Page 44 of Surface Scratch
“Why did they?” Caleb asked.
Marcus sighed as he poured another full glass of red liquid, smelling of both copper and strong wine. “There was another one of us, much older, named Soloman. He ran a blood donation center under the guise of one of those national companies, the one with the cross on it, and he ran it well. There was enough surplus that I opened the Members Only area of the club for those of us passing through. Vincent did something similar for his club, and it seemed like everything was fine, but Soloman fucked up the whole thing by trialing and scrapping too many humans too close together.”
“Trialing?” Caleb repeated, his eyebrows chasing his hairline. Maybe it was the alcohol, but the word wasn’t translating to anything he could make sense of in his head. Then again, the thought of a fake blood donation center for the sole use of vampires should bother him as well, but it barely registered as a concern in his mind. He was instead very aware of how hot his skin felt and the sudden desire to roll a breakfast sausage up in a pancake and eat it.
Marcus took another long drink from his glass like he was swallowing his doubts. “It’s something us old ones did. Something unpleasant.” He grimaced.
The pain in his voice made Caleb stop in the middle of completing his plan with the sausage pancake-roll. “Will you tell me?” His own voice sounded strange to him. Determined.Oh, I’m getting tipsy again. That’s why. I guess I can roll with it.“I really do want to know.”
Marcus looked away from him, his concern written across his face. “Back before blood donation was commonplace, we needed ways to protect ourselves while not starving into madness. There are two ways to go about this. Go out and find someone no one will miss to feed on when you cannot tolerate the hunger anymore, or find a constant willing source. And the old ones believe if there is no willing source, you make one. You know about each of us having an ability?”
Caleb nodded.
“The old ones believe that ability is specifically granted to us to lure in prey. Whatever it is, you use it to capture someone and put them through a trialing. Some take a gentle approach, but more often than not, it’s days if not weeks of torment and torture until they break and agree to do whatever you want.” Marcus’s amber eyes stared off into the dimly lit kitchen, his look seeming even farther away and wistful. “The beast in here”—he pointed to his chest—“it likes seeing others in pain, so the process comes to all of us easily. Occasionally, someone would get someone strong-headed who wouldn’t break, or they would lose their temper and scrap them—kill them.
“Soloman was an old man when he was turned, and he was loath to embrace change. He ran the blood bank but never once used it. He preferred to have a trial. And he picked the wrong young woman for trialing. She refused to break, and was related to a long line of hunters,” He shook his head. “He’d already burned through five at that point, and I think taking a descendant of hunters was entertaining for him. Within a week of her body being found, the Daylight Society set up in town and started killing us. It didn’t matter to them if their targets participated in trialing or not. Being one of us or associated with us was the only thing they needed to decide who lived and died.
“We tried to reason with them. We gave them Soloman, but even after they bled him dry and left him to burn, they still came for us. We offered to leave town for good, but they wouldn’t agree. They wanted all of us dead.” He finished another glass, still staring off into the void of the kitchen. “They took every human associated with those of us that lived here to lure us into a trap. Friends, lovers, trials—everyone. The initial plan after that was just to get them back and run. We were going to let them drive us out, but by the time we had figured out where they were hiding everyone… they were dead.” Marcus buried his face in his hands.
Caleb dropped the food he was eating and put his arms around Marcus, resting his cheek against his shaking shoulder. Even with the haze of the alcohol and the concerns about what sort of things a ‘trial’ was put through, his heart ached at the sound of Marcus’s usually calm voice thick with grief. “You did what you could,” he said, feeling his own sadness beginning to rise.
“Not one of us left that building without spilling blood. None of our loved ones got a proper burial. I thought I had seen the darkness of humanity during the great wars, but when Vincent found the child—” Marcus let out a shaky breath, like he was trying to keep himself from crying. His voice faltered, his shoulders stiff. “Shit, I’ve had too much blood-wine. This is not my business to tell.”
Caleb tightened his grip. “Please tell me. I won’t say anything to him,” he implored. “I feel like I’m finally getting a better understanding about this. Please. I promise I won’t say a word to anyone.”
Marcus moved his hands from his face and ran his fingers through his hair to draw the loose strands away from his eyes, his sclera enveloped in black. “People like the ones in the Society don’t think we feel, but they’re wrong. We do feel, we just don’t really have an ability to temper our emotions. Each one is felt to its full extreme whether we want to or not. So when Vincent took a young man for trialing and fell in love with him, he fell hard and fast, and his trial fell in love with him. Even I couldn’t believe it when it happened, but he had found someone willing to feed him and entertain our peculiar… appetites.” Marcus slumped back into the couch. He patted Caleb’s shoulder, prompting him to break the embrace for a moment.
Caleb sat up as Marcus adjusted, twisting his body and leaning back against the arm of the couch. He positioned his legs on either side of Caleb’s body and patted his chest, silently motioning for Caleb to embrace him again. He scooted back and nestled himself between Marcus’s legs, leaning back until his head rested on Marcus’s chest, feeling a slow heartbeat gently bumping against his scalp.
This is it. This is what you have been missing your entire life.Caleb bit back the contented sigh that rose in his chest as Marcus’s long fingers raked through his curls, somehow heightening the sensations and making him want to close his eyes. An impossibly intimate closeness filled the hole he’d felt in his chest for years but could never put a name to.
“His lover was a single dad with a very shy toddler, a boy, and he became a part of our family. For those six months, Vincent was happy. Still violent and a right asshole, but happy. The Society ruined that. That little boy didn’t deserve what happened to him. They burned him alive in front of his father.”
Caleb felt his eyes fill with tears and he gripped Marcus’s arm where it draped over his chest with both hands. A lump formed in his throat. It just seemed so anathema to their mission for a group of people determined to ‘save’ people from vampires like Marcus to do something so obscenely cruel. Even though Tariq described them as zealots, it was unfathomable that that was the next logical conclusion for them.
Marcus tugged on Caleb’s curls gently, pulling his head back to plant a kiss on his forehead. “I’m sorry, this is terrible date conversation. I’m feeling aimlessly nostalgic after talking to Vincent,” he said softly.
“So Adam is his trial? He went through that process?” Caleb asked.
“It seems it started that way, yes, but Vincent is romantic at heart, so things have changed,” Marcus said. “He agreed to help us because he doesn’t want it to happen again. I couldn’t get him to admit it, but he’s smitten with your former classmate.”
Marcus’s words seemed to hover in the air between them, the silence deafening.
Caleb traced a finger along the muscles in Marcus’s forearms. “I know I’m not as strong as you guys, or as fast, and I can’t make people cripplingly horny or high by touching them, but I want to help stop them any way I can,” he said, tilting his head up so he could see Marcus’s face. His eyes were still black, but he didn’t look as distressed as before. “They attacked me too.”
Strong arms wrapped around him in a tight embrace. “I will respect your wish to help, and I won’t interfere, but at the first sign of danger, I will lock you in the wine cellar so they can’t get to you,” Marcus warned, seeming like he was only half joking. “I saw that you could handle yourself that night, but still, I don’t want to risk them getting that close again, even if they are far less coordinated and weaker than the last time we went up against them.”
Huh, so there is a wine cellar.
Marcus sighed. “You have to promise to be safe. I can’t lose you.”
“I will be, but you have to promise to be safe too,” Caleb said, pressing his lips to Marcus’s forearm. “I can’t lose you either. I lo—” He snapped his mouth shut before the rest of the words came out of his mouth.
Damn Long Island iced tea. You’re supposed to wait until after a third date for that kind of declaration. Or, wait… was that for sex? What did that article online say? Shit, I don’t know if any of it applies anymore since the guy I’m seeing is a two-hundred-year-old vampire. Shit.
Caleb shifted on the couch until he was partially on his side, settling with his head resting on Marcus’s shoulder and his hand running along the scruff that shadowed his fine jawline. Even with his eyes still engulfed in darkness, Caleb marveled at how beautiful he was.
He traced the creases in Marcus’s dress shirt over his chest, the chill from his skin permeating through the material and cooling his fingertips. He hadn’t had the opportunity to see Marcus without a shirt on, but from what he could feel with just that touch, he was definitely in shape. His fingers itched to pull open the buttons that kept their skin apart, but that was just one of the many lustful impulses he’d resisted acting on since the first time they kissed. Maybe there was still some lingering hint of Vincent’s ability trapped in his subconscious. Or maybe it was the alcohol.
