The Hybrid –Part 3
by Atonia
Chapter 1
“Let me have a look at you.” William moved around Jameson. “Success wears well on you.”
“I’m so glad you’ve come.” Jameson’s joy was quite evident in his face.
William had traveled to Venice to hear him play. “How could I not? Handbills litter the streets with your likeness pressed upon them. You have exceeded my expectations for you. May I say I am quite proud of you.”
“Thank you.”
Richard opened the door to Jameson’s dressing room. “Oh, sorry.”
“No, no, come. I’d like you to meet someone. This is…my cousin, William Cornith…my good friend Richard Davies.”
“I’m pleased to meet a friend of Jameson.”
“I’m honored,” Richard replied. He checked his watch. “Ten minutes. I’ve had a look through the curtains, Jameson. The largest audience yet.”
“I hope they will not go away disappointed.”
“He is so humble and never nervous.”
“Is it true you are humble? Well, that is something.”
Jameson smiled. “I try to appear so.”
“I’d better take my seat. I’ll see you later.” William squeezed his shoulder and left.
“How do you feel tonight?” Richard asked.
“Happy.”
“No storms and raging seas?”
“I don’t know what will come forth.”
What came forth was yet another milestone for him. Misery, desire, happiness, love, it all flowed from his fingertips. He was called back for an encore; something he didn’t ordinarily do.
“They want me to write an opera.” Jameson laughed later in his room. “Me who still cannot write a note of music.” He tossed the notes on the table.
“That’s what you have me for,” Richard mused. “I could if you’d play it.”
“I do not write operas.”
“None of the music you played tonight is written is that right?” William asked.
“I play whatever comes to me. If I had to study it and repeat and practice it would go stale very quickly. No, it is not written and will not be written. Richard and I have written music and it’s played in London but is not advertised.”
“I think I will leave you two to catch up on things. Unlike Jameson, I have to sleep at night.” Richard made his exit.
“A very nice young man. I’m glad you have such friends.”
“He is devoted to me.”
“You have come through this tour very well. When I heard you were on tour I had some concerns about you.”
“You needn’t have worried.”
“So I see.”
“You haven’t mentioned Mary Reynolds.”
“She did not wish to travel. She will be sorry to have missed you, I’m sure.”
“You’re still with her then.”
“Yes. “ He was with her but he didn’t know how much longer it would last. Mary had grown quite weak. It was the way of things.
“I envy you.”
“Why don’t you marry?”
“I don’t think I shall ever marry.”
“With the world at your feet you could have your pick.”
Jameson looked up at him. “I do not think it wise for me to marry. There could be no children.”
“How do you know?”
“I would not want to create another such as me. I’m not even sure I could father a child. It will not happen.”
“How have you changed, Jameson?”
“I feed more often. It seems to take more to satisfy me.” He turned away. “There are other things.” He wanted to tell him about Bonner.
“You haven’t gone over to men have you?”
“No, not men.”
“Do you need to tell me something, Jameson?”
“Yes, I do but I’m not sure how to go about it. I don’t understand it myself. I’ve met…a vampire.”
William lifted his chin and narrowed his eyes. “Who?”
“Stephen Bonner.”
“Ah, I knew you would. I asked him to keep an eye on you. It seems he has.”
“He has not…molested me.”
“No…do you wish him to?”
“I don’t know.”
“You mean he has not made you. If you do then you must know what that will mean for you. You are now able to live among humans as one of them. Do you want to sleep in a crypt? Give up your mutton and puddings? Give up your good friends. It may even affect your ability to play as you do. The transformation is final…as is the death of your body.”
“I look at you and I see you are perfect in every way.”
“I am by no means perfect, Jameson. It is the human in you that I love so dearly. Don’t throw that away.”
“I am so confused by him. I think he has seduced me.”
“I don’t doubt it. If he has not made you it is because he sees something in you he does not wish to destroy. Don’t give up your life for him, Jameson.”
“No, no I don’t think I will. I have offered myself to him…I have no shame.”
“If you offered yourself to me I would be hard pressed to deny you. Do not ever drink from him.”
“I am yours for the taking. I have missed you so much.”
“I’ve missed you too. What will you do now that you are world famous?”
“Continue to play for as long as I can. I have a gift but I do not know how long it will last.”
“There is no reason to think it will not last forever, is there?”
“I will not live forever.” He met William’s gaze.
“You are young and have many years ahead of you. Do not dwell on such thoughts.”
“Would you see me grow old and withered, useless? And you always beautiful.”
William turned away. “Put these thoughts aside. There is time…but not now.”
“But you would allow it?” Jameson sat forward in his chair.
William turned back to him with a little smile. “In time…in time but not now.” He was amused that he must allow it. Jameson was now twenty-two but still very young in many ways.
“My lord, your carriage has arrived.” Morvan appeared in the doorway.
“Morvan, how good to see you.” Jameson ran to the door and clasped his hands.
“And you, young Jameson, how proud you have made us.”
“Must you go?” Jameson turned back to William.
William did not like to leave Mary for very long. She suffered on his account but suffered willingly.
He sat back in his carriage and thought about Jameson. It was hard for him to equate the handsome young man with the child he’d once held in his arms. He was attractive and could well understand Bonner’s obsession with him. He could only hope that his will was strong enough to protect Jameson. How unfortunate it was for them to be destined to kill everything they loved.
Stephen, hidden in the shadows on the balcony, waited until William left. He’d been there for some time. How was it that William trusted him with Jameson? He was sure William knew he was on the balcony and yet he’d said nothing. William had been right about his reasons for not making Jameson. He loved him and did not want to take away that human side of him at least not yet.
Ah, but there might be a problem. He was sure William meant to make him when the time came.
Jameson felt lost after William left. He thought about their years at Cornagaugh. How he’d loved him. He became aware of Stephen and turned toward the balcony. Stephen then stepped out into the open doors.
“How long have you been here?”
“For awhile.” Stephen came to him and kissed him. “Would you like to go out?”
“Yes…with you.”
How strange it was that his kisses no longer revolted him. He reckoned he was well and truly seduced and he did not mind it. If he could not have William, there was Stephen Bonner. Stephen would protect him, guide him and love him.
Out on the streets his senses heightened. He was surprised to see other vampires walking about. Some in twos and threes and some alone.
“It is the lone ones that you must be wary of,” Stephen cautioned. He walked with his arm around Jameson. It was a show of possession.
Jameson was glad of it. Some had bared their teeth at him and hissed. “Why do they not come at you?”
“They know me. Fortunately they do not know you.” He fingered Jameson’s hair which he wore loose and curtained around his face. “Do not make eye contact.”
They hunted for awhile and Stephen brought him a half dazed whore who he took against a wall indulging himself in the ultimate thrill while Stephen kept watch.
For the first time he responded to the kiss Stephen gave him after the kill. He felt a shudder ripple through Stephen’s body and began to think about his own power over Stephen.
Chapter 2
The tour had been a success and Jameson was now a wealthy man. He still gave regular concerts in London but more and more he concentrated on leaving a lasting legacy. He and Richard spent a lot of time together putting his strange music to paper. The demand was great.
Richard had acquired a fiancé and quite often his intended would find a girl for Jameson. They made a handsome foursome as they squired about London. Jameson had made his intentions clear. He did not intend to marry and gave the excuse that his music took his life and there would be little room for anything else. Still the society matrons trotted out their polished daughters for him to peruse an any function he might be attending.
If he took a woman to bed he made sure she was married and there were plenty to keep him satisfied. He’d learned to control his instincts with these women. They were safe enough beneath him. Not so with the street women he picked up from time to time. They were more likely to end up in The Thames.
Stephen seemed to know when Jameson needed to hunt. He’d begun taking him to outlying villages and into parts of the city where he’d never been before. Jameson was well known in London and they had to be careful that he was never recognized. Jameson began to depend on Stephen and never ventured out alone to hunt.
He had allowed Stephen to become more intimate with him. There were often marks on his body where he’d allowed him to bite and suck his flesh. It gave him pleasure of a certain kind. Stephen stayed clear of his major veins. Remembering William’s words he did not return the pleasure to Stephen. But it seemed enough for him to be able to mark Jameson with his love bites.
Jameson had always been discreet with his liaisons. However, he was caught in the act with the wife of a member of parliament. Without a word, he’d pulled on his clothes and left the angry husband behind. It made the scandal sheet after being leaked by a member of the household. Husbands decried him and women loved him all the more. He’d been publically embarrassed.
Along about the same time, Richard, who’d married, found he could not spend as much time with him as Jameson required.
“For God’s sake, Jameson, learn to write it yourself.” With that Richard stormed out of the studio. The break-up hurt both of them but Richard had something in his life that was more important than Jameson. That was a hard fact for Jameson to accept.
He began to withdraw from public life. From time to time he would give a concert but his price was high and not as well attended as they had been in the past. He spent most of his time alone at his piano or in the company of Stephen who now openly came to his house. Sometimes Jameson would play for him before closeting themselves either in his rooms upstairs or in his study. Cutler recognized him as a gentleman and treated him as such even if he was a little pale in the face.
He became more aggressive in his hunts and oftentimes careless. Stephen tried to rein him in.
“What is wrong with you?” He asked one evening when they’d come in from a hunt. “You take too many chances. You are going to be found out.”
“I don’t care anymore.”
“Yes you do. You’ve let it all slip through your fingers. Instead of hiding out after the scandalous affair you should have gone on stage immediately. Rumors grow and multiply. You let it happen. I once told you your downfall would be a woman. Are you prepared to prove me right?”
“I don’t have to prove anything to anybody. He got up in Stephen’s face. “Least of all you.”
Stephen’s eyes glowed with passion but he held himself in check. There comes a time when you either make or break. He would not make him though he wanted to. His eyes moved to Jameson’s throat.
Jameson tore off his neck cloth and ripped open his shirt. “Do it…do it now.”
Stephen’s lips curled back for an instant and then he met Jameson’s glittering turquoise eyes. “And let you loose on London. No…I will not be responsible for you. You would go about like a mad dog tearing the throats out of half the population of London. You wouldn’t last long, you know.” He grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him in. “Your sweet innocence is wearing thin.”
“I am neither.”
Stephen let him go and pushed him away. “As much as it pains me, Jameson, I must leave you.”
“Go then…everyone else has deserted me why shouldn’t you.”
William returned to Cornagaugh after Mary’s death. He’d been bereft and if not for Morvan he would have shriveled into nothingness in his crypt. Morvan worried him and cajoled him to hunt with him and thus kept him alive. He wandered about his estate, lonely and craving human contact. But he had vowed not to form another relationship such as he’d had with Mary. The end was certain when he first took her to bed.
but the knowing did not make it less painful. It was a scene he’d created too many times in his life.
He’d been there two years when news of Jameson’s fiasco reached the north. He decided to go to London and look him up. Morvan thought it the best thing for him.
It was nearly four in the morning when his carriage pulled up at the townhouse. The house was dark and the chimney’s showed no sign of smoke in the fog. When he alighted from the carriage he could hear the sounds of a piano. Without knocking he opened the locked door with a twist of his wrist. He found Jameson at the piano with one lone candle burning low. He’d never seen him in such disarray. His hair was down to his shoulders in a tangled mess, shirt open to the waist and he was barefoot. He sat without looking up picking out something with one hand.
“Jameson.”
He looked up and dropped his hand to his leg. “William…oh…William.”
William went to his knee beside the piano stool. “Jameson, what is the meaning of this?”
Jameson shook his head unable to speak.
“Where is Cutler? How can he allow such-”
“He’s gone. I dismissed him.”
“Are you ill?”
“I am ill of mind. I’ve lost it…I’ve lost it all. I cannot play.”
William sighed and looked toward the door. “Morvan, some tea and find him something to eat.”
“When did you last feed?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long have you been in this state?”
“Week…maybe.”
William stood up and took him under his arms and pulled him up. “Come away from the piano.”
He got him up the stairs and Morvan arrived with a tray. They made him eat and drink the tea. Moran left them to prepare the crypts in the cellars of the townhouse.
William tucked him in bed. He’d had only a sketchy account of Jameson’s troubles . The night was running out and he hated to leave him.
“Sleep, Jameson, sleep as long as you can. I’ll be with you at dusk.”
“Why do you bother?”
“I wonder that sometimes myself.”
William ducked under the beams and brushed a sticky spider web from his hands.
“My lord, what is to become of Jameson?”
“We’ll take him home to Cornagaugh.” He stepped into his crypt and lay down. “And then we’ll see.” He smiled a little and lifted the lid into place.
Morvan settled into his own with a troubled mind.
After tossing about for a little while Jameson drifted off to sleep. William had come…William.
He slept until around four in the afternoon. A pounding on his front door and he pulled on his robe and went down the stairs. Through the glass he could see his business manager red of face and about to bang again. He’d ignored his letters demanding money for the cancelled tour. Finally he jerked open the door.
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you.” He barged into the townhouse. “You owe me money. I had to guarantee the tour out of my own pocket.”
“I have given you all I had to give. There is no more of me.”
“It’s not you I want it’s your damn money. You owe me.”
A fury rose up in Jameson and his eyes blazed. “I owe you nothing…leave my house.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you pay me what you owe.”
Jameson snapped. He grabbed him and tore at his throat with his teeth. With a strength he didn’t know he had he held the man’s arms down in a death grip. He struggled against him but Jameson was stronger and he drained him quickly. When he had finished he tossed him aside and shrank away from him into the front parlor.
The scene had not changed when William walked into the hall at 4:45. He stopped and looked down at the man. “Jameson?”
“I’m in here.”
“Get up.”
“I…I…couldn’t help it..I”
“Get…up. Go and dress yourself, make yourself presentable. Afterwards you will dispose of the carcass in the hall.”
Memories from his childhood came to him as he looked up into Williams’s cold white face. “Yes, yes, I will.”
“You are disgusting to me right now. Do as I say.”
Jameson did as he was told carrying the body down to the river and tipping it over into the water. Thumpish went the splash. He watched it until it disappeared. He had a growing fear that William was going to desert him. He’d failed him and disgusted him. Why would he stay?
His steps were heavy leading back to the townhouse. He fully expected to be told what a worthless idiot he was and then he’d be left to his own devices.
“It took you long enough. Morvan has packed your trunk. Is there anything else in the house you want to take with you?”
“Are you going to put me on the street?”
“You fool, I’m taking you home.”
Chapter 3
Throughout the drive north, Jameson’s story came out in detail. He kept nothing back for he knew it would do him no good in the end. He confessed his sins to William. William was mostly silent and listening.
Without being told, Morvan pulled up in several villages as they passed. They had to hunt. It gave Jameson a feeling of joy to be hunting with William again. He tried to conceal it for William had not yet shown him any warmth.
For two days he reveled in the freedom of Cornagaugh. He slept when he wanted and roamed the house and land. Morvan had taken food along the way for him and he cooked his own eggs and fed himself. He came in at dusk one day to find William in the music room with his violin. He avoided the piano and sat down on the settee. When William finished he asked Jameson if he’d like to play it back to him.
“No, I’d probably miss a note. You know I could never stand that.”
“You’ve lost your confidence.”
“Along with everything else.”
“You only lost what you wanted to lose. Else you would have fought a little harder. Are you totally without funds now?”
“No, I’m not. I have gold concealed in my trunk.”
“Why did you not pay your creditors?”
“They were like vultures circling around me. Pecking me to death. Leeches living off of me. Damn them all to hell. I took my money out of the bank so they could not get at it.”
“So, you are through with London.”
“London is through with me.”
“What do you propose to do with yourself?”
“I don’t know. If you’ll allow me to stay here for a while I’ll get myself together again and be out of you way.”
William frowned a little and set his violin back in its case. “You are not in my way. I’m glad for your company. You may well be the only company I have now since you have blackened my name in London. I should have never given you my name. A moment of weakness and sentimentality.”
Jameson covered his face and leaned on his knees.
“I fancied myself married with a child. Something I’d never had in my life and never hoped for. Elena would have eventually died anyway. You only hastened her death.”
“You’ve never forgiven me for that, have you?”
“It was not your fault. It was my own. I made you what you are. Only I hadn’t reckoned on what to do with you when she would die. You called me Dada and you had my heart. I look at you now and I do not see that child that clung to me in this very room. You are not the young fresh thing that I took to London and launched. You have lived, loved and suffered, you have grown into a man.”
“Not much of one. I’ve brought you shame.”
“Only if I accept it. There are not many men who have risen to the heights that you have. You had the world in the palm of your hand. How proud of you I was. How beautiful and elegant you were. None could touch you, Jameson. You had a gift like no other . You dazzled me with it in Venice.”
“It’s all past .” Jameson’s eyes stung.
“It can be again…all of it if you want it bad enough.”
“I would love to make you proud of me again. I’ve sunk so low I can’t play anymore. The music that used to come to me has stopped. The gift is gone.”
“It will come back to you.” He sat down on the settee beside of Jameson.
Jameson looked up into his eyes. He felt a strange pull and even leaned toward him. William broke eye contact and looked away toward the fire.
“Do you think it cold in here?”
“No.”
“You’re very warm.”
Jameson held his breath. Oh, would he turn back to him?
“You’ve known me all your life as I’ve known you. You think you know me but you do not. I am not your father. I am your guide, your mentor. You need it, Jameson. You were never meant to be alone. I failed you in that respect. I will not fail you now. “
He turned back to Jameson and locked eyes with him. “I love you as you are and I do not know what you will become. Do you love me Jameson?”
“Yes, yes, William, I love you.”
“Not as a child.”
“No, no, it’s always been you I loved.”
William kissed him on the mouth. Jameson felt his hands untying his neck cloth.
“Do not be afraid.”
“I’m not.” He was trembling but not with fear.
His shirt was pulled apart and over his shoulders. For a moment William breathed in his blood scent, tasted his salty skin. He was in a state of excitement. His teeth sank into Jameson’s neck easily. Jameson leaned his head back and closed his eyes. It was like nothing he’d ever experienced. Ecstasy beyond ecstasy. He thought surely he would swoon and William’s lips closed over his again. He could taste his own blood.
William discarded his own neck cloth and opened his shirt. He pressed Jameson’s face to his neck. He let him drink and then kissed him again. Jameson felt his body contract in pain but it was only a brief cramping feeling and then the ultimate release. William was at his neck again. He wanted it to go on forever. He sought William’s vein as he’d once sought his mother’s nipple.
It was done. William held him in his arms. He licked his neck clean of blood and looked up at Morvan who’d come into the room.
“He sleeps, my lord?”
“Yes.” He ran his hand over Jameson’s face and kissed him. “It was time.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“I don’t know what we’ll have when he wakes.” He rocked him slightly.
“Would you like for me to take him?”
“There on the sofa where we can watch over him.”
Morvan took him from his arms and laid him on the sofa. “A handsome lad.”
William rose and left the room. He went outside and looked up at the moon. He became emotional and let his tears fall dripping blood on his white shirt. He ran from the house all the way down to the pond and there he washed the bloody tears from his face. He was gone for some time trying to reconcile what he ‘d done. When he returned to the house he was damp with the night air and his hair had curled around his face.
He came back into the music room. Morvan was standing by the sofa and Jameson was sitting up. He went to him and down on his knees.
“Jameson, how do you feel?”
“Cold…and thirsty.”
“Do you want to hunt?”
“I’m not sure…I’m a little weakish.”
“Will you drink from me?”
“I think…a glass of water.”
William looked up at Morvan.
Morvan laid a hand on his forehead and his eyes widened. “He’s warm…it didn’t work.”
“Look at me, Jameson.” Their eyes met each reflecting the love they felt for each other. “You didn’t die.”
“I’m reborn.”
“No, I mean your body didn’t die.”
“William, I’m as dead as I’ll ever be.” Jameson smiled and reached for William’s hands. “I would like a glass of water.”