The Old

Nativity

“… We are just as real as your fellow men. You invalidate nothing and solve nothing by calling us symbols.”

-The Red Book

In those last days before Christmas, Kristian Strauss headed across the campus of Wallington College with a brisk sense of satisfaction. All about him the campus was covered in white, and the old brick buildings rose up from the whiteness in solemn greeting, their steepled roves covered in snow, the great branches of the bare trees also caked in snow which, now and again, by the work of a small bird, shook down and fell on his shaggy almost tower of brown hair and made him laugh. His old professor shoes—this is what his sister called them—were almost soundless as he climbed up the steps into the damp alcove that surrounded Madeleine Hall, and then he opened the door and went up the steps into the old building, through its halls to the open door of a book crowded office with its paper strewn desk where Dr. Dunne was filling up a briefcase.

“Ah, there you are, Kristian,” Dr. Dunne said.

“Is this a stand up thing or a sit down thing?”

Dr. Dunne shook his head. “If you can’t offer a seat, what business do you have to ask someone to cross campus? Unless you’re out of time?”

Kris spread his hands out and sat down, stretching his long legs. He wore thin, checked pants, and his old jacket was open to reveal a white shirt and faded blue tie.

“You finished your grading?”

“Done and done,” Kristian said.

“And everything turned in?”

“Yes, Uriah,” Kris sat up. “What in the world is this about?”

“Do you have a few days before Christmas?”

“For?”

“I was wondering if you could accompany me on a trip?”

“To? I mean yes. Wherever it is, of course I’ll go. But my family’s expecting me for Christmas.”

“Of course,” Uriah said. “And my family is expecting me right now. Summoning me you might say.”

“That is… Now you’re just being weird.”

Uriah Dunne was the end of a long process by which Kris Strauss, an ambitious high school student who had hit a depression in his senior year, had ended up at Wallingtoin College, a good school, but not the Harvard he’d planned on. One semester Uriah had befriended him, and he had been amazed by this man’s knowledge and wisdom as much as by his compassion. It had been Uriah who had pointed him toward graduate school, made sure he had a tutor for the GRE and written the most glowing of his references, and when he was done with his Masters work and not entirely sure about his PhD, it had been Uriah who had gently encouraged him to continue his thesis and come back to Wallington to teach. So when Uriah Dunne said come you came.

“It’s only to my uncle’s house,” Uriah said.

“Oh, well, the long tall man clapped his hands and laughed a little. “I love going to a big city. When do we head out?”

“We head out tonight,” Uriah said.

Kris nodded sharply.

“Excellent.”

Then Kristian said, “But why? I mean, why do you want me to go?”

“Because a long time ago you said you’d left the Church because the Church didn’t have answers. You said it wasn’t that you didn’t believe in other things and deeper realities, but that you didn’t think the Church had the key to them.”

“And then I said that my church was here. Was academia. This is my religion.”

Kris gestured about the room lined with groaning bookshelves and books stacked on top of each other or shoved into corners.

“This isn’t enough,” Uriah shook his head. “You said you never wanted to get too comfortable.”

“And now?”

“You’re way too comfortable,” Uriah said. “We leave at eight.”

Lewis settles on his bed, waiting for Chris to join him. At last the long tall man does, and the two of them lay down looking at the ceiling.

Lewis pulls down his trousers, and Chris runs a long hand over him.

“You’re soft you know? So soft,” Chris breathes, pressing himself against Lewis.

Chris tugs down his own pants and then they pull off their shirts and lay together in their underwear. They lay side by side in the light of the room until, at last, Chris’s hands slip through the soft waistband of Lewis’s briefs and Lewis begins to stroke Chris at the same time Chris touches him. They don’t look at each other, just at the ceiling, then at the blackness of their eyelids and now Chris rolls over to kiss him, and, at last, the underwear is gone and their limbs link.

Oh, he is soft, Chris 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 thick thighs, this soft, sweet skin, this warmth, oh God, the small curls, the roughness of cheeks not shaved for a couple of days, of those eyelids and the mouth, the generous mouth, oh, those hands up and down me.

And oh, Lewis sighs, 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! Lewis 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 thickness of his always spiky hair.

“I love you.”

“Be inside me,” Lewis says.

The whole apartment is quiet and dark. The only sounds are small, the small creaking and giving way of the bed, the moans and gasps. If one was there to watch you could see them, curled into the corner of the bed like a sexual armadillo, Chris, white assed, on hands and knees, dark thighs gathered around him as he fucked Lewis.

“I’m about to come,” Chris whispers, almost desperately, feeling the flood building, the urge tingling at the tip of his cock.

“I’m about to come.”

“Come inside of me.”

Lewis is pulling him in, and Chris has not stopped, and he cannot stop, and his body freezes, and then jerks. and Lewis feels him pumping, pulsing, semen like thick syrup coming between his thighs. He cradles Chris’s damp head to his, kissing his face, feeling his own hardness, knowing he will do the same to Chris before the night comes. Chris, gasping, slowly unfolds from him, and they hold each other, lying face to face, damp, amazed, entranced and unable to speak.

His head shot up at the sudden appearance of a tall, dark haired man, pale faced, fierce eyes glowing over his sharp cheekbones.

“Do you know who I am?” the vampire asked.

“No,” the man lied.

“Well, let’s just pretend that’s true. I am Lawrence Malone.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

“No, that can’t be possible,” Laurie said. “You cannot possibly be pleased to meet me. “

The man said nothing, and Laurie said, “Would you be the one who came to Lynn Draper with packages of photographs and records?”

“I… might be,” the man stood up, clearing his throat.

“I am in fact. I am Theodore Coach. And yes. I did bring all of those files to your girlfriend. To your… whatever she is.”

“At whose command?”

“At the command of one Eve Moreland.”

Laurie’s face changed, though the man could not tell what the change meant.

Then the vampire asked, “Did you know what was in those envelopes?”

The man seemed to be thinking about his answer, then a look crossed his face and he said, “Yes, I did. I do. Evidence of what you are. Evidence of what you had withheld from this woman.

“Look,” the man said, becoming suddenly bold with his new truth telling, “I know exactly what you are, and I know exactly what my mistress is, and when Eve Moreland or her grandfather asks me to do something I do it in gladness, and not even a blood drinker can—”

But before the sentence was out of his mouth, Laurie had lunged across the table and crushed the man’s windpipe in his jaws. It was impractical not to drink him, and as he did so, the man screamed, not from the pain of Laurie’s teeth, put from the fist, suddenly punched into his chest with vampiric strength, shattering his rib cage. As he died, Theodore Coach saw Laurie lift up his bleeding heart, saw his blood spurting all about the office, and all over the immaculate clothing of Laurie Malone, saw the vampire, like a mad man, biting into the living heart, draining it. What he could not have seen, being already dead, was the coup de grace, Laurie Malone’s strong hands, claw like, twisting the neck, ripping the head off and raising the shocked face of Theodore Coach to look down on the wreck of his erstwhile life.