They Come by Night Read online

  I entered his foyer cautiously. Had my uncle gone off the deep end? This wasn’t the best time to think of it, but was I safe here?

  “What did your father tell you?”

  “Huh?” I glanced around casually. Okay, I had a clear path to the front door if I had to make a run for it. I’d just have to make sure it stayed that way. “Oh, that in a couple of years a vampyr will come to claim me.”

  “And…?”

  What did he mean, “and”? “That was all.”

  He shook his head. “If that isn’t like Ben. Okay, I’ll tell you what I can. Want a glass of milk?”

  “No, thanks. I didn’t bring the lactase. I’m lactose intolerant.”

  “You are?” He looked confused. “I’ve never heard…. Never mind. How about a Coke?”

  “Uh… sure. Thanks.” I gave him a head start, then followed him down a short corridor and into the kitchen, which was super small.

  He handed me a bottle that quickly began sweating condensation. “All right, this is the way it is. He won’t fuck you.”

  Why does everyone keep saying “he”? Do I look gay?

  He continued. “She won’t expect you to fuck her. You’ll never penetrate or be penetrated. A virgin’s blood is what they want. That’s why a sabor reaches puberty so much later than normal humans.”

  I paused in twisting off the bottle cap. “But Dad said I was normal!”

  “Ha! What does he know? He didn’t have to worry about being valued only for the blood in his veins. He was able to marry and father children, even if the woman he chose was a witch.”

  “Huh? My mother is a witch?”

  He sighed impatiently. “Not literally, Ty.”

  “So we don’t even get to come?” It came out snippier than I’d intended. But then again, maybe not? I might have reached puberty only a few days before, but I’d still listened when the other boys talked about sex.

  “Your generation likes to think it’s so hip and happening and now, but it’s no more so than previous generations.” He looked directly at me, and while there was exasperation in his eyes, again I saw the sadness in them. “Oh, they see we enjoy the act. In fact….” He glanced away, his face pale. “It’s addictive, Ty. Maybe we’re wired that way. If it didn’t feel so good….”

  Feeling good was fine, but, “Suppose he looks like that guy from Nosferatu, with the weird teeth in the front of his mouth and the crazy eyes and long, skinny fingers?”

  Uncle Phil smiled wryly. “No need to worry about that, Ty. They’re all very attractive.”

  “Suppose he’s old?”

  “Vampyrs don’t look old until they’re about to die.”

  “They can die?”

  “All creatures do. It’s the nature of things. Vampyrs have a very long life span, and it just takes them longer than the rest of us. There’s a school of thought that holds that’s possible because of the blood they drink from us.”

  “Suppose he”—I swallowed—“wants to have sex with me?”

  “He won’t.” He didn’t question that I hadn’t added the qualifying “or she.” “There are reasons why there are laws, and when they’re broken, the consequence is swift and irrevocable.”

  That didn’t sound good, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what the consequence might be. I took a swallow of Coke, waiting for him to tell me more.

  “Sabors fall in love with the vampyr who comes to them, but only for the time they’re together, until the vampyr moves on. Sometimes it’s after a day. Sometimes it’s after a couple of days. It all depends on how much blood the vampyr needs. They leave us once they’re done feeding.”

  “Do we stay in love with them?”

  “Oh, no. When the next vampyr comes to us, we’ll fall just as madly in love with her.” He studied me thoughtfully. “Him.”

  I felt myself flush. “Um…. How often do they… uh… come to us?” I couldn’t bring myself to even think the word “feed.”

  “We’re given about two months to recover between visits, although it can be longer than that.” He crossed to a window and stared out of it. “That factor in our blood that they need to have? We need to have it drawn. It can become painful for us if we go too long without a visit from one of them.”

  Didn’t that suck? And oh, great. I’d just made a pun.

  I disregarded it—I had other things on my mind. “How do they see us? I mean, are we just a buffet to them, or do they see us as a person, or….” Or maybe did they love us back?

  Uncle Phil seemed to know what I was asking. “The vampyr doesn’t fall in love in return.”

  “What, never?”

  “Well, they aren’t supposed to. I’ve never heard of one doing so.” He didn’t answer my other questions, and I realized that was answer enough.

  “Maybe he did, but they just didn’t want sabors to know?”

  “Don’t set yourself up for a fall, Tyrell. No matter what we… you… want to believe, vampyrs won’t love us.”

  “Well, that sucks.” And the heck with the pun. “Not only don’t I get to have sex for the rest of my life, but I don’t get someone to love me.”

  “Your father loves you. So does the rest of the family.”

  “You know what I mean. I’ll be some vampyr’s chew toy for the rest of my life.”

  “It will be a long life.”

  Like that was going to compensate for being passed from one vampyr to another. Six a year, for the rest of my life? No, that was no compensation at all! And how was I going to deal with them touching me?

  “Do they… do they still come for you, Uncle Phil?” He was pretty old, at least forty.

  “Not for a long time.”

  “But you said it hurt if they didn’t feed from us.”

  He rolled back his sleeves. Deep cuts scarred his arms, and I felt nauseous. He must have seen how sick I looked. “No, they weren’t attempts at suicide. We can’t… sabors don’t have the option of an easy out. This? It was the only way I could get any relief.”

  “I’m… I’m sorry.”

  He covered his arms, and when he met my gaze, his eyes had taken on a wistful expression. “My vampyr…. Her name was Vidalia.”

  I bit my lip in an effort to keep from asking, “You mean like the onion?” That would have been cold. “What happened?”

  “She was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen, younger than the other vampyrs who’d come to me, and I fell in love with her as soon as she entered my home, just as I expected to, but afterward, after she left… I hungered for her.” He looked out the window. “I’d go around for days with a hard-on….”

  “Uh… too much information, Uncle Phil.”

  “Sorry.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe she sensed it. I don’t know. I do know she came to me more often than any of the others. And then one night, we made love while she was drinking from me. I knew we shouldn’t—there’s a reason why penetration isn’t permitted—but I couldn’t resist her. She nearly drained me. After that…. Well, I was no longer a virgin.”

  “And that vampyr dumped you?” The bitch!

  “No! She…. It wasn’t her fault.” There was aching loss in his words, and it almost broke my heart. “She….” His hesitation was noticeable, and I wondered what she had done, but when he continued, he simply said, “She stayed with me until I recovered, and when she got ready to leave, I wanted to beg her not to go, but of course she couldn’t stay, so instead I begged her to come back to me.”

  “They don’t? We never see them again?”

  “Of course we do. There aren’t very many of us. But usually it’s after a few years.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “The words were hardly out of my mouth before I realized she would never be able to return to me. I promised I’d keep what we’d done locked in my heart. ‘Do you think you can keep that a secret?’ Vidalia asked in the saddest voice I’d ever heard. ‘Do you think I can?’ She ran her fingers over my birthmark, then left me without saying another word. But I wa
s going to prove to her how worthy of her I was. I’d never tell anyone, and she’d see that and come back to me. And I suppose I thought it wouldn’t matter. You see, before the Plague, we were a luxury reserved for only the royalty and the nobility.”

  “But Dad told me sabors weren’t discovered until after the Plague.”

  “No. We’ve been in existence for almost as long as vampyrs. There’s even a school of thought we were once the same species, but at some point we branched off.” He sighed. “So much of our history has been lost.”

  “Okay, so before the Plague we were a luxury.” I was only just coming to terms with being a sabor. The thought I could have been born a vampyr—that didn’t bear thinking of.

  “Yes. Sabors and their families belonged to the vampyr lords, and they were kept isolated on their estates. You have to remember those were feudal times, Ty. The vampyrs guarded their possessions ferociously, and their sabors most of all.”

  So we were nothing more than possessions?

  “What happened afterward?”

  He went to the sink and ran the water for about a minute before taking a glass from the cabinet and filling it. “With the population of normals so depleted, we became a necessity. For the other vampyrs to survive, they had to drink from us. The rege had no choice but to permit it.”

  “And you’re telling me we have to be virgins for our blood to be of any use to them.”

  “Yes.” He brought the glass to his lips and took a long swallow.

  “You said they don’t come to you anymore.” I had a sick feeling. This wasn’t going to end well. “What happened?”

  “The next vampyr who came to me realized immediately what had happened. He….” Uncle Phil looked lost and as sick as I felt. He touched his throat, and now that he’d drawn attention to it, I could see his birthmark was more than just a birthmark. It was a scar.

  “Uncle Phil, what did he do?”

  “Nothing more than I deserved.”

  It looked as if his throat had been—I closed my eyes, shutting out the sight. “How did you survive it?”

  “I survived.”

  “But it wasn’t your fault!”

  “He was furious. They can only drink from a virgin, he told me. He demanded to know which vampyr had been my partner, but I refused to tell him. I could feel him trying to invade my mind. I had no idea that could be done. It… it was like being raped again.”

  “Again?” Oh, Jesus, my poor uncle!

  “My action, our action, resulted in there being one less sabor available to them. After that, vampyrs no longer came to me, and normal humans seemed to sense there was something different about me. They avoided me as well.”

  “Did she ever come back to apologize?”

  “Vampyrs never apologize. At any rate, even if she would have wanted to, that wasn’t possible.”

  “Why?” I knew I shouldn’t ask, but if being a sabor was going to be my fate, I had to know.

  “I wasn’t the only one who was punished. The rege knew which vampyr had taken my virginity. Her talisman was taken from her.”

  I had no idea what the talisman was supposed to represent, but his tone was so chilling I shivered. It had to be really important, and the loss of it equally devastating.

  “How do you know this?”

  “The vampyr who came after… he knew something had happened. No vampyr had ever raised a hand to me—it wasn’t necessary—but he… he flung me against a wall, and I thought he’d fractured my spine. I’ve never been able to figure out how he didn’t.” He shook his head. “He left, and I had no idea how long he was gone. All I know is by the time I regained my equilibrium, he’d returned.”

  “Did you… did you love him?”

  “No. He blamed that on the fact I was no longer a virgin, but I couldn’t have loved him. He told me what happened to Vidalia in all the gory details, and said it had been done because of what she’d done.”

  “Made love with you?”

  “No. Oh, that pissed him off, but that wasn’t what really drove him wild. He said any vampyr could scent that Vidalia had fed a sabor.”

  “How could he—Wait a second! You fed from her?” Could that even be done?

  “I’d never have survived otherwise.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Fifteen years. God, I wish she’d let me die!”

  “Uncle Phil!” That shocked me more than anything he’d said before.

  “Do you want another Coke?” he asked abruptly, and I knew he wasn’t going to answer me.

  I stared at the bottle in my hand. It was empty. “No, thank you.” I put it down on the table. “Is that why you live here alone?”

  “I live here alone because that’s my choice.”

  “So I… I don’t have any choice in the matter?”

  “I’m afraid not.” His expression was desolate.

  “I guess I’d better go. Thanks for talking to me, Uncle Phil.”

  “You’re welcome, Tyrell. I’m sorry I can’t help you. It’s in our blood, you see. Literally.”

  Shoot.

  Well, all right, then, if that was the way it had to be, but I didn’t care what the rules were. I wasn’t going to fall in love with any vampyr whose only desire was to bite me!

  And if any of them thought otherwise….

  Well, they could just bite me!

  I NEVER told Dad I’d gone to talk to my uncle, but when I went back out to see Uncle Phil again just before Christmas to bring him a little gift, it was to find the windows of his cottage boarded up and a For Sale sign stuck in the front lawn.

  IT HAD been a long two years. My body had ached with the growth of muscle and bone, and I’d been uncertain what to do with the hormones that flooded my system. For the last year, girls had been looking at me with as much interest as their moms looked at Dad, and so had a couple of the boys, even one who I’d have sworn was straight.

  In spite of having more testosterone than I knew what to do with, I was still a virgin, never been kissed, never been laid, because while it might be interesting to have sex with someone, anyone, my body kept saying, “Uh uh, no way!” The fact of the matter was as much as I longed to be touched, paradoxically, I couldn’t bear being touched—not a friendly clap on the back, not a high five, not even Dad’s hand resting on my shoulder. I’d hoped as my body filled out I’d be able to tolerate contact, but no such luck. It was a good thing that as a runner, body contact was never called for, and I was nimble enough on my feet to avoid any pileups.

  How in hell was I going to let a vampyr come close enough to sink his fangs into me?

  THE DAY of my eighteenth birthday finally dawned. This evening a vampyr was coming to claim me. I’d be taken away from my home, from Dad, from everything I was familiar with.

  For the last week I’d been antsy, my dick half-hard, unable to settle on any task Dad gave me.

  Now it was even worse, and even though he kept me busy with chores around the house, my nerves were so bad I’d no sooner leave the bathroom than I’d have to turn around and go back in, and I found the tension ebbing and flowing as the day progressed, but mostly flowing. I was a total wreck.

  One good thing was my friends were busy with college. Some were scattered across the country, and they wouldn’t expect a farewell phone call. Jimmy Black, my best friend, was still in town, but when he asked where I was going, I was able to offer something vague about going to Disney World and then turned the conversation back to him. Maybe that came across as if he didn’t care about me, but I knew he did, and it just made it easier for me to not have to lie to him.

  Dad had made my favorite meal, and I knew there was a triple chocolate layer cake—chocolate filling, chocolate frosting, chocolate cake—in the fridge with my name on it. I didn’t have much of an appetite when it was time for dinner, though.

  “It’s going to be okay, Ty.”

  I could tell he wanted to hug me, or maybe give me a simple pat on the shoulder, but he wouldn’t,
and while that made me sad, there was nothing I could do about it.

  “You know I can’t stand anyone touching me, Dad. How am I going to cope with that?”

  “I have every faith in you, son. I know you’ll manage.”

  “I hope so, Dad.”

  “I wish you could have spoken to your uncle about this. I don’t think you’d feel so nervous, then. Unfortunately, I was just given the bare bones. I tried to talk to your uncle—”

  “What? When?”

  “Last year. His house was empty.”

  I caught myself before I could say “Still?” I’d never told him I had spoken to Uncle Phil, and it only made me more nervous. Especially since what Dad and Uncle Phil had told me were diametrically opposed.

  “Well, it doesn’t seem fair,” I muttered.

  “Life isn’t fair, son.” He looked at the clock on the wall. “Time’s running short.”

  I wished he hadn’t reminded me. I rose and started to clear the table.

  “That isn’t necessary. Why don’t you take a shower and change? I’ve… I’ve laid out your clothes on your bed.”

  “Okay.” I looked into his eyes. We were almost the same height now. “I guess I should have packed earlier.”

  “There’s no need. Everything will be provided for you. I… I….” He cleared his throat and leaned forward to pick up his plate. He hadn’t eaten much, either.

  “Will you be okay, Dad?”

  “I’ll be fine. And if they ever mistreat you, you come right on home.”

  “But will they allow it?”

  “Fuck them. I don’t care what they allow. If any of them hurts you, I’ll hunt them down with holy water.”

  “What about the Jewish ones?” I thought about Uncle Phil pressing a Star of David against my forehead. “Or the Muslims?”

  “Garlic and wooden stakes will work on them just as well.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Now hurry. You’ll want to make a good impression.”

  I went up the stairs to my bedroom. Lying across the bed were clothes I’d never seen before: a pair of black boxer briefs, black trousers, a silk, blood-red dress shirt, and black silk socks. On the floor was a pair of shiny black slip-ons.