Master: Crimson Read online

  Raiden awoke with a start, the phone’s monotonous ringing jarring him out of a sound sleep.

  “Fuckers,” he directed at no one in particular. Rolling out of bed with an exaggerated slump, he stumbled to his cell phone, intending to silence it with a swift blow of his fist.

  “That’ll teach you to—”

  Raiden’s words dried in his throat when he looked at the caller id. So. We meet again. Flipping open the phone, he paused for just a moment before donning his usual sardonic tone. After all, he had to keep up appearances, even if the mixture of dread and relief coating his stomach threatened to send it into revolt. Even if I’m kinda scared shitless for the moment. Sighing deeply, the vampire rolled his eyes with practiced sarcasm and spoke into the receiver, the confidence in his tone never betraying the tremble beneath it.

  “Took you long enough.”

  Chapter 6

  The Body

  The fire burns from the inside out

  The pyre in your eyes ignites;

  You suffer alone.

  Raiden wearily licked his lips, noting with dull uneasiness that the Gabriel situation was rapidly spinning out of control. Narrowing his eyes, he tried to concentrate as the frightened actor continued to blabber away. Something about a kid, bloody car seats, teeth, something…He frowned as his still-sleepy brain tried to piece together the fragments of Gabriel’s nearly incoherent babbling.

  “…and he’s not moving now, but his eyes are open and I think he sees me, but he’s been holding his breath for a really long time and I keep trying to—”

  “Gabriel!”

  “—open his mouth but there’s some teeth stuck inside his throat that I accidentally broke and I think they’re impeding his airway, maybe I should take them out, what—”

  “Gabriel, listen to me! Where—”

  “—happens when you take pieces of a person’s teeth out of their throat, do you think he’ll start bleeding again? I need to call the hospital, but I can’t remember the number and I don’t speak fluent Japanese and I—”

  “Gabriel, shut UP for a second! I need—”

  “—called you because I thought you might have it since you probably go there a lot to steal blood or something and maybe you could actually put some of the stolen blood back into him and wake him up like that before—”

  “It’s too late,” Raiden finished, having tired himself out with vainly screaming Gabriel’s name. The effect was as he expected. The actor fell silent, his heavy breathing the only indication that he was still on the other end. Raiden muttered a curse as he dragged his ass to the bedroom closet to assemble a corpse kit. Cradling the phone between his shoulder and neck, he rapidly pushed clothing aside to reveal the hidden walk-in safe. As he entered the combination, Raiden felt the anger sneaking up on him. He was going to straighten the younger vampire out, one way or the other. Gonna give the son-of-a-bitch a proper disciplining and cover my own ass in the meantime. Believe it.

  “So, you had your first feed. Which, if I remember correctly from our last conversation, was supposed to be impossible? According to you, it was all just a big prank. After all, I‘m just a crazy psycho pulling a practical joke on you in order to back out of some movie or something, right? What do you believe now, Gabriel?”

  This should be gold. Raiden knew he was on dangerous territory, but playing the bad guy was just so much easier than trying to give a shit.

  “You’re wasting my time,” Gabriel snipped, throwing him off guard with the unexpectedly coherent and decidedly uppity response. There should be…an apology? Begging? Tears? Instead, there was this….defiance. Insubordination. Raiden bit back a snarl as he robotically yanked the necessary tools out of the safe.

  “You’re wasting your own. More importantly, you’re wasting MINE. You woke me up out of a sound fucking sleep to bitch about some poor dead kid collecting flies in your car…”

  “He’s not necessarily dead!”

  Raiden snorted, not even bothering to turn on the light as he stepped into the safe, quickly collecting the remainder of his equipment.

  “Yeah, and we aren’t necessarily alive, but I’m not here to argue semantics with you. So what’s it gonna be, Gabriel? I’m not going to help you if you keep living in denial.”

  He slammed the safe shut. Eyeing his extensive collection of clothing, he pulled out a black shirt and even blacker pants. I hope he’s not wearing one of his pansy colors today. What they were about to do required wardrobe much more discreet than the actor’s usual gaudy taste. Just in case…Raiden chose an outfit similar to his own, only with bigger proportions. Hey, didn’t this belong to one of my old victims? Knew it would come in handy at some point.

  “I’m afraid someone’s going to see me,” Gabriel confided, his voice soaked in worry. A frown persisted across Raiden’s forehead.

  “That’s not an answer to my question.”

  “My windows are tinted, and there aren’t any security cameras here, but maybe someone heard something, even though there‘s no one around as far as I can tell, but they could be hiding in—”

  “Can we PLEASE try to stay on topic here?”

  Raiden threw his completed corpse kit across the room, breaking a lamp in the process. He absolutely loathed the idea that Gabriel could get this much under his skin, but for once, he couldn’t control his emotions. He fairly shook with exasperation and something else that might turn into all-out fear if he thought about it too hard. Fuck this.

  “Gabriel, I’m going to hang up on you now.”

  “DON‘T!” Gabriel cried suddenly. The raw terror in his voice clawed its way inside Raiden’s brain, leaving him breathless with anxiety. Covering the mouthpiece with both hands, he closed his eyes and attempted to bring his breathing back into check. The vampire shuddered, sinking to the floor as his limbs lost their strength. The power of his memory lay in its ability to trap the senses, to filter them back through time and into his mind as if they had never left. Voices from the past screamed at him.

  “I just want to give you this…Raiden, why won’t you let me?”

  “I don’t want it! Get her away from me!”

  “But she wants you to.”

  “I won’t have any part of this. I’m not like you.”

  “Look, Raiden. Feel how warm she is!”

  “Stop!”

  “And this, this beat right here—hear it?”

  “DON’T!”

  Raiden dug his fingernails deep into his ears, the little bits of flesh furling beneath them like ragged petals. He focused on the sweet, savage rush of pain that blasted through him as the echoes from his past screeched silent. Vaguely, he was aware that Gabriel was repeating his name over and over again.

  “Raiden, Raiden, Raiden, Raiden, RAIDEN, RAIDEN, RAIDEN, Raiden, Raiden, Raiden, you bastard, you piece of shit, you asshole, you—”

  “Sticks and stones, sweetheart. Now shut your trap and listen,” Raiden snapped, suddenly back in his own skin. The sordid echoes of his past fled the scene like a couple of murderers. His commanding tone worked like a charm, as Gabriel said nothing more for the rest of their conversation.

  After he hung up the phone, Raiden began to outline the details of his plan. He dressed for the funeral of Gabriel’s first feed, and surrounded himself with a shroud of apathy as night began its descent.

  * * * *

  After the conversation with Raiden, Gabriel sat back and placed a careful palm over the wound on the boy’s waxen thigh. He barely noticed the tiny-yet-deep nicks and scratches the boy had inflicted upon the backs of his hands during the attack. Closing his eyes, he rested his head against the window.

  Raiden said to wait…to stay here…to stay and wait and be quiet…and he’ll help me. He’ll help me with my problem. The boy? Thoughts like foreign languages jabbered, and clucked meaninglessly. Though he could not properly understand them, their tongue was familiar. If he tried hard enough, he could almost discern their intent. The plosives, the vowels, the consonants�
�all in all, they wove an ominous verbal tapestry whose threads were starting to wear.

  Small droplets of blood decorated his chin with a speckled maroon crust. Cold sweat dripped down his back, forming icy pools in the cleft between his buttocks. Dried salt burned underneath his eyes and behind his ears. Breathing heavily, Gabriel sat in a stupor, seemingly unable to move a single muscle. He kept straining to hear some sort of sound from the boy, a whisper, a heartbeat, or a breath, however faint. But there were only the echoes of his own harsh panting, accompanied by the rhythms of his accelerated, pumping pulse. Not even the merest flicker of life sparkled from the body below him. Death is the absence of mortal sound. Through his horror-stricken haze, he gradually became aware of a noise far more ominous than his own bodily commotion. It was like a miniature heartbeat, mocking the boy’s stillness with its insistent ticking.

  Leaning forward, dread coating his stomach with its pale bitterness, he gingerly turned over the boy’s limp wrist. The muffled ticking increased in volume. A watch stared back at him, its face glowing defiantly in the dull murky darkness. Unable to look away, Gabriel followed the movement of the hands, noting that the bigger of the two was adorned with the familiar face of Pac-Man. Pac-Man. How lame. Only a kid would wear something this gauche. Unwillingly fascinated, he peered closer at the watch. Each number was surrounded by a series of dots, which were apparently representations of Pac-Man food. Stupid, really. Childish. The bloodstained wristband was worn, its edges ragged, frayed by time and affection. He must have barely ever taken if off. He was just a kid. A ridiculous, goofy, living kid. Now dead. Because of me.

  To torture himself, he began to fabricate the kid‘s entire life story. Born in a small town outside of Nagoya. The youngest of five children. The only boy. The favorite, the prized. The special one. Belatedly, Gabriel realized he had never gotten the kid’s name. And you can’t ask a dead person what his name is! He can’t even verbalize. I made sure of that.

  Effortless, this new feeling inside of him, like he was born to kill and had just now discovered it. He wanted it to end; he needed to let it go. But that blood, the richness, the taint…it was simply impossible to ignore. Raiden had tried to tell him; warned him in the dreams. Taunted him, tempted him, and cursed him with the crimson promise. The betrayal by his former idol was sickening. As much as his gorge struggled to rise, the call of blood was more insistent. The feeling felled him; already, he wanted more of the bloodlust, the awakening in his body. I have to let it be forgotten. I have to bury it.

  He stuck two blood-streaked fingers down his throat and attempted to vomit. As soon as his taste buds came in contact with that sultry red taste, however, the hunger consumed him again. It drenched his senses, flooded his nostrils with its sweet, urgent pungency. It was joyful, savage; satisfying, yet never enough; and he wanted it. Through it all, Raiden’s face was in the background of his mind, whispering once again, commanding him to drink more, more, more, FUCKING MORE! Greedily, the new vampire’s eyes scanned the empty lot, sensing the distant presence of humans, searching unconsciously for his next victim, looking for the weakest links, trying to sense the strength of their blood from the merest beating of their hearts. In the darkest part of his conscience, he craved more. In that moment, Gabriel knew for a cold, hard fact that he would stop at nothing to get another fix—and another—of blood’s bittersweet addiction. From the first tear of flesh, the first penetration of teeth, the first taste, he was hooked. A goddamned junkie. Goddamn you, Raiden. Goddamn you.

  The actor curled his fingers into a fist, striking the boy’s thigh with a blow so powerful, the impact sent quaking vibrations up and down his arm. Glancing down in shock, he noticed that the wounds on his hand had completely healed. I didn’t see that. He zipped up his pants with numb fingers, making no attempt to clean himself off while he waited for Raiden to arrive. Almost as an afterthought, he redressed the boy (the corpse) as best he could and turned his head to the side. Those dead, accusing eyes told him more than he wanted to know.

  * * * *

  Forty-five minutes later, Raiden finally located Gabriel’s car. Of course, he would never admit that during the process of said discovery, he had gotten lost more than once (despite the navigator inside his car), nearly pulverized someone’s Jaguar, and sweated more profusely than he had during the peak of summer. He stubbornly refused to acknowledge his nerves. He didn’t know exactly what to expect, but he was well aware that a single misstep could result in the sharing a jail cell with the actor. Though it would almost be worth it to watch him drop the soap. Raiden smirked as he parked his 350-Z one spot away from Gabriel’s M3. He scanned the parking garage for other signs of life, but found that the nearest warm body—warm human body—was a good mile away.

  Turning off the engine, the vampire took a silent, deep breath, smelling the scent of the kill. Freshly spoiled meat, along with congealing blood and more than hint of sex permeated his nose. And then…there was the Gabriel-smell. A wave of almost painful nostalgia broke through him, leaving him a shuddering, gasping mess as he inhaled the pungency of the actor’s scent. I have to learn to stop reacting to him like that. The vampire couldn’t comprehend his almost emotional reaction to Gabriel’s presence, but he certainly didn’t want to try. The implications were fairly threatening.

  Donning his habitual facial mask, he briskly stepped out of the car, grabbing his corpse kit in the process. In a matter of seconds, he had crossed the distance between Gabriel’s vehicle and his own. Peering inside the tinted windows, he nearly yelped. The younger vampire was staring back at him, the soreness of his bloodshot eyes painful to observe. Raiden flung open the driver’s side door, slinking into the seat as if he owned it. Closing the door, he turned around to survey the scene of the crime. Oh, shit. It’s worse than I expected. With a sinking feeling, he took in the details.

  Blood EVERYWHERE. Red splatters on the once-beautiful interior. A huge puddle of the stuff drying on the floor. Giant smears of it in random places. Blood on the leather seats, the floor, the ceiling, the windows. Blood definitely all over Gabriel. Not a whole lot of blood on the body, though. Or in it, for that matter. Guess he was pretty hungry—the again, three days of starvation post-change could do that. Sweat in copious amounts, caking the cracks in between the seats, drenching the interior, coating the actor with several extra layers. An impressive amount of dried semen, three parts Gabriel and one part the kid‘s. Oh, Gabriel, you dirty boy. Raiden flared his nostrils, concealing a highly inappropriate chuckle. A watch, ticking cheerfully away as if its owner could still hear it. The body, lying cool as stone, not quite halfway to rigor mortis. Gabriel, well-fed and not the least bit rested. Raiden scanned his face to get a better reading of his emotions, but found nothing to aid him in his search. All he saw was pain, with more than a hint of disbelief. Gotta get him moving before he shuts down completely.

  Leaning forward, the older vampire forced himself to speak in a calm tone.

  “Listen to me very carefully, because this is how it‘s going to happen. We’re going to drive your car to my summerhouse near the bay. Then, we’re going to park it in my garage. From there, we‘ll prepare the body for disposal. When it’s ready, we’ll take it to the docks in one of my cars. Then, we’ll load it on my boat. After that, we’ll take it to the deepest part of the water and dump it. When that’s done, we’ll come back to my house, clean out your car, and drive it back to the garage. There will be NO DEVIATION from this plan. Do you understand me?”

  Raiden allowed himself to breathe again. You’d better fucking understand me.

  Gabriel didn’t give any indication that he had heard him. Raiden grasped his shoulder with lightning speed.

  “Gabriel, I said, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”

  “I understand you. Now get your filthy fucking hands off me,” the younger vampire growled, suddenly reanimating as he recoiled from his maker’s touch. Raiden released his hold with a bitter little laugh. Turning away, he tossed his corpse kit into the back
.

  “Get in the front, Gabriel. I’m not your fucking chauffeur.”

  Gabriel silently obeyed, slipping his lanky form between the seats with a liquid sort of grace that men shouldn’t rightly possess. Raiden adjusted the seat and mirrors, pretending not to notice the tears standing stubbornly in the corners of the actor’s eyes. As they exited the parking lot, the vampire mentally kicked himself for the thousandth time, wanting so badly to just to do it all over. Should have done him in when I had the chance! Disturbingly enough, the thought was half-hearted, lacking in its original malicious intent. It was almost as if he felt guilty for even thinking it. This is not the time to go soft.

  As they drove on the highway, the tension between them escalated with each tick of the corpse’s watch. Gabriel lay against the headrest, expression unreadable in the intermittent flashes of headlight from passing cars. Raiden couldn’t help the surges of extreme annoyance roiling beneath his irritable skin. Anything, even an angry diatribe directed at his admittedly deserving self, would be more agreeable than Gabriel’s sullen silence. Raiden finally couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “So how did it feel?”

  “What?”

  Gabriel stared blankly at nothing in particular. Raiden pressed further, sickened by his own cruelty.

  “How did it feel? Taking someone’s life. Quite a novel experience, eh? Or perhaps you’ve done it before? For all I know, it’s old hat to you.”

  The buttons were officially pushed. The younger vampire turned towards Raiden, the beam of rage brightening in his eyes. “How dare you ask me that? You know exactly how it feels.”

  “No, I don’t. I know how it feels for ME. But I don’t DARE to presume to know your mind.”

  Gabriel started to shake. “But you dare to presume the right to ask me such a question when you’re the reason why that poor boy is dead and—”

  “No, Gabriel. You’re the reason why that boy is dead. I didn‘t kill him. I might have turned you, but I didn’t force you to butcher some kid. I offered my help before, and you refused it,” Raiden replied. He was fully aware that he had just concocted a dangerous brew of trouble. The actor’s eyes burned into him.