Chapter 4: Hail Mary

Nicholai was nostalgic—the effect of sugar long since gone—as he trudged slowly with cement-laden feet through his front door. He keyed open the door first before letting it shut on its own behind him. The couch lay in front of him, a living room connected to a nicely accommodated kitchen and a suitable-for-one dining set. He plopped, suddenly tired, on the wrap around couch, having nothing to look forward to but a long weekend completely alone.

A weekend alone in a house that wasn’t exactly bad, but defiantly not up to standards according to how he used to live his pampered life. It could stand to use a little interior designing and the green carpet in his living room just had to go, red more suited his tastes. The mahogany trim around roughly commented the off-white walls and scarlet furniture. The white tiles in the kitchen had begun to loosen and wiggle about under his quiet, padding footsteps as well. Nothing that a little glamour couldn’t fix, if Nicholai was strong enough to support anything but the changing of his own appearance, and even that took its toll on him. A week of looking human made him want to sleep the weekend away. Which is just what he thought he might do.

As to not be bothered by the shoddy appearance of his messy living quarters, Nicholai forced himself off of the couch and headed into the bathroom to empty his bladder. He rubbed his eyes in the tired way that a young child might and almost crawled up the stairway located directly across from the bathroom in the narrow hallway.

In the upstairs the carpet was a mocking shade of the most abhorrent white that he’d ever laid his eyes on, but at least it was clean. He had a rather large futon for a bed, with an extra mattress piled on top, and a million pillows for extra plushy comfort. It gave him something more solid in the bed to sleep beside, something that felt quite like the rough curves of another body or beast. Comfort and rest was what he needed now, so he divested himself of his clothing, dropped his glamour to let his crimson skin dampen through like a misty haze, and settled into the luxurious pillows and drew a silken midnight blanket around his nakedness.

The vampire slept through until nearly Saturday evening. The darkness that surrounded him was as thick and as black as the velvet blanket he kept at the foot of his bed for really cold nights. When he opened his emerald eyes, he wasn’t sure at first if he had really opened them at all. He searched until he found the patch of moonlight that always streamed from the one small circular window up near the ceiling in the center of his room, then grunted as he climbed to his feet. He let the blanket drop with a slight rustle behind him as he walked, familiar with the surroundings, to his closet. Reaching in, he clasped his hand around the black robe he wore around the house when it was a little too chilly to be naked and drew it around his shoulders.

Downstairs in the bathroom, he relieved himself and ran a hot bath. The feeling of hunger was present already—in his stomach and in his mind—but it was dull enough that he could ignore it for a while before going out to find a kill. His bathroom was extravagant compared to the rest of his humble home. It was kept very clean, very dark, and very sensuous. Thick draperies hung over the one window beside the toilet. Fur covers were on the toilet lid and back, silken scarves hung down either side of the large mirror above the black marble sink with its shiny, polished, silver spout. The wood and trim around were of a deep, rich, mahogany, and his shower curtain was pulled back with a heavy ribbon and tied to one side. The only thing that was stark and stood out like a sore thumb was the peach colored bathtub.

Nicholai enjoyed being clean very much, and when he had nothing else of importance to do—instead of showering—he would bathe in a long, luxurious, hot bath. Cleansing oneself could be considered a very corporal experience as he sometimes showed his guests. Those were the times when he more enjoyed playing with his food rather than eating it right away. The feel of another’s soap-slicked hands over his naked body was almost as good as running his hands over another’s naked body.

Plumes of steam rose as he poured bath beads into the tub and it was suddenly accompanied by a scent only known as Dragon’s Blood. A very pungent odor, almost manly, and colorful to his senses. He let his robe glide off of his shoulders and turned to examine himself in the mirror. A nearly hairless body stood before him, reflected in all of its scarlet glory, with a seemingly endless ocean of black hair cascading like velvet down his back and over his shoulders. It tickled the backs of his legs when he moved, and he couldn’t help grinning at his image in spite of himself. His thin lips stretched across teeth that were perfect and straight, a most charming smile that matched the iridescent green of his eyes.

Nicholai shut off the running water and listened to the complete silence for a moment before disturbing the perfect stillness of the water with one foot, then two. He sat back with a contented sigh, immersing himself once to wet his thick, black mane. He had so much hair and it floated around him as if it were also a part of the water as he began soaping himself up. The water was almost to scalding point and felt quite nice as the oils began to soften up his skin. He sank down to his chin, closed his eyes, and allowed himself to relax for just a little while as he worked out in his mind where he would go to feed tonight.

His mind was easily thrown off track in the instant that Aranael popped up. Everything came tumbling back to the vampire, what he’d said, what he’d promised, and how he was going to accomplish it. At the time it had seemed like such a good idea to take the boy in. He was a beautiful thing and more than willing, or so it seemed. Nicholai had never turned anyone into the thing he was. He had never seen it done but had heard of it. In his younger years, some of the elders would speak of the outlaws who had turned a few humans into Halflings. It was forbidden within the circle, and for a while back then, a lot of the Halflings were hunted down and killed. It was an impurity within the race. Now, most vampires were impure in some form, and a lot of them had accepted the blood of many. Some of the older vampires still kept tradition, and refused to speak or acknowledge any of the impure brought into the cult.

Nicholai himself was not pure, but he had no human to speak of, and whatever else there was that coursed through his veins, there wasn’t much of. He was mostly vampire, and proud of his heritage too.

If he adopted Aranael, the chances of the boy going insane were outrageously high, and Nicholai’s chances of ever getting back into the utopia of the circle would be dashed forever. Still, Nicholai pondered as he stood and sluiced the water from his skin, would it really be worth it to go back to a place where so many had already outlawed him? He didn’t think so.

The matter was of little importance now though; Nicholai sighed and drained the tub. His hunger had worsened considerably and he needed to concentrate on pulling off a completely new disguise. He couldn’t look like himself or Mr. Creighton if he was going to go out and feed. Instead, he settled for the look of a freckled face redhead, aged just enough to get into the local bars down one of the main roads. Last week he’d indulged himself in the flesh of the young and terribly innocent, this time he would return to his steady diet of older gentlemen. Though it was tempting to return to Evangeline.

Nicholai wriggled into a tight pair of blue jeans with rips in the back pockets and pulled a violet turtleneck sweater over his head. A pair of shiny black boots, and a black cabbie cap later, Nicholai—now known as Ambrose Riddle—did a once over of himself in the hallway mirror. His disguise was perfect as he donned a pair of artsy glasses and perfected an alluring wiggle of his hips as he waltzed out the door.

Spiders hall, the corny little bar just down the street from the Art College was where Nicholai—Ambrose—ended up. It was suiting to his new image, a creative, cozy, uneventful place with dim colored lights and dark heated corners. Music pulsed from overhead speakers, but it was nothing like he had ever heard before. Soft, silky voices mad him unsure if the singer was male or female. Even so, the lyrics were captivating.

The floors were carpeted in a sickly spill of multicolors, and where it wasn’t carpeted was sticky with spills of another kind. A bit unsanitary, but too comfortable for it to really bother him. Ambrose—who was really Nicholai—walked smoothly along the floors. The people in his peripheral vision dulled out and became invisible, they didn’t matter. His head pounded and the ache intensified as he tried to sort out the smells of the different people and find whose blood called to him the most.

He was sitting up at the bar. The scent of wild smoke and innocent babes put a highlight on the man. The smell was thick, intoxicating, and so full of holiness mixed with the blasphemy of wicked desires. It was, plainly, sinful.

Nicholai invited himself beside the priest, feeling sudden sympathy for all the things this man never got to do. He would never get to do them either if Nicholai had his way tonight.

“Hello Father,” he whispered to keep the other people ignorant of their conversation. “Can I get you a drink?”

The man’s eyes widened in surprise, Nicholai knew, because someone had seen through his disguise of everyday normal clothing.

“How—“ He never got the chance to finish his question.

“Never mind that,” Nicholai smirked, extending a slender, friendly hand. “Ambrose Riddle.”

“I-Ivan Moretti.”

His eyes were well rounded and large on his face, he blue of them was like two windows on an afternoon sky, portraying a semblance of innocence. When Nicholai playfully and suggestively fingered a strand of the chocolate colored hair, he found it to be powdery to the touch. Absently, he wanted to know if the lips would feel the same.

Underneath the practical outfit, the frame was lithe. The pointed chin dug into Nicholai’s shoulder when the besotted priest learned of intimacy and touch. His waist was so thin, that the vampire could have wrapped his spidery arms around them twice. His lips held a tint of underlying rouge as they traced over the sickly bumps of ribs, across jutting hipbones, and into the hallow, sunken stomach. Ivan’s skin had turned china white from years hidden in the deep bowels of the church, never seeing the yellow glow of sunlight on a creamy summer day.

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee…” Ivan whispered quickly, over and over and over again, and it amazed Nicholai. That he prayed to his God, in his monotheistic, narrow-minded point of view, for forgiveness even as his hands fisted in the pleasure of the flesh that was so forbidding.

“Do you believe God will save you?”

“Hail Mary…”

“When you die, will you be salvaged by the hand of god and the sacrifices of Jesus Chrisssst?” He hissed, worshiping Ivan’s sickly body like the idol it had never been, deserved to be, and never would be again.

Nicholai joined in the chorus of Hail Mary’s, whispering a soft one over the chalky thigh, another across his stomach, on a trembling inner thigh, and across the priest’s most sensitive parts. And when I van jerked violently in his first and last orgasm, Nicholai bit gently into the soft mound of flesh above the pulsing genitals, where all the juiciest of the main arteries ran together. The tangled web of life and blood poured itself into Nicholai’s mouth, staining it a dirty red.

The vampire sucked him dry, angry for some reason at the loss of such a pitiful life. It could have been more he thought; it could have been more than a forced lifetime of Hail Mary’s. He gently stroked the lifeless body. All of the elements that had once made Ivan human now weighted Nicholai’s gorged belly. He had never been one to show much forlorn emotion, but as he closed the unseeing blue eyes—still wet with a fine sheen of glorified tears—the vampire let wetness fall from his own emerald eyes. He believed in nothing, worshiped no one, but still managed to wonder if Ivan had found his eternal paradise, and wondered yet still if he would ever find his.