Here, In This Place: An Origin Tale

EAT THIS FLESH

CONTINUED

He cannot really speak of death. Of course, he cannot remember it. It is not sleeping. You are not off dreaming. To be dead is to be… not.

Later he would see others Made, but what happened when he was made, Chris could not say. If he saw a white light, he does not remember. If he went to heaven or purgatory, he could not say. Dealing death and having died, for a Drinker, death was still a mystery.

Even having passed through death we do not know what it is.

    

When I woke up, everything assaulted me. Even though it was dark, the darkness was too much. I could see everything. Everything rocked and reeled. The low noises were too loud, every movement was too much. I opened my mouth and began to scream, but a hand lowered over my mouth gently, and my head was placed to a breast.

“Calm, calm,” a voice whispered, soothingly. “Calm, calm, there there.

“Drink,” he murmured.

And obeying, like any infant, not even thinking of the strangeness, I bit into his chest and felt Kruinh wince with a pain that he said, and I have experienced, was also a pleasure, and I felt, for the first time, the joy of blood entering my mouth, some of it, yes, going down my throat, but most of it saturating tongue and gums and roof of mouth, being absorbed directly into me, as if my body was a sponge.

“Yes, yes,” Kruinh crooned, “Drink, drink your fill. You must have your first drinking. You are a child again. You are a baby. Drink.”

Kruinh taught Chris many things,  first that he was now a member of his clan, like any of his natural children.  And there were also things he did not learn right away or, for that matter, within the next century. Chris had come into his new life in the hull of a slave ship bound for Hispaniola, and by the time it landed far from Port au Prince, there was not a white man on it save himself. Black men landed on the beach and immediately went into the hills. Chris lived with them for some time, and there were other places he went, other adventures, but in time he was drawn to America. It was the new and savage land, but new and savage because of the Europeans, not because of the many who had lived there for hundreds and thousands of years.

“And we will go there,” Kruinh promised in the heat of the hills in the land that its people called Hyati. “We will go, and there will be rich feasting for you, and for me. I could pose as your slave. You would be my master.”

“I would not have it!”

Kruinh laughed and Chris could not tell if he was serious or not.

“We could,” Kruinh went on. “It would be the best way. What a harvest we would have.”

“Will have,” Chris said, kissing him. How many times since his making had Chris Ashby’s lips been on Kruinh’s body, had his teeth sunk into his breast and drank his blood, and in the intensity of the sharing how many times had Kruinh’s teeth grazed his neck as well?

In the Haitian night they kissed fully, again and again, and Kruinh felt in himself that old unwinding. He was fluid now, and so was Chris Ashby, and in the drowsy heat, the scent of orchids and verbenum and jasmine filling the night hair, the lamp in the room making a low amber light, the two of them stumbled to the bed, pulling at boots, and trews, at the great white shirts with their starched cuffs. All this cumbersome foolishness of wealthy barbarians who wore wigs and powder to cover up for the evil they did. Stripped of these things, they were only two wild creatures, naked before each other, joined together, lips pressed to lips, mouths pressed into shoulders, drawing blood and pleasure one from the other.

The first time he made love to Sunny, Kruinh had surprised himself. Kruinh had never known a father. Osmunde had been killed before he was born, and it was as a boy, Kruinh had been dressed like a prince at Visastruta in times long past, stood up before his family, before his sisters and their husbands, and informed that he was the Lord of Visasttuta, prince of this clan. When his grandfather had gone into the sleeping death. Kruinh was king, and at such a young age. Young for what he was. Siblings in the world of Drinkers were not as mortal siblings. His closest in age, Miriamne, the baby of the family, was thirty two when he was born. Magdalene was over two hundred. From a tender age he had learned to command a household of old and very often recalcitrant vampires. By the time he was the age Magdalene was at his birth, he had put many of them to death.

So the surprise with Sunny was the lightness he felt. Every time Kruinh made love he was surprised that he wasn’t a stone, that he could still feel innocent, that he and another could be naked and tender before each other. He was surprised that after so much of what he had seen and what he had done, he could fall asleep in Alexander Komnsky’s arms, have the back of his neck kissed over and over.

Chris was right. He and Sunny were much alike, and Kruinh longed to take Sunny into orgy. When one loved another, what you had with him was everything, but it deepened when you could bring two whom you loved together. Kruinh was not sure this worked with mortals, or that it should, but the first time he had lain with Lawrence, being with him was like being Christopher being with him. It was like being with the version of Laurie Chris knew, and it was like being with his own private Laurie too. Being with the two of them at once was an experience upon an experience upon an experience, an orgy not only of sex, but of emotion and thought and persons and blood, and yes, blood. It seemed that when mortals made love it was not quite like this, but when drinkers came together, they became each other. If he and Chris and Sunny and Laurie were all to be together for a night, the experience would be echo upon echo upon echo. They would be bound in a way that even were there not lingering feelings of resentment, one so recently mortal as Alexander Kominsky could never have borne.

The night that Sunny said, “I want to introduce you to my friends,” Kruinh understood that something was about to happen. He understood it with the eagerness of a boy. He climbed on the back of Sunny’s motorcycle, and as the sun melted before them, they rode to Rawlston. Dan was playing at the Grey Note, and when he came off stage he sat down at the table with them.

“Look at you!” he said to Kruinh. “I’ve never seen you look so young.”

Kruinh loved Brad and Nehru. He had always loved humanity and especially thinking humanity. Dan returned to the house in Glencastle, but Kruinh could not resist going up to the apartment that reminded him of the old coffee shops in Constantinople and in Baghdad which had found their way into Europe and eventually, much altered, into 1960’s America. He could never resist the electricity of a coffee shop and late night conversation.

Everything that needed to be said had been said. There was no drinking, no smoking, and only a minimum of light. Brad was still talking about politics, rent increases, poverty, resistance when, lazily, he paid attention to Kruinh, whose hand was unzipping his jeans. He helped him, working them down, pulling down his Jockeys. On the other side of Kruinh, Nehru’s trousers were already all the way down, and Kruinh was working him too. Now, Nehru whispered in Kruinh’s ear, and then Kruinh bent down and took Brad in his mouth, and Brad closed his eyes and plunged his hands to Kruinh’s shaven head. He opened his eyes to look at the ceiling, and then to look to Nehru, who leaned forward to kiss him. Nehru’s mouth on his, Kruinh’s mouth on him.

In the dimly lit apartment, in the early autumn night, things happened slowly. They had not closed the blinds or the curtains. The windows were high and they were high up. As Kruinh undressed and Nehru helped to undress both him and Brad, Sunny remembered his first time with the both of them, before Rosamunde and before Gabriel, and his penis rose in anticipation. On the soft carpet before the sofa, he took Kruinh. They both moaned and even Nehru moaned as Brad buried his thick cock inside him.         

The four of them moved on the bed, on the floor, on the edge of the bed, between bed and floor. Kruinh was harder than he could remember ever being in all of his long years, and what long years they were! The sex thrill was at the base of his balls. Across the length of Brad and Nehru’s striving, mortal bodies, he gazed into Sunny’s blue eyes and those eyes burned him.    

That night in sleep they rolled together and embraced, woke up, rejoiced to be together,  and embraced again.

Brad Long needed no alarm clock. Even on days when he wasn’t going to work but going to piss right back to sleep, he always woke at 6:26. Beside him lay Kruinh who climbed on Brad, squeezed his shoulders, mussed his hair. Brad rose to go to the elegant bathroom. He saw Kruinh naked, stretched out like a starfish, his buttocks and thighs rounded and strong, his head now between Nehru’s legs as he sucked him into morning. In the bathroom Brad could hear Nehru’s moans which were becoming cries. He wanted to see it. Now he could hear a new voice, a new sound of pleasure, surely Sunny who had been sleeping like a white marble angel beside them. Brad thrilled at the sounds of clapping at the elegant way in which Nehru, on hands and knees moved his body, at the fierce rhythm in which Kruinh fucked him. He could barely stay away. His penis arched up like a sausage. His knees trembled. Full of lust and love, Brad moved toward the bed. Sunny, who lay on his side watching, at Brad’s approach, made a swift movement where he slipped his fingers in the crystal ointment vial beside him and thrust the thick oil into himself, and then rose on his hands and knees, quivering as Brad, who had circled the bed, climbed onto it and knelt behind him. While Nehru’s cries grew more frantic with the increased clapping of Kruinh fucking him, Brad and Sunny both groaned while Brad entered him.

Here they were, altogether, all of these memories and centuries of memories before. Only a little while ago, Kruinh had lain deep asleep, dead asleep, beside Sunny  Komisnky, and then had come the alarm, and now here they all were, Laurie, Dan, Chris, Mother, his sisters, all but Rhodias. Here was his daughter, wailing on the floor while he knelt supporting her, their bodies rocking, and now the servants arrived, and they placed the corpse of David Lawry on a bier, and then, silently, they lifted it and carried him through the dining hall to the silent throne room. As other servants arrived to wash the blood from the flag stones, Hagar led her clan as they followed behind David’s body.

Making was never certain, and this Making, making one who was unconscious, who had said nothing, was very uncertain. Death was death. While Tanitha quieted herself, Miriamne, Hagar, and a clearly disturbed Asenath moved forward, stripping the bloody clothes from David’s body. Servants brought water and herbs, myrrh and frankincense, and carefully, singing wordless tunes, the women washed David, dipping cloths in water and tenderly running them down his arms, over his long fingers, across his pale face. They bound his jaw, and covered his eyes in coins. They bound his feet and cleaned his nails. Hagar held the feet of the man she had so recently met and kissed them tenderly, and Dan felt a sob rise in his throat, shaking his head.

“It’s going to be alright, right?” Dan said.

Chris looked truly troubled, but said nothing.

“All of us have died,” Laurie said what Chris was thinking, “but none of us have ever seen our death.”

When the women were done, they left David’s body naked, but for the feet binding and the jaw binding and the square cloth covering his sex. They draped a great linen shroud over his body. The men came now with other servants, setting up tall brass candlestands, two at David’s feet, two at his head. Kruinh and Hagar lit tall beeswax candles and set them in those candlestands, and Chris helped Dan fill the incense pot with myrrh and set it alight on the little table before David’s feet. Someone else had already taken the old bloodied clothes with which the women had attended him away.

They remained only a little while, surrounding the bier, the incense filling the hall, and then each turned and left the great throne room which was now illuminated only by the those four candles around that body. Tanitha lay weaker than she had ever felt in her father’s arms.

Miriamne said, “All we can do is wait.”

They found her in the throne room. How huge it was, so much larger it seemed than it did yesterday, what a great grey space with a shadow of a throne like a gash on the wall, and past the middle of the room, catching all attention, the bier veiled over the outlines of a body, and the candles lit at either end of it. The incense pot was burning low, and just some time ago, Asenath had returned to refill it. Tanitha sat in black by the body, and no one told her to come away.

Not long ago what they had all assumed had been discovered. Rosamunde was gone.

“We are going after them,” Laurie said. “We will bring them back.”

Sunny, Chris, Daniel and the cousins who had stayed away from the feast last night had dispensed with normal clothing and were in spiked leather, carrying wicked whips, daggers and chains.

Chris Ashby said, “We will bring them back here, and they will be punished.”

Not looking at them, her voice far away, Tanitha nodded.

“Yes,” she said.

“Do that.”