Here, In This Place: An Origin Tale

P  A  R  T

F  O  U  R

 

VILE

AND

GLORIOUS BODIES

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S E V E N T E E N

EAT THIS FLESH

“We always come together for one another.”

-Chris Ashby

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“Do you think I am stupid?” Kruinh demanded.

“Master?”

“Do you think after all my years my mind is slipping?”

They had been driving back from that desolate neighborhood in Lassador where they had wiped out Rosamunde’s ill made clan. Kruinh had just exacted the promise from Sunny to return to them in a few days, and then let him go off on his own.

“Kruinh, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

Kruinh was seized with a sudden desire to knock Lawrence Malone in the back of his head and, probably, Laurie already knew this. They drove on in relative silence.

Tanitha, having just introduced David to the rest of them, was rejoicing with David that Sunny lived and perfectly fine with him running around on his own. Chris and Laurie did not trust it and Kruinh was put out with them. The house remained quiet, at a stalemate for the rest of the day. They dozed fitfully until the evening, and Kruinh served dinner. He and Christopher and Lawrence ate quietly, and then Kruinh nodded as if to say the dishes did not do themselves and left, threading the winding corridors to his set of rooms at the back of the long house.

He did not shut the door, and when Christopher and Lawrence found him, he looked up at them from the deep, plush chair where he was reading.

“What?” Kruinh demanded.

The two of them looked like contrite schoolboys and since, even in their actual youths, they had almost never been schoolboys let alone contrite, he said, “What is going on with the two of you?”

As usual, Chris Ashby was in jeans and a short sleeve workshirt, and Laurie was dressed to go into the office. It was Chris, the oldest, who looked like the youngest tonight, who came to him first.

“We’re sorry,” he said.

“We’re sorry,” Laurie echoed.

“We’re sorry,” Chris had said again, his voice a breath as he kissed Kruinh on the lips. “We’re sorry.”

“Sorry.”

“So sorry.”

“Don’t be angry.”

“Forgive.”

They breathed as they circled Kruinh, kissing him as a hand found his sex and cupped him firmly.

“We love you,” Chris whispered.

Kruinh heard the jiggling of a belt, felt the undoing of his own.

Despite his irritation, he felt his desire rising. Despite his thoughts on Alexander Kominsky, this new arrival, Christopher and Laurie were here right now, and as Chris kissed him deeply, he was unbuttoning his work shirt, and Laurie, in nothing but a shirt that was barely hanging off of him, was going to his knees, working at Kruinh’s trousers.

“We used to have this all the time,” Chris said in a voice that was at once sad, and delighted, “and after tomorrow, when he arrives, we may not have it again.”

They brought wine to the room, heavy, fortified, the kind that sets even a Drinker off his head. They brought the fume bottles, capped and cut from fine glasses. They set them down. Kruinh closed his eyes and felt the suction of Laurie’s mouth working away on him, slurping noisily. He was growing bigger and bigger the more Laurie worked him, and now he stumbled out of his clothes. Naked, six legs, six arms, two brown, four white, a kissing thing of two tall men and a smaller on, they stumbled to the great bed.

He kissed Laurie quickly, kissed him long and deep and could almost hear Chris’s whimper of desire. But Kruinh desired Laurie right now, and the strength of his kiss and the feel of his hair, and now Kruinh was running his hands up and down Lawrence Malone’s body, inhaling the pungent scent of his cologne. He pressed his face to Laurie’s chest, inhaled deeply.

He turned around, and Chris Ashby was standing up, and his face was lost in shadow so Kruinh could not see his expression, only the fullness of his lips, his high white cheekbones. Kruinh unbuttoned Chris’s jeans and then unzipped them and took out his heavy penis, With care, gently now, he began to massage it from half life to full life, watching it rise like a long arc. An ancient love, deep in his mouth swallowed Chris. With the liquid rising like a dewdrop from its round tip, with his spit, with the oil from the ancient vial by the table, Kruinh polished Chris’s cock, watching the veins rise up on the shaft of his penis, watching the head swell. Kruinh felt Laurie’s hair brushing his shoulders, felt Laurie’s mouth on his throat, on his back, felt Laurie’s arms embracing him, heard Chris’s jeans dropping. They remained like this before Chris stepped out of his jeans, lifting up his work shirt with a groan, and they watched him, tall, white gold hair sticking up, penis bobbing before Kruinh reached out and drew the long tall Drinker into his arms.

From the old plush chair, Kruinh watched, Chris, semi on hands and knees, fucking Laurie, watched the undulation of his beautiful, white buttocks, the pulsing opening and closing of his thighs as he rode Laurie, listened to Laurie’s cries and Chris’s low satisfied moans. He loved seeing what Chris Ashby looked like when he was fucking another man. When Chris was fucking him, of course, he could only feel. Kruinh stood up and ran his hands over Chris’s ass, caressed him, ran fingers up the small of his back, rubbing his shoulders, kissing his old friend, and creation over and over on his dear shoulders. He came around to the front of them. Chris’s face was indistinct with sated lust, Laurie’s eyes were rolled back while Chris crammed him, and suddenly Kruinh leaned in and took Chris’s head and they kissed and Chris’s tongue went deep into his and the harder he kissed Kruinh, the harder he fucked Laurie and Laurie crammed the blanket into his mouth to muffle his scream.

Kruinh stood up straight and parted from Chris’s mouth the same time he inserted his penis in Laurie’s…

He lay between those two, one dark and slightly hairy with Mediterranean blood in the his olive skin, the other red lipped, platinum haired and snow white, Laurie holding him, kissing him up and down lazily, Chris sucking on his lips, thrusting his tongue in his mouth. Even now, on this saddest of nights when David Lawry is surrounded by blood, Kruinh can still feel Laurie inside of him, the gentle thrusting that became the steady pounding.

This night they are gathered together in sorrow, but that night they moved in concert. In the amber light of a late summer morning, Chris kneels over him as Kruinh makes his cock grow. All night, but for the moment he sucked him, he has given himself mostly to Laurie and let Chris and Laurie have each other. Deftly, Kruinh opens the glass vial, spills thick oil and rubs it inside of him as he has made Chris’s cock glossy with it. He opens an intricately cut bottle and deeply inhales its fumes, the warmth dissolving his solidity and opening his anus like a flower while he turns over and Chris murmurs, kissing him, “Master, I have to fuck you.”

“Master… my Maker… Father I have… to fuck you.”

They both groan and Chris presses inside of him, the great transgression, the great given, the Made to take the Maker.

Kruinh is lying face town, transfixed, completely penetrated while Chris swells inside of him, long white hands grasping Kruinh’s while Laurie watches mystery of two bodies pressing, stretching into one flesh. Chris is throbbing in him and now Laurie moves away to sit in the chair to get high on cocaine and the fumes in the bottles, to drink the last of the wine, to stroke himself and watch the surrender knowing, as the bodies of Chris and Kruinh bunch together, tighter and tighter, this moment is for them. He is satisfied to watch bodies pressing together, now bouncing on the bed, to see Chris’s long white body pound Kruinh’s smaller caramel one and know that, even while Chris pounds, he is pounded, even while Kruinh surrenders, he triumphs. Only such a mighty lord could freely shout, gasp, scream as Kruinh does. Laurie is honored, watching his own penis rise higher and fuller, to be witness to this. Everything in this night has led to this moment. There is no quietness on this bed. There is cursing, shouting, sobbing, rejoicing in the creaking bedsprings. Laurie is scarcely conscious of stroking himself. As someone almost screams, as bodies bunch, he comes, an arc of semen erupting from his penis, caught golden in the morning light. As Laurie is taken on the edge of orgasm, he sees Chris’s face changed, his kneeling body looking as if he’s been stabbed while he comes outside of Kruinh, a white stream to match Kruinh’s own.

In the early morning, when it was time for sleep indeed, when Laurie slept deeply on the other side of them, the back of Kruinh’s hand touched Christopher’s cheek. His eyes fluttered, boylike, and Kruinh ran a hand over the slong sides of his slender body, smiling at the love he felt for long feet and long hands, touching palms he knew so well. He was surprised, as usual, by the strength in Chris’s arms, surprised when Chris drew him close.

“I wonder if you don’t like this Sunny because he is like… and unlike me.”

“Eh?”

“When I was with Malachy, I thought how he was like and unlike you. You remind me of him, but you remind me of yourself. It may be that this Sunny reminds you a little of me, but mostly of himself. It may even be,” Chris said, thoughfully, “that I have always reminded you of him, only he never existed until now.”

“You may not be wrong,” Kruinh’s voice was quiet. “But I love you. I love you for your tenderness, for your strangeness. I love you for your youth, and your ancientness. I love you for your violence.”

“After Melek died, there you were,” Chris said. “And after Malachy, you again. We always come together for one another.”

Kruinh rubbed the spot over Chris’s heart, feeling its strong beat.

“That’s who we are.”

They moved through the hills, and the singing went on while the conch blew, piercing the night air.

 

Se mwen menm ki Pitit Bondye a,

yon fwa wè li toujou konnen!

 

Moun ki wè m 'wè papa a

Moun ki wè papa a wè mwen

Vreman vre, mwen menm ak papa a se Youn!

 

Tonight they came down through the hills, black and brown, Indian and African, and white, poor English, Irish, Scot, screaming with torches and machetes, and they came upon the plantations, burning, torching, and the power moved through Chris’s body. He was no Drinker, not yet, but this was more than the power of a man. This was the power of a man filled with magic and desire for a witch, and he hacked his way through overseers, always watching Melek on his horse, dropping his machete on those below like Ogun himself, and the words of the song continued in his head.

Thus it was that blood invaded his vision as Melek was struck and fell from his horse, and shouting, Chris lost his concentration. But as he turned to duck the blade, it struck him, and then another, and then another, and sword blows slicing him, battering his head and cutting up his body, his vision went red and then dark and then he knew nothing.

“Can you do anything?” he heard a voice above him asking.

“No,” the woman said, “but you can.”

The other voice, Kruinh’s, said, “That is not lightly done.”

“And this is no light thing,” the woman said.

Chris opened his eyes and, opening his mouth, coughed up blood.

“Wha….:” he began, his mouth thick with blood, his chest sliced open many times over.

“What?”

And then he called, “Melek!”

“Dead,” Kruinh said simply.

“And soon you will be too,” the woman said. Her white hair was in an aureole about head. It was The Maid.

Chris’s eyes widened and then went dim. He coughed again.

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” The Maid said.

White faced, green faced now, Chris turned to Kruinh, and Kruinh said, “She is right. And if you make the choice, if the choice does not suit you, you can turn away from it, step out in the sun and end your life.”

Chris nodded rapidly, coughing up more blood, though he wasn’t entirely sure what he was nodding to.

Kruinh bent down toward him, and for some reason, now Chris smelled the blood all over him. This close, Kruinh’s teeth were most visible.

“Do you wish to live?” Kruinh asked, “or to die?”

And Chris gurgled through the blood in his throat, “Live!”

No sooner had he done so then the fangs, precise and sharp, were in his throat, and blood was being drained from him, clearing his throat and his nostrils so he could nearly breathe again, so that he was filled with relief even as something else entirely new entered, setting his veins, setting all of him, on fire.

While Chris watched Tanitha lay David’s body down, he remembered:

When you Make you Make with both the lower and the upper teeth and so, when Kruinh made me, I felt the pain of his teeth in my throat, the headiness of my life slipping away. But next I felt the pain of the lower teeth, and my body was filling with that thing which is life to a Drinker, but final death to one who is mortal. And so, my last minutes as a man, as a mortal human, were in the strong grip of Kruinh’s arms, my throat caught in his jaws, pain lacing through my arteries and I…did not drift off to sleep, for it is not really like sleep...

At Visastruta Castle, near the end of the night before the great darkness of first morning, Chris Ashby felt Laurie’s hand, the hand of his sometimes lover and always brother, who had filled the castle with the screaming of Asenath while he fucked her, who would not have found David unless he had been fucking her. Laurie’s hands were so tender in his.

Chris, looking at the mystery of David Lawry’s dead body, whispered:

“Once… I died.”