Here, In This Place: An Origin Tale

EATEN BY OTHERS

CONCLUSION

Dan Rawlinson was not a stupid person. He knew it because once, Kruinh had looked at him after some event and said, “You are not a stupid man, Daniel.”

It had been a reproof because Dan felt it easy to be happy go lucky and joyful. He found it easy to not be serious and not be taken seriously. This worked superficially in music, though in life his best friend Myron had reminded him, “If we want this to work. Even a little, we’ve got to be serious.”

Dan did not like the serious side of himself. It was heavy. All the grim things belonged to that Daniel. It was, in a way, something Dan didn’t feel worthy of. When Kruinh had looked at him and said, “You are not a stupid man,” Dan had felt embarrassed, seen through. Dan was aware of what he had always been, good looking, well received, likeably, not a wavemaker. Not serious.

His first time at Visastruta, he had recently been made a drinker, and was away from the world he knew and the people from whom he was hiding the truth. Dan Rawlinson was the son of Lucy Wheeler and Amir Rawlinson, but as the telltale name Amir suggested, his father was the product of a very white Sam Rawlinson and a very Lebanese Abila Haidar. She was, in fact, as Lebanese as Mahmoud Wallouwa, who had fled Beirut with a French wife, and under much reduced circumstances come to America where, for the sake of convenience, he allowed Wallouwa to be Wheeler and then had four children, one of them being Dan Rawlinson’s mother.

His brother and one of his cousins excitedly sent him Lebanese dancing and music they’d seen on YouTube and with equal excitement Dan watched these things. Nowadays he posted on social media about his pride in social diversity and his own Lebanesse heritage, and when left on his own, he would get quiet in his room and take out the hookah another cousin had sent him. He would play Umm Kulthum—Egyptian, but beloved by his grandparents, and rejoice in singing the words low to himself, mastering the particular guttural inflections of Arabic.

 

As'al rouhak as'al qalbak
qabl ma tes'al eih gheerni
ana gheerni azaabi fi hobak
baad ma kaan amli masabarni
ghadrak beyyi
athar feyyi
watgheerat showya showya
atgheerat wa mosh bi eedee
wabdeet atwa haneeni ileik
wa akra daafi wa sabri aleik
wa akhtarak abaad
warfat aanad…

 

But he knew what they were doing even while they did it. Dan remembered being a freshman at Saint Ignatius, and hearing someone call Tony Shammi a towelhead. Tony had wooly brown hair, brown eyes and brown skin. He was obviously Arab. Dan had cringed and looked at himself, his straight hair, his ivory skin, had realized for the first time that he’d always wanted people to think he was white. He would have said it in a different way. He would have said he wanted people to think he was “just like them” but that wasn’t it. The moment he cringed when they called Tony a camel jockey and a towelhead, and he just kept walking and said nothing was the moment that Dan understood himself very well, and he needed to stop understanding himself. So he gave up on reflection.

The Arabic pronunciations he was proud of getting right, that he sometimes corrected Myron on when he tried to sing along, had embarrassed him in his childhood. Now he was embarrassed of his embarrassment. Looking too closely just made him squirm in his goodlooking skin. Everything about him he had been proud of for the wrong reasons. No one had ever said how good it was that his skin was so white, or his chocolate colored hair so straight, that he took after the white side and the light Lebanese side. No one had to. And of course, they were Catholics, most Lebanese people were some form of Christian. The Rawlinsons weren’t like those Muslims. They were American.

Of course, these days things were just the opposite. He found himself trying to prove how Lebanese he was, what an Arab he was, how much he knew, how much he wasn’t just a white guy. How he had culture. He wondered if Black people or anyone else who wore their ethnicity on their face had this confusion. He’d never say that was an easy way. It wasn’t. There was a reason his family had wanted to hide, a reason he had hidden, but this not knowing what you were, this feeling you were being called out even if you weren’t wasn’t easy either.

Those issues extended quickly to his sex life. From the awkward and embarrassing way in which Myron had initiated him into it in the backseat of a car with a college girl they had both shared, to the night he’d been with Rosamunde, except with Eileen, sex was an escape. Especially after Eileen, it was a means of proving that he had it, whatever it was. That a girl would see him on stage, looking sensitive while playing that guitar, putting all of his private feelings on paper and then giving them to the world, and later that night she would shout as he fucked her in the backseat of his car, gave him some sort of validation, and Dan could only say some sort because he couldn’t explain it. Explaining it would mean looking.

One would think becoming a Drinker would change all of this. It didn’t. Everything in him became magnified, all of his shames and insecurities. Only Kruinh seemed to see them. All of his senses were heightened. He had been made in the midst of fucking Rosamunde, and when he had come into this new life, he kept doing it. He left because he knew she had a hold over him. Even when he was finally in the house on Brummel Street, for some time it was a geas that Kruinh had put on him that kept him from seeking her out.

“I don’t understand it,” Dan said.

“It is the bloodbond,” Kruinh said. “There is nothing as intimate as the bond between Maker and Made. Except perhaps the bonds between two drinkers in the same family, made by the same maker or by close kin. We drink from each other. That is not infrequent. We are closer to each other, have more feeling one for another than mortals are used to, can even see into each other. For that reason the bloodbond often becomes a sexual one.”

Kruinh said it clinically and without embarrassment, so Dan felt sufficiantely un embarrassed. He began to have sex in a more conscious way with the women he met. He was surprised to find himself thinking about men as well. He thought about them, but he wasn’t ready for them. If it ever happened it would happen, but this was not the time. Kruinh had warned him of that too, that drinkers, having less of a need for sexual reproduction, were often less—or more—than heterosexual. Dan remembered that Kruinh had known a wife, but Elisaveda seemed to be the only woman who had ever been in Kruinh’s bed. Quiet Chris Ashby, whom he had made three centuries ago, was often his bedmate.  Perhaps Lawrence, who loved Chris and loved women, was as well. To Daniel though, both Kruinh and Tanitha were the father and older sister he had needed so badly, who had taken him in that night when he was a boy and saved him from Rosamunde when no one else could. The love he felt for them was burning and intense, violent. He had surprised himself once, snapping the neck of someone who had once come at Kruinh in a meeting of Drinkers. But his love for them was not sexual.

That was why, when he had come to Visastruta, he was so surprised by his connection to Miriamne. The moment her dark eyes had fallen on him, her mind had poured into his.  He had been in her presense for less than five minutes before his whole body was trembling. He had known lust and love and desire, all of those things, but he had never known this terrible pull, this sort of burning that would have been embarrassing if it had not been explained to him. On that trip it had only been him and Kruinh. Miriamne had calmly shown him the central part of the palace and then shown him his rooms. In the midst of talking, the dignified vampire queen had suddenly gone flustered.

“We cannot go on like this,” she said, breathlessly. She sounded almost embarrassed. “I am so sorry.”

Dan’s jeans and underwear were down around his ankles. He was stiff as a board. It happened so quickly. He raised her gown and pressed her against the door. Gathering her in his newly strong arms, breathing out of his nose like a bull, he fucked her quickly and she cried out while he did. He screamed as he came.

They did not separate. He was still deep in her, blinking.

“That’s never happened,” he said, his mouth on her shoulder. “I’m embarrassed.”

She reached behind her, stroking his hair.

“Don’t be,” she said tenderly. “It will make things easier between us now.”

“Will it?”

“If we don’t pretend it didn’t happen. Why don’t you take off your clothes and we’ll get to know each other.”

Miriamne was sensible and right. Much of Dan’s sexual embarrassment had come from fucking and running, but staying the afternoon with Kruinh’s sister, they had come to know each other. As the time for supper approached, he was still surprised by himself, but not ashamed.

He wasn’t surprised this night, either, when he rose from bed and Miriamne reached out for him.

“You’ve worn me out!” Dan ran a hand through his hair, which was sticking up.

“I need to stretch my legs, not just my back. But if you would have me, I’ll come back.”

Miriamne turned on her side and smiled at him, heavy dark curls falling over her breasts. She was, he remembered, the aunt of Rosamunde, something which had existed long before the drinker who had made him, and the love he had with Miriamne seemed a corrective to what had gone on with that poisonous creature.

“When you come back,” Miriamne said, turning to lie on her stomach, “and I am not saying you should hurry, it would be wonderful if you would bring that absolutely delicious freezing melon juice.”

“You could get it for your refrigerator here.”

“I could,” she said as Dan was leaving, “but it makes one lazy to have everything within fingers’ reach.”

Dan was not going to argue with the logic that he was the one bringing the juice back. Rather he walked through the long and ancient halls of the north wing and on his way downstairs, a door opened and, shirtless, hair touseled—and his hair was never tousled—out came Laurie from what should have been Asenath’s rooms.

Laurie immediately blinked at him.

“Well!” Dan smiled.

“Shut up,” Laurie said, turning red.

“There’s no need to be embarrassed, Brother.”

“Then why are you looking at me like that, and why are you here anyway?”

“I’m here for the same reason you’re here,” Dan said. “Well, not the completely the same. Same reason. Different sister.”

“You’re gross.”

“The difference is I’m quite in awe of Miri, and I don’t think you like Asenath at all.”

“Do not,” Laurie, was pulling on his Oxford shirt and buttoning it, “presume to understand what I like and what I don’t.”

“Alright, brother”

“Why do you do that?” Laurie said, scowling at him.

“Call you brother?”

“No. Insist on annoying me?”

“I think it is you who insist on being annoyed.”

“Daniel,” Laurie buttoned his cuffs as they reached the staircase. “I love you, but—”

“You love me!”

“Don’t be an ass. I love you, but I don’t get you.”

The two of them trotted down the steps, and then, giving away an older brotherly impulse, Laurie momentarily threw a hand over Dan’s face.

“Don’t look!”

“Laurie,” Dan murmured, his fingers reaching up to take Laurie’s hand away.

“Stay right behind me,” Laurie whispered, removing his hand, and racing quickly to the great foyer.

When Dan reached the foyer, he was in a panic, Laurie was leaning over David Lawry’s body in a pool of blood, and a knife was planted deep in his chest. Dark blood soaked the tee shirt he wore, and bright blood painted his throat and chin.

“Dave!” Dan shook him, but his eyes were hollow.

“Bring him to Tanitha,” Laurie said. His face was grey. They knew he was the one. He was their family. He would have been with her.

Dan moved to lift David, but Laurie said:

“No, no. Don’t move him. I’ll sound the alarm.”

    

 

They came with the speed of vampires. Tanitha fell to her knees, wailing, while Sunny stood beside Ktuinh, furious. Even Hagar was present. Not present, though this was not the moment to say it, were Rhodias or Gabriel.

While Tanitha screamed it was Hagar, all in dark colors, who knelt, and passed a hand over David.

“Granddaughter,” she said, precisely. And she repeated this when Tanitha did not hear.

Shaking, her face wet with tears and blood, Tanitha looked at Hagar.

“This one,” Hagar pronounced, “is strong.

“He is not dead.”

Tanitha stopped.

“He is not dead,” Hagar said, again.

“We can heal him,” Tanitha whispered.

“I was a healer,” Hagar said, “No witch, no sorceress, but a healer. The only way to heal him is to take the blade out and that will kill him instantly. You would need a sorcerer and we do not have one here.”

“You know what to do,” Kruinh said.

Tanitha looked up at him.

“Tan,” he said, firmly, “there isn’t much time. You know what to do.”

“But I’ve never done it,” she said.

“You know the way, though,” said Kruinh.

For a moment, little girl like, Tanitha wanted to beg her father, “Do it for me. Do it for me and take the blame if blame should come.” But there was not time for this. Even now the time was slipping away.

Tanitha Tzepesh nodded, and now she bent low to David. There was the pulse. There, just barely, was the breath.

“David,” she whispered, “do you wish to live or die?”

The ancient words.

He did not respond.

“If he regrets it or we regret it, if it goes wrong, we can amend it later,” Miriamne told her niece.

While she gripped the blade in his chest, and rocked it out of him, Tanitha sank her teeth into the throat of David Lawry. Like a curtain her black hair hid them both while she drained the remaining blood from him until light erupted in her, ichor erupted from her teeth, from her not open mouth, filling David’s body, and the two of them were locked together in conception until, at last, covered in his blood, the dark vampire bride lay weak and sorrowful beside the pale body of her dead groom.