The Blood of Kings Read online

  The Blood of Kings Copyright ©John Michael Curlovich 2005

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  For more information contact:

  Riverdale Avenue Books

  5676 Riverdale Avenue

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.riverdaleavebooks.com

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  Cover by Scott Carpenter

  Digital ISBN: 9781626019881

  Print ISBN: 9781626019980

  First edition published by Alyson 2005

  Second edition, October 2019

  Books by John Michael Curlovich

  The Blood of Kings

  Mordred and the King

  Love of the Argonauts

  You Must Remember This

  As “Michael Paine”

  Steel Ghosts (January 2005)

  The Colors of Hell

  Owl Light

  Cities of the Dead

  

  For

  Jerry Priori

  An Introductory Note

  This novel was written in the early 2000s, before many of the advances the LGBTQ community has seen. Sodomy laws were still on the books; marriage was a distant hope. Yet despite the many leaps forward we have made, the reactionary right wing never tires in its attacks on us. And in many particulars the hatred they spew is more venomous than ever.

  I thought then, and think now, that closet cases tacitly permit them to advance—or at least maintain—their hold on the reins of power, if only by not speaking out against them. In many cases they work actively to make the situation even worse for us; witness the ever-growing number of anti-LGBTQ preachers and politicians who get caught in same-sex scandals. And there are many, many more of them, like a certain vocally pro-Trump Southern senator. The notion that attacking the gay community somehow “proves” you’re not gay yourself is far from dead, and it plays deliberately into the hands of the anti-LGBTQ forces that never seem to tire.

  We need to stand firmly against these people and take back the power they cling to so desperately. We need to reclaim our glorious past and our rightful place in the human family. Hence The Blood of Kings. The book is fantasy, to be sure, and like all fantasy it tends to exaggerate certain aspects of reality. But in some ways it strikes me as more timely now than in the period when it was written. As a wise man once said, imaginary gardens can have real toads in them.

  John Michael Curlovich

  2019

  Prologue

  Danilo.

  The love of my life.

  And the even greater love of my death. Or my life-in-death.

  Gone, now. And yet still with me, there in my blood.

  It seems to me that death has always been with me, death and sadness. And fear. But they have hardly been with me in the way they are now.

  My father died when I was four years old and my mother a year later. The relatives who raised me told me she died of grief at his loss, which I think was supposed to make her sound noble or tragic or something. But all it told me was that she valued him and her love for him, and not me. When I was still a boy I was able to see through sentimental rot like I Remember Mama. A hard lesson to learn when you’re that young, but that’s the way it was.

  I was raised on a farm outside Ebensburg by a cousin of my mother named Millie. She and her husband took me in more out of obligation than anything else, but at least they did it. Their “Christian obligation,” I should say. I still remember them reading the Bible at me, and even the apocrypha, though I was never much interested and didn’t try to hide it.

  There was a small trust fund out of my parents’ insurance, administered by a law firm in Pittsburgh, so all their expenses were covered, with a bit more to reward them for their trouble. They made sure I was fed and clothed properly, and there were Christmas and birthday presents. But they had their own kids. I don’t remember anything warmer than indifference from them most of the time.

  From junior high on, I swam. First time I went in the water, I took to it. Breaststroke, butterfly, I was never much good at the backstroke, but I was good enough overall to be one of the stars of the school team. Not that it counted for much. Central Pennsylvania is football country; the rest of the school athletes barely got noticed unless they won especially big. Which we did, now and then, but nobody paid much attention anyway, once football season started.

  In high school I met Tim, Tim Johanssen. He was my first love. Two years older than me, captain of the swim team in his junior year. Tall, blue-eyed, black-haired, pale-skinned. He had what everyone calls a swimmer’s build, of course, since that’s what he was. Lean smooth body, as beautiful as anything I had ever seen.

  Not long after I made the team, we were in the locker room alone one day, showering. He smiled at me. “You’re good.”

  “Thanks.” He was a senior and the team captain, I was a tenth grade rookie. I didn’t know what to make of his attention.

  “You need to work on your backstroke, though.”

  “I know. I’ve never been any good.”

  “You’ll get better. Why don’t you let me work with you? The backstroke’s my event.”

  And so we worked. There was so much physical contact between us, in and out of the water. Coach Harrison watched us, quite approvingly. At night in my room I made imaginary love to Tim. He had a girlfriend. Every time I saw him I went numb with love and fear.

  Love and fear. It was the first time I had felt either. Now they are constants.

  My other passion was the piano. I honestly don’t remember how or why I first put my fingers on the keys, but I know that it felt right to me, instantly. At first, I played very badly, of course. All I could do was try and imitate what I heard on the radio, bits of Chopin, Mozart, the simpler Beethoven.

  But as I said, it felt right, and I couldn’t not play. After trying for months, and knowing how bad I was, I finally got up the nerve to start taking lessons. I persuaded Paul Kowalski, my trust fund administrator, to let me buy a battered old spinet so I could practice. It wasn’t an easy step. The other kids listened to hip-hop, house, techno, metal, anything but Chopin, and I was different enough already. Millie made me put the spinet in the basement.

  When I got good enough to play even a bit well, when my fingers and my mind were limber enough, I can’t tell you what a thrill it was. For the first time in my life I was free to express myself.

  It was Chopin I loved most. Not the lighter stuff, the “Minute Waltz” and such. It was the dark, agitated Chopin, the nocturnes, that I loved. It seemed to be the music I had been hearing all my life without knowing it. And then there I was, playing it myself. When I played, I thought of Tim.

  One winter day we practiced late, just the two of us in the pool. Somewhere, I’ll never know where, I found the courage to kiss him. I was terrified what he’d do. But he kissed back. Should I take the next step? I couldn’t stop myself.

  “Tim, I think I’m in love with you.”

  He said nothing. It seemed to me he was actually shaking. Then he kissed me again. “Jamie.”

  I read the life of Chopin. Then I went on to read his letters. There among them were the ones he wrote to his friend, his lover, Tytus Woyciechowski. He always ended them, “I send you big wet kisses on the mouth.” Somehow I had always known. At my next piano lesson, I told my teacher, Mrs. Crevanti, what I had disco
vered.

  “Nonsense. Chopin was not like that. He couldn’t have been.”

  One afternoon late in the school year Coach Harrison caught Tim and me. We were making love in the shower. Our passion must have been obvious to see. For a moment he just stood and watched, and we froze when we realized he was there.

  “Dunn! Johanssen! What are you two doing?”

  We were too scared to answer. Finally, Tim stuttered, “N-nothing.”

  He took a few steps toward us and pushed us apart. Then he rounded on Tim. “Johanssen, you just won a scholarship. You want to lose it?”

  Tim was terrified. His family was poor. Without an athletic scholarship he’d never be able to go to college. “No, sir.”

  “Then don’t do any more of this shit. Hear me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you, Dunn. What are you, a fucking girl?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Maybe you ought to quit the team and stick to your dainty little piano.”

  “Please, sir, no.”

  “Both of you get your clothes on and don’t let me catch you like this again, you hear me? I catch you even staring at each other and you’re off the team.”

  Silently we got dressed. Tim avoided looking at me. He was still trembling. Outside I tried to talk to him, but he turned his back and walked away. I wanted to cry but of course it was not something I could do then and there. Later, in my room…

  That night I sat at the piano and played through the Chopin nocturnes and forced myself not to let what I was feeling show, except in the music.

  Tim barely talked to me again for the remainder of the school year. He made a big show of keeping company with his girlfriend. Then school ended, we didn’t see each other at all, and he finally left for college.

  When I was a senior, I outgrew Mrs. Crevanti and started commuting to Johnstown for more advanced lessons. That spring I gave my first recital. Some Chopin, one of the Bach English Suites, a few Prokofiev waltzes. I went online and found Tim’s address at the University of Western Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh and mailed him an invitation, with a handwritten note that said, “I’ll be playing the Chopin for you.” He never came.

  One day I saw Coach Harrison having sex with one of the new kids on the team. He realized I was there, watching, and he glared at me. There was a threat implicit in it, and I understood what it meant. I never told anyone.

  There were a few news stories about some mysterious murders on the West Penn campus. Young men had been found stripped naked and mutilated. Others had gone missing. I remember vaguely hoping Tim would be okay there. Then I promptly forgot about them. It certainly never occurred to me that one day I would become involved with them in the way I did.

  There were two scholarships for me, both partial, one athletic and one for piano, so I could go to school without draining my trust fund. I decided West Penn was the right school for me. Tim was there, and I tried to tell myself that wasn’t the reason I chose it, and I had no reason to think we could be lovers again, but…

  I was not one for illusions, not one to dream or imagine things. Reality had forced itself on me early and never left. And yet I knew what I wanted, and I knew love was a part of it.

  I hardly understood what to make of myself or my feelings or my talent till I met Danilo, and he showed me so much that was thrilling, so much that was dark and so much that was very, very frightening. He took me on a journey of discovery, not just a physical one to France and Germany and Egypt—to the secret chambers of the Louvre, and to ancient hidden tombs—but an interior journey too.

  Love and fear again, but both of a different kind from what I’d known before. Life without death. And, oddly among them, hope. Those were Danilo’s gifts to me.

  And I will not go back.

  Chapter One

  First day on campus, Freshman Day, and of course it was nothing but confusion for me. The campus was huge, the streets bewildering. Like all eastern cities Pittsburgh doesn’t actually have streets, just paved-over cow paths. I didn’t think I’d ever remember where everything was. After living in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, the real world came as a shock.

  My dorm room was miles too small. They had me in with another jock, a guy named Norm Pulaski, who played baseball. The first thing he said to me when I found the room was, “Boy, you sure have a lot of books.”

  “Silly me. They told me this was a college.”

  “It is.” My sarcasm was lost on him. I made up my mind then and there to get my own place as soon as I could. Freshmen were required to live in the dorms; after that… Sophomore year couldn’t come soon enough to suit me.

  “You a swimmer?”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “You a fag?”

  I did a double take. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing, I guess. Just don’t try no fag stuff in here.”

  I put on a big phony smile. “Well, okay, but you’ll have to promise not to read any of my books.”

  He gaped at me. I got my keyboard out of its case, set it on its stand and plugged it in. It sounded fine.

  “You gonna play that here?”

  “This is my room, too, Norm. I have to practice.”

  “I don’t like listening to concertos and stuff.” He pronounced it con-sert-os.

  I decided to ignore his rudeness and try to be helpful; he needed it. “We’re supposed to go to orientation.”

  “I’m not gonna bother with that shit.”

  “Oh.”

  He made another stab at jock camaraderie. “There’s a game Saturday night. You goin’?”

  “No, I’m not gonna bother with that shit.”

  “Fag.”

  I laughed at him. He seemed not to know what to make of me, which struck me as a good thing.

  “The chick I’m takin’ has a girlfriend. You want me to set you up?”

  “Thanks, Norm, but I’m not gonna bother with that shit, either.”

  He didn’t know what to say. He picked up one of my paperbacks and thumbed through it, puzzled, like it was an alien object.

  I finished unpacking and got out of the room.

  Orientation was mostly what I expected. Dull speeches, dull rules and instructions. There was a long code of student ethics; I wondered what Norm would make of it.

  It was a gorgeous late summer day, which made being indoors that much worse. Then they divided us into groups of 20 so student volunteers could show us around campus. Like Norm, I was going to skip it. I had made a point of visiting the campus twice during my last year of high school, so I knew where the main buildings were, at least a bit. But the guide for our group introduced himself as Justin Hollis, a member of the diving team. I shook his hand and introduced myself.

  “Good to meet you, Jamie. Why don’t I make the sports facilities the first stop on our tour?”

  “I’ve already seen them.”

  “Even so. It’s the only place on campus I really feel at home.” He had a sweet smile.

  So we saw the Olympic size pool, the diving platforms, the gymnastics equipment, b-ball court, and on and on, even the bowling alley. Most of the students in the group were girls; they seemed happy for the chance to check out the male athletes. When we took a break it became obvious to me why Justin wanted to stop there first. He spent more than a little time with one of the gymnasts, a red-haired guy.

  When we left, one of the girls in the group asked him something about a murder, or a series of them.

  “We’re not supposed to talk about that.”

  “Oh.”

  Naturally this made me curious. I sidled up beside her and asked her what she was asking about.

  “There have been some murders on and around campus. Guys. Most of them jocks, I think, and some of them in the arts.”

  I had forgotten about those news stories. My curiosity was up.

  “I didn’t think it would be anything to worry about, anyway, you know, but if our guides were told not to talk about it, then there must not be any
thing to worry about. If there was any danger they’d warn us.” She shrugged and walked over to one of her friends. They whispered something about me and giggled.

  Then came the rest of the campus. One academic building after another, science labs, the fine arts building, the library, the Academic Tower, “the tallest scholastic building in the world—wait till you see it lit up at night.” There was the Z, the campus sandwich shop and general hangout. “Short for the Zone,” Justin told us. The university owned an observatory, he said, but it was off north of the city; there would be bus rides for people who want to see it. It was all pretty exhausting, and there was no way to remember it all, not that I needed to. Besides, I wanted to find Tim. But at least the weather was nice, and I did manage to find where most of my classes were.

  Last of all, and with fairly obvious distaste, or maybe just disinterest, Justin took us to the University Museum. An old Gothic Revival building, the oldest on campus, he said. It looked like something out of a Hitchcock movie.

  On the first two floors there were rooms full of Greek and Roman statues, medieval tapestries, Renaissance manuscripts, dinosaur skeletons, collections of butterflies on pins… We breezed through them all quickly. He told us there were classrooms on the upper floors.

  In the last room we visited was a huge collection of Egyptian things. They caught my attention, for some reason. Justin made sure we all knew how to find our way back to our dorms and said the tour was over. I found myself lingering, checking out the statues.

  Justin came over to me, smiling. “You interested in this stuff?”

  “I don’t know. I like it, but I really don’t know anything about it.”

  “I hope my tour wasn’t too boring for you.”

  “No, it was fine.”

  “Thanks.” I don’t think he quite believed me. “Listen, you want to get together later on? Some of us from the team are heading to the Z for burgers.”