Chapter Three

NATHEN

 

“Want to get a tattoo with me?”

Dizzy and light-headed from the alcohol in his partner’s blood, Cameron’s impulsive question of the tattoo sent Nathen’s mind pinwheeling not to “if” but rather “what” kind of tattoo they would get. “Sure! I’ve always wanted a Japanese-style black-and-pink cherry blossom sleeve but could never get up the nerve to get one. Tattoos are so…permanent. But now I can technically remove my own tattoos.”

They dressed as Cameron explained. “I can’t get a sleeve because I want to stay neutral and professional for clients.” He chuckled at his own desire to be conservative. “But anything in any area that wouldn’t show, like on my back, front—” His mind flashed to the butterfly. “—or upper arms. Or even legs.”

As he was thinking, Nathen read memories associated with Cameron’s existing tattoos. The butterfly that christened the area above Cameron’s pubis was one of a set, the other on a man named Tommy who lived in New York. The fleeting memory of them getting matching butterflies at seventeen years old was replaced by those of the tree on Cameron’s shoulder that he got to honor his mother and the matching Celtic knot whose twin adorned Syn’s upper arm.

“I need to be able to wear short-sleeve dress shirts to work. But I’m happy to get whatever you want…if you want to match?”

Nathen grinned at the new adventure. “Maybe a geometric shape or fractal? I really like those, and they are objectively beautiful to most people.”

“I should get a tattoo saying that I belong to an incubus,” Cameron teased. After surmising that his shirt was lost to the ether, Cameron borrowed Nathen’s hoody. Hooking Nathen around the waist, Cameron kissed him deeply, shrouding him with drunken excitement.

Now that his mind was on tattoos, Cameron’s memories bubbled forth to entrance Nathen in a nebulous show. The butterfly had been Tommy’s idea. The beautiful boy with two-tone hair had looked up from sucking Cameron in the forest when a butterfly had landed on the spot a tattoo now memorialized. The boys had held each other’s hand, teasing each other about the new sensations. It represented to Cameron his first love, exploration and discovery of youth, and to a lesser degree, loss. The knots and tree, added for his mom, didn’t come until his twenty-first birthday when he and Syn had gone to San Diego for a week to celebrate.

Cameron led Nathen out of the roped-off VIP area, snuggling him close as they skirted the black light and made their way to the door. Cameron always scanned for active threats, but it became apparent that he did not scan for people he knew. As they exited the building and walked around a couple who were standing outside smoking, Cameron stiffened. A man called out, “Cami? Is that you?”

Flashes of memory raced through Cameron’s mind and bombarded Nathen: Frank, Frank’s friends, Frank’s apartment, the sex parties where Cameron was often the star attraction, though uncomfortable and unwilling to let anyone get closer than watching him jerk off or allow Frank to give him head. Cameron often implanted suggestions to stay away, never able to relax in their groups. Frank made him sleep on the couch because Frank couldn’t sleep with anyone in his bed, despite it being king-size. Frank never cuddled or allowed him close when they were alone but made a huge show of kissing him when there was anyone watching. That final night of Frank’s birthday, when Cameron was still plagued by all of the things he should have done, known, predicted…

The tall one was an ebony-toned man in slacks, dress shirt, and tie. Instinctively seeking Cameron’s mind, Nathen read that he was Jason, an attorney, Frank’s ex, a relationship which allegedly ended years before Frank and Cameron had gotten together, but which Cameron often wondered about although never delved into either man’s mind to determine. Standing next to him, the one who had called out, was Javier, a younger guy who had always attended any of Frank’s parties. Cameron knew Javier was sixteen when Cameron was nineteen and met Frank, who at the time was twenty-nine. But Frank’s group enjoyed younger men, and at any given time, there were teenagers in attendance. Javier was dressed flamboyantly, wearing a pink faux-fur coat and rainbow-colored hair.

Both were now looking at Cameron, who was trying to shield his thoughts from Nathen while also trying to do something mentally with the men. Javier threw himself at Cameron, hugging him and suddenly crying hysterically. “Cami!” he wailed, “I’m so sorry! We didn’t know where you got off to! You weren’t at the funeral, and it’s such sad, sad news.”

Nathen started when a rolling boulder of guilt, shame, and rage rushed through Cameron.

Nathen saw the night clearly: the searing emotional pain that had torn Cameron asunder when he was able to move…dragging himself from the bed to the floor, crawling to the bathroom on leaden arms and knees. The party raged in the living room, a jovial juxtaposition to what was going on within him. An affront that they didn’t know or care…

Cameron hadn’t been able to think straight as he ran the water on its hottest temperature and sat bleeding and crying, desperately trying to pull his mental barriers around him to shut out the assault of minds and emotions from neighboring apartments. He ran the water well after it was ice cold, still unable or unwilling to move until Javier had come into the bathroom to use the toilet and had found him. He had asked what was wrong and Cameron fought through the fog to tear the memory from him, cloaking himself in mental invisibility. Triumphant, he stood and scrubbed himself until his skin was raw, accepting the punishment of the frigid water as if it was something he deserved. He dressed and left, shielding his exit from everyone, and he walked to a cheap motel half a mile away. He couldn’t face Syn and didn’t know what else to do. Once there, he cried himself to sleep, and in the morning, he went to the Berkeley clinic, the same clinic Nathen had seen six months of biweekly reports from.

After that first trip to the clinic, Nathen read Cameron’s return to confront Frank. He had been surly and hungover, unwilling to admit anything that he had done was wrong, insisting that the Special K was to “loosen” Cameron up. Cameron had then lost control and assaulted him, pouring every piece of emotional and mental pain into Frank, trying to make him as hurt as he had hurt Cameron. He had left the suggestion with Frank: Just go kill yourself.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later that he learned from a classmate…

Nathen stood in shock, trying to wrap his mind around what he had seen in Cameron’s memories, barely paying attention to the people in front of him.

Jason clucked his tongue in an offhand, but obviously not too affected, way. “Never knew Frank to be so depressed.”

Javier wailed again. “If we had known, we would have done something! Cami”—Nathen sensed Cameron bristle at the nickname Frank had given him—“did you have any idea he was so, so depressed?”

Cameron mechanically hugged Javier, shaking his head.

“But, of course, this has affected you the most! Of course, it has! You were inseparable!”

Cameron internally laughed without humor. “We have to go,” he said softly, leaving no room for argument from anyone. He turned away from the men, and Nathen sensed Cameron turn aside their mental protests and effortlessly insert the suggestion for them to go back to one another and forget about him being there. Pale and shaken, his eyes slid toward Nathen, mentally steeling himself for Nathen’s departure.

Nathen’s emotional field shone like a placid lake with bubbles of nondescript feelings rising up every so often to disturb the still surface—as if his emotions were subconscious, and he was waiting for something to rise.

Finally, he met Cameron’s gaze. “Well, that was unexpected. Did you want me to tell them to stay away from you in the future? You didn’t seem to like their company.”

Cameron’s eyes narrowed as he studied Nathen. Incredulous and confused, sickened with himself, Cameron asked beseechingly, “You’re not leaving?” He chewed fretfully on his lip, eyes shining with unshed tears.

“No. I thought we were getting tattoos?” He switched to using their bond, “As for Frank… He raped the wrong person.” He wrapped his left arm around Cameron’s side, waiting for him to lead them wherever he wanted to go.

Cameron tensed at the term “rape,” and Nathen sensed that he was still unable to fully accept that was what Frank had done. Tears fell quietly. Flooded with gratitude and slowly extracting himself from Nathen’s embrace, Cameron took a step away and found himself against a wall.

Unable to make eye contact, Cameron added, “There’s more.”

As Cameron gave both a physical and emotional sigh, Nathen sensed Cameron had to rip the proverbial bandage and take whatever fate would hand him, accepting the path Nathen chose. His past had been eating at Cameron, and though he could forget or bury the memories, he also did not think it fair to Nathen. In a split second, Nathen learned that it was not only Todd Jacks and Frank who Cameron had killed with his abilities.

*

CAMERON

 

Almost a week after he had learned about Frank’s suicide, and still reeling that it was because of him, in his capacity as a psychologist, Cameron had conducted a court-ordered evaluation for a man who wanted custody of his daughter, despite allegations of sexual abuse. The Child Protective Services case was about to be closed as “unfounded,” and the man was going to be the sole custodian of the six-year-old girl. During the evaluation, Cameron had skimmed the surface before he dove deeper and deeper, seeing atrocities he could never wipe from his mind. Cameron didn’t hesitate to call the hospital after the man’s suicide risk assessment. He had no history of suicide attempts and hadn’t been suicidal when he’d met Cameron, but no one would know that. Cameron was the doctor, after all, and by the time he left the office that day, the man was compelled to cut his wrists with his keys while being transported in the ambulance. Cameron wrote an entire report to the court outlining the man’s spontaneous admission of his exploits, and his suicidal ideation with a plan that resulted in his hospitalization. He learned a few weeks later that the man had committed suicide, and the only thing Cameron felt was satisfaction.

Though Cameron had “seen” various other atrocities, he didn’t act on them except to gently mentally push people in one direction or another. For domestic violence situations, he implanted the need for couples counseling or anger management. For substance abuse, he implanted the need for treatment and abstinence.

Then Syn had insisted he go to church with her for a Catholic holiday she rarely celebrated, but for some reason chose to do so that year. Cameron hadn’t stepped a foot inside a church since he was thirteen years old and was only there for a function his mother had dragged him to. It was almost a month after Frank’s death. While sitting next to Syn, fending off boredom, Cameron was suddenly taken aback by one of the altar boys’ surface thoughts. He dove deeper, learning about the things the boy had been made to do with the resident priest. Cameron scanned the rest of the people around the altar. All the teenage boys had been subjugated in similar ways! At the forefront of their minds a priest lurked, not the one heading the ceremony, but an older one, who “prepared” the boys by having the three of them recite prayers on their knees, their robes pushed up over their bare backs. The older priest would choose which one he wanted to “bless” personally. The teens, the youngest being fourteen, were wards of the church and had nowhere else to go. Cameron went home that day and researched the church, the priests, and especially the older one whose name he had learned from the boys’ minds. He found he had been moved from parish to parish, at least five times. The next Friday he joined Syn in her volunteer work at the soup kitchen. There, he found the priest who he gently suggested “fall” from the balcony accidentally. The tragedy of losing Father Gerald was talked about that weekend in church, which Cameron only learned from Syn.

The last man Cameron killed was someone from his own building. Cameron had seen that the man was a boyfriend to a woman who lived in the apartment, which had been left to her with a small trust by her grandmother. She had three young children. The man would come, eat her food, and beat her in front of her children. Cameron mentally suggested he leave the woman and the building, never to return, which he did.

Cameron had previously planted mental suggestions in many of his neighbors, but all positive. They ranged from healthier coping to communication skills, to suggestions about how to better handle finances or mental health situations. This was the only man that Cameron had ejected, but he had the address of where he stayed in Oakland. One day a few weeks later, out of curiosity, Cameron tracked the man to see what had happened to him and found him in the middle of attacking an eighteen-year-old girl who he had prostituted out since he’d found her as a runaway six years earlier. He had a gun to her head and was “punishing” her when she failed to bring him an expected cut of her earnings that night. She was strung out on crack cocaine, a drug he'd systematically gotten her addicted to when she was only twelve. Cameron maintained control, though the memory of Frank was vivid in his mind and triggering his anger. He waited until the girl was gone and made the man take his gun to his own head.

Cameron stayed quiet. The thoughts had come like a tidal wave, but only a few seconds had passed. He held his arms tightly in front of him as he silently wept. Flooded with relief for having told Nathen everything, he was resigned as he believed this was likely too much for Nathen to handle. Cameron was only remorseful for Frank, as that had been a complete accident and shock. For the priest, the father, the pimp, and Jacks, Cameron held no remorse but also believed there was no way that Nathen could feel the same.

His head hung low, chin touching his chest as tears fell straight to the ground. “I’m sorry…”

Nathen was quiet for a while. Cameron wondered how he was digesting everything. As a psychologist, or perhaps by virtue of being a mind mage, Cameron had learned how to put things like this on a shelf, so it didn’t affect him the way it did other people. But he had to tell Nathen if he ever expected to have an actual relationship with him. If Nathen had been a normal human, that would never have been possible. How could he explain about being a mage? But Nathen wasn’t human, and he deserved the truth, even if it meant losing him forever.

Nathen’s emotions were blocked, which Cameron interpreted as Nathen being overwhelmed. He didn’t seem to be feeling or thinking anything at all. In fact, Cameron didn’t sense Nathen’s thoughts until the vampire moved forward and embraced him. He choked, pulling Nathen in tightly and crushing him to his chest. He couldn’t read if this was a goodbye hug or not. Cameron’s entire body ached. This might be the last time I see him… And soon Nathen’s shoulder was sodden with tears as Cameron swallowed hard, sick with loss.

Nathen held him until he was hiccupping and his tears had had stopped flowing. “Did you maybe want to go home? Or did you still want to go get the tattoos? I don’t know what I am supposed to do.”

Cameron wiped his face on his sleeve. Frowning with confusion, he scratched his head. Unable to make eye contact, he asked, “Tattoos? Wait… Aren’t you going to leave me? End…end everything? I don’t blame you. And I don’t expect you to stay at all.” He wiped his face again and sniffed, his gaze rising to search Nathen for any sign.

“No, I am not going to leave… Why? Did you want me to?” He returned to Cameron, tentatively taking his hand as he gently traced the outline of Cameron’s newly shorn bald head, courtesy of the fire a few days earlier at the abandoned building, repurposed by the company. “I think I am coming to realize the world is darker than I could imagine. I don’t yet know how to feel about any of this because this is not really something I think about. My mind is usually occupied by running through trends and projections of future technology and innovations. Not things like pedophilia or sex slaves.”

“I’m so sorry… I can remove those memories if you want. You don’t need to know what I know,” Cameron wrapped his arms around Nathen, blanketing him with mental apologies. “I needed you to know about me. About who I am, what I’ve done. What I am. But also, why. They were all bad, evil people. I couldn’t save them even if I erased their memories entirely. There’s research on people who have total amnesia, and yet their core personality remains. They would have…continued.”

Nathen gently held Cameron, relaxing in his embrace. “I understand. And no, it’s okay. You can leave the memories. I just can’t promise I will emotionally process them. They were repulsive people. You took measures to stop them. They would have harmed more people otherwise. I can’t change that. So dwelling on them and the past is irrational.” He paused again, trying to figure out what to say next. “So were you okay with fractal tattoos? I was thinking of getting one on my chest.”

Relief crashed through Cameron, the emotion flooding out tangible, and Cameron let out a long, shuddering exhalation. “I love you, Nathen Hale,” Cameron confessed as he cupped Nathen’s face between both hands and softly pressed his lips in a tender kiss.

Love had been an emotion tickling at the back of Cameron’s conscious mind—one he had dismissed as lust, infatuation, attraction, appreciation. How does someone love someone in less than a week of knowing them? And yet, Cameron read into people’s souls, understood their essence.

What did it mean to truly know someone? For most people it was a slow, sometimes arduous process of trial and error, guessing what would anger or please the other, wondering about intentions. Love was something that built through experience over time. But such a thing as love at first sight? Cameron had been suspicious and even hated Nathen at first sight. When they’d first met, he couldn’t read him, and that had been terrifying. People often hate that which they can’t fathom: change and the unknown being the top two. Cameron had come up against very few things he couldn’t understand and nothing he could not change, even if the change was only in his own thinking.

That is, until that first night with Nathen, a being that Cameron couldn’t read or even sense. For the first time in his life, he had been in the vulnerable position of the unknown and, as such, the unchanging.

On that first night, when Nathen had taken his blood, his mind opened to Cameron. Nathen was brilliant, and as he had mentioned, his mind was filled with curiosity about a multitude of things. But it was also devoid of malice. Cameron had met no other adults like Nathen who were truly open to experiences and accepted the world wholeheartedly. Most people harbored guilt, envy, suspicion, or fear brought on by experiences, real or imagined. Nathen hadn’t been kidding. He had never thought about pedophilia. It was an abstract concept, like other words in the English language, but it had never applied until that moment. His mother had raised Nathen in a sheltered life, keeping him safe from trauma. A stab of guilt coursed through Cameron for opening Nathen’s eyes to the reality of the darkness of the world. He had tainted this perfect, beautiful, and unerringly kind being, now not once but twice! Just a few days ago, he had killed in front of Nathen, which had resulted in Nathen spinning out of control. Though they lived in the same world, Nathen was not actually part of it.

Fat tears of blood tumbled down Nathen’s cheeks, and he turned, hiding himself from the people walking on the sidewalk. “I love you as well.”

Cameron’s breath caught in disbelief and surprise. He scanned, realizing that Nathen wasn’t placating or responding in kind out of a misplaced sense of obligation or awkward need to reciprocate. Pulling Nathen against him once more, Cameron spread small kisses across his forehead before he wrapped his arms around him. His entire being alighted with positive energy and adoration for what was here, now, and yet to come. For the first time in months, Cameron felt whole. Using the sleeve of the hoodie, he wiped at Nathen’s face until he was presentable.

Cameron’s hand slid down to capture Nathen’s digits, twining them and pulling his fist to his tear-stained lips. His pale skin blotched from crying and the flush extended over his newly shaved head. He had to be branded physically! Cameron yearned with an abject need to have a permanent reminder of how much he loved Nathen, in every way possible.