The Vampire’s Kiss
by Atonia
Chapter 1
Jameson Cornith, newly made vampire, walked along the garden at Cornagaugh. William and Morvan had never seen anything like him. He was still a hybrid. It had taken three days for him to come to himself, his new self. He no longer needed food to sustain him, but he did occasionally drink water. His body temperature still had not regulated itself. He was blood warm to the touch but often felt chilled. His body was burning blood for fuel. His bowels and bladder had cleansed themselves and William had told him he may come not to need water at all. The sun felt good on his face out in the garden in the early morn. He would have to retreat indoors when it reached its zenith at noon or be blinded. All these things he had to learn on his own. He was still finding his way.
He did not sleep but passed into a kind of twilight, and this could happen at any time it was convenient for him. He usually went down from noon until around four pm. He had more or less adapted the same hours as William. Unlike William, he did not feel the need to hide himself away in a crypt. He kept his old rooms and managed to close the shutters outside the window and pull his drapes during mid-day.
William. At first he wasn’t sure what kind of a relationship he would have with him. He’d only known one other vampire and that had been Stephen Bonner. The making of him had been an intimate experience with William. He would gladly give William leave to have him anyway he wanted him. But William did not approach him in that manner. They did often kiss in greeting but nothing more. Instead there seemed to be an easy companionship forming between them. He no longer looked at William as a father figure, for in truth there was only three years difference in their ages. William had over a hundred years of experience behind him and had set himself as Jameson’s mentor and guide.
Jameson built a fire in the great hall. It was the usual room where they would gather when William would rise and join him. Since he was the first up he’d relieved Morvan of the task.
“How has your day been?” William asked coming quietly into the hall.
Jameson turned from the fire. William always appeared pale when he rose and would so until the hunt. Even pale Jameson was struck by his beauty. How had he never noticed it before? If he had it hadn’t registered with him. He was becoming reacquainted with William but in a different light.
“Pretty much uneventful. I slept most of the day. I found a nest of robins this morning in the hawthorn. I heard them and traced their scent. There was a fox down by the pond.”
William smiled, “A nature lover.”
“I don’t think I ever paid mind to it before. At least not since I was a child.”
“Cornagaugh brings back memories for you.” William joined him by the fire.
Jameson leaned over and kissed him. “I have many memories here.”
“Your lips are warm.” William turned and poked the fire a little. “A warm bodied vampire.”
“Am I truly made?”
“I believe you are. You will not age…your beauty will not diminish.” He placed a hand on Jameson’s cheek. “You do not have to shave your face ever again.”
“I don’t mind losing that.” Jameson chuckled.
“What do you mind losing?”
“Food…I loved a cup of tea.”
“You don’t hunger for it?”
“No, no, I don’t. I threw out the rest of the food this morning. The smell of it near sickened me.”
“What do you hunger for?”
Jameson shifted and looked down at the rug. He hungered for William, for what he’d experienced when William first sank his teeth into his neck. He couldn’t bring himself to tell him.
“For life’s elixir. Where will we go tonight?”
“A small village not too far from here. I will show you something tonight.”
Jameson was intrigued.
Concealed in a copse of trees William summoned a young woman from the cottage. Jameson watched as he took her in his arms as a lover might and drank from her. He looked up at Jameson and waved him over. “Don’t kill her.”
William watched him to make sure he did not. “Enough.” He took the woman from him and sent her back inside the cottage.
“Was it not sweet?”
“Yes, William, it was.”
He taught Jameson to summon victims from their beds as they roamed the countryside. They ended the hunt by taking their pleasure with a victim before William allowed Jameson to kill. Jameson was more than ready for the encounter. It was the way they would hunt together, sharing.
When they arrived back at Cornagaugh Jameson took note of the stable lad. “Did you make him?” he asked as they walked toward the house.
“Morvan made him.”
“How many vampires have you made?” Jameson was curious.
“Only you.”
Jameson smiled to himself. He was glad he’d been the only one. “How well did you know Bonner?”
“Well enough.” William opened the door. “I do not feel the need to increase our kind.”
“I near begged him to make me.”
“No doubt you tortured him. He would not because he knew you were mine. There is some honor among our kind. I trusted him and he did not fail me.”
Morvan took their cloaks. He’d lighted candles in the music room and a warm fire. Jameson went to the fireplace and William sat down at the piano and began to play.
“Now you torture me,” Jameson said.
William looked up at him his eyes glittering sapphire in the candlelight. “I will teach you to read and write music. Years ago you scoffed and dismissed me when I made the suggestion. Perhaps now it becomes important.”
“I’m open to anything…you can teach me.” His words came out with more passion than he had intended.
William lifted his chin and considered him for a moment while his fingers played across the keys. Jameson was in love with him. He had suspected it. He’d always been filled with passion and had channeled it on the keyboard. He hoped he might open that channel again for him.
“Come and play with me.”
Jameson pulled up another stool and played left handed to William’s right. “Brahms.”
Soon Jameson’s right hand played the notes on his thigh. He became impatient with William’s style of playing. William rested his hand in his lap and let Jameson play.
“You play it as it should be played.” William quietly withdrew from the piano and walked to the fire. He smiled watching Jameson play with his eyes closed feeling each movement. It was all there inside of him ready to be unlocked again. They just had to find the key.
They returned again and again to the same cottage. William had become attached to the young woman. He still offered to share her but Jameson backed away and let him have her. While William took his pleasure, Jameson wandered around in the garden. He thought William soft and easy to please. In all his life he had yet to meet a woman whether she lay beneath him or in society that sparked him. They came after him for his looks and his reputation, his celebrity, not for the man he was. But, he mused, he kept his innermost self hidden. Had they known the beast that lay hidden they would have fled.
He looked up toward the window of the room where William lay with her. It was not so for William. Whether he charmed them or seduced them he didn’t know but William was not afraid of revealing his true nature. ”Who would refuse him? Not I.”
He was filled with restlessness and longing that could not be fulfilled. He mounted his horse and rode out cutting across the moor. The moon was full casting a luminescence over the landscape of gently rolling hills and casting long dark shadows along the hedges and stone fences. He came across a dead sheep with its throat torn open. Wolves? Were there wolves about? Before he had time to contemplate further he sensed a presence and at that same instant he was dragged from his horse.
William stood in his stirrups just off the road trying to sense Jameson’s presence. Why had he left? He rode out a little on the moor and heard what he thought was Jameson’s horse. He sped toward the sounds. His senses keen and alerted it didn’t take him long to come upon the two figures rolling about on the ground locked in a desperate struggle. He attacked.
Jameson rolled away and came to his knees. “William!” Half running and falling he reached them and with great strength hurled the vampire from William, forced him on the ground and tore his throat apart. William was badly injured. He gathered him up and carried him to his horse. Holding him tightly in front of him he whistled for Williams’s horse to follow and he raced back to Cornagaugh.
Morvan stripped William to his waist and began cleaning his wounds. He had a nasty bite on his shoulder and deep scratches across his chest. He’d lost a lot of blood and lay pale on the kitchen table where Morvan had set up.
“I will see to you in a moment, Jameson.”
“Do not mind me I am only mauled about.” He was bloody from scratches.
“They are horrid creatures, more animal than man. You should have been warned about the moors.” Morvan was wrapping a bandage carefully around William’s shoulder.
“I may have been at some time. I didn’t think tonight of danger.” He hung his head.
“Now, let’s see to you.” Morvan addressed his wounds.
“Will he be all right?”
“In time his scars will fade as will yours. You are not too badly cut up.”
“He’s lost a lot of blood, see how pale he is.”
“He needs to drink. I will accommodate him shortly.”
“No…let me.”
“Very well.” Morvan finished tying a bandage around Jameson’s bicep.
Jameson carried William to the music room and sat down with him on the sofa. “I am so sorry.” He kissed his forehead.
William opened his eyes. “Are you-?”
“I am all right. Please…drink from me. You’ve…bled.”
William shifted slightly in Jameson’s arms and bit into his neck.
Does he know what pleasure he gives me? His arms tightened around William.
Morvan brought a blanket and tucked it around them. “Do not let him drink too much or you will be on the floor.” He left them after building up the fire.
Jameson would have let him drink for as long as he wished but William pulled back and drew his head down and kissed him on the mouth.
“Thank you, Jameson.”
Jameson buried his face in William’s hair for a moment. “Will you be all right…say you will?”
“I will be fine. I’m tired and would like to rest for awhile.”
Jameson shifted him bringing a pillow under his head. He covered him with the blanket. Having gotten him settled he ran upstairs to his room and changed his clothes. He tossed his filthy ripped clothing in the fireplace and came back downstairs. William was as he’d left him.
He was so full…full of the violence of the night and of William. He’d almost caused him great harm. Perhaps even death…could he die? He looked over at him wrapped in the blanket. William had come to his rescue again. His eyes were wet with bloody tears. With no other recourse for his emotions he sat down at the piano and began to play. He began with Mozart and soon launched into something else. He wasn’t even aware of what he was doing.
Morvan had quietly come to the door.
William raised himself on the sofa. For a young man who found it difficult to articulate his feelings there was no doubt where his heart and mind were. William could hear the fear, the strong emotion, and the love flow from Jameson’s fingers. He never ceased to amaze him. He glanced over at Morvan who nodded and smiled. Jameson Cornith was back.
Chapter 2
During the time while William was recovering Jameson hunted alone sometimes at dawn but always at dusk. He was careful to keep himself pumped with blood for he was feeding William until he was strong enough to hunt on his own. Morvan told him it wasn’t necessary but he ignored him. William didn’t seem to mind it.
“I think you grow too fond of this.” William said as he bit into him.
Fond? Jameson considered it an act of love. “Do you not love it?” He whispered as his eyes rolled back. For him it was better than any sexual encounter he’d ever experienced.
William raised up from his neck and pressed Jameson’s to his. “Drink…but this must come to an end.”
Jameson drank from his neck and held him in a lover’s embrace. He didn’t take much, afraid to weaken him further. William kissed him.
“Is this enough for you? You are a strange one, Jameson.”
“You are enough for me.”
“No, no, if you’re going to do it do it right.” William leaned over Jameson and corrected a note.
Jameson frowned and looked at the notes he’d written and went back and played them over. William was teaching him to write his own music down.
“I do not care what you do on stage but you must publish, Jameson. All the great composers have left behind a legacy. You will do the same.”
“But I’m not a composer. I am a performer.”
“You are a performer when you are playing someone else’s composition. Now start again and see how far you go.”
With a sheaf of written compositions in his trunk William took Jameson to Paris. It had been a year since his great success there and he’d dropped out of the public eye. There had been rumors of his death when blood was found on the floorboards of his townhouse. He laughed away the rumors and offered only that he’d retreated to the country to write.
He played with the Paris symphony orchestra and that led to concerts where he played alone on the stage accompanied by a candelabra and a trailing plant against dark red velvet drapes. His music was different, ethereal, other worldly and evoked passion and emotion.
He wore his traditional black velvet with white lace at his wrists and neck. William had given him a heavy gold ring set with rubies that he wore on the little finger of his right hand. He commanded a high price for his talent and the theater owners were glad to pay it for he always played to a full house.
It came back to him quickly, the need for public adoration. William told him he was born for this.
“Which birth would that be?” Jameson asked.
They left the theater one night and William directed the driver in a different direction. “We’ve been invited to a reception.”
“We don’t do receptions.”
“We do this one. I think you will be surprised.”
It was an elegant house that they pulled up to. No shortage of servants here. Jameson looked up at the house and through the open doors into the lighted room filled with people. “Where have you brought me, William?”
Their cloaks were taken and their hostess came to greet them. “I wondered if you’d come.” She looked up at William and then at Jameson giving him an appraising eye. “He’s even more beautiful up close.”
William made the introductions and Jameson was whisked away to be introduced to the rest of the room. At some point she handed him a small wine glass.
“I don’t drink spirits.”
“You’ll drink this.” She smiled revealing her small pointed teeth.
Jameson brought the glass to his lips. It was blood.
He then began to take a closer look at the other guests. Could it be they were all vampires?
He looked around for William and saw him talking to a tall dark haired woman.
“He has not left you, but for now you are mine.” She led him to a piano. “Would you play for me?”
“I’ve just finished a three hour concert.” He sat down and ran his fingers over the keys. “Were you there?”
“We all were there.” She indicated the rest of the room.
He smiled a little and went quiet. The music came to him and he began to play. He looked up at her strange eyes and played for her. He only played for about fifteen minutes but he got a round of applause and bravos from the guests. The hostess, whose name was Vivian, leaned over and kissed him.
Her eyes widened and she kissed him again. “But your lips are warm.”
“I’m strange that way.”
She licked his cheek and shook her head slightly. “Anyway, you are delicious.” She smiled at him.
“Do you see that silly young thing there?”
“She’s human.” Jameson looked up in surprise.
“She belongs to Jacques.”
The possibilities were endless. Jameson looked around the room there were other humans there too and some were men on the arm of vampire women. He’d never been exposed to anything like it.
“Come with me.” She took his hand and led him up a short flight of stairs.
“Won’t you be missed?” Jameson looked back down the stairs and thought of William.
“Not for awhile.” She led him into a bedroom.
He’d never had a vampire woman. She was beautiful with long blond hair and blue eyes that held him trancelike for a minute. She began to unbutton his vest. He obliged her.
They lay down on the bed and she touched the marks on his neck. “He bites you?”
“Yes.” He settled into her and found her lips. As their passion grew he felt her at his neck and he bit her back. It was incredible.
Later while he still lay with her she played with his hair. “I have a chateau out in the countryside. Will you come and stay with me for awhile. I can’t let you go now.”
He wanted to say yes. “I should check with William.”
“Why? He’s coming too he just doesn’t know it yet.”
He rolled over on top of her again. “Then, yes.”
“Why did you never tell me such societies existed?”
“Because, Jameson, your human self wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in there. You’re safe now.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Jameson looked out of the window of the carriage.
William laughed a little. “Vivian and I are old friends. “She had you did she?”
“Yes,” Jameson bit his lip. “She’s invited us to her chateau will we go?”
“I think you’ll like it.” William smiled and took his hand.
The Chateau was another new experience for Jameson. There were numerous guests in and out of rooms. Roaring fires, and the hunting was said to be good. Down underneath the chateau was a hotel for vampires. Many caverns with assorted crypts and caskets. Jameson and William took the complete tour with Vivian.
“You’ve been here before haven’t you…many years ago?”
“Many years, Vivian.” William gave her a kiss. “You were an excellent hostess then as you are now.”
Jameson smiled and suspected William might have been the object of her desire. However, it was without doubt, Jameson who now caught her eye. She kept him close and used him most delightfully.
One morning he saw a young woman not more than seventeen or eighteen down in the garden. She was cutting roses. He was preparing to go to bed and had been out earlier to hunt but she caught his eye. Human…warm. Later that night he asked Vivian about her.
“She is in my employ. Do you want her?”
“Oh…no, I was just curious.”
“Why don’t you take her and use her. Better than hunting.” She shrugged. “There are plenty more where she came from.”
He thought about it and thought about William and how he would return to the same one again and again. He noticed the humans attached to certain vampires. Did they keep them as their own source of drink? The next morning he looked for her again. It was early not yet nine o’clock. He went out into the garden.
“Let me help you with that.” He smiled and his eyes shone in the early light.
She let him take her basket while she continued to cut flowers for the vases that graced all the tables in the great hall. He followed her around making small talk until she smiled at him. He was a most handsome man but she wasn’t sure she should be talking to him. She turned the flowers over to the housekeeper. Jameson kept himself in the recesses of the doorways until she passed and he reached out for her.
He only had to charm her a little for she was willing to go upstairs with him. With help from his powers of persuasion she fell in love with him. He ordered trays of food from the kitchen and fed her by hand. He enjoyed her sexually and drank from her. Afterward she would sleep with him through the day. It seemed a much more civilized way to him.
“You have a girl in your room.”
“Um, yes I do.” Jameson looked William in the eye.
“Do you think that wise?”
“She causes no problems for me.”
“Not for you but what will you do with her when we leave? You hadn’t thought about that had you?”
“I can take her back to Paris with me.”
“You are so easily influenced, Jameson. If you kill her you will have to dispose of her discreetly.”
He hadn’t thought to kill her. “She is a lusty country girl whose blood restores daily.”
“I see you are positively rosy with it.”
“Would you like her? She’s very obliging.”
“No, you keep her. Enjoy her while you may.”
William didn’t share her but Vivian did.
They’d been at the chateau for a month when William confronted him one evening.
“What work have you done?”
“I haven’t been working…I think you are aware of that.”
“I’m very aware. You spend your time in bed.”
“Why else are we here? I’ve been exposed to different things and I find them enjoyable.”
“We are leaving tomorrow. Have you forgotten you have an engagement in Paris?”
He had forgotten the time. His days and nights had passed in a fog of pleasures.
“Well, finish your business here tonight for the coach will be by at dusk tomorrow evening.”
Chapter 3
Vivian cried when he told her he was leaving. “I will have a word with William. He cannot take you away.”
“In truth, I must go. I have a concert and have neglected my music while I’ve been with you.”
She frowned and moved around him. “You must come back, Jameson. I think I have fallen a little in love with you.”
“And I with you.” He pulled her into the circle of his arms and kissed her.
In the coach on the way to Paris. “What did you do with the girl?”
“I gave her to Vivian. She was too good to kill. I was sorry to leave her.”
“She will not last much longer, not the way you’ve been using her.”
“I have been gentle with her as you taught me to be. Are you so angry with me?”
“No, my darling Jameson, but I find I cannot let you off the chain for very long. You have no self-discipline; none at all.”
William became a hard taskmaster for a while, pushing Jameson to get his music published, which he did. They spent a year in Paris before returning to London. William opened the townhouse again and word spread that Jameson Cornith was performing again. His music was already being played in theaters around town. The scandal he left behind him rose again but soon it was forgotten. He was playing better than ever and some said he looked better than ever. There was a quality about him one couldn’t quite pinpoint.
After one of his performances Richard Davies, his old friend who he’d been estranged from, came into his dressing room.
“Richard!” Jameson shook his hand.
“I had to come and see if it was the same Jameson Cornith I used to know. You sound really good.”
“Thank you. How are you? Still married?”
“Oh, yes, got a little girl now. You know, I still have the studio if you’d want to come around.”
“I appreciate that, Richard, but my days are pretty well taken up. Some evening when I’m not playing?”
“Ah, well, my evenings are pretty well taken up. William, nice to see you again.”
William nodded.
“I see, well, it was good to see you again.”
“You too, Jameson. You’ve got an edge to your music now, it’s different…good but its sharper, more defined.”
“Whatever it is it seems to be working.”
“Oh, yes, it’s working.” Richard smiled. “Who is writing your music for you now?”
“I am. I took your advice and learned to write it myself.”
What happened between you and Richard?” William asked after he’d left.
“He got married,” Jameson shrugged. “I lost him. He lost his nights and I’ve lost my days.”
“I wish sometimes I could give you back your days, your sunlight.”
“Don’t wish it…I don’t.” Jameson finished changing from his black velvet suit he’d worn on stage. It had become his trademark, that and the red curtain.
He’d performed in front of many different colored draperies but in Paris it had been red and it seemed to symbolize his life. Divided from humanity by a blood red curtain.
“Is it open house tonight?”
“No, I thought it time to give it a rest.”
“Good, shall we go?” Jameson settled his cloak around his shoulders.
Once they reached the town house, “Are there any societies in London like we met in Paris?”
“I do not seek them out, Jameson; it’s too close to home. You have a reputation to protect here.”
“Am I so special?”
“Yes…you are very special.”
“Am I loved?”
“Of course you’re loved. You will always be loved. What brings this tonight? Was it seeing Richard again?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I feel so very low. I take you from the life you might have had without me. I see how you move through society. I can never be so at ease. You might have a woman to comfort you if not for me.”
“I’ve had women to comfort me and well may again. It is not good to…become attached to one. What kind of a life might I have without you? A very lonely one. You give me purpose. Your successes are my successes, Jameson; I bask in your glow. Do not feel low on my account. You and I are fated to be together forever unless you tire of me.”
“I will never tire of you.”
William sat down on the sofa. “Come to me.”
Jameson looked into his eyes and went to him.
William loosed his neck cloth. “Do you not know you belong to me?” He kissed him and moved to his throat.
This was all Jameson needed. An intimacy that he would never have with anyone else. It was an intimacy born of love. For William had made him a vampire with love. William bared his own throat to Jameson. Jameson was his creation almost from the moment of his birth. He knew him as no one else would ever know him. He loved him, despaired of him, pushed and cajoled him and embraced him. This sharing was their bond.
Long after William sought his crypt, Jameson sat at the piano and played softly. The sun was up now but he didn’t bother to greet it. More and more he preferred darkness and the soft glow of a candle. Whatever demons had plagued him in the night were gone now. William had banished his fears.
He found a sheet of paper and began to put down the music that was coming to him almost in gentle waves. He wrote quickly feeling he must finish the piece before he went up to his room. The candle burnt itself out but chinks of light from the draperies gave him enough light to see. He lost track of time so intent on getting down the last few notes. He played it through from the beginning changing a few things here and there. He was pleased. It was perhaps the greatest thing he’d ever written and he’d composed it for William.
The room had become lighter and he stood up straightening the papers on the piano. An urgency to seek his room came over him. The windows in his room had been boarded up behind the dark red draperies. He ran for the stairs and as he reached the landing a shaft of brilliant sunlight broke through the tall window. It hit him like a bolt of lightning, stunned him…before he burst into flames.
It was Morvan who found the charred remains of the carpet on the landing. William had sent him up to see what was keeping Jameson.
William stood on the landing trying not to comprehend the horrible thing that had happened. He bent down and picked up the gold ring Jameson had worn.
“My lord?” Morvan watched him closely.
William let out an inhuman howl. He slipped the ring on his finger and stumbled back down the stairs and into the room where he’d left Jameson just before dawn. Stacked neatly on the piano was the music Jameson had written. He sat down at the piano and began to play. Soon the notes were unreadable, blurred through a film of bloody tears.
Morvan brought the carriage around and led William out of the townhouse. He took him back to Cornagaugh. William would not hunt and Morvan’s efforts to keep him alive were in vain. William went down into his crypt where he would remain for another hundred years.
Jane Simmons stood in her stirrups and shaded her gray eyes. Was that a rooftop? She thought she had become familiar with the surrounding landscape. She urged her horse forward ducking beneath branches and trailing ivy. Soon the crumbling remains of a great house came into view. Built of gray stone and nearly covered in ivy and honeysuckle. The tower still stood tall against the blue sky. She dismounted and carefully made her way to the heavy doors.
Jane had come over from America to care for her ailing aunt. She was due to inherit the estate and her aunt had requested that she come. Jane was the eldest of four children, all girls, and since she hadn’t found a suitable husband her father was more than agreeable to ship her to England.
She was not one to be content sitting by the fire with needlework. Her efforts were frowned upon by her Aunt Patricia Hammock. Her parents came under heavy disapproval for her upbringing. Given the chance she was on horseback racing across the countryside with her russet hair blowing behind her. She’d been brought up in the Midwest where her father owned a large farm and dairy.
Surprisingly the doors opened without too much difficulty. “Oh,” she exclaimed. It was like stepping into another world. A world frozen in time.
TBC