Master: Crimson Read online

  “Don’t you—don’t you remember anything?”

  “I hope not,” Gabriel replied cryptically, refusing break eye contact. Raiden smelled a little fear on him, but not enough, considering the events of the past hour and a half. He began to worry.

  “So you remember something?” Raiden prompted. His nervous hands twirled strands of hair around his fingers. Now that the bloodlust had worn off, he was feeling more than a little awkward. The vampire frowned. He was never this jumpy. He always managed to keep his cool around others, but Gabriel was acting so completely abnormal, it flustered him. Raiden had predicted tears, he had predicted violence, he had even predicted the possibility of being thanked, but the actor’s apparent lapse in memory left him at a loss. How could he forget something like THAT?

  “I don’t know. Just tell me.”

  “Um…I don’t really—I can’t—um…” Raiden trailed off, reluctant to actually relive the night’s proceedings. In any case, the last thing he wanted was for the actor to cause a scene, though he knew it was probably inevitable. It’s not every day you turn into a vampire. Taking a deep breath, he sidled the tiniest bit closer to Gabriel and put a tentative hand on his knee. After all, he could offer him the illusion of comfort. It’s the least I can do for ruining his life. Gabriel’s body stiffened, but he didn’t move away. Raiden decided to lay all the cards out on the table, since there was obviously no way to weasel his way out of rehashing their eventful evening.

  “We were supposed to meet for dinner tonight. I was running late. I was hungry. I stopped to get a bite to eat but I—I didn’t know it was you. When I saw your face, I realized I‘d made a mistake…you were so weak, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want you to die. So…c’mon, you must remember what happened! Don’t make me say it.”

  “Oh, I think you need to say it.”

  Gabriel’s tone was stony; his eyes widened past the point of ridiculousness. Raiden thought he looked rather like a cartoon frog, but refrained from telling him so. Letting out an exasperated sigh, he released his hold on the actor’s knee and rubbed his temples in frustration.

  “Fuck! Okay, Gabriel, I turned you into one, okay? I made you like me.”

  “One what?”

  “You know what!”

  “No, I have no idea what you mean,” Gabriel stated with all the emotion of a robot, almost as if he’d rehearsed his response. Raiden glared at him and lost all patience when he saw that the younger vampire’s stoic expression stuck stubbornly to his face like glue.

  “Fine, I turned you into a vampire! Is that what you want to hear? You want me to shout it to the streets? You want it on a banner? You want me to make you a fucking T-shirt?”

  “Where are my clothes?” Gabriel inquired, as if Raiden had just asked him to play a game of cards. The older vampire openly gawped at him, but then decided to go along with the conversation’s sudden shift in course.

  “They were too dirty for you to wear.”

  Raiden averted his eyes in embarrassment as he remembered undressing and bathing Gabriel’s filthy figure. He had avoided looking at Gabriel’s nakedness as much as possible, of course. His nose, however, pointedly informed him that not only had Gabriel wet himself, but also had orgasmed inside his pants. Of course, this was a perfectly natural reaction for a person to undergo during the change, but the older vampire pitied him all the same. Luckily, Raiden had within his possession a pair of loose, long shorts and a baggy shirt; hurriedly, he cleaned Gabriel off, changed his clothes, and threw the soiled garments into the empty bathtub. He hadn’t been able to offer him a pair of underwear; then again, the actor hadn’t been wearing any in the first place.

  “What do you mean, ‘too dirty’? I’d like to see them.”

  Gabriel’s unexpected request snatched Raiden out of his reverie more brutally than a splash of cold water. He couldn’t believe his ears.

  “What good is that going to do? I already told you what happened, and you should remember anyway,” Raiden muttered. He was well on his way to getting downright irritated by Gabriel’s off-the-wall behavior.

  “Just show me the clothes.”

  The singer’s temper flared at the order and he practically flew to the bathroom to retrieve the sordid, sopping pile of material otherwise known as Gabriel‘s clothes. “Here.”

  “There’s blood all over these,” Gabriel stated, incredulous. His face finally began to show some sign of the horror Raiden had anticipated. Took him long enough!

  “Gabriel, were you even LISTENING to me? I turned you into a goddamned vampire!” Raiden tried to lower the volume of his voice, but he couldn’t keep annoyance from lacing his tone with a scorn more deadly than arsenic. Holy shit, this guy’s dense. He’s got more air in his head than a blow-up doll.

  “Where’s the bite mark, then?” Gabriel asked. He brought a hand up to the side of his neck, and looked thoroughly startled when his fingers grazed over the surface of a makeshift dressing that covered his major artery.

  “Underneath your bandage. It might be healed by now, though.”

  “You call this a bandage?” Gabriel scoffed, having by now discerned that his “bandage” was nothing more than a few sheets of toilet paper stuck to his skin with scotch tape. Raiden blushed furiously.

  “It’s the best I could do.”

  At those words, it was as if a light bulb finally illuminated above the actor’s head. He leapt to his feet and regarded Raiden with an accusatory stare.

  “You BIT me!”

  “I told you I did!”

  “Why would you bite me?”

  “LISTEN TO ME. I. Am. A. Vampire.” Raiden spoke in an exaggeratedly slow voice, drawing out each word. He crossed his arms and stared into Gabriel’s eyes. Go ahead, just try to defy me. We’ll see how far you get.

  “You’re a vampire?”

  “YES. And now, so are you.”

  Raiden was greeted by a heavy silence. He decided that plunging headfirst into his ‘Introduction to Blood-Sucking’ spiel was the best option. The quicker, the better. “I need to explain the rules to you. First of all, don’t believe all the myths about sunlight, because it’s perfectly fine as long as—”

  Gabriel held up a hand to stop him from continuing. Exasperated, Raiden opened his mouth to speak again, but the actor beat him to the punch.

  “I don’t know who put you up to this, Raiden, and I doubt you’ll even tell me—”

  “What are—?”

  “Or maybe you planned it all yourself and didn’t even need a third party to—”

  “I don’t know what the f—”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about. How you found out about the movie doesn’t matter, what matters is that—”

  “What movie?!” Raiden yelled, unable to follow Gabriel‘s train of thought. Clearly, he was in denial. It took every last iota of self-control he possessed not to slap that disbelieving look off the younger vampire’s face. But how can he be? He has the mark to prove it! There’s blood all over his clothes!

  “Don’t play dumb, Raiden.”

  Gabriel shook his head back and forth with seemingly genuine sorrow. Raiden gritted his teeth in fury.

  “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about, Gabriel. I’m trying to tell you the truth here. I bit you in the alley and then I turned you in the car—”

  “Do you think I’m that stupid? Do you really? Do you honestly doubt my intelligence that much? You know, if you wanted to turn down my proposition so badly, all you had to do was say politely over the phone that you had no interest whatsoever in working with me. You didn’t have to go through all this trouble to convince me that you’re a deranged lunatic who has absolutely NO QUALMS about inflicting severe physical and emotional pain upon me simply to avoid acting in my movie. You could have just said NO!” Gabriel screamed, breathing heavily, nostrils flaring out of control. Without warning, he ripped the bandage from his neck and threw it on the floor. The older vampire watched in a daze of disbelie
f as Gabriel fingered the fading bite mark that now resembled nothing more than a severe, slightly perforated hickey. Wow, he healed even faster than I did. The actor’s shoulders were shaking from the fury of his outburst; his tentative exploration of the wound ceased. Raiden quickly changed tactics to regain control of the situation.

  “Gabriel, listen to me,” he pleaded. “You’re a vampire now, I’m telling—”

  “If you say something like that one more time, I’m calling the police,” Gabriel retorted, bolting toward the door of Raiden’s apartment. “And then I’m going to tell everybody who will listen what a freak you are. I’m contacting my bodyguard now, and then I’m going to wait in the lobby for him to pick me up. If you even so much as attempt to touch my sleeve, I’ll yell at the top of my lungs and wake up your entire apartment complex.”

  Raiden‘s shoulders slumped. Clearly, the younger vampire didn‘t believe him. After a couple of days, however…

  “Are you going to tell anyone what happened tonight?”

  Gabriel stared him with something between fear and hate. Raiden’s pity vanished. Look at me like that all you want, but shortly, you’ll know firsthand what it’s like to be a freak.

  “I never want to think about this night ever again for as long as I live. If I never see your face or hear your name again, it will be entirely too soon.”

  “So I’m guessing you don’t want your dirty clothes back,” Raiden snapped, covering his dismay with sarcasm. You’ll be seeing my face much sooner than you think.

  “I’d rather cut off my dick and eat it,” Gabriel growled. Disgust swathed his tone with its filthy sheen. “And don’t expect to see these garments of yours again. Once I get home, I’m burning them. And in the morning, I’m getting tested for diseases. If you gave me anything, I’ll destroy you,” he finished lamely, the panic in his eyes conflicting with the threat in his tone. Raiden knew at once that Gabriel’s stint with denial wouldn’t last long.

  “I’d like to see you try,” the older vampire sneered, a strange thrill running up his spine at the thought. I’d end up on top, dumbass.

  “Don’t tempt me. Nothing would give me greater satisfaction than putting your head on a stick. Thanks for dinner, asshole,” Gabriel snarled. He fumbled with the many locks on Raiden’s front door; then opened it with such force that a huge blast of air hit him directly in the face. The singer stifled a snicker at Gabriel’s perplexed expression. Don’t know your own strength, huh? Just wait and see.

  “You’ll be back,” Raiden whispered in a faint voice no human was capable of discerning. The actor paused just long enough for Raiden to know he had heard the remark before closing the door with a resonant slam. Chuckling, Raiden locked the door and made his way back to the couch, picking up Gabriel’s discarded items of clothing. He fingered the splashes of gore on Gabriel’s clothes and felt a sudden, stabbing pain in his chest. Swallowing hard, he rushed into the bathroom and turned on the shower at full force, hoping to drown his random surge of shame. The scent of blood lingered, like the haze of seduction.

  Before long, Raiden succumbed to its allure, hand traveling downwards, groping furiously for his aching cock. He panted, biting Gabriel’s bloody shirt to stifle his groans of pleasure.

  Chapter 4

  The Nightmare

  His eyes are open, waiting.

  Don‘t want to see, can‘t want to see

  Those sly rubies peeking out at me.

  The only sensation he could fully concentrate on was the cold. It crept into his skin, stealthy as fog, covering every available inch of him in a numbing blanket of ice. Teeth chattering, Gabriel waited impatiently for the limo to rescue him. Every few seconds, he cast a furtive glance over his shoulder, half-expecting to see Raiden’s open mouth bearing down upon him like the grille of a Mercedes. Those teeth…Gabriel shook his head from side to side, hindering the thought’s completion. Five seconds later, however, he was peering over his shoulder again, attracting the curiosity of the night guard for the umpteenth time.

  Cursing under his breath, Gabriel forced his leaden body to move toward the lobby doors, straining his ears for any signs of an approaching vehicle. A footstep fell behind him, and he whirled around in fright. It was only the guard. Sighing in relief, he advanced closer toward the doors, and chose to ignore the skeptical stare cast in his direction. With each stride, he felt further and further removed from the appalling situation to which he had awoken; however, no distance could help him forget the hideous nightmare he had suffered while imprisoned within Raiden‘s apartment. Those teeth…no, those FANGS. They were all he could picture.

  More disturbing than the mental images, though, was the eerie sense of disconnection that had slipped upon him like a hangman‘s noose. He could easily attribute this strange feeling of detachment to shock and blood loss, but his mind kept trying to convince him there was a deeper reason. His body felt so foreign, so alien, like it didn’t even belong to him. Like part of him had ceased to exist. Hastily discarding that last notion, Gabriel performed another full-sweep surveillance of the lobby, squinting as his gaze passed over the brighter sections of the room. His actions caught the guard‘s attention, who inconspicuously rolled his eyes; then dug inside his nose for nuggets of hidden treasure. Much to Gabriel’s disgust, the guard picked out a particularly sizeable gem and proceeded to pocket it. That’ll give him something to snack on later, a voice sounding suspiciously like Raiden’s mocked inside his head.

  Gritting his teeth, the actor quickened his pace until he was within reaching distance of the door handle. His unease, instead of dwindling, grew more and more insistent with each passing moment. He could swear there were eyes bonded to him like a magnet. Not the guard’s eyes, but Raiden’s. THAT FREAK. Fuck, you can’t trust anyone these days. Of all the celebrity candidates gunning for the coveted throne of supreme insanity, Raiden had been the dark horse. His completely mild, mellow, perpetually bored persona had seemed authentic enough, but little had Gabriel realized the lunacy lurking below that gentle façade. He was disappointed in himself for having been so effortlessly duped. After all, he was acquainted with more than few celebrities who were certifiably crazy.

  In Gabriel’s experience, a twinge of insanity was usually a very alluring quality for someone to display—it made the person more interesting. What Raiden shown him, however, was so sick and twisted, Gabriel could neither make sense of it nor find its appeal. The singer had BITTEN him. He had probably drunk some of his blood, too. Gabriel fingered the bite mark on his neck fearfully, praying it hadn’t somehow grown bigger since the last time he had touched it. Strangely enough, the punctures seemed smoother than twenty minutes ago. He frowned, on the verge of boarding an entirely more disturbing and unwelcome train of thought, when a whiff of gasoline caught his nose. Then, he heard the roar of an engine. FINALLY.

  He sighed in relief and grasped the door handle, intending to take full advantage of the heated seats inside his limo. A sudden realization, however, stilled him in his tracks. There was no tell-tale sign of headlights, no beep of the horn to indicate the limo’s presence. No trace of it whatsoever. Confused, Gabriel peered out the door. He had excellent night vision, so it was easy for him to ascertain that there was no vehicle in sight. But…I smell the gas. And I hear it coming. Even stranger, the smell was getting stronger by the second; his vision started to swim with the intensity of the fumes. Gabriel went to cover his nose with his hands, but before he could manage, two piercing circles of light drove directly into the depths of his skull. Screaming in agony, he ignored the guard’s startled gasp and staggered out the door. The limo pulled up with a screech, and then Joe’s familiar form was standing over him, pulling him inside, and slamming the door.

  “What happened, boss? Are you okay?” his bodyguard asked, grasping his shoulders. Gabriel opened his mouth to speak. His head still smarted from the glare of the headlights. The gasoline fumes, instead of fading, had grown even stronger. The limo’s engine was deafening. That’s
not normal. Gabriel wanted to tell Joe everything. He desperately needed to relieve the burden of the evening‘s horrors, but his tongue would not cooperate.

  “My head hurts. Just get me home.”

  Exhausted, the actor sunk into the seat. He was suddenly more tired than he’d been in months, and all he could think about was getting warm and sleeping.

  “Why are you wearing—shit, is that blood?!” Joe exclaimed, touching his earlobe with a cautious finger. Flinching, Gabriel swatted his hand away and turned to look out the window. Missed a spot. Turning off Raiden’s voice, which had once again intruded inside his head, Gabriel hugged himself and waited impatiently for his body to thaw.

  “No. Just get the driver to turn on the heat back here, would you?”

  Joe looked puzzled, and more than a little disturbed at the actor’s request. Narrowing his eyes, he scooted closer.

  “The heat? But it’s eighty degrees in here. Boss, are you—”

  “Just DO IT, goddamn you!” Gabriel snapped, his patience having reached the end of its rope. Joe sat back, startled by Gabriel’s sudden flare of temper. Still, concern nearly oozed out of his pores.

  “Right away, boss. But if something happened to you, if you need a doctor—”

  “Give me some space and shut up,” Gabriel snarled. He silenced Joe with a quick dart of the eyes. His bodyguard seemed to get the hint.

  “Sure.”

  Closing his eyes, Gabriel tried to ignore the migraine currently bulldozing away a section of his brain. Without realizing it, he fell asleep.

  * * * *

  The whole room was bathed in a dirty red glare, the kind of light that would usually illuminate the seediest section of town. It was neon; gaudy. Filthy white sheets covered the furniture, their griminess accentuated by the dull scarlet glow surrounding them. Gabriel thought he heard laughter, but before he could react, something moved underneath the armchair directly in front of him. He tried to take a step backward, and found his feet would not oblige him. He was paralyzed from the knees down.