dontravis.com
blog post #400
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| Courtesy of Pxfuel.com |
Thanks
to everyone who congratulated me on the acceptance of The Cutie-Pie Murders for
publication. Thanks to Dreamspinner Press for that bit of news.
This
week, and for a couple following, I’ll again step out of my usual genre of
writing. This is a short story about a vampire. Yes, you read right. A vampire.
Not the Bela Lugosi portrayal, but still a bit spooky. In this first installment,
you’ll meet Tancready—as he’s called himself for the last two hundred years.
Prior to that, he bore other pseudonyms. Shall we start?
*****
THE PRESCIENT
From a park bench cloaked in the deep
shadow of night, I observed the progress of the quasi-organized brawl these
people called baseball, a neighborhood game of frequent bawdy disputes, usually
resolved just short of mayhem. Despite the throbbing pain occasioned by bright,
glaring pole lamps, only marginally eased by heavily smoked glasses, the
raucous vigor and raw emotions of the rowdy participants were ambrosia, feeding
my vortex, easing the gnawing of a voracious hunger and restoring my pranic
energy sufficiently to dull the edge of my depression, a condition I often
suffer.
Yet, even the massed force of those
straining, sweating, cursing young men on the field would not sate my
appetite—not completely. For that, I required an intimate confrontation with
the tall, wiry young man with the broad Magyar brow generations of New World
blood had not significantly altered. This youth, whose towering aura
occasionally flickered in my direction, surpassed the collective beauty of all
who cavorted on the field.
My name is Tancready, although that is not
the appellation bestowed at my birth in 1047 Anno Domini. While not my
first alias, Tancready is the one that has served for the last two hundred
years. I am an Eternal, or if you prefer, a Vampire; not the idiotic caricature
of fiction or the loathsome, bloody fiend of legend who stalks the unwary with
deadly intent, but one of a miniscule elite who escape the usual constraints of
humanity. I exercise an eccentric lifestyle and develop unorthodox
relationships, such as that I seek from the most uncommonly beautiful human I
have encountered since the Italian Renaissance, the youth I patiently stalk.
Over virtually a millennium, I have
endured many lifetimes, embracing death often over the centuries, but true to
my ilk, I endlessly return from the earth to assume another name, another
persona. I endured Vlad the Impaler’s tortured reign and witnessed his
assassination. I died at Hastings with the Conqueror’s army and attended
Henry’s knights as they slew Thomas à Becket at Canterbury, fought with the
Mongols on the Steppes when Temujin became Genghis Khan. I battled the Emperor
in Russia and again at Waterloo. I died at the hands of German Nazis at
Stalingrad. I have seen … lived … momentous history!
The game on the sports grounds ended in a
pungent burst of sweaty enthusiasm as redolent as a potent Russian brew. The
field began to clear, and the terrible lights slowly died, allowing my
photosensitive eyesight to regain its sharpness. Body vibrating, nimbus
soaring, the boy approached on the paved walkway, his corded arm riding the
shoulders of a young lady. The easy, comfortable companionship between the two
elicited an instant and unintended burst of energy from me. The boy’s rich
luminescence, yellow with affection and friendship for the creature under his
arm, suddenly flashed red as he crossed the path in front of my sheltered
bench. Tentacles reached toward me uncertainly. I quickly reined in my raging
jealousy and sent a more benign form of kinetic energy toward him, seeking to
block his unconscious curiosity. I overdid it, as was frequently the case; he
visibly staggered, but recovered and continued across the park, his aura drawn
close against his body. His flesh, I knew, would be puckered in a case of
‘heebie-jeebies,’ in today’s pedestrian vernacular.
The boy was aware of me now, too much so
at this point, although he had no real understanding of that fact. Nonetheless,
I would need to proceed carefully. His name was Boris Balint, a good Hungarian
patronymic miraculously not yet Anglicized into Valentine. Born in the northern
New Mexico mountains twenty years past, he now attended classes at the
university in Albuquerque. His passions were chess and photography. All this
and more, I knew from clandestine midnight visits to the university records
room. Chess, I decided, would be my gateway into his life.
As my quarry passed from sight, my energy
level dropped precipitously. Edginess and irritability, frequent companions,
returned until I focused on a distant figure on the field. My need honed to a
keen edge, I moved toward the sleek young Hispanic responsible for securing the
game equipment. Anticipating the touch of his smooth, dark flesh, I literally
salivated. He was at that brief age when adolescent mestizos were as
pretty as girls yet exuded the budding machismo of their elders.
Delicious!
Although he had not yet seen me, the youth
demonstrated a sharp alertness as he slowly turned from the equipment shed to
nervously scan the darkened pathway. I flooded his slender form in tentacles of
friendship yellow and purple desire, overpowering the fearful red of his
suspicion. His resolve faltered, and enveloped in my powerful sexuality, the
boy obediently trailed me into the deep shadows behind the equipment shed.
Without physically touching him, I pulled him to a halt before me. He swallowed
hard.
“What is your name, my beautiful young
friend?”
“Car…Carlos.”
“Ah, Carlos. You bear a noble name.”
He flinched at my hand on his cheek. No
sign of a beard. Beautiful. The boy stood hypnotized while I stripped him naked
in the cool, high-desert air. My sensitive fingers traced the broad, bony
shoulders, the curve of the thin chest. His heart raced at my touch. I inhaled
the push of air from his diaphragm as I slid down the gently bowed belly. He
awakened at my touch. Well-endowed for one so young and slight, the boy
responded readily.
Young Carlos moaned, torn between fright
and desire. I wrapped my physical arms around his waist and pulled him to me,
allowing the salt of recent sweat, the aroma of strenuous exercise and sexual
arousal to tease my nostrils pleasantly. His hands closed on my head; his hips
twitched. He was lost, and I was greedy for his fresh young semen.
The youth’s thin frame jerked in the
throes of an orgasm he would fruitlessly strive to match for the remainder of
his days. Shuddering, this fledgling Carlos, this namesake of powerful kings
and emperors, would have fallen had I not eased his weight to the ground. I
contemplated arousing him again, but he was drained beyond quick recovery. Satisfied
for the moment, I disappeared into the night, leaving the boy naked and spent.
I smiled to myself. The boy’s seed, while sweet, had yet to reach the peak of
potency. The lad was an immature eighteen; in a year or two, his sperm would
ripen.
*****
Hope that was enough to
rouse your interest. Let me know what you think of the start of Tancready’s
story.
The following are buy
links for my last BJ Vinson mystery The Voxlightner Scandal.
Barnes
& Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-voxlightner-scandal-don-travis/1132632844?ean=9781640809260
Now
my mantra: Keep on reading and keep on
writing. You have something to say, so say it!
My
personal links: (Note the change in the Email address because I’m still getting
remarks on the old dontravis21@gmail.com. PLEASE DON’T USE
THAT ONE.)
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter:
@dontravis3
Buy
links to Abaddon’s Locusts:
See
you next week.
Don
New
Posts every Thursday morning at 6:00 a.m. Mountain time.
