These introductory comments are for my American readers.
The presidential election is less than a month away. There are only two men who have any chance of winning that election - Al Gore or George Bush. Al is a bit flawed and definitely boring. George has as his senior political advisor Ralph Reed, the cute, friendly, boyish former head of the Christian Coalition (and Pat Robertson's Josef Goebbels).
Al Gore, however, does have the training to step in directly to lead the strongest, longest streak of economic growth that any economy has ever shown. He supports gay/lesbian rights to legal equality. And, so far, we haven't seen him play dirty in this election.
George, on the other hand carries with him the personal support of Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition. We have had the chance to see him turn to the preacher/wannabe fuehrer to pull his nuts out of the fire after his substantial loss in NH (Robertson and the religious right started a rumour campaign against McCain in SC that included telling people that McCain had a bi-racial child ). The Robertson effort was very under the radar and very effective among the less-educated voters who make up his fascist movement and the Republican party in the South.
This election is important on a number of fronts - do you want an economy that continues to grow or one that is thrown back into the grow and burst cycle that Bush's dad and Ronnie the B-movie actor gave us? Do you want up to 3 supreme court judges appointed in the next 4 years who will make decisions on gay rights, women's reproductive rights, guns, hate crime legislation, etc, based on law or on what Pat Robertson says are his conversations with God? Do you want gay acceptance (legal and social) to continue to spread or do you want acceptance that acceptance rejected on the federal level? Do you want federal officials appointed who are favourable to the law or who are intolerant, close-minded bigots?
If you vote for Bush, stay home or vote for Nader, you effectively vote for Bush and the Robertson agenda for America. You'll have yourself to blame for the first recession to hit America in 8+ years, you'll have yourself to blame for the increasingly anti-gay stance that will take over the federal government. And you'll be able to blame yourself for the return of the American decline that started with Vietnam and continued through 1992. That decline has been arrested for the past 8 years but George Bush is guaranteed to start the country spiralling downwards again with more poorly educated Americans with a federal government that is underfunded because of his tax cuts and with spiralling inflation because of the federal debt.
If you vote for Gore, America has a chance to enter the 21st century still growing, vibrant, and better educated than it has been for 25 or more years. And you'll hopefully have broken the back of christian fascism. Unfortunately, I'm not an American citizen - I can't vote. Fortunately, my passport isn't American - I can leave before George opens the door for Pat.
VOTE NOV 7!!!!!
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CHAPTER TWENTY
Lynda Renfroe was a startling woman to look upon: tall, slim, and attractive in an androgynous sort of way - yet, distinctly feminine. Her shoulder-length hair was the colour of warm flame. In appearance, she was everything her brother was not.
Emil answered the door and held it as she entered my house. I sensed her alertness even from the sitting room where Boyd, Tom, and I waited for her. It was an intellect that was curious, even inquisitive, as she studied the front hall and, then, Emil. Her study lasted but a moment before she smiled at my Swiss lover and told him: "Agent Boyd called a little while ago and asked that I meet him here."
I felt Emil question his commitment to complete gayness as he led her back to us. "This woman is gay?" I asked Boyd.
He laughed. "She's lesbian, Prince. Over here, you need be careful who you're calling gay - the girls can be damned militant about that."
Emil stepped aside to permit Miss Renfroe to enter the room. She took Tom and myself in immediately before fixing the FBI agent with her gaze.
"It's three o'clock in the morning, Jimmy," she told him. "This better be good."
"Lynda, I want you to meet Prince Karl von Muribor-" I raised the stubble of my brow a centimetre, surprised this man who had yet to address me correctly knew my title. "And his lovers Emil Paulik who's behind you and Tom McPherson." My brow rose higher. How in bleeding hell did he know the names of both my lovers?
"And-?" She stood at the door easily but unwilling to enter and join us until someone explained things far better than the FBI agent had over the telephone when he woke her.
Boyd grinned and lounged back in his chair. "The Prince here has a little story for you."
"Story?" Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.
The agent's face remained an affable grin. I noticed Tom watching him closely. |He's one cool customer, Karl,| the American opined when I touched his thoughts. |I'd sure hate to play poker with him.|
I suspected I would lose a fortune in a game of chance with the man even were I to be able to read his surface thoughts while we played.
"Lynda, how would you like to have Pat Koughlin and Joe McCarthy served to you on a platter?" Boyd asked, holding his cards close to his chest.
The expression on her face didn't change as she gazed at him. I felt no tenseness enter her body. She simply waited for him to continue.
"I've got some black and whites for you too. The kind that sell newspapers even before they get to the stands. Think you can get the boys at The Blade to run a special?"
"A special?" she erupted with laugher. "Jimmy Boyd, it'd take another oil-bought assassination to get my paper to go to press before next Wednesday!"
"Even if you could nail Joey McCarthy being ploughed? Even if you scooped everybody with the murders of two Congressmen?"
She stared at him. Her cool was gone. She was a hungry woman. I could feel it in the tension that came over her and held her.
"What've you got, Jimmy?"
"Not me - the Prince here. Well - I do have the photographs."
It was rather humorous actually. I suspected I would rather have liked seeing the faces of the editorial staff at The Washington Post that Saturday afternoon.
How embarrassed could grown men who had seen everything be? How red-faced could a board meeting be? I knew nothing of the newspaper business and could imagine little of how it worked; but I understood an embarrassing scoop when I saw it before me.
The Washington Post was a venerable daily paper with sole ownership of the investigative putsch of Nixon that Bernstein and Woodruff had pulled for it twenty years ago.
Its report of the deaths of Congressmen Broussard and Treman was limited when it hit the streets Saturday morning, presenting but the barest facts and hinting there would be more, juicier details later.
The Washington Blade was the free gay weekly that came out on Thursdays and a venerable and valued member of the Gay Press Association. Its first ever special edition began to hit the streets at noon on Saturday.
It carried blurry black and white pictures of the two Congressmen in coitus from the videos Agent Boyd had supplied his reporter at the paper as well as scene of crime photographs. The Blade's coverage of the facts of the case was similar to that of The Post. But it also carried photographs of Joe McCarthy between his two skinheads. Enjoying himself.
There was no mention of vampires, witnesses, or wolves in either paper, but The Blade's four page spread of photographs and text clearly was a better case of reporting than The Post's one column on page three. The Blade also stressed the Congressmen's involvement with Reverend Pat Koughlin and proceeded to give its readers eight more pages of high-lights from what Marcus Eichmann had taken from the preacher's central files.
Washington, DC, was abuzz with The Blade's revelations by mid-afternoon. Even devout heterosexuals who, to use an American phrase, wouldn't be caught dead reading that queer paper, were trying to buy a copy of its special issue.
By the time Emil and I were awake Saturday evening, Agent Boyd's favourite reporter was recognised as belonging to a select group of bigger than life newspaper people that had once included only Misters Bernstein and Woodruff.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The lithe Negro youth abruptly stopped in the doorway of the sitting room and stared at me in growing shock. "Go on in, Tony," Marcus Eichmann told him from the hall. "He may be a nobleman but he doesn't bite-"
Tony wagged his head slowly, a careful smile spreading across his face. "He just might, Marcus. Lordy, but he might!"
I recognised Tony, of course. From our meeting at `P' Street beach and from many nights at Congressman Treman's home - especially the last one. I stood and smiled back at him, extending my hand in welcome. "You're a guest in my home, Tony," I told him and extended my mind to his to reassure him.
He stepped hesitantly into the room, his eyes round and perspiration breaking out across his forehead even as I dispelled the foremost of his fears. "Does that mean you ain't planning on having me for dinner?" he managed.
I laughed, enjoying his ability to play on words even in what was for him a moment of danger. It bespoke a quick, sharp mind.
"Would you like a drink?" I asked. "Whiskey or wine, perhaps?"
His eyes stayed with me, riveted to my slightest movement. His body remained tensed, ready to jump the moment he saw something threatening. "Something real strong, mister."
I nodded to Marcus who moved immediately to the bar. "Please," I told Tony, "be seated and make yourself comfortable. You're an invited guest here, and I think I can vouchsafe your continued safety inside these walls."
He laughed then, accepting my assurance and relaxing slightly. "Man, you sure ought to be able to do that."
He glanced about the room as he lowered himself into the chair nearest the window. "I seen this house lots of times. I always wondered what it was like inside-" He wagged his head slowly and smiled. "Sure is a nice place you all got here."
"I like it," I admitted. "I hope the others do too. If you'd like, Marcus can show you around later."
"You sure ain't going to worry about no break-ins or murders - not in this house," he mumbled.
Our conversation continued and Tony relaxed more completely. I was amused he avoided any specific reference to what he had seen of me but accepted it as a psychological ploy he was playing on himself in order to maintain his equilibrium.
We ate - or Tony, Tom, and Marcus ate while Emil and I pretended to eat. The Negro's discomfort grew as we seated ourselves in the dining room and Tom served dinner with Emil's help, but I sensed this time the young Negro was afraid of embarrassing himself before us. He watched me closely, duplicating my every choice of utensil.
I had to make him blink more often than he needed so that I could dispose of the foods that rode to my lips on either spoon or fork without my actually eating it. It was either that or embarrass myself by my stomach's violent attempt to rid itself of vegetables and dead flesh.
Our conversation at table maintained the innocuous banter we established earlier while drinking our whiskeys. It was only after we retired back to the study for brandies and Tom and Emil had joined us that I turned our discussion back to him.
"What will you be doing with yourself now?" I asked, alluding to his benefactor's demise.
Tony was momentarily startled but recovered quickly. "Congressman Broussard's getting killed does sort of mess me up," he allowed and shook his head. "That was three hundred a week in my pocket."
"You won't be young forever and, besides, being a rent boy wouldn't be the most comfortable employment I can imagine."
"It ain't," he allowed. "Especially with him."
"I'd have thought ploughing arse every night might be fun," Emil offered and I caught the hint of humour behind the words.
"Not with that bigot, it weren't!"
"He was a bigot?" I wondered. "Yet, he kept you and your friend on retainer-"
Tony laughed bitterly. "Ain't you heard? Nigger boys are supposed to have big dicks. And the Congressman sure did ever more like them big-"
I noticed with amusement Marcus' eyes glazed for a moment as he assimilated that information and made the logical conclusion about Tony's endowment.
"He also liked them staying hard for hours at a time," the Negro continued, his bitterness still evident. "And that sure ain't easy to do."
"So, what will you do now?" Tom asked. "Get a job?"
Tony snorted. "Ain't you folks heard? Unemployment for black boys is at fifty per cent here in the Capital of the brave and free. I'm from a project in Anacostia. I graduated from high school two years ago and have been trying off and on ever since to get a job. Except for pushing a broom around, there ain't none for the likes of me-"
He took a deep breath, forcing his anger back within whatever compartment he kept it in. "Last year, I sat myself down and really looked at my options. I could sell drugs or my booty. I decided I didn't like the chances of getting killed or locked away that comes with pushing drugs; so, I put my dick up for sale - it was big enough."
"Why not go to university - or a trade school?" Tom asked.
"With what?" he growled, his eyes blazing. "I'm from the projects-" He took another deep breath and spent longer moments this time pushing his anger back under control. "There wasn't no money and a diploma from my high school didn't mean diddly."
"What would you like to do?" I asked quietly.
He turned to me, his eyes still flashing, his anger barely under control. I touched his thoughts and soothed him.
He looked down at his hands in his lap. "I sort of like playing those arcade games - the hardest ones that take some thinking."
"Computers!" Marcus breathed and began to smile.
I chuckled. "I suspect you and Marcus will find more in common than just bedroom frolics," I opined.
"How's that?" Tony demanded.
"He's one hell of a computer whiz," Tom answered.
Tony looked over at Marcus Eichmann with eyes that evaluated the plump Swiss closely. "Really?"
"You better believe it," I told him.
Tom was out when Emil and I woke late Tuesday afternoon. The sun was dropping behind the spires of Georgetown University when I finally left the bed and a sated Emil for a most necessary shower.
"Liebchen," I called to him as I stepped under the jets of tepid water, "turn the air conditioning down so it's bearable in here."
|Karl! Emil!| Sergei screamed to us, his fear crashing through my mind in a flood.
I was following the thought back to him immediately. I appeared in the courtyard of the George Washington University Medical School building and changed immediately to wolf shape. I barked a greeting to Emil as I saw him do the same thing I had done, even as I felt a tingling along my back from the heat of the day.
|Where is he?| Emil projected to me.
I extended my senses out over the cobbled courtyard, searching for him. I felt him at the same time my eyes saw the top of his head as he rode the escalator from the underground station. There was a young man in normal street-clothes on either side of him and, as they reached the ground, I saw one of them held a pistol against Tom's back.
|I see them,| Emil informed me. |What now?|
We could rush them; but the sidewalk in front of the underground had too many people on it. I didn't relish attacking the men holding Tom MacPherson in front of witnesses. There would be too many questions and Tom was unable to disappear as Emil and I could. He would be left to the police and forced to lead them back to us.
|They won't kill him out here,| I answered, praying I was right. |Let's wait until they get him away from all these people.|
I reached out and touched the thoughts of the man with Tom nearest to me, pushing past the fear and determination I found in the foreground of his thoughts as he scanned the milling night students and street vendors picking up their wares for the night.
He had spent hours watching Tom pour over medical books and he wanted to be through with killing him and return to his wife. He was concentrating on making the building, remembering a first floor bathroom in a room full of exhibits. I felt his remembered revulsion at seeing the pickled brains and cranial slices.
He would make it to the bathroom, I decided. But he'd never see his wife again. Not in this life. I told Emil to meet them there and I would follow them.
Tom had seen and recognised us. His eyes widened as he watched Emil change into a mist and move toward the building's main entrance. No one else noticed - or paid attention to the wolf prowling and sniffing about the courtyard, moving closer to the three men walking toward the building. I touched several passing minds, curious at the lack of interest. And was surprised to find I was viewed as only a stray dog, scavenging for food.
I followed the two men pushing Tom ahead of them to the double doors and saw the campus policeman standing just within the glassed foyer. I became mist as they pushed inside, following them across the lobby by oozing across the door.
From the moment I saw Tom's situation, I wanted to attack. To destroy these insane creatures who, in my mind, had given up their claim to humanity by agreeing to wantonly kill a man who had caused them no harm. They might see themselves as soldiers fighting a war and killing the enemy; but I refused to see myself the enemy of mankind. To me, they were as un-human as a skinhead or drug dealer - they had given up their humanity and were legitimate prey.
I had wanted to kill them but hadn't - for the same reasons they hadn't yet killed their intended victim. I didn't want to be seen tearing their throats from them; I didn't want witnesses.
Past the lobby entrance and no longer surrounded by people, I changed back to wolf form and padded a metre behind them into the exhibition room and through it toward the bathroom. The men pushed Tom into the cubicle between the two doors and I sprang toward the man who couldn't wait to get home to his wife.
The first man had pushed open the interior door and stepped inside when my jaws snapped closed on his companion's throat. My teeth sank into muscle that resisted the impulse to tear away from his throat loaned it by my weight and speed. The resistance lasted but a moment before the front of the man's neck pulled away, but it was enough to brake my headlong collision with the wall of the cubicle.
I landed and pushed myself to my feet, growling as I looked about to find Tom.
Emil had sprang toward the other fascist thug as he stood against the door and stared unbelievingly as I tore his companion's life from him. His shock had held him long enough for Emil to reach him.
Tom simply collapsed to the floor of the cubicle when he saw my snout clamping shut on the neck of the man behind him. As I looked about to assess the situation, I saw his eyes were wide as he watched Emil pull his man's throat open and began to lap blood and gore from the wound.
I changed back to human form and began to feed as Emil was doing on the tiled floor of the bathroom behind me.
"Jesus fucking Christ!" Tom hissed, pulling himself up the wall to gain his feet, pulling away from the dying man under me still trying to push me away from his throat.
"Shut up!" I growled at him without looking at him. "Shut your eyes and keep quiet!" There was far too much blood pooling in the man's wound for me to do anything but ignore Tom. I was as hungry as Emil, and this was food.
With a surge of good sense, Tom MacPherson did as he was told.
I dragged my man's body inside the bathroom and placed it on a toilet after I had fed. Emil had done the same with his man, and the three of us stood facing each other inside the bathroom. "You're both naked," were Tom's first words since I ordered him into silence.
"You caught us on the way to the shower," Emil chuckled. "There didn't seem time to decide what to wear."
"You killed them," he accused, his face bleached.
"Damned right we did," I said. "They were about to kill you-"
"But you-"
"Scheie!" I growled. "There's no difference between a bullet to the brain and a throat torn out of a man - they're both death. Besides, they were no longer human. They had become rubbish. They were legitimate prey and we were hungry."
Tom sank back onto a lavatory, shaking his head. "I never thought. Jesus!"
"You never thought you'd be murdered by two fascist thugs either!" I sucked in air. "Sergei, explain this to him while he makes his way home."
"Home?"
"We've got to get away from this." I pointed at the two toilet cubicles that now held dead bodies, then at the small cubicle that was splattered with blood and gore. "Emil and I can teleport ourselves there. Nobody's going to see us-" I glanced down at my nudity and, then, at Emil's. "Not like this," I offered, my voice softer and carrying a note of humour.
"You, however, have to take the tube home. I doubt even Sergei can move your corporeal body from one place to another as we can ours."
Both Emil and I felt his growing revulsion at what he had seen.
"Verdammte!" Emil hissed. "We saved your bloody backside, Tom. You'd have been dead in another minute if it hadn't been for us."
Tom gazed at the closed cubicles for long moments before he pushed himself off the lavatory. "I guess we better get out of here," he mumbled, turning to look at us.
"Do you want us to meet you at Eastern Market?" I asked softly.
His eyes seemed to plead with mine for the moment he held them. "Yeah. I guess so. I don't think I want anybody else sticking a gun in my back like those guys did."
Emil and I dematerialised and, again at home, dressed quickly for our walk to the underground to meet Tom.
"Our Yank member appeared a bit green at the gills," Emil opined as he slipped into his loafers and made sure his shirt buttons lined up with his belt buckle and fly.
"Who?" I asked absently.
"Tom. The boy's been plying me with questions about the functions of every part of my body this past month - including my privates."
I looked up from slipping on my own shoes. The Swiss member of our trio hadn't sounded at all American and that stood out, emphasising the difference of this line of thought from anything I had heard the past several months. Normally, he sounded American - or he had since Tom entered our lives. But this was real English I was hearing now, something taught at Oxford. And more than slightly catty.
"What're you trying to say?" I asked and started for the door of the bedroom.
"I'm saying I think Tommy has been edging closer and closer to the big decision, lover. He was ready to have you sink your teeth into his neck and suck him dry," he offered as he followed me down the stairs.
Now he was sounding American catty, Anywhere High School of 1997. "You know you don't become a vampire from being fed upon, Emil," I reprimanded him.
"I'm sorry, Karl," he mumbled as I opened the front door and stepped onto the veranda. "I was being a real bitch there-" He paused and was silent as he followed me out to the sidewalk.
"Tom's been closing in on making the decision to join us," he began again as we rounded the corner of Sixth and started up toward Pennsylvania, his English well-modulated and belying his national origin. "But I suspect he had an overdose at the medical school earlier this evening."
"How else could we save him?" I demanded gruffly as we reached Pennsylvania and turned eastward toward the underground.
"I think our feeding upset him," he suggested.
"Verdammte! We were both hungry. That bloody drek was going to die anyway. Why shouldn't we feed?"
"You know it and I know it, but he didn't until he was watching us."
"And you're saying?"
He smiled at me, even as he struggled to match my stride. "I think Tom MacPherson shall shortly be undergoing an identity crisis and we need to treat him carefully."
"Do you really care, Emil?" I asked and immediately regretted the question. I loved him every bit as much as I did Tom.
He didn't take offence for which I was most grateful. "I was there as quickly as you were," he answered gently.
I stopped in mid-stride and turned to look at Emil who stopped at the same moment I did. We stood before the art deco exterior of an American cowboy gay bar.
"I've come to love him every bit as much as you ever did," he offered. "Read my thoughts if you don't believe me."
"I'm sorry, Emi," I told him. "The three of us have been flowing smoothly along, true; but I've been waiting for something to come along and touch that fragile facade, shattering it."
He grinned. "It's not shattered yet, Liebchen - unless young Tom is a match for Prince Sergei of Odessa."
I grinned back tentatively. "I doubt he is - I know I never was."
"Or me. You should have seen him take charge while you were recovering from your sun-burn. Gott!"
Tom was leaning against the wall of the escalator when we arrived. "I thought you would never arrive," Sergei told us both in German when we neared him. Emil glanced sharply at me but, as quickly, turned his gaze back to him.
"Sergei?" I asked, barely above a whisper.
He chortled. "I thought I might be needed to help this American out, miene Freunden - in what may prove to be trying times for him-" He grinned. "You see, he has developed some doubts of how he might feed himself if he succumbs to your charms."
"He can drink bovine blood if he prefers that," I grunted, remembering my own experience between the wars.
"He seems to have momentarily forgotten that point this evening as he watched you two."
We were standing at the elevated side of the escalator and I noticed several young men of both races glancing at us. "I think we should perhaps return home," I offered.
"What?" Sergei yelped. "No added pleasures to our evening, my Prince?"
"Scheiße!" I grunted, starting back the way we had come. "Your lad there doesn't care much for added pleasures."
"True, he is a bit of a prude," Sergei offered quickly and following me with Emil bringing up the rear. "I find it strange trying to handle some of his feelings - he sees things so differently from the way I would."
"How long are you going to stay in charge of him?" Emil asked, matching his steps with ours.
Sergei grinned at me. "As long as it takes me to have one of you to open a vein and allow him to suckle."
"Gott im Himmel!" I grunted as we turned onto Sixth Street and began to pass the open-air restaurant there. I cringed when I realised several pairs of eyes had looked up from their sidewalk tables and were watching me. "He'd hate all three of us if he didn't make that choice himself," I continued in German.
"He already has," Sergei allowed, continuing in that language.
"What does that mean?" I demanded as we left the harsh street lamps beside the restaurant and continued south to the end of the block.
He paused to gather in the idiom he was looking for. "He put the decision in my hands, meine Freunden. It is mine to decide if he goes back to Baltimore or stays with you."
I stopped and stared at him. "Really?"
Sergei halted and, turning to face me, smiled at me from Tom's face. "Why shouldn't he? He was afraid to handle the decision after this evening. And I am as much him as he is."
"No!" I growled. "Each of you are different, even if you are the same soul in the same body."
"Perhaps, dear Karli," he answered softly. "But Tom's personality, the one separate from mine and Wurther's, put the choice in my hands-"
"I'd like to hear that directly from him before one of us lets you suck," Emil said bluntly, staring at him.
Tom's face managed to look wounded under Sergei's manipulation. "Such little faith you have, Emi," he mumbled.
"We're talking a very permanent condition, Sergei," I jumped in. "I want you with us as much as Emil does - and I don't want to have your American incarnation hating us for making him undead any more than Emil does."
The light-complexioned face framed by the mass of dark curls altered slightly. It wasn't something a mortal would have seen, but both Emil and I watched Sergei become Tom again. "This is a decision I can't make, guys," Tom said in the flat American cadence I couldn't imagine Sergei's Ukrainian soul ever sliding into.
"Tom-" I reached out to him.
"Don't!" He pulled away. "It's not I don't love you - both of you. I do. I'm queer as shit and I accept that. I want the - the rest of it too. But I don't - not if I have to do what you guys did this evening. I decided to let Sergei make that decision for me."
"You know which way he'll decide," I told him.
He looked down at the pavement and shrugged. "Yeah. At least, it's a lot more likely than Wurther deciding that way."
"Do you want that?" I asked, pressing.
He veered closer to the street and away from me. "Goddamn it! Yes, I do. I hate what you did. But all the rest of it-"
"Stay with us, Tom," I pleaded softly.
"I thought you loved Sergei," he hissed.
"I did - ninety years ago. I love you now - and Emil. Emil and I both love you. We want you with us." I sighed, sickened at what I was about to suggest yet knowing its necessity between us. "Hear them and accept their council, Tom. You're unique among vampires and mortals to have the experiences of these two previous lives - personalities - you can consciously draw upon. But let Emil and me see only Tom MacPherson. You're the man we love in the here and now."
Tears welled in his eyes and slipped unnoticed down his cheeks. It was still Tom MacPherson who was with us when we turned into the house. We continued to maintain the silence that had held us until we were behind the door to our bedroom.
"Will I have to kill people?" he asked suddenly, holding back as Emil and I advanced deeper into the room.
"To feed?" I asked and turned to gaze at him.
"Yeah-" He nodded.
"Ask Sergei," I told him smiling. "He read my mind for you here recently and I imagine he found how I lived from his death until Wurther died."
His brows bunched together as he retrieved the memory. "Cow's blood?" he said in disbelief.
"For thirty-five years. I'm willing to go back to that again."
He turned to Emil. "And you?"
"I'm just one member of this family," he answered and shrugged. "I'll go along with whatever program we all agree upon."
Tom MacPherson sighed. He smiled slowly and glanced from one to the other of us. "I guess I'm acting too much like some prima donna."
"Tom, why make the decision now?" I asked sitting on the side of the bed. "You've put it off these last three months-"
"I've put it off since you woke Sergei and Wurther up back in December, Karl. That's when I started fighting this thing-" He snorted suddenly. "I was fighting to stay out of your bed as well as your damned immortality. Look how long it took me to lose that first fight."
He glanced down at the floor. "Now, I've lost this one too." He looked back up at me, his eyes searching for mine. "You wouldn't even let me hide behind Sergei now it's time to surrender."
"You still don't have to make this decision tonight," I told him.
"The hell I don't! You've stirred up a hornet's nest with these fundies - and I was right there alongside you. I was seconds away from getting my head blown off there in that john." He wagged his head slowly. "And those skinheads the other day weren't exactly playing a friendly game of tag with my jaw, either."
He smiled suddenly and pushed his shoes off as he pulled his shirt over his head. "I think I'd like getting it like Emil did."
"How-?" The Swiss demanded in surprise.
Tom grinned. "Remember? You made sure Sergei read your mind before he did Karl's. That seemed pretty nice." He unbuckled his belt. "Do you think both of you can get in on this bloodletting I'm walking into?"
Emil began to undress. "Looks like we're going to have to change the sheets tonight, Karl," he laughed.
I stood, a bemused smile plastered across my lips as I admired Tom's naked body and rigid manhood standing just beyond my reach. I began to undress as Tom moved to the bed and climbed onto it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Hell broke over Washington by Monday when The Post printed its own story of the connections between Reverend Pat Koughlin and the terrorist militias and Aryan Nation in the west, skinheads in the east, and Klansmen throughout the country. Its fires sprang into conflagration the following day in New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Chicago to start the month of June.
The Southern Baptist Conference issued a news release on Tuesday proclaiming that organisation's continued faith in Reverend Pat Koughlin's ministry but called for the immediate dismissal of Joe McCarthy for both abomination and misuse of his powers. Dallas burst into flames as its dailies followed the rest of the country.
By mid-week, television talk show hosts dropped their interest in middle-aged women who slept with their teen-aged daughters' boyfriends and began airing former members of the Aryan Nation, the Klan, and militias throughout the country, trying to delve into their sexual practices. Each host devoted several spots on each show to pleading for any adult who slept with any of America's top neo-fascists to come forth and give their own stories; Tony found himself an instant television celebrity by the end of the week. There were rumours of circulars spreading across Mississippi offering five thousand dollars to anyone who killed the young Negro.
Tony stayed close to Marcus and I noted with satisfaction he felt that association was enough to have me protecting him.
Christian Circle bumper stickers disappeared from automobiles in Maryland and Virginia as fast as their owners could scrape them off.
The circus had begun. American style.
Sated, I lay between my two lovers as the eastern sky lightened outside our window. Emil was already a vampire as he snuggled closer to me in his sleep, and Tom was becoming one even as I held his unconscious, changing body to mine. Languidly, I told myself mine had been a full life these past one hundred and fifty years and accepted it was only just beginning. I had forever stretching out ahead of me with these two men to help me explore it.
Storm clouds rose at the far horizon and moved swiftly over the endless sea of tranquillity that had been my thoughts. I frowned and extended my senses toward them.
Joe McCarthy was pacing the floor of his bedroom in his home in the Virginia suburbs, his thoughts a turmoil of raging images and unidentifiable fears, a pistol in his hand. I looked about the room for what would agitate him so and stopped when I found the bed. The two skinheads from DuPont Circle I placed with him lay there, one on top of the other. The manhood of the one on top was still in the bottom's ass.
But they weren't moving and, a moment later, I realised neither of them were breathing. I saw the small hole in the top one's back, close to his spine and three ribs up. There was very little blood, but I knew he had been shot through the heart and the same bullet had killed the youth beneath him. Their heat evaporated slowly in the waning night.
It was obvious to me that Joe had killed them. But why?
I touched his thoughts, forcing my way past the fears and insane imaginings that stormed across the foreground of his mind.
The boys had been waiting for him when he arrived home. He hadn't liked their assumptiveness; the preacher was already in a rage about Treman and Broussard and didn't seem to believe him when he swore he wasn't part of their orgies. That had been yesterday, before the damned Washington Post ran the picture of him naked as a jaybird, lying down with his legs spread, and somebody pretty obviously plugging his butt for him.
It was all over. The preacher knew he was a liar. The whole goddamned world knew he was a frigging queer. And somebody had even managed to kill the men he sent to get rid of that damned Austrian hussy's pretty boy American sidekick!
His dreams lay shattered. The Christian Circle was gone. He'd never be able to stand at the right hand of power again. Shit! The preacher was probably going to fall too. All because of that frigging Karl von Muribor.
Karl, somehow, was responsible for everything that happened starting with Saturday night. As he approached the boys, he shuddered and was glad he hadn't been at Treman's house. He'd be dead too.
He sure didn't need these two fucking mindless assholes confirming again for the whole world how queer he was. He started to tell them just that. Started to. But didn't. Instead, he had slipped into the same mind set that had destroyed him in the first place, that had started him with that damned Austrian.
He flip-flopped and decided what he needed was a good lay. He could lose himself in that. He could forget everything that happened with a big dick up his ass.
It was good too - even if Jesus hadn't been with him. He had been able to forget his troubles for more than six hours. The boys had stayed hard and plugged into him. But that was before the phone rang and the answering machine kicked in. Before Reverend Pat Koughlin told him he was through and not to come back to his office. As he was right in the middle of the best orgasm he had all night.
And the silly little bastards didn't even care. When he uncoupled himself from them, they just grinned and started in on each other.
The bastard on the bottom even had the nerve to tell the one sticking his dick in his ass that he loved him.
Loved him? When Satan had finally won? When the world was passing into hell?
Loved him? An abomination actually loving another abomination?
He had seen it then. Understanding it clearly for the first time. Evil. Pure, unadulterated evil. The two boys were agents of that evil - like that Austrian. He had taken the pistol from his drawer then.
Even if he was shipwrecked, he could still reach out and stop some of the evil flooding over the world.
Joe McCarthy laughed. It'd only taken one shot to put an end to their evil. One little twitch of his finger and the world was free of two abominations.
He saw then that it was easy to destroy evil. It only took a bullet to do it. Only, the core of that evil was inside him too. It was there when he lusted for the Austrian, spreading its fingers through the Circle and closing around the preacher's work, slowly squeezing the life from it.
He could free the world from that very core of evil, but it meant he would be dead. It would only take a single bullet to his head and Satan would be cast back into hell. The world would be saved. The preacher's work would go on, and America would be Christian again.
With the evil out of him, God would take him to his bosom again and he would live forever with Jesus.
He didn't want to die. Only he had to, if he wanted to live forever. He raised the pistol to his head.
I fled Joe McCarthy's mind before the man could pull the trigger. I smiled grimly as I shut my eyes.
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Finally!!!!!! David MacMillan Presents is ready (almost) ... It'll take until Mon or Tues for the secured lines for credit card purchases to be operational and there are a couple of minor changes that still need to be made. The URL is www.macmillanbooks.com and Nifty readers get 2 nice presents. 5% of your purchase(s) go to Nifty to keep it going AND you get a free book if you buy 3 or more. Yeah, everybody gets the buy 3 and get a free book deal through 1 Nov - BUT only Nifty readers will continue receiving that special thru the end of the year. BUT I need to know you're a Nifty reader, guys (and girls).
I've already spent over $1500 and committed to over $100 a month to set up the site and bring on a secure cyber gate for credit card purchases. Until DMP is making money, I'm not willing to invest in more software which is what I'd need to separate Nifty purchases from everyone else's. So ... Please write me a short note when you order. That way, I'll know that you're a Nifty reader and can give Nifty their 5% AND you your free book.
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Dave MacMillan