The Hunt

10

Wordlessly, Andreji followed his Master into his chambers. The man sat down on a finely carved wooden chair; Andreji knelt to his feet, his eyes averted.

“Where have you been?” the leader requested in a lofty tone.

“Out to feed and do business, Master,” Andreji answered deferent.

“Yet not alone…”

“No, I took my fledgling with me.”

“Do you not think this is too early?” his Master questioned Andreji’s actions. “Have you broken your little toy in this soon?”

“Of course not, Master,” Andreji was quick to assure. “I was under the impression that he was still entertaining fantasies of escaping and returning into his old life and thus found it necessary to point out to him that this path was barred and all his chances lay with me.”

His Master smiled smugly. He removed Andreji’s hair tie so that the long white masses fell onto his shoulders and in his face. “So the little one is still troubling you… I have always known that you are not fit to be a Master; you are too good a fledgling, too acquiescent…” He seized Andreji’s chin and pulled him up into a greedy kiss.

River went impatiently up and down the room. Had he manoeuvred Andreji into a difficult situation? What would Andreji’s Master do if he had found out about River’s escape? Would he punish Andreji? That could not be good for River.

Eventually, he heard quick steps draw nearer and the door was opened. Hurriedly, he ran into the entrance area. “What’s happened? Is everything alright?”

Andreji seemed as indifferent as ever as he took off his coat. He threw it into River’s arms and turned towards the bathroom. “Please make fire; it is cold.” The door shut behind him and River stood baffled outside.

Well, what had he expected? Just because Andreji had not been angry with him that did not mean they were confidants, now. River was still the unimportant fledgling, why should Andreji care to tell him anything?

Scowling, River returned to the library. He threw the mantle over the backrest of the armchair Andreji usually took and got a fire going. Subsequently, he slouched down in the second armchair and waited for his ‘Master’ (ha!) to re-emerge. However, the first excitement falling away, tiredness overcame him.

Andreji had taken a very long and thorough shower. Wrapped into his bathrobe, he left the bathroom and stepped into the library that slowly grew warm. He halted in front of the armchair in which the young blond was slumbering. He lifted him up, sat down, and placed the boy on his lap. Instinctively, the sleeping one snuggled up to him, eagerly taking in Andreji’s scent.

Andreji closed his eyes, enjoying the body heat that seeped through him and the weight that rested against his chest. During the last days, the decision had slowly taken shape in him; the decision to let his natural instincts take over. He had nothing to lose.

River awoke in his bed. He was undressed. Completely undressed. In his mind, there still lingered the remains of another X-rated dream. Not only in his mind, moreover. If Andreji had appeared at this moment and done with his body what it screamed for, River was not sure he would have objected. What was up with him?

River sneaked into the bathroom and took a cold shower, his hands actually shaking in excitement. When he entered the library a while later, Andreji sat in his armchair, writing. “You took your time.”

“Are you keeping an account of how long I’m showering, now?” River retorted defiantly and knelt down to make coffee.

His Master only smirked. After a moment, Andreji got up and left the sheet he had been writing on lying on the chair.

“A new list?”

“Looks like one, yes. I’ll be in the smithy for a while.”

River wanted to say something that kept Andreji from falling back into their old ways of spending as much time as possible apart, but what could he say that would not leave the wrong impression? River only longed for company, after all; there was no personal interest involved. Right?

Grudgingly, he picked up the list and read it. Then the thought crossed his mind that he had no bread for breakfast – a welcome distraction. He prepared the dough, put it to rest, and ate some yoghurt. If only he had at least a bit of music – time would pass by quicker then.

All right, back to the list. River sighed. Half of the creatures Andreji had scribbled down were totally unknown to him. Sluggishly, River went over to a shelf and picked a random book to see if it contained pictures. Of course it did not. After half an hour’s fruitless search for pictures of the beasts he was to investigate, River turned back to the list in annoyance. There was a word he had not been able to depict at first glance; he had ascribed that to Andreji’s bad hand. Now that he looked at it again, he realised that it was Cyrillic. Those beasts were probably not common in Western Europe and could therefore not be found in English books. Great!

He took the sheet to the shelf with the books that were covered with Cyrillic letters and started comparing the signs. It took a while, but then he found the book. It was very informative – for someone who knew Russian. River put it aside and picked up the books that had stood next to it. Something fell to the floor. River picked it up. It was an old newspaper snippet. On one side was an article about a World’s Fare in Paris during which the Metro was opened, on the other side was an advertisement. Someone must have used it as a bookmark. A long time ago.

Intrigued and little interested in his tedious task, River searched for other items that were hidden in the books. A few unused picture postcards came to light, as well as a few notes, often written in languages River did not understand. He wondered how old Andreji was. So far, he had always taken him for granted. He had never contemplated who Andreji truly was – the man could easily pass as a man that had grown up in modern times.

River put a book back in which he had found nothing, at the same time already glancing at another. As he reached for it, he heard a loud thud. He looked to the floor. “Sh*t!” He knelt down to pick the book up that had fallen down. The leather binding had broken. As River examined it to see if he could fix the damage, he saw that a number of photographs were hidden inside. He pulled them out.

They seemed very old. River smiled. The first pictures showed Andreji sleeping, completely naked and yet somehow innocent. Then the perspective changed and a second man came into view. He was not as tall as Andreji but more masculine. His face was shaped like a half-moon, his nose was long, and his eyebrows thick so that they darkened his gaze. Yet River had to admit that he was not unattractive.

The man’s hair was untidy and his chin was covered by stubbles as if he had just awoken in the middle of the day after a long night. There was something possessive about the way in which he bent over Andreji, in which he touched him in intimate places although the white-haired beauty (that was the impression he left on River in these pictures) seemed still asleep.

Not feeling comfortable with looking at such private snapshots, River put the photos back before he came across even more sensitive material and went on with the tedious research. Of course, his mind constantly strayed back to his discovery.

Griet sat together with a couple of others, mostly fledglings. They did that from time to time – meeting to talk or make music together. Right now, she was strumming on her guitar and singing to it. In her youth, her voice had always been called too rough, but nowadays it was in fashion.

Someone chuckled behind her when she had finished. Her face turned to stone. She knew exactly who that was.

“What is it this time?” she hissed.

The petite woman smirked in a fashion that she only displayed in the absence of anyone she deemed ‘important’. “I just found it amusing with what kind of activities you are wasting your time. One would think the fledgling of the grand Léon would have more appropriate things on her mind…” With that she turned and took her leave.

Her eyes sparking, Griet packed up her instrument and made to retire for the rest of the night. Angrily she hurried through the corridors.

“You know that you outmatch her, physically?” a calm voice was suddenly raised in the dark.

She turned to see Andreji. The way he looked, he had just arrived from another trip.

“After all, her Master was fool enough to make two fledglings at once – that left her weak…” he continued as if he were talking about the weather.

Griet was surprised to hear such words out of his mouth. He was known to never lose a critical word about his Master – and the petite snake was his Master’s fledgling, after all. “Only in her case her weakness is her strength,” Griet said in answer to Andreji’s strange insinuations. “Attacking her would mean attacking your Master. I don’t think you have a solution for that part of my problem, have you?”

Andreji smirked meaningfully and left without another word.

For a while, River had tried to depict the books’ meaning with an old dictionary he had found, but in the end he had surrendered and asked Andreji for help. After giving him one of his meaningful side glances with a raised eyebrow, the man had turned out to be a superb teacher. The way in which the foreign language flowed over his lips almost sounded like a song. River was strangely fascinated by it.

Mocking River about his imaginative translations, Andreji went through the passages with him sentence for sentence, explaining not only what the words were in English but also how a meaning a writer had ascribed to a phrase in the past could differ from how a modern day man would understand it. It felt good to work with Andreji in unison like that instead of exchanging sarcastic remarks or being completely alone. When River thought back to the moments when he sat with Andreji in front of a fire, nestled into a cosy sweater, drinking a cup of coffee and discussing an old text, his heart grew warm. It felt homelike.

As Andreji shut the last book, the book with which they had finished their work on the list, River spoke up. “Can’t we always do it like that?”

Andreji – just having gotten up - looked down on River with his strict, indifferent gaze questioningly. That expression of Andreji’s made River shiver at times. He had tried to catch a look of Andreji’s face in a moment of inattentiveness, of feeling unobserved, but the tall man never so much as twitched. His whole movements were controlled. He moved eloquently and chose every word carefully. Only in a bout of sarcasm did Andreji smile. It was as if he hid something behind a giant mask.

Thinking back to their first meeting, River had the impression that Andreji had been a little more relaxed then. Yet perhaps that had just been another mask – after all, the present Andreji was not the flirting type, so how would he have gotten River into bed (or rather under a shower)? On the other hand, Andreji’s humour had been the same, had it not? Perhaps Andreji felt forced to behave in a certain way amongst his kin? Perhaps a man of his status was supposed to act that cold, arrogant. Yes, that was it. River knew that Andreji was urged to treat his fledgling much worse than he actually did. A community that expected its members to behave like that surely had more rules of conduct.

“Can’t you teach me everything this way? I’ve learned so much more during the past days than in my silent studies…” River explained what he was asking for.

Andreji turned to go to a shelf to put the book away. In his eyes River could read that he was considering his plea. River got up and followed him. Hesitantly, he placed his hand on Andreji’s shoulder. “Please, Master.”

Andreji turned to look over his shoulder into River’s face, surprised by the way the boy addressed him. His eyes were narrowed, calculating whether River was just trying to influence his decision or whether he truly started to accept his position as fledgling. “Fine.”

River awoke from a restless sleep. He licked his lips and pulled at his shorts that pressed uncomfortably against his arousal. What was he fighting against anyway? He pulled them down and grazed with his fingertips gently over the hot flesh.

In his imagination, he was in Andreji’s smithy, undressed and grinding himself against his Master. He turned his face up to welcome Andreji’s warm tongue in his mouth. They kissed deeply while Andreji was caressing River’s erection with one of his strong hands. With the other, he kneaded River’s bottom. River’s hips circled involuntarily. Andreji’s imaginary finger brushed along River’s cleft and finally entered him.

Before River’s fantasy had really started, he already came hard into his own hand. An ecstatic shiver ran over his back.

They sat together once more, River holding a cup of coffee in his hands, Andreji reading aloud. River was not listening or drinking. His eyes were drifting over Andreji’s body. At first they had been glued to the man’s lips, following their movement, than they had wandered lower, over Andreji’s chest, his strong arms, to his crotch. On his fingertips he could feel what it would be like to brush along Andreji’s thighs. He licked his lips and averted his eyes to keep himself from a visible reaction to his fantasies.

It was only a month since River had tried to escape from this place, this man. However, he had totally discarded these thoughts. The strange faith in Andreji’s integrity that River had had from the start of his captivity on had grown into an obsession with his Master by now. He could not shake it off. Whenever he was close to Andreji, whenever he heard his voice, River’s brain went on vacation.

Andreji rose and threw the book onto his seat. “Since trying to talk to you seems to be a waste of time, I am going up to the smithy. I have enough things on my schedule.”

River watched him leave, baffled. He would have loved to smack himself.

They met in a hotel room. The lights were switched off, the curtains drawn.

“… is disgusting. If it goes on like this, I’ll be gone before long!” a voice uttered in the dark.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Where do you want to go? We need each other.”

“ Yes, running away leads to nothing. We’ve already seen how people end after doing that. We need every person to defy him.”

“We won’t achieve anything. Hardly anyone likes him, yet they are too cowardly to stand up against the greedy git. As long as that doesn’t change we’re powerless,” the first voice reasoned.

“Is that not an advantage for us, that there are so many passive people? Even if they don’t dare to work against him, they might not speak or act up in his favour either,” a female voice observed.

“Counting on that is too risky. ‘They might not’ is like playing Russian roulette.”

“Speaking of Russian – I’ve had a strange encounter with Andreji lately,” the female voice said.

Someone snorted snidely.

“Let me finish. He openly suggested attacking the Master’s little lapdog to me after the snake tried her forked tongue on me again.”

“Yeah. That fits. That would make him his Master’s favourite fledgling. I hope you didn’t let anything slip – you with your weakness for the white prince.”

“Of course I didn’t,” the woman defended herself. “Still, why would he care to be the favourite fledgling if he is going to be a Master himself soon? If he had wanted to get rid of snake-girl he surely would have done so long ago.”

“That’s a good objection,” someone admitted. “Nonetheless, to trust a fledgling to turn against his Master is illusionary. No one can overcome nature.”

River was just putting his dirty clothes into the laundry basket when the door swung open and Andreji hurried in. River’s heart sank into his boots.

“Bring me the dressing material,” Andreji said, River in his back, as he headed for the bathroom.

“Dressing material?” River stammered, feeling stupid already for being so excited.

“Yes. In the left drawer,” Andreji pointed, turning half around. He held a cloth to his chest that was stained with blood. “…Unless you want to start your transformation today,” he added with a smirk and seized the doorknob.

“What if I do?” River whispered.

Andreji stopped abruptly and stared at River. His gaze was piercing. He lowered the cloth. The blood ran down his exposed chest, over his nipple, and disappeared underneath his shirt. “Then come and get it.”

River hesitated. Two sentiments clashed in him. On the one hand, his desire to become a vampire was still limited. On the other hand, his desire to touch Andreji, to be united with him, was all the greater.

Slowly, he set one foot in front of the other, mesmerised by Andreji’s stony gaze. Only when he stood directly in front of him did he lower his view. His eyes hurt.

River lifted his hands and unbuttoned the rest of Andreji’s shirt to bare his chest. His Master stood perfectly still. “How did you get that?” River asked with regards to the cut from which the blood was still flowing.

“I have not fixed the blade properly on which I was working.” Andreji’s voice was low, tempting River.

The young man stood paralysed, hands on Andreji’s shoulder, eyes glued to the small stream that threatened to disappear in Andreji’s trousers, now. He was very aware of the effects this situation had on his body, and he was bewildered by it. Why was he growing hard in the prospect of drinking blood?

Fingertips ran gently over River’s back and made him shiver. Andreji bent down to his ear and caressed it with the tip of his tongue. “Drink,” he whispered seductively.

That nudged River over the edge and in frenzy he knelt down, his tongue darting out to taste the blood. Andreji pulled him up again. “Do not bother with the cold trail. Drink from the warm source,” he whispered and guided River to his wound.

In the first moment, Andreji’s blood had the metallic taste that River had expected, but then River’s senses exploded. His arms wrapped themselves around the taller man and pulled him closer, his tongue eagerly digging into the wound. Slowly, he sank onto the floor and pulled Andreji with him, not letting go of the ecstasy source.

Yes, ecstasy it was what he felt. Every fibre of his body was on fire. He felt how his blood was pumped through his veins and into his erection. His breath went heavy and fast. River loved the weight of Andreji’s body on him, the warmth of his skin.

Hands settled on his shoulders and fixed him on the floor. He tried to shake them off. His lips lost contact with Andreji’s chest. Andreji was slowly rising from the ground again. River’s mouth longed for more. It moved like the mouth of a fish out of water.

“No.” Andreji’s cold, firm voice wrenched River from his frenzy. He stared at his Master perplexedly, panting.

Andreji fixed him with his gaze and got up. He retrieved the dressing material and went into the bathroom, leaving the door open. River crept up to the door to watch him.

A side glance. Andreji held out a bottle to him. “Be a good boy and help me with this.”

River straightened up, glad that he was entrusted with this task that let him get close to his Master’s body again, and took the bottle. It was iodine to disinfect the wound. Inhaling deeply to come to his senses, he applied it, noticing only now how deep the cut was. “Did I make it worse?” he asked concernedly.

Andreji smirked meaningfully. “Not much.”

“I’m sorry I lost control. I don’t know what happened…”

Andreji smiled on. “I do.” He handed River the bandage.

“Shouldn’t somebody sew this?”

Andreji shook his head. “It will heal in a few days.”

“Right,” River said, realising who he was talking to. “So what happened with me?” he returned to their actual topic while he finished the bandaging.

Once more the wounded man smiled. He went around the half-Japanese. A loud moan escaped River when Andreji’s hand seized the bulk in his trousers. “That is what has happened,” the vampire whispered into his ear while River covered his hand with one of his own to make sure it stayed in place. He felt how a third hand opened his trousers. Quickly, he pulled them down himself. When he stumbled back into Andreji, he moaned again, already frenzied again, upon feeling something hard press against his bottom.

“Andreji,” he whimpered. Strong hands turned him around.

“Who am I?”

River let his eyes take in the other man’s whole appearance once more before he looked into the serious face again. This was it, was it not? He had chosen a path. There would be no turning back. Longing for Andreji’s approval, he officially acknowledged what he had gradually accepted over the past weeks. “You are my Master.” He pressed his lips on Andreji’s and felt his tongue dart forward. His Master granted him entrance.


Constructive criticism is always welcome.