Phillipe
Dominic had left me the house and, I also discovered, a substantial sum of money in one of the banking houses in the city. I invested most of it in Art, taking advice from a friend of his in the business (excellent advice, as it turned out) - and so I was in a very comfortable position from the start. I've never had to work (although I have done from time to time, mainly for reasons of entertainment), and that's left me plenty of opportunity to indulge my love of travel. At one time or another I've probably been to most civilised places on the planet - more so since aeroplanes and trains have been around.
But it was during one of my earlier forays that I met Phillipe. I'd been hiking through southern France, stopping at sleepy villages to drink wine and pass the time of day with locals, spending the nights in little cottages, wrapped in the arms of adoring men. I was on the road from Toulouse to Bordeaux, my intentions being to make my way gradually northwards and finally cross to England - a place I'd never visited, although I had a standing invitation from my friend David who'd moved there some time ago. It was a hot afternoon in late summer - the fields beyond the vineyards were being harvested and the scent hung in the still air like a blanket. The village of Aiguillon was as picturesque as a postcard, and I was sitting at one of the wooden tables outside a small white-painted inn, sipping red wine and enjoying a game of backgammon with a gnarled old-timer while putting the world to rights. An unexpected benefit of my transformation was that for some unaccountable reason it gave me a facility for languages which I'd never had before. My native Italian had served me well for many years and in many places, but I found that nowadays after just a short time in a new country – or even sometimes after just a few conversations with someone - I was reasonably fluent in their language, though vocabulary was often still a problem. Even so, the old fellow continually grunted and shook his head at my pronunciation.
As we talked and he thrashed me yet again at Backgammon, a young man pushing a bicycle appeared around the corner. We watched in silence as he propped the machine against the wall, sat down at one of the other tables and began to roll himself a cigarette. I noticed he had very little tobacco left, and the cigarette, when it was finished, was the approximate diameter of a matchstick. The old man jerked his head in the newcomer's direction and made some comment, but I didn't hear him - I was transfixed by the boy. It's a funny thing - you'd think that because we Vees can have any man we want, and therefore usually pick the very best and most gorgeous specimens, we'd eventually get jaded. This is not the case - I suppose it's built into us as part of our survival strategy. At any rate, I fell instantly in lust with that boy. He wasn't the best-looking I'd ever seen, in fact he was pretty ordinary compared even to the one I'd had last night, but there was something about him that attracted me intensely. He sat there seemingly unaware of us, with his rapidly-diminishing cigarette. He didn't order anything; he just smoked, enjoyed the view, and said nothing.
I came back to reality with a start as the old man banged the table irritably and reminded me it was my move. There wasn't much point, as my position was hopeless, but I rolled the dice and shifted a counter anyway. Ten seconds later the old man - with considerably bad grace, I might add - had won the game and was setting the board up for another. I shook my head and smiled, pushed over the few coins we’d had on the game, thanked him for his company, and finished my drink. Then I got up, walked over to the boy's table, and sat down. "Would you like a beer?" I asked in French.
As his gaze shifted from the vineyards to me, I waited for the expression of shock which almost always accompanies a young man's first look at my face - a short intake of breath, a licking of the lips, a dilation of the pupils (and, usually, an instant erection) - but it didn't come. He smiled as if I was just a regular guy, and nodded tiredly. "Merci Monsieur, c’est très gentil," he replied in a very bad accent which I recognised immediately. "Are you on holiday?" I asked in Italian.
His face broke into an grin of profound relief. "Oh thank fuck - someone who speaks my language! My French is awful."
“Yes it is,” I agreed, and ordered beer for both of us.
It turned out that he'd accidentally killed a man in Rome, and was on the run from the police, who weren't at all convinced it had been an accident (it took quite a while and a few beers to get this out of him, by the way). He'd fled to France, and he’d been trying eventually to get to England where he had relations - but three days after arriving in Montpelier he'd been mugged, and robbed of everything that he had. He'd nicked a bicycle and had peddled from there in the last few weeks, taking work where he could.
While he talked, I sat there with my head propped in my hands, smiling with delight as I watched him. He had a way of making his points by flicking his eyebrows up and down which I found fascinating. Although not the most physically stunning young man I'd seen, he was good-looking by any standards, and there was something about him that caused a rare stirring inside me. And he had the most gorgeous brown eyes.
We talked, and watched the sun go down. I treated him to a good meal and booked us both into the inn for the night.
I kept wondering about Phillipe's lack of the usual reaction when he’d first seen me. It's difficult to say this without sounding arrogant, but invariably I get a stunned response when a guy first sees me. I got used to it a long time ago and, although in the early days I did get arrogant for a time, that soon passed - and from then on I've noted it only as a continuing confirmation that I haven't lost my looks during the night. The response is nothing to do with any special powers I have - even when I have them all 'switched off' my physical appearance alone is usually enough to trigger them. As I had expected it to do with Phillipe. But it hadn't.
The possibility crossed my mind for a moment that he, too might be a Vee - even we respond to the sexual magnetism of another of our kind in the same way. But an ‘accidental’ touch of his wrist while I reached for my beer told me he wasn’t. Still, as we sat in our room with a late-night bottle of cognac, I couldn't stop wondering about him. I was also wondering what the sleeping arrangements were going to be. I'm not sure what it was, but there was something about him that made me not want to resort to using my special abilities on him, and to stick to my un-enhanced (but still devastating) sexual technique when I got him into bed - but I was beginning to wonder if I was going to get that far. This had never happened before. Usually I have to beat guys over the head to stop them jumping into bed with me, but not this one.
In the end the cognac revealed all. This poor boy was so desperately lovesick over a girl back in Rome whom he'd got pregnant that he could think about - and respond to - nothing else. He broke down and told me everything. It was a long, complicated and unlikely story, involving jumping from balconies, high-speed chases on horseback, and a stuffed penguin. The unfortunate bird had been a present from him to her - and was, apparently (but unknown to Phillipe at the time) stuffed to the beak with Opium. The heavies descended on him, missing him by seconds; there followed the chase, the ambush, the fight, and the accidental death. So Phillipe wasn't just being hunted by the police, but also by the girl's family, and the drug dealers. I suspect the Mafia may well have been in there somewhere as well but I didn't press him on that.
I heaved a heavy, but silent sigh. This was as bad as the Backgammon earlier: it was a no-win situation for me. I was in lust with this boy, but he had promised himself totally to the Roman girl. He was so hopelessly smitten with her that even my not-inconsiderable charms weren't getting through to him. Well, the cognac had done it once, let's see if it could do it again. I refilled his glass.
It must have been a very good cognac - I hit pay dirt halfway down the bottle. It seems that the very first time they'd gone to bed had been after a particularly boozy party. They'd played around for a while in an alcoholic haze, been too drunk to have got anywhere - so had dozed in each others' arms, then had woken up, slightly more sober, and had started again. It was in this second sexual extravaganza in the small hours of the morning, that Maria had suggested a little bondage. Neither of them had ever done this kind of thing before, but they were sufficiently entranced with each other, and just drunk enough, to experiment.
The experiment was, apparently, rather successful: Phillipe found himself getting turned on enormously by being tied to the bed with two tea towels and a pair of socks, and being totally under the power of the beautiful girl; while Maria discovered to her surprised delight that the ability to do, in theory, anything she liked to this boy she'd lusted after for ages was at least as intoxicating as the wine they'd consumed that evening. Having got her boy helpless, however, she began to run out of ideas of things to do to him. So she bit his nipple. In fairness, she hadn't meant to do it quite so hard - but the alcohol in her was making fine co-ordination difficult, and she applied rather more force than was strictly necessary. She was instantly contrite, and started to apologise - but the effect the pain had had on Phillipe stopped her in mid-flow: he was gasping in extreme pleasure.
As we sipped our cognac, Phillipe smiled to himself, lost in the memories of that amazing night. He was - perhaps understandably and, despite the alcohol - reticent to go into all the gory details of what she'd done to him, but the fact emerged that on that night he’d discovered that he got off so much on the erotic pain she caused him that the episode added a dimension which was altogether more carnal, intense and urgent to his already great love for her. From that night on, their lovemaking became more passionate, and invariably ended up with him tied to the bed while she raked, squeezed, bit, beat and otherwise abused his defenceless body. He took to wearing high-necked sweaters when the marks began to show, and sitting down became a conscious, rather than an automatic, act. Their orgasms became more intense and satisfying (Maria even began to report multiple ones) and he and she became sex-crazed animals whenever they were together. Over the months, Maria found more and more ways to torture him, to take him higher and higher. They constructed elaborate restraint devices which Phillipe kept hidden in his attic, and their lust for S&M grew by the day.
They often joked that they'd turned each other into monsters - and there was probably more truth in that than they realised, because for both of them S&M (although of course neither of them had ever heard of that term) had become necessary. Making love without it ceased to be exciting. In fact, Phillipe realised on one occasion when they were having sex in a wheat field manifestly lacking in bondage facilities, that the S&M was turning him on now as much as Maria herself. That worried him - that worried him a lot.
Eventually - although they had been very careful - the inevitable happened, and Maria came to him in tears one day: she was pregnant. He’d seen the penguin in a second-hand shop (how it had got there, stuffed with addictive substances as it was, he’d no idea) and he’d bought it on impulse as a present for her.
Phillipe put his empty glass down, almost missing the table. "That's when it started to get complicated," he said.
The rest of the story I knew. Phillipe was very, very drunk, and in a transport of melancholy. He missed Maria, but even more than that he missed the things she did to him. He found that when he masturbated - which was rare these days - all he could think of was of being tied up by her, being helpless, and being in pain of some sort.
The boy was clearly very depressed, and I knew there was something I could do to help him. I could show him that there were other people apart from Maria who could give him what he needed so badly. The question was, should I?
And could I? He hadn't reacted to my looks so far, but surely no mortal could be completely unresponsive to my abilities. I decided to try a gentle experiment. He'd drunk so much cognac that he was in danger of passing out anyway, so I reached into his mind to sober him up a little. Immediately he perked up, blinked, and reached for the bottle.
I smiled inwardly - experiment successful. I let him finish the bottle off (there wasn't much left), but prevented it from having any more effect on him. Then I released some pheromones.
His pupils dilated even wider than the cognac had made them already, and he looked at me in a slightly surprised way - as if noticing me for the first time. He started to say something, but stopped, clearly thinking better of it. I increased the dose, and stretched sexily. "You know," I said quietly, "you're a very good-looking boy."
I didn't give him time to think about that - I gently made him more receptive to suggestion, and continued, "I think I can do something to help you, if you'd like…"
He was looking confused. I'd pushed my chair back from the table, and allowed him to see the erection which was very clearly outlined inside my trousers. His eyes fixed onto it, and he ran his tongue over his upper lip. He cleared his throat nervously. "Wh- what do you mean?"
"A little thought-experiment." As I spoke, I kept careful control of his mind, opening it slowly but irresistibly to what I was saying.
"I want you to imagine for a moment that I am the sexiest boy you've ever seen. I know you're not into guys, but that doesn't matter, does it - it's only a thought-experiment…"
He was looking at me intently, and nodding his head slowly. I noticed that his breathing was becoming slightly faster.
"Ok - now imagine that, like you, I am also turned on by sexual pain - but from the other side: I like to inflict it. I like to get a boy tied up, helpless, so he can't move, can't escape, and so that he is totally in my power."
Phillipe now had a stonking erection - I could see it.
"...and imagine, just for a moment, that I can do everything to you that you get off on - in exactly the way you like it. Not too much, not too little – exactly what you want." I paused, to let that sink in. When I could see from his expression that it had, I continued, quietly, "Now, if all that were true, would you take your clothes off, go and lie down on the bed and surrender your body to me?"
He sighed, very deeply. "Oh, yes. Oh yes, I would do that."
I smiled gently at him. "What do you see when you look at me?"
He licked his lips again. "You are beautiful," he whispered.
"Well, Phillipe - I can do all that."
Carefully, although completely sober now, he put the glass back onto the table and stood up. He looked at me longingly for a moment, and then undressed. In less than a minute he was lying naked on the bed. I smiled again, then joined him.
For the next three hours, I caused Phillipe an impressive array of very controlled agonies - but I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wanted – needed - every one of them. He was not physically restrained in any way, and yet, to him, it seemed as if he were chained to the bed, and gagged.
I’d started carefully and slowly, but it quickly became apparent that he wanted more – and more. I could feel exactly what he needed, and during those hours I employed just about every single one of my abilities to torture him slowly, erotically, and mercilessly.
I began with his nipples. I made him see claws at the ends of my fingers, with which I gripped his nipples and slowly squeezed, the talons biting into the flesh further and further. He screwed his eyes up and let out a long, slow sigh of pure pleasure through the intangible gag. Monitoring him very carefully I increased the pressure further, and began to twist them too.
This was employing both of my hands, of course, but that was not a problem: I caused him to feel a third hand on his balls, and while I kept the ones working on his nipples at a moderate level, I began to dig more claws into his testicles. By adjusting the pain of these two things I made waves of pleasure course through his body.
My teeth became fangs to bite the soft flesh of his shoulders, chest and stomach. I raked my canines over his body.
My hands were at one moment instruments of pain, and at another the softest silk to caress, stroke, tease and tickle his aching cock; my breath was fire or ice on his skin; incandescent sparks of electricity arced from my fingertips towards the most sensitive parts of his anatomy to make him convulse and give vent to muffled screams of agony from behind the non-existent gag. There were times when I made it difficult - or impossible - for him to breathe, or to see anything; times when I caused him to feel a long, mobile finger gently insinuating itself into his arsehole, seeking and probing until it found the little hard gland of his prostate; and times when I convinced him that there was an army of fiends working on every bit of his helpless body at the same time.
All through this a part of my mind was inside his, tuning everything I did to his wants, and his needs. He writhed, struggled and fought against his 'restraints' all the time - but not once did he ask me to stop, although I made quite sure that he was always able to do so.
Towards the end, I concentrated on his cock. For over an hour I tormented it, getting him more and more horny, more and more desperate to cum. I knew precisely how he needed it to be worked on from one moment to the next, and I licked it, stroked it, squeezed it, teased it, bit it, scratched it, raked my teeth along it, hit it, tickled it, and slowly jacked him off with a single fingertip until nothing more than a breath on his cock would have caused him to ejaculate - and then I stopped. Over and over I did this, ignoring his pleading to be allowed to cum. For what seemed like an eternity to him, I repeatedly brought him to the very edge of orgasm.
Then, when I could stand it no more, I fed. I sucked his hot, sweet spunk into myself and felt new again.
Afterwards I tucked him into the bed and made him sleep, getting myself as comfortable as possible on the two chairs by the window.
In the morning, he was nowhere to be seen. After washing, and gathering my things, I went downstairs for breakfast. I found him sitting outside in the sunshine at the same table where I'd first spoken to him. I wasn't sure what to say - or even if he'd want to speak to me at all. Vees have the ability to make a mortal forget any - or all - of what happened during an encounter, but I purposely had not used that ability. For good or bad, I wanted Phillipe to remember every detail about what he had experienced. So I was very unsure of my reception when I sat down opposite him.
He continued to gaze out at the countryside for a while, not even acknowledging my presence, and then he turned his eyes to me and smiled gently. "Thank you," he said, simply.
Looking at him sitting there, his brown eyes gazing deeply into my own, and knowing he remembered every single thing that had happened - every detail of what I had done to him, I felt strangely embarrassed. I'd never felt that before, and it was an odd sensation.
He licked his lips, then lowered his eyes almost coyly, and whispered, "that was a lovely thing that you did for me."
Inwardly, I sighed with relief. This boy continued to surprise me. But he had, in fact, only just started to surprise me.
Phillipe cocked an eye at me. "Are all Vampyres as nice as you?"
I stared.
"You're only the second one I've ever met, but the first was lovely too."
I swallowed - I had no idea how to respond to that. We can make a man forget any - strange - happenings during an encounter, and in fact it's very rare that we don't. Generally, it's not a good idea to let people remember impossible things that we've done to them - and it's even more unusual to allow a mortal to go around knowing that we exist.
Phillipe smiled. "Don't worry - your secret's quite safe with me."
The innkeeper arrived at that point and after a quick discussion with Phillipe I ordered croissants and coffee for us both. When he'd gone, I still didn't know what to say. Eventually, I asked, "who was the other one?" - and then regretted it immediately, as it was a tacit admission that I was a Vee. But then I realised that he hadn't somehow been guessing - he’d known. His next sentence almost stopped my heart.
"His name was Dominic," he said.
I must have turned a strange colour, because after a few moments he looked at me and asked if I was all right. "Yes - yes, I'm fine. Tell me about Dominic."
"Oh I didn't really know him. We never - had sex or anything like that. It was the year before I first met Maria - I was out walking with my grandmother, not far from the Vatican. There were lots of people about, as usual, but suddenly grandma stops and sort of shudders. I thought she was ill, but she brushed my hand away and slowly turned round. Grandma is ninety-eight, and a bit old-fashioned. She believes lots of old-world stuff - reads tea-leaves, cures warts, makes funny signs before entering doorways, does strange things with dried seaweed, stuff like that - and she says she has the 'sight'. His eyebrows flicked. “Don't ask me - I've no idea. Anyway, she pointed to a group of people sitting on the grass over by the bridge. They were all kids, except this one man, and they were laughing and joking and eating their lunch from paper bags. It was obviously a school trip. She kept her bony finger pointing at him and started muttering some kind of incantation, or prayer - I don't know. She'd been a bit funny lately anyway - even for her - and I didn't take much notice. And then the guy lifted his head slowly and looked right at her. He was too far away for me to see him clearly, but I could swear that he smiled. Anyway, straight away Grandma stopped acting funny and started asking me why I'd stopped. I told her what she'd just done, but she didn't believe me. More than that, she apparently thought I was taking the piss and fetched me one across the earhole."
Phillipe grinned, and took a bite of his croissant. "She's a funny old bat," he said around it, "so, I didn't think any more about it - until the next day. I was studying architecture in the evenings, and we were scheduled for a session with a visiting lecturer. Guess who that turned out to be."
I listened in stunned silence.
"He introduced himself as Dominic. I don't remember much of what he talked about - all I could think of was what an incredibly handsome man he was. He seemed to have this aura of sexuality. It was obvious that the rest of the class were feeling it too - especially the guys, for some reason. I saw four hard-ons during his talk, and one of them was mine.
"After the lecture, lots of the lads hung about to chat to him. I kept thinking about the way Grandma had acted the day before. There was something very strange about him, I knew. But I can be a bit shy, and all the others were pushing to the front to talk to him. I wasn't getting a chance. But then he looked straight at me - and he smiled at me. He dealt with the others fairly quickly, and sent them on their way. Finally, there was just him and me in the room. He closed the door gently and sat on the corner of the desk, smiling and saying nothing.
"I didn't know what to do - I felt awkward - I thought that I should have gone when the others had, but something had kept me back, made me want to get to know him better. Thankfully my hard-on had gone down a bit. He sat there just looking at me and smiling at me for a long time, and then he asked me why I really wanted to be an architect. I spluttered some inane reply about living in a city where some of the best architecture in the world was just lying about. He laughed, then beckoned for me to sit down beside him. And then he told me exactly why I wanted to be an architect. I don't remember the words he used, but it would have made anybody want to be one. It was the most wonderful, uplifting, motivating speech I had ever heard. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that from that moment on my life would not be complete until I was an architect.
"And while he was speaking, he changed somehow. He became - I don't know - he almost glowed with enthusiasm. His shape sort of blurred somehow, as if I was seeing him through a heat haze - you know? - and he was fucking beautiful. And suddenly the room was full of the scent of roses. It was a religious experience. I was enthralled.
"Then, when he finished, he seemed to jerk as if he'd just realised where he was, or as if he'd done something he shouldn't have. The roses scent had gone as quickly as it had come, and everything was like it had been before. I sort of sat there blinking, not really knowing what to do or say. He gazed at me for a minute, then smiled in a business-like sort of way and set about collecting his notes together. I stood up and thanked him, hesitated, then made my way to the door. As my hand was on the knob, he stopped me. I remember turning quickly - hoping he was going to suggest we go for a drink, or - I don't know what. I just knew I wanted to see him again. Badly. He asked me if I was hungry. I nodded violently and said yes. I think I probably shouted it. He laughed and told me to come with him.
“Dominic took me to a little restaurant I'd passed hundreds of times but had never had the money to enter. We ate well, we drank well, and we talked until the early hours, sat there with the table between us and, towards the end, the waiters getting more and more pissed off wanting to close up and go home. That was one of the most wonderful evenings of my life. People came in, had their meals and left. They were replaced by other people - but I never noticed any of them. As far as I was concerned Dominic was the only person in that room."
A faraway look came into Phillipe's eyes as he stared vacantly at the vineyards across the road, remembering the evening. "The image of him - of his beautiful face in the flickering candlelight as we talked - that will stay with me for the rest of my life. He had the most amazing blue eyes - just like yours - and I kept losing myself in them. I felt as if I was drowning. I'd never felt like that before. I kept asking myself: 'am I in love with him?' I'd never felt anything even close to that for another man before. And the funny thing is that I didn't particularly want to go to bed with him. It wasn't sexual. Well, yes, it was - in fact it was very sexual – but, somehow it wasn't carnal ." Phillipe looked at me for help. "I'm not making much sense, am I?"
I smiled gently. "Oh you're making perfect sense, believe me."
"Anyway, we spent the whole evening talking in the restaurant. He confided an awful lot to me. I don't know why – he didn't know why (he said as much) - but he told me almost everything. And in the end he told me what he was.
“When the waiters finally made their point by taking everything off our table and sweeping underneath it, we left. But we didn't stop talking. We walked along the Tiber - it was a perfect moonlit night - and we kept stopping to look at the view: the river, the sky, or some building or other. He said he'd rarely done this before - told someone as much as he'd told me. He said it was a risk, that he could make me forget it all, but that he didn’t think he was going to. Is that true? Could he have made me forget it all?"
I blinked, then nodded once. "Yes, he could." I wondered why he hadn’t done.
Phillipe blew out air through his nose. It was a short sound - halfway between a laugh and a sigh. He nodded then, as if in confirmation of what he had thought. He finished his croissant and drank his coffee - they were both cold by now - and there was silence for a while. Then he surprised me again. "He mentioned you, you know."
I felt my heartbeat quicken once more in my chest, but I didn't reply. I waited for him to continue.
"He told me about this boy he'd known in Venice. A rent boy. An artist..." His voice inflected upwards on the last word, making it a sort of question.
I stared at him, hanging on every word.
"Was that you?"
I nodded quickly.
"He loved you, you know. He loved you more than he'd ever loved anyone before." Phillipe paused. "He made you a Vampyre, didn't he."
It was a statement, not a question, but I answered him. "Yes, he made me a Vampyre."
"He made you a Vampyre because he loved you. He didn't tell me that bit, but I know it's true." Phillipe smiled at me, and the sun seemed to shine from his eyes. "And I can see why," he said.
The workers in the fields were having their mid-morning break, and happy conversations drifted across the hedges to us. A tractor groaned past us down the road, followed by half a dozen little children who kept jumping up onto the back of it, riding for a few yards and getting off again. It disappeared around the bend in the road and was gone, leaving a wisp of smoke hanging in the warm summer air.
"I talked to Grandma when I got home. At some point she'd apparently remembered the whole episode near the Vatican, and couldn't stop apologising for belting my ear. Didn't know what had happened to her, she said - must be getting senile. Anyway, she told me about Dominic's kind - that there were old legends of ‘others’ living with us who weren't like us. She did use the 'V' word, but she crossed herself twice first. She told me to stay well away from him, that he was one of the Devil's children, and that no good would come of any of this."
Phillipe saw me smiling at that, and smiled back. "Of course I didn't believe a word of it, and the next day I tried to find him, but he'd gone." He ran his finger round the rim of the coffee cup thoughtfully, then looked straight at me. "You know, I've never stopped thinking about him. I wondered if there were any more like him - and then I met you. What was he like when you knew him?”
I sighed. "He was the most wonderful person I've ever met." I wanted to tell Phillipe everything - about how much I'd been in love with him, how I was still in love with him; about the mind-shattering sex we’d had; about the warm nights when we'd sat and drunk wine on the verandah, overlooking the twinkling lights of Venice; about the warmer nights in bed, melting into each other's bodies - but somehow I couldn't. It seemed that to do so would somehow have have betrayed Dominic. In view of everything Phillipe had told me, this might seem unfair - but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.
Somehow this revelation - that Phillipe had known him, possibly had even loved him - made me feel even closer to the boy. Apparently he was feeling the same thing, because he looked at me squarely then, and said, "I need to hold you, Justin."
Here outside of the inn would not be a good place to do this, I thought, and so together we went back inside. On the pretext of having forgotten to pick something up from my room, I asked the innkeeper if we could go back up for a few minutes. He made a very French, dismissive gesture, looked at Phillipe, and winked at me broadly.
As soon as we were inside the room Phillipe threw his arms around me and burst into floods of tears. "I'm so fucked up," he moaned into my shoulder. "I still love Dominic and I love Maria and I love to get hurt and - and - and I love you!"
This I hadn't expected. We dropped onto the bed in a tangle of arms and legs, and I felt tears welling up inside me as well. For a long time we hugged each other, saying nothing. I stroked his hair and nuzzled his neck, while he sobbed against my chest. Was I in love with Phillipe? I honestly didn't know. I felt all sorts of strong emotions for him, and more than anything else I wanted to have sex with him - there and then - without using any of my special powers on him. I wanted him to want me.
Oh he wanted me all right. We spent the next hour having the most wonderful sex you can imagine. No S&M, no party tricks - just plain, old-fashioned sex.
And it was fabulous.
Afterwards, lying in each other's arms, totally exhausted (I’d cum once, he twice - and, no, it wasn’t wasted), he turned his clear brown eyes to me and asked, "what's it like being a Vampyre?"
Just like Dominic had done to me, I told him the good things - and also the bad things - about being a Vee.
He smiled, gazed at the ceiling for a long time, and then rolled towards me and kissed me slowly. "Justin," he said.
"Mmm...?" I knew exactly what he was going to ask me, and I knew exactly what my answer would be. I'd been wondering when he'd get around to it.
"Would you - would you make me a Vampyre?"
I hugged him, and buried my face in his hair. I knew he wanted it more than anything else. I knew it would enable him to go back to Italy and make sense of his life. I knew he'd be able to become the architect he wanted to be. I knew that it would make everything he'd learned about us safe, and I knew it was the one way to make everything right.
And I also knew that I would lose him, and that I would never be able to have sex with him again. Lying there with Phillipe, on that bed in that small French village, was the moment it first really dawned on me exactly what Dominic had felt when I’d begged him to transform me.
"Yes," I replied, "if that's what you want."
He hugged me so tightly I thought I would suffocate. We lay there for another eternity. My eyes were shut, I was committing the touch of his body; the clean, fresh smell of his hair; the very essence of that lovely boy, to memory. I knew I would never feel it again in the same way, and that I had lost him. He knew it too, after what I’d told him. He knew exactly the sacrifice he was asking me to make.
Then, with no more words being spoken, I pulled him even closer - until it felt that we were one – and, gently, I bit him.
He left that afternoon. I'd told him about the pains which would follow his transformation, that he'd be ravenous when it was over, and that for the rest of his life he would need some special food of some kind. He nodded, and said he'd find a quiet place in a wood for the next few days. I walked with him out of the village, him pushing the bicycle, until we came to a pathway which left the little road and wandered off between the fields. He stopped and leaned on a wall, looking off into the distance. "I think I shall go that way," he said.
I could hardly speak. I reached into my pocket and took out a small bundle I'd prepared for him. It contained a tin of tobacco I’d persuaded the inn keeper to sell me, the address of David’s house in England where I was eventually heading, and five thousand French francs. He smiled that brilliant, heart-melting smile of his, and embraced me. We kissed for a long time, and then I pulled him gently away. His face was wet, as was mine. "Take good care of yourself, Phillipe. You’ll meet someone sometime, and you'll fall in love. When you do, do it with your whole heart - but remember me."
"Oh, I’ll remember you, Justin. I will remember you." He squeezed my hand gently.
I watched him walk away down the little path until he disappeared into the trees in the distance. The birds were singing, and the air was sweet with the scent of wild thyme. It was a beautiful day - but I no longer saw it. My eyes were closed and full of tears.
After a while, I walked on.
*
It had not been easy to get Phillipe out of my mind, and so I’d thought a change of scenery would be in order. My intention had been to make my way from France to England, but I got distracted by boots. In Germany some pinhead called Hitler was stomping all over the neighbourhood and I didn’t want to get involved with that. However, I kept up with the news, and pictures in the papers of these Nazi types did get my attention: for some inexplicable reason I found their jackboots gob-smackingly sexy. I was not short of time, and so, confident that with the help of my abilities I could look after myself, I went to Germany.
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