Vampire Vow Read online

  VAMPIRE VOW

  By

  Michael Schiefelbein

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Epilogue

  Vampire Vow

  By Michael Schiefelbein

  alyson books

  los angeles new york

  ALL CHARACTERS IN THIS BOOK ARE FICTITIOUS. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO REAL INDIVIDUALS—EITHER LIVING OR DEAD—IS STRICTLY COINCIDENTAL.

  © 2001 BY MICHAEL SCHIEFELBEIN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

  THIS TRADE PAPERBACK ORIGINAL IS PUBLISHED BY ALYSON PUBLICATIONS,

  P.O. BOX 4371, LOS ANGELES, CA 90078-4371.

  DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED KINGDOM BY

  TURNAROUND PUBLISHER SERVICES LTD.,

  UNIT 3, OLYMPIA TRADING ESTATE, COBURG ROAD, WOOD GREEN,

  LONDON N22 6TZ ENGLAND.

  FIRST EDITION: JULY 2001

  ISBN: 1-55583-586-4

  COVER DESIGN BY MATT SAMS.

  COVER PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROMA STUDIOS

  For Gary

  I

  Baptism Into Blood

  Chapter One

  ^ »

  I wanted Jesus. That's how it started. Yes, the Jesus they built a religion on, the one they say rose from the dead. (I should be the last creature in the world to doubt that.)

  There we were, on a quiet, stony hilltop overlooking the city, the stars above us like light through pinpricks in black velvet. Just he and I, years before the 12 dolts who formed his entourage. We huddled next to each other as we often did, and I finally asked him.

  "Joshu," I whispered—that was my name for him. "Why resist this? You're always talking about the vanity of human law, about wanting to strike out against the old order."

  He looked troubled, a young man of 23 still as idealistic as his disgustingly naive, dull Nazarene parents, who actually believed me when I told them I was a Jew—I, a Roman officer serving under Pilate!

  "I'm troubled," he said. He leaned back on his hands. The moonlight washed over his lean form, his fine brow betraying his sensuality as much as it did his intelligence.

  "What's to be troubled about? Love? That's what you rant about all the time, isn't it? Love must replace the legalism of the priests." I stroked his cheek, the smooth cheek of an unmarried Jew boy.

  He took my hand and kissed it. "You know what place you have in my heart. You are the earth itself to me. But the earth is passing—"

  "This is pious trash." I jerked my hand away. "The truth is you lack the boldness to act by your beliefs. You're not a man of action. You're a poet brainwashed by the Essene fanatics walled up in their caves. All this business about the end of this age, the plight of the complacent priests. Then when it comes to a radical move—"

  "You're talking about forbidden relations."

  "Forbidden to whom?" I asked. I could hear him weakening, see him eyeing my strong calves, my bulky thighs. It was hot and I had thrown off my tunic to tempt him. Nature had given me a square jaw, a cleft chin, a dark mane, eyes that could bring a vestal virgin to her knees—and a cock that could keep her there. My meaty physique came from years spent in the Emperor's training rooms.

  "The point is," I said, "we've sworn allegiance to each other. We meet on this craggy hillside night after night. I listen to all these dreams of yours about a kingdom of god. Your god. The stuff of sedition, I might add. We race along the river, buck-naked. We even bathe each other! Ours is only the ultimate bond."

  Right there, the Jew temple of Jerusalem beneath us, I swore to myself that I would finally enter him—the boy prophet, the ultimate challenge, my obsession. I would enter him the way I entered the Emperor's gates after a campaign: invincible, majestic. But hailed by his groans rather than by the cries of banner-waving masses.

  I reached beneath his robe.

  He pulled away. "No, Victor." His voice was not without regret. "I'm not ready to throw out the law of my fathers. This cannot happen."

  This was the last time we met there.

  Soon afterward I received a message from him: I must give myself to no earthly man, only to my Father in heaven, for whose coming kingdom I must prepare. For the sake of this, we must meet no more.

  I persisted. I who had taken whomever I chose until that moment. I followed Joshu, hounded him until he fled to the desert to live as a hermit.

  I had never hesitated to use force with other subjects of the Empire, to beat, to wrench them into submission. With this one, though, force could not be mustered.

  Chapter Two

  « ^ »

  I met him a week after arriving in Palestine. After military training in Rome, my birthplace, and commanding troops in Gaul, I received a commission to serve in Judaea under Pilate, who'd replaced the puppet king, Archelaus, when he'd proved incompetent. My head swelled with the honor of it—living at Pilate's palatial headquarters on the Mediterranean coast, parading through the rabble of Jerusalem to remind the Jews whose empire they belonged to, spending the day wrestling naked soldiers and training in the governor's gymnasium. Besides quelling riots now and then and presiding over executions, all I had to do was bark orders and look good.

  My hopes were crushed, however, as I and a fellow officer surveyed Jerusalem for the first time from horseback. Beggars squatted at the city gates, pissed out in the open. The marketplace stank with overripe fruit and animal dung. Urchins ran naked through the streets, and toothless hags scrubbed linens at the wells.

  Rome was not without its own squalor, but I had been exposed to little of it. I'd been raised outside the city in a magnificent villa with gardens, vineyards, and a superb view of the Apennines. The city drew me only after dark, when I needed a whore, when the lurid faces I passed in the night only excited my wild, drunken desires. In Rome, colossal buildings of marble overshadowed the ghettos. Fountains in enormous squares, mansions on the Palatine, the Circus Maximus, the baths of Caracalla, aristocrats draped in purple—the splendors of the city made up for its unpleasant corners.

  While Jerusalem—aside from the temple (a shack by Roman standards), Herod's palace, and a few mansions—had nothing to offer but rank slums.

  I got drunk every night the first week, depressed about being stationed in Judaea for three years. To hell with standards of Roman discipline, I thought. I needed an escape from that hole. After carousing one night after Pilate had left for councils in Rome, I shook off the clingy Egyptian whore who couldn't get enough of me and rode to the hills overlooking the city. A cool wind blew. The sky already burned pink on the eastern horizon. I dismounted, threw a blanket on a smooth rock, and passed out.

  When I opened my eyes, the sun was setting. I'd spent a whole day sleeping off my stupor, but my head still pounded. A voice rose over a ridge just a
bove me, a voice as smooth and sensuous as a wooden flute, a young man's voice. I scaled the rocks to peer over the ridge. A stark-naked boy, who seemed barely 20, cavorted on a bluff, throwing up his hands, swirling his head, all the while chanting an eerie Oriental tune. His eyes were closed and I watched him freely for several minutes before he stopped directly in front of me and gazed down at the ledge where I stood, without a hint of shame in his handsome face.

  "What's wrong, haven't you ever seen one before?"

  He'd caught me admiring his dark circumcised cock, thick as a rope used to hoist building stones. "Not like that," I said. "You're my first naked Jew."

  "It's a sign of the covenant," he said with pride, continuing to stand unabashedly in front of me with his arms crossed.

  "Covenant?" His Latin was crude and I thought I'd misunderstood him.

  "Yes, the covenant between us and our God."

  "Demanding son-of-a bitch, if you ask me."

  He sized me up as though he might kick me in the face, then laughed instead, his taut belly quivering. He laughed until he coughed and wiped tears from his almond-shaped eyes.

  "Help me up, damn it. I'm tired of balancing on this ledge."

  Still smiling, he offered me his hand, and I scrambled up to the bluff. He handed me a skin of water, exactly what I needed after a night of liquor and a full day of sleeping in the sun. Then we hiked to a lower level, leading my thirsty horse to a pool of water that had collected in a cave. He seemed to know every niche of the mountain, stepping with confidence in his dusty sandals across gullies and jagged stones. Still naked. In the twilight shadows at the mouth of the cave, his sinewy form and his long, unkempt hair seemed to belong to a wild man who roamed the mountains.

  "Are you one of the crazy Essene cave dwellers I've heard about?"

  "What makes you ask?" He stroked the neck of my horse as it lapped the water.

  "Don't tell me all Jews prance around on mountaintops with their peeled cocks flopping."

  "No, just me."

  "And why is that?"

  "I'm strange, they say. I'm drawn to the mountains, up above Jerusalem. You can laugh, but I sense God here, even more than in the temple." He nodded in the direction of the city.

  "Which god?"

  "There's only one."

  "Ah yes, a Jew idea. So you toss off your clothes when you feel the presence of your god?"

  He smiled. "I go a little mad. Down there inside the temple walls, God seems confined. I know I feel confined."

  "Watch out, Jew boy, you'll be stoned for heresy. I hear that's part of your religious code."

  We secured my horse and climbed back to the summit where we'd met. It was too dark now to descend the mountain. We ate bread and lentils he'd brought in a pack, and stretched out on a homespun blanket to gaze at the lights in the city below. When the wind picked up, the boy slipped into his robe and lay close to me for warmth. He tantalized me more than any creature ever had, but I kept my hands to myself. Few, very few men could raise a sense of honor in me, but he—a Palestinian subject of the Empire, a Jew boy—managed somehow.

  Over the next year, I became obsessed with him. We sailed on the Sea of Galilee, near his hometown, and hiked the rugged mountain terrain of Judaea. We feasted on roasted lamb, chugged his homemade wine until our vision blurred. Hot and drunk on the Mount of Olives, east of the city, we talked freely. He lampooned religious sects like the Pharisees and spun theories about the Elysian Fields, what he called the kingdom of Heaven.

  In time he owned up to his heat for me—like I couldn't see it in his eyes. It frightened him. But it wasn't fear that kept him from grabbing my balls. He had religious qualms. He was destined to be some kind of eunuch for his god, a damned vestal of Palestine.

  His power over me never relented. Not when I inspected with contempt the modest stone house of his family in a neighborhood of Nazarene artisans, not when I watched him join dirty swarms of Jews outside the temple, not when I nearly exploded in unrequited lust.

  If he'd toyed with me, if he'd held me at bay to stir up my desire, I'd have taken him in an instant. But he didn't tease. Nor did he fear me. He wanted me but wouldn't succumb. And I wanted nothing less than his will.

  Our last night together, I was horny as a satyr and thought, To hell with it, I've been a Stoic long enough—and when he feels my cock inside him he'll forget his scruples. When he refused me, and cut me off, my rage knew no bounds.

  Chapter Three

  « ^ »

  "I'm sick of hearing of it, Lieutenant," Pilate said. He was flat on his stomach on his massage table, naked and glistening with oil. The man working his shoulder muscles was a barrel-chested Egyptian with braided black hair. The bath chamber was heavy with columns, gilded tiles, draperies. "It was one thing to beat the tax collector for cheating us above the usual amounts: He was an example. The defiant drunkard, too. But a woman with her baby? By the gods, man, we'll have a mob on our hands. We've got enough trouble the way it is."

  These words from a man who loved bearbaiting.

  "She was a prostitute, Your Excellency." I stood at attention above his bald head, my crotch level with his eyes. (I'd heard he liked to carry on with his soldiers, though he'd never summoned me to his chamber.) "The people might have stoned her tomorrow for all we know, and she refused to obey my commands."

  The governor signaled for the Egyptian to stop. The servant did so and brought him a sheet. Pilate wrapped himself in it and strolled to his couch. He stretched out on his side, eyeing the insignia on my tunic. His dark eyes were bold and cunning.

  "She did not realize your rank, your position here?"

  "Of course the bitch knew."

  "And what did you command her to do?" He didn't bother trying to hide his curiosity.

  "The usual things. I wanted to enter her backside. I wanted her tongue inside me. I wanted to bind her."

  "And she resisted?"

  "She tried. I tied her down, forced myself into her, with the brat looking on, bawling in his own shit. I backhanded him."

  "Yes, well you might have spared the child." He motioned to a ewer of wine on a table and the Egyptian brought him a cup. "The Jews won't tolerate beating one of their children, even one that belongs to a prostitute. I've met with two contingents of their priests today."

  "I'll restrain myself, Your Excellency."

  "If you're hungry for blood, I can make you head executioner, Lieutenant." He eyed me impatiently over his cup.

  "I will restrain myself."

  "See to it that you do. I won't have another riot outside my walls." He waved me away.

  In my dark room in the barracks, I removed my uniform and sandals and stretched out on my cot. The arched window framed a moon round and white as a discus. I knew I had gone too far. But since Joshu had dismissed me, fury had driven me to madness. What Pilate didn't know was that I'd knocked around other whores, as well as two or three Jew boys who'd tried to guard their circumcised shafts the way witless maidens guard their own treasures.

  I had never wanted anyone like I wanted Joshu, a superior specimen of manhood—not just in his taut, athletic physique, but also in his thinking. He challenged not only the inane Jewish laws of ritual purity but, at least in private, elements of Roman civilization—the Emperor's title of divinity, social classes, the possession of slaves.

  I shared his disdain. The difference between us was that I at least pretended to abide by the rules and obey the commands of my superiors. Such adherence had won me my rank, and I believed I was destined for greater things, perhaps direct service under Tiberius himself.

  Now, however, my ruthlesness had spiraled out of control. My downfall was imminent if I could not restrain my animal urges.

  Chapter Four

  « ^ »

  Other officers had sworn by the tranquilizing potions of a seer named Tiresia. I'd resisted entering the cluttered slum along one of the city walls where she kept shop, but now I was desperate for an elixir that would temper my ange
r.

  Made of stone blocks, all of its windows bricked up, the former inn was entered through a small portal leading to a long, cavernlike corridor built against the wall. I stumbled in the darkness past three or four cubicles toward a dull light. I found the wench staring into a mirror of polished metal, oil lamps glowing around her. She saw my reflection and smiled triumphantly.

  "So, you've finally come, Lieutenant Victor Decimus. Welcome to my lair. Sit here." She patted a stool next to her. She wasn't the ancient hag I'd expected. She was not yet 40, her Ethiopian locks threaded with colored beads, her abundant bosom jiggling beneath her flowing robe with every movement she made.

  "What, has another officer told you of me? Speak the truth, wench." I continued watching her in the mirror.

  "The truth!" She laughed from deep in her chest. "I know nothing else. Nothing. If you please, my lieutenant, advance."

  I approached the stool, removed my sword, and sat next to her.

  "You're a handsome man, Lieutenant. You've a strong jaw, strong shoulders. Your eyes… they're bold, keen. You're a model client."

  "I know what I look like. Enough of this prattle." I turned to her, but she averted her face from me.

  "Please, my lord. Keep your eyes to the glass. If you want to be satisfied. Look only to the glass."

  "If this is a game, I'll rip you apart, woman." I motioned to my sword and took a seat.

  "You won't be sorry, my lord." Through the mirror, her heavy-lidded eyes again peered at me. She was a stunning beauty. "The remedy you seek, I have. I have something more, if you dare try it. However, it will stir up your passion rather than calm it."

  "You must be a second-rate sorceress. The last thing I need is more of a temper."

  "Ah, but what if you could be transported beyond the grounds of Pilate's headquarters? What if you could take whomever you pleased with no ill consequences?"