The following night, Charles and Tenrael fought a vampire. She was a young one, probably turned within the past year, but that made her all the more vicious. Long-established vampires survived on restraint and tact. They were vulnerable, as creatures went, with their limited diets and many ways to be killed. Charles had even met a few vamps who fed on willing victims, never taking enough to harm them, and although that wasn’t his own personal thing, he didn’t judge any of the parties involved.
But this particular vampire had, according to informants’ reports, just arrived in town from Christ knew where, and she’d already slaughtered several dogs and a middle-aged man who’d been making a predawn vegetable delivery in Chinatown. She had to be dealt with.
It would have been best to confront her before sunset, when she was still at rest, but unfortunately it was well after dark when they tracked her to the inside of a small warehouse just off Stockton Street. She’d probably been no more than twenty when she died, but it was hard to tell—she was gaunt now, with filthy matted hair and rags for clothing, and she hissed viciously when they found her.
“You’ve been killing people,” Charles said to her, almost gently, because it wasn’t really her fault. Not too long ago, she might have been a perfectly lovely person going about an ordinary, harmless life. And then some bastard of a vamp had killed her and turned her into a monster. She couldn’t help needing blood to survive. But even though it wasn’t an animal’s fault that it caught rabies, that animal would still need to be put down.
The vampire bared her fangs. He didn’t see anything rational in her eyes, simply rage and fear and hunger.
“If you’d been turned by a vamp gentleman or gentlewoman, this wouldn’t be happening. He or she would have kept a leash on you until you learned control. You might have had a long unlife ahead of you. But I don’t have any vamp associates handy to teach you, I’m afraid.”
While Charles spoke, Tenrael had been creeping up behind her. A quiet, clean kill of a vamp required a wooden stake through the heart, and that meant getting close. Normally Ten was very good at moving stealthily, his dark wings camouflaging him and muting any sounds he made. But tonight he wore the ring, so there were no wings. He had shoes on too, and his step was just a little too loud on the dusty floorboards. Before he was within striking distance, the vampire shrieked, spun, and flew at him. She latched her fangs onto Tenrael’s throat, the force of her attack driving him back and making him drop the stake.
A vampire bite couldn’t destroy a demon, but it still hurt like hell. Tenrael shouted something foul-sounding in what might have been Etruscan, and Charles smelled his blood, rich and sweet and piquant.
Roaring, Charles surged toward them. He held a stake, but it was difficult to get a good angle. A bullet to her head would have slowed her considerably, but then Charles would risk shooting Ten as well. So he thrust the stake into her back with as much aim as he could muster. It wasn’t good enough. She whipped around, dragging the embedded stake from his grip, and went for his throat. Fortunately he was tall and she was short, so she ended up with a mouthful of his chest instead.
Charles swore—but not in Etruscan—and tried to pry the stake out of her back. Before he could get an adequate grip and before Tenrael could help, the vampire released him with an inhuman scream and stumbled backward. Her mouth and jaw were… melting. Like candle wax. As Charles and Tenrael watched, she shrieked and clawed at her face. Within seconds her nose was gone too, and then her eyes, and she slowly collapsed to the floor with a terrible gurgling sound. Her body melted, very rapidly, until nothing was left but hair, clothing, and a greasy smear.
“What the hell?” Charles breathed.
Tenrael’s throat had a gaping hole, but it had already stopped bleeding and he wasn’t paying the wound any attention. “Have you ever been bitten by a vampire before?”
“No.”
Ten nodded as if that proved his point. “Your blood destroyed her.”
Charles pressed a palm against the bite mark on his chest and shook his head. “I don’t see how. Your blood didn’t seem to bother her.”
“You and I are not the same, Master.”
“I….” Charles didn’t want to think about it. Because while being toxic to vampires might be a handy asset in his line of work, it was also a reminder that he wasn’t truly human. That he wasn’t anything classifiable. “Let’s go back to the hotel and clean up.”
“Your injury needs tending to.”
“I’ll be fine. We have a first aid kit.”
But Tenrael gently moved Charles’s hand out of the way, ripped open his shirt and undershirt to better expose the bite, and licked at it very tenderly. Nothing unpleasant happened. He didn’t scream and melt when the blood slid down his throat. Charles was, however, suddenly overtaken by the eroticism of Ten’s soft, damp tongue against his own skin, and his trousers became uncomfortably tight. “You consume blood too?” His voice sounded rough to his own ears. “I’ve never heard that about demons.”
“It is your essence, Master. I do not need it to sustain me, but I find it delicious, just as I love to taste your sweat and your spend. I delight to have you inside me.”
That didn’t loosen Charles’s trousers one bit.
He pulled Tenrael’s head away from his chest and rubbed him where his horns should have been. “Let’s see if we can get back to our room without scaring anyone to death.”
It was a short walk to the St. Francis, most of it downhill. With Tenrael’s coat collar up and Charles’s coat buttoned, their blood and wounds weren’t too obvious. The hotel doorman gave them a slightly skeptical look as they swept in, but he didn’t say anything.
One of the benefits of their room was its outsized bathroom, easily twice as spacious as the one back home. Tenrael steered Charles straight into it, and they both stripped out of their clothing. “More ruined shirts,” Tenrael observed. His was badly bloodstained, while Charles’s had a ragged hole.
“The Bureau can buy us more.”
“Sit”—Tenrael pointed to the closed toilet—“Master,” he added with a curl of a smile. He doctored Charles’s injury deftly and gently, washing away the blood, assessing the scope of the wounds, and applying iodine. The orange stain and red bite marks were startlingly bright against Charles’s alabaster skin.
Charles winced a little at the sting. “Do you think I can catch anything nasty from a vampire bite?”
“She seems to have caught something nasty from you.”
“I guess it’s good to know for the future.” Not that he intended to get bitten again, but in his line of work, one never knew. He wondered in what ways his blood was different from ordinary humans’ and what other potential effects it might have. Aside from those times when he’d smoked or had consumed meat or alcohol, he’d never been sick. Not so much as a sniffle. When his mother lay sweating with fever and gasping her last breaths, he’d felt perfectly, horribly healthy.
But Charles wasn’t immune to injuries, unlike Tenrael, whose flesh healed within minutes or hours. When Ten washed the blood from his own muscular neck, all that remained were a few ugly scars. They’d be gone by morning.
Tenrael reached for a bandage, but Charles stopped him. “I should shower.” He felt unpleasantly grimy, as if some essence of the melting vampire had settled onto his skin.
“You could bathe instead.” Tenrael nodded toward the tub that, unlike the one at home, was big enough to accommodate Charles’s long legs.
Why not? A touch of luxury would be a nice change.
Tenrael filled the tub, muttering under his breath about the wonders of modern plumbing, and then helped Charles climb in as if he were an invalid. Ten had picked up a washcloth and the cake of rose-scented soap and seemed determined to wash Charles, but then the phone rang. “I will answer it,” Tenrael said before Charles could so much as groan.
“It was Collins,” Tenrael said when he returned to the bathroom. He knelt beside the tub, seemingly oblivious to the hard tile under his knees. “He has no new information, and the boy was not at the Sea Dog last night. But he is going out again tonight.”
Charles scooted a little deeper into the tub, careful to keep his bandage above water, and leaned his head back. Soaking felt heavenly and soothed the itch where his wings used to be. That itch was so constant that he barely noticed it anymore—and didn’t realize how tense it made him. Now he allowed himself to relax fully, with the water vapor swirling around like a private pocket of San Francisco fog and Ten’s hands slow and steady with soap and washcloth. Charles even closed his eyes. “Let’s stay in tonight.”
“Yes, Master.”
Outside, monsters roamed. Young men disappeared. People aged and died. Wars raged on. But here, in the small universe of a hotel bathroom that smelled faintly of roses, there was peace.
Ten soaped Charles’s shoulders and arms, the unmarred portions of his chest, the ladder of his ribs. Although Charles was reasonably strong, you wouldn’t know it to look at him. His long body had none of the bulging muscles that Tenrael’s did. Just pale skin over bones. But Tenrael had never seemed to mind that, and he took his time over Charles’s flat belly and prominent hipbones.
It wasn’t until a warm, soapy hand cradled Charles’s balls that he realized he was hard and had been so for some time. He felt no urgency, however. Just languorous pleasure when Ten slowly stroked him. But then he realized he was depriving himself of an additional treat and opened his eyes to watch Tenrael. His Tenrael.
Sometimes people spoke metaphorically about wanting to be rid of their demons, but Charles never wanted to lose his very real one. His demon, who was unique in all the world, who craved the pain Charles gave him as much as he craved the tenderness, who trusted Charles in ways nobody ever had. Who never wished Charles was more—or less—human or would fit into the world more comfortably. Who cherished Charles exactly as he was.
“You’re so strong,” Charles rasped. Strong enough to depend on another; strong enough to view his own needs as joys rather than burdens.
Still working Charles’s length, Tenrael gazed at him from under a fall of dark hair. “You let me be that way, psixi mou.”
“Your soul?” Charles had intended his translation to be slightly mocking, but it instead sounded plaintive.
“Without you, I am a shell. With you, I have a home, a purpose. A soul. I can love.” Tenrael’s face shone with wonder. “Is it blasphemous of me to say so?”
“It’s beautiful.”
With movements almost too fast for Charles to track, Tenrael dropped the washcloth and soap, clambered into the tub, and impaled himself on Charles’s cock. It must have hurt—there was no lubrication to smooth their joining—but Ten’s cry spoke more of triumph than pain. Water sloshed everywhere. Charles gasped and bashed the back of his head against the tub. Then Ten tossed the ring aside—it clinked against the tile floor—and he rode Charles with wings partially unfurled and eyes flashing.
It was all almost too much: the sight of Ten above him, the sensation of Ten’s body encasing him, the lingering echoes of the word love. Charles couldn’t thrust up under Tenrael’s weight and didn’t try. It took all his strength to lift one hand out of the water and wrap it around Tenrael’s erection, which he caressed with more eagerness than finesse.
Tenrael flexed his thighs, rising and falling, his head thrown back and neck tautly corded, the fading scars exquisite. Multilingual words tumbled from his lips like a cascade of jewels. Charles wondered vaguely whether his own heart could withstand the strain and decided it didn’t matter. He would willingly die like this.
But then Tenrael bent forward—such a gorgeous, flexible creature—and captured Charles’s mouth in a fierce kiss. They were joined at mouth and groin, a complete and infinite loop, as perfect as anything ever created.
Charles swallowed Tenrael’s cries when the demon came. And a few heartbeats later, Tenrael swallowed his.