Immortality

***
Twenty-Two

The door opened slowly and Gabriel stared at it with a sort of halting expectation. It wasn’t a feeling that he could explain and he couldn’t say that he cared to; he just sat back restlessly in bed and felt his skin tingle with anticipation. He didn’t have to ask who he’d see. Soon Dracula was standing in the doorway, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

The door swept shut and absently he registered the sound of a key in the lock an a b a bar being slipped back into place. Perhaps before that would have meant something to him, had he been planning an escape, and he wondered briefly why he had no plan. Still, that was of no importance, not now, not when Dracula was standing there watching him from his place by the door.

He was wearing black, as it seemed he always did – high black leather boots over black trousers, a high-necked black shirt under a well-tailored black jacket. He had that silver ring on his finger and his long hair was, as usual, caught up behind his head, just a few errant strands falling across his forehead. The flickering light of the flaming torches – so much more dramatic there than mere lamps – made his dark eyes seem to dance, and spread shadows across his pale face. Then he inclined his head slightly in greeting, his lips quirking in a small smile. Gabriel found himself smiling in return, and that in turn brightened Dracula’s smile.

“You are no longer frightened,” he said, just a little surprised and obviously rather pleased.

“I never was.”

He nodded, conceding the point. “No, no I do not suppose that you were ever *really* frightened. Perhaps I should have said ‘appalled’, ‘disgusted’, ‘overflowing with hatred’, no?” He smirked to himself and began to step forward, so slowly, languidly, that the soles of his boots made no sound against the stones of the floor. “But whatever it was that you felt for me before this, you no longer feel it.”

Gabriel found himself shaking his head. “No,” he said, “I don’t.”

“I am glad.”

Dracula was now by the foot of the bed; his hands came to rest on the board there, his long fingers playing at the carved wood. He leant down slightly, his lips just barely parted and his gaze intent though somehow Gabriel knew that its intensity had several more yet hidden levels. “How do you… feel?” he asked, standing back suddenly. “Are you tired? Dear Dorian tells me that you have been feeling rather weak today.”

“I feel fine.” Gabriel frowned as he spoke; the words had come without thinking, and he found with an experimental twitch of his limbs that what he’d said was true. That was strange, when he’d felt so very drained.

“Then why are you still in bed?” The count tilted his head very slightly.

That was a very good question. “I don’t know,” he said, still frowning, and cast back the sheets, sat up, twisting to bring his feet to the floor. The stones were cold against his bare feet and the air he knew was warm felt vaguely chilly over his bare torso, but heoredored the sensations as he stood. He was wearing only his trousers and belt but felt oddly comfortable dressed that way, every as he saw and felt Dracula’s gaze run over him.

“Perhaps you would care for some refreshment?” The count gestured to the table by the covered window, and Gabriel went to it, passing close enough by the count to feel the cloth of his jacket against one bare arm. He took a seat and helped himself to a glass of wine, then took a small sip. He should have been hungry but he found he had absolutely no appetite. Instead of eating he watched as Dracula pulled back the second chair from the table and then sat down.

“You are not eating?”

“I’m not hungry.”

Dracula smiled, showing a brief flash of white teeth that made Gabriel shiver. “Of course you are not, I should have known. There is nothing on the table that will tempt you. But perhaps…” He folded his hands on his lap and tilted back his head, glancing up at the ceiling for a moment before fixing Gabriel in his gaze once more. “Perhaps there is *something* for which you have an appetite
It
It was *such* a line. Ordinarily Gabriel would have laughed, but coming from him it seemed different, darker and vastly more suggestive. It was his voice that made the difference, with its darkness, a strange velvet allure that wove deftly through his mind and held him there, captive. He had somehow regained his strength but still he remained helpless. The verdestdest thing about it was that he quite simply did not care.

“Perhaps,” he said, and Dracula nodded.

“Yes. But do take a drink.”

So Gabriel lifted the glass again, rested the rim against his teeth for a moment, let the wine brush against his lips, and then drank. He drank, as Dracula moved with that preternatural swiftness and fluidity, tasting the sweetness as he’d never tasted it, feeling Dracula’s palms brush over his bare shoulders.

“Won’t you take a drink?” he asked, replacing his glass on the table with one hand as he brushed back his long hair from his neck with the other. He could feel that what he was suggesting was so very, deeply wrong, and understood that somehow he was under Dracula’s control. He should have been infuriated by the knowledge, but he could not quite seem to muster the enthusiasm for that. He was himself but not himself, and could not quite find it in him to hold back.

Dracula’s fingertips brushed over his neck for a second, but then moved off and skirted along his collarbone. “No, not yet,” he said. “Though it is a most tempting offer, I must tell you.” His hands left Gabriel’s shoulders and he began to move away, this time his heels clicking loudly against the floor. Gabriel turned in his seat to watch him, hooking his arm over the back of the chair. He felt strangely awkward there in Dracula’s presence in a way he’d never really felt before; he watched as he moved, with such ease and grace and effortless dignity, and felt that he was monstrous in comparison. He was too bulky with all his musculature and his height, ungainly in his movements.

Then he stood, slowly. He couldn’t help himself – he was unable to do anything else. He wiped his hands down over his hips as he stood there, watching the count who now stood perfectly still, his arms by his sides, the line of him perfectly symmetrical. He knew that there was something ste, se, something not quite natural about the stillness of that body, and knew that it was death he saw in him. He was so unnaturally still that he might as well have been a corpse. Gabriel wondered if that was not exactly what he was.

Then Dracula spun on his heel and in a flash, a swirl of black cloth and long, dark hair, they were facing each other; Gabriel’s skin crawled as Dracula stepped closer, his right hand reaching for the first small button by his collar.

“I have something to show you,” said the count, pressing open that first button. Gabriel frowned but found that he could not look away; he wasn’t sure that he wanted to, either, which was most probably what made the task impossible. Dracula continued, pulling open the second button, the third, until his jacket hung open and he pulled it off, tossing it to the floor. Then he tugged apart the ties at the neck of his shirt, revealing the pale flesh underneath along with a twinkle of silver.

There was a moment, just a moment, where Gabriel could do nothing but stare. They stood there, not six feet from each other in the small, dark room, and Gabriel stared, stricken. “What is that?” he questioned with much more confidence than he actually felt, motioning with one hand to the silver thing that hung there glinting in the torchlight, around the neck of the count.

“This?” Dracula said, touching his fingers to it briefly with a strange sort of almost-reverence. “It is what I wished to show you. It is yours.”

Gabriel blinked slowly and then stepped forward, reaching up to touch the thing that was hanging on the chain around Dracula’s neck. He lifted it away from his body, his fingertips touching against the cold skin as he did so, and then he looked at it; how he hadn’t noticed before was beyond him then as he saw it was a ring, almost a perfect match for the one he’d worn for so long, that he now knew belonged to Dracula. It was made of solid silver and bore the same emblem, but was just a touch smaller, just a touch less worn. He wondered if Dracula had worn it there against his chest and his unbeating heart for all those years or if it was just another part of the game, designed to trick him into believing in a past that could quite simply not be true. He had no way of knowing.

Dracula pulled off the chain, slipping it from about his neck and over his dark hair, then undid the clasp and slipped off the ring; he threw the chain down, onto his jacket at the foot of the bed, and held out the ring on the palm of his hand. “Take it,” he said, and so Gabriel did, plucking it from his hand with his fingertips. He slipped it onto his little finger and looked at it, rubbed the pad of his thumb over the raised emblem on it, then looked back up at Dracula. Dracula smiled.

“You see now, don’t you?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied, but looking at at the ring that fit so perfectly there on his little finger, he wasn’t sure that he could truthfully say that he didn’t.

“Then allow me to convince you.” Gabriel suspected that it would not take much to convince him, not that he was entirely sure what he was to be convinced *of*. “There are things that I could do that would perhaps refresh your memory.” And in spite of his better judgement, Gabriel knew that was what he wanted. He didn’t even flinch as Dracula moved closer and slipped one cold hand to the back of his neck. He didn’t move an inch as Dracula brought their foreheads down to rest together. He just closed his eyes, the darkness strangely fitting.

“We were so close, Gabriel, you and I,” said the count, lowly. “For a while my brides were a comfort to me in your absence, and I dared to believe that I could continue to… live, without you.” He brushed the pad of one thumb over Gabriel’s cheekbone, and he shivered. “Now I have no brides, but here you are. We two should always be close, Gabriel. I thought that I could kill you and be done with it, but I had deceived myself. I…”

“Don’t.”

Dracula frowned, moving back a step to look into Gabriel’s eyes. “Don’t?”

“Don’t say it. Don’t say anything else. Just…”

Then the look on Dracula’s face changed; suddenly Gabriel felt laid bare before him, that Dracula could see right down to his soul, that he knew and understood him completely in that moment. He saw that he was powerless against him, wondered why it had not been so before and then decided that the explanations were wholly unimportant. How could Dracula look at him that way f they had never known each other? Perhaps it was all true – perhaps four hundred years ago he’d killed his best friend, just as Dracula and Abraham had told him. That ring, those rings, with the mark of their order… they told him it was true. That strange nagging prickle of familiarity he felt at Dracula’s touch… that told him it was real. But he didn’t remember.

The next touch and the kiss that followed it were cold and made him shiver bodily, as though the heat was being leeched from his every cell in one dizzying, hypnotic swirl. He had to bring up his hands to clutch ad Dracula’s shoulders just to keep himself from falling, though that was merely in the physical sense. Inside he felt chaos, curling tendrils of black shadow that plucked at his nerves and vivid dashes of red, clawing him down still er. er. It was all in that kiss, in a fragment of one moment that made his head spin and his soul ache as every moment that had passed before weighed down on him in their vague nonsense forms and cracked him into pieces. But all of that crumbled away, collected like rubble at his feet. Soon all that was left was the kiss.

And then they moved. They shifted closer to each other, ‘til Gabriel’s cooling body fit against the count, whose fingers were tangled in his hair. The kiss deepened and Dracula’s hands dropped to rake his fingernails down over Gabriel’s bare chest. As Gabriel’s eyes closed he moved back, was moved back, and he felt the side of the bed strike at his calves; he sat down, pulling reluctantly from that soul-deep kiss, sustained only by the knowledge or the hope of what was to follow.

He twisted, hoisting himself up the bed as he watched as Dracula pulled his shirt up over his head and discarded it by the foot of the bed. He worried the bed sheets with his fingernails as he watched Dracula pull off his high boots and stand barefoot on the stone floor. He almost shook as Dracula knelt on the side of the bed and then crawled up to him, over him, like an animal with sharp predator’s eyes. It was a look he knew, from a time and a place that he could not quite recall. It was all so vague but somehow closer than it had ever been as Dracula leant down and took his lips again. It was so close, just there behind his eyes, like a world glimpsed through water that vanishes at touch.

Then his tongue touched on Dracula’s long canines and the moment shattered. He forgot. And a strange new intensity flooded into him, just knowing who and what it was above him.

He yanked the clip from Dracula’s hair and tossed it to the floor where it fell with a clatter; the count’s hair fell forward as he sat back and smiled, showing those sharp teeth. He was kneeling there on the bed between Gabriel’s spread thighs, his hands on his own, his long black hair brushing down over his cheekbones, down onto his shoulders. He was so pale. It was like there was no blood in him at all.

Then he slid his hands up, over Gabriel’s thighs, to the buckle at his waist. With fluid, languid motions he undid it, pulled it from the loops with a deft flick of his wrist and tossed it the way of the hairclip. Gabriel’s breath hitched as Dracula’s hands went to the buttons of his trousers, but even had he trusted himself to speak he wouldn’t have told him no. Instead he batted his hands away and undid the buttons himself, shifted just enough to pull off that last item of his clothing, then moved back into position.

What happened next was rather a blur, so fast that he couldn’t quite follow, but when Dracula leaned down above him once more they were both naked from head to toe, only the rings on their fingers remaining. Gabriel gasped at the sudden cold of Dracu ski skin against him, at the weight pressing down on him, at the incipient hardness he felt there brushing against his own. They kissed again and his head swam with it, swirling, the agony of his broken life welling up in a kind of brutal, reverent joy somewhere in a hollow behind his eyes, ‘til he could almost have cried out. Then Dracula pulled away and all of that ebbed away, leaving him wondering if he’d even felt it at all, even as he ached to feel it again.

“I have missed you,” Dracula said, and Gabriel couldn’t doubt it. Dracula’s hands were on him and he felt as if he’d been there before, though that could not have been true. Dracula pushed his legs apart, and the diamond-sharp scratch of nails against the back of the thighs was like something he’d felt a thousand times before. Intangible, formless but silver-bladed memories cut him wide open as Dracula thrust deep inside him. It was not the physical pain that made him cry out loud.

He clutched desperately at Dracula’s forearms, an icy burn inside him that somehow he knew meant that they’d been bound together from the start. He couldn’t let go. Dracula thrust harder. The pain was nothing; the pain was everything; his muscles clenched and seized and his sight came then only in glimpses, through his half-closed eyes. He saw white skin, black hair, dead eyes that devoured him alive and left him bleeding. He saw fire and felt it through the chill. And as everything he knew, everything he was and might be came raining down in one fabulous ice-sharp mirror-shard downpour, he saw his own blood even before the bite.

He came, and so did Dracula, as his blood sprang out from the wound in his neck, almost prematurely, as if it welcomed the release. He clutched at Dracula’s shoulders, might even have drawn blood himself, but he had no intention of stopping it. He wanted it. Because in that moment, in Dracula’s embrace in the aftermath of what hone one before, he saw it. He saw it clearly as he’d ever seen. He remembered the day that he’d murdered his best friend.

Dracula moved, settled down beside him and pulled the blanket up over them both, but Gabriel barely even noticed and didn’t say a word. He knew that he’d forget it just as surely as he knew his name, but in that moment he saw. It was true. He was a murderer after all. Perhaps it was all that he’d ever been.

They lay together in silence, unmoving, until Dracula’s hand snaked up over Gabriel’s chest, over his collarbone, to the punctures at his throat. He should have shuddered but his body didn’t seem to understand. He should have been repulsed, but he craved the touch. He longed for the chaos of his kiss.

“I won’t let you leave again, Gabriel,” Dracula told him, his voice right by his ear.

He didn’t reply, but he knew that he was going nowhere. And when they kissed again, amidst the dark and swirling, clawing chaos of their passion, he tasted his own blood on his dead lover’s lips.

***