouldn’t have minded getting up and taking a gander at the claw marks he’d drawn down my back before they healed up, but it felt like way too much effort. The rhythm of his breathing lulled me, and I let another measure of control slip away. “It must be a relief, in a way,” Michael said. “What’s that?” “To know that Gray didn’t turn you by having sex with you. That it was the bite that did it.” Shit, I hadn’t even hashed things out that far in my head. I tried to get my body to wake up enough to make sense of it, but it was like struggling against quicksand. “And that should make me feel better because…” “Well, it takes your decision-making out of the equation. You chose to sleep with him. But the bite was out of your control. So you couldn’t have done anything differently.” I was way too cashed to try and hop onto his train of thought. “Yeah, sure.” “Think about it. If you had no choice, then you can’t take any of the blame.” I wondered if kissing him would shut him up, but I felt too tapped out to move. I sighed, and felt the blanket rise over my nose and mouth, and settle back down. He snuggled his face into the crook of my neck. Sweet, sweet Michael. Deadly Michael. I’d been combing through my vocabulary for a word that mean lust-smacked. And boneless. And fucked up, and scared, and invincible. But I’d come up emptyhanded. All I could say was, “I love you, you know.” Because that was about as close as I could come with words. I felt Michael smile as the daylight leached my consciousness away.

Jordan Castillo Price Jordan Castillo Price grew up in the steel mill warrens of Buffalo, NY, spent some formative drinking years in Chicago, and migrated north to small-town rural Wisconsin once she realized she was going to kill the next person who bumped into her with a shopping cart. She did a six-year stint in art school and played bass in a punk band that crashed and burned just before their first CD was pressed. At least she got a cool boyfriend out of the deal, since she ran off with the drummer. Jordan has a weekly show on erotica writing tips and techniques at www.packingheat.net. She suspects some of her listeners aren’t much interested in writing, and just tune in to hear her say naughty words. Readers interested in freebies, snippets, and peeks into the writing process should check out JCP News, a monthly newsletter where Jordan posts links to free eBooks and serialized M/M stories. Visit www.jordancastilloprice.com to sign up.