Sitting here now, some sense has returned to me. I know I am under his control, but I also know that I need to escape. The daylight hours offer my only hope. Only then will his power over me weaken enough. I will try again with Hare while Craven is in his coffin. I’m not sure I will ever get home, Minter, but while I still live, even with his marks on my neck, I can still hope.
May 9—Part of me wants to protect him now. Part of me wants to stand guard outside the door to the cellar and beat off any who might try to hurt him.
But another part of me wants nothing more than to plunge a stake right through his centuries-old heart.
And what of Hare? The same complex emotions must run through him, for my door was left unlocked this morning. Or maybe it’s simply that, with Craven’s oversize hickey now prominent on my neck, Hare figures I’m powerless to run away.
Am I?
I’m writing now in the parlor. The front door is not locked. But I haven’t left. I still may, of course. Yet what would leaving accomplish? I know enough of the lore to understand that Craven could merely summon me back anytime he wanted to. No, it’s better that I stay, at least until I can figure out what the next step is.
I suppose I could go to the police. Bring them back here, show them Craven in his coffin, show them the wounds on my neck.
But I’m not going to do that. Whether it’s Craven’s power over me or something else that stops me, I’m not sure. I just know I’m not going to the police.
I’ve got to handle Craven myself.
My love.
The man of my dreams.
May 9 (continued)—Minter, I know it’s difficult to understand, loving a vampire. I can’t rightly explain it myself. But I do love him. Not that I don’t love you. I do, with all my heart. But as the afternoon goes on, I’m filled with such a sense of excitement to see him again. Such passion. Really, Minter, he’s all I can think of. Maybe I should just end this journal. Why send it to you? What’s the point? You’d never understand, and it might just hurt you. Better for you to think me dead, I suppose. How can I explain the change—the glorious change—that has come over my life?
May 9, 5:45 p.m.—It’s almost time! I can barely control my excitement. Soon he’ll be walking up those stairs and he’ll take me into his arms—
May 10—It’s a few seconds past midnight, and the echoing of the clock as it chimes through the house drives me mad. I’ve got to find a way of getting this to you, Minter. For your own safety!
He appeared as soon as the shadows had deepened into blackness. I was there, waiting for him. But he did not greet me. He walked past me as if I were invisible, and gave no answer to my protests of love. He was engrossed in studying road maps that Hare had left for him.
“I’ve waited for you,” I said, reaching out to him. “I didn’t run away. I could have. But I waited—”
“Of course you did,” he said indifferently, still studying the maps.
He was wearing blue jeans that fit him superbly, shaping his high, incredible ass over powerful thighs. A brand-new white T-shirt was stretched across his muscular chest, his biceps straining at the sleeves. His dark hair had been cut short, and his skin was golden and glowing. He looked just like a contemporary urban gay man.
That’s when it hit me. His questions about Boston—
About you, Minter—
“You’re leaving here, aren’t you?” I asked.
“It’s no concern of yours,” he said, not even looking at me.
Hare entered the room then, carrying two suitcases. He set them down on the floor and looked up at his master.
“Very good, Hare,” Craven said. “Put them in the car. I think I’ll drive rather than fly.” He smiled, finally looking at me. “Bats have such a difficult time carrying heavy luggage. Such little claws, you know.”
I said nothing, just stared at him.
“A joke, Jeremy. I made a joke.”
“Don’t leave me,” I said.
What a pitiful thing I had become. I detested myself standing there. All I could think of was that he was leaving me, that I was losing him. Nothing else. Nothing that I should have been thinking at the time, and that shames me, Minter, it really does.
“It’s Minter you want, isn’t it? Because of his resemblance to Jebediah . . .”
Craven’s dark eyes danced as they looked at me. “Yes, Jeremy. It’s Minter I want.”
“He won’t want you. He loves me.”
“Well, I had no trouble turning your fancy, now did I?”
The full horror hit me. “You can’t do this to Minter!”
He laughed. “Yes, Jeremy, I can. That’s what you need to understand if you are to have any peace. I can do it, and I will.”
“But he’s not Jebediah. He’s Minter. Irwin Minter. He’s not from some century long ago. He’s not some old dead forgotten creature like you. He’s living. He’s alive. He’s a photographer, a modern guy, twenty-six, full of life—”
“Full of life.” Craven snorted. “A life you expected to share with him.”
I began to cry. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
“I can give him a life you never could. Eternal life, as they say.”
“No,” I moaned.
He drew close to me, grabbing my filthy shirt in his hand. Being so near to him made me weak. I longed for his hard muscular body, for his full, red lips. But he had only contempt for me.
“Let me tell you what will happen to your beloved Minter,” he said, and I could see cruelty shining from his eyes, a cruelty engendered by loss and grief, by sorrow and bitterness. “I remember the first day I awoke with the curse. I remember the strange sensation of understanding what it felt like to be dead. To live within a dead shell of a body, a walking, thinking corpse where vital organs were now irrelevant, where such simple functions as eating and excreting were forever changed. But most of all I knew the hunger—the overwhelming urge for the taste of warm blood in my throat. It replaced the sexual urge, but not the desire for love. Imagine that, Jeremy. To have love and death so inextricably woven together.”
“You have a conscience,” I said, trying to argue with him. “I saw it last night. When you said the people of this village had suffered too much. That’s why you suppressed your urge for so long—for thirty years—ever since the tragedies your friends and family suffered because of you—”
“A conscience? Yes, I have a conscience. It is the devil that haunts me always. It’s what has kept me prisoner here for thirty years. But am I never to know love?”
“You can love me,” I offered. “Leave Minter alone.”
Craven looked at me shrewdly. “Do you offer yourself out of your desire for me or out of your love for Minter?”
I couldn’t lie to him, nor can I lie to you. Of course I wanted to save you, Minter, but that was not the overwhelming motivation I felt. I wanted him. And still do. That’s what’s so horrible, so shameful, about all of this.
He saw the answer on my face. “I don’t want your kind of love,” Craven said to me. “I could have had that easily anytime in the many decades that I’ve walked with this curse. My plan is different now. I will meet Minter as a man. A man who will be there to comfort him when you fail to return. In time, he will love me with the kind of feeling that the two of you share now. Then I will make him mine for eternity.”
He moved toward the door. I couldn’t let him leave. Suddenly I lunged at him, tearing away my shirt to reveal the wounds on my neck. I scratched them open, releasing a fresh flow of bright red blood. Craven saw it, all at once snarling and salivating like a dog.
“How long did you deprive yourself of this?” I shouted. “Too long! Take my blood! Drink!”
Craven gripped me hard by the shoulders and glared down at me with furious yellow eyes. “How dare you tempt me in this way?”
“You want me as much as I want you,” I said.
He growled and almost pulled away, but then he swung back at me, baring his fangs and sinking them deep down into
my bloody neck. Oh, the sensation—it was exquisite. The sharpness of his teeth, the lapping of his tongue—I orgasmed once more as I stood there in his embrace. He drank long and voraciously, to the point where I could feel my very life flowing out of myself and into him. My head grew light, my senses became dulled. But tonight he cared not a whit for my pleasure, as he had the last time. Tonight it was all about him.
Holding me around the waist with one hand, he reached up with his other and tore his T-shirt, revealing perfectly chiseled pectorals. He pressed my face close to them. Now it was his turn to draw blood, and with a sharp fingernail he opened a vein in his neck. What flowed from his body was my own blood, and it was my own blood that I was forced to drink. As he held me tight, the warm blood coating my throat as I swallowed, I could feel him shudder against me, his own shattering climax. Then he dropped me, spent, to the floor. I lost all consciousness.
I awoke in my room. How long I have been here I do not know.
The house is quiet. There is nothing but the wind outside my window and the low, constant crash of the surf.
I have lost him. The chiming of the clock drives me mad. I cover my ears and try to force sleep upon myself. I hope I never awaken. I am nothing without him.
May 10, 10:05 a.m.—He hasn’t gone. He’s still here!
I knew it as soon as I opened my eyes this morning. He never left last night as he’d been planning to do. I know it, for somehow, in my mind’s eye, I can see him, sleeping in his coffin, his torn T-shirt stained with my blood.
And I can see more, too. So much more.
I see him tall and handsome and young, but not because he has gorged himself with blood. I see him as he was, two centuries ago, a young man flushed with life. I can see into his mind now, into his very past.
He’s with Minter—Jebediah—
They’re both on horses, riding fast, the wind in their hair. They’re laughing. It’s their last day together: I know this somehow. Tomorrow each will be betrothed to women, as their families demand. Yet there is no sadness, no heaviness in Craven’s heart. He assumes his friendship with Jebediah will continue, that nothing will change. He loves his bride, he loves Jebediah: there is no reason he should not have both of them. I have never discriminated in love.
But now I see her: the she-devil he spoke of. A beautiful blond woman with the cadence of the French West Indies in her voice. Is she Craven’s bride? Perhaps, but this is not the woman he had loved. He may have dallied with her, toyed with her affections . . . but he has not loved her. In revenge, she has prevented Jebediah from coming to Craven—Jebediah is dead, that’s what it is, Jebediah is dead! I see him now, bleeding on the earth. Dear God, Minter, it is you! It is you!
“I killed him,” Craven is saying, standing over his body, the smoking gun still in his hand and tears falling from his cheeks. “She made me do it. The witch! She has set a curse upon us all! Everyone I love will die!”
I see her again in all her fury: her eyes popping, her mouth in a terrible snarl. “I curse you, Bartholomew Craven!” And then the giant bat—it flies into the room to attack him. I feel the pain at my own throat. I feel his life slip away.
We are linked now. Yes, that’s what it is. Our minds, our spirits—I can see his past, read his thoughts, feel the coldness of his grave. I shudder now against the confinement of his coffin. I can see him there, glutted with my blood. I can see him last night, too, stumbling across the room, Hare helping him to a chair. He was drunk, bloated, unable to move.
So I have succeeded: I have kept him here with me.
But with the linking of our souls has come something else: clarity. Oh, how pathetic I have been. I do not love him. I love you, Minter, and the liberation of knowing that once again is exhilarating. Worse than any physical confinement has been the emotional imprisonment—the brainwashing, if you will, the utter lie that was foisted upon me. Take my blood, take my body—but my love, my soul, that was the most despicable theft of all. To think that I professed love for such a monster.
And yet—what am I now? My body feels different. The sensations around me are new. Sound is unfamilar, and I see with new eyes. The very touch of my hand to pen and paper is like nothing I have before experienced. I have changed, Minter—we have shared each other’s blood, Craven and I—and that has made me nearly his equal, his peer. Perhaps it will allow me to fight him now, Minter. Perhaps it will allow me to save you.
For tonight when he awakens, there will be no stopping him. He will leave this place. He will show up in Boston under an assumed name. He will be there for you when word reaches you of my death. He will try to win your love, Minter. He will be successful. And then he will turn you into the same sort of undead monster he is, and has been all these centuries.
I will not let that happen. I make that vow, Minter! I care not what happens to me anymore. All that matters is saving you from the fate he has planned.
But there is only one way I can stop him. Only one way. And I will do it, Minter. I will not fail.
May 10, 4:55 p.m.—All is ready, my love. I am here, waiting beside his coffin. Hare is nowhere to be found. Even if he arrives, he will not stop me. For what I plan, none of them could suspect. I will be successful, my love. There is only one way to fight Bartholomew Craven—and I will do it!
May 11—(blank)
May 12—I’ve been unable to write, but I’m going to try. I must get it down. What happened needs to be recorded, and I’m not sure what condition I’ll be in tomorrow. How much will I remember? How much will make sense?
I hope you can read my handwriting, Minter. I’m so weak. I can’t hold the pen very well. It keeps falling from my fingers. I’ve lost a lot more blood . . . and I was already down several quarts.
So I was there, waiting for him, when he rose from his coffin.
“What are you doing here?” he snarled.
“Waiting for you,” I said.
He glowered over me. “You mean nothing to me. Do you understand? It’s Minter I want. My Jebediah!”
Everything was riding on how good an actor I could be. How believable, how mesmerizing. But I had the power now. His power. The power of seduction.
“Please!” I gripped his arm, loathing myself for this display. “Let me satisfy you again. Please, drink my blood as you did last night!”
He shoved me away from him. “You will not tempt me again.”
Hare had come down the stone staircase then and was watching helplessly. He seemed to be taking great pity on me. Who’d have thought?
“Please!” I begged, following Craven like some pitiful dog. I was utterly convincing. “What will become of me?”
He spun on me. “Don’t you see? I don’t care. Hare might drop you from the cliffs, or maybe he’ll just let you starve to death down here. I have ceased caring about your fate. I am off to find what I have denied myself too long.”
He pulled the torn, bloodied T-shirt from his torso and revealed a physique even more magnificent than the day before. My blood had given him that. And despite myself, I felt the lust take hold of my mind once more. He still had that hold over me. That’s why I could-n’t have killed him as he slept. It would have been impossible. That’s why this was the only way—the only way to save you, Minter, my love.
I wouldn’t look at him as he pulled on a clean shirt, offered to him by Hare. “Please,” I said, “you will need sustenance for your journey. Take mine!”
He laughed. “I don’t need sustenance. If I did, I’d never have made it for those thirty years, sober and alone. Yet had I tasted blood, drunk of it regularly, I would never have become the hideous old creature you first encountered.”
“Then drink again from me now,” I said. “You look magnificent, but there are many gay men who look just as good in Boston. Have you ever thought of that? Drink from me, and make yourself even more spectacular, so that Minter will be unable to resist your beauty.”
He narrowed his dark hypnotic eyes at me. “And why are you so eager to s
acrifice yourself so that I might win Minter?”
I managed to hold his gaze without breaking. “Because if I can’t have you, I want eternal life. I want you to drain my blood. I want to become as you are.”
He smiled in fascination. “You are a brave young man, bargaining with me.”
“I am faced with either eternal death or eternal life. Those are the only two options I can possibly hope for now. I can never go back to my life as it was. Am I not right?”
He studied me for several moments. “Are you saying that you would go willingly to an eternity of darkness, of never seeing the sun again, of spending your days as a corpse in a coffin? You would accept that life with conscious choice, when even I myself fought the witch who made me thus, and forever rued the curse she placed upon me?”
“I’d choose it, yes—over dying here of starvation, over being flung from the cliffs like some unwanted rag doll.”
Craven laughed. “You observed that I had a conscience. You were right. Very well, Jeremy Horne. You shall know the life of the vampire.”
What happened next is hazy, a blur of motion. Craven bent forward and took me in his arms, and I thrilled once more at his touch. But just as his teeth punctured the raw skin on my neck, I heard a shout from behind—but who could it be? There was no one else, no one but Hare—
And Hare was mute!
“No! You will not have him! Not my son!”
There was a sudden struggle, as Craven was grabbed from behind, taken unawares. It only served to drive his teeth deeper into my neck, and like some crazed dog, he could not let go, not stop drinking, even as he began to be pummeled from behind. I couldn’t see what was happening, couldn’t comprehend—
Until suddenly Craven’s fangs were ripped backward from my throat as he clutched his chest in pain, and I saw the wooden stake burst through his white T-shirt, driven in from behind.