The Wicked: A Love Story

TEN

LOREAL

AND

LAWRENCE

AND ESPECIALLY

DAN RAWLINSON

Takeyour fill of love.

-The Book of the Law

She came to Lawrence Malone, kissing him on both cheeks. Dan could see how boylike, boylike as Laurie had never been, Laurie was, his hand tenderly holding Loreal’s, his eyes full of her. But then, how could your eyes not be full of her? The scent of her hair that was candy and that was spice. That was like a flower, Dan settled on, yes a flower, because there was thyme in that hair and in that skin, the flesh of a twenty three year old that would one day be the flesh of a fifty year old, flesh that was not locked in time.

Before Laurie had been able to introduce him, Loreal had fairly squealed, “You’re here!” and left Laurie’s embrace, to tae Dan in one of her own.

Dan was not sure if he loved Loreal because Laurie did, or if he loved her on his own, and it didn’t really matter. There really was no “his own” anymore. There was no separating him and Laurie, at least not now,

“Does it ever end?” Dan had asked Chris.

“Not if you don’t want it to,” he said. “It doesn’t have to. Do you want it to?”

“No,” Dan said. “I’ve just … never felt like this before.”

“Neither has he,” Chris said. “Look at him.”

Laurie was in jeans and a sweatshirt that almost looked appropriate, joking and laughing and Chris said, “He was bound with me, but I’m not a fun person.”

Dan snorted.

“I think you’re pretty fun.”

Chris shrugged.

“But I am older, much older. When you were bound together, he became younger, gentler, happier. More like you. It’s a nice thing to see.”

But Dan, blood drinker that he was, was still not used to the bonding. He was happy, but stood aside from the happiness wondering at it. Since that first night after he had killed Evangeline and taken her blood, after he had fed from Kruinh and come back high on old blood, and he and Laurie had made love, things had changed for him. He had never thought of being with another man, not seriously, and from that night all he thought about was making love to Laurie. All he thought about was the look of love in Laurie Malone’s dark eyes and what his older brother felt like leaning over him, kissing him tenderly. It was strange to feel this way, very strong, for they were strong, Laurie feeding on the ancient blood Dan had gained, and then Dan feeding on Laurie’s. Dan was immensely powerful as he had never been, but so vulnerable, so soft, so protected in Laurie’s arms.

He was still surprised by how he had given himself to another man, given himself to Laurie, and then Laurie had given himself to him. He was surprised by the entry where he never thought an entry would be. There was a wonder, a terror. Was he homophobic? Was everyone a little homophobic at core, and wasn’tthis surrender, this being entered, worthy of a little fear?

But beyond all that, stranger than this, was Loreal.

Dan could not pretend to have ever, in his mortal life, been in anything but a normal relationship. He knew that once he’d loved a girl and then that girl and a friend had ended up together and he had felt betrayed. There was nothing complicated in that and, indeed.

But Dan had known all about Loreal already, seen this girl, no this witch, in Laurie’s apartment in Chicago. Even teased Laurie about her, but the night he had come to Laurie, Loreal had not been on his mind, and all that night when he had been with Laurie, nothing else had been in his mind but being with him. In the morning, however, he had thought of her, and when he thought of her, he tried to think of her with pity, as the girl who had been cheated on. But that moment seemed false, and all he could think of was how lovely she was, see her the way Laurie saw her. He had no intentions of keeping Laurie or, if he did, no intention of keeping him from Loreal.

This had been explained to him before, the sharing that happened between two Drinkers, how sometimes it meant they were lovers in the usually sense, but sometimes it meant something else. This had been explained to him, yes, but he had never experienced it first hand. He needed to be with Laurie, but, no, that was not so. It was not like that young and codependent love.

When he was seven he’d been given a guitar, but by the time he was eleven, he knew it mattered, and he knew to make the having of it worthwhile, to understand it, for music to happen, his fingers and the guitar to become one, he must go back to it over and over, and this was how it was with Laurie, not some confusing guilt ridden thing, but something he was committed to. They had to go back to each other. In the day, in their conversations, gentle gestures and understandings of one another, and in the night, they had to sleep together and the more it happened, the more he loved Loreal.

“I have to meet her,” Dan had said in the dark. “I can’t just keep loving her through you, all three of us must meet. We have to get together.

And so had come this night when he had arrived at her room with Laurie, and though sometimes he could read the minds of mortals, her mind flowed into his and he saw himself the way she did, tall, dark complexioned, sexy, chocolate eyed and chocolate haired, a white guy who was half Arab with the desert dusk in his creamy skin.

Late into the night she had been making a fried chicken sandwich, and when she came back she sat in the chair across from them. At first Dan had been nervous, but she just kept eating while Laurie and he talked to each other and at each time, when Laurie had touched him, Dan had been slightly embarrassed. When Laurie brushed Dan’s hair from his face, Loreal said, as she put a kettle chip in her mouth, “I see it now. I get it.”

“What?” Dan almost looked stupid.

“You’re married.”

“We…” Dan began. “But…” Dan said, “No…”

“Yes,” Loreal said.

“It’s different with us, with blood drinkers. And—” Dan began.

“It may be a little different, but it’s not that different. Not for you,” Loreal said. “It’s plain to me the two of you must have always felt something for each other.”

“Well, that’s true,” Dan went on. “Because as blood drinkers we—”

“You and Laurie are married,” Loreal continued.

Dan didn’t know what to say. He frowned.

After a while he said, “You’re not angry.”

Loreal said, “They explained to me that you and Anne and Sunny are not old vampires. That Anne was an old woman, but you are a young man. You’re actually not that much older than me,” Loreal said.

“Yeah,” Dan nodded, frowning, looking at her and wondering where she was going with this.

“So in a way, everything happening to you is as strange to you as it is to me. But,” Loreal said, “It is happening. No doubt about it. I was never one to stop things that were happening from happening.”

That night, Laurie gently slugged Dan on the cheek, and he looked so sweet with his mildly monkey face and his sticky out ears.. His dark eyes were mellow.

“Get your guitar our like we were before.”

Dan went to get his and Laurie got his and Loreal said, “You play a guitar?”

Or maybe, somehow, being with Dan had made him able to play it.

“I used to,” Laurie said. “Back in one of the wars. With my mates. And I loved it. And then I stopped it.”

So, Loreal thought, it was somewhere between what she had thought and what he had said. Most likely, she thought, as Dan began to strum, being with Dan had reawakened a gift Laurie, who never took vacations and always wore fitted suits and good cologne, had put away.

Dan began:

“If you're travelin' in the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine.”

And she was surprised when Laurie began to sing, when the two of them, leaning over their guitars looking into each other, and then to her, traded lines.

“If you go when the snowflakes storm
When the rivers freeze and summer ends
Please see if she's wearing a coat so warm
To keep her from the howlin' winds…”