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.

DECEMBER 30th

"Sleep well, darlin?'"

I woke up to see Syd staring down at me, smiling smugly. I was sore all over from sleeping in such an awkward position. I couldn't believe I had actually fallen asleep at all.

"You got a piece of TP stuck to your forehead," he said to me as he uncuffed me.

Feeling disgusted, I quickly batted the tissue off my face.

"Get up and get in the shower before we go." He pulled his jeans up, again without underwear.

"And if I refuse, I suppose you'll force me into the shower and wash me yourself?"

"You'd like that, I bet. No, I won't. Never shower again for all I care." He put on his boots and his hat and went into the living room.

Alone, I got up. I did feel like a shower. After I was done and dressed, Syd came back into the bedroom.

"I made you some eggs for breakfast. I'm going to pack. You should too. Take everything, you won't be coming back. By the way, check this out."

He opened up his closet in his bedroom. There was a cabinet I had seen before, a small built-in. He pulled it, and the back of the cabinet swung open, revealing a secret safe. No, not a safe, I realized. A small refrigerator. "It's been my little secret this whole time," he said to me.

"What's in there?" I asked.

He pulled a plastic container out and showed it to me.

"Oh, sick!" I yelled. "Blood! Where on earth did you get those?"

"They're stolen from a hospital," he said. He started packing them in a cooler.

"Syd, people need that blood!" I said.

"Not as much as I do," he said.

"You're not a vampire, you sick little child," I said, but it did no good.

In a half hour we were in his truck driving away from the house. I looked back the small county cottage, trying to understand the meaning it had upon my life.

"Are you ever going back there, Syd?"

"I did Tahoe. I'm done with it. Time to move on."

"You speak of the lake like it's some woman you just scored. Use it up for your pleasure and throw it away."

"Damn right."

When we got onto the main road, he pulled into a gas station. "I'm trusting you not to make a scene or to try and run, got that? If you do, you'll be asleep for the rest of the trip."

"There's people here. I could have them call the police."

He shook his head. "If you did that I'd have to kill them, and I hate killing more than a few folks before lunchtime. So behave yourself."

With that threat over my head there was nothing else to do. I reclined my seat as Syd refueled the truck.

"Good," he said as he got back in and drove us back onto the road.

We drove in silence almost the entire trip, going south, into the desert. We got to Vegas at sunset. I had never seen it before, and as we drove along the strip I took all the flashing lights and themed buildings in.

"Ah, great food, tons of gambling, and the hottest women in the west. I like me some Vegas."

"It's pretty, but it's all fake," I said. "Just a façade, with nothing of substance underneath. It has no soul. Hmm, sounds exactly like you. No wonder you like it."

Syd drove through the strip and actually went to another hotel a good way south of all the main hotels. We stopped at the Silverton. "Why this one?" I asked him as he parked his truck in the parking lot.

"Because my family owns it," he said. "And it's known for catering to the country western crowd." We got our things and made our way into the casino. "Don't you dare try to make a break for it in here," he said to me. "This casino is filled with friends of mine. You won't be able to trust anybody."

I didn't say anything in response. The casino was filled with flashing lights and sounds of slot machines chiming. It sure looked more upscale than the ones I had seen in Tahoe. Syd didn't even need to check us in, he just went to security, and they handed him his cardkey.

Our room was on the third floor. It seemed like a nice room to me, a spacious zone with a king size bed and a large bathroom, but I didn't have any experience with Vegas hotels. Room service was brought almost immediately to our room, two steak dinners with champagne.

"Come eat with me," Syd said as he opened his tray cover.

"I don't think I'd be able to stomach eating anything while I'm looking at your smug face," I said.

"Fine, don't eat," he said. He finished his half, and then put on some of his cologne.

"That better not be for my benefit," I said. "There's nothing you can put on your body that will ever make me find you attractive again."

"Boy, you got a sweet mouth on you, you know that?" he said sarcastically. "In fact, it's not for you, Jakey. Sorry to disappoint. I need to go out and feed."

"If you're still hungry, you should eat my dinner," I said.

"No, feed, Jakey. I need blood."

"That's disgusting. You are not a vampire, Syd. This is just foolish delusions."

"You keep telling yourself that, darlin,'" he said. "I'll be out getting some blood."

I sighed. "You have all that blood in your cooler, remember?"

He made a face. "Cold blood is not very appetizing to my kind, Jakey. I really just keep it for emergency situations. If at all possible, I drink someone's blood every day. Wish me luck."

"You are not seriously going to go bite somebody and drain them of their blood," I said. "It's not only insane, its plain wrong. And who knows what diseases you could pick up that way."

"I'll make you a deal," he said.

"What?"

"I won't take a victim tonight if you let me drink your blood. Right from the neck."

"Eew, no way! I would never, ever be okay with that!"

"Then someone else has to suffer," he said. "While I'm out there, might as well enjoy myself with some poker. Maybe hit the bars. I'm keeping you locked in. Oh, and it's a special sound proof room, so no amount of screaming will do any good. Don't wait up, Jakey."

He left the room with that same smile that I always wanted to rip off his face.

Immediately, I started to scan the room. There had to be a way out of here. I tried the door handle. It was securely locked, and there was no unlocking mechanism on the inside, just a slot for the keycard Syd had in his pocket. I scanned the table and nightstands, looking for a phone. Oddly, the room was totally without one. Clearly this was a room set up just for kidnap victims. The ideal room for a psychopath like Syd.

I opened the curtains; the window beyond looked over the parking lot. The window was not the type that made to open. I grabbed one of the nightstands and pounded it against the window, intending to shatter it.

Not even the slightest dent in the glass. I tried again, hitting the window over and over with all my strength. No, it was impenetrable,

I started looking at the ceiling. Maybe there was a vent I could open and climb into. People were always doing that in movies. But no, all the vents were tiny.

I gave up. There was nothing to do but sit there and wait. I pulled out one of the books Ahmad gave me and started to read. Ahmad, I wished so bad to be with him right then. I should have taken him up on his offer to go home with him for Christmas instead of going into the wolf's den. I thanked my luck that the snowstorm kept Ahmad from staying with us in Tahoe. If he had come, Syd might have killed him too, for all I knew.

After a while, I was so hungry that I ate the room service food that had been left for me. When it was quite late, I used the nice, clean bathroom to take a really long shower. Even after I was thoroughly clean, I closed my eyes, letting the water run over my head, trying my hardest to forget about the situation I was in.

I was startled by the sudden feeling of hands on my back. I opened my eyes and spun around. There was Syd, grabbing me in the shower. With the water on, I hadn't heard him come in.

"Hey, I'm bathing here," I said.

"Great, perfect timing for you to be fresh and clean." He pulled me out of the shower, turning it off, and into the bedroom, not even letting me towel off. "We have company." Though there wasn't anyone else in our room. Oh great, was he hallucinating up some imaginary friend of his? His friend Scully again, perhaps? I refused to indulge his fantasies.

He pushed me over to the left side of the bed, and that's when I saw he had attached his handcuffs to the bedpost there. "Oh, no, I'm not going back in those," I said, and I hit him in the face and struggled to get free.

"Yes, you are," he said, and even though I used all my strength against him, he managed to wrestle me down and cuff both my hands behind my back. I noticed he had placed me on the left side of the bed, lying on my back.

"I hate swearing but I think God will forgive me this once if I say Damn you," I said to him.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure I'm already good and damned, if you believe in that sort of thing." He started going through his bag.

"I can't wait until you end up in hell, being eternally tortured for all the people you've killed," I said.

"I think it's time we quieted that sweet mouth of yours, darlin,'" he said. I noticed he had a roll of duct tape in his hand. I yelled at him and shook my head, but it was useless, he taped my mouth shut after a moment. "There, much better. See, darlin?' No need for all your sweet words. I can see all the love you have for me coming through on your pretty little face." He touched me on the cheek, and I so wanted to kill him. "Now, try and behave for our company. I would have gone back to her place, but she is staying with her aunt, so I brought her here. Oh, one more thing."

He pulled a rope out of his bag, what looked like a rodeo rope to me. What bizarre torture instruments did he not have in that bag of his? He grabbed my two feet in his hands. I started to kick as violently as I could, but he was able to subdue me by crawling on top of my outstretched legs. "You know, every time I want you to do something, without fail, you fight against me physically. There's no point in fighting, Jakey. Fighting me like that will just make you more likely to injure yourself." I continued to kick my legs, not giving a darn about injuring myself. But it didn't matter; he easily tied my ankles together with some knots, and then tied them both with a long strand of rope to the bottom of the bed and around the lower left bed leg. When he had finished, my legs were just as immobilized as my arms.

I saw him pull that cardkey out of his jeans back pocket, and then use it to unlock the door. He disappeared and left me alone for a few moments. Then the door opened again, and Syd came back in, with a drunk-eyed, red-headed woman dressed in modern country western garb.

"Ooooh, nice room," she said, looking around. She quickly found my naked body handcuffed to the bed, and jumped. "Who in God's name is that?" she askedd in a thick hick accent.

I figured there was no way she would be okay with my presence. Clearly she would freak out and call the police. I opened my eyes wide and thrashed around to let her know I needed help.

"Just my friend," Syd answered. "He's going to join us, is that a problem?"

I shook my head violently and moaned through my tape.

The red-head stared at me for a good long time, her expression in deep consideration. "No, that's terrific," she answered finally. I could not believe she could fall for what Syd was feeding her. Either she was incredible drunk or incredibly stupid. Probably both. "I've always wanted to have a Nicki Minaj!"

"It's called a ménage a trios, sweetheart," Syd said.

"Yeah, that's what I meant." Then she added, with a giddy laugh, "And I LOVE negroes!"

I glared at her, at first thinking she was trying to be offensive, then realizing she actually thought that's what we were called.

"Oh well then, perfect!" Syd said, all too happily. He came over and patted me on the butt cheek. "What he is trying to say through the tape is that he loves you too."

"Then how come he seems so agitated?" she asked, and I hoped she was finally wising up. "Why is he shaking his head?"

"He's not agitated, he's just a little freaky," Syd said. "He loves to be tied up like that, it gets him so excited. He also loves to shake his head and thrash around It's all a part of his weird fetish."

"Oh, so which one of you wants me first?" the red-head asked.

"He's just going to watch. He's voyeuristic."

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"He gets off on watching."

"Well, whew! Watch this!" She shrieked happily as she pulled her top off, and then bounced her breasts in her hands.

"Love those gorgeous titties, darlin!'" Syd yelled. "And see? Jakey here likes `em even more than I do. He's such a breast man, ain't ya, Jakey?"

I tired to look as angry as possible.

"He doesn't look like he likes these," the girl said.

"He's just upset `cause you haven't stuck em in his face yet," Syd said.

"Oh, well, problem solved. Woo-woo!" she cried happily as she forced her breasts against my face. "Oh, I know!" she said, coming to some inner realization as she thankfully pulled her breasts free from my face and I was able to breathe again. "This guy is totally a gimp, isn't he? Have you seen the movie Pulp Friction?"

"I think you mean Pulp Fiction, darlin.'"

"Whatever. Well, I have a friend who moved to LA, and she says like two thirds of all men there are bonafide gimps like in that movie. I was like, damn! I wish I lived there! She has all the fun. Time to get you out of those pants!"

She squealed happily as she ripped open Syd's jeans and yanked them down, exposing his penis.

"Whoa, did you know you have a huge weiner?"

"I had a suspicion, darlin.'"

"Was it always so ginormous?"

"Pretty much."

"And you sure are hard! My last lover needed to take two Viagras before he could get stiff."

"Never came up short in the hard, Texas cock department," Syd said.

"But how come the gimp isn't getting hard?" she asked.

"Well, he really, really wants you to rub your pussy all over his face."

She scoffed. "Really? That's so disgusting! I LOVE it!"

She pulled her skirt off and started to sit on my face. I shook my head violently to try to give her an idea that I was not appreciating this at all.

"Yeah, rub your face in my pussy, bitch!"

"Darlin,' you just made his week," Syd said.

She jumped off of me finally, and made a beeline for her purse. "Oh, how I could I have forgotten! I have just what we need!"

She dug through her purse for a moment before extracting an odd, electronic instrument, which she held up gleefully.

"Watcha got there, darlin?'" Syd asked.

"My taser!" she said. "I keep it around for self-defense."

Yes, this is precisely what we needed. I started nodding my head towards Syd and making noises, trying to infer that I wanted her to use it on him.

"I think he wants me to tase you," she said. I nodded vehemently, and she flipped a switch on the black instrument and an electric current sparked to life. She quickly darted her arm forward and pressed the current against Syd's pec.

I hoped that the weapon would knock him unconscious, but he only laughed. "It tickles!" he said.

"I have it set to the lowest setting," she said.

"My buddy will flip for that," Syd said.

Her face turned even more excited, and she climbed on top of me, in spite of my increasing intensifying thrashes.

"See? He's already all wound up," Syd said.

She flipped the taser on and pressed the electric current to my chest. It certainly didn't just feel like a tickle to me; it shocked me, perhaps with more of a weird jolt than it did with any serious pain. Still, it was highly unpleasant.

"I know what he'll love," she said excitedly. "You fuck me doggy style and I'll put the taser in my mouth."

"Sounds like some good ol' fashioned Texas fun, sweetheart. Let me put on my rubber."

All I could do was pray that this woman would pass out drunk before she could follow though with her designs. Much to my chagrin, she was somehow sober enough to turn the taser on, bite down on the handle part of it so that the weapon was threateningly stuck in front of me, grab the bars on the headboard, and sprawl herself over my naked body. She felt sweaty to me, and I vowed to take another shower as soon as I was free to wash her germs off. I had nothing to look at but her crazy face surrounding that taser-head, and red hair above me.

I heard the girl moaning, and I felt the sudden weight of another much heavier person on top of me, and knew Syd must have gotten into position on top of her.

"Yeah, take that big texas cock," Syd cooed, and I knew he was inside of her. Behind her, I could see Syd's idiotic face appear, looking down at me with that big, stupid grin of his, of course wearing his lame cowboy hat.

Every time Syd's dick pushed all the way into her, her body slammed against mine, and that's when the shocking started. The first few slower strokes by Syd only got the electric current threateningly close to me. But then he really started to give it to her, and the current of the taser pressed into my throat, which was even worse than when she had shocked me on the chest.

I cried out with every electric pulse, but Syd only got a more and more humorous look on his face as he rained down upon her the kind of language that would only be found in a cowboy themed porno. Unlike myself, she seemed to be loving it.

After a few minutes of steadily getting shocked, I was able to adapt to the odd pain, and the shocks became less and less effective as time went on, thankfully.

Then Syd gave a particularly hard thrust, and the taster rattled in her mouth, her teeth flipping some sort of switch. The current once again went into my neck, only this time the current was so remarkably stronger than it ever was before. I felt a huge, jolting pain through my whole body, and I almost felt like I was going to pass out.

She shook Syd off and pulled the taser from her mouth. "My bad, I accidentally knocked the taser onto its extreme self-defense setting," she said. "Did I hurt him?"

Syd shook his head, waving his huge condom covered boner around. "No, he's totally turned on by that. Go ahead and do it again."

I shook my head, not sure if I could take another one of those shocks.

She looked down at my penis quizzically. "He doesn't look hard."

"He IS hard," Syd lied. "He's a shower, not a grower. That's as rock hard as he gets, and that means he's totally into it."

"Well then, if he wants more, Mommy will give it to him."

The thought of getting shocked again was so appalling, I did the only thing I could think of to prove that I wasn't sexually excited by it. I knew guys couldn't pee while hard, and I figured she seemed like she had enough sexual experience to know that as well. I had a little urine in my bladder, and though it was a totally disgusting idea, I had few alternatives. So I let loose a bit of urine, just enough to make her notice.

"Ooo, I LOVE golden showers!" she yelled happily, dropping the taser, thank goodness, and rubbing my piss on her body. "Oh, you dirty boy, want some of Mommy's piss?"

I shook my head violently.

"Yeah, I bet you do. Here it comes."

She kneeled over my body, and then let loose a stream of urine that landed all over my body. It was so disturbingly unsanitary and defiling, I wasn't sure if it was better or worse than the shocks.

"Oh yeah, he loves that," Syd said.

"Aww, but I'm out already," she lamented. "I barely had to pee at all, too bad." She pounced on Syd, this time away from me on the other side of the bed. "I want more of your hot cock, Mister."

"Yes ma'am," Syd said, kissing her.

Their fuck session continued, though I was so angry, and disgusted, I turned my head to face away from them. They rolled around beside me, alternating between oral and intercourse, for what seemed like ages. The sounds they were making made it seem like this was the best sex both of them ever had, though I knew, at least in Syd's case, he acted like that every time he had sex.

Finally, after what must have been an hour of carrying on, she shouted, "I'm going come soon!"

"Right there with ya, darlin!'"

I looked back at them, and she was riding on top of him, with both of them sitting up, his arms holding her ontop of his lap. He opened his mouth, and I gasped as I saw him push those ridiculous fangs out again. Her eyes were totally shut; she wasn't even seeing the threatening, razor-sharp points right in her face. He moved his mouth over to the supple skin of her throat.

I shook my body and screamed through the tape, trying to get her attention, but to no avail.

He bit into her throat; I saw the blood hit his mouth before he wrapped his lips around the wound, cutting off my sight. I swore she would be shaken out of her sexual reveries by the shock of the pain, but her eyes stayed firmly shut as if she felt nothing. Was she that drunk?

In fact, it all seemed to only increase her pleasure. She squirmed, moaned, and shook, absolutely freaking out with ecstasy, sounding almost like she had never experienced an orgasm before, or perhaps just never one that pleasurable.

He clamped his eyes shut and stopped the thrusts, and he held himself inside her. His expression looked intense, as he continued to suck the blood from her neck, and I knew he was hitting his own orgasm.

He cried out, his voice deep and guttural. And I knew he was filling up that condom with tons of cum, like usual. As Syd continued to suck her blood, her head fell backwards and her body went limp. Crap, had he killed her like he had done to poor Viktor, sucking so much blood she would never survive? I yelled and shook my body in protest.

He set her limp form into the bed and finally took his greedy mouth off her wound, and I almost looked away to avoid having to see the blood. After that, I had to blink several times to make sure my eyes were working properly. Though I could still see Syd's stupid fangs in his mouth, the wound on her throat was gone. It made absolutely no sense. Had I imagined the biting? Had he just been licking harmlessly at her throat that whole time?

He pulled his massive dick out of her vagina, carefully holding onto the edges of the condom to make sure it wouldn't fall off in the process. Even with the largest size condoms, his engorged unit looked much too big for it, and I would have worried about potential breakage. The amount space at the end of the condom was just flooded with cream.

He reached over and pulled the tape off my mouth. "Don't even think about hurting this girl," I ordered. "Just let her go. Please, Syd."

"Only if you're good," he said. "I'm gonna rinse off."

"Aren't you going to untie me first?"

"I may be a dumb fuck but I'm not THAT stupid." He shut the bathroom door and I heard the shower turn on.

"Hey, wake up!" I said firmly but in a hush to the girl, not wanting Syd to hear me.

The naked girl was dead asleep, not making a move. I tried to bend my body to the side in order to touch her, but she was too far on the other side of the bed. I bounced up and down rhythmically, making the bed shake violently.

"Wha?" she said, finally coming to.

"Wake up!"

"I'm awake, what is your problem? Stop shaking the bed!"

"Syd's in the bathroom only briefly," I said. "Look, I've been kidnapped, and I need you to call the police."

"Stop screwing with me and let me sleep."

"I'm totally serious," I said. "He's already killed one person, and I wouldn't doubt that he means to kill both of us as well."

"Oh my God, this always happens with the guys I go home with!" She jumped up off the bed and started throwing her clothes back on. "What should I do?"

My heart was racing. "See if you can find the handcuff key he used somewhere in his things," I instructed.

Panicked, she ran over to his items and ruffled through them. "There's no keys of any kind here."

"Okay, you'll just have to leave without me," I said. "DO NOT say anything to the people in this hotel, they are in league with him. Just get out of here, and call the police."

"Okay, I promise," she said. She took her taser and hid it under the bed. "I'm leaving this hidden for you in case he tries anything after I left," she said. Wow, in spite of her ditsiness and odd sexual tastes, she was really coming through now, when it mattered most.

"That's perfect, thanks."

She ran towards the door and tried to open it. "Shit, it's locked!"

"Hey darlin,' leavin' so soon?" asked Syd as he opened the bathroom door and stepped out in a towel, drying his hair. "I was hoping ya might want to go for round two."

"I can't, sorry," she said, her voice a bit strained. "Auntie will get mad at me if I'm any later."

"Oh, so sad. We coulda had a lot more fun."

"Maybe next time," she said. "Can you unlock the door please?"

"I could just never let you leave," he joked. Or was he joking?

She laughed nervously.

"Oh, alright," he said. He retrieved his card key and unlocked the door. "You need a ride home?"

"Yes." I gave her a look and she shook her head. "Wait, no, what am I thinking? I don't need a ride at all. Nope, I'll be fine, thanks," she said as she opened the door.

"Wait," he said. "No goodnight kiss?"

She nervously forced a smile. "Sorry," she said, and she turned to kiss him.

He kissed her harder than normal, almost threateningly hard, and I worried he would never let her leave.

Finally, he pulled off of her. "Goodbye, sweetheart," he said, opening the door for her.

"Goodbye," she said as she hurried through the door.

Syd turned to look at me. My heart was pounding, wondering how long it would take for the police to intervene once she contacted them.

Suddenly, Syd turned around and opened the door again. "Oh, sweetheart?" he called down the hall.

I could see the girl stop cold in the hall. "Yes?" she asked icily, turning her head back to look.

Syd stayed in his towel, looking at her from our door. "What were you planning on doing with yourself after this?" he asked sweetly.

"Well, I'm going to leave the hotel, and then call 911 on my cell, and tell them about you." I couldn't believe she was just handing this information over for no reason. What was wrong with her?

"Hmm. I'm gonna need you to not call the cops," Syd said. "Please just call a cab, go to your room, and forget about everything that's happened from the moment we met from the moment you go to bed, okay?"

"Of course, Syd. Be glad to." Was she just humoring him?

She turned around to leave, and he shut the door. I knew he would never just let her leave if he thought she was going to call the authorities. That made me wonder if she had been some sort of actor, perhaps another accomplice from this hotel. Well, at least he didn't know about the taser.

He turned around and opened the door one more time. "Oh, and sweetheart?" he yelled down the hall.

"Yes?" she asked.

"Where did you leave your taser?"

"It's under the bed," she said, and I knew for certain she had been acting all along.

"I figured as much," Syd said. He ran over and grabbed it. "You sneaky devil, you," he said to me, smiling as he ran the taser back to the girl in the hall before coming back in and shutting the door again.

"Please, please untie me," I said firmly.

"Nah, I don't think ya earned it, Jakey."

"Syd, I am lying in a bed soaked in a strange woman's urine," I said. "It's unsanitary."

He laughed. "Well ya slept in my bed in Tahoe, and I'm sure there was more than a little dried piss from some of the kinkier women I'd been bedding there."

"That's so sick!"

"You just need to grow up," he said.

"Oh yeah, because I'm the one out of the two of us with maturity issues," I said. "Anyway, how do you explain that?"

"Explain what?"

"How little miss I-Love-Negroes went from being ready to call the cops on you to total submission in the span of 6 seconds?"

He smiled. "A little glamour goes a long way," he said.

"Glamour? As in sophisticated style? You're a long way from the cover of Vanity Fair, Syd. I don't think she suddenly changed her mind because you won her over with your glamorousness."

"Someone needs to invest in a thicker thesaurus," he said. "To glamour also means to bewitch."

"Sorry if my supernatural vocabulary is not up to snuff. If I had known I would be kidnapped by a delusional, psychopathic ex-lover, I'm sure I would have taken Bram Stoker 101 in Cal or something. So, you're saying you cast some sort of magical enchantment on her?"

He laughed. "Really it's just like a form of hypnosis. For the couple of hours after they are bitten, human victims are open to vocal suggestion by their biter. I can make someone forget forever that they ever saw me that night, though I can't erase memory further back than that. Or I can make them do things. Turn them into slaves for a couple hours, if I wanted."

"Umm, I don't see how that is scientifically possible," I said.

"It's like this. Vampires use their whole brains, while normal humans use just ten percent of it."

"That's a myth," I said.

"It's a scientific fact!" he said.

"Where did you get that, from the movies?" I said. "Because it's a complete fallacy, Syd. All brain scans show that humans use their whole brains. That's just a made up deception used by pseudo- scientists to dupe people into handing over their money."

"Fine, so maybe I have no idea how it works all scientific-like, okay? It just does. I can glamour people, and they do what I want them to. But I can't make them kill themselves, which is really lame, and I can't make them tell me something that hadn't happened in the past few hours. Believe me, I've tried."

"And if all of that's true, how come you never did that to me?"

"Because in order for a vampire to glamour someone, they have to bite their victim while they are bedding them. I need to fuck them. And the sex has to be willing. No, willing is not the right word. The victim has to be in sexual ecstasy for it to work."

"If that were at all true, how come you never tried that on me?"

"You are a little different than a normal human, and one difference is that you cannot be glamoured. But back before your boyfriend ruined everything, it had been my ultimate goal to fuck you and try to glamour you, just to be sure you were what I thought you were."

"You mean, you were trying to get me to let you top me?"

"That's right."

"No, I never would have done that."

"Are you kidding me? I had you eating out of my fuckin' palm. No, scratch that, I had you eating out of my huge cock. With enough time, there's no way you would have been able to resist me."

"You have totally lost your mind. You are crazier than I ever could have imagined, seriously."

"You still don't believe a lick of this, do you?"

"Not in the slightest."

"Well then, Mr. Logician, how do you explain her behavior shift?"

"Easy," I said. "She was an actor. In on it the whole time."

"So, our lovemaking? All the noises of pleasure she made? They were all a clever rouse?"

"Well, that part was real. But everything she said to me after was a lie."

"And me biting her? The blood I was drinking?"

"It could all be explained away by stage makeup. They do that stuff all the time on Broadway. You probably had a fake blood capsule in your mouth that you bit into. That would explain why she never had any wounds."

"It's cause I licked her wound. Vampires licks can heal minor flesh wounds on anyone sides ourselves. It takes a few licks, but it works wonders."

"Oh, right Syd, that makes pefect sense."

"Well, what about these?" Syd asked, his two huge fangs extending. "Ya got something sarcastic to say about these impressive puppies?"

"Fake, just like Viktor's."

"You want me to bite you? So you can see just how real these babies are?"

"No, I do not," I said. "Just because they are fake doesn't mean they can't hurt me. You keep your sick delusions to yourself, please."

"And this?" he said, taking his right hand and curling it into a fist. I could have sworn the fist changed color, but that must have just been a trick of the light. He smashed it through the wall, lodging his hand in the newly created hole.

I shrugged. "A fake wall, just like on movie sets," I said.

"Wowie, Jakey, you been doing some deep thinkin' there. Did you use the Scientific Method to reach your theorries? Can't you see how illogical it is to believe in all these ridiculous explanations?"

"All it comes down to this: once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Since vampires and hexes clearly are impossible, the explanations I'm left with, though highly unlikely, must be correct."

"This is getting really quite annoying," Syd said. "One more demonstration, and then if you still don't believe me, I really don't give a damn."

"Deal," I said.

He held his left hand up to me. "Look at my arm, Jakey."

"Yes, I see it."

"No, really get a good look at it. Feel it, even." I put my hands on his arm as be requested. "What do you feel? Besides the perfect amount of biceps, that is?"

I glared. "Nothing."

"Exactly. Nothing the least bit out of the usual. No fake arm, no fake blood pack, nothing like that?"

"No."

He then pulled a hunting knife out with his right arm. Frightened, I moved away from him. "I'm not going to use this on you, Jakey, don't worry."

Instead, he took the knife to his left arm, grimacing as he cut himself from his bicep to his wrist, dark blood seeping out everywhere all of the sudden. He was cutting himself many times over until his arm was unrecognizable. I knew this time that he was not tricking me; he was legitimately hurting himself out of amusement. He was so disturbed.

"Oh, sick, sick, sick!" I yelled, my stomach churning. I had no idea what point he was trying to prove except for the fact that he was utterly psychotic, which I already knew too well.

Seeing all the blood, I got that familiar tunnel vision, ringing in my ears, and then started to collapse.

"Nah-ah, you cannot faint on me!" he pushed me onto the bed and propped my feet up. That was enough to keep the blood in my brain, keeping the fuzziness at bay.

"Now, watch my arm." He turned his arm inwards, so that he was looking at the underside of his forearm.

Just when I was about to look away in disgust, something miraculous happened: I realized that the wounds were slowly undoing themselves. I did a double-take, thinking my eyes were playing tricks on me. But when I adjusted my vision and looked again, I realized I could actually see the wounds slowly healing, right before my eyes.

"Holy crap!"

It was all too much for me, seeing the bloody arm repairing itself. In spite of me lying down, in spite of my elevated feet, I instantly fainted.

I awoke to someone slapping my face, somewhere just north of gently.

"You believe me now?" asked Syd as I opened my eyes again.

There he was, his left arm now totally wound free, leaving only some residual blood. "It has to be fake," I said, shaking my head.

"You said yourself the arm was completely real!" Syd argued.

"There must have been some parlor trick I'm not thinking of," I said.

"There isn't any trick, Jakey!"

"Then I must have hallucinated," I said. Yes, that must have been it. "You slipped something in my food, didn't you? Peyote, or LSD, or something."

He huffed angrily. "I didn't drug you. Come on, be rational. There isn't any hallucinogenic drug that causes no other symptoms, trust me, I tried `em all. You would have known you were drugged from the very first moment."

He was right of course. I shook my head. "Goodness, I must be hallucinating on my own then," I said. "I'm going insane. Starting to snap. It's no wonder, given the circumstances you've put me under as of late."

He sighed. "Jakey, you're the sanest guy I know. You're not losing it, kiddo. Maybe someone else would crack under the pressure, but not you. This is real, I'm real. You're not stuck in some waking dream."

Holy crap, logically I knew he was right. And that left nothing, no other option except the completely unbelievable.

My body went cold, and my mind went entirely numb, broken down from an absolute crisis of logic. "You're really a vampire," I admitted to myself, knocking my whole belief system out of the park. Kicking everything I thought I knew about the world, all my assertions that superstition and supernatural beliefs were all a load of bunk, created to help pitiful people feel empowered in the face of difficult lives. I was completely certain those superstitions were incorrect, and now, suddenly I had this vampire force his way into my belief system. Vampires. I didn't even believe in Santa when I was a kid.

If one belief, that vampires could not exist, had been crushed, didn't that call into question all the other beliefs I had once taken for granted? Were all the most basic tenements of science utter bunk as well? It was a brutal paradigm shift. There was so much to process, too much.

Syd's cell phone started to ring. "Hello? Yeah, he's with me in Vegas. No, he figured it out. Yeah, I know it was my goddamn fault. Okay. No, we'll be there in a couple days."

So, he had an accomplice. "Who was that, Satan?"

"Ha ha, worse, actually. It was my father." He threw the phone down angrily.

"What do you want from me?" I asked.

He sat down on the bed. "I'm not really supposed to say. Let's just say that you are... different."

"How do you mean?"

"You have a very important gene that almost no one else in the entire human species possesses. A gene that can only be passed down through males." I couldn't imagine what could be so different about me. The only unique gene I could think of was the gene that made my earlobes attached to my neck. He folded his hands. "It's because of this that we've taken an interest to you."

"Who is this we?"

"The vampires in my Blood. We were able to trace the gene to your family through your dad's line. We weren't positive our information was correct, so I was assigned to ascertain it."

"So you entered into my father's life and became his best friend just so you could figure out if he had this gene?" It seemed so excessive.

"That's right. When he died, my assignment switched to you and your brother. It was necessary to insert myself as a trusted member of the family. Once I had accomplished that, I moved on, but I was always sure to keep in contact with you and your brother. `Cause of certain world events, I was ordered to initiate contact with you once again. I bought a house in Tahoe and invited you to stay with me."

I was so angry. "And so everything between us, it was invented? If you wanted me, why not just take me?"

"My first assignment was to ascertain that you had the gift, to the best of my abilities. Once I had that figured out, my goals shifted. I was to bring you willingly here to Vegas for New Years Eve, and turn you over to my other cohorts at that point. I had hoped to take you here without you ever knowing about all of this."

"Wait, how did you ascertain that I had this gene?"

"You gave me a good hint the first day you were here. You complained about nightmares."

"What does that have to do--?"

"And then," he said, cutting me off, "there's one trait that always remains in all of the men with your gene. They have some sexual disposition towards men. They are either gay or bisexual. So all I had to do was to prove beyond a doubt that you were gay." He smiled at me, that same gosh darn charming smile that before meant so much to me.

"So that means, if I had the gene, then my dad had it too. So he was really gay?"

"Bisexual, I'm sure," said Syd. "But he was so conditioned to be homophobic that he must have had it buried deep inside him underneath many layers of self-hatred. I tried to seduce him, but he never took my bait. And so I failed my assignment. With you, I was gonna vindicate myself. I was tactical and took it slow."

"Why not just ask me?"

"You would not have been honest with me if I had, and then I would have lost the comfort level I had built up with you. You would put up your guard, just like your father. No, I had to make you want me so bad that you would willingly engage. I knew you were amazingly self-disciplined and so I had to break you down with desire a little bit at a time. I have to admit it was fun to do. Every time I undressed, every time I touched you, I knew I was making progress. But I wasn't positive you were gay until just recently. Now I know, you are the one."

I felt extremely hurt. Used and lied to by someone I thought I knew. "How could you manipulate me like that?" My voice trembled with anger.

He laughed. "Oh, come on, Jakey. You couldn't have thought all of that was genuine. I played the perfect role. Things like that don't happen in reality. You were fooling yourself just as much as I was fooling you."

I didn't answer him. Of course, he was completely right. "Does this mean that Jerry is gay?"

"Or bisexual, yes."

I tensed up. "What have you done with Jerry? Did you hurt him? Are you going to try to seduce him too? Is he in danger?"

"Don't worry. Now that I know you have the gene, it guarantees Jerry has it too. Unless your step-mother Jane was unfaithful, but a simple paternity test could prove that. There's no need to seduce him in the same way. They're not interested in Jerry, he's irrelevant. They want you. He's just an insurance policy, in case anything happens to you."

"What am I? What do I have that is so important?"

He shook his head. "I can't tell you that. You'll find out soon enough. It's just a gene that very few men in the world have. Possibly, you and your brother are the last ones who possess it. The oldest living man with this gene is the only one who is unique. Anyone younger with the gene has nothing special about them. That's why they couldn't care less about Jerry. He'd only become of interest to them if you died." He yawned. "Unfortunately, vampires still need sleep. It's late now, and we have to get an early start, so I suggest that we get some shut-eye."

"I thought vampires slept during the day?" I asked.

"You thought wrong."

"So, all vampires can walk around during the day?"

"What do I look like to you, Vampipedia.org? Enough with the questions! It's late and we need to get to sleep." He started to get into bed with me.

"Oh no, there is no way on God's green earth that I'm sharing a bed with you."

"Christ almighty, Jakey, it's a goddamn king! It's practically two separate beds!"

"No, it's not happening!" I shouted, banging my handcuffs against the bedpost they were attached to.

"Oh yes it is! You don't make the demands around here. I'm the goddamn vampire, remember? You'll do as I say." He grabbed the covers and turned his back away from me in bed, clearly not intending to unlock my cuffs for the night.

I started jumping up and down, shaking the bed. "Oh no you don't," I said. "I cannot sleep in this bed, and if I can't sleep, I won't let you sleep either."

He jumped out of bed, obviously very annoyed at my antics. "Fine, Jakey, I'll be the nice guy, but just this once. Next time you pull this crap you're gonna end up with a nasty bite." He grabbed his handcuff key and surveyed the room. "Now, don't think that I'm unlocking you because I've started to trust you. I don't. And we both know I'm a heavy sleeper. I just know there's no way outta this room. And there's no phone except for my own cell." He picked his phone up in his hand. "Which you will not be using."

He got out some duct tape from his bag. He held his phone against the stalk of his huge, soft penis with one hand while he used the other hand to repeatedly wrap the tape around both his phone and his dick, making the phone totally unreachable.

"There, now that you won't be using my phone, there's no reason why I can't uncuff you." He used his key to unlock the cuffs and take them off my wrists. "Enjoy sleeping on that tiny loveseat. Don't be expecting any pillows or blankets from my bed."

He got back into bed as I went to lie down on the loveseat by the window, which was painfully too small to fit my body. But I would never, ever complain to Syd about that.

"Darn, I forgot how badly I need a shower," I said, and got off of the loveseat, jumped in the shower, and washed myself extra well before drying off and getting back onto the loveseat.

Even though my body was worn out from not enough sleep as of late, my mind would not settle down enough to let me sleep. Too many crazy thoughts were going through my head. I felt like at any moment, I would wake up from this nightmare, and my life would be back to normal.

I wrestled with all of my beliefs being uprooted for a couple of hours of that night, trying to deal with the impossible coming to life. Then, I finally forced myself out of my own head, forced myself to accept this reality and try to deal with the situation at hand.

I opened my eyes and looked over at the bed. The circumstances were this: I had been kidnapped by a vampire. Although I had before thought Syd must have been insane to be saying the things he had, I realized then that my assessment might have been incorrect. Nothing had proven his insanity, though he was clearly an evil man, the way he murdered Viktor in cold blood. And that certainly wasn't the first person he had murdered. Worse still, there were other vampires like him, and that's where he was taking me. My chances for survival when we finally reached our destination surrounded by enemies seemed extremely thin.

I had to break free when it was only Syd with me, before they took me inside their stronghold. I knew the one time Syd was vulnerable was when he was sleeping. Like he said, he was a heavy sleeper. And at that very moment, I could tell by the way he was breathing that he was in his deep sleep mode.

But the door was locked and the window was unbreakable. I thought briefly about trying to untape that phone, but figured there was no way he would sleep through that. I couldn't do anything to wake him up.

Before, Syd hadn't thought I had seen him unlock the door with his special keycard as his woman left, and then put the card in his jeans pocket. Instead of a handlock like normal rooms would have, this one had only a cardslot, just like the outside of the room. It could only be locked and unlocked with that card.

I quickly gave the room a visual scan, looking for his jeans. I found them lying discarded on the floor next to the bed, typical for him. I tiptoed to them, picked them up, and started going though the pockets. I found his wallet, which I didn't take, but I also found the keycard, and as an added bonus, I found his carkeys. I took them both.

I got dressed quietly but quickly. I glanced over at Syd. I noticed that he had left the handcuffs he had used on me dangling from the bed post, with the key still in the lock. Hmm. Syd was sleeping on his left side, with his left arm and hand completely hidden under his body. In order for me to have access to that hand, I would have to roll him over. I wasn't too keen on that idea.

However, his right hand was just lying there on top of his body, totally exposed. If I put it in those cuffs, would he wake up? My past experience with him while he slept told me he wouldn't, but I couldn't be sure.

I really was not someone who would choose the risky path, but this time, I decided to try. I approached the bed very slowly, listening to my breathing to make sure I wasn't making the slightest noise. Of course, if he could hear my heart beating as fast as it was, he would have known something was up.

I crept onto the bed beside him, so slowly so as not to disturb him. I held my breath, and then reached out with my hand, touching his right wrist. I knew that if he would wake up, that would probably be when he did, and I held my hand against him fearfully.

He did not even stir in his deep sleep. After a few moments, I squeezed my hand around his wrist and started to pull it up towards the bedpost. Crap, this guy's beefy arm was heavy; I had to use both arms to lift it.

"Mmm," he mumbled, moving his body, obviously waking up.

Terrified, I jumped back, leaping completely off the bed. Darnnit, I had blown my shot.

"Mmm, yeah Debbie," he mumbled.

Oh my goodness, he was only sleep talking again. Having some sort of dream about whoever poor Debbie was.

Emboldened again, I climbed back on the bed and put my hands on his arm. This time, I carefully lifted his hand to the bedpost, and then placed his wrist inside the cuff. All that was left was for me to close the cuff and take the key.

BUZZZZZZZ!!

I jumped back off the bed again, scared to death by the unexpected sound. I quickly realized it was the mechanical sound of a cell phone on vibrate. I had to find that phone and turn it off! His hand was still in the handcuff, and I knew there would be no denying what I had been up to if he woke up.

Of course, I remembered exactly where the buzzing was coming from as I saw his soft penis shaking to and fro. The silenced cell phone had turned his huge unit into a battery powered dildo. Through the holes in the tape, flashing lights blinked like a child's toy, illuminating his blonde pubes and balls as they did. Surely he would wake up at that.

"Mmmm," he moaned again, and I realized his dick was hardening under all that buzzing; it was clearly exciting him in his sleep.

Finally, the buzzing stopped, and I was able to catch my breath. His dick looked like it was slowly letting out steam.

Then, the buzzing started over again. Shoot, couldn't the caller understand that he wasn't available?

His dick hardened again, and his moaning continued. "Mmm, yeah Debbie. This cowboy loves it when you suck my cock like that."

He thrust his hard cock towards me, obviously thinking he was thrusting down this Debbie's throat.

Then, the buzzing stopped again. I waiting, silent and still, for the third call to start. It never came, and Syd's dick once again started to soften. After staying there for some time, I got the nerve up to continue where I had left off. I got back onto the bed and moved my hands back to his wrist on the bedpost.

I clicked the handcuff to a locked position, and I removed the key. I got off the bed and put the key in my pocket. Turning towards the door, I pulled out the card key, slipping it into the card slot. When the door opened, I stepped outside, removed the key from the slot and pocketing it, locking Syd inside the room as I closed the door behind me softly.

The hotel hallway was abandoned. I started to make my way towards the elevator when I noticed a security camera pointed towards the door. I hoped no one was watching that, and I tried to act nonchalant just in case.

I decided to avoid the elevator, and instead I walked over to the entrance to the stairs. Once I was inside, I looked around for cameras, and not seeing any, I started to run down the stairs as fast as I could.

I was worried security would be waiting for me at the casino entrance, blocking me from leaving. Instead, there was nothing unusual there, and I was able to just walk right outside.

I grabbed Syd's car keys out of my pocket and ran towards the parking lot. Darn, there were way more cars there than when we had come into the hotel, and at first I thought I wouldn't be able to find it. But Syd's big truck stuck out like a sore thumb, and as soon as I spotted the thing, I ran towards it.

I quickly used the key-clicker to unlock the doors, and then got into the driver's seat. The first thing I did was lock the doors again, then I stuck the key into the ignition.

I looked down for the automatic gear shift, and my stomach felt sick as I saw a goshdarn stick shift. I had forgotten his truck had a stick. I had never learned how to drive one.

At first, I thought about ditching the truck and trying to run off by foot, but decided against it. It wasn't like this casino was on the strip; I couldn't just run into the crowd on the street and disappear. No, this was the perfect time to learn how to drive a stick.

I found the clutch pedal and pushed it down with my left foot. Then I held down the brake with my right foot as I started the car and removed the emergency brake.

I just had to switch into reverse. I grabbed the stick and read quickly which position was for "R." Then I switched it into the position as I took my foot off the clutch and pressed lightly on the gas.

The engine shook and turned off, going dead. Crap! I put my foot back on the brake and I turned the car on again.

I tried the process again, but again the engine just shut off. I did it a third time, still nothing. Running by foot was starting to look like a better and better option.

I gave it one more try, though this time I was so frustrated I stepped on the gas sharply.

The truck quickly started to drive in reverse, pulling back out of the parking spot. It was too fast for me to turn, and I actually ended up rear-ending a couple parked cars behind me.

"Oops, so, so sorry," I said to them, though no one was anywhere around to witness this.

I used my newfound skill at shifting to put the truck into first gear with success, turning the truck to pull it into the parking lane. This wasn't so hard after all.

SLAM!

I jumped at the sound and yelled as I saw something land right on my front windshield as I drove. A body, I realized.

Syd's body. He had jumped right onto the windshield, and he was glaring at me though the glass, naked except for a pair of jeans. Darn!

I hit the gas hard, propelling us down the parking lot lane as fast as I could, trying hard to drive even though he was covering most of my view.

He reached his hand up, made it into a hard fist, and this time I swear his fist changed color, turning a dull grey, seemingly hardening before my eyes. He pounded that fist against the windshield. A crack appeared around his first, but it wasn't enough to break through.

I had to get him off me. I slammed on the brakes and whipped around a turn onto the main road. He slid, almost falling off the truck, but keeping himself planted somehow.

He punched the windshield again, this time creating deep shatters all around his fist, though he still hadn't broken through.

I slammed on the accelerator, barreling down the street. I drove faster and faster, dangerously so.

Again he slammed his fist, and this time, he punched through the windshield completely. He grabbed it with both hands, ripped it off the frame, and tossed it aside.

He moved so quickly inside the truck, and then he grabbed me by the neck. "Stop the truck!" he ordered.

"No!"

"Stop it before you crash. I promise you I would survive that crash, but you probably wouldn't, and you might take some innocent bystanders down with you."

I couldn't argue with that logic. Even though I was flaming mad, even though my rage urged me to keep the foot on the gas pedal, I forced myself to brake instead, coming to a stop.

I had once again been overcome. I felt so completely deflated as I turned the car off.

He raised his arm up and showed me the cuffs still locked to his wrist. "Give me the keys for these," he ordered.

I pulled the key out of my pocket and handed it over. He unlocked the cuffs and tossed them in the car.

"How did you get out?" I asked him.

"I pulled the bedpost out in order to free my hand, but those rooms are meant to hold even beings as strong as me. So, I had to untape my phone and call security." He grabbed my face and pulled me towards him, his eyebrows furrowed as he looked at me with absolute fierceness. "I don't think you understand who you're dicking around here, Jakey. You tell anyone about this, and I will kill them. You try to escape, and I will find you. And if I can't find you, I'll be very, very angry. I know where your family lives. I will find them and I will kill them. I know where your friend Ak-mak lives."

"Ahmad."

"I don't give a damn what his name is. I will find him and I will kill him too. So, now that you know the seriousness of the situation, I want you to swear to me that you won't try to run again. Do it!"

"I swear, Syd," I said, my voice seething with my anger. And I meant it. I had thought before it was just my own neck on the line. Now that he was dragging all my loved ones into this, I knew he had me beat. And I absolutely hated him for it.

He pushed me over and rode the truck back to the hotel. He left his phone and the handcuffs inside the truck this time. I couldn't believe I was willingly stepping back into that casino, but I had no other options.

Syd walked us past security, tossed his keys to a guy, and told him that his windshield would need to be replaced by morning. The guy agreed.

Back in our room, Syd locked the door. "Back to sleep. This time, I trust there will be no more interruptions." He stripped off his jeans and got back into bed.

I curled back up on the couch, too angry to fall back asleep. In my mind, I eliminated escape as a possibility for me. I wasn't going to risk my loved ones getting dragged into this.

Instead, I came up with a new plan as I drifted off to sleep: kill Syd.

DECEMBER 31st

I was by no means a killer, but when my family was threatened, I was capable of terrible acts. And besides, this was not a person I'd be killing. This was a cold-blooded murdering vampire. Killing him would probably end up saving countless lives of his future victims.

In my head, I went through all the normal ways I could kill someone. The first things that came to mind were strangling him or suffocating him with a pillow in his sleep. I thought I would have the guts to do something like that, but I was positive he would wake up during the process and easily fight me off.

I remembered that hunting knife he had used earlier. I could get that and stab him in his sleep. Maybe slit his throat.

But I wasn't sure if I had the constitution to go through with something like that. There would be so much blood, probably causing me to faint. Plus, I already knew he healed from similar wounds. I doubted if that would be enough to kill him.

I knew he had guns in his car; if I could at some point get control of one and shoot him, maybe that was the answer. Though again, I had no idea if that would kill a vampire.

No, I was thinking too much like a rational human being. I had to think like an irrational, superstitious person. I had to make use of the totally preposterous but well known methods for killing vampires.

Now, I certainly had no interest in the subject growing up, and never read a book about vampires or anything of the sort. I avoided those kinds of silly movies and shows if I could, finding them laughably ridiculous. Lucky for me, my ridiculous brother Jerry had watched those kinds of movies all the time. As much as I had tried to ignore them, it was impossible not to let some of the details get into your brain.

I made a mental list of every outlandish vampire weakness I could think of. Once I did, it was just a matter of systematically going through the list until I had found one that helped me kill him.

Right of the bat, I scratched mirrors and photography off my list. I knew I had seen reflections of Syd in the mirror, and he appeared in pictures. Those two myths clearly had no value to me.

Also, he plainly didn't need to sleep in a coffin. That too was crossed off.

Often in the movies, vampires exposed to silver would burn under its touch. Putting a silver chain around a vampire's neck either caused them to be immobilized with crushing weakness, or it just outright killed them. I was hoping for the latter.

I waited a couple hours until I could hear Syd sleeping soundly again. I got up, and rummaged through my bag until I found my cross on a silver chain. Thanking my mother for giving it to me, I went to the bed where Syd lay, completely naked on his back, the covers pulled off. Very carefully, I tied the chain around his neck, then I stood back to examine the damage.

Nothing at all. Syd showed absolutely no sign of disturbance. I pushed away the silver from his skin. No sign of burn or even the slightest bit of irritation. Shoot. I removed the chain and put it away, crossing silver off my mental list.

I lay back on my bed, and started mulling over the next vampire killer on my list: sunlight. Everyone knew vampires would die if exposed to direct sunlight, either bursting into flames or just turning into ash. I couldn't imagine a vampire that was not prone to that weakness, yet I had seen Syd on dozens of occasions walking around half naked in full sunlight. In some shows, I remembered that certain vampires could go into the sun only because they had some sort of magic trinket or charm on them. He must have worn something like that.

I started going over all my memories of Syd in sunny places. I swore there were times where sun was hitting him in the nude, and he was still fine. So, if he had a magic trinket, it would have to be really small.

Then it hit me. I got up and excitedly walked over to Syd on his bed. I looked carefully at his left hand, and saw something I had seen hundreds of times but never thought much of: a ring (which looked silver) on his pinky finger, with an engraved "L" on it. It matched his belt buckle, and stood for his last name, Logan. He had worn it ever since I first met him, and I couldn't ever remember him taking it off.

Yes, that had to be it. I looked at the window, and noticed our room faced east. I devised a new plan.

I waited patiently for two hours until the morning sun was rising on the east horizon. Then I opened our window's curtains, flooding the room with direct sunlight, all of it pouring over Syd's tan body in bed. He didn't budge at all when the light hit him, still in a deep sleep.

Now it was just a matter of removing this ring before he woke up. I got into bed next to him quietly. Very carefully, I grabbed the ring on his finger with my right hand, and started to pull gently.

Hmm, gentle wasn't working, the ring was stuck. I pushed it harder, putting more force into it. Still it wouldn't budge. I started using both my hands, but try as I might, the ring would not move at all. Darn, he must have not taken this thing off for years.

Exasperated, I got off the bed and went into the bathroom. I found some complementary bath oil, just what the doctor ordered. I got back into bed and poured it all over his hand, then tried again. That time, I could almost get it off, but not quite.

Wanting to get better leverage, and noticing he wasn't waking up at all, I straddled him in bed, placing my knees on both sides of him, and sitting on his six-pack. Then I lifted his hand up over his chest and used both hands again to pry it out. Still no success.

I grabbed the oil, and just poured and poured everywhere all over him, making a huge mess. Then again, I put everything into pulling it off.

Oh crap, I felt it slip past his first knuckle, the largest obstacle. I just had to finish the job.

"Jakey, what's going on?" I heard unexpectedly as Syd opened his eyes underneath me and sat up, his face suspicious. I pulled back my hands.

Darnit, I had been caught!

He looked down at me straddling his oily, muscled body. "Are you waking me up with a massage, Jakey?" he asked.

"Uh, yes," I lied. "Your muscles looked, umm, sore."

"Hah, I don't really get sore, being a vampire and all. I totally just made that up before. But don't let that keep you from continuing your massage."

Still straddling him, I pressed my oily hands on his muscular pecs and started to massage.

"Hell, I guess I should have more pity for you," he said. "Sleeping naked with no covers in bed, forcing ya to see my irresistible, studly body for hours on end. No one could keep up their self control under those circumstances."

I wanted to punch him, but I had to keep myself cool. "Mmm-hmm," I said.

Just when I started on his arm and was getting close to his finger again, he spoke up. "I think ya got my upper half covered, Jakey. But little Syd is feelin damned ignored so far, ya don't want him to be cross with ya."

He effortlessly spun my body 180 degrees until I was looking down at his soft cock sprawled out in front of me, with his legs beyond.

"Why not oil that baby up?" he asked, handing me the body oil.

I couldn't believe I was about to do this, but I couldn't stop now that I was so close. I poured the oil all over the base of his huge, soft prick, soaking his blonde pubes. Oil dripped down the huge length of his penis.

"Go on, Jakey," he said. "You know ya wanna touch it."

I really did not want to touch it, but I put my hands on it in any case, massaging the thick, veiny unit. I felt that familiar pulsing from deep inside the flesh that I knew meant he was starting to get hard.

Behind me, Syd used his greasy hands to rub and play with my naked butt. I did not appreciate his touch, but what could I do?

I kept rubbing, and his member kept on hardening. Then Syd pushed my butt down until he made me sit directly on his semi hard, oily dick.

He sat up in bed and pressed his greasy chest against my back, his chest fur wetting my dry skin. I felt his muscular arms wrap around me and grab my chest. Beneath me, I felt him slide his now firm, massive dick up and down my crack.

"Oh, sweetheart, I'm so glad ya decided to wake me up this way, so glad you came to your senses."

I said nothing, but lifted his hand up to my kiss and started to kiss it. I stuck the ringed finger into my mouth and started to suck it.

"Yeah, that's so hot, baby," he cooed, starting to slide his oily member harder and harder against my hole.

I could taste his ring in my mouth. I gripped it with my teeth and pulled my head back, feeling a huge satisfaction as I felt it finally slide off his large digit.

I immediately hopped away from him, not wanting to obstruct the direct sunlight, and especially not wanting to catch fire or anything as he burned.

I looked to see the light extend over every bare inch of his body. His face looked surprised, perhaps out of sudden pain.

I waited expectantly for his skin to start burning off. I waited. And I waited.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The ring had no charm at all. I spit it back out at him angrily.

"Why'd you jump out of the bed like you saw a rattlesnake?" he asked me. "Well, maybe you DID see a rattlesnake, a mighty big one!"

I ignored him, and jumped back into bed.

"That's more like it!" he said.

I straddled him, carefully looking over every inch of his body to see if he had on some other hidden piece of jewelry. I rubbed my fingers over his whole body, half pretending I was continuing my massage. There was no other trinket anywhere, no ring, no bracelet, nothing pierced into his skin. He was totally, absolutely bare, and covered in sunlight.

No, another myth. I checked it off my list. This was so frustrating.

I got off him and started to put my clothes back on.

"What's the problem now?" he asked me.

"You absolutely disgust me," I said, not able to conceal my hatred.

He laughed. "That's sure not how it looked five seconds ago when you were worshiping my body. You're the one who made a move on me, remember? You'll feel a lot better if you forget about your personal feelings and just let your body tell you what it wants. Which, in this case, is obviously me."

I ignored him and kept on dressing.

"Fine, I'm getting in the shower."

After he showered, they delivered breakfast to our room. Then, we were on the road again, heading east on the 93, the bright sunshine hitting my eyes. I looked over at Syd. He had his cowboy hat and sunglasses on, looking very cool. Goodness, I hated him.

"Sun sure is bright today," I said.

"Yep," he said.

"Are you sure you're not going to burst into flames or anything?"

"I'm fine, thanks." He turned on the country music and cranked it up, singing along in his country twang.

"Do you have to do that?" I asked him.

"What?"

"Act like you did before I found out you were secretly a vampire killer who was only bothering to interact with me because he wanted to use me?"

He huffed. "Hey, we spent all day driving yesterday in silence. Well, I'm plain sick of that shit. I'm a fun-lovin guy, Jakey. You can be as mopey as you want to be, but don't try to bring me down."

He resumed his singing, and I sat there in silence, beyond angry.

It wasn't long before we came to the Hoover Dam. "Oooh, have you ever been here?" he asked me.

"Nope, never," I said.

"It's pretty swell, Jakey. You can take a tour of the inside, and they got this movie about how it was built. `Course, I came over a couple times back during the construction. Seeing them make the thing in person was a whole different cattleranch, ya know? We should stop!"

The truth was, I had always wanted to visit Hoover Dam, I was a history buff and it was an interesting slice of history. But I had no interest to do it with my present company. "No, I am not going in," I said.

"Why the hell not? You're not spooked by all the ghost stories ya hear, are ya?"

"No, don't be ridiculous. I don't want to go in because this is not some buddy road trip we're on."

"Yeah, it kind of is."

"No it kind of is not! Let me remind you of the facts. You brutally murdered my ex-love-interest not even two full days ago, traumatizing me in the process. Then you told me you had been lying to me ever since I ever knew you and you never cared for me. Then you kidnapped me, and since then you've repeatedly tied me up, physically overpowered me, or outright humiliated me. You've threatened to kill everyone I care about. And you're forcing me to go somewhere where I'll probably be killed very soon. Do you deny any of those points?"

"Hmm, nope. Seems pretty accurate. But come on, that's just one tiny insignifaicant part of our unique rapport. It's our fiery chemistry. We have a classic love/hate relationship."

"More like a hate/hate relationship," I said. "There's absolutely no love coming from my end, at least."

"That's not what you were saying a couple days ago when you were worshipping every inch of my body. "'Member that?"

"Those days are over! So, you can force me to go to this destination we're headed for. But you can't force me to be your little road buddy."

"Fine, we'll skip Hoover, but it's your loss," he said, driving past the landmark.

After we got on the 40 east, we stopped for lunch at a burger place in Flagstaff, a pleasant Arizona desert town that I knew was not far from the Grand Canyon, another place that I had never seen. While we were eating our food in the truck, I noticed a small Catholic church across the street.

"I'm going to make a phone call," Syd said, leaving the truck. "I'm trusting you to not run away." The way he said it, it was clear it was less an affirmation and more of a command. He then left me alone and walked around to the other side of the restaurant.

My eyes went back to that church, hatching a new plan. I left the truck, taking my backpack with me. I ran across the street and into the church.

There wasn't a service going on, and the place was mostly abandoned. I found the stoup holding the holy water. Looking around quickly, I made sure I wasn't being watched, then I pulled an empty water bottle out of my backpack and filled it with some of the holy water. That took care of half of my reason for being there.

Continuing around the church, I found a small crucifix nailed to the wall. I again looked around to make sure I wasn't being watched. Then I pulled the crucifix off the wall, and put it into my backpack. I felt guilty as I made my way back out of the church. I had never stolen anything in my life, and here I was, stealing an object that was priceless to these folks. If I ever got out of this alive, I was going to send this church a big check.

With haste, I ran back across the street and jumped back into the truck, just a few seconds before Syd reappeared, putting his phone away. As he started to get into the truck, I fished the bottle of holy water out of my backpack, sauvely acting like I was just taking a swig.

Instead, as soon as I uncapped the bottle, I darted my hand towards him, spraying his whole body with the stuff, but making sure to dampen his face in particular.

"Ahh!" Syd yelled in surprise as soon as the water hit him. "Oooow!"

His hands quickly went to his face as he whined in pain, and I knew right then that I had finally found his one true weakness.

But then he removed his hands from his face, and I could see that there were no signs of burning. Instead, his face was just wet.

"Goddamnit, ya spunked me right in the eye!" he said angrily, rubbing his red eyes. "I haven't been this blinded since that hot brunette in Tahoe squirted her love juice all over me. What's yer problem?"

Once again, I realized I had been beaten. The fact that the water had been blessed had no bearing on Syd. He was irritated because I unexpectedly sprayed him with water.

I crossed another vampire weakness off my mental list.

"Sorry, it just slipped," I said.

"Like hell it just slipped. You've been acting kooky all day."

"We'll, I'm sorry," I said defensively. "Maybe if you stopped kidnapping me and murdering my friends, I would behave more to your liking."

"Well, that's not gonna happen," he said, starting up the truck and heading back east.

In the afternoon, we stopped in Gallup for a bathroom break, and I followed Syd into a public restroom, my bag slung behind me. The place was completely empty except for us. There was a single urinal, which I used. He tried to share my urinal, and I angrily left him to it, using a stall instead.

I finished first and zipped up. When I came out of the stall, I yelled to him, "Hey Syd, check this out."

He turned to face me, looking to see me hold my crucifix towards him, which I had just pulled out of my bag. Once again, I waited for some sign that it was affecting him.

"Oh, pretty," he said, sounding rather unimpressed. "Did you find that in here?"

"Yeah," I said, putting it down. Darn it, another myth busted. Syd seemed to have no clue that I had carried the thing in with me.

"Huh, leave it to the southwest to install crucifix's in their fuckin' public restroom toilet stall. I guess if I had pulled ya back in there to give me some awesome head, they expect seeing a dead Christ on a stick is gonna change yer mind."

I shrugged, and we got back in our truck, heading east. We didn't stop again until we came to Albuquerque, a city high in elevation that had a modestly-sized but pretty skyline with mountains in the background. Because it was the biggest chunk of civilization we had been through since Vegas, Syd wanted to stop for a dinner that was "at least halfway decent." He took us to a sports bar type place that he knew, a local hot-spot that was large and crowded, with dining room seating in one wing, and a large bar in the other. We got a table in the restaurant side. When we were walking in, I noticed an attractive blonde waitress in her early forties glancing longingly at Syd as discreetly as she could. I knew he noticed this too, as he totally puffed out his chest and flexed his arm muscles. She came over to our table with a pad of paper in her hand.

"Hi y'all," she said with that country twang.

"Hi darlin,'" Syd said, his charming smile out in full force. "I noticed you checking me out as I walked in here."

"Well I--" she stuttered, her face turning red.

"Nah, no need to turn all red on us," Syd said. "Why, I often check myself out too. When you look snazzier than the devil himself, it can't be helped." He laughed, and I rolled my eyes.

She erupted into laughter. "I'm Mary-Anne. I'll be your waitress this evening."

"I'm Syd, and that's Jake," Syd said to the lady. "And, can I say, it's so refreshing to have you just use the word waitress.' We've been living in California for too long, where you'd be forced to refer to yourself as our server' to try and sound all sophisticated."

"Oh, good heavens, how awful," she said. "I can tell by your accent that California is not where you're from."

"No, thank the lord for that. I was born not all that far from here."

She winked at him. "Well, welcome home, cowboy."

I rolled my eyes again as I looked over my menu.

"Just whistle for me when you're ready to let me know how I can be of service," she said. "And if there's something that is not on the menu that you'd rather have, just let me know and I might be able to get it for you."

"Well, thanks Darlin.'" His eyes lingered on her as she walked away.

"Syd, you're practically sexually assaulting that woman's mammaries visually."

"That was like several hundred too many ten-cent words for me to follow, but I think you just complained about me titty fucking the waitress with my eyes. And in my defense, I'm just reading the writing on her T-shirt. If she's going to put writing on her chest, she should expect people to read it."

"Syd, all it says is `Waitress,' and yet you are still staring at her breasts."

"You always complained at how slow a reader I am."

Syd ordered a huge stack of pancakes, and I ordered a hearty looking salad, with Syd complaining that I should eat a proper meal, but me not listening. Once we ordered, Syd announced he was going to check out the sports bar area and if I would like to join him. I told him the less time I had to spend with him, the happier I would be. So he left me alone, warning me not to do anything stupid.

I amused myself watching football scores on a nearby TV until Syd returned fifteen minutes later with a huge grin on his face, somehow even bigger than his normal smirk. "I found someone to feed off of."

"Oh, splendid. Who is it this time, a nun?"

"No, it's Mary-Anne."

"I should have guessed."

"Hell, she meant it when she said she'd be able to get me something from off the menu. I told her exactly how she could serve me, alright." He fished a condom out of his wallet and set it on the table. "I had to make sure I had one of those suckers on me."

"Syd, you are more into safe sex than any other vampire I know," I said to him. "Planned Parenthood should give you a medal for that."

"You clearly haven't known a lot of vampires," he said back.

"Actually, I'll buy you a medal myself as long as you keep those condoms on. My worst nightmare would be to envision having your spawn running around somewhere in the world."

"You and me both, Jakey," he said. "I mean, fuck, could ya imagine a worse party killer? One of the main reasons I always wrap up by big Johnson."

Mary-Anne appeared. She smiled at me. "Your food will be right out." Then she turned to Syd. "And sir, I had some questions about your order. Can I take you back to the pantry to show you?"

"I'd be much obliged," Syd said, grabbing his condom and following the waitress into the back.

After awhile, our food was delivered by a much older waitress. As I thanked her, I looked at Syd's pancakes smothered in syrup, and I had a thought.

"This is a weird request," I said to her, "but could you ask your chef if they have a container of garlic powder that I could borrow?"

"For whose meal?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

I worried that she might see Syd coming back from the pantry and actually hand him the garlic, telling him I had told her he wanted it in his food. That would have exposed me, so I decided to lie instead. "I like to add a lot of garlic to my, uh, salad."

She made a face. "Are you sure? I don't think garlic compliments raspberry vinaigrette dressing."

"Oh, I think it does," I said.

"Okay, I'll see if we got it," she said.

I started eating my salad, and she came back a good ten minutes later with a plastic container of garlic salt. "This was the best I could find," she said.

"That's just fine, thank you," I said, knowing it was just the same as the powder, just saltier.

I expected her to leave, but she just stood there, staring at me expectantly. I had no choice but to use the stuff as I had told her, taking the cap off and shaking it onto my salad.

"And that actually tastes good?" she asked me, watching me carefully.

I felt forced to take a bite. The combination of the overpowering, salty garlic and my sweet dressing was beyond horrid. Really it was hard to swallow the food. "Mmm, yes, that's perfect."

"Huh, well whoda thought?" she asked. "I'll have to start recommending that combination to the cooks."

"Yes, for sure," I said.

"Why don't you just keep the bottle for now?" she asked, and left me alone.

That's just what I was hoping for. I looked around to make sure Syd wasn't within sight, then I leaned over and shook an obscene amount of garlic onto the syrup on his pancakes.

"Hey, hands off my food!" came Syd's voice, startling me, and I pulled away from his plate, knowing I had been caught red-handed. "If you wanted pancakes you should have ordered them to begin with, instead of the rabbit food you ordered."

I quickly hid the garlic salt under the table. "Sorry, couldn't resist."

Syd sat down with a highly satisfied look on his face. "Turns out Mary-Anne had all sorts of great talents. I tell ya, they just don't make `em like that in California. Want to hear about what she could do with her pussy?"

He picked up his fork and started to cut into his pancakes, while I eyed him carefully.

"I'm dying to hear all about it, but if you kissed and told like that, it would ruin your sound reputation as a world class gentleman."

"I can be a gentleman when it matters," he said. He set his bite down for what seemed like no reason at all.

"Yeah, like when it helps you get into bed with someone like Mary-Anne."

"Hey, it wasn't like I totally took advantage of her," he said as he started to unpack a butter packet and spread the paddy on the cakes. "She was begging for it. Told me I was the sexiest guy to ever come through this town." He was on his third butter patty. Goodness, how much butter could one man's pancakes possibly need?

"So, maybe the sex was consensual," I said. "But I'm guessing the whole biting and blood drinking part wasn't a part of your pre-arranged agreement."

"Hey now, it's not like I killed her."

"Oh, well then, she should be grateful."

He put his fifth butter paddy on his pancakes while I looked on with disgust.

"Wow, Syd, do you want some pancakes with that butter? Great, somehow you've managed to make an already unhealthy food ten times worse for you."

"This is the only way I like `em," he said. "Come on, Jakey, I know yer jealous."

Finally, Syd took a nicely huge, juicy bite of the pancakes, opening his mouth really wide as he did so, licking the butter obscenely in order to disgust me. I studied him closely as soon as he had taken his bite.

He made a weird hacking/gasping sound, and he dropped the fork on the plate. His eyes turned red and moist. "Ugh," he said, the he started to cough and hack, obviously choking. It was working!

His face turned beet red and his skin started sweating as his choking and hacking intensified. He spit out his bite into his napkin.

"Oh lord!" he said. He kept coughing.

"What's wrong Syd, are you allergic to your pancakes?" I asked hopefully.

"There's so much garlic," he said.

"Don't like garlic?"

"No, I like garlic as much as the next fellow," he said. "But not on fucking pancakes! And there's more garlic on these than all of Italy would ever use in a decade." He spit again, and took a swig of his water. "It's terrible!"

Clearly he had no problem with garlic. Again, I started to feel so very angry and deflated. Every single vampire myth that I could think of had been disproven, all except wooden stakes. That one would certainly not be convenient to try out.

"I need to order something else," he said.

"I don't understand," I said. "Why do vampires need to eat food if they drink blood?"

"Well, technically we don't," he said. "Our digestive systems are different from humans. All solid food we eat is absorbed through our stomach into our body. So, I have never in my life gone number two."

"Handy." I guessed that explained why he would go days without having any toilet paper.

"And we can stop eating altogether as long as we get a large daily dose of blood. Not enough blood that would kill the victim, but enough to knock them unconscious for a while and make them pretty weak after. That's not really feasible for me most of the time. Like here. See? Mary-Anne is already back waiting tables. She's totally forgotten the part where I bit her, though I let her remember the sex, that's why she has such a large smile on her face. If I had taken enough blood to stop eating, she would still be unconscious on the pantry floor. Someone probably would have discovered her and called an ambulance. It's just not convenient. So, when I can't afford to knock someone out or bed and feed off of two people a day, then I have to eat food to keep me at full strength."

"I can't believe you can discuss your victims like they are pieces of cake," I said, making a face. "You're talking about piercing someone's jugular, sucking out all of their blood, and drinking it down. It's completely repulsive. "

He shrugged. "I was born a vampire, Jakey. Instead of breast milk, I was fed blood. I could never imagine life without blood. It's the most pleasurable ecstasy created."

"It's a sick perversion, that's what it is. Your pleasure is coming at the expense of others."

"There's a lot you should understand `bout me. I was born in the mid 1800's on Texas soil, in fact. My parents had three kids, and I was the middle one, but my sister was born ten years older than me, so she and I never grew up together. My sister was the most prized right from the start. She was raised directly by my father and mother. I was sent to be raised by my aunt, along with my little brother, who was just two years younger than me. My aunt--"

"I'm sorry," I cut in. "What is this? Why the endless autobiographical exposition? What gives you the notion that I am the least bit interested in your `fascinating life story?' Maybe, if we were buddies, I would tolerate this rant. Since we are not, I don't want to hear about it. Save it for Oprah."

"Damn, you whine when I tell you I've been lying to you, and then you whine just as much when I try to tell you the truth. Alright, I see how it is."

Syd ordered a hamburger, and afterwards we were back on the road, veering north on I 25. It was well after dark when we pulled into a hotel parking lot in Santa Fe.

"Does your family own this place too?" I asked Syd, looking at the pleasantly new hotel with a strong desert motif.

"Nope. I guess I'll have to be satisfied with being an average customer like everyone else."

He got us a suite this time, so there was a bedroom with a king bed, but also a living room area with a pull-out couch, perfect for me.

"I think after today you've earned my trust," he said to me. If he only knew I'd been trying to kill him all day long. "I trust that you won't try to run. I'm through with the handcuffs, and I trust you to sleep on your own." There was truth in that; I wasn't going to run anymore. "Of course, if you want to share a bed with me for old times sake, you can. Hey, tonight's New Years Eve, almost plum forgot. We can stay up, and you can kiss my dickslit at midnight, ain't that sound sweet?"

"I'll pass."

"Well, if you wake up in the morning and I'm still sleeping, give me a wake-up call."

I agreed. I took a shower, and then got ready for bed. Telling me we would again have a long day tomorrow, he went to sleep in the bedroom, and I curled up on the sofa bed. I was actually trying to keep myself awake, but I was so tired, and the sofa bed felt so good, that it wasn't long before I was zonked out.

JANUARY 1st

I woke up very early in the morning, cursing myself for letting myself fall asleep. I got up quietly and searched through every nook and cranny of the living room area I was in, but found nothing useful. I put on a hotel robe and very quietly let myself out of the room, extending the door jam so that the door could not lock on me.

I searched around the empty hotel until I lucked out and found an unlocked supply closet. In there, I found a wooden broom. I picked it up and broke it in half over a shelf, discarding the brush end and taking the handle end with me.

I rushed back to our hotel room. Examining the wooden rod in my hand, it was clear that it would need much sharpening in order to make a stake out of it. I searched the area again, but found nothing useful to sharpen the thing with.

I remembered the hunting knife I had seen Syd carrying around with him. His belongings were in the bedroom, which I had wanted to avoid at all cost. But it was the only option I could think of.

Putting the stake down, I gently opened his bedroom door. I could see him sprawled out in the middle of the large bed, naked as usual. I listened closely, and I could hear that deep breathing that I associated with his heavy sleeping. Encouraged, I slipped into the room and tiptoed towards his bag on the floor.

I slowly went through his belongings, trying to be as quiet as possible. To my happiness, it wasn't long before I came across the large hunting knife. I grabbed it and pulled it out of his bag. I quietly left the room and shut the door.

I got the stake in hand, and immediately started to whittle, wanting to be thorough, but also not wanting to make enough noise to wake him up. It took me about fifteen minutes to really craft the wood into a sharp but sturdy weapon.

I had no experience with a weapon like that, never having the urge to learn how to fence or anything else in which one used a sharp object. So, I practiced with the new instrument in my room, at first just getting used to handling it, learning its weight and form, and then graduating to actually performing simulated attacks. I knew I was going to have to plunge the weapon in really, really hard if I had a shot at breaking through ribs and hitting his heart, so I played out that motion in particular, really working until I knew I was throwing every ounce of my strength into my stabs. Finally I deemed myself physically prepared.

Very carefully, I opened the door to the bedroom and peeked inside. Syd was still sleeping heavily, so I grabbed my stake and headed in. Luckily for me, he was lying on his back without any covers to impede my access to his chest. It was just standing there, totally naked, in the open, begging to be attacked.

Unluckily for me, he was lying right in the center of his huge bed. I tried to come to the side of the bed and lean my body over to his chest, but even though I could reach it, I knew that the position was much too awkward to afford me the ability to use my full strength. I decided to climb on top of him instead.

I carefully got onto the bed by his feet, stepping gently onto the mattress so as not to disrupt him. I noticed that my feet were causing his body to bounce with every step, so I kneeled onto my knees and crawled forward, straddling both his legs with my two shins. After every movement closer, I stopped and carefully monitored his breathing.

I crawled up his body until I was straddling his hips and looking down at his upper body. There, right beneath me, was my target: his perfectly formed left pec. I readied my stake in the air above my mark.

I had readied my bodyfor what I would have to do physically in order to kill Syd, but I had not readied my heart. Instead of steely resolve, all of these emotions came through me all at once.

This was the monster that killed Viktor in cold blood.

Could I really kill someone? I had never had to ask that question before. But did Syd really count as a "someone?" He wasn't even human.

What if I wasn't strong enough? Surely he would wake up and kill me; it would be over for me.

Remember, this was the cold blooded killer that threatened to kill my loved ones.

This was going to be messy. How would I handle all the blood? Would I just pass out? Oh well, no point worrying about that part so soon.

Just a couple days ago, I was head over heals in lust for this man. I was starting to fall for him. Now, I was considering killing him.

I had known this man since I was a boy. But that really wasn't true at all, I had never known the real him until I walked in on him killing Viktor.

I thought of all the people he had killed in his life, and wondered about how many more there would be.

That last thought decided it for me. I swallowed and summoned my courage.

I drove the stake towards his body.

I stopped short, just as the point of the stake grazed his skin. I just flat out chickened out. I couldn't go through with it.

"Mmm," Syd said, making me jump in alarm.

Was he waking up? How would this look?

"Mmm, yeah, Mary-Anne, lick it." I should have known he was having sex dreams again.

Thinking about his antics with that waitress which resulted in her getting her blood drained against her will to satisfy his hunger, not to mention his sexual lust, something inside me just snapped.

I pictured my loved ones safe in my head, and then I raised my stake again. I hardened my whole body, and then I slammed the stake down with every last piece of my power.

The point of the stake hit his skin right at his left nipple. Suddenly, there was so much force pushing the stake out of my hands as the weapon wanted to slip down his body. I had not prepared myself to hold on properly once the stake hit flesh, and the result was, I almost lost my grip on the stake right there.

Instead, I clamped down with both of my hands as hard as I could, and managed to somehow hold on and stay in control.

I saw the point of the stake cut through a couple of inches of flesh and skin. Then it seemed to stop as it must have reached bone.

Almost on instinct, I acted fast, throwing my weight down on top of the stake. I felt the stake push through, obviously splitting between two ribs, and then the steak pushed down several more inches until it was clearly all the way through his lung and into his heart.

"AHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

His mouth opened wide and an ear-splitting, deep scream emerged from his throat.

I let the stake go and sat up straight, still straddling him. The stake remained lodged totally into his chest.

His eyes opened wide, terrified and blood-shot.

The scream continued, even as blood started to bubble into his throat and mouth. His whole body twitched and convulsed.

Blood was pouring out of the wound on his chest, dripping all around his torso and landing on the sheets of the bed. I forced myself not to faint.

He managed to lean up and look his chest. "What... did... you... do?" he slowly stammered through the gargle of blood.

My goodness, it was working, it was killing him.

He sat up, and I jumped back off him. He spit out some blood. "WHAT DID YOU DO, JAKEY?" he yelled, this time without stammering.

"I staked you through the heart, Syd!"

"You stabbed me?" he asked, looking confusedly at the object stuck in his chest as blood started to pour down his stomach and into his crotch.

"In the heart. With a wooden stake."

"You stabbed me through the heart with a stick?" He said, his eyes somehow clearing, his voice normalizing. "Why, Jakey? Are you just trying to screw with me? Is that it?"

He shook his head in disappointment, and I just stood there, shell shocked, staring at him.

"I know you think that these are all just fun and games, that because I'm a vampire, I can't hurt, so you are free to take your frustration out on my body. Well, guess what?" He pointed to his chest wound. "This fuckin' hurts like a motherfucker. This stick of yours went all the way through my goddamn heart, did you know that?"

"It's a stake! Not a stick. Stake!"

"I don't care about semantics Jakey." He got off the bed and walked towards me, the stake still lodged in his chest. "God, never thought I'd be ringing the fuckin' new year in with a stick through my heart, I'll tell ya that. This cannot bode well for the year ahead, no sir."

It fully sunk in for the first time that my attack, though perfectly executed, had no greater effect than to temporarily cause the guy pain. In the back of my head, I dejectedly checked off the last vampire killing myth I could think of. None of it had been true.

Syd looked fiercely angry at me, but his face looked more like an owner angry at a misbehaving dog than a warrior hating his absolute enemy. "I'm sick of your petty little mind-games." He pointed at the stake in his chest. "And goddamn Jakey, did ya really have to hit me right on the nipple? It fuckin' hurts! I mean, I'm okay with a little nipple-play, plenty of eager ladies have given them a gnaw or two. But this would even scare off the most hardcore masochists." He shook his head again. "Now, if you're going to get your kicks stabbing me, you'll be the one to pull out knife. Come on, you pull while I push the wound closed."

I looked at the blood spilling down his body, and I couldn't figure out how I had remained conscious. "But if I do that, I'll faint."

"That's too bad, Jakey. Shoulda thought of that one before you skewered me. Now, come on, this will be less messy with me lying down."

He got back into bed and placed himself face-up on the mattress, the stake sticking up and out of his body. Then, while he held the wound open, I gripped the stake with both hands and yanked back, undoing all the progress I thought I had made moments ago.

I pulled the stake clean out, and then looked down at the now open wound, which was just absolutely gushing blood all over the place. Syd started to push the wound closed, waiting for his body to slowly heal, but it was all too much for me. I fainted, bloody stake in hand, and went black.

I was out only long enough for Syd to heal his wound entirely. I sat up from the bed, my head clearing.

"That was officially the worst wake-up call of all time," Syd said to me as he wiped the last of the blood off of his chest. "In case you're wondering, I MUCH prefer the method you used to wake me up yesterday."

The hotel room phone started to ring. Syd answered it.

"Yes?" he asked. "Several noise complaints? Screaming, huh? Oh now, everything's fine," he assured the person who was certainly some hotel desk clerk. "Well, sure, there was a lot of screaming, but we're both perfectly fine. Yeah, no... good question. Well, we were, um, having really loud sex. See, we're a gay couple. You probably haven't had much experience with gay couples in this hotel, but we all like really, really rough sex first thing in the morning. No, we're done now. Yes, no problem." He hung up the phone with a smile on his face, the first smile I had seen that day. "Now, since you were feeling all pokey this morning, you can be the one to figure out what to do with the blood covered sheets while I take a shower and rinse this blood off me. And ain't no way they'll believe ya if you try to tell em the bloody sheets were just cause you got your period."

While Syd was in the bathroom, I gathered up the sheets into a bag and stowed them in Syd's truck for the time being. After Syd and I ate a quick breakfast, we hit the road again, heading northeast out of town. I hadn't been able to see Santa Fe when we drove in, but looking back at it as we drove away, I noticed how beautiful the town was.

We had barely left it when Syd pulled over unexpectedly. He unbuttoned his cowboy shirt and tossed it to me. "Tie this around your eyes," he told me.

"Come on, really Syd?" I asked him. "For how long?"

"For the next several of hours. The rest of the drive. Stop whining, it's really for your own good."

I tied the shirt on as a blindfold just as he had asked. "Wait, does that mean they're not going to kill me after all?" I asked excitedly. "Or else, why would this matter?"

"Awww. Doncha get yer hopes up too high there Jakey. I don't want ya to end up disappointed when they don't come true. This blindfold thing probably won't help much."

"Wait a second," I said. "You think that if you level with me about my impending murder, it will save me from disappointment when it comes true? Oh yeah Syd, thanks for that excellent kindness. No I'm sure I'll be thrilled when the other vampires murder me."

"Hey, just didn't want to lie, is all."

"Well that would be a first for you," I said harshly.

"Ha ha, not gonna argue with that one."

For the last hour or so of the drive, from the sound of gravel under Syd's tires and the extra vibrations the vehicle was making, it was all too clear that we were no longer on a paved road.

Finally, we came to a stop and Syd pulled my blindfold off. I took in my surroundings. We were parked in the dirt parking lot of a large but nondescript wooden building. I could tell it wasn't a residential structure, and the lack of any signage seemed to eliminate it as being commercial. There were a number of other dusty cars here. The building was surrounded by rolling, arid hillsides. Behind us, a long gravel road disappeared over a ridge. The road ended at our destination, and no other signs of civilization were visible here.

"Grab your shit and come inside," Syd told me, gathering his belongings out of the truck.

I grabbed my bags and followed Syd into the front door of the building. We stepped into what looked like the waiting room of some country clinic. A woman in her fifties looked down at us through her glasses from behind the receptionists' counter.

"Back so soon, Syd?" she asked as she looked him over. Her voice sounded critical, but her eyes seemed happy to see him.

"'Fraid so, ma'am," Syd said, taking off his hat.

"Boys, take the man's things," she said, addressing two grown men who both seemed mentally handicapped. They grabbed the bags out of our arms and carried them through one of the nearby doors.

"Uh, thanks," I said to them, not exactly feeling fantastic about these strangers making off with all of my possessions, but trying to be polite.

She looked at me with a much more critical eye. "I see you brought a friend. Not a vampire, is he?"

I wasn't sure if I should have been insulted or proud that she did not mistake me for a vampire. I certainly would have been surprised to hear she was a vampire, since vampires didn't seem to age and I didn't fathom they ever needed glasses, but who was I to judge?

"Doc Emory can see you now," the woman said, and she opened the door and beckoned us through without a smile.

We entered a large exam room, and the woman shut the door behind us. The windowless, square space had one door on each of its four walls. One of the doors had large red signs all over it denoting it as a "H. Quarantine Area." Another door was labeled "Clinic V." This door opened and a balding man in his fifties appeared in a white coat, a surgical mask on his mouth and latex gloves on.

"Hey ya Doc," Syd said.

"Hi Syd, whatcha got?" the doctor asked, looking me over. "A new human, huh? Well, he'll have to go through our protocol two-week quarantine and examination process."

"Two weeks?" I asked him.

"That's right," the doctor said. "It's not exactly fun, I know, but it's standard procedure for all humans and female vampires entering the Territory. Been through it multiple times myself, so you'd think I'd be used to it by now. But two weeks seems like hell, especially when you're packed in with dozens of other folks, and you're poked and prodded and sliced open and basically submitted to every test we know to give."

I made a face. "Does this mean I'll have to give blood?" I asked anxiously.

"Oh yes, multiple times a day," he said. My heart started to race. "But it's the only way to make sure the territory stays absolutely clean," he said.

"That's right," Syd said. "We got stations like these on every entrance into our land, and they managed to keep it completely bug free for quite some time. Ain't even the littlest cold being passed around in there for months now. Doc Emory does a real good job."

"And at the moment, our quarantine only has a couple of dozen folks staying there, so it's relatively empty. It's a good time for you to be processed."

"Now hold on there, Doc," Syd said. "Jakey here will not be going through the quarantine."

He raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Why not?"

"Because he ain't a normal human," Syd said. "He's unique. He can't get sick. He's immune to any kind of ailment or disease, both internal or external."

"So that's what this special gene gives me?" I asked Syd. "That's why everyone's making such a big deal?"

"That's right."

I thought about my life-long avoidance of germs. I was always anxious about the possibility of getting sick. "So all the hand sanitizer I have in my bag, all of that's useless?" I asked.

"That's right," Syd answered. "And those multivitamins you take every morning, those can be thrown out too."

Wow. There was such a weight lifted off my shoulders as I let myself process all the long-term ramifications of this genetic gift.

"I'm not following," the doctor said. "He's human, but he's not human?"

"Correct," Syd said, not bothering to explain himself.

"Are there physical tests that can verify this?"

"I'm not sure, Doc," Syd said. "But they're totally unnecessary. I'm completely positive."

"Syd, I'm charged with the protection of the entire territory. Is there someone else who can verify this claim?"

"I can call Jericho, do you want to speak to him?" It sounded like a threat.

"Hmm. No, that's okay. Alright, he can go straight on through then to the back. We'll still have to give you the normal male vampire physical, Syd. If you pass, you'll be free to go in."

"I know," he said, walking towards the door that said Clinic V.

"By the way, be sure to say hello to your brother for me," he said to Syd. "Parker saved my daughter from being killed by a bandit. I owe him everything."

"Will do, doc," Syd said as he disappeared through the door.

"You can go through that door and wait," the doctor told me, pointing at the unmarked door before following Syd out of the room.

My door led me to a little waiting area, occupied by several other humans. I found a seat, wished I still had one of my books with me, and waited for a couple hours for Syd to reappear. A simple lunch was brought to me during this time by some of the workers.

Finally Syd reappeared, smiling wide. "Well, I bed a couple dozen of women in the past few weeks, but I'm still herpes free, lord be praised," he said. "And all around healthy it seems."

"So, vampires really can get sick?" I asked as he led me through the building. "You weren't faking when you got sick in Tahoe?"

He laughed. "Do you really think I could fake something like that, Jakey? The snot, the high fever?"

"Well, it seems like you're capable of faking a lot, Syd," I said.

"True. But snot and illness aren't exactly my typical tools of seduction, Jakey. No, male vampires have a nasty weakness to contagious illnesses."

Somewhere in my head I filed that bit of knowledge away for later. "So that's why you almost died of a fever while refusing to be hospitalized? Because you had a bad flu?"

He laughed. "I told you, I get my flu shot every year. I've never gotten the flu, thank the lord. What you saw was me with your average common cold, Jakey."

"You're kidding."

"Hard to believe, ain't it?" he asked me. "A normal bug that would give you the sniffles for all of five minutes would put me, a very strong vampire, outta commission for so long."

"What would have happened if you had gotten the flu, Syd?"

"Lot's of vampires have, Jakey," he said. "They need to be hospitalized by someone like Doc Emory who is experienced with vampire health. Even then, there would be a pretty good chance they wouldn't survive."

"Wow," I said. "So, if it's really you vampires that are so sickly, how come you get pushed through this place in a couple of hours while we humans have such a long quarantine?"

"Because it takes that long for them to detect all the diseases they need to in humans," he said. "Human illnesses sometimes take a while to gestate before they are detectable. A virus acts completely different in male vampires. It works extremely fast, and causes noticeable symptoms almost immediately after contact. The tests all work amazingly swift-like."

We ended up in a room filled with small storage units. I noticed none of them were locked. I guess people were trusting here.

"I left a bunch of supplies here," Syd said, pulling up the door to one of the storage lockers. Inside was an odd assortment of camping supplies, guns, and western clothing. He started loading up his bags. "We're gonna be out in the wilderness for a while, livin' off the land and whatever supplies we bring with us." He grabbed a rifle and a revolver that both looked like antiques, only they seemed newly constructed in that they had little sign of wear.

"Are you seriously bringing those?" I asked.

"We need weapons," he said. "There are bandits out there, these parts can be dangerous. Plus, we might decide we want fresh meat and we'll want to hunt."

"Well, are a bunch of Revolutionary War novelty guns really going to do us any good?"

"Those aren't that old, Jakey. They're from the mid-1800's, like everything else in the Territory. And they're actually fairly newly constructed. This looks like an antique Colt revolver, but really it was built here just a few years ago. They won't fall apart on us."

"Well, wouldn't it be better to bring some modern weaponry?"

"Sure it would," he said. "Until you ran out of ammo. They got plenty of ammo in there, but all of it was designed for these types of guns. Minie ball bullets and the like." He started stuffing a modern tent into his bag. "Unlike everyone else in the Territory, I actually think like you."

"I would doubt that," I said. "I don't usually think about sleeping with women and sucking their blood, killing people, or kidnapping."

"Well, in this case, I agree with you. A lot of the modern stuff is better. Look at my things here, Jakey. A modern camping tent and modern camping supplies, including a water filter. I dress in modern, store-bought clothes. These things are all scoffed at in there, but I don't give a damn." He looked me over. "Yer gonna need to dress a whole lot warmer than that. It's winter. There's no snow on the ground, but the air is cold." To make his point, he started to put on some western style clothing that looked pretty sturdy. "Here, put some of my things on," he told me.

I shook my head. "Uh-uh. I'm not dressing up like I'm heading to Brokeback Mountain," I said. "I'm not a cowboy and I never was."

"Don't be foolish," he said.

"No, I refuse."

"I might be able to help," said a woman's voice. I turned behind me to see the receptionist standing there. She came in without making a sound. She opened another locker. "One of the human men who came in here left all this North Face gear. He's not coming back. You might as well get some use to it." She handed me the clothes.

"That's perfect," I said, putting on one of the jackets. "It fits fine. Thanks so much."

She nodded, and left us alone.

"Perfect for sticking out like a stubbed toe in there," Syd said. "You look like some yuppie who just stepped out of a REI."

"If I embarrass you too much, you can always let me go," I said.

"Nope, nope. It's fine. Let's go."

Syd picked up his supplies and walked out of the building through the backdoor. I followed him into the sunshine. "Where are my things?" I asked him.

He pointed to a wooden structure to our left that had to be a barn or a stable. He led me inside, and I wrinkled my nose at the manure smell. It was clearly a stable, filled with horses in stalls. A plain young woman came up to us as we went in. She looked hard at me. "Yous a free man or a slave?" she asked me in a low-class Western accent that was almost too hard to understand.

"Uh, I don't know," I replied, not sure what she was talking about.

"Ya don't know?" she asked, confused. "Well, ya got the Free Mark or ain't ya?"

"Mark?"

"I'm a free man, I am," she said. "Born free. See my mark?" She did an about face and pulled her long hair forward to reveal the skin on the back of her neck. I looked, and saw a small "L" tattoo, in the same design that was on Syd's ring and belt buckle. She spun back around and looked at me. "See? Don't try sayin' I ain't a freeman. `Cause it be a lie. A lie!" She went from angry to calm suddenly. "Yous got the mark?"

I turned around and let her see the back of my neck. "No."

She gasped and spun me around. "Ain't there!" she said. I wasn't sure if she was feeling superior to me or sorry for me, or both. "Yous got the slave mark then!" she said, shaking her head sadly.

"He ain't got neither, Polly," Syd cut in. "Not yet."

She looked surprised. "Well, I got the horses for yous, like you asked me."

She pointed behind her. There were three horses that had been pulled out. Two had been saddled with decidedly old west looking gear. The third was holding all of our possessions.

"Much obliged, Polly," Syd said, pulling the horses out of the stable. "You take care now."

"I'm everywhere!" she shouted after us as we left. "I'll be seeing yous, as long as you gets the free mark," she said. "If ya ain't got it, well, I won't be seeing yous."

We left this odd, odd person behind, all sorts of new trepidation getting into my head. "Are they going to make me a slave, Syd?"

"No human stays unmarked in this place for long," he said. "You either get the free mark or the other kind."

"Any chance they'll give me a free mark?"

"Yes," he said. "But don't get too excited. People like Polly, the Doc, all the other people who work for us all get a L tattoo on the back of their necks. They call themselves free, and their fate is certainly preferable to the other kinds of humans around here. But don't be fooled, Jakey. No human here is really free. No one can ever leave the Territory unless on approved business for the Logan Blood. Only those who are trusted with our secrets are allowed to do those sorts of outside ventures for us, and those people all are monitored closely. Otherwise, they all have to live their whole lives here, in the Territory, without any contact with the outside. You can see how crazy that can make them, in Polly's case. Though she's the best with horses." He handed me one of the saddled horses by the reins. "You ride this one," he said.

I made a face. "Syd, do we have to use horses? I don't know how to ride."

He scoffed. "You're kidding me! You're from the South! How can you not know how to ride a horse?"

"Because I avoided them at all costs." The horse stepped forward and snorted at me, and I jumped back.

"Yer not scared of the horse, are you?" he asked me.

"No, I'm not afraid of them, Syd," I said. "I don't like them. They're dirty. I can smell their stink from 30 yards away. They slobber, and they attract flies. There must be another means of locomotion for us," I said.

"There's no proper roads where we're going, and even if there was, there's no gas station in there, Jakey. This is the wilderness, not godamned Beverly Hills."

"Well, can't we hoof it?"

"Yeah, if you want to triple the number of days our journey will take," he said. "I know you secretly are trying to extend the amount of time you and I will be on this trip all by ourselves. I know you want to get in as much romantic time alone with me as possible. I could consider that, if ya promise to cuddle with me every night camping."

"Forget it, we're taking the horses," I said. "It can't be that hard to learn how to ride one."

"It sure ain't."

"I'll just get on," I said. I stepped towards my horse to board it, but the animal sidestepped me and pulled away. I just needed to let it know I meant business. I adopted a firm tone of voice. "Now, you listen here, girl."

"Girl?" Syd said. "Can't ya see your horse is a male, Jakey? His dick is almost as big as mine!"

I grumbled. "Somehow I don't think I offended her."

"Him!"

"I don't think the horse has mastered his pronouns yet, Syd. Now, you listen to me, BOY. I'm your master and you'll do what I say. And this time, when I try to get on, you'll stay put."

I stepped towards the horse again, but one more time, the slippery animal moved away from me.

"How `bout I just hold the horse while you get on, Jakey?" Syd said, putting his hands on the creature and holding him in place.

With Syd restraining him, I was able to approach the right side of the creature. I stuck my left foot onto the hanging footpedal and started to get up onto the horse.

"Whatcha doin,' Jakey?"

"I'm getting on the horse, what does it look like I'm doing?"

"Well, it looks to me like ya want to spend this ride staring at yer horse's ass. `Cause the way yer getting on, you'll end up backwards."

"How should I get on, Syd? Why don't you tell me, instead of making snide quips at my expense?"

"How about you try putting your right foot in the right stirrup, not your left foot," he said rudely. "That might be a good place to start."

I replaced my left foot with my right one, though doing so meant I had to get significantly closer to the animal than I would have preferred. Then I put the weight onto my right side, standing up, and swinging my left leg over the animal, sitting down into the saddle as I grabbed onto the knobby thing in front of me.

"You sure I won't fall off this creature?" I asked him. "It doesn't seem very safe. There's no other strap I should put over myself?"

"The horse doesn't come standard with a seat belt and an airbag Jakey. You'll be fine. Now, I'm going to let you go." Syd let the horse go, and the willful animal trotted out into the dirt.

"Whoa horse!" I said. "Stop!"

"The horse ain't that smart, Jakey! He ain't gonna respond to vocal commands!"

I remembered seeing riding competitions on TV. The riders sat up on the horses and used their legs to control, it seemed. I tried the same technique, lifting my butt off the horse and trying to guide it with by squeezing my thighs.

"What are you doing now, Jakey?"

"Steering!"

"This ain't no English horse, Jakey! And if it was, you'd be in real shit. You keep your cute rear- end in your saddle. No need to wave it around for everyone to drool over."

"And how am I supposed to steer?"

"Why don't you try grabbing those reins?" he asked me.

I grabbed the ropes that were tied to the horse's mouth. It wasn't long before I had gotten the horse to turn right, left, and then stop. "Hey, this isn't so hard!"

Syd mounted his horse much more gracefully than I had. He tied the third horse behind his animal, and then started to lead us off into the plains ahead.

"I hope you know where you are going!" I said.

"I've been to Fools Gold hundreds of times. I'm not going to lead us astray."

"What's Fools Gold?" I shouted after him.

"The biggest town in the Territory."

It didn't take that long for me to become comfortable with the riding. Although I didn't enjoy getting so close to such a smelly animal, and the dirt the horses were kicking up was getting everywhere, the riding aspect wasn't that hard for me.

After a couple hours of leading and me following, Syd steered his horse back close to mine, close enough so we could easily talk as we rode. "I wanted to ask for your feedback," he said to me.

"Huh?"

"I wanted to ask you about my seduction techniques I used on you. Obviously they worked, but is there anything I could have improved?"

I seethed with anger, but tried not to show anything. "Well, it seems to have been successful."

"What about the pace at which I unveiled all the nudity? Too fast? Not fast enough?"

"It was fine, Syd," I said, brushing it off.

"It's a fine line I have to walk. At first, I exposed only enough of my studly body to pique yer interest. Then, to keep you piqued, I slowly start to show you more, but only so far forward at any one time. Kind of a tease, ain't I? Of course, there were so many things that worked out for me that I couldn't have planned, but the skill there is just to go with it. Like, you coming home drugged and needing me to rinse you off. Or, me falling while we were snowboarding and getting snow down my pants."

"The time you came home drunk?" I asked him. "Was that all an act to get me to help you undress?"

He laughed. "No siree. I was dead drunk, in fact. That was not part of the plan, but I partied a little too hard with some of the ladies."

"So, vampires can get drunk? Seems bizarre."

"Yes, vampires can get drunk or high just like people. And medicine works the same way too. But male vampires, we don't have any of the negative side-effects that you have. That hang over I had? Just an act, because I knew you would expect that. We don't get hangovers. We can't become chemical addicts. We will never get cancer or any other malady from these vices. It's only fun and games for us. So all those times you tried to lecture me about smoking? Well, fuck you." To make a point, he pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, stuck one in his mouth, and lit one with a lighter. "This ain't gonna hurt me anymore than me not buckling my seatbelt will hurt me."

"Well, you couldn't have exactly told me the reason why those things wouldn't hurt you," I said. "In your act to be human, it would have made me a lot more impressed if you had pretended not to do all those risky things. It truly made me angry and frustrated with you. Weren't you supposed to be making me adore you?"

He shrugged. "Some things just aren't worth lyin' about."

"There were other things you did that annoyed me," I said.

"Well, we already covered that I ended up gettin' sick. Totally not part of the plan, but what could I do?"

"Yeah, but besides that," I said. "All the womanizing. A constant cycle of women were coming through the house every since I got there."

"Hey, that can't be helped. A guy's gotta eat."

I shuddered. "Well, every time we went anywhere, it seemed like you were letting your penis make decisions for you."

"Hey, I can't turn off that part of my nature."

"Well, you asked for advice, I'm giving it to you. Those women were so objectified. Used and then tossed aside."

"I didn't hear a single complaint from any of those ladies. In fact, just the opposite."

"I was on your computer and I found all these videos you had recorded."

"You found my vids?" his tone of voice seemed angry. "What were you doin snooping around on my computer for? I thought you were above that."

"I was looking for something else, and then I came across them. How I found them is not the point. The point is, those women are being recorded for your pleasure."

"Hey now, that's not fair. I ask the women if they want to film our fucking. The ones who say no never get filmed. And I never, ever put those online or share those with anyone. It's just for me." His face turned into a pleased grin, and if he had been close enough to stick his elbow into my ribs, he would have. "So, did you look at all the videos? Pretty fuckin' hot, weren't I? But did you see me bite any of them?"

"No. Goodness, I wish I had, then I would have had one heck of a reason to get out of your house."

"Jakey, back off!"

"Excuse me? I think I have a right to my hostility given the situation."

"No, back off!" He pulled his horse away from mine. "Rear up! A rattler!"

Finally, what he was trying to tell me registered. I searched the ground around me, and then found the dusty snake coiled up silently on the ground, directly in front of my horse.

I reared up hard, but not soon enough to keep out of its way. The horse's front hoof practically stomped the thing.

The reptile, which so far had lain dormant, perhaps sleeping, jerked to life. Its rattle started buzzing, and it took a swipe at my horse's hoof.

That's exactly when my horse first noticed the thing. It was so surprised, it whinnied and jumped up on its hind legs. I tried to use my legs to hold on, but I had no experience with this sort of thing and ended up falling backwards, off my horse.

Thank God for making me a graceful tumbler. I turned my body in the air so that I would land on my front, spreading out the impact to keep me from getting injured. Immediately, I was on my feet again, afraid of being so close to the snake, but when I looked around, I saw that the rattlesnake must have scurried off.

Syd had dismounted his horse and was holding my horse's reins in his hands, trying to calm it.

"Is he alright?" I asked.

"Just spooked," Syd said. "Not bitten. What about you, you alright? I seen human men die in falls like that."

"No, I'm fine," I said, moving all my muscles to make sure. "Wait."

I felt a pain in my left hand, and looked at it to make sure it was okay. Instead of the bruise I was expecting, my heart skipped a beat and my head started to go fuzzy as I saw red liquid all over my palm.

No, no, no. I would not faint. It really was a measly cut, I told myself. Just a couple inches on my hand. Nothing that would ever need stitches. Nothing to faint over.

"How did this happen?" I asked, and then looked down on the ground. I realized my left palm had landed right on a jagged grey rock. I could see a bit of the blood there. "Hmm, I cut myself on the rock."

"Cut yourself?" Syd said, letting my horse's reins go and coming to inspect. I saw all three horses were just calmly waiting, grazing on the brush.

"Yeah, see?" I said, raising my hand and showing him the wound.

Syd's eyes transfixed on my hand. Those eyes weren't just studying me, I realized. They were filled with lust.

As he stepped closer to me, he inhaled deeply through his nose. Slowly, I noticed his canines were beginning to grow.

"Whoa, is this little cut having some kind of effect on you?" I asked him, pulling my hand back. "Don't freak out on me, please."

He shut his eyes and seemed to pull himself under control again. "I'm fine, Jakey," he said. "I've had a lot of experience controlling myself around human blood. You are no way in danger."

Well, that was a relief. I brought my hand closer to him. "It looked like your fangs were going to pop out for a second there."

"I can control my fangs," he said to me, and I noticed that they looked perfectly normal again.

"Oh yeah?" I said. I lifted my hand just a couple feet from his face. "Are you sure you can handle this?"

At first, I could see he was trying not to look at my hand. Then, his eyes were pulled back to the blood. He gazed at it lustfully, and I saw his fangs just start to grow. Suddenly, they stopped growing and returned to normal size. "See? I'm fine."

"Oh yeah, you look so very much in control there, Syd," I teased him. "You don't care one bit about that hot, red blood, oozing out of me, do you?" I stuck my hand closer to his face.

He sniffed deeply again, clearly able to smell the blood somehow, then he opened his mouth. I could see his canines lengthening again, and this time they didn't stop.

He kind of involuntarily bucked his hips towards me. I looked down at his jeans, and saw the outline of his long penis snaking down his left leg. His jeans were as tight as ever, revealing every inch of his dick including the mushroom head. All of it was clearly rock hard and straining against the constricting fabric of his denim. Clearly my blood was not only turning on his mouth.

"Seems like I got you pretty excited down there," I teased him.

"I'm fine," he said in response.

"Oh yeah?" I said. I moved my hand right up to his face and waved it around, inches from his mouth.

I saw his fangs fully extend, and I had forgotten how big they were. Frighteningly so, in fact. I decided to stop messing with him, and pulled my hand back.

He grabbed it in midair by the wrist and pulled it towards his face.

"Hey, let me go," I said.

He pushed his body hard against mine, and I could feel that hard rod in his pants against me. He kept staring yearningly at my hand, and I saw him move in those massive fangs. I was sure he was going to bite me, and I winced. Instead, he just grazed them along the skin, teasingly.

"Let me lick the wound and heal it," he pleaded in a sexy, masculine voice.

"No way in hell," I said. "I'll just put a bandage on it."

"We don't have any bandages."

"Well, I'll just leave it then. You said I can't get infections now, right?"

He didn't answer me, but it was clear he knew I was right. "You won't be able to ride with this wound."

"How far are we from uh, Fools Gold?"

"Couple days ride. Way too much for that wound to handle."

I shook my head, hating these circumstances. The truth was, I was already feeling woozy from this cut. I couldn't deal with it getting worse at the days went on, possibly bleeding more and more. I needed it gone. Out of sight.

"Are you sure you can do this without freaking out on me?" I asked him.

"I can be a good," he said.

I sighed, very annoyed. "Alright, do your thing, then. Quickly, please."

He smiled at me, looking very pleased. He may have been trying to be reassuring, but his smile really couldn't muster that effect with two massive, sharp fangs getting in the way. He sat down on a nearby boulder, and then pulled me onto him, having me straddle his left thigh and sit down on his leg.

"Are you sure you know what you are doing?"

"Quite sure," he said. "Now, shuttup for a moment."

With me sitting on his left thigh facing towards him, he grabbed my hand by the wrist and lifted it to his face. He looked again lustfully at the wound on my hand. His super-erect fangs started to scrape around my palm again, teasing it. Finally, he moved the point of his right fang over the blood, getting just the tiniest amount on his tooth. I saw his tongue lick the point of the fang, getting the first smallest taste of the blood. "Mmmm," he moaned, very sexually.

Finally, he flicked his pink tongue out and let his tip touch the bloody skin. He pulled his tongue back into his mouth and closed his lips, letting the flavor hit him.

"Nnnnh." His eyes were rolled back and his eyelids flickering, and from the sounds he was making, I thought at first he was having an orgasm. Finally, he opened his eyes again. "My lord," he said. "Your blood!"

"What? What about my blood?"

"I knew it was AB negative, I can taste that, which is wonderful enough. But there's something totally different about your blood, something almost magical, something I've never tasted before. I can't even put it to words."

He licked a bit more blood from hand. "Oh god, this is the best blood describable," he said. "It must be because you're different. That active gene must be doing this, because I tasted your father's blood and it wasn't like this. Of course, he never had his gene activate." He shook his head angrily. "I should have forgotten trying to seduce you. I should have just bitten you from the start, and I would have known you were special."

"Hey, you know, it's alright," I said. "I'll be fine without the wound being healed. I don't think you can handle it."

He shook his head. "No, no, no, I can handle this. You're not going to take this away from me now."

He looked at my hand again, and stuck out his tongue, taking a long lick at some of the dripping blood. He moaned sexually, and bucked underneath me. I realized I was sitting right on his hard dick.

Then his tongue reached the actual wound for the first time. I clamped up, expecting to feel pain. Instead, I felt numbness where his tongue had touched me.

More hurriedly, clearly less in control, he licked up all the blood until there was just the wound left, moaning with every drop, flicking me with his fangs, and bucking his left leg, forcing his rod into me.

Then, he started to really concentrate on the wound itself, licking it carefully and tenderly, milking every last drop of blood that came out.

The oddest thing started to occur. The wound, at first just feeling numb, started to tingle in a strangely pleasurable way. The warm licks he kept providing entered my flesh and sent sensuous waves through my body, actually turning me on. I got hard, and when he bucked his penis into me, this time, I started pushing back against him. My body cried out, wanting him to continue, to push it further, to expand the pleasure.

"There, finished," he said dreamily, and I opened my eyes again, looking at my hand. It took quite a lot of licking, but he had done it, there remained no sign of any wound on my hand.

I was left feeling extremely sexually unsatisfied. I hadn't wanted the experience to end. I forced myself back to rationality and got up off of him.

Obviously, he was just as frustrated. His dick was still visibly rock hard, and his fangs still extended hopefully. He seemed fixated on something on the ground. Bizarrely, he walked over and few steps, then lowered himself.. I realized he had his face right where that sharp rock that had caused the problem stood. There were still a few drops of blood there. He slowly and sensuously lapped up the blood with his tongue, until there was absolutely nothing left to drink.

"That's right, you haven't fed today, have you?"

He shook his head. "No, I had a meal at the quarantine before we left," Syd said. I should have known he'd find a way. It was shocking that he was so overcome with bloodlust even though he had recently fed.

We got back on our horses and kept riding.

Syd decided we would stop for the night at a stream he knew. The flow running through it was scarce, but it was enough to feed several small trees which gathered along the edges of the water. When I got off my horse, it sank in just how sore our half day of riding had made me.

"Holy crap, my butt is sore!" I said out loud, barely able to walk straight.

"Saddle sore," Syd said knowingly. "Not surprising. I can give your butt a deep tissue massage, if you like," he said, raining an eyebrow.

"Wow, that is such a not tempting offer."

We tied the horses up to the trees and left them where they'd both be able to drink from the stream and graze on grass. They seemed content.

Since I didn't know how long it would be until we had another source of water, and we had gone through a lot of it that afternoon, I made it my mission to refill. I took the water filter and our bottles to the creek.

"Hmm," I said. "This water might be too stagnant to be safe, even with the filter."

Syd chuckled. "Whadya worried for, Jakey? Forget ya can't get sick anymore? You could just drink the water straight off the ground."

I had forgotten. There were at least some advantages to me being "special." Still, the idea of drinking straight out of the stream seemed gross to me. It would surely taste purer when filtered, at least, so I went ahead with the original plan.

By the time I had finished the water, Syd had started a little fire, and was using it to heat up some dinner that he had pulled out of his cooler. Hamburgers and beans, it seemed like.

"Normally I'd say we should camp out under the stars," he said. "We don't get much rain in these parts, and most of the year it's warm enough. But it's a nippy winter day."

I shrugged. "Couldn't we just leave the fire going?"

"No, we should snuff it out after the food's done," he said. "Don't want the smoke to attract bandits."

"Human bandits?"

"No, vampire bandits. They roam these parts, and can be very dangerous."

I certainly didn't like the idea of attracting those types. "I thought you brought tents with us?" I asked.

"Tent, singular. I'll set it up."

"One tent?" I asked. "Where's mine?"

"We're sharing."

"Oh yeah, should have known you'd bring one tent."

"Hey, we needed to pack light."

"Then how come you brought a 12-pack of beer with you?"

"It's light beer."

"Very funny."

As soon as Syd erected the tent, it became very obvious how small it was.

"That's not big enough for the both of us," I complained.

"It's a two-man tent, Jakey."

"They use that two-man label loosely. Just like a twin bed sounds like it would hold two but really doesn't, a two-man tent really is just comfortable for one."

"Well, it's what we got."

Our dinner finished, and I ate my food angrily and quickly. When we were both done, it was pitch dark outside, beautiful stars blanketing the sky. If I was feeling romantic, I would have been enamored by my wonderful surroundings. I wasn't.

He stared into the fire as he drank one of his beers. "Oh, I brought my guitar. Want to hear my new song?"

"No, I absolutely do not," I said, angry at myself for letting myself get moved the last time I saw him play.

But he pulled out his stupid instrument anyway. "Yes ya do," he said. "I wrote this one for you."

A couple days ago, I would have been thrilled if he wrote one of his sentimental songs about me. Now that I knew how artificial he was, it was the last thing I wanted to hear.

He started strumming.

"Won't this racket attract the deadly bandits out here?" I asked.

"No, they don't have nearly this good taste in music." Then he started singing. "Jakeey, Oh, Jakeey. Jakey loves my dick. Oh, Oh, Oh. Jakey loves my big, purdy dick. He loves to give my purple knob a lick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jakey dreams all night about my giant, tasty stick. Oh, oh, oh, Jakey loooooves my dick!"

"Oh that's real special, Syd. As much as I am dying to hear how many different words you can think of that rhyme with `dick,' I'm going to bed."

He kept singing his stupid song as I walked over to our tent and got inside. Syd was right; away from the fire, it was darn cold at night. I kneeled down and tried to block out enough of the singing to mentally say my evening prayers.

Syd surprised me by bursting into the tent in the middle of my prayer, singing about his dick. He stopped singing when he saw me kneeling on the ground.

"Oh, baby, I didn't know you'd be so moved by my serenadin' that you'd have a religious moment. I know yer prayin' to Zues, Yahweh, Odin, or whoever else is in fashion nowadays, thankin' `em for bringing me and my guitar into your sad, boring little life."

"Actually, I'm praying to Christ that He'll stop my suffering by making you mute," I said.

"You can pray all night long, for all the good it'll do ya," he said. "Honestly, Jakey, I never could understand how someone like you who claimed to be all logical and sceientific-like could ever get sold on all this hocus-pocus hooey."

"I can't believe I am getting lectured on sound rationality by a vampire cowboy with only basic understanding of mathematics or English grammar."

"And damn proud of that fact, too," he said. "I really don't give half a shit what kind of god or demon you want to pray to, but you'd better not let anyone else see you prayin' like that. Vampires are atheists, and no one in our domain is any sort of worship. Let others see you, and you'll end up prayin' in a jail cell."

"I really don't care how much religious intolerance they have here," I said. "You told me I wasn't going to survive this trip anyway."

"Just don't do anything to get ya killed faster than necessary. You say you're a smart kid, well, time to prove it. Hey, if you want something to worship, you can start by worshipping my whopper of a dick."

I grumbled. "The only time your penis makes it into my prayers is when I'm wishing it'll go permanently impotent."

"Maybe you should pull down my pants and see if those prayers have been working," he suggested.

"Maybe you should get the heck out of the tent and leave me in peace," I said.

"'Heck,' ha ha, isn't that cute? Damn, ya must be really pissed off to say a big, mean word like that. Fine, I'll leave ya alone, but I'm takin' this with me." Setting down his guitar, his nimble hands pulled the cross and chain I had around my neck, breaking the fastening off the chain as he yanked it clean off my body.

I got up and started to fight for it. "That's mine! You have no right!"

He pushed me back. "Someone's bound to see it, with you flaunting it around everywhere you go. I'm doin' you a favor."

A wave of anxiety hit me. "Perhaps you would be more comfortable if I was wearing a pentagram, Syd, given you take so much after Lucifer? My mother gave me that cross as a child. I've never been without it."

"Fine, I'll let you keep the cross if ya swear ya'll keep it hidden from everyone at all times," he said.

"Okay, I swear," I said. "Please just give it to me."

He put the little cross in my hands, and I felt instantly reassured. I hid it among my things. "What, no thank you?" he asked me.

I just glared at him until he took his guitar and left the tent. I hopped into the sleeping bag fully clothed, and found that was warm enough.

"Cut out the racket, Syd!" I yelled, trying unsucssfully to block out the noise enough to fall asleep.

He responded with discovering a new verse to his song about me, only this one was even more vulgar than before.

I awoke feeling something being dragged over the top of my head, then down the center of my forehead. I opened my sleepy eyes to see a soft penishead dragged over my nose, filling my nostrils with its sweet scent. I felt the soft flesh push over my lips, just barely push into my open, waiting mouth before being dragged down over my chin.

I pulled myself out of my sleepy stupor. What was happening?

I was still lying on my back in the sleeping bag. Above me, all I could see were meaty pecs now, and even they were lowering. Then a thick neck, then a handsome face that I hated all too well.

"What is going on here?" I asked angrily.

"I'm getting into the sleeping bag," he said, and I realized he was sliding his body on top of mine in the sack. "Didn't mean to wake you."

"You're naked!" I protested.

"Well, I figured we could warm each other up again."

"No! No, no, no. Get out of my sleeping bag, and get in your own."

He laughed. "I only brought one, Jakey."

"Well, too bad then. I guess you'll just have to stay out in the cold. Can vampires freeze to death? I sure hope so."

"No need to get mean," he said. He continued to push himself into my bag. "Anyway, I'd like to see ya try to force me out."

I pushed and I struggled and then I resorted to hitting. None of it bothered him in the least. He settled down on top of me and started to hold me.

"Well then, I'm getting out." I said. I pulled out from under him and removed myself from the bag.

"Fine, suit yerself Jakey," he said. "Don't think your uniqueness will keep you from freezing to death." He shut his eyes and went to sleep.

Problem was, the tent was beyond tiny, and Syd's body was taking up most of the space. I managed to push him to the edge of the tent, and then in the small space I had, I lay down against the bare canvas, covering myself in my spare clothing.

I fell back asleep.

I woke up, shivering like crazy. These sleeping arrangements were inadequate. I looked over at Syd, warm and toasty in the sleeping bag, a sly smile on his face as he slept deeply. Man, I hated him.

"Mmm, Lynn," he mumbled in his sleep. Hearing him mumble girls' names in his sleep was so irritating, I almost got up and hit him. Sadly, I knew he would feel no pain.

No, I had to do something that would cause him pain. I had to think logically.

I opened the tent and stepped outside. A cool wind hit me, and I shivered painfully, almost deciding to give up my task.

After fumbling around in the dark outside the tent, I found where Syd had put his cooler. I opened it up, finding food as well as several plastic packets of blood. His true sustenance out here. Ironically, the temperature of the cooler seemed warmer than the frigid outside air. I grabbed the whole thing and dumped it over, shaking its contents all over the ground. Then, I searched through the food items until I found the packets of blood, walked over to the stream, and emptied them out one by one. I almost threw the packets in the water, but I didn't want Syd to find them the next day, and I really didn't want to litter, especially in such a pristine countryside.

I balled up the plastic bags and put them in my pack with my things.

By the time I was back in our tent, I knew the chill had gotten so deep into my bones that I wouldn't be able to fall back asleep blanket less. I hated having Syd win this battle, but I climbed into the sleeping bag with him anyway. Even though I was fully clothed, he immediately wrapped his naked body around mine, warming me up. I could feel his hard penis poke against me. He let out a smug little sigh. He knew he had won.

I smiled as well as I fell asleep. He may have won the battle, but there was so much more at stake here. If only he knew.