Page 34 of Envious Of Fire
“Vampire,” states Lazarus, baring fangs, then plunges into Kyle’s neck.
6.
Your First Lesson.
—·—
As if through some deep, murky pool, Elias’s screams swim around the room, far away, dreamlike and unreal.
The weight of the being’s body, flattening to the wall, Kyle rests his chin on a granite-hard shoulder, as if being embraced, seeing stars through the dim light of the bedroom, circling.
Vampire, Lazarus had said.
Vampire. The word pulses in Kyle’s ears like Elias’s distant cries. A word Tristan never let fly from Kyle’s lips, a word that in some way felt locked up like a shameful secret, a terrible word.
Uttered so plainly, cleanly, in Lazarus’s deep, crystal voice.
Vampire.
It seems like a lifetime later when Kyle finds himself on the floor, back slumped against the wall, head drooped. Lazarus is a mountain over him, a web of blood drawn down his chalky white chin and chest. “I am just one,” he states clearly, “but there are hundreds of us, thousands perhaps, that the self-appointed, self-important ‘Lords’ of our kind can never control. We are bound by no one. Organized by no one. Truly free. The strength of gods in our teeth. Give me one night of your life,” he says with a lift of his bloodied chin, “and I will show you what you are.”
Kyle doesn’t even have the strength to lift an arm, to shift his cramping leg, to tilt his dizzy head. He just gazes upward at the being, eyes half open, jaw hanging, weak.
“I won’t drink it,” says Lazarus with a nod at the bed, “but not due to any respect for it. My actions are in respect to you andyour claim over it and its blood.”
“I’m … I’m not …” Kyle can barely muster the strength for words. “I’ll never …”
“You need food.” Lazarus crouches down, brings his face close. “Let me teach you your first lesson.”
Lazarus bites his own hand until blood pools at his palm. Then he presses it over Kyle’s mouth with force.
At first, Kyle fights back, annoyed by the intrusion of the hand over his face. But his fight is pitiful, only a twitch of a leg, a flinch of his arm, a tug of his eyebrows to express anger.
Then his mouth fills with Lazarus’s blood.
A thirst takes him over like he has never known before.
An all-consuming, absolute, primal thirst.
He swallows, at first reluctantly, then deeper, until he finds himself holding Lazarus’s palm over his face and sucking for his life, gulping mouthful after mouthful, eyes wide and crazed.
Too soon, Lazarus pries his hand away. A ghost of a smile creases his powdery face. “Good,” he says simply, then rises.
Kyle’s legs are slow to respond, but he too rises, stumbles on his first step, then braces himself against the cracked wall. “I didn’t want that,” says Kyle, spits once, spits twice, two fireballs of blood spattered upon the bedroom floor. “I don’t want—”
“Yes, you did. And you want more.” Lazarus stops at the door. “Come and find me. All your questions will be answered with no words exchanged at all. Just see us with your own eyes. If you can’t find me with your vampire senses, then I will leave you my address.” His grey eyes tighten. “Run away from the sun. Find us hiding beyond a dark mouth, itself armed with teeth. Just one night of your life, that’s all we need.” He frowns at the bed where Elias has grown quiet, still trembling in fear.
A flash, like a train flying by, close enough to nip the nose.
And Lazarus is gone.
Kyle stumbles over to the bed, releases Elias’s ankles, thenup to the headboard for his wrists. Elias rips off his blindfold, eyes wet with tears of panic as he takes in the sight of Kyle. “Oh shit, are you okay? Babe! There’s blood all over you!”
“And you,” says Kyle wearily, though he hasn’t even looked into a mirror yet.
“Don’t mind me, I-I’m—” Despite their mutually bloodied state, Elias embraces him so tightly that Kyle grunts. “I’m just relieved you’re okay, so relieved. I was scared for you. I thought he was gonna …” He lets out a shivery sigh. “I don’t even know what the fuck he was doing, what was going on …”
Still embracing, Kyle stares over Elias’s shoulder at the wall where Lazarus’s hands thrust into, the lightning-like fissures of plaster that run as high as the ceiling, as low as the baseboards, and the dust on the floor from where the ceiling above cracked.
