Chapter 25 – Luna #2
I’d explained the entire ceremony in exquisite detail to Paco, plus left him a physical written To Do list. I knew he was smart and invested in getting it right—I just didn’t know how Zach would handle things.
If he wanted to leave, Paco would have to let him.
This particular ceremony wasn’t the kind of thing you could just brute force—and it would take hours once it started, probably bumping up against dawn.
So when I hadn’t heard anything “active” from the living room in half an hour, and my curiosity was killing me, I sat down on the ground and rudely plastered my ear to the thin particle board door.
“It was one thing getting a blowjob from you when I didn’t know you were a vampire . . . but now? Totally not on this evening’s bingo card.”
Paco made a rough sound, then laughed. “I swear to God, it’s on this piece of paper here.”
“Somehow not making me feel better, but okay.” Zach sounded amused rather than frightened though, at least.
“We’re both kind of in the same boat, you know. You’re good looking and all, but I’m also not real thrilled to be down here.”
“You can’t tell me you don’t like to suck—that’s how you introduced yourself to me, if you remember,” Zach said, with a slight tease.
“I do remember,” Paco said after a pause, in a tone of voice that could do bad things to a person, before he switched gears. “What I mean is I don’t usually sleep with strangers. I mean, I used to, before I had sure things in my life—but I’m fucking rusty.”
“I’ll say,” Zach quipped. “But—I’m not really a stranger here, am I?”
Bless that man. I quietly fist pumped.
“No.” Then there was a long stretch of silence wherein I realized Paco was thinking too hard. “Do you really love Jack?” he asked Zach, which had not been in any of the voluminous instructions I had left him. It was all I could do not to bang on the door.
“Yeah,” Zach said, after a pause of his own. “I know that sounds crazy.”
“More or less so than me being down here, hoping to put your dick in my mouth for his sake?”
I heard Zach laugh again. “Probably just equivalently. But—you can start now.”
I bit my lips and waited with bated breath. “You’re here because you want to be?” Paco asked, because it was part of the ceremony.
“Yeah,” Zach breathed—and I finally felt comfortable leaning back.
Despite having stretched out beside Jack’s coffin on his bed, I didn’t get any sleep that night—and not because I wasn’t tired.
No, it was because any time I wound down, I’d hear something in the other room. After their first two rounds or so, the ice’d been broken, and I’d made it clear to Paco that the gemstone pendulum would work better the more they fucked, advice which he seemed to’ve taken to heart.
So any time I was about to drift off, I’d hear Zach’s fevered shouting, or some action taken in the other room would give Jack’s furniture an ominous shove.
They once took a break to take showers—and then started in again, in there, which sucked because it echoed and was just on the other side of the wall from my headboard.
Then there was one climax after which I assumed Zach would tap out entirely—but then I heard Paco say something, Zach laugh, and it was back on.
Even Sugar was complaining, although that could’ve been because she was trapped in the same room I was.
Fifteen minutes before dawn, I decided to let us both out. “Are there any survivors?” I asked, walking into the hall with a hand over my eyes.
“Luna,” Paco said, like he was happy to see me, and I dared peeking.
Most of the candles were out, there was melted wax everywhere, and two very good-looking naked men were somewhat tangled on the floor.
My eyes clinically skimmed over Zach’s back. “He bit you?”
“Just three times. Like was on your list,” Zach said, reaching over to pick up a crumpled piece of paper.
“Yeah, I don’t think I want to touch that anymore,” I said, going into the kitchen, and returning with a plastic bottle before dropping to my heels.
“You’re going to want to eat some meat today,” I said, tossing some of the vitamins Jack had bought me at him.
“And take twice as many as the label says of these.”
“I could actually recommend some supplements—” Paco started.
“Of course you could,” I said, cutting him off. He snorted, and rocked his head back. He had a thin sheen of sweat and his hair was disheveled, but his color was better than it’d been when he’d first gotten up. His eyes were brighter, too.
“When will we know?” Zach asked me.
“It’ll take two days,” I said, standing up.
Paco let go of Zach, and he also made to stand, starting to root for his clothing among the piles of melted wax. After he’d pulled on his jeans, he turned and asked, “When you go to get him, can I come with you?”
It was easy to see where Paco’d bitten him now. There was a mark at his throat, over his heart, and I knew where the third one was, because I’d put it on the list.
Some people got to be slowly introduced to the idea of vampirism over time—whereas others got pushed in the deep end, like Zach here.
But somehow it hadn’t drowned him.
I nodded strongly. “Yeah. We’ll take you.”
Paco was quiet until Zach left, when he gave the younger man a nod and a wave.
I wandered around the room, putting out the last of the candles as Paco watched me. “I’ll clean all this up,” I told him. “You need to get to bed.”
“And this’ll work?”
I picked the gemstone up from where I’d looped it over Jack’s flatscreen TV, where who knew the depravities it’d personally seen. I could feel the spark of magic inside of it though. “It’s started—it just takes time.”
The look he gave me said what we both were thinking: time Jack likely didn’t have.
“And you’re sure there’s no way to speed it up?”
I shook my head. “Unfortunately.”
“Will he make it?” Paco asked.
I thought back to when Rosalie had me help her torture a fellow vampire once.
She’d kept the man caged in the bowels of Vermillion, and had me walk in front of his cage repeatedly.
Over the course of a month I watched him turn into a desiccated corpse.
After a few days he’d been scary, following me on his side of the cage, like a tiger pacing back and forth, snarling, and I knew if he were able to reach me, I’d be dead.
Jack was . . . three nights out now, and minus however much blood he’d lost in the crash or the subsequent vampire fights?
I shrugged my shoulders and lied. “He’s tough.”
Paco finally stood, grabbing his own clothes to hold over himself, maintaining a modicum of propriety. Even though I’d already seen him in action before—with Zach no less!—it was kind of nice to get our relationship back on a professional footing.
“Yeah he is,” he said, before looking around. “Thanks for all this . . . Renfield.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“I’m too big for you to carry,” he said, his lips lifting up.
The silly fool was high on sex and hope, and I didn’t want to take that away from him. “I know how levers work—don’t tempt me,” I said, pointing towards the bedroom and the coffin. “Get to bed.”