Evil Is a Man

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

If you like what you're reading, let me know: SellarDhor@gmail.com. And let me know where you want the story to go and who you want Jake to end up with. And if you have any ideas for the future, let me know, I might include them.

MARCH 6th, cont.

"The Tsar won't see you unless you are gagged," said the Decency Policeman who was guarding the Tsar's train as it pulled into the Krasnyj Sneg station that night.

"That's fine, but tell the Tsar a message for me. Tell him that I give myself over to him for him to do as he pleases with me. I hope that the things I've heard about him being a decent, moral ruler are true, and he will listen to the message I need to give him in order to save my life. If not, he is free to dispose of me however he sees fit."

And then I was gagged by the policeman and led back into the regal steam train with my hands forced behind my back.

"Your majesty," the officer said as he led me back into the opulent throne room, where intimidating Kirill was on his throne, dressed again in his turn-of-century Russian military uniform. Both he and I bowed deeply. "Look who willingly came back for more."

"Ah, Mr. Groves, how delighted I am to see a genuine gentleman of your caliber again."

The officer gave Kirill my message, word for word.

"Ah, so it seems I have an important decision to make." He moved so quickly it made me jump, caressing me from the front. "Let you speak with me as you came here to do, which would put you under my protection and give you the freedom to walk off this train forever. Or, I could never let you speak again, and enjoy your pure flesh as I may. What a choice."

He pulled a hammer and nails from his breast pocket and showed them to me.

"Is this answer enough for you?" he asked as he started to line up his nailhead to my skull. "I just cannot resist the temptation you give me towards selfishness."

I sighed sadly as he started to nail into my head, and I cried in pain.

"I know this hurts, but you may take solace in knowing that I'm using smaller nails this time. Last time, I used the larger nail to sever your nerves. This time, I'm merely pinching them, meaning if I fatigue of these later on, I can remove them without any permanent effects."

The first agonizing nail once again made my speech leave me, and as soon as it was in, they took the gag off me.

"This time, I have a couple more nails to add," he said, and I thought anymore searing pain in my head would cause me to vomit.

But when the second nail went in, it did so without pain, and I knew the first nail had taken the pain away at least. As soon as it was in, I felt my jaw go slack and my lips turn numb. Any attempt to close my jaw or my lips failed. And then he started with the third nail, with even worse effects than the last. It made my legs go weak and useless, and I could no longer stand without the officer holding me up.

"This time, give him his own room," said Kirill.

"His own room, your liege?"

"Yes."

That policeman carried me through the train, which was starting to leave the station, and put me into a smaller cabin than the one that I had been in last time, the one belonging to Kirill. There wasn't much in this room, but there was a bathroom and a bed. That's where he put me, on my back. He stripped me down and handcuffed my wrists behind me to the headboard.

Kirill came into the room. "The keys, officer?" he asked. The officer gave him the handcuff keys and Kirill stuffed them into his right pants pocket. Soon, we were all alone.

Still fully clothed, Kirill climbed onto the bed with me. "Hopefully you are not in too much discomfort, fine gentleman. That's why I've taken away the pain for you."

I couldn't stop a bit of saliva from escaping my lips.

"Ah yes," he said as he wiped it away with his finger. "A necessary side effect for my improvement, I'm afraid."

He surprised me by kissing me, licking up my saliva as he did. My lips were unable to stop his tongue from moving deep down my throat.

"Ah yes, the sweet flavor of purity and goodness. Intoxicating, Mr. Groves."

His hands, which surely with most kills would only touch his victims barely at all, eagerly rubbed over all of my naked skin.

"Now, Mr. Groves, because you have proven yourself worthy, I am about to entrust you with the most important part of myself, a piece of me that only three other living souls have been entrusted with. Not even my Decency Police are pure enough to witness this part of me. You see? It's the true source of my power, the true source of all my purity. Only the truest souls such as you have the ability to see and touch it without tainting its pureness. Anyone else who sees or touches it must be quickly killed to keep them from bleeding my white light. I trust you understand how special you are to me."

He unzipped his pants and pulled out his uncut, fleshy meat, flaccid but still enormous. It was glistening white, much lighter than Maxim's. Even the head seemed almost white somehow. The blue veins that pumped through it icy in color.

"I've seen vile Code breakers go blind at the sight of my giant phallus of purity, but your sweet eyes are unfazed. While others look at this giant creature and see nothing but their well deserved death, terrified of it, you look at it and see how it can penetrate your goodness and bring you pleasure."

He placed his soft dick into my mouth, and I realized that with that second nail, he had completely made me unable to bite him or even shut my lips against this intrusion. I tasted his very clean dick.

"See how good goodness tastes? So much better than anything else ever placed in your mouth, right?"

He pushed himself around in my mouth, working himself up to a ragingly massive erection.

"You may not be able to speak, Mr. Groves, but I know what those eyes are imploring me. You so dearly want true penetration of my phallus of light."

He pulled out of my mouth, and lifted my dead legs up, tucking them underneath him. He leaned down and licked my hole a few times before replacing his tongue with his dickhead.

The pain was at least taken away by the first nail in my head as this giant unit pushed into me. His face went from absolute delight to confusion as I felt him plunge into slime.

"There's another man's seed already here, isn't there?" he asked, and I nodded.

He quickly pulled out of me, squeezing the semen off his dick and onto the bed.

"Wait a second. This semen is burning right through the sheets. This is Dr. Herzog's seed, isn't it?"

I nodded.

"You're trying to kill me with highly lethal bacteria, aren't you? Oh, I see. Your warning to me as you came here about me choosing to help you was a serious warning. And now, because I was tempted into selfishness, I'm going to die. Well, if I'm going to die, it will be inside your wonderful purity."

He pushed himself back inside me.

"And being surrounded by Doctor Herzog's seed doesn't bother in the slightest, he is as pure as you and I."

He started to screw me.

"Ah, there it is. There's that pain, there's that death." He started to groan in pain, his whole body shaking. And then he collapsed on top of me, taking a loud final breath.

I shook him a few times to make sure he was really dead; his blank eyes were just staring off into space, not shut. Killing the Tsar was the easy part. Getting out alive would be much more difficult, and I hadn't exactly planned all of that part through.

I had to get these handcuffs off of me, but he had the keys in his right pocket. If I was able to move my feet, I'd be able to use my toes to pull them out, but that wasn't happening.

His muscled chest was at my face-level, and I could press my face against the pocket that held the hammer, but without being able to use my lips or teeth, I couldn't manage to pull it out. I pushed my head up on the bed until I could reach it with my hands. The first two nails I grabbed were much too far pushed in for me to even loosen, but the third one was only halfway in. I pulled and pulled with my fingers, using all my strength and even cutting through my skin, but managed to finally pull that one out.

Right away, I felt my jaw and lips return to their faculties. I then used my teeth to fish the hammer out of his breastpocket.

Getting the hammer from my mouth to my hands above me was very difficult, but I managed. I used the hammer to pull out the nail that I knew incapacitated my legs. When I felt them kick in again, I didn't bother taking the time to pull the last nail out, not unless I needed to later.

I wanted to use my legs to push his hardness out of me, push him off of me, but I still needed him close. I fished out the key in his pocket with my toes, and then thanked God he made me flexible as I pulled my feet up towards my toes. I grabbed the key in my hands and used it to unlock the cuffs, freeing myself finally.

That's when I started to pull the third nail out of my head.

"Surprise! Guess who is not quite dead after all?!"

Kirill moving on top of me, his drifting eyes locking onto my pupils, scared the wits out of me. But I only let myself jump in reaction before continuing to pull the nail out of my head.

"Nope, I'll take this back, thank you," he said, grabbing the hammer and putting in back in his pocket. "I can't have you able to deliver your message to me."

And then before I could try to fight him, he had my hands back in the cuffs behind me, and those nails in my head, making my legs go weak again as well as my jaw and lips.

"I thought it would be fun to play dead and see what you'd do. Just to let you know, since I know you are new to this game, vampires are highly susceptible to illness, that's true. But that illness must be viral, because we're completely immune, just like you, to bacteria and parasites. So, Dr. Herzog's bacteria- laden semen does nothing more than provide a wonderful lube for me. I'm sure you would have known fanged vampires were immune to bacteria if you knew that Dr. Herzog's little Chinese dalliance was a special, and therefore immune to it as well, hence why he was first able to sleep with her. Without killing her, I mean."

He resumed screwing me, and I realized I should have known he was playing dead since his dick hadn't deflated that entire time.

"I deceived you just because I wanted to see what you would do once you thought I was dead. I figured there was no way you'd ever get out of the bed, but you proved me wrong. I knew already what a rare gentleman you are, but you proved to be very clever as well. In a few moments, you would have had that nail out and you'd be using your cell phone over there to call for help, probably calling my indecent, Code-breaking son, who has been chomping at the bit to get me off the throne."

He put his hands on my cheek.

"You may think I hate you for trying to kill me, but the truth is, you warned me implicitly about the danger of keeping you silent and taking you to bed, as I've done. You had to do what you had to do, and I understand completely, and I admire your tenacity. And now, to continue where I left off."

His fangs, which had popped out from the moment he got hard, cut through my throat. Even more numbness, this time searing with sexual pleasure, shot through my body as a result, and my dick got hard as well between our bodies.

"Mmm, you taste better than anything I ever imagined. I'm tasting the purity in you, I know it." He grabbed my hard dick. "And this, this is proof that my phallus of light is bringing as much pleasure to you as your body of goodness is bringing to me."

I wanted to tell him that my dick was only hard because he bit into me, but obviously I couldn't. He continued to drink from me as he stroked me and pounded my butt. I shut my eyes and willed him to end it as quickly as possible.

"I know you think I am severing your life-cord with my thirst, but I'm not," he said, licking my wound shut. "Mr. Groves, quite frankly, you are my ideal mate. Well-raised, full of decency and manners, yet also courageous and resourceful. You are brimming with goodness and light, and I know my phallus of purity can bring you pleasure no one else is capable of feeling. How can I end your life, when honestly, I've fallen in love with you?"

He kissed me hard, and the love he had in his kiss proved his words true. All I could think of was how insane he was.

"Yes, yes, I can tell in your kiss, you love me right back, I'm the only one who can penetrate you with goodness like this. There's three others I've deemed worthy of my pure phallus over the years, but none of them have the level of goodness that you do inside them, none of them taste like pure righteousness, none of them are as beautiful as you are, and so, I want you to know, you will always be my favorite of the four."

He continued stroking me until I couldn't hold back any longer and went through my orgasm as he kissed me and plowed me.

"Yes, yes, give your pure seed to me as a testament to our shared love!"

That drove him crazy, increasing his rate of pumping me greatly. He moved his hands to my head.

"There's a very special component of my special ability that only those three others have experienced, and only the bare necessity here on the train know about. I want to share this wonderment with you, and it only has the power to come out when I'm orgasming inside you." He went harder and harder, relentless. "Yes, take my purity juice!"

I felt him unload a huge amount inside me as his body curled in total pleasure. I thought his fingers were digging into my scalp as a sign of his pleasure, but realized there was something more to it than that.

"Yes, here it is!"

And then I went completely senseless and disoriented, my vision swirling around so fast I felt like I was going to throw up. I tried to get control over myself on that bed, writhing around, not even totally sure I was even in the bed at all anymore. It was an awful, horrible feeling, and it lasted for a couple minutes.

"Shh, wake up, wake up."

Before I could open my eyes, I realized I was still handcuffed to the bed. But why was I dressed? Did Kirill put my suit on?

"Wake up, my love." There was something oddly different about that voice. "I'm afraid my ability always has a disorienting effect on the recipient, which I'm told is quite unpleasant. I'm sorry for causing you pain."

I opened my eyes, realizing the dizziness sickness had passed. But the face staring down at me with an odd grin sent chills through my body.

"Hello, Mr. Groves," said Kirill's Russian accented voice, but speaking with a wholly wrong timbre.

I was looking at myself, standing over the bed, looking down at me. And one look down at my body in the bed and I saw a taller man than should be there, with much larger muscles, and, most concerning of all, large, white hands coming out of the cuffs of the Russian military uniform I was wearing.

"A neat trick, isn't it?" asked me as he looked down at me from above with pride. "As orgasm hits me, I am able to use my gift not just to analyze brains, but to actually reform them. I am able to reform my brain into your brain, and vice versa, switching all the memories and personalities with ease. I just need to make out with my subject sometime during the sex, or else the body switching won't work. As I said, there are only three others that I would ever consider pure enough to fully inhabit their bodies, and I'm just delighted to try on your body this time. I promise to treat it sweetly, as it deserves."

I struggled against my handcuffs and tried to speak, but nothing came out.

"Now, good thing for me switching bodies like this creates a disorientation period in my subject, because it allows me to fully protect myself from my own body. While you were lying there in confusion, I did everything you did when you thought I was dead, pulling out the nails in my head and untying the handcuffs. And then I reattached your handcuffs to your vampire body, and nailed in all sorts of lovely new nails into your head before you could even fight back. You've noticed that you still cannot speak, but I've also used other nails to take away all of your vampire strengths and abilities. You see, my special ability, because it's based in the mind, goes with me into your body. Otherwise I'd be stuck here, wouldn't I? The only thing I can't seem to do is jump to a new body. I first have to jump back to my own body before I can move to any other vessel."

He was still naked, which somehow made me feel exposed. He walked over and pulled out another nail, coming to my head with his hammer one more time.

"Because I love you, I'm going to do something that I never do for the other three. I'm making you extremely tired, so you can just sleep through all the hours I leave you here." He started to hammer in the nail. "And I will be back, I promise."

I felt myself become completely drowsy as soon as the nail went through me, and was fighting to stay awake as he put on my suit and pocketed my cell phone.

"I'll take this," he said. "I don't want this in here as a temptation."

He knocked on the door.

"Please unlock the door now, officer."

"What is the password?" came the voice through the door.

"Grigori."

And the officer unlocked the door and let Kirill out just as sleep overtook me.

MARCH 7th

I only woke up again when he came back into the cabin and removed the sleep inducing nail from my head. I had no idea how much time had passed, as there was no clock around or any windows, but it felt like I had been asleep for half a day.

I felt hungry, deeply hungry.

"Yes, wake up, dearly loved Mr. Groves." I looked at my own smiling face. "I've quite enjoyed being you, most of all knowing that I can't get sick in your body at all. But I'm ready for my body back."

There came a buzzing, and Kirrll pulled my phone out of my suit pocket.

"This noisy little nuisance has been buzzing incessantly." He turned the phone on. "Hello?" he asked into the phone. "Who is bothering me so?"

Perhaps because I had vampire ears, I could just hear the voice coming through the speaker. "It's your mother."

"Ah, hello, mother. I'm too busy to chat it seems, now and forever."

"Is that a Russian accent you've taken up, Jake? Lord in Heaven, I prayed that letting my son move to San Francisco wouldn't turn him into a red-loving Communist! Please help my poor boy!"

"The volume of your calls as of late borders on the obsessive," said Kirill. "Mother, don't you know that women insisting on coddling their grown sons is so unhealthy? I'm doing us both a favor and disconnecting this phone line."

"Jake, you hold on one hot second!"

But Kirill used my hand to hang the phone up. Severing my relationship with my mother was the least of Kirill's offenses against me, but it annoyed me so much, to see him use my body to hurt someone I loved while I stood back helplessly.

But having someone impersonate you on phone calls was nothing compared to being mouth-raped by your own body, which I guess he needed to do in order to switch bodies back with me. Being a top, he clearly had his anus sealed up, so he just had to make do with abusing my mouth. He unzipped his fly on my suit.

And then he forced himself on my mouth, which I absolutely despised.

Funny thing, the closer he got to me, the hungrier I felt. I realized it wasn't just my stomach that was hungry for food, there was a different kind of hunger entirely. He uncuffed me, but I wasn't strong enough to shake him off.

He put his hand on my head as he came down my throat, this time not taking his time or expecting me to come as well, but just quickly getting it over with. That sick disorientation hit me, and I passed out again.

When I came to, I was back in my own body, lying on the bed. Kirill was likewise back in his own body, pulling up his military pants.

"I want nothing more than to spend all day here with you, but I'm afraid I've got agreements to fulfill. I don't want to be the cause of your suffering, so I've decided not to put any nail into you but the one inhibiting speech, as well as restrain you. You are incapable of breaking out of this room, I guarantee that." He pointed a box of really old books. "I brought some of my favorite books in English for you to read to keep you entertained. If you get hungry, just pound on the cell door, and they'll get you some food."

He gave that Grigori password again, and the guard let him out before locking me in alone. I got my suit in order, and felt the one nail on my head. There was no way I would be able to work than one loose without some tool of some kind. I had my wallet in my suit, but no keys or cellphone.

I began a search of the room for anything I could use as a tool or weapon, but found nothing. The bathroom had everything but a razor. I found a ceiling vent in the room, but it was much too small to crawl through. There were no windows in my room.

I noticed on the opposite walls of the room, there were two steel panels covering what might have once been windows. I pushed the chair under one of them and climbed up. There were screws holding the panel in place, and I couldn't get them loose with my fingers alone. A knife would work wonders.

I banged on the door, and a bit later, the officers delivered food to my room. I was hoping they would give me silverware as well, but it had all been pre-cut into bite-sized pieces. I ate the food with my fingers, trying to think of a new solution, and one hit me.

I pulled out my wallet. My cards were too flimsy to work as screwdrivers, but there was a small pouch filled with coins. I found one that was the right size, and I used it on my panel.

I uncovered a hole in the wall that was large enough to crawl through. But the room beyond seemed no more attractive to me that the one I'd left. Compared to the comfort of my room, this one was starkly different. A door, heavy and secured, was surely guarded and locked. There was no sign of any tool or weapon in there. There weren't any windows or any other wall panels that could be used by me to escape. All there was in the room was a tiny jail cell with nothing but a toilet, not even large enough for the prisoner to lie down completely in.

The prisoner locked into the cell was enormously striking. Her beauty and light blue eyes clearly meant she was a vampire, and something about her seemed to suggest she'd been there for quite some time. She was naked, but there were clothes lying folded outside the cell. Her facial features were beautiful in a bold, angular way, looking like a cross between a young Michelle Pfeiffer and a young Sigourney Weaver, with something all herself mixed in as well. Her irises were actually whiter than her skin, showing no color that I could discern. Her long hair was very odd. It was cut nicely, but the blackest shade I had ever seen hair turn.

In her scalp, there were nails in her head. Seeing that, along with the pain on her face, I wanted to help her, but I wasn't sure that if I dropped into the room, that I could climb back up again.

As I watched her, she knocked her head violently into the wall. She did it once, and then she repeated this over and over. I realized that I had been hearing a banging noise from my room the whole time I had been in it, and this was the sad source of it. Clearly this woman was mentally off, and who could blame her?

I put the steel panel back on, and it was easy enough to screw the screws in halfway so that I could easily remove it again, and then I moved my chair across the room and undid the screws to the second steel panel. I was frustrated to find an identical jail cell room to the one that held the female vampire, again with no sign of escape. I realized that my room was between these two cells, and all three doors were against the same hall, which was patrolled by the same guards.

This cell had a male vampire instead of a female, but the circumstances were the same. He was what I guessed was a Valmor Blood vampire, a very handsome brown-skinned Hispanic with hazel eyes, with the same nails in his scalp. He had the exact same haircut as Kirill, with his same goatee as well. His clothes were folded outside his cell, and his naked body was large and powerful, with a powerfully endowed unit that was circumcised, quite the unusual site there.

With no further options available, I knew I'd need to just pick which side I'd go into and make my move. But before I could decide that, I heard the cell door start to unlock from the other side.

I quickly moved the panel back in place, leaving just a crack left for me to spy through. Kirill came sweeping into the room, followed by two human men, both of them quite unattractive. One was about three-hundred pounds, and the other castaway thin.

"I've made a promise to both of you that your obedience would be rewarded with eternal life, and today, I mean to pay up."

"You can turn me first, my liege," said the skinny man hopefully.

"Not how I do things. Neither of you may be Code breakers, but you're still not pure enough of speech and of mind to be permitted to see my phallus. So, as I always do when new Petrov vampires need to be turned, I have a system in which I do not have to dirty my hands."

He pointed to the skinny man.

"You're first," he said. "Since you like men only and are a bottom, this vampire here, one of my vessels, my old favorite vessel, in fact, will turn you. Since he is a Valmor Blood, you will become one too, making your unusual powers all the more remarkable to me. You've seen me turn into this man enough times to know his physical form sufficiently. But the question I have for you is, are you attracted to the core to this vampire? Do you feel for him? Because, if not, the conversion won't work."

"Oh, I see my liege. No, of course it will work, I will make it work. But I thought he had to feel the same about me?"

"That's why, when I do this, I always make this slight alteration."

When Kirril moved towards the cell, the vampire shook his head, made a moaning sound, and tried to push himself back against the wall. Clearly, he had been used as a vampire-creating device plenty of times before, and he did not want any part in it. And I realized why the cell was so small as Kirril reached in between the bars and grabbed the man, pulling him against the bars and turning him around until his scalp was facing out. Very quickly, Kirill hammered in a couple nails and removed a couple more, and the vampire's complaints stopped, replaced by a very sexual moaning.

"There, I've given him back his vampire powers while at the same time, turned him into a mindless sexual machine. All he wants to do is insert his phallus into whatever fleshy hole he can get his hands on while at the same time feeding on them."

Soon, Kirill opened the door and pushed the skinny man inside, locking him in with the newly sex-crazed Hispanic vampire. The vampire grabbed him, ripped off his clothes, and locked him against his body. He bit into his throat and stuck himself inside him, and then started to thrust. To anyone who just walked in, it would look like the vampire was raping the man, but the truth of the matter was just the opposite.

Later, when the vampire started to blow his load inside the man, Kirill reached through the bars and pulled his head off the wound. He used a knife to cut open the vampire's wrist and then placed the wrist to the man's mouth.

"Drink."

At first, the man didn't open his mouth.

"Drink!"

Finally, he opened it, and the blood trickled into his mouth. But still, his body never showed any signs of changing like Tucker's had when Giggles had turned him, and he just went limp finally.

"Dead. Well, darn," said Kirill. "See? That's what happens when they don't really care for the one who is turning them like they should."

Kirill pulled out certain nails and put in some others, taking away the vampire strength again as well as the mindlessness. He opened the cell and pulled the man's body out.

"You'd better not have the same lack of feelings for the woman, or you won't survive this either."

"No, I've obsessed over the woman for as long as I've worked here. She is beautiful beyond belief."

As the officers took the body away and locked the door up as Kirill and the obese man left, I quickly pushed my chair across the room and gave my other panel a small spying slit in it. My hunch was correct as they soon entered the room with the woman in it, and that was the first time I knew for sure she was a special.

"We have a lot more hetero or bisexual top men needing to be turned, so I make use of this vessel of mine much more frequently than the male. Of course, you'll turn into a Petrov Blood vampire with this one."

As soon as she saw them, she moaned in displeasure and shook her head frantically at the two of them. Kirill opened his mouth and let out a huge stream of fire that covered most of her cell and licked her body. She jumped in terror and started to cry in response.

Kirill laughed. "Can you believe it? The only fanged Petrov Blood vampire who ever was actually afraid of fire. Pathetic."

Kirill did the same thing, reaching into her cell and pulling her against the bars before changing the nails in her head, giving her strength back but making her a mindless sex creature at the same time.

Clearly, the obese man was extremely attracted to her. He undressed himself, and his dick, which seemed small, was already hard. Once again, Kirill unlocked the cage and stuck the man inside. The vampire woman moved towards him, and the obese man embraced and entered her as she bit into his throat, and copulation started.

The more blood she drained from him, the less active he became, and after a while, she was the only one continuing their tryst. That's when Kirill pulled her off of him and cut open her wrist.

This time, once the man started to drink, life started to appear again in his body instead of leaving it for good. His color returned first, and then the transformation began. In the matter of a couple minutes, I saw his body lose every ounce of excess fat, turning not just lean, but ripped. His previously bloated skin turned perfect, and his uglier features smoothed out, leaving an attractive vampire behind.

He kept on drinking until she was weak and lifeless, using his new fangs to rip more into her. He kept on screwing until he came, and then he left her, unconscious but still breathing, on the floor.

Kirill opened the cell and let the man out. "Control your thirst. If you bite me now, I will kill you for it."

The no longer obese vampire was able to control himself and he moved out of the cell. "Incredible," he said. I was able to see that what seemed like a small unit to me before had just been that most of it was obstructed by fat.

Kirill removed and hammered in nails until she was in the same state he found her in. "I'll get my officers to feed her some blood."

"Thanks again, my liege. Have a great night."

"Welcome to the Decency Police," he said to him. "Tell your fellow officers that I'll be sleeping in my new vessel's room tonight. I'll go there now."

I quickly shut the panel, grabbed a book, and got back on the bed. When Kirill came in, I did my best impression of a person who had done nothing but read all evening, and knew nothing of what had taken place in the surrounding rooms. Trying to find a way to escape would have to wait until morning.

"I hope you weren't too bored without me here to warm your bed, my pure one." He stepped into the room and the guards locked the door.

I shook my head and lifted up the book I was reading.

"Have you eaten dinner already?" I nodded. "Good, then there's nothing keeping us from going to bed. Why don't you get undressed."

What I wanted to was jump out of bed and try to break his nose with my shoe, but I reasoned with myself, trying to keep my temper down. I knew that if I did anything to displease this man, he would believe I was less pure than himself, perhaps more on par with his two vampire victims he kept caged up. He would lock me up just like they were at the slightest offense, and I would never be able to escape.

No, it was absolutely to my advantage to play with his feelings with me until I could use them to my advantage. I knew he'd be using my body before the night was through, and I certainly would rather have him force himself on me when I had tried every means to keep him off me instead of meekly going along with it, but this was one instance when I had no choice but to keep him in my favor. I told myself it would just be for one night.

So, I started to remove my suit as he asked, even managing a smile. He was dressed in one of his fancy military uniforms, and I tried not to stare at the fancy fencing sword holstered at his side. If I could get him asleep, I could grab the sword and make an end of him.

While I undressed, he started to talk as he watched me. "Believe me, kind sir, if I had the option, I would spend the day with you and you're purity. Instead, being the Tsar brings with it an endless current of matters to attend to. Much of my attention, like all the other Blood leaders, is devoted to keeping our activities in the darkest recesses of the shadows. You see, almost since the beginning of our existence, vampires have been hounded and dogged by our enemies. Trying to live amongst humans always was a death sentence for us, so our industrious forefathers poured all their resources into subterfuge in order to keep us alive. These safe territories were always free of our enemies, keeping our kind alive. In order to our species a secret, we needed to infiltrate every nook and cranny of humanity. We now have at least one vampire or human agent in every single significant human organization in the world. They keep people from entering our lands, keep them from flying over us, program every satellite to blotch out our images. They all know that if vampires ever were discovered by mainstream humanity, it would end up with disastrous results for humanity, not to mention for their personal gains. The only human group we've failed to infiltrate completely is The Bridge, but that too will come in time."

I finished undressing, and was on the bed naked.

He kissed me, and I told my mouth not to bite his tongue but to welcome it. "Mmm, I've been surrounded today by the impure too long. Finally, we can join our bright lighted purity together again."

Soon, he was inside me, both his teeth as well as his unit. And I had to endure nearly an hour of his fevered thrusts before he finally came inside me, littering me with talk of purity. After he said the word for the fifteenth time, I wondered if there was anyway I could have it permanently removed from the English language. If purity had substance, I would have crafted my own sword out of it and cut off the man's head right then.

Of course, after he was done with my hole, it turned out he was a post-coital cuddler, embracing me from above and again going on and on about how wonderful my non-code-breaking self was to him.

It took another forty-five minutes before he fell asleep on top of me, holding me still, his dick still out of his fly and pushing against my own. I had no signs that he was a heavy sleeper, and I knew any smallest movement I made could wake him, so trying to crawl out from under him wasn't going to happen.

Very slowly, I moved my left hand down towards the foil sheath hanging from his right thigh. When I grabbed it, I accidentally rattled the decorative strips of metal together, making a sound, and as a result, he stirred in his sleep. I clamped down onto the hilt, suppressing the noise until he fell back asleep.

Finally, I pulled the sword out of the sheath, and moved it up towards his neck. And that's when I realized what I had in my hand wasn't a sword at all, but a short knife. No, not even a knife, a dull envelope opener, incapable of being used as a weapon. Angry, I put it back in his sheath.

I decided to check his pockets in any case, and in his left pant's pocket, my fingers touched a key. I grabbed it and pulled it out, hoping it was the key to my room, but knowing there would be no way to test that out until he was gone. I hid the key under the bed and shut my eyes, falling asleep. It wasn't long past that when he woke up on his own and left my cabin, presumably to sleep in his own bed.

MARCH 8th

I woke up what felt like early morning, so the first thing I did was pull the key out and try my room door. No luck. Stymied, I tried to think of what that key would be for as I ate the breakfast that was waiting for me, showered, and got dressed.

I pocketed the key and opened again the panel on the wall, looking down into the woman's cell. She was still banging her head into the wall. I grabbed a bedsheet and tied it to the wall, throwing it down into the room, leaving me with a means to get back up, and I lowered myself down.

She turned her head towards me and noticed me for the first time. She grunted threateningly, but when I grunted back, she realized I was another victim and her demeanor softened.

Both of us grunted back and forth for a minute, like Neanderthals desperately trying to learn how to speak like humans. And then she turned around and showed me the nails in her head. I grunted back, knowing already the cause of her disability.

But she pushed her scalp against the bars, grunting desperately. She pulled at one of the nails, but her weak fingers were doing nothing. I looked carefully and realized that one of her nails was indeed loose somehow. Her fingers were too weak, but when I put my hands on it, they proved just strong enough to work the nail slowly out.

"Yes, yes, thank you!" came her voice, strong and commanding in tone with a subtle Russian accent. "I've been working on that for months now, banging my head to loosen it. Of course, if luck really favored me, it would have been the nail that is keeping my vampire powers at bay that would have loosened, as I can't exactly cut through these bars with words alone, can I?"

I shook my head.

"You're one of the bastard's new bodies, aren't you?"

I nodded.

"Are you another vampire? Let me see your eyes. Dark. So, another African vampire?"

I shook my head.

"Do you have anything you could use as a weapon? Please, please kill me. I've been waiting so many decades to die." A tear ran down her cheek, and I felt incredibly sorry for her.

I supposed I could have gotten my pillow and tried to smother her with it, but who knows if that would have been effective. Besides, I'd rather help her escape than kill her out of pity, so I shook my head.

I pulled out my key and showed it to her.

"Did you get that from that bastard?"

I nodded, and tried her cell lock, but it didn't fit. I tried her door, but that didn't work either.

"No, he only opens my cell when he wants to use me to turn humans or when he needs a body in battle. Otherwise, he only trades bodies with me a couple times a year. I don't think he likes being in a woman's body. That key probably would go to something he opens more frequently."

I sighed unhappily.

"Listen, I'm going to use all my knowledge to try to help get you out of here. You have to promise me you won't think twice about leaving the rest of his bodies behind in captivity. Of course, if you had the ability to blow up the train after you made the escape, I'd want you to do it. His bodies would gladly die if we had the chance to take him with us."

There came some distant banging sound, and she smiled.

"Ah, where did you think I learned how to bang my head like that? Now, you may not realize this, but there's more bodies than you and me. There's another cell like this across the hall from us. I share a vent with that cell, and I can hear him. An African vampire."

I nodded.

"For a long time, the bastard would exchange bodies with him frequently. He's not a special, but the bastard I'm sure loved his different Matsoua Blood abilities, like those metal teeth. But for the past decade, he's fallen out of favor. That's because he's gone completely crazy recently, behaving less and less civilized, making the bastard worry that he would break his stupid Codes if he had the chance. It's sad, really, what has become of that poor man. Must be because, since he's not a Petrov Blood vampire like the others here, the guards have always taunted him. Instead of handing him packets of blood, they toss the blood into his cell and make him lick it off the dirty floor to stay alive."

That's when I looked up at the vent on the ceiling that the pounding noises were coming through, and I realized that it was much larger than the vent in my cabin, and that got me hopeful. There was a stool on the outside of her cell, so I grabbed it and moved it under the vent. That allowed me to just barely reach it with my fingers, and I used my coin to undo the screws on it and pull it off the ceiling, leaving just a large hole, certainly large enough to fit through.

"Ah, I see what you're thinking," said the woman, and she reached over and helped boost me up so I could pull myself up into the vent opening.

I crawled as quietly as I could through the vent, moving over the hall that bordered the woman's cell, my own, and the other Petrov vampire captive. At that point, the vent moved off in both directions horizontally down the hall, but I was disappointed when I realized those vents were too small to fit through. The only place I could squeeze through was straight ahead, across the hall. I could hear guards moving around in the hall, and I had to move quietly to make sure that I wasn't discovered.

I came to another vent cover as I reached the end of the hole, and I had to kick it to get it to come off, and it fell to the floor. The room below me came into view. It was just like the two cabins with jail cells that I had already seen, only this one held a vampire that was new to me. His irises were so dark, they were nearly black. Black, handsome, powerfully built, and hung. You could tell just by looking at the erratic movements he made that he was insane. He couldn't talk, but he was moaning and groaning, seemingly speaking to himself.

Before I could come down into the room, the cell's door opened, and a guard in a Decency Police uniform came in. Luckily, he didn't seem to notice the vent cover on the floor. Instead, he threw a blood packet into the vampire's cell, but threw it so hard it broke and blood sprayed all over the floor.

"Stupid animal," said the guard as he left, and locked, the cell.

I took off my pants and tied them to a grill up in the vent, using them as a rope to slide safely down into the room below. I pulled out my key and tried the cabin door, but it didn't fit.

The African vampire's fangs came out, as well as his teeth turned to steel, as if the guy suddenly had a grill, as he licked up the spilt blood on the filthy floor.

I reached into the cell and grabbed onto the blood packet, pulling it towards me. He surprised me by noticing my arm and spinning around to attack me, hissing.

I was just barely able to get my arm and the packet out before he ripped my hand off. Everything told me he had worked that vampire power inhibiting nail fully loose, as he was one powerful guy.

For the first time, he looked up at my face and made a very unfriendly series of noises, sticking his bloody tongue out and licking the air towards me. He was staring at the blood packet, and he was extremely unhappy.

I rubbed the blood onto the nailhead in my scalp, and then pushed that nailhead against the bars. I heard him come up behind me and take a deep whiff. Next thing I knew, I felt a newly hard dick pushing through the bars and poking me in the butt, and I only had my underwear on.

I shook my head vehemently, and pointed to the bloody nailhead, pushing it as far as I could towards him.

I felt his tongue licking up the blood off the nail. No, that was not what I needed. I put more blood on the nail and tried again.

That time, I felt him use his metal teeth to bite the nail head. When he had it secured, I yanked my head forward, and I felt the nail dislodge.

But he let go with his teeth, and he hadn't finished pulling it out. Only a couple millimeters had been removed, and the nailhead was both thick as well as long, perhaps five inches in length. I poured more blood on the nail and leaned back to try again.

I felt his tongue return to my scalp, and then his teeth again bit into my nailhead. I yanked my head forward, and got another big chunk of the nail removed.

But then his arms for the first time reached through the bars and grabbed me from behind unexpectedly. He yanked me so hard against the bars, I almost blacked out, but I fought to keep conscious.

I tried to move forward, but he was pinning me with those dark, muscular arms against the bars. And then I felt his fangs sink into the skin on the back of my neck, and he started to frantically drink me down, of course loving the taste of my blood, and drinking me down with lust.

As I became hard and that sexual feeling passed through me, at first I just sat there, not reacting. But when I felt him use his foot to pull down my underwear and then frantically stick himself inside me, I snapped back to reality.

I pulled at his arms, trying to get to my freedom, but they would not give. I kicked at his feet, trying to trip him, but he used his feet to pull my own through the bars and locking them there with his strong legs. I became totally helpless as he pounded away at me and continued to drink.

He was going to kill me, I realized, unless I could get away.

I stopped my rage and started to think clearly again. One solution came to me.

I stopped using my arms to try to fight his arms off and moved them to my scalp. That massive nail was now a couple inches out. It took all my strength, but I managed to pull the sharp thing completely out.

And then I reached through the bars and slammed the nail as hard as I could right into the vampire's right temple.

Shouting in pain, he let me go, and moved back away from the bars. He was trying to pull out the nail, and failing.

I hadn't meant to kill him, but that's what happened. He fell to the ground and died. I felt bad for him, but better him than me, I knew, and that was the position he had put me in.

That deadly nail sure would be handy, but his body was out of reach to me. I tried using the key to see if it unlocked his cell, but it didn't. I was rather sure I knew whose cell it would unlock.

Some of his blood oozed over towards me, and I used it to heal the bite on my neck as well as the hole in my scalp before he died fully and the blood lost its effect. And then I pulled my underwear on, grabbed my pants and used them to climb up into the vent before putting them back on.

I dropped back down into the woman's cell.

"Well, that trip proved to be useful."

"You're able to speak again!" She said happily. "Did the African vampire help remove it?"

"Not by choice, I'm afraid," I said. "And I'm also afraid I had to kill him in order to keep him from killing me."

"Well, clearly he had lost his mind beyond any hope of recovery. Killing him was merciful on your part."

"I hope so. Regardless, I'm pleased to meet you, ma'am. My name is Jake Groves."

"Oh yes, lovely making your acquaintance."

"What's your name?"

"I can't remember it anymore. You see, when you're a vessel of his for long enough like I have been, you've received so many nails in your head that you lose all your memories. It's like he's taken even my past, my family, my identity from me as well as my body."

"That's so sad," I said, feeling sad for the Hispanic vampire as well, who must have had the same curse. "What is your first memory, then?"

"I can remember my mother, who I loved enormously. I was just barely eighteen when he took the both of us. I don't have any memory of anything or anyone before that point. That's the first moment I became afraid of fire, I know that much."

"Did something traumatize you?"

"You could say that. He breathed fire on both of us. I was immune to the fire, but my mother wasn't a special. I tried to use my body to cover her, protect her from his fire, but no matter how much I tried, I couldn't cover all of her. She lost her right arm to the flames, and then her left leg. And then he used much, much hotter fire, so hot it singed my hair black and cut through my body, almost killing me. And no matter how hard I held onto her, she burned to death in my arms. All because he said he needed to burn away the little indecency I had on me from being born from such an indecent woman as my mother."

"He's so evil."

"He still takes me out sometimes, perhaps when he's upset at something, and burns me until my skin melts off as I scream in terror. Don't let yourself became the next one of us."

"I'm going to try to break out of here today."

"Very well," she said. "Promise me that if there's any way you can kill the bastard, you won't hesitate."

"Oh, I won't. Thank you for helping me."

"It's such a joy to be able to finally be of use to someone besides him after all these eons locked in here. All the best luck to you."

I climbed put through the window back into the cell and put the metal panel back over it. And then I pulled down the metal panel from across the room and looked into the other cell, where that male Valmor Blood vampire was kept. I tied my bed sheets to allow me to climb back out of the room, and then I set down into the vampire's cabin.

As he looked towards me with surprise and groaned, I first tried the key on the room door. When that didn't fit, I tried the cell lock, and that finally was the lock that engaged.

Before I finished turning the key, I looked at the vampire. "If I let you out, will you help me escape? Because there's no way I can think of right now to get both of us out."

He nodded at me and made an agreeable moan.

I opened the cell, and he gleefully stepped out of it, joy on his face as he was able to walk around a larger space in who knows how long. I inspected his nails, but none of them were loose enough to work out.

"I need you to climb up into my room through that window, do you think you can do that?"

He nodded, but when he walked over to the bed sheets and started to try to climb up, he quickly fell down out of weakness. I had to help the naked vampire up to his feet, and then I ended up lifting him up above me so he could scramble through the window, his big cut dick squishing against me in the process.

I used the sheets to climb up, and then put them back on the bed and replaced the wall panel. Everything had to look normal.

"What I need you to do is lie in bed with the covers on and try to be Kirill. You have his physique."

He nodded, and I tucked him into bed, pulling the blankets over his head.

When he was ready, I summoned my courage and knocked on the door. "Please unlock the door now, officer."

"What is the password?" asked the officer through the door.

"Grigori," I said with certainly, memorizing every syllable of the name.

The guard opened the door, but was surprised to see my body.

"Sir?"

"I decided to give this body another go round, I had so much fun with it last time. See? My normal vessel is sleeping there in bed after I've pounded my nails into him."

The guard looked at the vampire's body in bed and then nodded, letting me pass. "Alright, my liege."

"Thank you, Officer."

But then he stopped me. "Wait a second, why are you speaking in an American accent?"

"Do you like it? I figured it suited this body better."

"No, I don't. Let me hear the real you again." Clearly he was testing me.

So, I started to speak with the best Russian accent I could manage. "How's this?"

"Ah, that's you there now, my liege. I didn't want to be fooled."

Apparently, being around Russians for so long had improved my accent enough to pass.

"Where are you headed, my liege? To your throne room, correct?"

"Uh, right," I said, and walked down the hall.

"My liege, that's the wrong way!"

"That's because I wanted to go to me bedroom, actually," I said. Luckily, I had been in his bedroom before, and was able to identify the door and go into it, escaping the guard's watch.

But my luck ran out as my eyes landed on the real Kirill. Thank goodness he was sleeping in bed, having a late, lazy morning, it seemed. I stopped breathing, determined not to make the slightest sound.

I was standing right next to his dresser, and there was my cell phone sitting on top of it. I grabbed it and put it in my jacket.

And then I jumped as there was a knock at the door. Positive that he would wake up, but not hearing him stir, I opened the door and slipped out of the room, shutting the door behind me.

"Yes?" I asked.

"Oh, my liege, you've switched bodies again?" asked an old white man who had an air of villainy about him.

"Yes, I have."

"Well, I wanted to show you the progress we made with your pet project in the laboratory."

Anything was better than standing there having a noisy conversation right outside of the Kirill's room, so I agreed to follow this man, who was dressed in white robes, through the train. He led me into a laboratory, not unlike Günter's in design, but much smaller in scale. It contained a number of people in white robes, some vampire, some human, but all looking busy in experimentation.

"Hello my liege," said one of the younger looking human men. "And hello, Dr. Firsov." Just what I needed to hear.

"Hello, Dr. Tokarev.," said Dr. Firsov.

Dr. Firsov led us to the back corner, where vials and vials of clearish-white liquid were being refrigerated, which didn't look unlike semen to me.

"Production will be complete in four weeks, my liege, and we will be ready for deployment on your word."

"Ah, perfect, thank you, Dr. Firsov." I almost let it stand at that and walked out of the room, but something about the sinister look on this old man's face told me that there might be something very nasty about this. I grabbed the fresh-face doctor nearby and pulled him towards us, and he seemed quite surprised. "Dr. Tokarev, what do you know about this project?"

"I'm afraid I know absolutely nothing, my liege, other than the work has been referred to as Project Cleanse."

"Well, that won't do at all. Dr. Firsov, could you bring him up to speed, please?"

"But my liege, this project is under your top classified level."

"That's fine, I've come to know Dr. Tokarev well, and I trust him with my life."

"Oh, thank you, my liege," said the young doctor, very surprised.

"But my liege, you don't want me to fill him in on everything, do you?"

"Yes, everything. Right now, Dr. Firsov, no need to keep the young man waiting."

"Alright," said the old man, clearly distressed. He looked around to make sure no one else was around to overhear, then started in a hushed tone. "Project Cleanse has been something the Tsar and I have been leading for as long as I've been here. The Tsar desired to create a biological weapon. He arranged to provide me with a bacteria sample that was instrumental to my findings many decades ago."

"And, Dr. Firsov, please tell him exactly how we acquired that sample," I said.

"Well, alright, my liege. You see, Dr. Günter Herzog turned out to be the perfect provider of that specimen."

"Oh, did he willingly volunteer it, then?"

"No, we never trusted him with this project," said Dr. Firsov. "At the time, the doctor was planning to leave this Blood in order to join up with some woman in the Chinese Blood. The Tsar wouldn't have that betrayal, so he had his men kidnap the doctor just before he made it to that woman, and convince him that it was the Chinese woman who betrayed him, and then started extracting the specimen from him by force. At the same time, he wrote that woman and told her that he had contracted the flu and died, tying up loose ends wonderfully. Of course, that lasted only so long before the doctor learned to stop providing the specimen, and once that occurred, he was no longer useful to us in that regard, so the Tsar had him let go, and later employed some brilliant emotional manipulations in order to convince him never to provide the specimen again at all, just to make sure it didn't fall into the hands of our enemies."

I was a little surprised he was smiling at me, until I recovered my cover. "Yes, it was a very clever move on my part."

"And since that time, I've led the project in the lab. It's taken all that time first to replicate the specimen's semen, and then to change the nature of the bacteria held within. You see, we didn't want something that was so acidic it burned through all materials, and we didn't want something as deadly. This new version won't burn through metal, glass, stone, or living flesh, so it's more containable."

"So, now the idea is to release the specimen to an enemy population, like the Logans, perhaps?"

"That might be an eventual goal, yes, but the primary objective is to release it to our own population. The Tsar wants it put into the water system. Anyone who drinks the water or bathes will contract the biological infection. Just as the Tsar planned, only the worthy, who tend to be the least likely to be Code Breakers, will succumb and die. The others will fight it off and survive. Of course, all fanged vampires will be immune, and we've created a vaccination that we've been spreading around to all important humans as well as all worthy female vampires."

"Oh, that's what that vaccination was."

"So, we'll begin deploying this as the Tsar planned in the next few weeks."

I felt the train coming to a stop at some station.

"Actually, I've had a change of heart, Dr. Firsov."

"You have, my liege?"

"Yes. This plan is much too simple-minded. I am plotting something far grander, where much more lives will be lost. In the meantime, I want all of these specimens thrown out, as well as the means to create more."

"Are you sure, my liege?" asked Firsov.

"Yes, completely."

"It will take a couple weeks to dispose all of this safely."

"Still, I want it done."

"Alright, my liege."

"Thank you."

I rushed out of the laboratory, and into the throne room.

"Guards, open the main door, I want to step out for some air."

"Yes, my liege."

They opened the door to the outside, and I walked right past them nonchalantly.

I rushed around on the train platform of some small town, and found another train leaving on an entirely different track, and I jumped through the train doors just before they shut and the train started to move. As we left, I could see the Tsar come out of the train, followed by his guards, looking for me, with no luck. I wondered if they would figure out where I had gone.

A ticket taker came around, and when I didn't have one, they were very perturbed. I offered them money, but they didn't want dollars, but that was the only currency I had with me. No amount of pleading kept them from kicking me off the train at the next stop, though I did manage to pocket a steak knife from the dining car before I did. I ended up on some tiny platform in the middle of nowhere that had no connecting tracks and was surrounded by nothing but snow and trees.

There was nowhere to walk and nothing left for me to do, so I pulled out my cell and called Günter. He had his phone off, he must have been with his patients, so I called Maxim instead.

"What do I owe the pleasure to?" he asked.

"Well, the good news is, I managed to escape Kirill's not-so-happy train on my own this time."

"And the bad news?"

"I'm stranded in the middle of nowhere and need you to come rescue me before his police do."

"Oh my. Well, I'm in the middle of another hard day of work at the Sneg Dvorec, and won't be able to pull away until evening. You know what a hard worker I am."

"Uh, okay."

"Just kidding, I'm kidding! No, I'll be there right away."

"Thank you."

"But where is there, again?"

I told him the name of the stop, and he told me to hang tight.

About a half hour passed until another train came, and as soon as I saw it had come from the last stop, I backed away, off the platform and into the snow. My instinct was right, I saw three Decency Police disembark the train and began searching the platform, and I remembered that `Men of three, leave them be' rhyme the girl had said. I moved back into the cover of the trees, where there wasn't any snow on the ground to leave my tracks, sure they would board the train again as soon as they saw an empty platform.

I was annoyed when the train left without them, leaving these three thorough officers to continue searching. While one of them remained on the platform, the other two ventured off. One of them began searching through bushes on the other side of the platform, but the other started to search the trees I was in. At that rate, he would reach me in a few minutes. I might keep moving away from the platform, but behind me the cover of the trees stopped and left a field of snow, in which I would surely be seen. It didn't look like the officers had guns with them, but even with a head start, they would surely catch up on a footrace.

So, instead of moving horizontally, I moved vertically. I found the largest tree around me and started to climb up it. I stopped climbing as the officer reached earshot of me, hoping I was high enough for him not to notice.

He walked right to the trunk of the tree I was in, and stopped, turning his head this way and that, and sniffing the air. Was I close enough for him to smell my blood?

No, thankfully. He kept walking past me, leaving my tree behind and searching the ones behind me. And then he looked at the empty snow field beyond, and then turned around and came back.

I tensed up again as he walked under my tree a second time on his way back, but once again, he passed under me without a word.

"This side's clear!" he shouted to his partners, and I took a (silent) sigh of relief.

"No it ain't," yelled the one on the platform still, looking over.

"Yeah it is."

"Fucking turn your head up, you idiot! I can see him in the tree!"

Crap, how had he been able to see me through all those trees from so far away? And then I remembered these Petrov Blood vampires had telescopic vision, of course.

The vampire under me looked up and laid eyes on me. "He's here! I've got him here!"

And the other two policemen converged quickly on my location.

"Come down here and go with us peacefully," ordered the one that had been on the platform.

"No, you will not take me without a fight. Listen, I'm tempted to judge you three on my previous experience with the police here, but I know that's wrong to do. So, let me warn you upfront. If you try to take me back, someone will die here, I promise you that. Best option you have is to leave me be and tell Kirill you never found me."

"You shut your mouth. I'll get him down," said the one who had been searching the trees under me.

The officer started to climb up the trunk of the tree. As soon as he got close to me, I used my left foot to kick him as hard as I could in the face. He was so stunned, he fell off the tree, but clawed painfully into my right leg and was trying to pull me down with his weight.

I grabbed on with my arms to the branches I was in as hard as I could, then let the my left leg step off the tree and moved towards the officer, kicking him over and over in the face until he let go of my right leg and fell to the ground.

"Fuck!" said the officer, getting off the ground to his feet again. "Let's fucking kill him for that!"

"The Tsar wants him alive!"

I realized as I pulled myself back into a higher perch of branches that I had sustained a large gash in my calf, and before I could do anything about it, blood fell from it.

It landed right on the face of one of the officers, who opened his mouth and licked it in. "Oh my lord!" he yelled, his fangs coming out. "No wonder the Tsar wants him alive, one taste and I'm ready to fuck any hole of his I can get my hands on." He grabbed his hardening bulge in his old-fashioned police uniform. "If you want to subdue the guy, don't send a fucking rookie. I'm coming to get you, sweet- blood!"

He started to climb up as well, moving a lot more skillfully and quickly than the first officer. When he got close to me, I moved my foot to kick him in the face, but he dodged that kick and grabbed my leg instead. He grabbed both my legs and tried to pull me down, but I kept my arms so attached to the branches that he couldn't do it.

"Fine, you want to play in the tree? I can stay here in the tree with you all day."

He climbed up until he was lying on top of me in my canopy of branches.

"Well, guess what you're gonna find in this tree?" He fondled the lump of his crotch. "The biggest, meanest woodpecker you'll ever meet."

He opened the fly of his uniform pants and pulled out his large, hard, uncut dick.

"I don't think Kirill would like it if you brought him damaged goods, if you know what I mean."

"What the Tsar doesn't know can't hurt him. That's what me and my two partners have learned."

"Well, I'll most certainly tell him."

"You can tell him anything you want, but we both know he's going to silence you from the moment he sees you. So, now you WILL treat my woodpecker right."

He grabbed my right pants leg and ripped it apart, laying bare my leg. He leaned down and licked the blood I was dripping from my scratch.

"With blood like that, you're just begging to be fucked, aren't you?"

He continued to rip through my pants, rendering my butt bare.

He slammed a finger into my hole. "Ah, what's this? Looks like this gigantic woodpecker has found a pretty little hole, and we both know what woodpeckers must do to holes."

I tried to struggle with my legs, but he grabbed them with his two hands and forced me into submission. He stuffed his hard dick inside me with no lube, which not only hurt a great deal, it brought back those old emotional scars.

"Yeah, this is just about the best hole this woodpecker has ever destroyed!" he shouted as he really started to fuck me, each stroke hurting.

"Yeah, teach that runaway a lesson!" yelled one of the officers below.

"I call next for that hole, as soon as he's on the ground."

I realized the other two officers had pulled their dicks out too and were stroking themselves.

"I can't stop myself, I have to bite him," said the man inside me. He bit into my throat, and at least that brought with it some numbness for me.

It wasn't long before his orgasm hit him, and for the first time, he shut his eyes in pure bliss as he unloaded into me.

I used that moment to reach into my pocket and pull out my knife.

"Watch out!" said one of the men beneath me.

The officer opened his eyes just in time to see me shove the knife with all my strength through his temple.

"No, you murdering fuck!" yelled one of them on the ground.

I pushed the officer's dead body out of the tree, it landing on the ground with a thump. And the other two officers put away their dicks real fast.

"Anyone else want to climb this tree?" I asked them in defiance, waving my bloody knife, trying to sound tough even though I was feeling faint from my gross act of violence.

"We'll never get him alive without a huge struggle. It's not worth trying."

"You're suggesting we just leave him?"

"No, I'm suggesting we burn it down." He opened his mouth, and flame came out and began to smother the trunk.

"Kill him? What will the Tsar say?"

"We'll tell him we never saw the suspect here at all. Now, help me burn this down."

Both of them opened their mouth and began igniting the tree trunk. After a minute or so, the tree really caught fire.

I climbed up higher, trying to see if there were any branches I could use to climb to another tree. But I realized there was nothing like that.

The smoke was really bothering me, so I moved as far out, away from the flaming trunk, as I could. But as the tree grew more and more fully ignited, the branches brought the fire beneath me.

I pulled my bare legs up and smothered out a fire in the tatters of my pants, burning myself in the process. I climbed as high up and away from the flames as I could.

And then I knew how I was going to die: not from burning to death, but from smoke inhalation. I was coughing and coughing, desperate for some real air, my lungs not finding any, while my ears rang with the laughter of the two officers beneath me.

Just as I was about to pass out, the flames licking my feet stopped burning me. I looked down and saw a surreal sight that I at first figured must have been an oxygen-deprived hallucination: all the flames on the tree left the trunk and branches, and began moving away from my body, floating in the air, yet somehow still burning even though there wasn't any fuel attached to them any longer.

And then I remembered Maxim's power, and looked back towards the platform. I hadn't noticed him, but there was his stagecoach, pulling towards the platform, proving that what I had thought had just been snow was actually a concealed road, and the horses were pushing through it.

And I saw him as well, running towards me as fast as he could, only just reaching the range of his power, but as soon as he had, he pulled that fire away, just in the nick of time.

"What the?" the officers asked, staring at the fire that was floating in the air.

The fire didn't stay there harmlessly for long. It soon moved towards the officer closest to the tree, engulfing him in flames as he burned to death quickly, his resistance to fire not helping him against Maxim's supreme control over heat.

The other officer, the one I had kicked from the tree, looked between his two dead partners, and then turned foot and ran.

I would have let him run, but Maxim took off after him, his face absolutely enraged.

The man ran into the snowy field, and seemed to have enough of a head start to outrun Maxim and escape. But Maxim stopped completely and blew a breath of his own hot fire. It soon took on the shape of a large fire dragon that flew through the air batting its wings. The dragon flew much faster towards the running officer than Maxim was capable of moving himself.

The fire dragon caught up to the officer, and blew a huge breath of fire all its own, completely smothering the man in flame, charring him in to death in seconds.

He ran back towards my tree. I shifted around, trying to figure out the easiest way to climb down, and then the branches that were supporting me, which I had not noticed had become charred and brittle, broke, and I fell towards the earth.

Maxim came running as fast as he could, and just managed to catch me before I hit the ground. Still, the impact was hard and painful, and I blacked out.

"Come back to me."

I felt his sweet lips on mine, desperately filling me with air. I coughed out the smoke and took a deep breath.

"Yes, that's it, breathe again, breathe!"

"See? I told you being my friend would mean regularly saving my life."

He laughed through the tears on his sweet face. "Do you feel like you have any broken bones?"

"No."

"I'm going to lift you, then."

He picked me up gently, pulled me against his chest of his suit, and then walked us towards his waiting carriage. "It's funny," I said. "You have nothing but concern on your face now, yet your face looked so angry as you killed those officers that it actually scared me. That fire dragon you created was something out of a nightmare."

He rubbed my forehead. "Oh yes, he tends to come out when I'm killing bad guys. I didn't mean to scare you, but I am very, very protective of you, and have a temper as hot as my firebreath. When I see someone causing you pain or threatening your life, I want to them not only to die, I want them to suffer as they do it."

As soon as we were inside the stagecoach, he ordered the driver to make a quick getaway before another train came.

He set me down on the chair bench.

"You're covered with burns. I'm taking off the rest of your burnt clothes. No arguing!"

"I hope that suit is too burnt for you to realize it was one of the ones you gave me."

"That's the last thing I'm thinking about now." He took off my clothes, leaving me naked. "So many burns. I'll take care of those."

He started to lick my body, and the pain of the burns went away as the wounds fizzled away. "These burns would take weeks to heal on their own. I don't know what I'd do without a vampire around to heal my wounds, they are terribly convenient. I should never be without one again. I'll just toss one in my first aid kit and always carry it with me."

He laughed his signature, deep laugh. "While any average fanged vampire will heal wounds, might I suggest upgrading to a top of the line Maxim Petrov model? It would love nothing more than to be by your side at all times to protect you. It's been thoroughly consumer tested, and always has glowing reviews from satisfied customers."

I laughed as well. He always did that to me. "As wonderful as the Maxim Petrov line is, the sad truth is, everyone else wants to own a piece of it too, and I need something I can have all to myself."

"Ah, little Jake Groves, never learning to share your favorite toy with the other kids. Haven't you ever learned that sharing is caring?" He looked down and sighed angrily. "Okay, this time, I'm afraid your private parts have not gone unscathed."

"That could have something do with the fact that one of them ripped my pants off and stabbed me with his pointy stick before I stuck something much more pointy into his temple."

"I wish I could have burned that one myself, made him feel the pain of his flesh melting off his body as he left this earth. Now, I'm going to lick you all better down there."

He leaned down and licked my unit and balls until the pain went away. Then he gently rolled me onto my stomach and started my other side. He licked at my crack and hole last of all, which seemed to go on far too long.

"Maxim, you healed my burns there thirty seconds ago, you can stop!"

"Just wanted to be thorough."

I shivered. "A few minutes ago I never thought I would be cold again, but here I am, shivering. Can I put on your spare suit, please?"

"You know what? I've neglected to replace it this time. But you can put on my suit." He started to take off his clothes.

"No, I don't want you to go without clothes so I can be warm."

"I insist. Vampires don't get as cold as humans, and I was born and raised here. I'm used to the cold."

"Well, thanks."

He took his suit pants off, and his huge, floppy dick bounced into view.

"Whoa, given up on that lovely invention called underwear, have we?"

"You caught me. Luckily, this isn't anything you haven't seen plenty of times before. I'm counting on you to remain calm, Jake. Show me a little willpower." He laughed his belly laugh again.

"I'll try to behave myself in the face of such serious temptation, thanks for the advice." I tried to sit up, but I was really wobbly still.

"Don't even try to sit up right now," he said, sitting next to me, holding me, giving me support. "Are you ready to tell me what they did to you on that train?"

"Yes."

"Now, you know I believe in not keeping your emotions to yourself. To just get them all out."

"Yes, I know."

He pulled my head into his lap. "Feel free to cry if you need to. Just hold me and let it out. Hell, by the time you're done, I might be crying too. I did notice you don't have any nails for me to pull out this time."

"I pulled it out already, but thanks."

I started with my plan to turn myself in to him in order to either tell him what I needed to say or to kill him, and how that went wrong because I never knew vampires were immune to bacteria.

"Something I could have told you if you had clued me in to your plan," he said, angrily slapping me upside the head, extremely lightly. "Promise me that any future plans to kill this bastard go through me first."

"Yes, I promise."

I told him how his power was larger than anyone knew, how he used it to switch bodies with three other vessels, that he could only seal the deed by forcing himself on them.

"I always knew that bastard was a rapist, but there's been nothing I could do about that. He's allowed to do as he pleases to Code-Breakers, so all he has to do is get his officers to lie and say you and these other three would be in that category in order to not be punished for these sexual crimes. The fact that he was planning to keep you around and rape you over and over again for what might have been an eternity, well, he deserves to die a thousand deaths."

I told him how I narrowly escaped, and what I found out had been done to Günter and about telling them to dispose of the weapon.

"But for all we know, the bastard might have realized already what you've done and told them to stop that disposal. We need to kill the man before he has a chance to use it."

"I agree."

"But in the meantime, they'll be looking for you everywhere. Not like the last time you slipped away and he left you alone. This time, you know all his secrets and, even worse, you've seen his penis. That's why I didn't want to travel by train to find you today, the trains must be totally off limits until this has calmed down. And as much as I'd love you to move back in with me, because I miss your presence, my house is where they'll expect to find you. No one knows you've been staying with Günter, so that's exactly where you should stay."

"Your phone has been ringing over and over again for the past few minutes. Go ahead and answer it."

He pulled his phone out and did so, annoyed. "Yes, Edmund? No, I'm not weaseling out of my responsibilities, I had a genuine emergency. I'll be back soon."

I didn't dare show up at such a public place as the hospital, so I went directly to Günter's, and waited for him there, but he ended up working late. I called my mother and did major damage control, convincing her that someone who sounded a lot like me took my phone and impersonated me as a sort of prank. She told me she knew there was something off about my voice right away.

I ate, took another shower, and got into bed naked. I simply could not keep my eyes open, so I said my prayers and nodded off.

"Wake up, handsome," said Günter's German voice. "I'm giving you what I know you've missed since you've been gone." I was on my stomach, and he was behind me, covering me with his body.

I moaned as I felt his teeth in my throat, and as soon as he had a taste of me, he was raging hard and inside me.

"Your note was a little vague. I figured it must have just been that you needed to go off to do something important and that you'd return, but it flashed through my new self-doubting mind that you had left me for good, especially when you wouldn't answer my calls."

"That's not what I meant."

"I can see that. But this bed has been a sorely inactive place since you left. You have a lot to make up for."

"Listen Günter, as nice as a welcome back as this is, I really need to tell you what's happened since I left."

"Pillow talk is best left for after we've both hit unbelievable heights in bed."

"This is one instance where I need to tell you first."

"Fine, go ahead and tell me what you've done while I work your body over like this, and I promise to listen."

"You're ramming me so hard, I can't even get out a long sentence. Please, Günter, this is important. Just stop for a minute and hold me."

He swung my leg around and twisted my body around so I was on my back, with him lying on top of me, still inside me. "This must be bad news, because I've never seen you not beg to be screwed before."

"It is bad news."

He put his hand on my face, surprisingly gentle for once. "Please tell me."

I told him that I went to Kirill to give him a chance to do the right thing and let me deliver my message, knowing that if he was the man Günter believed him to be, he would treat me well. If he wasn't that man, if he was the murdered Maxim had claimed him to be all along, I was determined to kill him.

"He responded by incapacitating me and raping me."

"No, that couldn't have been him. It must have been his look-alike."

"His look-alike is human. This man was definitely a vampire, and this time, he used his brain powers on me as he was raping me. It could be no other vampire alive."

"Despicable. He must have gone totally insane in the past few weeks since I've seen him, that's the only explanation. I swear I would never throw my allegiance to a rapist."

"Well, it gets worse." I explained how he was able to use his special powers to change minds with people. "Because he liked me in some odd way and he knew I couldn't get sick, he wanted me to be his new vessel, locked up for the rest of time and available whenever he wanted to rape me in order to take over my body."

"This special ability is completely unknown to me. It must have kicked in recently and driven him insane in order to do that to you."

"Günter, this was nothing new. He admitted to having three other vessels he had locked up in order to rape and use their bodies whenever he wanted. I talked to one of them. They've all been there for ages, probably from before you knew him."

"This is unthinkable."

"I was able to confuse the guards into thinking I was him in my body and make a run for it, narrowly escaping his guards, who are still looking for me now. If I hadn't gotten free, I might have never seen you again."

"But the important thing is, you are free, you are here in my arms, and I am inside you again, where I belong. Kirill can't have you back, and he doesn't know to look for you here. I'm not going anywhere. I'll be your devote lover for as long as you'll have me."

"That's very sweet, but I need to tell you what I found out before I left. What I got them to tell me about a project of their research team when they thought I was Kirill."

"What's that?"

"Kirill has created a bacterial weapon that he wants to release into the water supply here in order to kill all weak people that he doesn't deem worthy of his vaccinations."

"That's monstrous! It's genocide!"

"I might have gotten them to destroy the bacteria, but I can't be sure. But the worst part, Günter, is that they used your semen to create this weapon."

"No. I never gave it to them, that's impossible."

"It was Kirill who had you kidnapped all those years ago and had those samples forcibly taken from you for as long as he could."

"No, that can't be. Those were the Chinese."

"Ask yourself, did you ever see their faces?"

"No, they had me blindfolded. But they spoke Mandarin."

"That was all staged by Kirill so you'd think it was Min. And then when you outsmarted them and stopped producing, he made you shut off your emotions so that you'd never give that sample to any of his enemies."

"That monster..." He shook his head. "But if that betrayal was all staged, how come Min never came looking for me?"

"Kirill contacted her to tell her you died of the flu."

"Despicable liar."

"So will you help me kill him now?"

"My existence has caused a hazard that could potentially destroy our entire human population, and the only way I know my biology will never be used to kill anyone is if the Tsar is dead and his labs destroyed. I'm in the business of healing, not hurting, so I'm afraid I don't have the slightest idea how to take this man down, but it is absolutely clear now we must."

"I'll think of a way we can do it, just give me time to think."

"I have total faith in you."

"Thanks. In the meantime, you need to act like you don't know any of this. Go to work and pretend like everything's normal."

"I don't know how you expect me to treat patients when I know their lives are in danger."

"You have to manage. It won't be for long."

"Alright."

"But there's more to this I need to feel you out on. So, I'm totally aware that romantic relationships should be the last thing on my mind considering so many people's lives are at stake right now, but I can't help it, I'm sorry. Günter, look into my eyes and tell me the truth. Do you still love Min?"

He looked at me and took some time to consider. "I do. I will always love her."

"That's what I thought. Then you need to go to her."

"No, I'm with you."

"But do you love me?"

"No, I don't."

"Then you belong to her."

"No. It's too soon for me to love you, but that doesn't mean I'm not fully capable of falling just as much in love with you as I ever was with Min. We have such a strong connection, and we're such a match sexually. If it was possible, I'd go through the entire day screwing you."

"Hmm. That might have been alright with me when I had every reason to hate Min, but now that I know she never betrayed you and is under the misconception that you're dead, I don't think I can stay in a relationship that feels like it should belong to her."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying, it's over with us, Günter. And I think, as soon as we've taken care of the Tsar, you should leave here and follow your heart, like you were set to do so long ago."

"And you won't be lonely?"

"I'll be fine. You need to think about your own happiness."

"You really are such a selfless person, Jake Groves. But the least I can do repay you for your kindness is to continue this relationship until the actual moment we part ways. And spend as much time as we can here in bed, celebrating where our best connection has been."

"That sounds nice, but honestly, being with you romantically like that feels like its cheating on her. I want things to end now."

"Right this very second?" he asked, swiveling his hips to remind me he was still inside me.

"Well, why don't we call this our last night together, and then it'll be over."

"Yes, perfect."

And he started to resume screwing me, though he was even more fevered than ever.

Much later, as I drifted off to sleep, I felt oddly relieved that the relationship was over. I realized I was entirely to blame. I had lied to him and told him I was a bottom in order to try and kill the Tsar, and I had never been able to come clean with that lie. And so, he believed me to be someone I wasn't. Though that lie seemed small, it had ended up destroying my feelings for the man. I could never again base a romantic relationship around a lie.

Just as importantly, I couldn't ever pretend to be a bottom when bottoming caused me serious PSTD symptoms. If my future lovers weren't fine with that, then I shouldn't be with them. No more grinning and bearing the pain in sexual encounters that were entirely one sided. I couldn't build a relationship out of pain.