Blackstone Angel

“You’re a pack of fools! Don’t just stand there gawking like owls – get that mess cleaned up before the Maître sees it and gets royally fucked off!”

But it was far too late for that. Armand had melted through the shadows in the space of Santiago’s energetic correction and now appeared just left of centre stage with his arms crossed and a look of decidedly controlled aggravation that resolved itself only in the unearthly hardness of his impossible amber-fired eyes.

“I’m afraid your Maître is here, has seen it… and is in fact, royally fucked off.” He began by way of introduction. The entire company held its collective breath. Every pair of eyes lowered to the floorboards and made a marked effort to pay no mind to the corpses of the boy thieves whose mangled bodies with limbs turned out at angles no mortal might possess, lay cooling in a puddle of their own blood and piss on the orchestra pit floor.

“Who is responsible for this?” Armand asked, almost placidly. It was that tone of his though. That tone alone was enough to make every one of them sick with anxiety. He shifted his position ever so slightly, and that was enough for the twins to break down in near in an explosive bout of mortified tears. The others flinched and were disinclined to implicate themselves by coming in to provide comfort to their bawling sisters.

“We’re so sorry, Maître! Only Dina and I were so starved and overtaken by thirst when we rose this night – “ Dula tried, through gaping sobs and blooded tears. “And these little bastards were in here rooting about our dressing rooms upstairs, looting the costume jewels for easy flog. They broke in from the backstage doors – “

“Which should have been locked up tight if Eglee wasn’t busy sucking whore in the alleyway after curfew.” Santiago interjected bitterly.

“Balls to that! I was running fucking drunkards out of Lestat’s dressing room because his Grace can’t be arsed to deal with his deluded admirers out in streets-“

“ENOUGH!” Armand’s snap was like gunfire in the chaos. The coven bit their tongues and lowered their heads in silence so dense you could hear a pin drop.

“I have a theatre to run. We are less than two hours from curtain call. Our lead actor is once more absent from rehearsal and as incompetent at standing on his marks as ever before, and I’m already up to my ankles in dead mortals. Broken curfew, non-compliant security practices and sheer lack of common courtesy aside, I am this close,” He gestured, pinching his thumb and forefinger together in the air, “to having heads roll and shutting down the production entirely.”

Chaos! A dozen voices all shouting placations and apologies at once. He raised his hands for quiet, and again the yawning silence came.

“I want these corpses off my boards, or I will make you eat them, piece for fetid piece. Mark me. Now the rest of you, get to fucking work. AND SOMEONE FIND ME LESTAT!”

An utter explosion of kinetic energy ripped through the coven simultaneously. In fact, Armand hadn’t seen any of them move quite so quickly in the past three months or more. Right now he was concerned with the stench tonight’s victim would likely accumulate in the theatre, for once the rats were fed full of dead thieves, they likely wouldn’t eat any more. And it would fall to him to once more make arrangements for the corpse to be disposed of outside the city borders.

He had a throbbing coming on again. A pain behind his eyes when sheer exhausted frustration overtook him. Lestat would always respond with off-handed humour at stages such as these. But Lestat had no head for business. And these days, Lestat had seemingly no head for very much at all. Armand wanted very much to just return to his coffin and pretend this night was not coming to pass. Nevertheless, he took the stairs heavily to his office and sighed. He’d have a smoke. Look at last night’s takings and come showtime, this pack of immortal idiots he had come to know and love would find some way to magically right themselves. Downstairs, he could hear Nicolas having a fit over the blood splattered throughout his orchestra pit where one of the unfortunate intruders had his skull cracked open, and his brain matter spilt grotesquely out against the polished timber floors. It was going to be one of those nights.

-- 10:32PM First Interval --

“That was the slowest quick change I ever had in my life!” Celest complained, pushing past her coven mates and tearing the feather boa from her heavily jewelled wig backstage.

“Sammy, you were too quick in your delivery of the ‘Take her’ line again. How many times have I told you?! You wait for Gustave to cross the third mark and then say the line, not before, you fool! You fuck up the timing for the rest of the cast!” Plache snapped, aggravated beyond measure.

“Well it’s not my fucking fault! I’m waiting for Tuan’s cue because I can’t see the mark when he’s standing over it, and I know if I don’t get the line out perfectly, Rom will shit himself over the lighting change…”

The backstage bickering between the cast and crew that constituted his coven was a continual battle Armand had learned to more or less drown out as he watched them take to their seats and readjust their costumes and make-up. The show was going decidedly well, all things considered. Lestat was only eight minutes late but used the flourish of his preternatural gifts to speed through his dress and pre-show line runs with characteristic cockiness. Only to be humbled in the middle of the first scene when he tripped over Estelle’s line. His co-star recovered with such a venomous glare that the wind was taken from his sails with considerable speed.

Even so, Santiago was the first to voice what he himself had witnessed from behind the wing curtains whilst he followed the performance with his script. “There’s another one out there tonight, Maître. Did you clock him? Six rows back seat fifty-six.”

“I did.” Armand answered simply, not bothering to look up from his page until he completed his margin notes. “Handsome, isn’t he? Have you seen him before tonight?”

The elder blonde vampire with his elegant features and arched brows merely shook his head and went back to adjusting his wig. “Not this one. Smells fresh. Foreign. He’s not a Frenchmen that’s for sure.”

“Are you suggesting Frenchmen have a certain smell?!” Lestat barked, getting into his silk breeches with no regard to his lower nudity in front of the other coven mates, male or female alike.

“Rank – like the back allies in the height of summer when the nightsoil men haven’t been around for a week.” Santiago quipped back.

“Wasn’t that your profession before you came to us, Santiago, my dear?”

God, they were off again. Armand cleared his throat.

“I think I want to watch this one a little closer.” He interjected, breaking up the banter before it could lead to any further wounded pride. “I’ve a taste for the new wanderer. You’ll each do me the courtesy of standing down lest I give the signal. Are we understood?”

What fury in Alafair as he struck his command with ruthless determination. That fist in his hair was starting to hurt but God help him, Armand pulled into it, revelling in the security. He was sunk so deep in the liquid fire of his submission, there was no hope of his resurface. His entire body was an instrument to serve. In this moment he would have surrendered himself lower than the poor creatures, the whore boys whom fed Alafair’s ravenous hunger. He didn’t care. He didn’t care. He was alive here. He was feeling something that he hadn’t felt in centuries. For a glimmering moment, his chest burned and tears slipped as he made obscene, guttering sounds. His breaths compromised, his nasal airways now working overtime to keep the oxygen supply line to his vital organs functioning. And all the while he wrestled with the sensation that perhaps even Marius who owned and loved him from boy to manhood could not make him feel like this. They were too close. Master and fledgling. Too close. This was different. This was new. This was elder and fledgling snapping together as though they were magnetised from the moment of realization toward the other’s existence.

Because he had clocked the boy as he sat with dog-like fascinated devotion staring up at the stage from the dress circle as though he was witnessing a miracle. And then the tremor of anxious fidgeting during the intermission as the house lights were returned and the patrons went about from their seats to seek refreshment or rest. His pen nib had stilled against the pages of his script. Writing notes on the coven’s performance became less than engaging. He’d lost interest entirely. Those eyes…. Those abnormally bright chartreuse eyes. They were beautiful. Entirely arresting. He felt his nerves fire, his pulse quicken.

‘No, it’s exhaustion, stress perhaps.’ He lied to himself. Ripped his eyes away. Tried to focus on the corrections for lighting that he would give in tomorrow’s performance.

How was he to know that tomorrow would not come without capturing this bird in his arms and never letting go?! Rather – what on earth made me him think he wasn’t going to take this boy down as he was right now? Only this time – it was love. Love and love and love…

It had to be, no? Please, God, let it not be some morbid chemical reaction, some trick of natural biology, the release of natural hormones in the pulse of his passion, in the crux of his submission that dazzled his eyes and fooled his heart. He couldn’t bare it. Not again. Anything but that.

But it wasn’t so… It couldn’t be. Not the way his lover spoke to him, held him, commanded him. Controlled him.

Alafair’s passion spilt in thick, honey-sweet blood-laced ribbons of silken fire into the back of his throat. He had to adjust his penetration just to angle up enough to taste the sweet, metallic, salt-laced tang in his mouth. Too good to waste. Too, too good. Whilst he swallowed, he reached out with the undercurrent of his mind-gift, and he ravaged the core of Alafair’s soul. Burning through the pleasure haze to hear his thoughts, taste his history, know his heart.

He was sincere.

That’s all there was to it. The boy loved him. And Armand’s doubts and fears and wicked insecurities that tormented him like shadows were banished as he sucked, caressed and swallowed mouthful after glorious mouthful. His fingers, two now, deep in his lover’s rear intimacy, finding that explosive point of nerves and stroking its warmth lovingly. His thumb tenderly massaging over the swells of his delicate scrotum. His mouth worked him, hard, harder, harder still. Suck and swallow, suck and swallow until he was so fed full he felt close to bursting and even then he would not allow a single drop to slip free.

His heart had left the human atmosphere in sheer rapture as his lover’s bucking, cries and guttural screams of erotic ecstasy arched him bodily from their cushioned silks. Vivaan fell away, Arjuun a focus only out of brutal pleasure that shattered him. Over the whore boy’s wrist he held his lover’s eyes and swallowed, swallowed… His eyes glazed and streaming in joy. ‘Yours for eternity.’ He confirmed at last. ‘This is my vow, my blood bond to you. We are now companions. Alafair… we are now family. I am yours as you are mine.’

By the third soul-searing wave of orgasmic euphoria that he milked from his lover’s manhood, lodged hilt deep into the back of his throat, Armand’s own pleasure exploded, leaving him shaking in whole-body gluttonous ecstasy. His mind and body had broken the upper limits of his pleasure stratosphere. There was no come-down. Only this innervate, otherworldly sensation of disconnect from the reality around him. Perhaps it was the prolonged lack of a steady oxygen stream. His vision was hazed in shades of lavender and rose. Alafair’s skin shone with a golden gleam. The boy's ebony black wings were massive and cast around him from high atop his shoulder blades. He basked in the light of their protection. His head was haloed in gold light. He was untouchable. He was his shield. Armand had never felt so safe and so enraptured in his entire life. It was no longer kisses, but sheer worship when he drained his lover of every silk drop of rich passion he had expelled into the back of his throat. Then came, with gentle affection, like the spring rain to lace his lips across that groin, that belly, over nipples and collarbones to his throat where his pulse hammered like a hummingbird in glass. Vivaan’s drained, unconscious body was rolled away and he collapsed then and there beside him. Shoulder to shoulder, sweat-soaked and gleaming in exhilarated joy. His own chest rising and falling rapidly as he fought for air and laughed in incontestable happiness.

He came hard with a shattered cry barely muffled by Arjuun's soft skin, hips bucking wildly as he spilled down Armand’s throat in thick, pulsing ribbons. The sight of those ancient eyes streaming with tears, watering because of the way his manhood was gagging him, the way Armand swallowed every drop without hesitation, only drove him higher. Alafair held him there through the peak, buried to the hilt, trembling with the force of it, toes curled and heels dug into silk and cushions. Even as the orgasm ebbed, he kept his hand tangled in those dark curls, though his grip had begun to loosen. The sight of Armand- flushed, tear-streaked, and radiant with pleasure -stole what little breath he had left, “Armand…” he whispered hoarsely, voice wrecked and shaking, for a moment forgetting any other word but the name of his lover in that final release. He couldn't even answer in his thoughts, mind a haze of thick cotton, starlight and electric.

When the last of those shivers faded, Alafair gently eased Arjuun’s wrist from his mouth- he brought the bleeding wound to his lips rather than teeth, biting the tip of his own tongue until fresh blood welled. With care, he pressed a slow, lingering kiss over the torn skin, letting his healing blood seal the wounds. Oh, how he'd wished he'd known this trick sooner, been taught it earlier-- even the feeding- Oh, the feeding! These boys would live! But ah, his mind is elsewhere in this moment, he will thank Armand later- chase him with more questions later. Not now. Only then did he release the boy- a whimpering mess that was barely conscious now -letting him slump gently aside with Vivaan.

His attention returned fully to Armand, and with a low, affectionate sound, Alafair slid his fingers beneath that perfectly carved jaw and tilted his lover’s face upward, pulled him up into a deep, messy kiss, uncaring of the taste of his own release still coating that clever tongue. He licked into Armand’s mouth with his own in slow, reverent strokes, savoring the mingled flavors of blood, salt, and passion, worshipping Armand’s mouth with his own now. He let it linger, let it draw out til he could recover more of his vocabulary, could recall how to string his words together, though even then only drawing back enough to speak, noses brushing, foreheads touched together. His hand released Arman’d jaw in favour of stroking tenderly over the line of his cheekbone, past temple, sliding back through hair to cradle the back of Armand’s head, fingers stroking almost delicately through his curls where they had gripped so ruthlessly just moments before, over undoubtedly sore scalp,

“I’m sorry,” he murmured against his lips between kisses, voice soft and tender between his soft panting, “I was rough with you, let me make it better for my beloved..” He’d do it again despite apology on his lips, of course he would, but that did not make his desire to chase away any leftover discomfort afterwards any lesser.

He continued kissing him- slow, loving presses to swollen lips, tear-damp cheeks, and fluttering eyes, nudged into jaw, at the edge of an ear, to a shoulder, the hollow of a clavicle, everywhere, as though he simply couldn’t help himself- he couldn’t, really, or at least, didn’t want to, “I love you too,” Alafair whispered his answer without missing a beat, the words falling like a vow, “Gods, Armand, I have fallen for you far too quickly, it’s frightening.. And I don’t regret a second, I’d fall for you a thousand times.. You wreck me..”

He kept stroking gentle patterns over Armand’s scalp between those whispered words, easing the sting, soothing it away, alternating now in little slips down toward his neck to massage in slow circles to the sides and nape of his neck before working upward into hair again, while his other arm wrapped securely around his waist, pulling Armand up higher, tighter, closer, holding their sweat-slick bodies against each other, “You were perfect.. so beautiful taking me like that.. How lucky I am..”

He deserved this. He deserved this love. This happiness. This elation. For all the torment and suffering he had endured. For the death and blood and gore and torment. For the depravity and starvation and rape. For the plights into listless depression, for the loss of his will to live, for the eventual insanity that followed and the contemplations of throwing himself into the flames. He deserved this now. This was his time. His season. His city. Alafair was his lover, eternal. Not a fledgling, not of the same bloodline. Not a fawning, power-dazzled leech of a creature meaning to test his wits and whiles against him nor capture his attention with ragged seduction to secure survival in his city. No. He loved this boy. And that was all there was to it. He could not begin to allow himself any other contemplation. He wore his heart on his sleeve. He fell hard, fast and brutally. This was alright, wasn’t it? He could be selfish for once? He could disengage from the duties he was saddled with to find happiness? Well fuck them all. He would treat the situation as a vampire. Take it by the throat in the tearing grip of his fangs and consume it whole. He was a man in love. And men in love are never entirely rational.

“Just you and me.” He echoed now, turning to his side, entangling his legs between his lover’s and taking his own caress to the curve of that ribcage. His fingers dancing over the peaks and valleys of every articulation beneath that now flushed, overheated skin. Alafair was alive as he was. Both of them positively blooming in rosy cheeked elation. Their colours healthy, glowing. Young men in the peak of their youth. Warm and wet and content in the other’s arms.

Oh, how he folded into those kisses and returned them with his own. Worshipful, ardent, endless in his dedicated attention. He purred, moaned sweetly. Stroking tender lines from the swell of hip and thigh, down between his lover’s legs to the rich, moist manhood he had embraced with is throat, to the flat expanse of his belly. Over chest and nipple, over collarbone and neck, pausing now to cradle his flushed, radiant face against his own warm palm. The pad of his thumb tracing the line of his lower lip, mapping these curves into his memory. “So beautiful… So very, very beautiful.” Again, he came for those kisses, soft and sweet, chasing that tongue that demanded his attention. Sucking against it with pleasured groans of scintillating satisfaction. His own fingers now coming to entangle them in the silken strands of his lover’s tawny curls. How soft they were. How brilliantly they reflected the light. And those eyes… Those eyes penetrated the depths of him. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ His thoughts a continuous mantra.

“Stay with me, beloved. I will enfold your body and mind in pleasures so absolute you will never again surface from their depth. I am transcendent in this moment with you. Nothing could possibly hurt me… Nothing could come close. Oh Alafair, I’ve never felt like this before. Ever. No one has made me feel what you have.”

Closer he shifted so as their hips were now flush and their malehoods were nestled against each other’s. “I haven’t words articulate enough to dare attempt paint a picture of the ecstasy you’ve immersed me in. Would that I could never surface again. Stay here with you for an age in these very rooms, feeding and loving each other in an endless cycle.” His voice pleasure hoarse and sweetly roughened.

“Tonight you unleashed me… let my passion burn unchecked. I did… I wrecked you beloved. And I want you like this… exactly as you are in this moment, preserved for all eternity. Look at you… at me…” He took his lover’s hand, entwining their fingers before his face and smiling.

“We are human right now. Completely and utterly human. See? See how plump and rich and warm our flesh is? This is how we must stay always. Especially you beloved, for you are young and tender and require consistent blood. Never will I allow you to suffer in hunger. Never will I want to gaze upon you pale and drawn and weak with need. No… No, you will be kept plump with fresh blood, pampered and served upon hand and foot for that is my will and my will is law.”

He kissed those fingers now, one after the other. Beaming in pride, in pleasure. “My needs for blood are reduced with age. I find I can go a week without feeding before I start to feel the effects of hunger. Rare now that I kill darling. I used to take reckless pleasure in the hunt. Indiscriminate as my prior conditioning had me. Not only the evil-doer would I take, but any and every wretch that crossed my path in a dark alley. Male or female, sinner or saint. I would tear open their throats and slake myself in their blood. Four sometimes six a night if it suited me. But never children… never them. Too tender… too sweet.” His eyes clouded for a fraction of a moment before clarifying again and refocusing on his lover. Now he took his hand and placed it atop his powerfully beating heart, enfolding it with his own palm.

“Then I came to my senses,” He continued, “And only the evil-doer would I take. You can sense them. You can hear their thoughts and given time you will be able to see them as well – like pictures in your mind. Moving paintings. Like the new moving pictures they invented, did you read of this marvel? Lestat took me to see it… A film, they call it. And they project it in a dark room upon a white sheet with light… amazing!” He laughed, giddy and excited. “All these things now we can experience together. And I will teach you our ways. My ways. That you might grow strong and powerful and knowledgeable, and none will touch you. I will hunt with you nightly, show you all the finest places where you might sink your stunning fangs into the richest veins. And how to better dispose of the bodies as they fall at your feet… But my darling, murder for food need never be your only avenue. For as you see tonight – with these hapless mortal boys at our side,” He paused, reaching over his lover to take Arjuun’s arm, lifting the limb as it lifelessly hung by the wrist, then letting it drop again. “With the skill of the Mind Gift, you may manipulate their thoughts, their perceptions, their reality. You may put them under the spell of your compulsion, call them out to you from wherever they might be and feed from them, seduce and drink, taking only measured mouthfuls. Draining them as you did this night – so perfectly, stopping well before the veins collapse or their heart fails and then, restoring the wounds, breaking their trance and returning them to the streets from whence they came. None the wiser. Like this you may go through dozens in a single night. Never to be hungry again.”

Again he laughed, content and rich and human sounding. What a laugh. Like a mortal boy. As he was right now. A happy mortal boy. “Look at them,” He chuckled, gesturing vaguely at the boys who slept soundly at their left and right, they sandwiched between their bodies. “See the force of my spell upon them? I have entirely taken over their minds and bodies. Blood in mortals replenishes quickly if you keep them fed, hydrated and rested. They will feel dizzy and nauseous temporarily. Fatigued, foggy-headed and sluggish. But their vitality will return in time and we may feed and fuck with them as often as we desire. Whores like these… I like them best of all. Their inhibitions are lowered. I have a standing account with this club. Sameer is a business partner. I keep his pocketbooks filled to keep these pets pampered and fed. He directs his clients to our theatre. I direct them back to his doors for after hours entertainments. We prosper in this manner. He does not know the truth of our nature. He never will. I am merely Armand Marius to him. Proprietor and Theatre Director. This is how everyone in Paris knows of me. And trust me… I am exceptionally well-known. In high circles and low, and everything in between. Though I keep myself in the shadows and mysterious. I send envoys and emissaries to speak on my behalf. Lestat is the theatre’s co-proprietor and the other blond, Santiago, he is our second in command. Director and Manager when either of us are indisposed. He handles business when we other otherwise engaged… And it seems like, over the next week… You and I will be extremely engaged…”

His eyes twinkling in mischief, in wonder and excitement. He was a boy again. A rosy cheeked boy in the bloom of youth. Free and seeking adventure under Marius’ careful hand.

“Mmmh… no coffins tonight. This room will serve as our temple of love. But our temple is sacred land and these pretty pets have out-served their purpose. Remember, beloved, when the flowers wilt, replace them.”

He snapped his fingers sharply. And in that moment both Arjuun and Vivaan’s eyes snapped open. “You have pleased and pleasured us greatly young men… We are satisfied. Go now, bathe yourselves, attend to your meal and drink. Rest for the next three days hence before attending your service. Go – and lock the doors behind you. Bolt us in tightly and ensure we are not disturbed the entire day or night.”

The boys nodded sleepily. Their eyes hazed. Their skins slightly damp and pale. Their minds a marsh of wooly sluggishness but they understood the command.

“Your will is law, Masters. It will be done. Peace be upon you.”

And this time it would last- Not nights of performance to help in making money as in his mortal life, not like Pietro, picked out to be a placeholder, a temporary impersonation of love made just to be abandoned, nor the nights he spoiled his feeds with- he'd not been taught to do it, but on instinct, simply being as he was, whenever he took someone to feed upon them he'd make certain that they'd been spoiled, pampered, adored, made certain they felt loved and wanted before he'd take them. Never from cruelty but from those same pure intentions- he did love each of them at least a little bit, every soul he took, whether he fell for their gait, or perhaps he'd fall for the old man's stories, the vagabonds' spark, the grandmotherly insistence in and old woman that he eat to fatten up, or the young woman's giggling and blossoming cheeks. He did it because he wanted to thank them in his own way for nourishing him, though they weren't aware it was to be their fate, fed them, loved them, ensured they felt as special as he could make them. But with Armand... With Armand it could be so much more than all of that, couldn't it?

He could have someone to learn from, someone that wanted to teach him. He could have someone to love without worry of it being 'too much'. Someone to truly love, every part of. Because gods, he did- every facet he'd seen or heard so far, he did, and he was certain he could love the rest of him too as he learned him, grew to know him better- and oh.. Oh, that thought thrilled him immensely- to know him to know him truly and absolutely--

He realised only then as his breath hitched to such a thought that he'd fallen silent for far too long as he listened to Armand speak such wondrous words- every single one of them committed to Alafair's memory, from the slight roughness of that otherwise soft voice, the instruction of feeding, the ecstasy the other claimed, Santiago's role in the theatre, to the wish to experience a life together. A real life. Truly together. Every last word absorbed, but he's dragging himself back into reality, lips curling into a slow smile,

"Oh, my darling.." It was all he could think to say at first, as his mind slowly found its way back to his body. He pulled Armand closer, fingers pressing into the slender line of his back, turning them, rolling them to press him down into the cushions in a soft laugh- soon cut off against the other's mouth in an aching kiss, because oh, he couldn't help it, even as he knew he should be coming to rest, "I want to learn everything you can show me, love.." He whispered against his lips, eyes opening to meet his, while the door clicked softly shut after the boys, it's lock sliding and clicking into place.

"Not just these things my maker should have taught to me, but you, my love, I want to know everything of you, more than anything else in this world.." Spoken through another kiss, before he finally forces himself to stop in a breathless little laugh of pure adoration, hands sliding lower along back, to massage into hips, into the tail of his spine, "I want to spend every waking moment coming to know all of you- your past, your present, learn your future together with you.. What makes you laugh, what makes you weep, I want to know how to make those eyes shine with wonder, what comforts you, scares you, I want--" A sigh, smile softening, lips brushed delicately, feathelight, along the line of Armand's jaw, utterly adoring, "I want to learn it all... Love it all.."

“I’ll tell you everything.” He promised in a low whisper. “Everything – everything I remember from the hour of my birth to the moment you found me. The beautiful, the ugly. It’s such a tangle of thorns. Very few roses bloom in my history, but when they did, oh Alafair, they were magnificent. So beautiful. And I think…” He tenderly tucked himself in, his resting his cheek against his lover’s shoulder, “I think another just has…. Right now, tonight with you… And… my angel, I think this is the most luminous and magnificent of all. Because of you… All because of you.”

No more words now. So overwhelmed was he with emotion. His heart thundered in his chest, beating against the bone of his ribcage and knocking in the base of his throat. His tongue thickened and again he felt he would cry. He pressed it to the roof of his mouth as Riccardo had once taught him in their Master’s palazzo. A nifty trick to use as they were being berated for recklessness, to stem the tears that rushed and would spill. For Marius in his temper would snap at them for blubbering, “You want to be real men – then God help me I’ll give you reason to cry like them, not sniffle about like little girls at their mother’s skirts.”

Oh, Marius could be hard and cold and cruel when he wanted to. But he never wanted to. It was always an act. His heart was too big. His soul too pure, his love too all-encompassing. But his lessons were sound. Armand smiled as the memory flooded back to him.

“There will be time enough, beloved. God blesses us to walk this earth eternally beneath the halo of his moon. But now, we need never walk alone. We have each other. We have an accord and love to sustain us. I will tell you everything and I want everything from you in turn.” His lips nipped Alafair’s earlobe affectionately, mouthing him now, holding the tender flesh between his lips and against his teeth to pacify himself. He squeezed his lover tighter, as if the whole of his flesh, raw and naked was enough to transmute his story directly into his mate’s soul.

“What I cannot find eloquence to say in human words, I will show you in my blood, in my mind. You can drink it from me, from my vein… Just as we do our victims. Those last flashes of life and memory passing through their mind’s eye as they slip from life into death. That is what makes them so beautiful. Such tender gratitude from me in those moments. For my Master taught me to love them, no matter their sin. Well, you and I, we can focus, meditate on thought and memory and reveal these images to each other in our minds, through the blood. Like a dream. I’ll show you mine… I want to show you mine… But angel, I beg you… not tonight… No more tonight. I just want to lay here with you, warm and happy like this.”

Oh how he brightened now, his amber eyes hazed in his passion, gleamed and flashed excitedly, and he chuckled happily, deep in his belly. A bright, almost effeminate sounding peel as he moved his head to lay upon the cushion, flicking his tongue out like a cat to lick at the tip of Alafair’s nose playfully. “You’re right though, we are going to need more than a week, you and I… Do you think Santiago and Lestat would mind it terribly if I told them I was signing myself off duty for extended leave to wander with you?”

How he chuckled. “They’re going to have a fit! Lestat is so proud and pompous and treats the coven like his personal servants at times. He drags on Santiago something fierce. They fight and bicker between themselves but they come good in the end. We’re family. For some of us, this is the only community we’ve ever truly known and felt secure in. We work together, hard. We built this business and our reputation from the ground up, honestly. None of our vampire tricks. We applied for grants and pooled our wealth, we suffered rejection and shut down. We incurred moral bombardment by religious puritans who complained even to the royal court about our succession. And our infamy only sought to increase the curiosity and fever at which the theatre would fill to witness our performances. Now… well, you see how we are. Lestat says he will not stop until we are performing for Emperor Napoleon himself. Can you imagine it? To hint at the truth of our grotesque nature right in the heart of Monarch’s inner sanctum?”

“You’re a pack of fools! Don’t just stand there gawking like owls – get that mess cleaned up before the Maître sees it and gets royally fucked off!”

But it was far too late for that. Armand had melted through the shadows in the space of Santiago’s energetic correction and now appeared just left of centre stage with his arms crossed and a look of decidedly controlled aggravation that resolved itself only in the unearthly hardness of his impossible amber-fired eyes.

“I’m afraid your Maître is here, has seen it… and is in fact, royally fucked off.” He began by way of introduction. The entire company held its collective breath. Every pair of eyes lowered to the floorboards and made a marked effort to pay no mind to the corpses of the boy thieves whose mangled bodies with limbs turned out at angles no mortal might possess, lay cooling in a puddle of their own blood and piss on the orchestra pit floor.

“Who is responsible for this?” Armand asked, almost placidly. It was that tone of his though. That tone alone was enough to make every one of them sick with anxiety. He shifted his position ever so slightly, and that was enough for the twins to break down in near in an explosive bout of mortified tears. The others flinched and were disinclined to implicate themselves by coming in to provide comfort to their bawling sisters.

“We’re so sorry, Maître! Only Dina and I were so starved and overtaken by thirst when we rose this night – “ Dula tried, through gaping sobs and blooded tears. “And these little bastards were in here rooting about our dressing rooms upstairs, looting the costume jewels for easy flog. They broke in from the backstage doors – “

“Which should have been locked up tight if Eglee wasn’t busy sucking whore in the alleyway after curfew.” Santiago interjected bitterly.

“Balls to that! I was running fucking drunkards out of Lestat’s dressing room because his Grace can’t be arsed to deal with his deluded admirers out in streets-“

“ENOUGH!” Armand’s snap was like gunfire in the chaos. The coven bit their tongues and lowered their heads in silence so dense you could hear a pin drop.

“I have a theatre to run. We are less than two hours from curtain call. Our lead actor is once more absent from rehearsal and as incompetent at standing on his marks as ever before, and I’m already up to my ankles in dead mortals. Broken curfew, non-compliant security practices and sheer lack of common courtesy aside, I am this close,” He gestured, pinching his thumb and forefinger together in the air, “to having heads roll and shutting down the production entirely.”

Chaos! A dozen voices all shouting placations and apologies at once. He raised his hands for quiet, and again the yawning silence came.

“I want these corpses off my boards, or I will make you eat them, piece for fetid piece. Mark me. Now the rest of you, get to fucking work. AND SOMEONE FIND ME LESTAT!”

An utter explosion of kinetic energy ripped through the coven simultaneously. In fact, Armand hadn’t seen any of them move quite so quickly in the past three months or more. Right now he was concerned with the stench tonight’s victim would likely accumulate in the theatre, for once the rats were fed full of dead thieves, they likely wouldn’t eat any more. And it would fall to him to once more make arrangements for the corpse to be disposed of outside the city borders.

He had a throbbing coming on again. A pain behind his eyes when sheer exhausted frustration overtook him. Lestat would always respond with off-handed humour at stages such as these. But Lestat had no head for business. And these days, Lestat had seemingly no head for very much at all. Armand wanted very much to just return to his coffin and pretend this night was not coming to pass. Nevertheless, he took the stairs heavily to his office and sighed. He’d have a smoke. Look at last night’s takings and come showtime, this pack of immortal idiots he had come to know and love would find some way to magically right themselves. Downstairs, he could hear Nicolas having a fit over the blood splattered throughout his orchestra pit where one of the unfortunate intruders had his skull cracked open, and his brain matter spilt grotesquely out against the polished timber floors. It was going to be one of those nights.

-- 10:32PM First Interval --

“That was the slowest quick change I ever had in my life!” Celest complained, pushing past her coven mates and tearing the feather boa from her heavily jewelled wig backstage.

“Sammy, you were too quick in your delivery of the ‘Take her’ line again. How many times have I told you?! You wait for Gustave to cross the third mark and then say the line, not before, you fool! You fuck up the timing for the rest of the cast!” Plache snapped, aggravated beyond measure.

“Well it’s not my fucking fault! I’m waiting for Tuan’s cue because I can’t see the mark when he’s standing over it, and I know if I don’t get the line out perfectly, Rom will shit himself over the lighting change…”

The backstage bickering between the cast and crew that constituted his coven was a continual battle Armand had learned to more or less drown out as he watched them take to their seats and readjust their costumes and make-up. The show was going decidedly well, all things considered. Lestat was only eight minutes late but used the flourish of his preternatural gifts to speed through his dress and pre-show line runs with characteristic cockiness. Only to be humbled in the middle of the first scene when he tripped over Estelle’s line. His co-star recovered with such a venomous glare that the wind was taken from his sails with considerable speed.

Even so, Santiago was the first to voice what he himself had witnessed from behind the wing curtains whilst he followed the performance with his script. “There’s another one out there tonight, Maître. Did you clock him? Six rows back seat fifty-six.”

“I did.” Armand answered simply, not bothering to look up from his page until he completed his margin notes. “Handsome, isn’t he? Have you seen him before tonight?”

The elder blonde vampire with his elegant features and arched brows merely shook his head and went back to adjusting his wig. “Not this one. Smells fresh. Foreign. He’s not a Frenchmen that’s for sure.”

“Are you suggesting Frenchmen have a certain smell?!” Lestat barked, getting into his silk breeches with no regard to his lower nudity in front of the other coven mates, male or female alike.

“Rank – like the back allies in the height of summer when the nightsoil men haven’t been around for a week.” Santiago quipped back.

“Wasn’t that your profession before you came to us, Santiago, my dear?”

God, they were off again. Armand cleared his throat.

“I think I want to watch this one a little closer.” He interjected, breaking up the banter before it could lead to any further wounded pride. “I’ve a taste for the new wanderer. You’ll each do me the courtesy of standing down lest I give the signal. Are we understood?”

What fury in Alafair as he struck his command with ruthless determination. That fist in his hair was starting to hurt but God help him, Armand pulled into it, revelling in the security. He was sunk so deep in the liquid fire of his submission, there was no hope of his resurface. His entire body was an instrument to serve. In this moment he would have surrendered himself lower than the poor creatures, the whore boys whom fed Alafair’s ravenous hunger. He didn’t care. He didn’t care. He was alive here. He was feeling something that he hadn’t felt in centuries. For a glimmering moment, his chest burned and tears slipped as he made obscene, guttering sounds. His breaths compromised, his nasal airways now working overtime to keep the oxygen supply line to his vital organs functioning. And all the while he wrestled with the sensation that perhaps even Marius who owned and loved him from boy to manhood could not make him feel like this. They were too close. Master and fledgling. Too close. This was different. This was new. This was elder and fledgling snapping together as though they were magnetised from the moment of realization toward the other’s existence.

Because he had clocked the boy as he sat with dog-like fascinated devotion staring up at the stage from the dress circle as though he was witnessing a miracle. And then the tremor of anxious fidgeting during the intermission as the house lights were returned and the patrons went about from their seats to seek refreshment or rest. His pen nib had stilled against the pages of his script. Writing notes on the coven’s performance became less than engaging. He’d lost interest entirely. Those eyes…. Those abnormally bright chartreuse eyes. They were beautiful. Entirely arresting. He felt his nerves fire, his pulse quicken.

‘No, it’s exhaustion, stress perhaps.’ He lied to himself. Ripped his eyes away. Tried to focus on the corrections for lighting that he would give in tomorrow’s performance.

How was he to know that tomorrow would not come without capturing this bird in his arms and never letting go?! Rather – what on earth made me him think he wasn’t going to take this boy down as he was right now? Only this time – it was love. Love and love and love…

It had to be, no? Please, God, let it not be some morbid chemical reaction, some trick of natural biology, the release of natural hormones in the pulse of his passion, in the crux of his submission that dazzled his eyes and fooled his heart. He couldn’t bare it. Not again. Anything but that.

But it wasn’t so… It couldn’t be. Not the way his lover spoke to him, held him, commanded him. Controlled him.

Alafair’s passion spilt in thick, honey-sweet blood-laced ribbons of silken fire into the back of his throat. He had to adjust his penetration just to angle up enough to taste the sweet, metallic, salt-laced tang in his mouth. Too good to waste. Too, too good. Whilst he swallowed, he reached out with the undercurrent of his mind-gift, and he ravaged the core of Alafair’s soul. Burning through the pleasure haze to hear his thoughts, taste his history, know his heart.

He was sincere.

That’s all there was to it. The boy loved him. And Armand’s doubts and fears and wicked insecurities that tormented him like shadows were banished as he sucked, caressed and swallowed mouthful after glorious mouthful. His fingers, two now, deep in his lover’s rear intimacy, finding that explosive point of nerves and stroking its warmth lovingly. His thumb tenderly massaging over the swells of his delicate scrotum. His mouth worked him, hard, harder, harder still. Suck and swallow, suck and swallow until he was so fed full he felt close to bursting and even then he would not allow a single drop to slip free.

His heart had left the human atmosphere in sheer rapture as his lover’s bucking, cries and guttural screams of erotic ecstasy arched him bodily from their cushioned silks. Vivaan fell away, Arjuun a focus only out of brutal pleasure that shattered him. Over the whore boy’s wrist he held his lover’s eyes and swallowed, swallowed… His eyes glazed and streaming in joy. ‘Yours for eternity.’ He confirmed at last. ‘This is my vow, my blood bond to you. We are now companions. Alafair… we are now family. I am yours as you are mine.’

By the third soul-searing wave of orgasmic euphoria that he milked from his lover’s manhood, lodged hilt deep into the back of his throat, Armand’s own pleasure exploded, leaving him shaking in whole-body gluttonous ecstasy. His mind and body had broken the upper limits of his pleasure stratosphere. There was no come-down. Only this innervate, otherworldly sensation of disconnect from the reality around him. Perhaps it was the prolonged lack of a steady oxygen stream. His vision was hazed in shades of lavender and rose. Alafair’s skin shone with a golden gleam. The boy's ebony black wings were massive and cast around him from high atop his shoulder blades. He basked in the light of their protection. His head was haloed in gold light. He was untouchable. He was his shield. Armand had never felt so safe and so enraptured in his entire life. It was no longer kisses, but sheer worship when he drained his lover of every silk drop of rich passion he had expelled into the back of his throat. Then came, with gentle affection, like the spring rain to lace his lips across that groin, that belly, over nipples and collarbones to his throat where his pulse hammered like a hummingbird in glass. Vivaan’s drained, unconscious body was rolled away and he collapsed then and there beside him. Shoulder to shoulder, sweat-soaked and gleaming in exhilarated joy. His own chest rising and falling rapidly as he fought for air and laughed in incontestable happiness.

He came hard with a shattered cry barely muffled by Arjuun's soft skin, hips bucking wildly as he spilled down Armand’s throat in thick, pulsing ribbons. The sight of those ancient eyes streaming with tears, watering because of the way his manhood was gagging him, the way Armand swallowed every drop without hesitation, only drove him higher. Alafair held him there through the peak, buried to the hilt, trembling with the force of it, toes curled and heels dug into silk and cushions. Even as the orgasm ebbed, he kept his hand tangled in those dark curls, though his grip had begun to loosen. The sight of Armand- flushed, tear-streaked, and radiant with pleasure -stole what little breath he had left, “Armand…” he whispered hoarsely, voice wrecked and shaking, for a moment forgetting any other word but the name of his lover in that final release. He couldn't even answer in his thoughts, mind a haze of thick cotton, starlight and electric.

When the last of those shivers faded, Alafair gently eased Arjuun’s wrist from his mouth- he brought the bleeding wound to his lips rather than teeth, biting the tip of his own tongue until fresh blood welled. With care, he pressed a slow, lingering kiss over the torn skin, letting his healing blood seal the wounds. Oh, how he'd wished he'd known this trick sooner, been taught it earlier-- even the feeding- Oh, the feeding! These boys would live! But ah, his mind is elsewhere in this moment, he will thank Armand later- chase him with more questions later. Not now. Only then did he release the boy- a whimpering mess that was barely conscious now -letting him slump gently aside with Vivaan.

His attention returned fully to Armand, and with a low, affectionate sound, Alafair slid his fingers beneath that perfectly carved jaw and tilted his lover’s face upward, pulled him up into a deep, messy kiss, uncaring of the taste of his own release still coating that clever tongue. He licked into Armand’s mouth with his own in slow, reverent strokes, savoring the mingled flavors of blood, salt, and passion, worshipping Armand’s mouth with his own now. He let it linger, let it draw out til he could recover more of his vocabulary, could recall how to string his words together, though even then only drawing back enough to speak, noses brushing, foreheads touched together. His hand released Arman’d jaw in favour of stroking tenderly over the line of his cheekbone, past temple, sliding back through hair to cradle the back of Armand’s head, fingers stroking almost delicately through his curls where they had gripped so ruthlessly just moments before, over undoubtedly sore scalp,

“I’m sorry,” he murmured against his lips between kisses, voice soft and tender between his soft panting, “I was rough with you, let me make it better for my beloved..” He’d do it again despite apology on his lips, of course he would, but that did not make his desire to chase away any leftover discomfort afterwards any lesser.

He continued kissing him- slow, loving presses to swollen lips, tear-damp cheeks, and fluttering eyes, nudged into jaw, at the edge of an ear, to a shoulder, the hollow of a clavicle, everywhere, as though he simply couldn’t help himself- he couldn’t, really, or at least, didn’t want to, “I love you too,” Alafair whispered his answer without missing a beat, the words falling like a vow, “Gods, Armand, I have fallen for you far too quickly, it’s frightening.. And I don’t regret a second, I’d fall for you a thousand times.. You wreck me..”

He kept stroking gentle patterns over Armand’s scalp between those whispered words, easing the sting, soothing it away, alternating now in little slips down toward his neck to massage in slow circles to the sides and nape of his neck before working upward into hair again, while his other arm wrapped securely around his waist, pulling Armand up higher, tighter, closer, holding their sweat-slick bodies against each other, “You were perfect.. so beautiful taking me like that.. How lucky I am..”

He deserved this. He deserved this love. This happiness. This elation. For all the torment and suffering he had endured. For the death and blood and gore and torment. For the depravity and starvation and rape. For the plights into listless depression, for the loss of his will to live, for the eventual insanity that followed and the contemplations of throwing himself into the flames. He deserved this now. This was his time. His season. His city. Alafair was his lover, eternal. Not a fledgling, not of the same bloodline. Not a fawning, power-dazzled leech of a creature meaning to test his wits and whiles against him nor capture his attention with ragged seduction to secure survival in his city. No. He loved this boy. And that was all there was to it. He could not begin to allow himself any other contemplation. He wore his heart on his sleeve. He fell hard, fast and brutally. This was alright, wasn’t it? He could be selfish for once? He could disengage from the duties he was saddled with to find happiness? Well fuck them all. He would treat the situation as a vampire. Take it by the throat in the tearing grip of his fangs and consume it whole. He was a man in love. And men in love are never entirely rational.

“Just you and me.” He echoed now, turning to his side, entangling his legs between his lover’s and taking his own caress to the curve of that ribcage. His fingers dancing over the peaks and valleys of every articulation beneath that now flushed, overheated skin. Alafair was alive as he was. Both of them positively blooming in rosy cheeked elation. Their colours healthy, glowing. Young men in the peak of their youth. Warm and wet and content in the other’s arms.

Oh, how he folded into those kisses and returned them with his own. Worshipful, ardent, endless in his dedicated attention. He purred, moaned sweetly. Stroking tender lines from the swell of hip and thigh, down between his lover’s legs to the rich, moist manhood he had embraced with is throat, to the flat expanse of his belly. Over chest and nipple, over collarbone and neck, pausing now to cradle his flushed, radiant face against his own warm palm. The pad of his thumb tracing the line of his lower lip, mapping these curves into his memory. “So beautiful… So very, very beautiful.” Again, he came for those kisses, soft and sweet, chasing that tongue that demanded his attention. Sucking against it with pleasured groans of scintillating satisfaction. His own fingers now coming to entangle them in the silken strands of his lover’s tawny curls. How soft they were. How brilliantly they reflected the light. And those eyes… Those eyes penetrated the depths of him. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ His thoughts a continuous mantra.

“Stay with me, beloved. I will enfold your body and mind in pleasures so absolute you will never again surface from their depth. I am transcendent in this moment with you. Nothing could possibly hurt me… Nothing could come close. Oh Alafair, I’ve never felt like this before. Ever. No one has made me feel what you have.”

Closer he shifted so as their hips were now flush and their malehoods were nestled against each other’s. “I haven’t words articulate enough to dare attempt paint a picture of the ecstasy you’ve immersed me in. Would that I could never surface again. Stay here with you for an age in these very rooms, feeding and loving each other in an endless cycle.” His voice pleasure hoarse and sweetly roughened.

“Tonight you unleashed me… let my passion burn unchecked. I did… I wrecked you beloved. And I want you like this… exactly as you are in this moment, preserved for all eternity. Look at you… at me…” He took his lover’s hand, entwining their fingers before his face and smiling.

“We are human right now. Completely and utterly human. See? See how plump and rich and warm our flesh is? This is how we must stay always. Especially you beloved, for you are young and tender and require consistent blood. Never will I allow you to suffer in hunger. Never will I want to gaze upon you pale and drawn and weak with need. No… No, you will be kept plump with fresh blood, pampered and served upon hand and foot for that is my will and my will is law.”

He kissed those fingers now, one after the other. Beaming in pride, in pleasure. “My needs for blood are reduced with age. I find I can go a week without feeding before I start to feel the effects of hunger. Rare now that I kill darling. I used to take reckless pleasure in the hunt. Indiscriminate as my prior conditioning had me. Not only the evil-doer would I take, but any and every wretch that crossed my path in a dark alley. Male or female, sinner or saint. I would tear open their throats and slake myself in their blood. Four sometimes six a night if it suited me. But never children… never them. Too tender… too sweet.” His eyes clouded for a fraction of a moment before clarifying again and refocusing on his lover. Now he took his hand and placed it atop his powerfully beating heart, enfolding it with his own palm.

“Then I came to my senses,” He continued, “And only the evil-doer would I take. You can sense them. You can hear their thoughts and given time you will be able to see them as well – like pictures in your mind. Moving paintings. Like the new moving pictures they invented, did you read of this marvel? Lestat took me to see it… A film, they call it. And they project it in a dark room upon a white sheet with light… amazing!” He laughed, giddy and excited. “All these things now we can experience together. And I will teach you our ways. My ways. That you might grow strong and powerful and knowledgeable, and none will touch you. I will hunt with you nightly, show you all the finest places where you might sink your stunning fangs into the richest veins. And how to better dispose of the bodies as they fall at your feet… But my darling, murder for food need never be your only avenue. For as you see tonight – with these hapless mortal boys at our side,” He paused, reaching over his lover to take Arjuun’s arm, lifting the limb as it lifelessly hung by the wrist, then letting it drop again. “With the skill of the Mind Gift, you may manipulate their thoughts, their perceptions, their reality. You may put them under the spell of your compulsion, call them out to you from wherever they might be and feed from them, seduce and drink, taking only measured mouthfuls. Draining them as you did this night – so perfectly, stopping well before the veins collapse or their heart fails and then, restoring the wounds, breaking their trance and returning them to the streets from whence they came. None the wiser. Like this you may go through dozens in a single night. Never to be hungry again.”

Again he laughed, content and rich and human sounding. What a laugh. Like a mortal boy. As he was right now. A happy mortal boy. “Look at them,” He chuckled, gesturing vaguely at the boys who slept soundly at their left and right, they sandwiched between their bodies. “See the force of my spell upon them? I have entirely taken over their minds and bodies. Blood in mortals replenishes quickly if you keep them fed, hydrated and rested. They will feel dizzy and nauseous temporarily. Fatigued, foggy-headed and sluggish. But their vitality will return in time and we may feed and fuck with them as often as we desire. Whores like these… I like them best of all. Their inhibitions are lowered. I have a standing account with this club. Sameer is a business partner. I keep his pocketbooks filled to keep these pets pampered and fed. He directs his clients to our theatre. I direct them back to his doors for after hours entertainments. We prosper in this manner. He does not know the truth of our nature. He never will. I am merely Armand Marius to him. Proprietor and Theatre Director. This is how everyone in Paris knows of me. And trust me… I am exceptionally well-known. In high circles and low, and everything in between. Though I keep myself in the shadows and mysterious. I send envoys and emissaries to speak on my behalf. Lestat is the theatre’s co-proprietor and the other blond, Santiago, he is our second in command. Director and Manager when either of us are indisposed. He handles business when we other otherwise engaged… And it seems like, over the next week… You and I will be extremely engaged…”

His eyes twinkling in mischief, in wonder and excitement. He was a boy again. A rosy cheeked boy in the bloom of youth. Free and seeking adventure under Marius’ careful hand.

“Mmmh… no coffins tonight. This room will serve as our temple of love. But our temple is sacred land and these pretty pets have out-served their purpose. Remember, beloved, when the flowers wilt, replace them.”

He snapped his fingers sharply. And in that moment both Arjuun and Vivaan’s eyes snapped open. “You have pleased and pleasured us greatly young men… We are satisfied. Go now, bathe yourselves, attend to your meal and drink. Rest for the next three days hence before attending your service. Go – and lock the doors behind you. Bolt us in tightly and ensure we are not disturbed the entire day or night.”

The boys nodded sleepily. Their eyes hazed. Their skins slightly damp and pale. Their minds a marsh of wooly sluggishness but they understood the command.

“Your will is law, Masters. It will be done. Peace be upon you.”

“You’re a pack of fools! Don’t just stand there gawking like owls – get that mess cleaned up before the Maître sees it and gets royally fucked off!”

But it was far too late for that. Armand had melted through the shadows in the space of Santiago’s energetic correction and now appeared just left of centre stage with his arms crossed and a look of decidedly controlled aggravation that resolved itself only in the unearthly hardness of his impossible amber-fired eyes.

“I’m afraid your Maître is here, has seen it… and is in fact, royally fucked off.” He began by way of introduction. The entire company held its collective breath. Every pair of eyes lowered to the floorboards and made a marked effort to pay no mind to the corpses of the boy thieves whose mangled bodies with limbs turned out at angles no mortal might possess, lay cooling in a puddle of their own blood and piss on the orchestra pit floor.

“Who is responsible for this?” Armand asked, almost placidly. It was that tone of his though. That tone alone was enough to make every one of them sick with anxiety. He shifted his position ever so slightly, and that was enough for the twins to break down in near in an explosive bout of mortified tears. The others flinched and were disinclined to implicate themselves by coming in to provide comfort to their bawling sisters.

“We’re so sorry, Maître! Only Dina and I were so starved and overtaken by thirst when we rose this night – “ Dula tried, through gaping sobs and blooded tears. “And these little bastards were in here rooting about our dressing rooms upstairs, looting the costume jewels for easy flog. They broke in from the backstage doors – “

“Which should have been locked up tight if Eglee wasn’t busy sucking whore in the alleyway after curfew.” Santiago interjected bitterly.

“Balls to that! I was running fucking drunkards out of Lestat’s dressing room because his Grace can’t be arsed to deal with his deluded admirers out in streets-“

“ENOUGH!” Armand’s snap was like gunfire in the chaos. The coven bit their tongues and lowered their heads in silence so dense you could hear a pin drop.

“I have a theatre to run. We are less than two hours from curtain call. Our lead actor is once more absent from rehearsal and as incompetent at standing on his marks as ever before, and I’m already up to my ankles in dead mortals. Broken curfew, non-compliant security practices and sheer lack of common courtesy aside, I am this close,” He gestured, pinching his thumb and forefinger together in the air, “to having heads roll and shutting down the production entirely.”

Chaos! A dozen voices all shouting placations and apologies at once. He raised his hands for quiet, and again the yawning silence came.

“I want these corpses off my boards, or I will make you eat them, piece for fetid piece. Mark me. Now the rest of you, get to fucking work. AND SOMEONE FIND ME LESTAT!”

An utter explosion of kinetic energy ripped through the coven simultaneously. In fact, Armand hadn’t seen any of them move quite so quickly in the past three months or more. Right now he was concerned with the stench tonight’s victim would likely accumulate in the theatre, for once the rats were fed full of dead thieves, they likely wouldn’t eat any more. And it would fall to him to once more make arrangements for the corpse to be disposed of outside the city borders.

He had a throbbing coming on again. A pain behind his eyes when sheer exhausted frustration overtook him. Lestat would always respond with off-handed humour at stages such as these. But Lestat had no head for business. And these days, Lestat had seemingly no head for very much at all. Armand wanted very much to just return to his coffin and pretend this night was not coming to pass. Nevertheless, he took the stairs heavily to his office and sighed. He’d have a smoke. Look at last night’s takings and come showtime, this pack of immortal idiots he had come to know and love would find some way to magically right themselves. Downstairs, he could hear Nicolas having a fit over the blood splattered throughout his orchestra pit where one of the unfortunate intruders had his skull cracked open, and his brain matter spilt grotesquely out against the polished timber floors. It was going to be one of those nights.

-- 10:32PM First Interval --

“That was the slowest quick change I ever had in my life!” Celest complained, pushing past her coven mates and tearing the feather boa from her heavily jewelled wig backstage.

“Sammy, you were too quick in your delivery of the ‘Take her’ line again. How many times have I told you?! You wait for Gustave to cross the third mark and then say the line, not before, you fool! You fuck up the timing for the rest of the cast!” Plache snapped, aggravated beyond measure.

“Well it’s not my fucking fault! I’m waiting for Tuan’s cue because I can’t see the mark when he’s standing over it, and I know if I don’t get the line out perfectly, Rom will shit himself over the lighting change…”

The backstage bickering between the cast and crew that constituted his coven was a continual battle Armand had learned to more or less drown out as he watched them take to their seats and readjust their costumes and make-up. The show was going decidedly well, all things considered. Lestat was only eight minutes late but used the flourish of his preternatural gifts to speed through his dress and pre-show line runs with characteristic cockiness. Only to be humbled in the middle of the first scene when he tripped over Estelle’s line. His co-star recovered with such a venomous glare that the wind was taken from his sails with considerable speed.

Even so, Santiago was the first to voice what he himself had witnessed from behind the wing curtains whilst he followed the performance with his script. “There’s another one out there tonight, Maître. Did you clock him? Six rows back seat fifty-six.”

“I did.” Armand answered simply, not bothering to look up from his page until he completed his margin notes. “Handsome, isn’t he? Have you seen him before tonight?”

The elder blonde vampire with his elegant features and arched brows merely shook his head and went back to adjusting his wig. “Not this one. Smells fresh. Foreign. He’s not a Frenchmen that’s for sure.”

“Are you suggesting Frenchmen have a certain smell?!” Lestat barked, getting into his silk breeches with no regard to his lower nudity in front of the other coven mates, male or female alike.

“Rank – like the back allies in the height of summer when the nightsoil men haven’t been around for a week.” Santiago quipped back.

“Wasn’t that your profession before you came to us, Santiago, my dear?”

God, they were off again. Armand cleared his throat.

“I think I want to watch this one a little closer.” He interjected, breaking up the banter before it could lead to any further wounded pride. “I’ve a taste for the new wanderer. You’ll each do me the courtesy of standing down lest I give the signal. Are we understood?”

When Lestat came to drive him into the light, he had seduced, manipulated and bedded him out of sheer desperation. Lestat took his companionship out of profitable agreement. Too embroiled was he in his own betterment to think of Armand as anything but a stepping stone to greatness in Paris. Of the coven Armand took lovers recklessly, in transactional agreement at best. It was not love, it was a means of whiling away a few empty evening hours for the sake of not suffering in silence once the curtains had fallen.

Lestat however, left a mark in Armand’s core. Of course he did. That was always his intention. But right now, Armand didn’t give a damn about any of them. The coven could have come to sheer ruin in that moment and he would not have so much as battered an eyelid. He didn’t care. He couldn’t care. Because Alafair had him now. And his ruthless youth and strength and vivacity was whole, incontestable and pure.

He felt it in that grip as he worked his lover’s length in heated, velvet wet passes of his tongue. Rolling its tender warmth around the tip and crown of his lovers head. Caressing the tense, velveteen swells of his scrotum with his fingers to massage their tension. And so proud of himself for every time his mate’s body shuddered and rocked.

“Fuck!” Alafair had cursed, for the first time that night. And it was like a whipcrack across Armand’s shoulder blades. That grip tightened, held him steady, demanded he open his mouth and throat. And he was delightedly powerless to refuse the pleasure his lover demanded. He loved it. Loved the way his lover’s emerald eyes shadowed in darkness and rolled into the back of his head that he buried back against the silk and velvet cushions that made their bed. He smiled adoringly around his precious mouthful, watching the curve of that Adam’s apple, that perfect throat with its merest hint of shaved beard forever cut so keenly into the skin, he would appear a boy for eternity.

The way his nipples peaked, and he swallowed, grunted, purred and groaned. And then he let his bloodlust take over. Vivaan’s throat, like ripe fruit sliced into. His juice… the blood of his veins flowed into his lover’s mouth, and for every pull, that cock twitched and convulsed against his soft palate. He sought to pick up the pace. Driving inch after inch, after glorious inch into the back of his throat until his very oesophagus was blocked. His gag reflex kicked back. His eyes began to sting and water. Fuck it felt good.

He took his free hand from his lover’s thigh where he braced himself and instead made to thread his palm over Alafair’s hand, their fingers entwining as he secured the hold to the back of his scalp.

‘Harder… Just like that… Good boy… Hold me down and take me deep… I don’t need to breathe lover… I just need you to come undone…’

God, yes! Alafair, enflamed, kicked his hips in a potent, undulating pace with the elegance of a belly dancer. Armand ecstatic, narrowed his mouth to threaten his lover with the edges of his razor sharp fangs and the wickedness of his powerful teeth. His mate hissed and purred around his own mouthful, perhaps enjoying the tension, the friction.

‘I won’t bite petite dove… Not here… Not when it tastes and feels so good… But you’re hungry… So hungry… And this body can take so much more than you expect…. Let me show you.’

Their eyes locked, heavy lidded and lust laden. Slowly Armand regurgitated his mate’s esteemed manhood. For the third time that night he cut the tip of his tongue against the unforgiving edge of his fangs and whilst his lover watched, made to tilt his jaw low, open his mouth and let the blood in a single red river, drip from the swells of his lips, against the heated, glistening tip of his mate’s proud cock.

Red against white gleaming in the lamp light of the braziers, the river of Armand’s blood rolled hotly over the crown and deep against the veins of his perfect shaft, collecting against his hilt and then pooling the swells of his scrotum.

“Deeper…. Feed me…” Armand murmured, barely above a whisper. His fingers came now to collect the crimson wetness and drape it down, down, deep between his lover’s legs to the core of his rear intimacy. So mindful of his glassy, manicured nails, just as Afalair had been with him. Only when he applied his mouth again, his middle finger, slick in blood and saliva made to breech his lover’s body. His free hand grasped the back of the boy’s thigh and pinned him in place, peeling his thighs apart as again he worked his mate with the warmth of his mouth.

Pass after pass, after pass. Each was successively deeper than the last. Guided by the warmth and wetness unless his mate’s body fluttered, tensed and relaxed. Now he worked him with his ring finger, ever so gently, up to the second joint. His lover so spectacularly tight and hot like an inferno. Like the fires Armand could conjure with his very mind.

‘Good boy… Give over to me, lover… Only you make stake your claim in me so ardently. You are the crucible by which everything else inside me burns… From this hour I serve for your pleasure alone…. That’s it… Take my head… Hold me… Fuck me hard… I’m no one’s whore but yours…’

The wet heat surrounding him was almost too good, almost too exquisite, slick silk and fire all at once. Alafair’s fingers tightened instinctively in those dark curls, holding Armand steady as he rolled his hips in slow, exploratory thrusts, gates slowly breaking on his own control. Every pass of that skilled tongue sent sparks racing up his spine, made him shudder and purr against the boy’s throat still held tight between his teeth, drawing slow and long, losing himself more with each moment that passed.

He could barely recall where he was by the time that those words in that precious voice flowed through pleasure hazed mind, paired with that perfect graze of fangs that made him buck and quiver, hand squeezing with Armand’s own laced over it now, before his lover is lifting and-

And then, just before he’s about to drag head back down, Armand’s blood- hot, delicious, and impossibly rich -dripped over his cock in that crimson river, Alafair’s eyes widened just slightly in delighted surprise and raw pleasure. The slick warmth coating him, sliding down his shaft and pooling at his base, spilling lower still, was obscene and perfect. “You’re absolutely sinful…” he whispered with voice almost sounding drunken as he finally drew back from Vivaan’s throat- had to, as he felt the boy grow heavier, felt his pulse begin to flutter -testing out that trick Armand had taught him, slicing tip of his tongue on one fang, never breaking eye contact with Armand in the process, as he lapped and kissed along Vivaan’s throat, the boy shuddering and whispering thank yous before he was released. Arjuun reached for- leaning in with that dazed eagerness to serve before Alafair even made contact.

Then came that first careful breach of Armand’s blood-slick finger, and oh how it made Alafair gasp, his body clenching in surprise, before melting into the intrusion. “Ah-! Oh, gods..” The stretch was new, burning sweetly, eyes fluttering as his grasp on Arjuun grew briefly painful, nails sinking into skin of a slender arm, and he found himself pushing back against Armand’s digit without thinking, chasing the sensation. He was delighted by every gentle stroke, every careful exploration of his body. “Don’t stop… that feels- fuck, that feels incredible.. Mnghh.. Feed you.. O-Oh, I’ll feed you, love, don’t you worry...”

Interrupted as Armand added a second finger and found that devastating spot inside him, that made Alafair’s back arch hard off the cushions, teeth bared in a hiss of breath as eyes rolled once more. A broken moan tore from his throat, loud and shameless, before he’s finally tearing down into Arjuun’s waiting pulse. The trio of sensation of that clever mouth swallowing him down while those fingers stroked his prostate, now with that fresh blood spilling to his tongue again sent white-hot pleasure crashing through him in waves. He was lost to it, utterly delighted and overwhelmed in the best possible way.

His grip in Armand’s hair grew firmer, more demanding. “Deeper,” he growled around Arjuun’s flesh while the boy squirmed against his chest in his own little whimpers, Alafair surprising even himself with the roughness in his voice in that moment, while that crash of pleasure peaked him, release spilled over tongue and painting the back of Armand’s throat in ribbons of bloodied seed. He began to thrust harder though, not stopping yet- pushing past the back of Armand’s throat with increasing insistence, the hand in his hair, laced with his lover’s, twisting to press down. The tight, fluttering heat there was too addictive, each choke and gag on his hardness making him shudder, only adding to the fire, to his arousal.

Alafair held him steady, fingers tangled tight, refusing to let him pull away even as his own body trembled with building ecstasy once more, hips snapping upward with purpose between rocking toward those blood-slick fingers working inside himself now. He pressed down relentlessly until Armand’s nose was pressing flush against his pelvis in each thrust, buried to the hilt in that impossibly tight throat, a little wet sound of connection with each collision of skin against over-full mouth. “That’s it- t-take all of me.. D-doing so well, darling,” he hissed out that mix of praise and command, spilling Arjuun in the process as he’d broken away from his jugular to speak, voice wrecked and loving, forcing his eyes to focus with some visible struggle, to find that golden-topaz of his beloved again, watching them water under his secure treatment of him. “Just like that, my love… fuck, you feel perfect.. Ahh.. I’ve got you.. A little longer..”

Alafair held him there for long moments, savoring the squeeze and flutter around him, before easing back just enough to let Armand up to his tip, only to thrust deep again with a guttural moan, reaching not for Arjuun’s neck this time- sweet and delightful as he was, he didn’t want the view of his lover working him to be obscured, dragging up the boy’s wrist instead this time, cradling it to his mouth as he sank fangs into the slender limb like biting into some luxuriously plump fruit.

What fury in Alafair as he struck his command with ruthless determination. That fist in his hair was starting to hurt but God help him, Armand pulled into it, revelling in the security. He was sunk so deep in the liquid fire of his submission, there was no hope of his resurface. His entire body was an instrument to serve. In this moment he would have surrendered himself lower than the poor creatures, the whore boys whom fed Alafair’s ravenous hunger. He didn’t care. He didn’t care. He was alive here. He was feeling something that he hadn’t felt in centuries. For a glimmering moment, his chest burned and tears slipped as he made obscene, guttering sounds. His breaths compromised, his nasal airways now working overtime to keep the oxygen supply line to his vital organs functioning. And all the while he wrestled with the sensation that perhaps even Marius who owned and loved him from boy to manhood could not make him feel like this. They were too close. Master and fledgling. Too close. This was different. This was new. This was elder and fledgling snapping together as though they were magnetised from the moment of realization toward the other’s existence.

Because he had clocked the boy as he sat with dog-like fascinated devotion staring up at the stage from the dress circle as though he was witnessing a miracle. And then the tremor of anxious fidgeting during the intermission as the house lights were returned and the patrons went about from their seats to seek refreshment or rest. His pen nib had stilled against the pages of his script. Writing notes on the coven’s performance became less than engaging. He’d lost interest entirely. Those eyes…. Those abnormally bright chartreuse eyes. They were beautiful. Entirely arresting. He felt his nerves fire, his pulse quicken.

‘No, it’s exhaustion, stress perhaps.’ He lied to himself. Ripped his eyes away. Tried to focus on the corrections for lighting that he would give in tomorrow’s performance.

How was he to know that tomorrow would not come without capturing this bird in his arms and never letting go?! Rather – what on earth made me him think he wasn’t going to take this boy down as he was right now? Only this time – it was love. Love and love and love…

It had to be, no? Please, God, let it not be some morbid chemical reaction, some trick of natural biology, the release of natural hormones in the pulse of his passion, in the crux of his submission that dazzled his eyes and fooled his heart. He couldn’t bare it. Not again. Anything but that.

But it wasn’t so… It couldn’t be. Not the way his lover spoke to him, held him, commanded him. Controlled him.

Alafair’s passion spilt in thick, honey-sweet blood-laced ribbons of silken fire into the back of his throat. He had to adjust his penetration just to angle up enough to taste the sweet, metallic, salt-laced tang in his mouth. Too good to waste. Too, too good. Whilst he swallowed, he reached out with the undercurrent of his mind-gift, and he ravaged the core of Alafair’s soul. Burning through the pleasure haze to hear his thoughts, taste his history, know his heart.

He was sincere.

That’s all there was to it. The boy loved him. And Armand’s doubts and fears and wicked insecurities that tormented him like shadows were banished as he sucked, caressed and swallowed mouthful after glorious mouthful. His fingers, two now, deep in his lover’s rear intimacy, finding that explosive point of nerves and stroking its warmth lovingly. His thumb tenderly massaging over the swells of his delicate scrotum. His mouth worked him, hard, harder, harder still. Suck and swallow, suck and swallow until he was so fed full he felt close to bursting and even then he would not allow a single drop to slip free.

His heart had left the human atmosphere in sheer rapture as his lover’s bucking, cries and guttural screams of erotic ecstasy arched him bodily from their cushioned silks. Vivaan fell away, Arjuun a focus only out of brutal pleasure that shattered him. Over the whore boy’s wrist he held his lover’s eyes and swallowed, swallowed… His eyes glazed and streaming in joy. ‘Yours for eternity.’ He confirmed at last. ‘This is my vow, my blood bond to you. We are now companions. Alafair… we are now family. I am yours as you are mine.’

By the third soul-searing wave of orgasmic euphoria that he milked from his lover’s manhood, lodged hilt deep into the back of his throat, Armand’s own pleasure exploded, leaving him shaking in whole-body gluttonous ecstasy. His mind and body had broken the upper limits of his pleasure stratosphere. There was no come-down. Only this innervate, otherworldly sensation of disconnect from the reality around him. Perhaps it was the prolonged lack of a steady oxygen stream. His vision was hazed in shades of lavender and rose. Alafair’s skin shone with a golden gleam. The boy's ebony black wings were massive and cast around him from high atop his shoulder blades. He basked in the light of their protection. His head was haloed in gold light. He was untouchable. He was his shield. Armand had never felt so safe and so enraptured in his entire life. It was no longer kisses, but sheer worship when he drained his lover of every silk drop of rich passion he had expelled into the back of his throat. Then came, with gentle affection, like the spring rain to lace his lips across that groin, that belly, over nipples and collarbones to his throat where his pulse hammered like a hummingbird in glass. Vivaan’s drained, unconscious body was rolled away and he collapsed then and there beside him. Shoulder to shoulder, sweat-soaked and gleaming in exhilarated joy. His own chest rising and falling rapidly as he fought for air and laughed in incontestable happiness.

“You’re a pack of fools! Don’t just stand there gawking like owls – get that mess cleaned up before the Maître sees it and gets royally fucked off!”

But it was far too late for that. Armand had melted through the shadows in the space of Santiago’s energetic correction and now appeared just left of centre stage with his arms crossed and a look of decidedly controlled aggravation that resolved itself only in the unearthly hardness of his impossible amber-fired eyes.

“I’m afraid your Maître is here, has seen it… and is in fact, royally fucked off.” He began by way of introduction. The entire company held its collective breath. Every pair of eyes lowered to the floorboards and made a marked effort to pay no mind to the corpses of the boy thieves whose mangled bodies with limbs turned out at angles no mortal might possess, lay cooling in a puddle of their own blood and piss on the orchestra pit floor.

“Who is responsible for this?” Armand asked, almost placidly. It was that tone of his though. That tone alone was enough to make every one of them sick with anxiety. He shifted his position ever so slightly, and that was enough for the twins to break down in near in an explosive bout of mortified tears. The others flinched and were disinclined to implicate themselves by coming in to provide comfort to their bawling sisters.

“We’re so sorry, Maître! Only Dina and I were so starved and overtaken by thirst when we rose this night – “ Dula tried, through gaping sobs and blooded tears. “And these little bastards were in here rooting about our dressing rooms upstairs, looting the costume jewels for easy flog. They broke in from the backstage doors – “

“Which should have been locked up tight if Eglee wasn’t busy sucking whore in the alleyway after curfew.” Santiago interjected bitterly.

“Balls to that! I was running fucking drunkards out of Lestat’s dressing room because his Grace can’t be arsed to deal with his deluded admirers out in streets-“

“ENOUGH!” Armand’s snap was like gunfire in the chaos. The coven bit their tongues and lowered their heads in silence so dense you could hear a pin drop.

“I have a theatre to run. We are less than two hours from curtain call. Our lead actor is once more absent from rehearsal and as incompetent at standing on his marks as ever before, and I’m already up to my ankles in dead mortals. Broken curfew, non-compliant security practices and sheer lack of common courtesy aside, I am this close,” He gestured, pinching his thumb and forefinger together in the air, “to having heads roll and shutting down the production entirely.”

Chaos! A dozen voices all shouting placations and apologies at once. He raised his hands for quiet, and again the yawning silence came.

“I want these corpses off my boards, or I will make you eat them, piece for fetid piece. Mark me. Now the rest of you, get to fucking work. AND SOMEONE FIND ME LESTAT!”

An utter explosion of kinetic energy ripped through the coven simultaneously. In fact, Armand hadn’t seen any of them move quite so quickly in the past three months or more. Right now he was concerned with the stench tonight’s victim would likely accumulate in the theatre, for once the rats were fed full of dead thieves, they likely wouldn’t eat any more. And it would fall to him to once more make arrangements for the corpse to be disposed of outside the city borders.

He had a throbbing coming on again. A pain behind his eyes when sheer exhausted frustration overtook him. Lestat would always respond with off-handed humour at stages such as these. But Lestat had no head for business. And these days, Lestat had seemingly no head for very much at all. Armand wanted very much to just return to his coffin and pretend this night was not coming to pass. Nevertheless, he took the stairs heavily to his office and sighed. He’d have a smoke. Look at last night’s takings and come showtime, this pack of immortal idiots he had come to know and love would find some way to magically right themselves. Downstairs, he could hear Nicolas having a fit over the blood splattered throughout his orchestra pit where one of the unfortunate intruders had his skull cracked open, and his brain matter spilt grotesquely out against the polished timber floors. It was going to be one of those nights.

-- 10:32PM First Interval --

“That was the slowest quick change I ever had in my life!” Celest complained, pushing past her coven mates and tearing the feather boa from her heavily jewelled wig backstage.

“Sammy, you were too quick in your delivery of the ‘Take her’ line again. How many times have I told you?! You wait for Gustave to cross the third mark and then say the line, not before, you fool! You fuck up the timing for the rest of the cast!” Plache snapped, aggravated beyond measure.

“Well it’s not my fucking fault! I’m waiting for Tuan’s cue because I can’t see the mark when he’s standing over it, and I know if I don’t get the line out perfectly, Rom will shit himself over the lighting change…”

The backstage bickering between the cast and crew that constituted his coven was a continual battle Armand had learned to more or less drown out as he watched them take to their seats and readjust their costumes and make-up. The show was going decidedly well, all things considered. Lestat was only eight minutes late but used the flourish of his preternatural gifts to speed through his dress and pre-show line runs with characteristic cockiness. Only to be humbled in the middle of the first scene when he tripped over Estelle’s line. His co-star recovered with such a venomous glare that the wind was taken from his sails with considerable speed.

Even so, Santiago was the first to voice what he himself had witnessed from behind the wing curtains whilst he followed the performance with his script. “There’s another one out there tonight, Maître. Did you clock him? Six rows back seat fifty-six.”

“I did.” Armand answered simply, not bothering to look up from his page until he completed his margin notes. “Handsome, isn’t he? Have you seen him before tonight?”

The elder blonde vampire with his elegant features and arched brows merely shook his head and went back to adjusting his wig. “Not this one. Smells fresh. Foreign. He’s not a Frenchmen that’s for sure.”

“Are you suggesting Frenchmen have a certain smell?!” Lestat barked, getting into his silk breeches with no regard to his lower nudity in front of the other coven mates, male or female alike.

“Rank – like the back allies in the height of summer when the nightsoil men haven’t been around for a week.” Santiago quipped back.

“Wasn’t that your profession before you came to us, Santiago, my dear?”

God, they were off again. Armand cleared his throat.

“I think I want to watch this one a little closer.” He interjected, breaking up the banter before it could lead to any further wounded pride. “I’ve a taste for the new wanderer. You’ll each do me the courtesy of standing down lest I give the signal. Are we understood?”

“Still so young, so fresh beloved… You’ve the bloom of youth in your skin and through your veins. You taste of spring and fresh rain and the raw power and passion of the Spanish sun… Oh… lover, what a blessing and curse that our blood gift increases your beauty along with your pallor.”

He paused here gently a moment and with a fluid, breathy sigh of billowing, erotic pleasure, he delicately and smoothly dismounted his lover’s hips. Their bond sliding deliciously free in a rich, warm-blooded mess that poured thickly from Armand’s intimacy and left him shuddering, his head tilted back and his eyes closed as he gave himself over to the sensation of being regretfully empty. Oh, but Armand had little time to ponder that void for his attention was now set to lavish his lover with the same delicate aftercare he had received himself. “Mmmh… And you’re still too pale beloved. I can tell by your colour. You’re hungry… My blood is rich and potent, but you’ll take me to drain point if I allow you to pull every drop from my heart.” He smiled happily at the concept as he now made to refresh the cloth, wringing it and again plied its lavender scented warmth in slow, sweet passes over his paramour’s belly.

“Not that I’d mind. I’d could take six of you on my veins at once and still beg for more… But I think,” He cast a quick flick of his eyes to their boys seated blank faced and passive on their cushions in repose, “That I should like you to feast upon our mortal pets once more before we send the away for the night. Take them hard and deep… but leave them when their hearts lose rhythm. They’re so decidedly delicious to play with, and I should like them to serve us again, no?”

Now he adjusted his seat, sliding back upon his lover’s thighs. His curls tipping forward as his kiss came to caress the curve of his lover’s collarbone. Then down the expanse of his pectoral to his nipple that he sucked upon sweetly, swirling the taut, pink bud with his tongue. Pulling deep. Nipping affectionately and chuckling at the pretty sounds his lover made.

“Mmmmh…. So tender to me beloved. Yes, yes I’ve dozens of playbills and flyers from the printing press that I’d gladly give you. Perhaps you might like the cast of the play to sign it as a token of their affection? Lestat loves his letters now that he learned to read and write them so well… Shhh…. Keep that secret. Mmmh… what a mess… here, let me.”

Now his tongue replaced the cloth as he lowered deeper still, taking his moistened, hot kisses along the length of the boy’s belly and lapping gently at the spill of his own passion. Dog-like and worshipful whilst his hand that held the cloth found his lover’s manhood and firmly massaged its length, wiping away the evidence of their delectable mating in a slow, firm massage.

“Mmh… Good boy… Enjoying that? See what I said about this city? How it makes you want to fuck and feed… Now you’ve experienced it first hand… Tell me you don’t want to leave my gypsy prince…. Stay with me… I’ve such need of you…”

Feline and liquid, he dismounted his lover’s legs to come settle between them. And only once he was level with his lover’s masculinity did he call out, “Arjun, Vivaan… Come… To young Master Alafair at once… Bare your throats to him… Give yourselves to his hunger… Then you will lock and shutter the windows. Pull all the heavy drapes in place so not a beam of the sun’s rays might penetrate. Then begone. Lock the doors tightly behind you. We are not to be disturbed for the entirety of the day or evening. Understood?”

“Your word is law, Master Armand. We obey. We serve.”

But when Armand dismounted his hips, length sliding from those velvet depths that squeezed him so deliciously, there was at last a noise of complaint, almost a whine, as his hips shifted, lifted slightly in a tilt as if to chase the warmth as it left him, “Ah.. Don’t go so far, my love-” He breathed the words of protest, hands drawing tighter around hips, clearly considering for a moment simply dragging Armand back into place, “I wouldn’t drain you to that point my love, I’d rather starve,” a soft mutter in partial answer, while his eyes wandered back to the boys, sat sweet and silent,

“They are quite delectable things..” A brief pause thanks to the hitch in his throat when Armand’s kisses trailed their way down to that sensitive little peak at his chest, settling into a soft moan. And oh, when he moved lower, lapped away that mess, wrapped him in slow, warm strokes- He shuddered to it, one hand tightening in a squeeze to Armand’s hip, the other sliding up to find its way into dark hair, fingers curling in encouragement, “You’re going to drive me mad, love..” Whispered in mingled heat and affection, hips pushing up into that attention over manhood.

Then here came those boys again- the two mortals crawling their way back toward them in their slow slink drew a smile to pleasure-parted lips- so willing, so eager to please in their daze, their oiled skin gleaming in the low firelight as they rested at each side of him, while Armand settled further between his thighs. Lovely as they were though, it was clear where his interest lay when it appeared to take a genuine effort to keep his eyes away from Armand for more than a few seconds at a time. But ah, it did feel delightful, ever so pleasant, those hands wandering his skin, their breath, their warmth, their pulses fluttering away, and– 

“Fuck–” His eyes rolled back briefly in the unexpected wet heat closing over his cock as that curse hissed past his teeth, and on instinct that hand in Armand’s hair tightened, gripping hard against those strands, breath hitched sharply, pleasure cutting through the languor like a knife. “Armand- Oh, love… Mngh..” he groaned, hips bucking upward before he could think to stop himself, shuddering as he tried to find some kind of sense in himself-

He reached out, fingers folding over the nape of Vivaan’s neck first, drawing the boy closer. “C-Come here.. Be still..” With a slow, deliberate motion as he strained those words out, he tilted Vivaan’s head to the side with a sharp press of fingers, and sank his fangs into the offered throat, groan muffled as the hot, salt-rich blood flooded his mouth- jasmine, and youth, and such energy.

Arjuun pressed warm and pliant against his other side, hands roaming over Alafair’s chest and belly, and Alafair welcomed the touch with a low, approving hum as he drank- But oh, how his head spun at the mouth of his lover. The contrast between the mortal warmth and Armand’s hunger below was intoxicating almost beyond comprehension. Almost.

And he can’t help himself- he keeps that grip in Armand’s hair, tight and steadying, to keep him down, hips rolling up now, testing the depths his lover would allow between slow, careful draws on Vivaan’s pulse while the boy snaked arms around Alafair’s neck in a giddy whine. Not that Alafair heard it. The slick heat surrounding him was exquisite, too good, and he pressed deeper with slow but firm insistence, fingers tightening in those thick, curling strands to hold him right where he wanted while he fucked into Armand’s mouth with slow, deliberate thrusts. He savored every glide along tongue, til he felt the tight squeeze of Armand’s throat around the head of his cock, his body’s automatic resistance, and a deep shudder rolled through him, pleasure hazed vision darkening. 

When Lestat came to drive him into the light, he had seduced, manipulated and bedded him out of sheer desperation. Lestat took his companionship out of profitable agreement. Too embroiled was he in his own betterment to think of Armand as anything but a stepping stone to greatness in Paris. Of the coven Armand took lovers recklessly, in transactional agreement at best. It was not love, it was a means of whiling away a few empty evening hours for the sake of not suffering in silence once the curtains had fallen.

Lestat however, left a mark in Armand’s core. Of course he did. That was always his intention. But right now, Armand didn’t give a damn about any of them. The coven could have come to sheer ruin in that moment and he would not have so much as battered an eyelid. He didn’t care. He couldn’t care. Because Alafair had him now. And his ruthless youth and strength and vivacity was whole, incontestable and pure.

He felt it in that grip as he worked his lover’s length in heated, velvet wet passes of his tongue. Rolling its tender warmth around the tip and crown of his lovers head. Caressing the tense, velveteen swells of his scrotum with his fingers to massage their tension. And so proud of himself for every time his mate’s body shuddered and rocked.

“Fuck!” Alafair had cursed, for the first time that night. And it was like a whipcrack across Armand’s shoulder blades. That grip tightened, held him steady, demanded he open his mouth and throat. And he was delightedly powerless to refuse the pleasure his lover demanded. He loved it. Loved the way his lover’s emerald eyes shadowed in darkness and rolled into the back of his head that he buried back against the silk and velvet cushions that made their bed. He smiled adoringly around his precious mouthful, watching the curve of that Adam’s apple, that perfect throat with its merest hint of shaved beard forever cut so keenly into the skin, he would appear a boy for eternity.

The way his nipples peaked, and he swallowed, grunted, purred and groaned. And then he let his bloodlust take over. Vivaan’s throat, like ripe fruit sliced into. His juice… the blood of his veins flowed into his lover’s mouth, and for every pull, that cock twitched and convulsed against his soft palate. He sought to pick up the pace. Driving inch after inch, after glorious inch into the back of his throat until his very oesophagus was blocked. His gag reflex kicked back. His eyes began to sting and water. Fuck it felt good.

He took his free hand from his lover’s thigh where he braced himself and instead made to thread his palm over Alafair’s hand, their fingers entwining as he secured the hold to the back of his scalp.

‘Harder… Just like that… Good boy… Hold me down and take me deep… I don’t need to breathe lover… I just need you to come undone…’

God, yes! Alafair, enflamed, kicked his hips in a potent, undulating pace with the elegance of a belly dancer. Armand ecstatic, narrowed his mouth to threaten his lover with the edges of his razor sharp fangs and the wickedness of his powerful teeth. His mate hissed and purred around his own mouthful, perhaps enjoying the tension, the friction.

‘I won’t bite petite dove… Not here… Not when it tastes and feels so good… But you’re hungry… So hungry… And this body can take so much more than you expect…. Let me show you.’

Their eyes locked, heavy lidded and lust laden. Slowly Armand regurgitated his mate’s esteemed manhood. For the third time that night he cut the tip of his tongue against the unforgiving edge of his fangs and whilst his lover watched, made to tilt his jaw low, open his mouth and let the blood in a single red river, drip from the swells of his lips, against the heated, glistening tip of his mate’s proud cock.

Red against white gleaming in the lamp light of the braziers, the river of Armand’s blood rolled hotly over the crown and deep against the veins of his perfect shaft, collecting against his hilt and then pooling the swells of his scrotum.

“Deeper…. Feed me…” Armand murmured, barely above a whisper. His fingers came now to collect the crimson wetness and drape it down, down, deep between his lover’s legs to the core of his rear intimacy. So mindful of his glassy, manicured nails, just as Afalair had been with him. Only when he applied his mouth again, his middle finger, slick in blood and saliva made to breech his lover’s body. His free hand grasped the back of the boy’s thigh and pinned him in place, peeling his thighs apart as again he worked his mate with the warmth of his mouth.

Pass after pass, after pass. Each was successively deeper than the last. Guided by the warmth and wetness unless his mate’s body fluttered, tensed and relaxed. Now he worked him with his ring finger, ever so gently, up to the second joint. His lover so spectacularly tight and hot like an inferno. Like the fires Armand could conjure with his very mind.

‘Good boy… Give over to me, lover… Only you make stake your claim in me so ardently. You are the crucible by which everything else inside me burns… From this hour I serve for your pleasure alone…. That’s it… Take my head… Hold me… Fuck me hard… I’m no one’s whore but yours…’