THE GIFT
Kasimir was a stranger to the city yet in some almost instinctive way he knew it well. Although the streets were unfamiliar, the scents were recognisable and somewhere amongst them would be that which sought him out, needed him - as he needed it.
The lights from the flashing neon advertisements lit up the dark blocks of buildings with intermittent washes of red and yellow and white. A brief spatter of sooty raindrops fell from the clouds scudding across the sky. Late night passers-by stepped aside to avoid the dark caverns of doorways which were at that hour already home to the homeless poor.
Kasimir sniffed the air identifying the individual smells - take-away hot dogs, onions and chicken tikka masala. Petrol and exhaust fumes from the cars and taxis temporarily halted at the red traffic lights. Air that had been breathed in and out, used air, tired air. But it was London air and for June it was quite mild. Then one individual smell caught him and he stiffened in anticipation. So many times over the centuries, so familiar, yet always arousing as if it was the first time. Coming closer...
He saw the young man by the light of the street lamps coming towards him. Kasimir stared, taking in the thin, pale face, the brown eyes under the curved eyebrows, eyes which showed so much sadness. The young man looked and, seeing that intense, personal stare, nodded, assuming that he knew him, that he was an acquaintance whom he must acknowledge. They passed in the night without an exchange of words.
In that one intense look, Kasimir learned all there was to know about the young man. Alone and lonely, eaten up by an unsatisfied craving, vulnerable and insecure. An obvious victim, though for a moment Kasimir, who recognised how he himself needed the young man as much as he was needed, wondered which of the two was really the victim, which the predator.
Kasimir turned to look after him. He had recognised only too easily the yearning in the young man's eyes, a yearning which could only be satisfied with one thing. Now he watched the young man's back as he walked away, his body slim and elegant, his buttocks moving easily, athletically with the cloth of his jeans, his shoulders, broad, his waist, narrow. Then he followed him, keeping to the darkness, avoiding the bright lights of the city which hurt his eyes, keeping as far as possible to the shadows that lay like dark pools between the orange, sodium street lights.
The young man reached the doorway of his house, felt in his pockets for the key, inserted it, turned it and pushed open the door. As he did so a figure emerged from the darkness at his side and he started at the sudden appearance. But Kasimir smiled gently, his teeth showing white from the shadows.
"Hello, my friend," said Kasimir, and his voice was husky and beguiling, and so gentle so that it dispelled the alarm brought on by his unexpected emergence from the shadows. "I think we know each other though I have forgotten your name."
The young man looked uncertain, anxious that he might be snubbing an associate, a colleague, perhaps someone he had met at work, someone of influence.
"Kasimir," said the stranger, "Surely you remember. My name is Kasimir. Not an easy name to forget, is it?"
The young man nodded doubtfully, blushing slightly as if he had made a social solecism. "Of course," he said, "and I am Nicholas. My friends call me Nick," he added inconsequentially. "Tell me, where was it that we met? Was it . . ."
The stranger interrupted before he could complete the question. "Ah yes. Nick! I remember now," he said, "but cannot we go in? The night is cool," and as he spoke a chill wind seemed to spring up out of nowhere almost as if the stranger had conjured it, so that Nick shivered, his thin cotton shirt suddenly unsuitable for the unseasonable weather.
"Yes, yes," he said opening the door. "Please come in. Perhaps you'd like a glass of wine to keep out the cold."
He led the way into his apartment. Soft lights lit up the room. There were rugs on the polished wood floor, brightly patterned Navajo designs. A large sofa was against one wall and a bookcase against another. The books showed Nick's interest in things supernatural. In front of the window hung a Chinese wind chime and the breeze from the opened window blew across the tuned wooden blocks, knocking them against each other, producing a musical if slightly discordant chime.
Quickly Nick pulled the window shut - though did he but know it, it was already too late to keep the terrors of the night at bay.
In one corner of the room was an incense burner and the fragrant smell of joss hung in the air. Set in the wooden door of the closet was a full-length mirror, the reflection making the room look larger than it actually was. Several pictures of cloaked beings, dark against an only slightly less sombre background, hung on the walls.
"I'll get the wine," said Nick. "I'll open a bottle." He turned to a cupboard and produced a bottle, two glasses and an opener.
The stranger who called himself Kasimir inspected the pictures, observing the cloaked figures, their pale handsome faces, their yearning, questing eyes. He noticed the books in the bookcase. "You are intrigued by vampires," he said, as if he had suddenly discovered the young man's special interest. But it was more of a statement than a question.
The cork popped.
"It is a particular enthusiasm of mine," said Nick. "You could call it almost an obsession." He paused briefly then asked, as if he were slightly embarrassed, "Do you think such creatures really exist? I mean - outside the imagination." His eyes were bright with a strange unsatisfied desire.
"I am sure of it."
"I wish - oh how I wish I could meet one." He brought the glasses and bottle over to a small wooden table, the top inlaid with a marquetry design, gestured to the stranger to sit down on the sofa and poured a measure of golden wine into one of the glasses. The smells of dried fruit and balmy Mediterranean sunshine filled the air. He picked up the other glass and started to pour.
"Why?" demanded the stranger loudly, almost as if the question was forced out of him, and his sudden query made Nick jump so that the wine was spilled over his other hand, the one holding the glass. Nick muttered a curse under his breath and turned to look for a cloth to wipe himself but before he could move away, Kasimir had seized the hand, raised it to his lips and was lapping at the spilled wine from his skin. Startled at the strange action, Nick tried to draw his hand away. What did this man think he was doing? But the warmth of the tongue on his flesh was strangely comforting and he let his hand lie there, a passive victim, until the wine was gone.
"Why would you want to meet a vampire?" asked the stranger, as if nothing had happened - and perhaps nothing significant had, though Nick was not sure. He handed Kasimir a full glass, and sipped his own. The wine was sweet on his tongue, full-bodied and rich. though Nick thought he could detect underneath the sweetness the slightest taste of corruption!
"I would like to know their secret," he said, "the secret of immortality."
"You see it as a blessing?"
"But of course," said Nick turning his eyes to meet those of the stranger. "What else could it be? Who wants to die, to lose everything that is pleasurable? To sacrifice the knowledge you have gained over the years? To become nothing?"
The stranger's eyes were black, bottomless, to gaze into them was to lose yourself for all eternity. "What if you were desperate to free yourself of pain or suffering? What if you wanted to die and couldn't?"
Nick shrugged. "It would be worth it."
"Yet the vampire has to kill so that he can live. Do you not think that he must feel guilt for such crimes?"
"We all kill so that we can live," Nick said. "We kill the beasts in the field so that we can eat meat. We destroy the plants so that we can have vegetables and fruits. The grapes from which this wine was made - " He tasted another drop of the rich yellow liquid and let it remain for a while on his tongue before swallowing " - they were pulled from the vine, not allowed to seed and germinate in the way they were intended."
"But you do not kill your own kind so that you may live. All countries have laws against murder."
"Laws!" Nick's tone was dismissive. "We kill our own kind every day of our lives. We murder, we steal the land so that others starve, we divert the water so that others thirst. We compete and trample on our rivals so that we can come to the top and prosper, while they fall down and rot in the gutter."
"So you think you could stand the guilt?" asked the stranger and beckoned with his hand for Nick to sit beside him on the sofa.
"I should not even feel it," said Nick, his eyes shining with an inner certainty which was almost a madness.
"Can you really be so sure?" The stranger put his hand on Nick's thigh but the young man scarcely felt it, so involved was he in his obsessive enthusiasm.
Nick persisted. "God must have put them on the earth for a purpose."
"It is said that they come from the darkness, from the primeval Chaos which existed there - even before God?" His hand traveled gently up towards Nick's fork over the soft material of his trousers and now Nick did notice but scarcely cared. In fact the touch was exciting, arousing and, though he had never been touched by a man that way before, he did not find it in the slightest way perverse.
"I do not care," he cried wildly. "I would join them, if I could. I would become one."
The hand, that foreign hand, that hand with its pale almost bloodless skin, its delicate narrow fingers, grasped his ballsack, felt the softness of his cock, quickly becoming hard. Then Kasimir unfastened the belt around the young man's waist, opened the button at the top, drew down the zip exposing the white underwear and a bulge that already was larger than it had been moments before.
"Would you allow one into you?" asked the stranger, taking hold of the cock through its soft cotton covering. "Would you consent to his lusts to achieve immortality?"
But the young man was too far gone even to answer and arched his body upwards towards the stranger's mouth as it fastened itself on his covered member, teasing it softly through the cloth, and the wetness of his tongue soaking the material so that it became translucent.
Nick cried out, a wild cry that had no words. The touch of the man's body pressed against his was inexpressibly exciting, the movements, the caresses but Nick had the feeling that it was a polished performance honed from much practice. Nevertheless his body could do nothing but respond. Proficient fingers undid the buttons on his shirt, gently stroking and embracing his chest, gradually going lower, removing his clothes seductively, the shirt, shoes, socks, stripping the jeans, the white briefs until Nick lay completely naked and exposed.
His fair skin was almost luminous against the red material of the sofa cover. His legs were slightly apart, his body open and vulnerable, his head laid back exposing his neck - everything available.
Kasimir stripped and lay on top of him. Nick could feel the man's smooth skin touching his, erotic and sensual. They were chest to chest, groin to groin, and he lay under the weight of him. A hard cock, on top of his equally aroused penis, pressed its need into his stomach and Nick felt an equal answering urgency.
Kasimir slid slowly down his body, kissing, tasting, rubbing, stroking - lingering for a time under his chin where the soft suppleness of his throat offered itself, and then going - perhaps a little reluctantly - further down, lower, pausing to take care of Nick's nipples, his belly button, the trace of blond hair which led downwards before spreading into his bush of pubic hair, from which the cock sprouted. His tongue tasted under his ball-sack, along the trail which led to his hole. Slowly Nick spread his legs apart but was unable to stop the momentary, involuntary twitch of resistance as the tongue touched the sensitive place. Kasimir looked up and saw the look of apprehension on Nick's face.
"Do you want me to? You have to give me your consent.. I cannot take you against your will."
Nick had a momentary doubt, for a second wasn't sure that this was what he wanted but almost as if they had a separate life of their own, his legs opened and he surrendered himself. Kasimir put his hands under Nick's buttocks and lifting them a little, dived into the sweet, musky darkness. At the first touch of his tongue, Nick tensed again, but suddenly was overcome by a tantalising delight such as he had never felt before. He lay there on the sofa and enjoyed the feeling that Kasimir's warm tongue produced, gliding over his hole, now with fast, brief cat licks, then slowing down, butterfly-light, each touch something different, each contact provoking a different sensation. Nick felt himself fast approaching a climax.
Kasimir's mouth was now nuzzling at the base of his prick and Nick felt a moistened finger gliding into his hole. It slid in without any pain or resistance. He could feel it inside him, probing and investigating, finding the very centre of his sexual being which made him groan and desire that he be invaded even further. Slowly and languorously, Kasimir washed the length of the penis with his tongue and licked away the oozing excitement from the top.
"You want me to continue, don't you?' Kasimir murmured, the sounds felt through the closeness of their mouths rather than heard. "You want me to go all the way?"
"Don't stop. Don't stop."
Kasimir inserted two fingers into his hole, stretching the muscle and watched the face of the young man underneath him. He gently enlarged the opening, caressing his balls in the palm of his other hand.
Nick knew what he wanted. "Come into me," he murmured. "Come into me."
But as he felt his legs lifted and sensed the urgent head of Kasimir's penis pushing strongly against his opening, he tensed again.
Kasimir leaned over his body so that his breath whispered into his ear. "Relax your muscles. Just relax. Relax." Nick stared into the cavernous hollows of Kasimir's dark, almost black eyes which gave away nothing - except his lust. The words and the tone were hypnotic. Nick felt a growing pressure at the entrance to his arse and then suddenly the cock was past the sphincter muscle and inside him. There was a mounting fullness, a slow penetration. His body swallowed the intruder. At last Kasimir stopped. He was inside Nick as far as he could go.
Nick gasped. "Who are you, Kasimir? What are you doing to me?"
"I am what you have always desired." He bent over to kiss him on the neck, and at the same time he began to move his hips slowly in and out. Long, smooth strokes which pushed both men up on an erotic crescendo. They lost almost all feeling of time, of place, of sound, of vision, of the external world. The only thing Nick could feel was how the muscles of his own arse clamped around the invading cock holding it as every stroke was made and the tiny rasps of Kasimir's teeth on his neck. He heard, as if from a far distance, the loud gasping breaths of two voices and knew one of them had to be his own. The tempo boosted, the cock sliding freely in and out, increasing the pace, the sensation, building the stimulation until the point of no return.
At that very point the stranger bit and his sharp teeth sank into the tender flesh of the neck while at the same time Kasimir's shaft pushed to its full extent, deep into the compliant hole. Any pain that Nick felt as the needle-sharp teeth pierced his skin was subsumed into the ecstasy as with a cry Kasimir exploded and Nick felt the spurts inside him.
At the same time, he himself came, his cock pulsating, the semen shooting high over his own chest and stomach and while Nick's blood drained, he was filled by the stranger's juices. Sweat and blood and semen mixed and Kasimir bestowed his gift.
Afterwards Kasimir buried his face in the hollow of Nick's shoulder, panting. Both lay and listened to each other's heartbeats gradually slowing and becoming regular. At last Kasimir lifted his body and let his cock slip out. Nick gasped at the sudden feeling of emptiness. He raised his head, their lips met and he tasted his own blood. Suddenly he realised that blood was something which he would now need for his very existence. Frightened, he pulled Kasimir to him, held him close, stroked his chest, defined with the tips of his fingers the contours of Kasimir's body.
"Is that it?" he asked. "Is that your gift?" and heard the soft answer, whispered against his ear.
"You have immortality, Nicholas."
The other's voice was full of a desperate sadness. "Now you must feel the guilt as I do."
There was a pause and then came the final, terrifying words - "For ever and ever."
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