The Wicked: A Love Story

“So,” Levy said, “Kruinh has gone to Chicago.”

“To check out the damage Evangeline might have done. Personally, though he doesn’t say it, I think he went to see about …”

He had spoken too much.

Levy’s ears were perked.

“Lynn. Lynn was Laurie’s girlfriend.”

“The one pregnant with the baby.”

Dan raised an eyebrow.”

“Evangeline was talking about it,” Levy said. “Right before…”

I killed her.

“Well, yeah,” Dan said. “She was before Loreal.”

“Or you.”

“Yes,” Dan not quite frowned. This kid knew too much.

“Anyway, I think Kruinh went to make sure she was safe.”

“He’s a good guy,” Levy said.

“He’s the best guy,” Dan asserted.

“Laurie was friends with Chris?” Levy said.

“He is friends with Chris. They are best friends. Strictly speaking, Chris is his Master.”

“Explain that.”

“Whoever makes you is your Master. Chris made Laurie, but Kruinh told him how to do, and Kruinh is Chris’s master, so he is Laurie’s grandmaster.”

“Flash.”

“What?”

“Nevermind,” Levy shook his head. “And if I ask anything else I’m going to get distracted and forget what I was really curious about.”

Dan grinned and shook his head while he strummed on his acoustic guitar, “Okay. Shoot.”

“So Laurie is your brother?’

“Right.”

“Even though technically he’s like your blood… cousin? Cause Kruinh’s niece made you.”

“I voluntarily became part of Kruinh’s clan, so Kruinh became my Master. You can exchange Masters. Up to a point.”

“Oh.”

“But that’s not what you wanted to ask.”

“You guys are having sex with each other, right?’

Dan hit a discordant note on the guitar then muttered, “And there it is!”

“I mean, but I thought that would make him your boyfriend, like Lewis and Chris, and then, like he’s going to find Loreal, and I thought he was in love with her.”

“He is in love with her.”

“But he’s in love with you too.”

“No,” Dan said. “He’s not in love with me. He loves me, and I love him.”

“Oh.”

Dan began playing the first part of “Silver Dagger”, his fingers moving up and down the strings, and then, as he played quieter he said, “It was something we didn’t bring up because I didn’t think it was something you would understand.”

“My mother used to say that when she had sex with men for drug money,” Levy said. “But when she said it, she just meant she was doing something nasty and didn’t want to explain it.”

Dan stopped playing, but Levy seemed not to notice and, anyway, Dan realized, Levy could probably kill him with the swat of a hand.

“I’m not saying that’s why you said it though,” Levy said. “I’ve had to… had to figure out things about how you all work. I’m guessing that in a way whatever vampires do is different from what humans would do, or even what a human would do with a vampire. So, whatever you and Laurie do must be different from what two humans would do. I can’t really put my finger on it, but that seems to be it.”

“Twelve year olds shouldn’t really be talking about sex.”

“Actually twelve year olds who don’t talk about ti become thirteen years who have it,” Levy said.

Damn, this kid!

Dan put down his guitar.

“You wanna talk like a grown up, fine.”

“I just don’t want to be treated like a dummy,” Levy said. “I want to understand.”

“Fine,” Dan said.

“I… when I became what I am, when I was turned, I became different. I mean, I killed. I drank blood. I liked it. I was able to hunt people. I became a different person who liked different things. I had known about vampires being more or less what I guess you would call, bisexual. I knew that if you really cared for someone you might end up being their lover, for a time. Or forever. And it wasn’t the same as choosing a partner or a spouse. Just, two people who had that connection. I had heard about it, but humans don’t really work that way. Most of the time when you say you’re bi it pretty much means you’re gay and you just can’t handle it. So, I didn’t understand the intensity I felt for Laurie. And then, the other night, when I took Kruinh’s blood, and then Evangeline’s, that changed me more. I felt more of Laurie’s love for me. I was more aware of it, and I was more aware of my feelings for him. And so, we’re doing what we’re doing.”

“When you are with each other, do you drink each other’s blood?”

“Why would you ask that?” Dan looked mildly irritated, or as irritated as Dan Rawlinson ever became.

“It seems natural.”

“Yes,” Dan said, sitting somewhere between amazement and discomfort at Levy’s perception, “that is part of it. It happens and when we share blood, we share ourselves. So I’m more joined to Laurie. He’s more joined to me. And I’m joined to people he was joined to. We can feel each other, sense each other, even be each other to a certain extent, and whatever we do… as a couple... to a certain extent, once we share blood, we’re always doing it.”

“So like, in a way, you’re having sex with Laurie right now.”

“Yes,” Dan answered not willing to be embarrassed anymore, and realizing that Levy had no judgment. He was really a lot like this Lewis whom Daniel had known for only a moment.

“So… like, even if you never slept together again, you’d always be sleeping together?”

“Something like that. And,” Dan added, “the blood has the power and the memory, so I understand him more because I literally become him more, and he becomes me. So, I don’t want you to think we’re all just wildly jumping on top of each other. It’s… a serious thing. I’ve been a vampire for years and this never happened to me till the other night. For Laurie it only happened with one other blood drinker.”

“Chris.”

“How did you know?”

“I… it’s like his relationship with Chris just seems like that. I had wondered if they broke up, but no. It just became something else, right?”

“You’re a smart kid, but I don’t want to talk about my sex life with you anymore. You wanna learn how to play the guitar?”

“Not really.”

“Go upstairs,” Dan Rawlinson said more sharply than he ever spoke, “and get my spare guitar. And then after that, you gotta go to bed.”

“But I’ not--” Levy begins and stops.

The boy has learned at twelve, Dan realizes, what some people never figure out.

You’ve got to pick your battles wisely.

“Here is the kitchen, and here is the living room I never use. And there is the bathroom.”

“Ha!” Seth declares, “I love a man who keeps candles in his bathroom.”

“The bathroom’s one of the most important rooms in the house.”

“I love this kitchen.”

“And I love your enthusiasm,” says Jim.

“And there is the bedroom.”

“I can turn on this light,” Jim offers.

“Don’t worry about it,” Seth tells him. “Light is overrated.”

“It is,” James Strauss agrees.

Jim plops down on the huge bed, watching his new friend look around. Watching him almost look lost in such a small place before, at last, Seth joins him and they lay down looking at the ceiling.

“I feel so at home here,” Seth says.

“Me too,” Jim says, and they both laugh.

“I don’t know,” Seth says. “It’s just… I feel at home with you. I don’t feel that way with that many people.”

“The darkness is good,” Jim says. But now Seth watches him get up.

“I want the moon,” he says and opens the curtains.

Back on the bed again, Jim feels the weight of it as Seth turns over and looks at the white disk in the cobalt sky.

“I think,” Jim says, “the reason we love the moon is because it’s the only way we have of staring into the sun.”

“I used to be afraid of the night,” Seth said.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose it’s natural.”

“In a way,” Seth agreed. “But until recently I couldn’t even sleep, just sat up through the night. Too many visions. To many things came.”

“You’re very beautiful you know,” Jim said.

“At the moment I do,” Seth said. “When you look at me like that. It’s… Isn’t it something how you feel beautiful when the right person looks at you?”

Jim gave a grin and shyly touched Seth’s hip.

“I’d like to look at more of you.”

“What kind of underwear do you have on?” Seth says just as simply.

And like this, Jim pulls down his trousers, and Seth runs his hand over them feeling Jim rise under his hand.

“You’re soft you know? In a good way. So soft,” Seth breathes, pressing himself against Jim.

Fairly swiftly Seth takes of his dress trousers, and then they pull off their dress shirts and ties and tee shirts and lay together in their underwear. They lay side by side in the light of the room until, at last, Seth’s hands slip through the soft waistband of Jim’s briefs and Jim begins to stroke and massage Seth at the same time Seth touches him. They don’t look at each other, just at the ceiling, then at the blackness of their eyelids, and, at last, Seth rolls over to kiss him and, at last, the underwear is gone and their limbs link.

Oh, he is soft, Seth thinks, oh his kiss is just what I wanted, oh I could gather him up and be in his arms and feel his body, these thighs, this soft, sweet skin, this warmth, oh God, his thick hair is like, like a mane, these cheeks not shaved for a couple of days, those eyelids and the mouth, the generous mouth, oh, those hands up and down me.

And oh, the hair on his legs! So gentle, the perfect length of legs, the firmness of his ass, the dent in the small of his back, oh his back, Jim gathers as much of him as possible between his thighs, pulls his face down to kiss him in the dark, to luxuriate in his kiss, in his kiss, in his firm kiss, in his tongue thrust into his mouth, in the tangling curls of his hair.

“I love you.”

It slips out of his mouth like a surrender. He never tells it to a lover and has never believed it from lovers in the past. But they don’t know each other. But, they have always known each other. But they have been the stuff of each other’s dreams.

How tender it sounds when Seth says it too.

“Be inside me,” Jim says.