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Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 01

By: SadieRose



This was a piece of Vampire Fiction that I began as an exercise, in collaboration with Emily Palmer, in 1999. Gradually Rayne Wylde developed a life (or perhaps I should say, an UnLife) of his own. People have asked me how he came to be a Vampire. This is his story.

CHAPTER ONE - TURNING THE PAGE

RAYNE

21.30: June 26th, 1999 - MANCHESTER

It was time.... the others had gone ahead and now they were out there, waiting. Waiting for him.

The dense column of swirling, white smog descended slowly, wrapping Rayne Wylde in its chill, clammy folds. He tasted it, bitter and dry in the back of his throat and coughed to clear the choking sensation that invariably threatened to strangle his voice on nights like these. It was time. They were out there, waiting and he felt their keen anticipation, though the thick, cold mist muffled virtually every sound and reduced his vision to an all-consuming, opalescent greyness that swam and shifted around him like a thousand ghosts. On his left a towering block of solid darkness loomed up out of the fog and he used it as his guide. Picking his careful way through the impenetrable gloom, he trailed long fingers against its pitted flanks, feeling the vibrations run through it like the rapid heartbeat of a living thing. A shiver of anticipation ran through his whole body; a surge of sudden adrenaline - fear and longing combined - that tightened his gut and made his own heart pound faster.

Through the shifting mist a single, piercing shaft of ultra-violet light sliced upward, cutting through the curls of smog like a blade made from pure energy, etching sharp-edged, cavorting patterns on the impenetrable field of silver-grey. He dodged backwards, avoiding it, pressing his spine to the wall behind him, sliding sideways into the gloom. Another quickly joined it, cutting across at an angle - parrying it - then a third slashed through the cloak of fog, sweeping the scene like a searchlight. Now the screaming started.

Rayne’s blood raced. Shrill, disembodied cries stabbing through the icy mist goaded him on. Fearless, he stalked from the shadows to meet them - a king coming back into his realm - striding through the dancing light-beams, bolder with every step. Then dodging them like a fugitive as they strafed the rolling, silvery pall that hid and protected him. The sudden, staccato rattle of sound in his ears was deafening; like the crackle and thunder of repeated gunshots. He paced onward, a seasoned warrior on the field of conflict, unperturbed by the noise, calm and ready in the eyes of all that observed him - and there were plenty of those!

Rayne heard the screams intensify as he glided gracefully through the swathes of dry ice and let the tendrils of light sweep down over him like a falling net. He was not trying to hide. Let them find him. Let them see him at last in all of his lean, wasted, street-glam glory. He stretched out a pale-skinned, long-boned hand for the only thing on this platform that was thinner than he was. Towing the mic-stand to his black-clad body, he hugged it tight as the pounding rhythm of Simon Hathaway’s drumkit drowned out even the most ardent screamers. Behind him, Ciaran Hart’s bass kicked in; pulsing a rich, resonant counterpoint to the percussive rattle of noise. He kept his eyes fixed forward, oblivious to everything but his own breathing. Away to his right little Sean Courtney huddled low over his precious, blood red Stratocaster and made it scream far louder than any member of the mainly teenage crowd below.

A speculative smile haunted Rayne’s generous mouth. He straddled the stand provocatively, rubbing his whole body along its length, taking his time. Closing pouting, bloodless lips over the bulbous head of the microphone, he wooed it like a lover as the Strat’s wail keened in his ears, setting off his breathy growl to perfection.

“’She… Comes... like the Night...’” Rayne Wylde snarled seductively into the mic, and Whipsnade slammed headlong into ‘Dark Paths’. It was the track he had always considered the strongest on ‘Drowning Fields’, even if the Board at SOLD Records were too damned scared to put it out as a single.

Going by the reaction of the Whipsnade Party Faithful down below, the record company could go to hell tonight!

JABEZ

On the periphery of the bouncing, thrashing crowd within the decaying, art-deco theatre, a single, silent, motionless figure observed the night’s events with a sorrowful, speculative smile. At least in here it was warm. This country was a mess, Jabez Everman thought to himself sadly. For a hundred and fifty years, he had dwelt here and he was yet to experience an appreciably warm summer. Of course, compared to Egypt, the land of his birth, even its warmest days were unsatisfactory. And Manchester, quite rightly, was famed for its chill drizzle in summer and winter alike. 

He yawned and huddled deeper into his overcoat, watching the dry ice billow across the stage below. As a single, dark-clad, elegant figure gyrated out of the midst of this seeping smog, his smile broadened. He was transported back, over thousands of years, to Memphis where he had encountered the original incarnation of the current object of his intrigue. Neferuaten had been beautiful then, as she was tonight, dancing for him in the palace chambers; her back straight and motionless as her hips swayed and her long hands traced elegant patterns in the darkness with the tapers that she carried. 

How easily their bliss was rent asunder. For a few short, tender, precious years she had been his Moon and Sun. He would have done anything for her, to see her smile, and glory in the sweetness of her kisses and the hot wetness of her willing cunt. 

Back then his people had named him King Amenhotep III and afterwards called him by the name they would later sweep from the face of history; Akhenaten, the great Heretic. 

When he was still a boy, one had come to his father’s court that professed to be the Prophet of Atum Re; Lord of Light. Once, Pharaoh Tuthmose IV had been a mighty warrior King but in his twilight years his senses were failing him. His eldest son was dead of the plague and he grasped for any straw of guidance that the Gods could offer, even down to giving the prophet his younger son to be an acolyte and devotee of the Cult of the Light. For all of his teens, the young Amenhotep worshipped the Light. When his father went at last to his final rest and he was crowned Lord of the Two Lands, he took the name that would blight him. He became Akhenaten; meaning ‘the Aten is Satisfied’. 

The Mighty Prophet of Atum Re was 'certainly' satisfied. The young king had been his student and catamite for many years, slaking his lusts upon the altar of the God of Light each morning and evening until it seemed a natural way of life for him. In the name of the Aten, he built a new city and temple in T’el Amarna and forsook the gods his predecessors had worshipped for aeons. Akhenaten took the princess Nerfertiti to be his bride and she changed her name as he had done, in honour of the new God. Nerferuaten, as she became, bore him six beautiful daughters and he cherished them all. Their life was good. 

It took the Pharaoh many years to see the Great Prophet for the charlatan he really was, but even unmasked, he was not a man without power. In all the years he had been at the courts of the Pharaohs, Akhenaten's Instructor had swayed others to his ear and set in course many plans that would run for centuries, unchecked, until this very day. 

When Neferuaten could only bring Akhenaten girl children, who might not inherit his crown in spite of his love for them, it had been his Prophet who steered the Pharaoh’s own mother to his bed. This she did willingly, for the Gods had bidden it – or so she believed - carrying two fine sons, the younger of whom would one day be known to the world as the Boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun. 

The Prophet then promised Akhenaten life unending and in his vainglory, seeing a world where Neferuaten was at his side for eternity, the bold Pharaoh accepted his offer. But it was not to be. The old gods who could tolerate most violations or their laws saw this pledge as a gift only to be bestowed by the Deities. Even Maat, to whom he had devoted his most fervent prayers, after his worship of the Aten, turned her face from him and cursed him to walk the earth eternally until such a time as someone loved him for what he truly was and not for power or promises of glory. 

By then of course, his precious Neferuaten was in her grave and four of the six daughters she had borne him along with her. He was glad. She would have wept to see what had befallen him; how easily he had been duped and led astray. The one who had tricked and used him now persuaded him in his misery to yield power to the eldest of his incestuously conceived sons, Smenkhare, who had been his co-regent since Neferuaten’s death. Akhenaten did so gladly. It was a blessing to give over his power to another. He wanted only to lie down once more beside his young wife and never rise again. 

That was not to be. Maat’s curse had followed him across the centuries to this very day. As his Prophet had foretold, the barbed kiss he gave King Akhenaten bestowed life unending. He fled from Egypt and took another name, wandering in search of Neferuaten’s fresh incarnation. For generation after generation he searched. Each time he found himself thwarted, as Maat had promised he would be if his beloved did not truly love him for what he was. 

In that time, he had worn many names and many guises, as had his nemesis. Since 1893 he had been Jabez Everman, an art dealer and multimillionaire. And in this life his foe, the Great Prophet of Atum Re wore the guise of a powerful businessman who went by the name of Khaled Zelarin.

At the Manchester Apollo this evening, Neferuaten danced before him again, in the latest of her numerous guises. In 1999 ‘she’ was Rayne Wylde, lead singer and songwriter of a rock’n’roll band named Whipsnade.

DANNY

Fifteen year old Daniel Weston had never been to a gig before tonight. He supposed that had it been entirely down to him he would not have come to this one either, but Daniel had been given his orders, and if there was one thing that he was utterly proficient at it was following orders. Doing as he was told and not asking questions had kept him alive thus far. Keeping his mouth shut and his nose clean generally meant that he got food and pocket money and a room to himself, and he very rarely got a good hiding. After the first time, he always made sure that he moved fast enough to stay out of trouble. 

Having a pretty face helped. The boss liked a pretty face almost as much as he liked obedience. Back home, Daniel had just been one of too many grubby, demanding mouths to be fed and silenced. Possessing neither the power of the oldest nor the cuteness-quotient of the baby of the family, he found himself kicked from pillar to post on too many occasions. After finding himself relegated to punch-bag for yet another of his mum’s regrettable boyfriends, Danny took to his heels and headed for the streets. 

Blond curls and big blue eyes made him popular down the back alleys around Old Compton Street and Soho. It also brought him to the attention of the Boss. Mister Zelarin ran a club on the seedy fringes of the theatre district and it was there that Danny Weston learned the finer arts of personal service. At Flesh for Favours, he discovered the darkest of truths. There was truly nothing under the sun that money could not buy. 

And Mister Zelarin had bought and paid for Daniel Weston long ago. 

At the club he heard all kinds of music. Largely what was played depended upon the client, but he was familiar with Whipsnade. The band had released a video earlier in the year that was popular with certain of Flesh for Favours’ clientele. In it, the singer – a skinny, huge-eyed, ashen-faced creature, dressed in a ripped shirt and tight, black, bootleg jeans – was chased through the underground by two black panthers. When the animals cornered him finally, in a broken elevator car, they transformed into black-skinned men in animal masks and began to rip off his clothes as the elevator doors closed slowly. 

In an extended version of the video which the club had somehow acquired (rumour had it that that the director was a member, but Danny had never seen him if this was true) the singer, a guy named Wylde, was violently assaulted by both men. He had seen the film twice now. Even pressed up against the front of the stage, as close as it was possible to be, with about two thousand people pushed up close and personal behind him, Daniel could not swear that this was the same guy. He was charismatic, that was for sure, and good to look at in a wasted sort of way, but Danny could not believe that someone in Rayne Wylde’s position would allow something like that to happen to him purely for the sake of his art. 

Daniel had seen plenty of porn in his time. He had even taken part in it, and the scene in the extended video for Animorous had not been staged in any way. The man in the elevator had been fucked, anally and orally and the camera had uncritically observed every last minute of his humiliation. The only reason Daniel could imagine for his allowing its release was that Wylde had not only instigated the assault but also actually ‘enjoyed’ it. 

Watching his sinuous, gravel-voiced performance on stage, all Daniel could think of was the way that those two muscular rapists had used him. As his mouth enfolded the microphone seductively, Daniel saw those same sulky lips – cut and bleeding – forced down around a massive, black cock as he struggled to push himself away. When Wylde sank to his knees on stage, then slumped forward as if praying, groaning the lyrics to that same track, Daniel’s mind filled with the close-up image of his tight jeans, ripped urgently down to mid-thigh. He saw the singer, semi-naked, as his two attackers knelt with him and bucked their way simultaneously into his thrashing body.

Before the show was halfway through, Danny had a raging hard-on that would not quit.

RAYNE

Rayne first noticed the boy in the front row during ‘She’s Got Stars To Walk On’. The ballad gave him the chance for a breather after the asphyxiating pace of the opening numbers. ‘She’s Got Stars....’ was a personal favourite with all the band members. It looked likely to be the new single, if Matty Greening, Whipsnade’s long-time manager, could persuade the record company that it was right for the times.

He curled almost lazily atop one of the monitors and crooned huskily into the mic, watching the tiny, blond boy through lowered eyelashes. At first, Rayne had been unsure of the youngster’s gender; a factor that never failed to turn him on. One thing was certain, the kid had a strikingly beautiful face; utterly emotive and alluring. His eyes were long-lashed and pale, the colour of blue topaz in the moonlight, rarely blinking, even in the dry-ice and the flickering shafts of multi-hued, electronic lightning. The hands that occasionally pushed back the soft, golden curls of his shoulder-length mane from his face and neck were long-boned and artistic; the fingers delicate and the knuckles and wrists prominent. When he tilted back his head to catch a draught of cooler air wafting down from the stage, the bob of his Adam’s apple gave him away. 

Rayne caught himself wondering what the kid’s body was like under the glittering, skinny-rib top and faded jeans that he wore, and how it would feel to lose himself in the tumble of his unruly hair. He looked very young, but when his wandering gaze lifted and met Rayne’s unblinking stare it did not pull away. In fact, the kid just smiled as if he had a secret.

DANNY

Daniel had been wondering if he would get away with sliding his hand inside his pants and slowly bringing himself off. What with all the screaming and hysteria going on down here, one small climax was hardly going to make a world of difference! It was not as easy as he had imagined. For one thing, he was pressed up against the stage as tightly as a pilchard in a packed tin. He could not even lower his arms, let alone jerk off. When the band finally slowed the relentless pace of the opening numbers and consented to play a gentler track, he managed to get enough space to push his hands into his pockets. 

It was about this moment that Rayne Wylde sauntered languidly towards one of the monitors at the edge of the stage and sank down on it. Sitting with his legs half crossed and one foot tucked underneath him, he surveyed the audience almost playfully as he began to croon the lyrics. Automatically, they sang along and Daniel experienced a curious sense of isolation. He could feel his throbbing cock through the lining of his pocket and as his fingers curled around the top three inches of his erection, it felt as though he was the only person in the whole auditorium. No one else was real. 

No… not quite… it was at this moment that Rayne Wylde’s huge, pale, knowing eyes settled upon his face and rested there in solemn contemplation. This close to him, Daniel could see the beads of perspiration on his tip-tilted nose and the quiver of his long, black eyelashes beneath the tattered raven’s wing of his sweat-damp, sable hair. His gaze was the colour of some green, herbal liqueur Danny had once tasted at Christmas; translucent as crushed ice in Roses lime cordial. Wylde licked his lips very slowly between lines. He had a petulant, teasing mouth like some stroppy, adolescent choirboy. Danny wondered distractedly how that would feel wrapped around his hot, hard cock. 

A smile of purest ecstasy parted his lips as he felt the first spurt of hot, wet relief under his thumb. He kept on rubbing, harder and faster and closed his eyes as his slender body trembled from the force of his orgasm. So it was that he did not see the amused, knowing smile that the singer bestowed on him in return. 

RAYNE

The pass for the after-show party had been a moment’s impulsive gesture on Rayne’s part. The entire entourage of the band was issued with them on all dates. It was a perk - one of many - to touring with a rock group of Whipsnade’s calibre. Things had not always been so comfortable. Little more than five years ago - as Rayne recalled all too vividly - they had travelled the country in a defective, off-white transit van for seven miserable weeks. Back then, the crew consisted of Matt, their crazy, teenaged manager and a single solitary Roadie called Derrick. Derrick smoked pot compulsively and told endless, back-to-back tales of his days in the seventies hauling cable for Black Sabbath. Since he was the only qualified driver in their small entourage, they could hardly leave him in a lay-by at the first opportunity! So they careered unsteadily from one gig to another, up and down the M1, whilst bits fell off the van - a perpetual hard-shoulder memorial to their passing.

The Boardwalk in Manchester was one of the better classes of dog’s-toilet venues they had played on that tour. In addition to the open sewers they called lavatories, they had a solid and well-acknowledged reputation as a breaking ground for promising young bands. It had been there that Kris Spedding from SOLD, an ex-session guitarist and A&R man, finally saw them play live. SOLD was a fledgling concern - Whipsnade was to be only their second band - but Kris signed them on the spot. Whipsnade never looked back. They had the freedom with SOLD to make the music they wanted, in the way they wanted to make it.

The rest - as they say - was history.

In spite of the occasional disagreement about releases, the relationship with SOLD had been a good one. It had produced three best-selling albums (the last two of which had hit the top of the charts) and no less than eleven well regarded singles. SOLD’s offices moved to fashionable Notting Hill Gate in 1996 and now employed fifty people and eighteen decent bands. Whipsnade were the best of those eighteen bands, by a long way. Although not, perhaps, at the very pinnacle of the rock tree, they were pretty damned close and tonight, Rayne figured, they owed the Boardwalk some recognition for that break five years earlier. 


Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 01



He had been increasingly smug when Jon Brite, one of their current handful of highly-trained road crew members, returned to report that the blond haired boy from the front row had accepted the AAA-pass. Rayne never questioned whether the boy would guess at the connotations of such a gift. He had just watched the kid wank himself off in front of three and a half thousand people, after all. There were groupies at every show these days and ‘everyone’ knew what went on at Whipsnade’s parties!

DANNY

Outside the Apollo, blinking in the sodium glare of the streetlights, Danny gazed in bewilderment at the laminated pass in his hand. This task was turning out to be almost too easy. He experienced the first sense of trepidation as the crowds pushed and jostled past him, laughing and talking excitedly among themselves, discussing the show and the new songs and what they were going to do with the rest of their night. They were normal kids, going about their normal day to day lives. Daniel suddenly envied them.

He felt numb. Tonight he was going to follow orders and that meant going to this party and making damned sure that Rayne Wylde noticed him. The rest was up to him. His instructions had been fluid. Mister Zelarin knew that he was good at his job. The boss was not concerned that he would fluff his lines, but that was a part of the problem. His job was sex; that was what he was best at. In his time, Danny had been bait in any number of carefully plotted honey traps. He had closed his eyes and spread his legs for politicians and movie stars; sadists and masochists alike. 

Danny knew that he was one of the lucky ones. He was valuable right now; a precious commodity. But he was getting older, and before too long his place in the panoply of Zelarin’s golden boys would fall to someone younger and more innocent-looking. By that time, he knew, he’d better have proved his worth in other ways. He knew how those less fortunate ended up. There was an incinerator in the basement of Flesh for Favours that burned up more than just the domestic rubbish. And some of the games the club’s customers played went ‘beyond’ violent fantasies. Zelarin picked his boys from the street. Few people would miss them if they vanished for good, and by the time those people made others listen it was often too late.

No, Danny appreciated how fortunate he was to be blessed with a pretty face and boyish complexion. It made his life much easier. He knew that there were worse things out there than Black-Panther men with large cocks. Danny had slaked more than just the hunger for sex in his short career, and he had watched other boys feed that lust with their lives. 

It did not pay to cross Khaled Zelarin.

JABEZ

Outside the theatre where the air was refreshingly chill after the stifling atmosphere within, a solitary, tall, pale figure watched the black, stretch Mercedes parked behind the squat, ugly building on the edge of Manchester’s urban heartland. He had slipped away from the show as the encore began. It was not the first time he had observed Whipsnade’s performance on this tour and he was even beginning to recognise some of the pieces they played. Not to ‘like’ them, exactly; but at least he could tell them apart now. Had it not been for their dramatic and beautiful composer he would not have made such an effort, but he could not more stay away from Rayne Wylde than a moth could steer clear of a burning light bulb. 

It had been hundreds of years since he felt this way. Neferuaten’s previous reincarnation had been easier to approach. Michael Welton had been young and tractable, effortlessly influenced and bedazzled. His naivete was his ultimate undoing. In the bustle and pleasure of Britain after the Second World War, when everyone was dizzy with relief that the carnage was over, he stepped almost innocently into Khaled Zelarin’s path and was found with his throat ripped out under Battersea Bridge. 

Only the Undead could have perpetrated such a brutal slaying. Jabez kept vigil by his graveside for seven nights until he rose. It was in despair that he hammered the stake into Michael’s body to save him from further torment. Until the dawn, he held his lover’s corpse in his tight embrace, vowing that next time he would be more careful. 

He had begun to give up hope when, in 1968, Raymonde James Wilde was born. Jabez was aware of the moment as he had been aware of all Neferuaten’s incarnations, but it took him over twenty years to find the source of his new hope. Jabez had travelled the world in search of his beloved only to find the singer on TV in a bar in Budapest. Even over the distorted airwaves, he knew that this was the one. Another boy, snake-hipped and beautiful as his virgin queen had been when she first came to him. From that moment he had dedicated his life to Rayne’s protection. 

Getting close to him was harder than he had ever imagined, however. Whipsnade went everywhere in the midst of a press-pack and surrounded by professional security. For some years now he had watched his beloved from afar, wondering if – in fact – that was not the safest thing for Rayne Wylde. 

As the band and their manager tumbled out of the back of the venue, rumbled and sweat-damp still from their performance, a few hard-core fans were already waiting outside. They were rewarded with pictures and a few words before the five young men were hustled into the back of the limo and it growled away into the night. 

Jabez let his corporeal form melt silently into mist, unobserved by the crowds now spilling out onto the darkened streets, and drifted after it. 

RAYNE

Within the safety of the car, Rayne let himself gradually wind down. It always took a little while after a good gig to recover his equilibrium. Behind the smoked, bullet-proof glass of the Mercedes’ windows, he slumped into a supple, black leather seat and closed his eyes, lulled by the motion of the luxurious car as it sped away from the seething crowds around the Apollo theatre. Suspension this good was another of the benefits of Whipsnade’s success. Like the little pick-me-up Matty passed across to him, tapping him on the knee as he handed over the small, round mirror and the ebony cigarette holder. 

Rayne held the mirror steady as his friend and manager trickled the twin lines of pure white heaven onto the glass out of the twist of foil produced from within his jacket. The younger man used his AMEX Platinum Card to cut and divide the bands of coke. Juggling the holder between his index and forefingers, Rayne put one end into his right nostril and covered the left with his thumb to snort the first line cleanly, switching the slender tube to the other nostril to inhale the second. 

The buzz never let him down. That was another miracle of Whipsnade’s success. Since they had become a household name, the quality of the cocaine they scored had improved in leaps and bounds. A satisfied smile engaged his full lips as he handed the glass across to Ciaran Hart and Matt repeated the routine. From the opposite seat, young Court’ frowned at him reproachfully but Rayne was in no mood to argue with his guitarist tonight over the pros and cons of his habit. Life was rarely this good, and just for now Rayne Wylde wanted to enjoy it.

The Boardwalk was an eccentric place; that, in and of itself, appealed to his sense of the bizarre. Its situation, within the shell of the old school hall lent it a cool, lofty, church-like atmosphere alien to many similar sized venues. The capacity was only around four hundred and forty, thanks to fire regulations, but even full the place had never seemed oppressive. It had many entrances and exits, which was another reason why he selected it for the party. Whipsnade were able to slip into the building unobtrusively via a back door whilst their guests were still coming in from the street. 

Within the main body of the club, over the stage where Kris had first watched them play, there was a mezzanine level which ran around three walls. The balcony overlooked the dancefloor below and was reached by a staircase from the entrance hall, and another smaller flight of steps from behind the stage itself. Because of this, it was rarely full, since those who were not regulars at the club (and even some that were) did not know how to reach it. In addition, due to the height of the gantry, the view of the stage was not a clear one so it was less popular with those who wanted to see the bands perform. 

Thanks to the inaccessibility of the mezzanine, Rayne had it all to himself for quite some time after Whipsnade’s arrival and so was able to watch as his guests flooded in. Some were friends, but not all. A few were journalists. A handful were pluggers for the record company. More than a handful were hangers on invited by the crew. In their midst he picked out the boy from the Apollo crowd as he stepped through from the bar area with a glass in his hand and made his way to a secluded table in the corner opposite Rayne’s perch. 

Again, the sheer, simple beauty of the blond kid took his breath away. Not since his teens had he wanted someone this badly, and he lusted after the boy from the front row of the Apollo with a passion that left him dizzy. 

At that precise moment, the kid set his glass down on the table and looked up around the balcony over his head with a quiet, self-possessed curiosity. As his eyes swept along the rails they met and locked with Rayne’s. A smile, as knowing and unexpected as it was welcome, left the singer with a song in his heart and a sizeable bulge in his pants.

DANNY

The Whipsnade entourage had gathered around a group of tables on the balcony when Danny reached the upper level of the club. Watching the band members and their circle chatting and drinking as if nothing was more normal, Danny felt briefly like an outsider again. It was as if he was back at school, anxiously skirting around the older, more popular boys and their friends. It took him back to a time he thought he had left behind when he joined Zelarin’s coterie. These days he was above such things. Now he could look back at the behaviour of his peers from the classroom and laugh at the naivete of their posturing and posing. 

At a nod from Rayne, he was admitted to their group without question. A lanky, expensively dressed young man with waist-length hair in every colour of blond, from the darkest honey through to nearly white, leaned across the table and pushed a bottle of champagne in his direction. With no glasses or cups in sight, Danny hesitated only briefly before picking up the magnum and swilling the contents from the neck. There was a ripple of appreciative applause as he set it down again, meeting their eyes defiantly. He noted some smiles, a couple of head-shakes. Finally, his gaze met the ice and lime stare of the object of his fascination; the reason he was here tonight. Rayne Wylde rolled his eyes dramatically and turned away, lighting a cigarette.

He was very beautiful, even up close. Danny had seen plenty of ‘Beautiful People’ in his time who did not pass muster without the aid of the make-up artist’s brush or the forgiving soft focus of the photographer’s lens. Wylde possessed an arrogant, schoolboyish prettiness, enhanced by those huge eyes and long lashes. Sitting here, less than a few feet away from his target, Daniel was also certain that this ‘was’ the star of the video he had watched in Zelarin’s club all those weeks ago. Rayne barely met anyone’s gaze directly, but he was conscious of every glance in his direction; Danny was sure of it. He watched the singer to the exclusion of just about everybody else. Each wryly-deprecating smile and shake of the head only convinced him more. The singer did not talk a great deal; he listened and he watched; his icy, lime-green gaze moving from face to face so rapidly that it was hard to follow. Danny made the singer his personal study, assimilating his every move and comment. 

Rayne tapped his fingers frequently on his lean thigh, and Daniel Weston quickly learned that this was a sign that he was bored with the conversation. Not long afterwards, his gaze would move on to some new subject or another, more intriguing topic of conversation somewhere else. Danny could barely help but think that it would not take him long to asphyxiate on the dearth of intellect in this corner of the room.

The younger man allowed his attention to be diverted, ever so briefly, by the presence of the long-haired, spider-limbed youth in the chair adjacent to his own. Most of the clique surrounding Wylde and his immediate entourage, were fawning, giggling devotees, eager to draw attention to themselves. His neighbour seemed immune to all of this and sipped at a solitary bottle of pilsner, yawning occasionally as the hordes fought to win a glance, or a smile, or an acerbic comment from Rayne. As Danny looked him over properly for the first time, he realised that this was Whipsnade’s lead guitarist and Wylde’s co-writer, Sean Taylor-Courtney. Daniel thought that Sean could not be very much older than he was himself. He was surprisingly tiny and unprepossessing for a rock-star, and spent much of the evening trying to hide behind the fall of his dark-auburn hair, only emerging to take another swig from the beer bottle in front of him.

They began to talk almost to fill the space that seemed to exist around them. And that, it seemed, was the catalyst. Up until this moment, Rayne Wylde had been apparently content to ignore him and Danny was at a loss to find a way to get closer to the singer than he was already. He was on the verge of giving up, of going back to Zelarin and admitting – oh horror of horrors – that he had met his match; that he had found a man who did not automatically want to sleep with him. It chilled his blood to think about telling the Boss that he had been wrong. Zelarin was ‘never’ wrong; those who said that he was were invariably carrying out his instructions improperly. 

Danny did not want to think too closely about what happened to those unfortunate individuals. 

So he drank more champagne, talked about guitar music with Sean Courtney, and otherwise tried to pretend that he was just a normal kid, enjoying the night of his life. He was here, in the Boardwalk with Whipsnade, one of the UK’s most prominent rock bands. Hell, a mere five years ago he would never even have dreamed of this.

RAYNE

Rayne was feeling irritable. All night he had been waiting for the pretty, blond kid to make a move on him and nothing at all was happening. Now the Coke was wearing off and he was beginning to think that his judgement was slipping and he had played the boy wrong from the very start. Right now, the blond was ignoring him completely, which ruffled his feathers even more. On the kid’s right, Whipsnade’s own child prodigy was busy explaining instrumental progressions from tracks on ‘Silver Line Park’. Court’ was a musical genius, which, of course, Rayne Wylde and Simon Hathaway, his drummer and best friend, had recognised from the very start. Court’ could play any instrument you put in his hand or sat him in front of. At barely twenty, he was a natural musician with a flair for songwriting that occasionally left Rayne breathless. He had a real ear for a melody, but separated from his beloved crimson Stratocaster he was like a goldfish stranded outside its bowl.

Rayne could have coped with ‘all’ of his colleague’s prodigious talent unflinchingly, had it not been for that last factor. The kid’s inability - damn it, his downright ‘refusal’ - to blend in drove the older man to distraction. Music was Court’s whole life and he disapproved utterly of the old rock star cliché of sex, drugs and booze, which had always been a part of Whipsnade’s ethos. Sober, Rayne could just about tolerate him - and undeniably, Whipsnade needed him - but when Rayne started to get a little bit out of his head, as he was tonight, their relationship went from merely uncomfortable to downright precipitous.

“’’Ey! Court!” the singer barked now, prodding his guitarist hard under the table with the toe of one Cuban boot. “You’re a fuckin’ star, mate! Start behavin’ like one. The Chicken doesn’t want a fuckin’ masterclass, he wants to get stoned and get laid. Don’t you, sweetheart?”

This last comment he addressed directly to the blond boy, with a fierce, feral grin that showed off small, neat, white teeth. Court’ scowled through the tangle of his shaggy, russet-brown hair at him and the youngster looked quickly from one face to the other, his blue eyes wide and innocent. The kid liked Court’ okay, which was clear enough from his defensive expression, but the awed and astonished look on his pale, open features told the singer all that he needed to know. Since this evening at the Apollo, as he watched the boy getting off, Rayne Wylde had known precisely what he was interested in - and chord progressions had ‘nothing’ to do with it!

He was still staring intently at the boy when Court’ snapped back at him tetchily, breaking his concentration and inflaming his temper.

“That’s your trouble, Ray! If you can’t fuck it, or snort it or mainline it, it’s no fucking good to you, is it?”

Over on the next small table, Ciaran and Matty spluttered with ill-suppressed laughter at this exchange, both of them most definitely the worse for wear. Simon’s dark blue eyes flickered anxiously from the pair of them back to Rayne. The singer ignored them all and pushed himself to his feet with ice in his gaze, and in his heart. Whipsnade was ‘his’ band and he was damned if he would let anyone take the piss out of him tonight and get away with it. 

“’Fuck’ you!” he barked, letting the edge in his voice cut through the general hubbub so that a small silence descended around their table. A humourless smile graced his lips at that. There ‘were’ some advantages to a trained singing voice after all. “Fuck the ‘lot’ of you!” he shrilled furiously, before storming off in the direction of the back stairs.

JABEZ

A brief pool of light illuminated the blackness of the stairwell when Daniel pushed through the doorway out onto the metal-floored landing. The Vampire had been poised to make his move but he froze in the shadows again whilst the child he recognised as one of Zelarin’s boys figured out that Wylde could not have gone far. Using the handrail as a guide, he trotted easily down the aluminium flight. The youngster quickly located the dejected figure of Whipsnade’s songwriter and vocalist. Rayne was sitting on the bottom step, his tousled head bent over the ripped knee of his snug-fitting black pants, dabbing at the grazed flesh beneath with tentative fingers, cursing and sniffing alternately.

Whilst he was still in motion, Jabez eased closer still. He could smell the minuscule droplets of Rayne’s blood over the tantalisingly sensual aroma of his hot, weary body. As the younger lad came to crouch beside him the Everman breathed in a mingled scent of sweat and smoke and whatever herbal concoction the little whore used on his ragged blond hair. Over all of that, the smell of blood set his mouth watering. Whatever was going on here, it would not avail him to interrupt now. He had spent over three hundred years evading Zelarin and he would not run the risk that this child might identify him to his former mentor. 

Even so, it was hard to hold back when he was so close to the object of his desire. Rayne was hurt; drunk or drugged, he had missed his footing and tumbled down the final few steps in the darkness to land sprawled on the asphalt floor at the bottom of the stairs. Jabez itched to sweep from his hiding place and pick the singer up; to gently minister to his wounded knee as the boy was now doing. 

The little blond had been visibly irritated when he came down here after the singer, but now, in such close proximity, he was solicitous and attentive as Whipsnade’s glamorous front-man turned his pale face upward helplessly. Searching fingers reached up to touch the boy’s cheek spotting his face with blood, and in that moment the lad understood instinctively what it was that he wanted. Tilting his head ever so slightly, he let Rayne’s fingers slip into his mouth, tasting the salty warmth of his blood tentatively. Jabez closed his eyes and clenched his jaws against the hunger that raged within him. 




Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 01



He was still sucking Rayne’s fingers gently in the darkness when the singer’s other hand came up, hesitantly at first, running through his pale, tangled hair to caress the nape of his neck. He withdrew his fingertips from the boy’s mouth, then, more insistently, Rayne Wylde pulled his companion’s moist lips down onto his, kissing him with a savage hunger of his own.

Danny broke the kiss first, pulling away to whisper into his mouth; “D’you want to go somewhere more private?”

RAYNE

In spite of his resolve to seduce the boy from the front of the Apollo crowd, (Daniel… Danny, he reminded himself firmly) Rayne found himself surprised by the youngster’s willingness to be with him. He prided himself on his ability to judge a personality and he had already calculated that Danny would be pliable and possibly a little naive. That had been a mite shy of the mark. Already he had figured out that this kid was no pushover. Getting him drunk - or trying to - had not seemed to work and he was beginning to wonder if this endeavour had been worth the effort, when Danny followed him down the stairs. The boy’s concern had been a surprise. What he had not bargained for was that Dan would ‘physically’ want him just as much as ‘he’ wanted Dan. 

Charley Collister was outside with the Merc when they finally emerged into the cool Mancunian night. Rayne was still limping slightly from his tumble down the stairs, which allowed him to lean against Daniel for support, one arm draped loosely around the boy’s slim shoulders. His lips still tingled from the ferocity of their recent kiss. 

Danny Weston, on the other hand, seemed impervious to the moment of intimacy faced with their mode of transport back to the Midland Hotel. His hands wandered like a child’s over the gleaming bodywork of Charley’s black stretch Mercedes and he made little sounds of awe and appreciation, which clearly charmed big Chaz to the soles of his ox-blood Doc Martens.

“This is amazing!” the kid breathed settling into the supple, soft, ebony leather of the Merc’s immaculate upholstery. His fingers still wandered over every little feature of the car, exploring electric window switches and folding arm rests, locating the mini-bar in the back seat quite by accident.

Rayne fished a miniature Stolichnaya from the cache and with some magnanimity said; “Help yourself!”

Thumbing an overhead switch he dimmed the interior lights and a tiny portable TV screen descended smoothly from the roof and replayed the night’s gig for them in muted tones. Charley slipped into the driver’s seat and gunned the engine and the Mercedes slipped silently away into the Manchester night.

“I need to make a pick-up, Chaz,” Rayne Wylde told his driver in that same languid, gravel-toned voice that Danny recognised from the songs. “Just a couple of grams. Nothin’ heavy.”

Charley’s eyes met his sceptically in the rear-view mirror. “I should clear it with Matt, Chief.”

“Matthew won’t mind,” Rayne lounged in the back seat still rolling the tiny bottle between his palms. “I’m not over my spending limit,” he added persuasively. “And we don’t play the next gig ‘til Monday.”

Danny glanced at him, speculatively he thought. Rayne met the kid’s wide blue eyes and winked reassuringly. Taking a deep breath, Daniel said; “I’ve got some stuff. Just a little bit, if you want to share.”

“We’re not talkin’ blotters ‘ere,” Rayne chuckled at him and unscrewed the cap of his bottle, downing the contents in one. 

“Coke,” Danny said at once. From the driver’s seat Charley was looking him over again via the mirror. His expression was far from approving. Rayne was less judgmental. 

“You are a fuckin’ angel,” he exclaimed, wrapping himself around the boy and kissing him again. He was less restrained this time, getting his fingers inside Daniel’s cropped t-shirt and snug-fitting jeans, even as his warm, wet tongue explored the cavern of the boy’s half-open mouth. This time Danny made no attempt to resist his groping hands. 

TO BE CONTINUED......



Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 02



CHAPTER TWO - A BREATH OF SNOW; A TASTE OF BLOOD.

DANNY

The suite was large and spacious with two double beds - 'groupie built', as Wylde laughingly put it - and an enormous, azure and gold tiled en-suite facility. Rayne fumbled the lights on and behind him Danny adjusted them so that they did not glare as Whipsnade's singer lurched unsteadily into the bathroom and stared aghast at the reflection of his pale, exhausted, still impossibly pretty face in the mirror there. He heard the click of the door and leaned out, apparently half expecting Danny to have deserted him here, but the younger man was still standing just inside the bedroom door.

"I put the 'Do not Disturb' sign out," he explained now, half-embarrassed. "I didn't think you'd want to be... Disturbed, I mean!"

Rayne smiled weakly and unfeelingly. Back in the bathroom he stripped out of his gig clothes and left them lying on the floor. The twist of coke that Daniel had pressed into his palm as they necked in the car was resting invitingly on the glass shelf over the basin where he had left it when he came in. Now he unfastened it lovingly and cut a pair of fat, tempting lines on the shelf before him with the razor blade he kept for that purpose in the square-cut, silver locket around his neck.

Seemingly conscious of Danny's ice-blue eyes on the back of his head, he turned to acknowledge his companion's presence. Danny smiled back at him, swallowing his nerves. No matter how many times he played a trick like this, it always set off the butterflies in his stomach. Rayne Wylde was gorgeous, and they were definitely going to have sex. He could feel it in his groin, where he was getting uncomfortably hard again. 

"Want some?" Wylde invited guardedly, gesturing towards the Coke.

Danny smiled like a tolerant parent and shook his head once. He had his instructions. Under no circumstances was he to get stoned. That was in the rules and no matter how he itched to break them just this once, he held back. 

"You have it. I had some earlier."

"Cheers!" The singer grinned at him indulgently. 

There was a small, paper napkin on the shelf next to the glass with the complimentary toothbrushes and Wylde rolled it deftly into a tubular shape and snorted up both lines quickly before Danny could change his mind. Dropping the napkin, he sniffed appreciatively and licked the tip of his finger, dabbing up the residue and swallowing it.

"D'you fancy a shower?" he asked now, with a lascivious smile.

RAYNE

Danny did not show surprise when Rayne joined him in the vast, aquamarine and gold tiled shower cubicle. He did not resist the older man's attempts to soap him up and his skin was like wet silk under the singer's hands - even softer than the steady stream of hot water. The coke had put Whipsnade's vocalist in an almost jovial mood. He was feeling relaxed and curiously playful now, kissing Dan's neck and shoulders as they washed one another down vigorously. The blond boy was lean and pretty without his clothes on and Rayne stroked his semi-hard cock and shaved balls steadily for a while as they exchanged tongues beneath the flood of water and billowing steam. Danny did not protest when he finally eased him up against the mosaic tiled wall, sliding soap-slippery fingers between his firm, white buttocks and into the tightness of his rectum. He pulsed slowly until he felt Danny grow accustomed to the sensation of being penetrated. The boy had not said that he was virgin but nor had he claimed otherwise. He looked very young though. 

Not that it bothered Rayne too much. If Danny was not protesting then he certainly did not want to argue about it. The combination of physical contact and cocaine, coupled with the sensual buzz of the hot water on his back and shoulders was getting him rock hard. He kissed Daniel's slender neck hungrily and rubbed his own stiffening sex more urgently between the boy's naked thighs. 

"Ahhh… you are so fuckin' beautiful," he panted as his lips left Danny's throat and he turned the lad around to face the cubicle wall. Almost reluctantly he withdrew his thrusting fingers from the boy's snug hole and spread Daniel's cheeks, easing his throbbing cock-head into the well-teased passage they vacated. Dan was still tight, even after the vigorous foreplay. A little moan escaped the boy's throat as Rayne bucked deeper into his body, but he made no effort to fight the act of penetration. The singer sighed with pleasure at the feel of that firm ring of muscle closing around his pulsing dick and fucked him hard, without another word or any further attempt at seduction. 

Danny closed his eyes, one cheek pressed against the tiles, crying out very softly at each urgent thrust. The groping fingers of his left hand found and gripped the pipes for support, although the other slipped lower, seeking Rayne's own and showing the singer how and where he wanted to be touched. Rayne grinned at his enthusiasm. Danny was fully erect now and Rayne masturbated him willingly as his own cock ploughed the depths of the kid's warm, welcoming arsehole. He had been horny for this moment all night and it was 'so' worth the wait. 

He fucked Danny rapidly against the wall until exhaustion won out. As he released his hold on the boy and withdrew, Daniel whimpered softly. Rayne turned off the shower and they tumbled out of the cubicle and onto the bathroom floor. Dan rolled onto his back and the singer scrambled between his wide-spread thighs sniffing up the last residue of the coke and kissing him lightly on the cheeks and neck. Determined hands pushed the boy's slim legs further apart and urged his knees back towards his chest. Feeling dizzy with pleasure, Rayne pushed his way quickly back inside the kid, bucking uncontrollably between his thighs. His head was spinning and his nose felt as though it was melting from the inside but all of this was nothing compared to the fire in his rigid cock and throbbing balls. 

For nearly an hour they fucked with total abandon, scrambling from the bathroom to the bedroom where Danny kissed and sucked his nipples and cock on the huge bed whilst Rayne's mouth and fingers took him to new heights of ecstasy. He felt the singer's skilful tongue in every viable orifice of his body during that period. There was nothing they were afraid to try. After almost ninety minutes of non-stop sex, Danny's mouth brought Rayne to a coke-delayed climax. It was always harder for him to cum on cocaine, but the satisfying explosion was ultimately worth it. 

Dan had already spurted twice, once in his mouth on the bed as Rayne fisted him with spit for lubricant, and once against his belly as they screwed violently on the bathroom floor. His spunk was ever so slightly sweet and milky-tasting. Rayne closed his eyes for a moment to still the spinning in his head that threatened to unbalance him. He sprawled on the rumpled duvet, feeling short of breath and deeply disorientated. 

DANNY

They were sweat-soaked again by the time they sank, utterly enervated, into each-others' arms on one of the vast beds. Wearily, Danny traced patterns with his fingers down the other man's naked, slick, wet back as Rayne crawled between his thighs and nuzzled his earlobe wearily. His young lover turned his head, touching his lips to Rayne's mouth, letting his tongue flicker between Rayne's parted lips and tasting blood and the sweet and sour flavours of sweat and semen.

He was beginning to feel uneasy. Whatever the Boss had planned for tonight, so far he had seen no sign of it. If this was about blackmail then presumably there were hidden cameras in place. Their frantic lovemaking would be caught on film for whatever nefarious purposes Mister Zelarin had in mind. He supposed that a major rock star caught fucking an underage boy whilst out of his head on cocaine was a decent money-spinner for the press as well but he still felt guilty about it. Wylde was an incredible lover and fucking gorgeous to boot. Danny had not allowed himself to get this horny turning a trick for a very long time. 

"Are you okay?" he panted softly at last.

The older man nuzzled his neck quickly and breathed his words so that Daniel felt them along the line of his collar bone. He shuddered pleasurably.

"Just a bit fucked. I think I'll live."

"I hope so. I'm not through with you yet," Danny teased. He kissed a slow route down the singer's naked belly to his navel and his semi-flaccid prick. It stiffened automatically as his lips brushed it and then his tongue. He had a lovely uncircumcised cock; Danny reckoned it must be about eight inches, hard, which was not bad for a man of Rayne's less than average height and slight build. His crotch was shaved and the rest of his naked body was lean and hairless; curiously boyish. Danny began to lick his heavy testicles through the gossamer fine skin of his scrotal sac. Ever so softly, Rayne exhaled a little moan. He sniffed again, less forcefully. 

"Do you wax?" Danny asked him between swipes of his tongue. "You're so fucking smooth. It feels so good."

"'That' feels good," Rayne told him in his lazy Estuarine drawl, without answering the question. "Keep doin' that, sweetheart."

He spread his thighs wider and lifted his knees so that Danny could explore him more thoroughly. Willingly, Daniel's tongue probed him, caressing its way back between his legs and licking the length of his exposed crack slowly and seductively. Wylde uttered another breathless sigh and squirmed on the bed as Danny teased the pucker of his anus with the tip of that skilful tongue, then with a spit-lubed finger. As the singer's snug orifice yielded, he replaced the finger with his tongue again, reaming Wylde steadily until the older man was panting uncontrollably, reaching down between his legs to snag his fingers in Danny's fine, damp, blond hair. 

He was completely hard again when Daniel finally came up for air. The pupils of his unblinking, ice-green eyes were huge and dark. A tiny trickle of blood ran from the corner of one nostril. Danny put it down to the cocaine. He bent his head over the singer's crotch and wrapped his lips around the head of that magnificent cock swallowing it gradually, without gagging, until all eight inches were deep in his mouth and throat. He began to nod his head with exquisite slowness, running his lips and tongue up and down that fabulous shaft, tasting the mingled flavours of spunk and sweat and the sharp, muskiness of his own anus. Wylde groaned again, urging his slim hips up off the bed and thrusting vigorously into Daniel's mouth. At the same time, Danny eased a finger back into his lover's arsehole, frigging the soft wetness within. 

"Oh… oh Christ!" Wylde panted eagerly, shaking his head from side to side as the youngster fingered and fellated him. 

Before he could become much more aroused, Daniel stopped what he was doing and knelt back. Wide, helpless eyes implored him to go on but Danny just smiled knowingly back down on the singer. 

"You and I... we've so much in common. More than you could ever know," he whispered seductively, moving to straddle Wylde on the bed. "I was watching you tonight and I thought; 'There's a guy who really knows how to get off. And how to get others off too.' We could be so good for one another."

He rubbed his sex against the singer's flat, smooth belly, loving the feel of warm skin against his balls and his swelling erection. 

Sinking down into the pillows again, Rayne laughed huskily. "Ahhh.. don't spoil it, Danny," he chuckled weakly. "If you knew how many times I've heard that fuckin' chestnut – 'I love your songs, Rayne. We're kindred spirits, Rayne. We're so alike, Rayne!' It's all a load of bullshit. You don't know me. You don't know anything about me. That's the way I like it!"

A small gasp escaped him, like a hiss of pain, as Danny's fingers closed around his cock, guiding the spunk and saliva-wet head back between his legs. His long-boned hands moved to Daniel's slender thighs and hips, caressing encouragingly. As he did so, the youngster began to circle his hips, pressing down firmly at the bottom of each rotation until he felt the slick, hot bell-end pop suddenly back into his rectum. Danny caught his breath, then exhaled tremulously. He kept circling, urging himself lower as Wylde's hard cock slowly filled his arse. Rayne's wide, stoned gaze remained fixed on his face as the boy took him deeper and deeper, then began to ride him unhurriedly, kneeling astride him on the bed as he rose and sank on his lover's prick. 

"I know one thing," he said flatly, refusing to let the singer see how that last denial had hurt his feelings. For a moment he was tempted to tell Wylde that he would be in shit city once the pictures of tonight's little shag-marathon hit the tabloids but he closed his mouth on the words before they came out. He could not say them. 

Beneath him, between his naked thighs, Rayne trembled slightly as though he was trying to suppress a cough or a laugh. His acid-green eyes had closed and he made another little spluttering noise as Daniel rode him harder. Losing his temper, Danny sat forward so that Rayne almost slipped out of him completely. 

"Don't laugh! It's true! You don't know what…" He broke off abruptly, eyes widening with shock as a large, powerful hand grabbed him by the throat from behind. As he was hauled bodily off the mattress the last thing he saw was Rayne Wylde's ashen face below him. The singer was not laughing, he was gasping desperately for breath, his pale skin slightly blue-tinged as he started to choke, scrabbling uselessly with trembling hands at the silver chain around his neck and shaking his head weakly. A convulsion shook his body and he uttered an awful, terrified moan, a protest without words. He was choking to death. 

They both were. Danny felt his vision start to blur. Rayne's frightened features were the last thing he saw before the creature that had gripped him by the neck hurled him physically across the room and into the far wall beyond the other bed. 

JABEZ

By the time the Everman reached him, the singer's icy-green eyes were screwed shut and he was making terrible gagging noises, struggling to speak but unable to get the words out. His jaw was locked in a rictus grimace of pain and terror and now the spasms that shook his fragile body were getting worse and worse. Jabez thought fast. He had been watching Rayne and the boy since they came up here together, indulging a perverse, voyeuristic pleasure as they got naked together and began to screw. It was a certainly a most enjoyable sight. For the last hour he had slipped back into a more corporeal form in order to stroke his own sex as he watched their beautiful, sweat-slick, nude bodies writhing and grinding together urgently on the bed. 

The two rampantly copulating males on the huge bed were sufficiently wrapped up in their lovemaking to be unaware of him completely. He was not so far removed from reality however that he did not sense that Rayne was in trouble long before Danny realised it. His bond to his beloved, though unconsummated in this incarnation, was strong enough to warn him that Rayne's life force was ebbing at a dangerous speed. Three long strides took him from the shadows of the doorway to the bedside and he wrenched Daniel off the singer with no more concern for the boy's wellbeing than he might have shown a rat caught on his breakfast table. Dimly he was conscious of the sound of cracking bones as the youngster impacted with the wall, but it failed to divert him from the real emergency developing in front of him.

Rayne was dying. He was choking slowly to death. Jabez forced his jaws wide and probed his airway but could find no obstruction. Grimly he suspected the cocaine, which the singer had ingested before they began to couple. If that was the cause then he did not have much time. He could telephone Reception and get them to call an ambulance, but Rayne could well be dead by the time the paramedics arrived. Instead he rolled the young man onto his back and turned his head to one side, baring his beloved's soft, white neck. The singer's lack of resistance left him cold with anxiety, but Rayne was still trembling, still resisting death grimly. Jabez took a long, unnecessary breath. What he was about to do went against all his instincts. For centuries he had lived with the regret of allowing Zelarin to give him the Barbed Kiss, the curse of life eternal, but if he did nothing then he had waited all these years to no avail. His search would begin anew. He would have lost his only love once more. Jabez could not bear the thought of it. He had been lonely for too long. Tonight, he swore to himself, it would end.

Bending his fair head, he pushed back the dark, sweat-damp curls from Rayne's pale neck inhaling the lingering warmth of his body and allowing his dog teeth to slowly extend until they pricked his lower lip, drawing beads of blood. He touched his mouth to the singer's flesh, feeling the slowing of his pulse within the carotid artery that carried blood to the brain. Closing his eyes he prayed silently to Maat, though he knew that she would laugh at his folly, then bit down hard and deep. 

A tiny, fragile squeak of sound escaped Rayne's lips as the Vampire's powerful jaws drove a pair of sharp, ivory points into his bared neck and forced out a flood of his own thin and watery blood, carrying an endless loop of DNA into the singer's arteries. It was a complex code, a set of signals designed to suspend the mortal permanently in this one fleeting moment of his life. If it worked, if he was not too late, the young man would wake as he was himself; ageless and undying. If he failed, then he was condemned to return to his vigil, awaiting the next incarnation, whenever and wherever that might be.

Jabez sat patiently with Rayne Wylde for what remained of the night. He had wrapped his lover's cold, still body in the duvets from both beds. Rayne seemed to have stabilised, certainly, for his colour had improved although he was no longer breathing. His skin was cool, but it grew no colder as the night wheeled about towards the dawn. To the Everman's concern he had remained unconscious since he was bitten and Jabez was unable to wake him. Heaving a long sigh, he rose from the opposite bed where he had been sitting, watching the singer for hours and went to check on the boy. 

Danny was less than semi-conscious, but at least he was alive. Jabez picked him up as casually as if he was a rag doll and dumped him on the empty bed where he whimpered pathetically. 

"Don't look to me for salvation," Jabez told him coolly. "You would have sat by and watched as he died beneath you. I should wring your neck right now, but he will require you when he wakes."

Danny stared up at the tall, broad-shouldered stranger with wide, uncomprehending eyes. The man looked like some kind of urban angel in a pale, pristine suit and long, ivory coloured overcoat. His long, white hair was drawn back in a braid that fell to his waist and his handsome, sun-tanned face seemed ageless. The gaze that the stranger fixed on him was the colour of sunlit amber or burnished bronze. It was a solemn, pitiless expression. Danny shivered helplessly, unable to move. He could not feel his body at all. It had become an alien, unreachable thing, refusing to respond to the signals his brain sent it, signals telling it to get to its feet and run like hell. 

After a little while, Jabez sat down again on the end of the bed observing Rayne Wylde in contemplative silence. Not for the first time, he debated whether this was the right course of action. Yet again, his mind told him that it was the 'only' course. Any other would have seen Wylde into his grave tonight. His eyes drank in the pale, heart-shaped face, wrapped in dark, ragged curls and the way his thick, sable lashes fanned across his cheeks. His eyelids were almost translucent. Every flicker of his eyes beneath them made Jabez Everman's heart thump just once. One hand rested on his breast and the ancient creature let his gaze follow the twists and turns in the silver, celtic-knot ring on his index finger like steps in a meditation.




Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 02



It was not in his nature to weep. He had not shed tears for over seven centuries but his heart weighed heavy in his chest as he waited. At last he let his head sink into his hands and rested his eyes. He had been bowed over like this for some time when the bedclothes rustled quietly beside him and he lifted his head immediately. Rayne was staring blankly at him, a bewildered expression on his gaunt, handsome face.

"Who the fuck are 'you'?" he croaked weakly. "What happened? Where 'am' I?"

RAYNE

Rayne listened almost impassively as the tall, imposing stranger told him in soothing, unhurried words what had come to pass during the night. He recalled the fits coming on, struggling suddenly to breathe as though a hand had closed tight over his windpipe, strangling him by degrees. Then there had been nothing; he had slipped backward into a dark, cold place and lain there for an age. 

Since waking, he had been overcome by a wrongness that he could not account for. It had taken him nearly an hour, listening as the man called Jabez Everman told of what had been done whilst he was unconscious, to realise that he was hearing things and feeling things that were outside his normal sphere of awareness. He could smell food cooking in the kitchens five floors down and - closer to home - he could smell Danny's lean, warm, vibrant body on the next bed. In spite of his anxiety, that recalled the night before to him more clearly. Thinking back on what they had done, he could virtually taste Danny's tongue, and cock, in his mouth. More disturbingly, he could smell the youngster's blood; the raw, iron tang of it in the back of his throat made his stomach churn queasily, but it was not the discomfort of nausea, it felt more like extreme hunger pangs. 

His hearing was more acute. The conversations of people in other rooms kept disturbing him and he became uncomfortably aware of an argument which he sensed involved Matty and Si' who were taking his side against Charley. They were 'discussing' him in his absence! An irrational anger surfaced and he forced it down again, trying to listen 'and' make sense of what the handsome stranger was telling him. 

"I feel wobbly," he said hoarsely at one point. 

"That is because you require sustenance," said Jabez. He pressed a smile onto his face, which presumably he hoped was comforting. It only served to make Rayne feel more nervous. 

"I never eat in the morning," the singer declared. "It makes me sick."

"You are newly Turned," Jabez pointed out incomprehensibly. "You need fresh blood and quickly or your body will attempt to hibernate."

Rayne blinked slowly. He murmured; "This is the weirdest fuckin' trip I have ever had!"

Jabez shook his head impatiently and stalked to the other bed. He jerked Danny to his feet and dragged the boy back with him, dumping him onto the covers beside Rayne. The singer experienced another wave of disorientation, conscious that Danny was bleeding from a head wound. He could smell the blood. It was making him salivate. 

"Observe," said Jabez implacably. He knelt by the bedside and forced Daniel's blond head back roughly. The boy whimpered, deep in shock. Ignoring his feeble protest, Jabez Everman extended dog-teeth almost as long as Rayne's little finger and sank them into the boy's exposed throat as easily as if he was biting into a slice of cake. Rayne winced at the tearing of flesh and the greedy sucking noises emanating from the youngster's wounded neck. 

"'Jesus Christ Almighty, Jabez'!" he exclaimed in shocked tones. "What the fuck are you 'doing'? Are you insane?"

The Vampire lifted his head, looking up at his young protégé intently, his striking features masked in blood. He smiled again, baring dangerous looking fangs. 

"He tastes so good," the huge, impassive fellow told him encouragingly. "You know you want to, Rayne. I can feel every nerve in your body screaming for it."

"I 'can't'! I can't drink 'blood' for crying out loud!" Rayne stared at him incredulously. He wanted to wake up. He was desperate to fling himself up and out of this mad dream. It simply could not be real. Rock music was full of weird characters but in no walk of life did you wake to find a Vampire sitting by your bed coaxing you to suck the blood of the boy you spent last night fucking. It did not happen outside of Urban Legend. 

"It doesn't have to be so difficult. If you'd let me help you...." 

He got no further. "I've told you," Rayne screamed at him. "I don't want your help! I want you to leave me the fuck alone!"

Jabez put on his implacable face again. "You have to feed at some time. The sooner after your Turning, the better. If you cannot cope with feeding from humans, or other Vampires, there is always animal blood, although that is normally a last resort," he explained pleasantly as if this made everything all right again.

Unfortunately, his idea of a soothing remark did not currently fit his hysterical companion's mindset. Rayne only stared at him as though the fellow had suggested he should commit hara kiri during his next live performance. He was trembling with combined shock and fury. 

"I 'can't' drink blood! I'm a fuckin' 'vegetarian'!"

Jabez stared back at him neutrally as if this was a concept he simply could not comprehend. At last he gave up the pressure and left Rayne to his own devices. Danny still sprawled, unconscious on the bed beside him, mercifully out of it by now. The singer stroked his hair miserably and shivered like a junky coming down. This was almost worse than the spell of Cold Turkey he had gone through the winter before last, trying to kick his taste for Heroin. Simon had locked him in a room for seven days and enlisted Charley to make sure that he did not find ways to escape. He had been sicker than a dog, and more miserable than at any point since his teens. 

He ached and felt tired. His body simply did not have the energy to obey simple commands. 'And' he was ravenously hungry. With every minute that passed the hunger gnawed at his belly until he thought he would faint. 

He was still trembling violently as he bent his head to kiss Danny's throat where the lunatic had bitten him. The wound was healing but he could still taste blood on the boy's soft, cooling skin. He licked gently, then more urgently, filling his mouth with the coppery, salty taste. When it was all gone, he stroked Danny's hair, then nipped the boy's flesh ever so gently between his teeth drawing a small, fresh bead of brilliant vermilion to the surface like a fallen berry on a field of snow. Rayne stared at it in sick fascination. He ran his tongue over his teeth and started in shock at the unexpected protuberance of his own canines. The single jewel of bright blood was delicious but he wanted more. It was like discovering the source of a frustrating itch, once he began to scratch it there was no stopping until it was completely alleviated. 

Rayne Wylde sank his teeth ever so slowly into Danny's neck and let his mouth fill with the lush heat of his lover's blood. In his dreams he had never imagined a high like this. It was better than drugs, and almost better than sex. His cock stiffened in response to the stimulus and, if he was conscious of Jabez's coolly detached observation from the bathroom doorway, he ignored it now. Ravenously he fed one hunger and as the lust for blood was slaked he began to satisfy another. Spreading Danny's long, slim legs, he exposed the boy's tender arsehole and savagely bucked his erection into the insentient youngster's tight passage. It was bliss to bury his face in the hollow of Daniel's gore-streaked neck and shoulder as he fucked the unresisting youth and bit down deep and hard again. A fresh bloom of blood filled his mouth and he fed without restraint this time not ceasing until both his hungers were satisfied. 

THE AFTERGLOW

"Is he dead?" Once the passion of the moment was quenched, Rayne allowed himself to feel penitent. He was in the bathroom, washing the blood from his face and hair and gazing curiously at himself in the oval mirror. 

Back in the bedroom, Jabez bent over the boy, licking his bloody skin clean delicately. 

"Not yet," the older Vampire replied. "At least, his heart still beats. He is weak, however. Maybe it would be kinder to finish him."

Rayne shook his head incredulously. He would not consider that. Not just yet.

"I can 'see' my reflection."

Jabez ventured a tolerant smile. "It is just a fairy tale... that you cannot see Vampires in a mirror. At least, it is so long as the Vampire wishes to be seen." He shrugged off his coat and suit jacket and unfastened his shirt. "The business with crosses and garlic is a load of nonsense too. Stories to comfort superstitious fools!" 

"I'm immortal?" Rayne asked neutrally, the attempt at humour passing him by.

"Roughly so…" Jabez was shaking his head appreciatively. "You 'can' be killed, if someone takes out your heart or removes your head, but you won't get old and you certainly won't die of natural causes." He rose and unfastened his trousers, letting them cascade to the floor and stepping clear of them.

"I'll be thirty years old forever?"

Again, Jabez nodded. He had come to stand behind the younger Vampire now and his frost-blond hair tumbled forward, freed from its braid, partly obscuring his solemn, handsome face. Rayne took a moment to note that he was completely nude and also that he had a magnificent body. His stomach and chest muscles were sculpted in firm, golden flesh, rippling down into a flat abdomen and powerful thighs. He had an impressive hard-on. Rayne's eyes took in the upward jut of his enormous, circumcised cock and calculated that it had to be at least a foot long. His groin was hairless like the rest of his sleek, golden body. He made Rayne think of a magnificent white tiger, prowling and waiting to pounce. The singer wondered what it would be like to fellate that massive prick. 

"And 'you' did this to me... 'without' my permission?" he demanded imperiously to hide his awe. 

"It was either that or leave you to die. I was not prepared to do the latter," the Everman said casually. 

"Oh, well 'that's all right then!" The singer exhaled a short, disdainful breath through his nostrils and flexed his fingers. The flesh was cool - not quite cold - but a good, pale, natural colour. It was still very hard to believe. In fact he would have dismissed it out of hand and phoned security to get the stranger thrown out if it was not for the fact that he 'knew' it was true. He had just drunk blood from the neck of an unconscious boy and not wanted to retch. He could hold his breath indefinitely without feeling that he might explode. He felt intensely 'aware' all the time.

"So..." Rayne hesitated, glancing warily at Jabez now. "So - let me get this right. You've been stalking me for months. You barged into my room and bit me. And now I'm a fuckin' Vampire?"

"That is correct," Jabez nodded. "Actually I have followed you for centuries. Not in this same incarnation, quite naturally. But, yes, I have been watching you. In order to preserve your existence, of course."

Rayne looked visibly unhappy. He blinked several times, struggling with his emotions. "But… forgive me for any indelicacy here – but… I'm 'dead'?" 

Jabez sighed heavily and patiently. "Sort of," he responded at last.

The singer nodded slowly, feeling numb. He was trying very hard to be reasonable but a large, cold sense of panic was starting to rise in his chest. He realised with a sudden jolt that he was not breathing and reminded himself strictly to do so. That was about where the anxiety took over.

"So I'm 'sort of' dead?" he reaffirmed a touch hysterically.

"Only in the sense that you're not technically 'alive'," the older Vampire told him with infuriating placidity. "It will be fine, Rayne. Vampires are sired every day and their lives go on. 'You' will be fine."

"No..." Rayne answered him, shaking his head more fiercely. Anger helped. It focused him. "It will not 'ever' be fuckin' fine! I'm fuckin' 'dead'! I do not fuckin' think that is 'fine', Jabez!"

The tall, white maned creature kissed the back of his neck soothingly and Rayne shivered with a nameless longing. He stared at his reflection unhappily, beginning to believe that he was actually going insane. Jabez Everman kissed him again, more intimately. The touch of his mouth felt good, in spite of the tension in his shoulders.

"You do not 'feel' dead, do you?" he breathed and the words sowed shivers of pleasure through the singer's lean, unclad body. 

He certainly did not feel dead. In fact he felt more alive right now than he had in years. He was tingling with anticipation, buzzing with a thousand sensations. The urge to run out into the street naked and shout his feelings to the sky was almost overwhelming. Powerful arms folded around him. He shook his head. 

"Well then?" The Everman released him with a little shrug and returned to the bedroom to feed briefly from Danny Weston. When he lifted his gaze from the boy's bloody neck, Rayne was staring critically at him. Jabez said; "He gave you poison. He would have stood by and watched you die. Why are you so protective of him?"

"I don't know. Because no one else seems to be," Rayne pulled a sceptical face. "You think he gave me the coke on purpose? To kill me?"

"Don't you?" Jabez spread Daniel's legs and probed at him with that impossibly long tool. 

"Leave him alone," Rayne ordered tersely. "Isn't it enough for you that he's going to die? Do you have to humiliate him too?" 

"You did," Jabez pointed out. 

Rayne looked at his feet, suddenly sickened by what he had done. His dark hair tumbled around his face like a screen. Only when Jabez gently brushed his forelock out of his eyes did he even realise that the older Vampire had risen. Now he touched his lips to Rayne's mouth and breathed; "You have her compassion."

"What are you talki…?" Rayne did not get to finish the enquiry for he was suddenly overwhelmed by the passion of another mouth on his own. The Everman's hot, wet tongue glided between his teeth and they kissed intimately as the masterful ancient pulled Rayne down onto the empty bed. His strong hands fondled and caressed Rayne's naked body as they had longed to on the previous night and the singer submitted to his kisses and the sweep of his rough, wet tongue. Long fingers probed between his cheeks and pressed into his anus as firstly his neck and throat, then his torso, in particular his nipples, received a thorough nibbling and sucking. Rayne groaned in astonishment, writhing down onto the intrusive digits that pulsed into him rhythmically. He was not one of nature's born submissives, but to attempt domination of this particular Alpha Male was beyond his imagination. He allowed the Vampire to finger him for several minutes as they kissed on the bed. 

When Jabez urged his head down towards the nodding bell-end, Rayne did not resist. He 'had' wondered, after all… That huge dick was hot and throbbing as he caressed it's glossy helm with his lips and Jabez growled softly and pleasurably, manoeuvring him around so that he could use his deft tongue in Rayne's exposed crack. For the second time in twelve hours, Rayne allowed a man to tongue-fuck his rectum. He managed to get his lips around the head of Jabez's enormous tool at the same time and nodded slowly now, taking the big, beautiful Vampire into his mouth bit by bit until he had swallowed about ten inches of cock. Rayne was in heaven, he had already calculated that if he no longer had to breathe it was technically possible to take this monster prick all the way. His own rod was stiff and pulsing in the other Vampire's rubbing hand as Jabez enthusiastically frenched his arsehole, getting him slippery and pliable. 

When Rayne was finally nuzzling his balls, Jabez pulled out of his mouth and the singer groaned eagerly, all too prescient about what was to come. The older Vampire rolled him smoothly onto his belly, holding him by the hips with those powerful hands and parting his firm, white cheeks. Rayne uttered a little moan of anxiety and longing as that well sucked cock head nudged up between his legs, against his slick, wet hole. Roughly now it thrust through his tight ring into the softer, more accommodating depths of his anus. As a teenager, Rayne had taken plenty of men this way, but it had been a good few months since he last submitted to buggery, and years since he'd had a cock anywhere near this size. 

He groaned out loud, but did not pull away.

With about half of Jabez's erection inside him, Rayne began to cry out in arousal and astonishment at every thrust. His undead lover was penetrating him at an agonisingly steady pace, bucking it into him at about an inch per minute. After ten minutes Rayne was writhing and shouting incoherent abuse. At a little over eleven minutes he exploded, spurting cum over his chest and belly and the duvet beneath his knees. Jabez took his time, pulsing firmly for almost a quarter of an hour until Rayne finally felt his lover's heavy balls between his thighs. He rested there for a moment then began to pump harder. Rayne yelped his appreciation as that mighty tool started pounding him, tormenting his prostate until he was ready to cum again bare minutes after his first climax. 

"You are fabulous," the older Vampire growled huskily, fucking him more energetically as he sensed that Rayne was becoming used to his size and scope. "And incredibly beautiful! I have watched you and dreamed about you for so long."

He leaned forward, wrapping his arms around the singer and sitting back so that Rayne was pulled into his lap, riding on him like a creature demented. His lips raked the younger man's neck and shoulders as they coupled, communicating with little pleasurable sounds; whimpers and moans and sighs of satisfaction. 

"Do you like it?" Jabez asked him, having manoeuvred them both so that Rayne could watch himself in the full-length mirror on the wardrobe door. The singer eased up and down like a stretching cat on his hard pole. An odd little smile played about his full lips as he observed the reflection of his lithe body and his lover's more muscular frame. He positioned himself in order to be able to watch the Everman's humungous cock moving in and out of him then writhed sinuously up and down on him like a well-trained whore. 

"Touch me," he panted at last, neither acknowledging nor answering the question. "Make me cum."

Compliant, Jabez did as he commanded. Fisting the singer's throbbing eight inches vigorously, he soon coaxed his raven-haired beloved to orgasm. The tightening of Rayne's muscles milked his own penis and he pressed the beautiful young male into the bedclothes then and fucked him violently up the arse. It had been a long, frustrating time since he last had sex this good and Jabez revelled in every last moment of it. 

After he had spilled his copious seed into Rayne's deliciously submissive body, he curled around the singer possessively and held his sweat and cum-sticky body close. To his amazement, Rayne was trusting enough (or exhausted enough, he was not sure which) to fall asleep in his embrace. Jabez held him for as long as he dared, unwilling to relinquish the intimacy now that he finally had it, but knowing in his heart that soon he must. If Rayne was to be protected then he could not stay here.

MORNING

When Rayne Wylde opened his eyes, it was with some confusion. He was woken by a violent hammering on the door of his suite and sat up with a start as the memories slowly returned; memories of blood and madness. His first thought was that he had to get the bedding hidden and move Danny before people began to ask difficult questions. So it was that he found himself perplexed by the fact that he was utterly alone in the suite and the bed next to his own did not appear to have been slept in at all. He peered beneath the duvet and under the beds just to be sure, then checked in the spotless bathroom as well before stumbling to the door and letting Matty Greening in. 




Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 02



"What the bloody hell does it take to wake you up?" his young manager demanded furiously. "We was supposed to check out about 'alf an hour ago. I was just going down to get security. I thought you was dead!"

Rayne blinked at him. It was tempting to tell Matt that he 'was' dead and go back to bed. His head ached and his mouth felt disgustingly dry. He merely shook his rumpled mane and retreated to the bathroom. 

"Where'd you bugger off to last night anyway?" Matt wanted to know sulkily. 

"Just back here." Rayne looked out at him with a small, humourless smile. "I fancied an early night."

"The day I believe that's the day they put me in the ground next to you," Matty said cynically. "Was you wiv that blond kid?"

"No. He went home," Rayne lied, thinking; 'He went 'somewhere', anyway!'

"You sure you're awright?" Matt got to his feet, suddenly tired of the inquisition. It was early and few of the Whipsnade entourage did mornings with any degree of enthusiasm.

"I'll be fine. Just a weird trip, that's all. Don't worry about me." Rayne looked uncomprehendingly at his reflection in the mirror. It stared back at him, large as life. 

END OF PART TWO

TO BE CONTINUED...



Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 03



Friday, 25th June, 1999 - London

SIMON

“Shambles? Whaddaya mean, a shambles?”

 Simon Hathaway had to shout in order to be heard above the sound of running water as he showered away the last vestiges of sleep. His young lover, Thom Woodford, had been reading aloud from a selection of newspaper reviews carrying varied accounts of Whipsnade’s Oxford Apollo show from two nights ago.

Now Simon pushed back the screen to peer at the lad, seeking confirmation of what he thought he had heard. Thom merely flashed a tolerant smile back at him and returned his attention to the Guardian’s Arts section.

It was good to be back in London again. It always felt good to come home after a long stretch on the road and, for Simon, London was as near to home as he came these days. Lately he had lost his lust for the open road. Three months on tour was too damned long, however much success came from the enterprise. People who had never done this kind of thing for a living always seemed to think it must be such a glamorous lifestyle, being in a band; in Milan one day, Paris the next... doing interviews for popular music shows or glossy magazines. They never stopped to think about the kind of schedule that saw you fall asleep in your seat on a rancid tour bus leaving Glasgow Barrowlands at three in the morning, just a few hours after crawling off stage from a two hour set, to wake up at dawn in Hull, freezing your balls off whilst you waited for a ferry to Rotterdam, where in just a few hours you would be required to soundcheck for another two hour set that same night; in the meantime having slotted in four or five interviews and maybe (just maybe, if you were lucky) wolfing a cardboard sandwich and a Styrofoam coffee that didn’t touch the sides of your gullet all the way down.

In the three and a half, chaotic months just past, Whipsnade had finally concluded the mixes for their third album, ‘Drowning Fields’. B-sides were laid down for the next three earmarked singles at the same time and the band recorded promotional videos for them throughout the last week of April. This involved a twelve hour round trip to Berlin for the filming of ‘Willing Mind’ and three days standing on the moors above Bodmin, in driving sleet, doing the shoot for ‘She’s Got Stars To Walk On’. Preliminary gigs for the album tour had run throughout April, worldwide, after which the band were allowed to return to London for two whole days to record a slot on ‘Later…’ and the video for ‘Animorous’.

Filming took place on the abandoned tube station at Mornington Crescent and featured a pair of black panthers and a crew of hip-hop home-boys (from Islington) who spray-painted the tunnels with Whipsnade’s band logo and subsequently got them banned en-masse from the Underground System! 

Shooting done with, there quickly followed on-the-road interviews for the trade press to coincide with the single pressing of ‘Animorous’ and the release of ‘Drowning Fields’ in June. Most of these conversations took place on buses and trains en-route to Europe’s major capital cities for more promotional gigs. During the first week of May, Whipsnade even played in Bucharest and Zagreb where (and Matty was 'adamant' about this) they had a solid fan-base. It took three days to get to Bucharest from the former Yugoslavia thanks to a blow-out on the road from Sibiu, two and a half-thousand feet up in the Transylvanian Alps. Ciaran went down with food poisoning on the night of the gig, forcing one of their roadies to stand in for him, and Rayne contracted flu when the air conditioning on the coach seized on cold. Throughout the eastern-European leg of the tour, he had suffered persistent voice-loss.

Before the end of May, illness and exhaustion forced a brief return to England to recuperate. The press had a field day, photographing Rayne at Heathrow in dark glasses and a muffler, looking thin and ill, and printing stories alleging that he had come home for treatment following a Heroin overdose. It was a short halt. Less than a week later Whipsnade were on the road again, this time with a full entourage of more than fifty people and two support bands, gigging across the UK.

“’On a damp Tuesday night in Oxfordshire, Whipsnade put on a dazzling display of chaos for a frenzied fan-base who probably wouldn’t have cared if their heroes performed a set straight out of Mother Goose,’” Thom read aloud to him from the Guardian, as Simon splashed and soaped himself in the glass-panelled shower cubicle. “’Rayne Wylde’s gang of glitter-gothic troubadours are always good entertainment and, in spite of the obvious sound difficulties, managed a performance which brought a small part of Oxford, at least, to it’s knees. 

“’A close tangle with the crowd left Wylde bloodied but indefatigable last night, although the set was foreshortened as a result. What remained, sadly displayed the mighty Whipsnade as former rock kings in beggars’ rags. The old songs were delivered with a rabid gusto that only Rayne Wylde can manage. Demonstratively off his face, Wylde still navigates his way around a three minute pop song like no one else. The newer numbers range from the quivering tension of the single ‘Animorous’, to the broken-hearted balladry of ‘She’s Got Stars To Walk On’, which once more illustrates the band’s unparalleled capacity for writing unlovely love songs. It is a pity that this rendition was mangled by a singer with a skull full of lysergic acid! 

"'Whipsnade on form are miles better than the shambles here in Oxford last night, but right now a period of de-tox looks the order of the day for these former hopefuls of Rock’s Velvet Revolution.’” 

Simon tilted his head back beneath the blast of searing water, letting the shower soothe away his tension as Thom folded the newspaper shut decisively. He had slept solidly for the last day and night, since coming home to his apartment in the shadow of Tower Bridge. Deservedly so, in his opinion. The Guardian was entitled to its view, he supposed, but still it made him angry. All media coverage did at the moment. 

In Dublin, a well-publicised scuffle with some reporter from the Daily Mirror in the foyer of the band’s hotel had been blown up out of all proportion. Rayne had been pissed off about the Heroin story, true – they ‘all’ had, but the press really had it in for them this time around. The tabloids the next day were full of rubbish about Ray being too stoned to stand up on his own, totally ignoring the fact that he had decked a photographer twice as broad as he was.

Whipsnade’s drummer sighed and rubbed shampoo through his spiky, auburn hair. He supposed things would have been easier if relations between Ray and Sean Courtney had not deteriorated gravely during the Birmingham concert. Rayne had been two hours late for the sound check, and when he finally turned up he was wired and twitchy; still on come-down from the excesses of the Manchester aftershow party. The replacement tour bus had been a mess. Equipment went missing in Manchester (presumed stolen) and the sound had been fucking awful.

Oxford, a night later, had been a magnificent struggle against crushing odds. The Guardian was justified in its criticism of the sound quality but they were not to know that Whipsnade had not even soundchecked the venue. To make matters worse, the crowd had been a bolshy bunch from the word go. Even before the first band set foot on stage they were howling and throwing stuff around. Matters were not helped by the fact that Rayne seemed to be completely out of his head when he finally arrived for the show, alone and soaking wet, just half an hour before the band were due to perform. There had been a screaming row with Court during which the guitarist threatened to quit once the tour was over and Rayne told him quite bluntly that he could do what he damned well liked. 

Seconds before the house lights went down, Rayne changed the set-list triggering another argument, which continued on and off throughout the gig. Admittedly, Si conceded, the alterations (if not the altercations following on from them) helped to defuse the crowd’s aggression. Rayne was undeniably wired. He stalked onto that stage like a prizefighter, determined that no one would best him. For the first five numbers there was no let up; starting with ‘Animorous’; then the hotly disputed ‘Dark Paths’ in all it’s black sexual humour and scathing fury; followed without pause by their first single, ‘Outeract’, and a savage rendition of ‘Wild Women’ from the Acid Gardens album and culminating with ‘Wrecking Machine’, the only Whipsnade single never to feature on an album and one of their biggest ever hits.

The choices were good ones, with hindsight. It gave the crowd no respite and Simon had even relaxed and begun to think that they would get away with the lousy sound quality, when Rayne began to belt out the opening lines to an old B-side, ‘Lips Round the Barrel’, accappello. Court had looked over his shoulder at the rest of the band, clearly as startled as they were by this unscheduled addition.

The crowd loved it though, bellowing along with Rayne’s notorious paean to suicide as Whipsnade picked up the musical pieces behind their frontman. Rayne seemed not to care if they were with him or not. He was balancing on the monitors at the very edge of the stage, keening like a violin string; “Lips round the barrel... rope round your neck... Throw yourself down, boy.... Put yourself down....” Then, without warning, he toppled theatrically into the first few rows of the crowd. Trailing the mic lead behind him like the smoking tail of a stricken fighter plane, he vanished into the sea of thrashing bodies below.

Court cursed an audible blue streak and massacred his precious Strat to cover for the loss of vocals. The other two followed his lead, reprising the refrain helplessly, whilst the crowd erupted like a piranha pool at feeding time and the bouncers struggled to retrieve Rayne from their midst, ripped and bloodied but far from bowed. He was missing his shoes and the buttons of his black shirt when they boosted him back onstage, with his fly buttons half unfastened, swinging the mic around his head like a weapon. Blood trickled from his lips and left ear, but it was not until much later that Simon discovered how his silver-hoop earring had been ripped out forcibly by a frenzied trophy hunter. 

Oddly enough, the lobe of his ear seemed fine by the end of the night.

It had been a shock... to the reviewers as well, who commented on the singer’s battle scars with macabre glee. Simon’s concerns were more grave. Rayne had not thrown himself to the lions like that since one memorable night in Liverpool, over three years ago, when he had performed an elegant dive from the stage of the Royal Court Theatre into a packing crowd. It was the last show of that particular tour, although it had not been scheduled to end thus. A bunch of little Nazis, who had been heckling him all night, piled in and kicked seven shades of shit out of him, putting him in hospital with a broken nose and ribs and a cracked shin. Rayne claimed not to remember anything about the incident, but he never jumped from the stage again.

Not until last night in Oxford.



RAYNE

Rayne Wylde cradled his throbbing head against the heel of his hand and leaned back slowly on the cool, khaki-green wall behind his austere bunk. He had stopped shaking, finally, which was a blessed relief. Everyone who came into his tiny cell had looked at him as if he was a crazed drug-fiend. He laughed humourlessly to himself at the idea that (if they read the tabloids regularly) they probably thought he was anyway. Certainly, he had not helped his image by letting them bring him in here like this. At least now he was caged he no longer felt so nauseous. 

A young WPC had brought him coffee some time ago and he had wrestled it down past the lump in his dry throat, fighting the urge to cry, as vivid images flashed through his head from the last twelve hours.

His life had deteriorated into nightmare territory since Whipsnade came back to London. In the few short hours that they had been home, Rayne had lived a horror movie lifestyle. On the road he could hide behind an intense persona, fuelled by libido and stimulants. His coke-numbed senses let him exist at the most basic, primal level, but the drug turned him into an animal, incapable of making his own measured decisions. Here, in civilised West London, where people knew him, he had to resume a mantle of normalcy, at least for appearance’s sake. He had fervently hoped that the insanity in his head would stop the minute he walked across the threshold and back into reality.

When that did not happen, he began to panic. And the pressure was building up inside him now until he wanted to scream out loud.

Back in Oxford, he had begun to believe that it was all over; Whipsnade, his life, everything. It had taken all the shreds of courage he could muster and every last milligram of coke he could ingest (and even that most routine of habits had been a struggle) to throw himself into the crowd. Memories of the vicious kicking he had taken in Liverpool resurfaced as the Oxford mob closed over him, tearing like animals at his clothing and his body. Foolishly, he let himself accept that they would end this waking nightmare for him. Of course, they did nothing of the sort. 

Since four burly security men dragged him from the heaving throng, he had felt strangely empty and listless. Nothing mattered any more. If he could not die, what was the point in seeking after thrills?

Once upon a time Rayne had sincerely believed that Whipsnade was all he would ever need. Now, alone and in despair, he wondered what that dream had led him to.

Lying on the bunk in his cell, he thought back wearily to Manchester and the blond-haired boy called Danny. All of that night had been a vague blur. He remembered, distantly, that they had fucked. The kid had been a rare beauty, and an absolute dream in bed, but after the sex things had turned very strange indeed. For a while he was able to convince himself that it was the coke Danny had given him. He had known bad gear to do weird stuff to his head before, but never with such long lasting side effects.

Since Manchester, he had been unable to eat. He did not know if it was anxiety, or drug-related illness. Everything he forced down came right back up again. Even weak tea, which he loathed anyway, or the strong Italian coffee he normally adored, refused to remain in his belly for more than a minute or two. The fear was shredding him internally. 

He was ravenous all the time; only, nothing satisfied the hunger gnawing at his belly. When he ate, he was sick. Once he had vomited everything back up, he found himself starving again.

The need to tell someone what was going on created a nightmare scenario of Catch-22 proportions in his head. If he opened his mouth, his own friends would brand him a lunatic. If he kept it to himself, he would likely go crazy anyhow!

After the Birmingham show, which had been a dire affair, he had lain in bed, alone, and sobbed his heart out for most of the night, without knowing why, except that he felt so utterly wretched. Not since his boyhood had he let his feelings loose like that.

Not since mum died, anyway.

He shut those thoughts out hard, digging his nails into the palms of his hands. Grimly he stared at the grey-green wall opposite and refused to cry.

Even drugs could not soothe him by the time they reached Oxford. The insides of his nose were as raw as they only ever got after prolonged bingeing. He locked himself in his hotel room and stripped naked, dropping his clothes to the floor. Throwing himself onto the bed he closed shaking fingers around his semi-hard dick and jerked off rapidly in an attempt to calm his nerves. A satisfying wank generally helped him to sleep, but he brought himself off three times before giving up on the endeavour. He was still wired and craving… ‘something’, but he did not know what. Idly, he dabbled his fingers in the cooling spunk on his chest and belly then sucked them clean. It eased the itch inside him only slightly.

He had been frantic by this stage. Fleeing the stifling atmosphere of the Whipsnade entourage’s out of town hotel, he called a cab and roamed the city alone for an afternoon. He was a dissolute, twenty-first century vagrant cast adrift in this timeless town of golden walled universities; like a modern day gypsy lost on the set of a period drama. He walked aimlessly, hardly knowing where he was for much of the time. Passing a butcher’s shop on the High Street the most appalling craving yet had come over him. He stood for an age, staring through the window at the raw steaks and cuts of liver in their bloody trays, until one of the assistants had come out onto the street to ask if he was all right.

Rayne struggled to push away the memory of what he had done next. It had sickened him then and still turned his empty stomach even now.

It had been ten years since he last ate meat. The liver was cold and raw but still bloody when he took it from the flimsy plastic bag in a shady nook by the river. By the time Rayne was done with it, the piece of flesh was dry and desiccated and the bag licked clean. He crouched, panting like an animal, by the waters’ edge for a little while afterwards, as the blood ran slowly down his gullet and settled in a cold mass on his spasming gut. Then, sickened by his own degradation, he huddled on his hands and knees and threw up until his shrunken stomach ached and he was weeping with pain and frustration. Streams of blood and bile flowed from his mouth and nostrils as he sobbed and shuddered.

During that same afternoon, he decided to drown himself. Normally cocaine kept him away from alcohol whilst the band were touring, but he could not manage even a tiny sniff of coke by this time. His nose and throat and the insides of his skull ached like they were full of ice. It was easier to inject it, but he had always been squeamish around needles, letting Matt handle the fiddly business of mainlining. A bottle of vodka became his companion during the late afternoon and, when that was empty, he lay down by the riverside again and rolled nervelessly into the water. 

It was then that he recalled something else about that terrible night in the Manchester Midland Hotel. He did not need to breathe. Even under water he was utterly sentient, although he lay on the riverbed for nearly half an hour, just hoping blindly.

A couple, walking their dog by the Isis finally spotted him and raised the alarm. They fished him from the river with a boat hook and pumped his lungs until he had coughed up most of Oxfordshire’s water supply - or so it felt. By that time, he was too enervated even to cry.

What made it worse, he could sense the energy around him so very acutely. He could feel the shimmer of summer sunshine through the dappling leaves overhead and smell the verdant greenery and rising sap, and the loamy scent of the earth beneath him. The water had its own clear, slightly irony tang and the people around him were warm and pulsing with life. Rayne could hear the pounding of their earnest, anxious hearts and almost taste the salty heat of their flesh and their blood.

The hunger was so bad that he wanted to scream until the pressure in his head was gone. He longed to grab one of them and rip out his throat until the hot red life-force spilled over his face and hands. Finally, able to stumble to his feet, he had fled, not knowing what direction to take, only that he needed to get away from their concerned voices and the mingled pity and disgust in their eyes. They watched him go in silent astonishment, water still sluicing from his hair and clothing as he ran.

SIMON

Simon turned off the hot jets and ran his hands through his wet hair, surprised to discover that the memory had left him shaking slightly. It had been a shock, seeing his best friend vanish like that; sucked into the crowd and swallowed up by them as if he would never re-emerge. Recollections of Liverpool had given him palpitations until the security guys could get Rayne safely back onstage.




Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 03



Amazingly, Ray seemed unhurt this time, apart from the minor cuts and bruises on his lithe body and handsomely sneering face. Whipsnade slowed the furious tempo via ‘Hoodlum Lovesong’ (from the singer’s favourite album, the skewed and opulent Silver Line Park); the icy contempt of ‘Needle Tracks’, and one of their finest B-sides, (in Simon’s opinion) ‘She Cries in Her Sleep’.

By the time they played ‘She’s Got Stars...’ Rayne was flagging, coming to sink on the monitors like a wounded animal; his ribs heaving under the tatters of his shirt as he curled up by the front of the stage. His chin came to rest on the back of his hand, and his eyes closed; wooing the microphone in broken, husky tones. Dark curls were plastered flat to his head with sweat and blood and his slight body trembled as he forced out the breathless lyrics. Hands reached out from the crowd to tug and pull at him, immune to his helplessness, unheeded by the object of their desire.

Simon had realised then that Rayne was seriously hurting. If he had been able to, he would have thrown down his sticks and dragged the other man from the stage. A frantic glance into the wings located Matty Greening, poised on the edge of an amp-case, his gold-flecked, hazel eyes watching every move just as surely as Whipsnade’s drummer did. Matt checked his watch and tapped his fingers nervily against the pitted silvery flanks of the box and Si had known then that the show was in trouble.

If Simon Hathaway seemed protective of his bandmate and childhood confidante, then Matt Greening was doubly so. For almost two years before Whipsnade took off, Rayne and Matty had been so much more than just friends. They came together in Manchester when Rayne was a student there, caught up in a drug-fuelled spiral of mutual passions, which pushed everything else to the perimeters of their hedonistic young lives. Astoundingly, pure lust fired their on and off relationship for over seven heady years until the inevitable implosion came. Sheer pressure of being in each-others’ pockets night and day as Whipsnade began to ascend the dizzy heights took its predictable toll, and the fallout was spectacular and tear-drenched on both sides. Most amazingly, Simon thought now, Whipsnade survived it. 

Matt was still the consummate businessman, suited and booted for his meetings with the SOLD Board. Nonetheless, he was not so far from his humble origins in Tottenham that he could not strip down to ripped jeans and a vest in order to help with the stage lighting or fix an amplifier.

Neither he nor Rayne had been involved with anyone else since, save for the occasional fling. Matt still cared about his ex though, in spite of everything Ray had put him through. Simon had seen desperation that night at the Oxford Apollo, in every line of the younger man’s creased brow; in every tensed fibre of his casually suited body. Ray had dumped him cruelly, clearly and publicly, and Simon knew that their young manager had not forgotten it, but on Tuesday night Matt Greening had eyes for no-one on stage but Rayne Wylde. Moreover, there had been genuine concern in that watchful gaze - concern for more than just a solid business investment.

When Matt started to circle the air with his right hand shortly before the closing bars of the ballad, Ciar and Simon recognised the call for a break at once. Rayne did not see it, nor did Court, who was bent low over his Strat, picking heart-stoppingly pure notes from the strings to accompany the fragility of his partner’s smoky voice. As the song faded down, so did the lights. Predictably, the crowd went crazy for more, but Matt and big Chaz Collister were already hustling Rayne off-stage. Si leapt down from the riser, just able to make out his friend’s protestations as he was helped backstage and sank down on a box with his head in his hands.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he had demanded, glancing up sharply as Simon appeared before him. “Get back out there, now!”

“Are you okay?” Simon asked him, ignoring the command implicit in his old friend’s words. “You look fucking terrible, Ray.”

Pale eyes met his own through the tangle of sweat-soaked hair. Bluntly, Rayne Wylde said; “If you don’t get back on that stage now, Hathaway, I’m looking for another fucking drummer!”

They had managed two more numbers, culminating with an ear-splittingly violent rendition of their ‘96 hit, ‘Cattlemarket’ before Rayne called a halt of his own accord. None of it seemed to matter. The Oxford crowd was won over. 

“Shambles?” he murmured again now from behind the shower screen. He paused for reflection, then shook his head, knuckling water from his eyes and casting droplets all around from his close-cropped russet hair. “It wasn’t 'that' bloody bad!”

His partner of the last eighteen months tossed him a towel as he turned off the controls and stepped out of the cubicle. Thom was a slender, striking boy of twenty one, currently perched on the lip of the oval bath tub in rumpled blue jeans and a crimson chenille sweater with a scooped neckline that showed off his slim, pale neck and most of one shoulder. He was barefoot, running a nervous hand through his blond-streaked mahogany hair, the paper still spread across his knees.

Simon eyed him with weary speculation. Right now, the lad was just too tempting to be true. He cursed himself silently and towelled his hair, then rubbed himself down casually and discarded the bath-sheet.

“You should do that properly, you’ll get cold,” Thom admonished. “You know the doctors said you should take better care of yourself.”

Simon caught him in a drowning, sidelong, cobalt stare.

“It hardly matters, does it?” he said, perhaps more sharply than he had intended. “If you’re not gonna sleep with me anymore why should you worry?”

“Not fair,” the boy countered, his fine dark brows coming down in a petulant scowl. “You know how worried I am.”

His partner reached towards the hook on the back of the door and pulled on a heavy, towelling gown in deepest ultramarine, but not before he had surveyed his naked body in the slowly de-misting mirror on the wall. He still looked pretty fit, he thought. There was no sign of physical deterioration in the firm musculature of his stocky, sun-kissed frame. He was reasonably good-looking; fit; in the prime of his life. The friction of the towel had left his uncut seven inches of chunky cock semi-hard and he posed self-consciously in front of the glass for a moment. 

His flesh was still lightly bronzed from that holiday in Mauritius last year - before his test results came back - in a far-off time when Thom was still willing to be fucked by him. They had spent a fortnight in bed, or in the private hot tub, or late at night on the beach, just kissing and stroking and sucking and screwing. It was the most fantastic sex of his entire life. Simon bent his head, avoiding his own resentful eyes in the mirror.

“Well... you know the answer to that as well as I do,” he said mildly.

“I can’t...” Thom choked on the words and turned his head away. “Si, you know I can’t. I’m frightened.”

“You need to know,” his boyfriend replied, turning to face him. “So do I.”

Eyes the colour of brandy, shot through with firelight, darted to meet his own. Simon shook his head at the vulnerable, ‘little-boy-lost’ stare and Thom bit his lip like a recalcitrant child. “Why?”

“Because I want to know that I haven’t given it to you,” Simon told him bluntly. “It’s bad enough...” He stopped, clearing his throat slightly. “I just want to know that you’re all right, love.”

Thom looked down at the quivering paper in his hands. A little tumble of his coffee and cream forelock fell forward over his eyes and Simon smiled, remembering how it had been a similar reaction that brought the boy to his attention in the first place. He reminded Si of Rayne at that age, although they were nothing alike in looks or temperament. 

Rayne would not have sat here fighting tears because he was asked to take an HIV test. He would not have been happy, but he would have done it.

Sometimes Simon wondered why Thom even bothered to stay with him. It was not that he was ungrateful, Thom was fucking gorgeous and he had no idea how he would go about rebuilding his life after three years together if his lover walked out now. However, if he searched his own thoughts he knew that he could answer that question too.

Thom knew that Simon Hathaway was a wealthy and generous mate, and this was a beautiful apartment, overlooking the Thames, in the shadow of Tower Bridge. Moreover, Simon was an only child, with no progeny of his own and a distant relationship with his parents (at least it had been ever since he came out and told them he was queer!) Oh… Simon knew why the kid stayed, all right. Thom Woodford was well aware which side his bread was buttered.

He felt cynical, then guilty for even considering it. Guilty and sick to his stomach.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said at last, shaking his damp head. “The pills are okay. My T-cells are looking fine. Besides this place is superheated right now, I’ll be sweating by the time I get to the bedroom.”

He shook his head again, laughing softly and humourlessly.

“Those fuckin’ Guardian bastards, though...? Heh?”

Thom looked a little bit sheepish, he thought, as the kid murmured; “There’s worse, Si.”

Blue eyes met brown across the bathroom and Simon Hathaway prompted his younger lover firmly; “Well?”

“Ciaran’s been on the phone every twenty minutes for the last three hours,” Thom whispered almost tremulously. “Matt’s in A&E at St.Mary’s. They took him in this morning.”

RAYNE

Last night with Matty had been the final straw.

For a very short while, Rayne let himself believe that once he was home in his Ladbroke Grove apartment nothing could touch him. It was good to be back. Skye, still had the cats down in Sandlingford, and the place was empty and quiet. He bought several bottles of mineral water and a Chinese meal when Charley dropped him on the corner of Barlby Road, near the railway bridge, and walked all the way back to the flat to contemplate the last few days in peace.

Less than an hour later, tormented by the memories of Oxford and with the contents of his temporarily sated stomach floating in the toilet bowl, he started to despair. What if the dream he thought he had in Manchester was true? What if he genuinely ‘was’ dead?

It was too ridiculous even to consider. Rayne needed something to affirm his status as one of the living. So he telephoned Matty. 

Matt Greening had come round just after seven, with a bottle of Chianti and a smile that said he was glad Rayne wanted to confide in him. Before eight they were in bed together for the first time in over five years. The sex was fantastic - as it had always been. Rayne discovered that there were benefits to this enhanced perception of his. He was able to feel when Matt was close to coming and so control their lovemaking, prolonging the experience. For nearly two hours the pleasuring worked.

Firstly in the kitchen, where he drank wine from Matty’s soft, warm mouth whilst the younger man unfastened his pants and masturbated him urgently. Then in the bedroom, where he massaged sweet, jasmine oil into Matty’s pale, silken flesh whilst his miraculous lover cooked up a tiny rock of excellent Pakistani junk by the side of the bed. Deftly the younger man shot him up with a freshly unwrapped needle whilst he lay sprawled in the soft folds of the duvet with his eyes closed tightly. 

He had not used Heroin since he and Matt split up but the ever-tactical Matt ‘knew’ that it kept him hard. Rayne was aware (by the time the needle slipped under his flesh) that Matty had come here willing (even eager) to be screwed senseless by him.

The younger man stripped off completely before shooting up into one slim thigh. Watching him, Rayne wondered privately if he was still using on a regular basis. Not that it made a difference right now! He had never hesitated to share anything with Matty in all the time they had known one another. It was as if he considered their love to give them some immunity from the horrors of the real world, although he knew that was ridiculous. So far his trust had been repaid, the three tests he had taken for HIV all came back negative, which was a miracle considering his lifestyle - and Matt’s.

But as the skinny youth sank down lazily on the vast bed beside him, such grave considerations gave way to the compulsive urge to fuck him hard. Firstly, in his hot, wine-dark mouth, then up his sweet and tender arse. The Heroin, coupled with his enhanced sensory faculties, made this a curiously intense and frighteningly lucid experience. His lover’s every gasp of delight inflamed him further as he eased the younger man down onto the mattress and sank into his arms. 

Drawing Matt’s long legs up above his narrow, thrusting hips, Rayne kissed him so deeply that he could taste the wine on his bed-mate’s tongue. It was the most alive he had felt since before the tour began and he threw himself into the endeavour with a vigour that made Matty cry out loud in ecstasy and agony long before he was through. This was one of the pleasures of being with a lover he knew as well as he knew himself.

There were few words between them. Rayne shifted position restlessly throughout, pushing himself upright to kneel between Matt’s long, lean thighs; then pulling sharply out of him and turning him roughly onto his belly to straddle him and plunge back into his receptive body.

Matty felt tight and wet inside, skilfully milking his lover’s thrusting cock with the muscles of his rectum as they sprawled together on the mattress. Incoherent whimpers of pleasure escaped his lips with every stab and Rayne nuzzled his hot, lanky body greedily, overwhelmed by the delicious musky scent of his skin and the coppery tang of his blood. With almost deliberate languidness, he let the pulsing slow until each slippery incursion felt like an endless caress around his tumescent prick. Matty let out a long, tremulous sigh each time he pushed himself back in and Rayne basked in the other man’s enjoyment, sliding fondling hands over his mate’s sweat-slick flesh.

He exploded with a gasp of strangled relief, after nearly two hours of incessant fucking, kneeling back on his heels. Matt was seated astride him, pushing his firm, white arse cheeks back into Rayne’s throbbing crotch; impaling himself urgently on his lover’s erection. Rayne’s arms were wrapped tightly around the lad’s skeletal, naked torso, pulling him down hard. He bucked upward, flooding his lover’s snug, superheated anus with semen, as he buried his face in Matt’s waist-length, shaggy mane. His long blond hair was the alternating colour of every kind of honey. Rayne felt so good that he could have wept. The sustained pleasure emanating from his cock and balls was angelic relief after the tension of the last few days. He could almost forget how hungry he had been feeling.

Almost.

Matty leaned back against him with his head on Rayne’s shoulder as the older man uttered a throaty growl of satisfaction and kissed his neck, loving the sweat-slicked, saline flavour of his skin. Maybe it was the junk, but Matt seemed like a ghost in his arms, almost insubstantial after the vigorous exertion of the previous two hours.

They sank, exhausted, into the rumpled, white quilt and he writhed down sinuously to take Matt’s hard, heavy sex in his mouth. The younger man loved to be sucked, and Rayne adored the feel of Matt’s long, smooth, circumcised cock in his mouth. He teased the delicate silver ring, which pierced the firm ridge of skin above his lover’s urethra, with the tip of his tongue, half-smiling as he recalled how surprised he had been the first time he went down on Matt. 

At twenty-one he had never sucked a pierced knob, and the bolts and rings punched through his mate’s nipples, belly-button and cock head had both shocked and stimulated him. Sliding his hand between Matty’s legs now, he eased a probing finger deep into his mate’s thoroughly inseminated orifice, caressing the firm, glossy bud of his sensitive prostate with the skill of a master artisan. Matt writhed and called out his name repeatedly; his voice loaded with mingled passion and longing, his fingers tangling in Rayne’s sweat-damp hair.

“Ahhh Ray... Ray... yes! Like that!”

The fat, purple bell-end of his long, hard cock was as slick as wet velvet, oozing a steady stream of pre-cum onto the singer’s tongue. Rayne swirled it around Matty’s hot, swollen head, swallowing the slightly bitter fluids and kneeling back to lick his lips.

The taste was just too much for the Vampire in him to withstand.

Often, especially on Heroin, it took them a while to reach a satisfactory climax but Matt was intensely aroused by this time and Rayne had never once failed to make him come. The singer’s lips parted around his cock head once more and he began to nod his slow, seductive way down that long, hard shaft, caressing Matty with his tongue and easing another finger into his cum-filled arsehole, then a third.

“O’Yah-weh!” Matty groaned, arching his back to push his prick deeper into his lover’s mouth. “Fist me, Ray! Jesus Christ… fist me!”

Rayne’s lips stretched in a knowing smile around the jerking tool that probed the back of his throat. He did not even gag as he swallowed Matty deeper, burying his face in the younger man’s hot, clean-shaven crotch, nuzzling the hollows of his groin. He urged a fourth finger inside, stretching Matt’s sphincter slowly, then withdrew them all. Curling the sticky, glistening digits into a tight fist around his thumb, he forced it back into the skinny fellow’s well-fucked passage before the natural lube of spunk and mucus had time to dry out and lose its viscosity.

Matt Greening began to keen desperately as his lover’s left hand and forearm steadily impaled him. Rayne did not spare him, he was hungry for Matty’s cum and the blond man was soon lashing and struggling on the bed, his long fingers snarled in Rayne's dishevelled, black hair. His hands forced the singer’s mouth down harder and Rayne kept on sucking and nuzzling. His knuckles pounded Matty’s prostate gland, gathering speed and impetus as Matt bucked and screamed at him.

“OHH… JESUS! JESUS! FUCK ME! FUCK ME!”

When, finally, Matty released his hair and rammed his crotch upward into Rayne’s face, the older man’s lips parted in a soundless sigh of relief and satisfaction. The hot, spurting, satiating river of Matt’s semen rolled sweetly over his tongue and down his throat, milky and bitter in equal parts. Rayne thought he had rarely tasted anything so delicious. Only one thing would be better right now.

Keeping Matt Greening firmly impaled on his fist, Rayne let his softening prick slip from his wet lips and flop back onto Matt’s pale belly. The screen of his tangled, sweat-damp hair hid the irrepressible extension of his dog teeth and Rayne gave in to the hunger that was crippling him.

Matty protested weakly and none too seriously when Rayne began to nibble at the head of his cock, with perfect, sharp little teeth, then kissed his way down to the softer, yielding flesh of his bed-mate’s scrotum and shaved balls. The older man licked and kissed his inner thigh teasingly, still pumping him with his left hand until Matt began to get hard again. Initially, the slender youth uttered a sharp, excitable laugh; he was still glowing from the passion of their lovemaking when Rayne began to nip at his skin, then to bite more deeply. 

The blond man remained draped, supine and loose-limbed on the pillows, gasping with exhausted pleasure. Pain had never disturbed him, in fact it seemed to 'inflame' his arousal much of the time. Rayne could not recall that Matty had ever told him to stop because he was getting too rough. That suited Rayne Wylde well enough.




Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 03



Matt’s eyes were closed as he stroked his stiffening erection and rode on Rayne’s pulsing fist. He did not see the way in which his partner’s dog-teeth smoothly extended and his lower jaw effortlessly unhinged so that he could bite deep into the internal iliac artery of his lover’s naked thigh. 

The initial spurt of blood caught the singer unawares and he was forced to bury his face in the soft flesh of Matty’s thigh to stop it spilling all over the sheets and catch most of it in his mouth. Bestial instinct took over and he fastened his lips onto his ex-boyfriend’s inside leg, sucking like a pup on the teat, gulping down the hot flow of fresh, mortal life-blood. It’s slightly meaty, slightly metallic flavour filled his mouth and nostrils and he gorged ravenously, suddenly conscious of nothing else. This was what he had been craving. This was all he needed. Rayne Wylde was already drinking deeply from his lover when Matt realised what was happening and began to scream.

The clatter of a key in the lock of his cell door released Rayne from the clamour of remembered sirens in his head.

He must have passed out on the bed at some point. As he came slowly to his senses, he realised that – for the first time in days – he was not hungry. As he struggled to sit up, he had discovered Matt lying pale and unconscious on his mattress, sprawled out like a dead thing beside him, the sheets soaked in spilt blood, and done the first thing to enter his head. He ‘phoned for an ambulance, on autopilot.

The Paramedics must have radioed the police because a whole posse of them had been waiting for him at St. Mary’s in Paddington. The rest was all confusion. A grim faced man with dwindling, iron-grey hair and a moustache like a yard brush had escorted him to the car, asking him questions constantly - questions Rayne could not answer. There had been a young woman too, a blond who looked at him like he was a scrap of shit she had found under one of her perfect fingernails. 

They refused to let him stay with Matt, nor would they even tell him how the younger man was doing. He was questioned in the hospital foyer and in the police car, then some more in a grey-walled, windowless detention chamber at Woodfield Road Police Station.

Then they shut him up in this cell and left him alone, finally. The same WPC who had fetched him coffee asked, later, if he wanted a sandwich. Rayne shook his head mutely. What good were a few slices of bread and cheese going to do him? He was slowly and bitterly growing resigned to the horror that all he craved was human blood.



Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 04



Chapter 4: Destination Nowhere

© Sadie Rose 1999

(Gore Warning: The culmination of this story is 'still' [apologies to Laurel and Manu] a tad violent, so anyone with a nervous disposition and/or weak stomach should cut away before the last page. Sorry :I )

SIMON

"Why didn't you fucking wake me?" Simon yelled at his boyfriend, and not for the first time, as they skidded to a halt in the drop-off point at St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington. They blocked all entrances and exits, whilst Thom fumbled for the ignition key to restart the stalled engine of his unfortunate Toyota.

"You said you needed to sleep. There was nothing anyone could do!" the lad wailed hopelessly back at him. 

Simon let himself out of the car and slammed the door furiously. Behind him Thom wound down the passenger window and yelled; "How are you getting back?" 

"Like you care!" his partner growled and stormed off through the double doors into the antiseptic-smelling corridors of the hospital.

Ciaran Hart was still waiting outside the casualty department when Simon finally located it. Whipsnade's lanky, long-haired, Irish bassist looked up at him, blank-eyed and weary, chewing on his knuckles, as Simon demanded to know what in seventeen hells was going on. Charley Collister came to the rescue of both of them. Their big, burly driver had been to the coffee machine. Now he deposited a polystyrene cup in Simon's hand and said; "He's through the worst, Hathaway. Mind, he needed a transfusion; he'll be on the easy list for a few days, doctors reckon."

"What the fuck happened?" Simon protested, frantic by this time.

Ciaran looked pale and shaken as he muttered; "Si, they reckon Ray did it. He's down the cop shop at Woodfield Road."

RAYNE

When the door to his cell opened again, the grim, grey, bristle-faced man who had questioned him previously was standing in the doorway. Rayne looked up at him blank-faced, waiting. 

"On your feet, mate. It's ShowTime!"

He turned away without another word. The singer waited a moment for two burly PCs to come and cuff him. When nothing of that kind happened, he scrambled numbly to his feet and followed the Detective back down the faceless corridor to the depressing room where he had been interviewed earlier in the morning.

SIMON

Charley ran Simon to Woodfield Road Nick in the Mercedes and promised to wait there for him, which was reassuring on a personal level he could not quite connect with. Ciaran stayed at St. Mary's in case there was any news. 

The station was a small but austere, modern building. Its staff seemed well suited to the premises. A tall, bulky man with a thinning copse of grey hair on his head and considerably more steely bristles under his nose ushered Si into a tiny, featureless, grey room that was not much bigger than a toilet cubicle. Wordlessly he indicated a seat behind the plain, teak desk. He sat down opposite in a creaking chair and switched on a tape recorder, speaking his details into it without embellishment. A younger woman with straight, ash-blond hair that fell to her waist entered the room and sat beside him, setting a folder on the desktop between them and Simon.

She did not smile, although her features would probably have benefited from the attempt.

"Mr... Hathaway?" the man queried, glancing at his notes to confirm Simon's name although it had only recently been given to him at the front desk and he had just spoken it into the tape recorder. "I am DS Parker and this is WDC Berensson. We've already had a word with your - erm - colleague, Mr. Wylde, this morning but we'd like to clarify a few small points if that's okay with you?"

Simon nodded his head mutely and Parker confirmed his response for the tape.

"Am I under arrest?"

The Detective Sergeant shook his head at that.

"No, no, Mr. Hathaway. Nothing like that, I assure you. We just needed some more background information before a decision can be made about your colleague's bail conditions."

He rubbed his iron-grey moustache with a nicotine-stained finger and Simon itched immediately for a cigarette. He had left his at home in the rush to get to the hospital.

"Has Rayne been charged?" he wanted to know now.

"Not formally, no." It was the woman that answered him. She spoke with a husky, controlled alto voice and Simon found himself wondering, a touch irrationally, whether she could sing.

"Mr - um- Greening..." Parker took another glance at the file to confirm Matty's existence. "...has not laid any direct charges against your colleague. However, the doctors at St. Mary's have already stated that he was hardly capable of doing so when they brought him into the A&E. In view of the nature of the attack on Mr. Greening, and the fact that Mr. Wylde has confessed to the assault under questioning, we are still deliberating the wisdom of detaining or releasing him."

Simon stared blankly at him. Rayne had 'confessed'? He could not get his head around that information. What could Rayne have possibly done that he needed to confess to the police?

"We have a gig at the Roundhouse in just over seven hours," he heard himself saying distractedly.

"I don't think so, Mr. Hathaway."

That was the woman again. She fixed him coldly with blue-grey eyes, like cloudy skies reflected in twin puddles. Simon felt his scalp prickle as though she pulled fine claws through his hair, raiding his head for hard evidence of his guilt. He shifted awkwardly in the hard, plastic seat.

"I don't understand. The doctors wouldn't tell us.... I mean, what's Ray supposed to have done?"

DS Parker exchanged a speculative glance with his fellow officer which set Simon's nerves on edge some more. Then he filled Whipsnade's drummer in on the gory details of the attack that had drained Matt Greening of over a third of his natural body fluids. Before he was half done, Simon began to feel very sick.

"How long have you known Raymonde James Wylde, Mr. Hathaway?" WDC Berensson asked him neutrally, without giving him a moment's respite.

Simon rubbed his forehead, conscious that he was sweating under the glare of the strip light overhead and wishing that he had thought to bring his medication. He was still struggling to stay rational whilst a part of his brain teetered on the edge of hysteria. This simply could not be happening.

"I met him at infant school, we were about five years old," he volunteered automatically, his brain showing him a moon-faced, cherubic kid in green and yellow dungarees, which almost brought a smile to his face. From the expression on WDC Berensson's immobile face, he figured that this was hardly the sort of detail she required and added quickly; "Uh... about twenty four... twenty five years, I guess. God almighty! Twenty five years!"

DS Parker smiled a little at that beneath his heavy moustache. The young WDC barely registered the remark. Simon wondered if she had even been born twenty five years ago.

"And Matthew Greening?" she prompted, without looking up from her notes. "How long have you known 'him'?"

Simon chewed on his lower lip. He would have to be damned careful here. He had not missed the look of disgust on WDC Berensson's face at Parker's revelation of how Matt had been injured and the circumstances surrounding the assault. Now she was sizing him up, trying to decide what kind of pervert he was.

"Maybe six... seven years," he hazarded with a shrug. 

"And what is your relationship to Mr. Greening?"

Simon smiled unfeelingly.

"He's my manager... I mean, the Band's manager. Look... If he's stuck in hospital I really ought to ring the venue and let them know what's going on..."

"All in good time, Mr. Hathaway," said Parker tolerantly. "Were you aware of any - uh - amorous relationship between Matthew Greening and Raymonde Wylde?"

Simon blinked once.

"Is that relevant?" he wanted to know.

Privately he had already begun to suspect DS Parker of some closet voyeurism. He could not explain it. Perhaps it was the moustache! This, however, was not an issue he was at ease discussing with the man.

"I wish to establish the depth of feeling between Mr. Greening and Mr. Wylde in order to rule out possible conflicts which may... however inadvertently... have led to the incident in question," Parker told him, almost too casually.

WDC Berensson was more direct.

"Was there a sexual relationship between Matthew Greening and Raymonde Wylde?" she wanted to know.

Simon looked at his hands uncomfortably.

"Yes," he said at last, in a very small voice. "Not for quite a while though. They were together for a few years, but that was some time ago. They've been friends ever since. I wasn't aware that they were still close, physically."

"When you say together, what exactly do you mean by that?"

Simon glanced up and caught Parker's eye. There was a definite gleam of interest there now. Simply, he responded; "They shared a flat in Kilburn, up near the top of the High Road. I presumed Rayne was fucking him. I never asked!"

"How long ago, exactly?" asked Berensson.

The younger man's expression remained guarded as he looked back at her. Curiosity glittered in his blue eyes. She was fishing for sure; looking for something, anything at all, to pin on Rayne. Matty was five years their junior - they presumably had his medical files, they would know that. When Matt and Rayne first became lovers, Ray was twenty-one. Matt had barely turned sixteen. Simon was no fool. He could see what she wanted out of this.

"I don't recall," he lied vaguely now. "Maybe a couple of years. It was a pretty mad time, what with the band taking off and everything. I don't remember."

"Were you aware of Raymonde Wylde's sexual inclinations? You claim to know him well, after all." Berensson persisted, undaunted by his sudden evasiveness.

"I went to school with him. We've been in bands together. I didn't say I lived in his pocket!" Simon responded in brittle tones. "He was a mate. I knew he got off with boys as well as girls. He had a reputation for it, even at school. And no... before you ask... I've 'never' slept with him!"

'Frigid Bitch!' he amended silently. 'Suck on that!'

"But you are 'homosexual', Mr. Hathaway?" the woman retaliated without flinching. She pronounced the five offending syllables very cleanly and precisely like separate words, as though the very speaking of them could infect her with his perversion. Simon suddenly hated her for it.

"Yes, damn you!" he hissed softly, almost under his breath. "Yes, I'm fucking queer! And I'm also a damned good drummer, a half-way competent kick-boxer and some mother's fucking son!"

That finally raised a smile from the woman although it was not a facial expression that encouraged familiarity, even presuming Simon 'had' been interested! He glared back at her vehemently.

"I'm sure you're capable of taking care of yourself, Mr. Hathaway," she remarked acerbically. "The question remains though; are you up to keeping an eye on your... friend?"

He did not miss the deliberate pause. Convinced by now that she was out to ruffle his feathers, he purposefully controlled his reactions. If she wanted to prove to him that all gay men were hysterical queens, she would have to try harder than this.

"I'll do whatever is necessary to get him out of here," he said quietly now. 

"You're convinced that this whole messy business was an accident, are you?" DS Parker queried, frowning slightly.

"I don't think Rayne Wylde is a killer," Simon responded levelly, shaking his head. "Okay, he's not the most stable firework in the box but I can't believe that he meant to hurt Matt. There's no way he'd 'deliberately' do such a thing. This has got to be a mistake."

Berensson flipped through some papers on the desk in front of her. Coolly, she said; "The paramedics report stated that there was drug-taking paraphernalia at the apartment where they picked up Mr. Greening. Toxicology reports have not come back to us yet but their initial suspicion was Heroin. Do you have anything to say about 'that', Mr. Hathaway?"

Simon looked from her impassive face to Parker's inquiring one. He felt his heart sink. On top of the latest bout of press activity, this was all they needed. 

"I... I thought Ray was clean," he faltered, conscious that they were waiting on his response. "As far as I knew... he wasn't... he didn't, um, he didn't take that stuff any more."

WDC Berensson glanced at her colleague briefly and shuffled her papers. Parker shrugged his meaty shoulders once, then leaned across to the tape recorder. 

"Interview suspended at..." a glance at his chunky Rolex told him; "...fourteen hundred hours and seven minutes." Now he looked up at Simon shrewdly as he switched off the machine. "I hope you're right, Mr. Hathaway."

RAYNE

Rayne blinked myopically at the big man, not quite grasping what he had been told.

"I'm free to go?"

"Your colleagues have arranged bail for you," Parker told him gruffly. "That will do for me, for now. Be warned, you're not to leave the country. I'd appreciate it if you checked in here tomorrow and handed over your passport, just to be on the safe side."

"But I'm free?" Rayne persisted, still perplexed. "I can go home?"

"Sure," the detective replied amiably. "Unless your boyfriend changes his mind and decides he wants to press charges - or the worst happens and he snuffs it!"

Rayne experienced a sickening jolt somewhere beneath his ribs and fought the urge to retch. He had not quite managed to put the memories of Matty's pale, fragile body out of his head during the last hour or so in solitary confinement, but DS Parker's casual words brought the whole grim scenario sharply back to the front of his mind. Not for the first time he silently asked himself what he had done - and what he had become?

SIMON

Simon watched in rueful silence as Rayne flaked out on the back seat of the car just as he had after so many of their binges together. He wondered grimly if it would have been better to hear him protest his innocence. Nothing could have been worse for Simon after his interrogation at the hands of the Woodfield Road CID than to see his friend tacitly accept all that they had accused him of. Miserably he slumped in his seat, wishing that Rayne would at least try to deny it. To know that what Parker had told him today was true tore him to pieces more certainly than if he had been the victim of Rayne's malice. What sickened him was that Rayne did not appear to be the slightest bit repentant.

An ice-green eye opened behind the tangled screen of his forelock and Rayne Wylde asked; "What's going to happen about tonight?"

"I've been trying to get hold of Court all day," Simon replied, pushing emotion to the back of his mind and business to the fore, which he usually did as a means of coping. "I called the Roundhouse about fifteen minutes ago, before I tried the hospital again. They're putting out radio bulletins advising people that the shows are being postponed. I didn't tell them all of what happened, just that you were indisposed and Matty was in hospital. I guess the press will work it out sooner rather than later."

Rayne sat forward abruptly, glaring at Simon through his matted fringe.

"You put off the gigs?"

"What else was I to do? I thought you were in prison, Ray! This morning we all believed Matty would die!" 

For a moment, they bristled at one another like hostile tomcats contesting a hunting patch. Then, to Simon's amazement, Rayne backed down, looking away.

"It's over, isn't it?" he said, in such a small voice that the other man could almost have forgiven him – 'almost', but not quite. "Whipsnade is over. And it's my fault."

He wept then. Not for Matt or for himself but for the dream he had always cherished of the band; 'his' band. Simon understood his sorrow. They had been together in this venture since the beginning - he and Rayne and Matty. Whipsnade was their baby and it had come so close to the ultimate success.

Simon could virtually hear Matt telling Rayne and Kris Spedding at the last SOLD Board meeting that another six months would make or break them. 'Drowning Fields' was the album they had always wanted to make. The tour had vindicated all the belief he and Rayne had in Whipsnade and the Party Faithful were swelling in ranks still. To end like this...

IN DREAMS

Moonlight shimmered on the surface of the water as Rayne prowled between the trees, careful not to step on anything that might break and betray his presence. Up ahead, the pale shadow always danced, just out of reach, long silver-gilt hair hanging down between slim shoulders in a heavy tail, swaying from side to side as his quarry moved among the swaying palm trunks. Overhead the wind rustled in the long, heavy leaves and he shivered, feeling out of place and out of time here. Stumbling down a small, sandy defile, he found himself in a clearing, totally alone. It was dry and gritty underfoot and the edges of an infinite-seeming river lapped softly at the shore just a few strides away. 

There was not another living soul to see in either direction, up or down the banks. Only the chuckle of the water and the shushing of the leaves disturbed the perfect silence. His elusive prey had evaded him.

Wearily, he rubbed the back of his neck and sat down on a boulder by the river's edge, lost and helpless. He was a child of the city; this gilded wilderness seemed alien and dangerous to him. As he watched the tiny undulating waves twinkling in the darkness like a billion earthbound stars, he felt the touch of cool, moist lips on the nape of his neck and turned his head sharply to look up. 

Behind him stood a tall, broad-shouldered man who blocked out the starlight. His long, pale hair shimmered in the silver shafts of moon glow and his nude body was as sleek and smooth as a statue worked in bronze. As Rayne met and held his unblinking gaze, he smiled like a tiger scenting prey and held out his hand in an open invitation... 

SIMON

16th August 1999 - St. Katherine's Dock, LONDON.

"I had Ciar' on the phone the other day wanting know when the Roundhouse gigs were going to be re-scheduled."

Simon looked over his shoulder from the kitchen counter where he was cutting chilli peppers for a salad. Just lately, Rayne had developed a real craving for green salads. They were about all that he could stomach. Since Matt went into hospital, he had spent an inordinate amount of time at Simon's flat. 

Additionally, Thom had spent an increasing amount of time away from home. It was getting very wearing, to say the least. Simon would not have minded if it had just been the sex, (after all, he was getting used to doing without that) but he missed the younger man's company too. For a while, after they came back from Mauritius, he had hoped that they were actually beginning to work together as a couple.

Of course, events since Oxford had knocked all of that into touch. 

To everyone's relief, Matty was out of Intensive Care now and the Doctors even said that he might be allowed home this weekend. The Police had spoken to him a few days ago and he quite adamantly stated that he would not press charges for assault. Si had been to see him a couple of times but Rayne stayed away. 

Currently, Rayne was sitting by the deep, floor-to-ceiling bay window, staring out over the river. He gave no visible indication that he had been listening. However he surprised Simon by finally responding; "There won't be any Roundhouse gigs. He knows that!"

"Matt's gonna come round. Give it time," Simon reassured him gently, resuming his preparation whilst Rayne watched the Thames flow sluggishly by below. 

The most irritating part of all this was that Ray had not been home since his release from custody. He could not bring himself to enter the flat, so Simon was in the process of arranging its sale for him. He spent much of his time here, or with his father back in Dymchurch. Normally the filial visits only lasted a day or so, at most. Longer than that, Ray was unable to stomach, but when Rayne was here in London, Thom stayed as far out of the picture as possible. 




Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 04



Simon supposed that it was not a great surprise. Thom and Rayne had never seen eye to eye. Simon suspected jealousies on both sides but he loved them both and it was an increasingly difficult choice he was being forced to make. So far Thom had not laid down the law, or threatened to sever relations completely. It was Simon's flat after all; the older man could do as he liked here. His lover did not pay rent, just occasionally contributed to the overheads by providing food and wine. Simon had never complained and he supposed that Thom felt awkward doing so now. 

It hurt to think that Thom was spending his time away with other men though.

"No amount of time will give us back what we had," Rayne murmured, almost to himself, interrupting his friend's train of thought. "It's over, Si. I have to let it go."

Simon looked up at him imploringly, but Rayne was not even facing in his direction. He was still gazing out across the quay with a wistful expression on his face.

Matt was still very weak. Even so, Rayne refused to consider employing another manager, not even as a temporary measure. Kris Spedding at the record company had suggested it once and Rayne threw such a fit that the matter had been dropped immediately. Everyone in the music trade knew that Whipsnade kept SOLD Records afloat. That had been their saving grace. As far as the press releases were concerned, there was still a band. Even if Rayne refused to sing or write - or 'anything'! Even if they had no guitarist, and hence, no musical input.(Sean Courtney had unofficially walked out on the day Matty was admitted to hospital and flatly refused to speak to any of his band mates.)

Rayne remained withdrawn and uncooperative. Simon was growing increasingly frustrated. If Ray would even consent to sleep with him... He quickly pushed that consideration to the back of his mind. It would not work. He knew that from bitter experience.

"I wish you wouldn't talk like this," Simon told his friend unhappily, feeling very much as if he was holding a one-sided conversation. Rayne did not want to discuss the band at all, but Simon felt it was his duty to keep on nagging. "It's ridiculous. The whole business with Matt is settled. You know he'd forgive you like a shot if you'd ask him."

"I nearly killed him," Rayne said pointedly, without looking at him. "I still don't know what happened, but..." He stopped and lowered his head, his shoulders slumping despondently. 

Simon chopped vigorously, taking out his impatience on the little green chillies on the board. He glanced up at the singer with narrowed eyes.

"I hate it when you two dance around one another, avoiding each-other and trying to pretend there's no problem. It's bad enough that we lost Court... If Matty quits too, then we're really sunk. He wants to see you."

"He doesn't. 'You' want him to see me," his lodger muttered. "There's a difference."

"He loves you. He'd forgive you anything," Simon ventured desperately, and knew it was the wrong thing to say at once. Anyone who tried to love Rayne Wylde was asking for an emotional trampling. He invariably pulled down the defensive barriers when people used that particular four-letter word around him.

Simon muttered an insincere apology. Ray just scowled out of the window and shook his head grimly. 

"Don't ignore me, Ray! You know it sets my t...'Aagghhh! Owww!'"

Rayne turned from the window with astonishing speed as Simon dropped the knife and hunched over the chopping board with the fingers of his left hand clenched tight around the index finger of the right. The cut was deep, he could tell right away. It throbbed a counterpoint to the quickening of his pulse. Simon had always hated the sight of blood - especially his own. 'Especially of late'.

"What did you do? Uh-oh!" Rayne caught him as he swayed back from the board, the blood welling from between his fingers now and dripping down onto the marble slab on the counter. "Nasty!"

"Don't touch it," Simon said instinctively, pulling away from him. "Let me handle it."

Rayne took his injured hand firmly, ignoring the instruction with calm determination. Simon struggled, in vain.

"Don't be an idiot!" Ray responded in a mild, exasperated tone that took Si right back to their childhood together in Dymchurch. "You faint when someone has a fuckin' nosebleed. Let me..."

"I can't..." Simon looked up at him, crestfallen and unhappy. "Oh Ray... I just can't... I can't risk it."

"Fool." Rayne's eyes met his own, solemn and unblinking. "Do you think I never guessed? I've been here for weeks now. D'you think I never wondered why the guy who refuses to even take vitamins suddenly developed a pill-popping habit that makes Keith Richards look like some tea-total old granny? Simon, I 'know'! It doesn't 'matter', sweetheart. You 'can't' hurt me."

For a moment, Simon's lower lip quivered with combined shock and gratitude. He had dreaded having to tell Rayne about his HIV status for so long, and now, out of the blue, his best friend had suddenly made it so easy for him. He turned his face away, afraid that he might cry. 

"I think I've cut my finger off!" he gasped at last, the colour draining from his face. "I don't want to look."

Rayne's fingers were slick with his blood as the singer lifted his injured hand. His touch felt cool and strong as he manoeuvred Simon back gently against the counter to inspect the damage. Simon was watching his face. That had to be better than looking at the damage to his finger. What he saw left him in no doubt that he should have looked elsewhere.

As Rayne's full, pale lips drew back from his teeth in a hiss of concern, Simon saw something he later wished he could convince himself was pure delirium. The long, sharp, dog-teeth protruding from Rayne's upper jaw seemed to extend as he studied the cut. It was a difference of less than an inch but enough that when he bit lightly on his lower lip in tense anticipation, the points of his canines drew a pair of tiny, bright beads of blood. In the other man's ice-green eyes Si recognised something like hunger and could suddenly think of nothing but Matt's lifeless body, as they wheeled him out of surgery and back into the hospital ward, pale and drained. 

He remembered DS Parker at Woodfield Road asking him if he was sure that Rayne Wylde had not tried deliberately to kill their manager. Now, Simon panicked. The fear rising in him was sharp as ice in his own blood. As Rayne bent over his hand, he hauled himself bodily away and staggered back from the counter, shaking his head.

"No!" he screamed. "Leave me alone!"

Rayne looked incredulously at him, his pale-green eyes huge and astonished in the brightness of the kitchen lights.

"Don't be childish, Si. You've hurt yourself. I 'know' you hate the sight of blood!"

The overhead fluorescent flashed off his extended canines as he ventured an approximation of a reassuring smile. Simon shrank away from him until he felt the smooth, cold barrier of the fridge door against his back. He had nowhere to go. This was it. It was really all over. He was going to die.

Rayne took Simon's injured hand in both of his own once more and lifted it gently to his mouth. Very, very tenderly he closed his lips around the other man's bleeding digit and closed his eyes briefly as his mouth worked the damaged flesh. In spite of his terror, Simon was painfully conscious of how good it felt. Under any other circumstances, he would have died to have Rayne willingly pin him to the refrigerator and suck his fingers.

"M-mmmhhh..." Ray breathed hungrily as he let the tip of his colleague's gory limb slip from his mouth, trailed by a thin tendril of blood and saliva. "You taste of chilli pepper. I never realised that blood could taste 'green' before."

"Y-y-y..." Simon faltered incoherently, as Rayne gently continued to lip at his injured hand. "Y-you really did it? 'You' did that to Matty?"

Rayne's heartbreakingly clear eyes met his own, mere inches from his face. His best friend licked those full, sensuous lips once; a slow, deliberate sweep with the tip of his tongue.

"Yes."

He must have felt the panic in his companion for, as Simon began to struggle again, Rayne caught him. Impossibly strong hands closed around his upper arms, holding him back against the refrigerator. He was taller and broader than Ray but try as he might, he could not break loose. Simon cried out in terror and Rayne's mouth closed quickly over his own, kissing him and silencing him at once. 

After a moment or so, he stopped fighting. They kissed like that for a long, breathless time. At some point, Simon felt his heart begin to slow and he sagged against the cold, smooth surface behind him, whilst Rayne's lips moved intimately over his, and his friend held him, more gently and responsively. This close to Ray, Simon could feel that he was intensely aroused but he was too petrified to reciprocate, although he was dizzy with pleasure at the touch of Rayne's lips and the cool, wet presence of the other man's tongue in his mouth. Finally, Rayne released him, leaning into him and nuzzling his neck tenderly. Simon's arms moved around him weakly and he ground his crotch in slow circles against the growing hardness he felt in his friend's tight, black jeans.

"You're driving me crazy," Ray whispered huskily. "I wish you'd find a plaster for that damned finger! I can't get the taste of you out of my head, Si!"

That sparked the fear again, though it was less than it had been. Simon pulled away from him like a drunken man and Rayne let him go, watching as he rummaged blindly in cupboards and drawers, with his one good hand. At last, he produced a plastic box of Band-Aid from the back of one drawer. He wrestled valiantly to dress his damaged finger, running it under the cold tap and trying to juggle the plaster at the same time. Ultimately, Rayne took it from him and peeled off the backing strips.

"Ready?" he breathed, refusing to meet Simon's eyes.

"I'm ready."

Simon took his hand from under the cold running water and wrapped it briefly in a towel. When he removed it, Rayne pressed the dressing down on his cut finger and pulled it tightly around the wound to staunch the flow of blood. He was shaking too when finally he let go and drew away. Simon caught him, pulling Ray back into his arms, not ready to relinquish the moment. 

"Hold me," he whispered, barely audible, even to his own ears.

"Are you sure you trust me to?" Rayne's face was buried in his collar and the words buzzed softly against his neck. Simon nuzzled him gently, breathing in the clean, neutral scent of his hair and body. Ray felt cold. Si worried that he always seemed to feel cold these days. DS Parker's comment about Matty's condition came back to haunt him and he pulled Rayne closer still.

"I trust you with my life."

LATER...

"What's happened to you?" Simon asked him, over a glass of chilled vodka, once dinner was over. They were sitting quietly in the window bay once more, facing one another, with the lights of Katherine's Dock glimmering below them. "What I thought I saw tonight..."

He could not finish. Rayne did not look at him, but whispered; "I didn't want it to be true. But I can't deny it for much longer. I need something... more. I've changed, Simon, and I need to know what I've become, and if I can carry on living my life. Until then, I can't make plans."

"What do you 'think' happened?" Simon asked him warily. He was still visibly on his guard, refusing to let himself get drunk, no matter how much his body needed the alcohol right at this moment.

"Do you remember Manchester?" Rayne responded, nursing his condensation-beaded glass between long, steady fingers as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

"The last good gig of the tour," Simon said bitterly. "How could I forget it!"

"You remember the boy I got off with after the show?"

Simon looked at him quizzically. He remembered all right. It probably showed in his face. Rayne had always known when Simon disapproved of his behaviour and the way he vanished with the blond boy from the front row of the Apollo that night had rankled. Even if he said nothing about it.

"Something happened during that night I spent with him," Rayne told him steadily now. He held the glass very lightly between his fingers, almost as if he was afraid it might break in his hands. "I don't quite understand 'what', but in the morning, something very disturbing happened to me. I put it down to iffy coke at first, but since then nothing's been normal. I started to feel very weird. I really believed I was going crazy." He paused and looked solemnly at Simon Hathaway. "Si... I'm immortal. I 'can't' die."

This was such a ridiculous statement that Simon fought the urge to laugh. If Rayne's expression had not been so very serious, he would have failed. All the same it took an effort.

"Everyone dies, Rayne," he said instead, fighting to keep a tremor from his voice. "'Eventually', everyone dies."

The other man pushed himself to his feet and then, so very calmly that it made Simon jump, he smashed the vodka tumbler on the arm of his chrome and leather chair. Ignoring the alcohol splashed over his trouser leg and the beech-wood floor, he drew the jagged edge of the broken glass slowly up the inside of his forearm, cutting deeply; drawing blood. When Simon leapt up to stop him he was pushed back into his seat by the bloody hand of his imperturbable companion. 

"Watch..." said Rayne Wylde imperiously. "I didn't believe it at first, but I do now."

The blood was already drying, turning slowly to dust. As Rayne breathed on his arm, blowing the rusty red powder away, the skin beneath looked as clean and unmarked as ever. Simon gaped at it, unable to believe his eyes.

"I've tried every suicide method I could think of," Rayne said, carefully rubbing his thumb over his inner arm as though he too found it hard to believe. "None of them works. 'Not' drowning was an interesting experience! Poisons don't have any effect. Noxious fumes are ineffectual 'cos I don't 'have' to breathe them in."

"You don't have to 'breathe'?" Simon queried, growing more incredulous by the minute.

"It has its benefits," said Rayne mock-coyly, casting a glance at him that, under different circumstances, would have been downright irresistible.

"Hang on..." Simon diverted him, shaking his head. He did not want to go in that direction right now. Apart from a little casual experimentation in their teens, before tonight he had never been physical with Rayne, although they often fell for the same type of lover and frequently found themselves in competition over the band's groupies. On numerous occasions, Simon had fantasised getting naked with his best friend. He had rubbed himself to climax on many a lonely night with that thought for company but he tried not to think now about how good it would feel to get inside Rayne Wylde. This was neither the time nor the place. 

Moreover, Ray was not and never would be –to the best of his knowledge – a submissive lover. 

Instead he asked; "What has any of this got to do with the kid from the gig?"

Rayne smiled coldly.

"It's all his fault," he said in blunt tones. "It's 'his' fault this happened to me. And now he's disappeared, and I need to find him... or at least, find out what happened to him."

ON THE ROAD

Simon had a contact in the House of Lords. Since discovering that he was HIV Positive he had been involved with a charitable organisation known as the Pharos Foundation whose members (generally high profile celebrities and millionaire philanthropists) raised money for research and development to help in the fight against AIDS. One such viral warrior was Lord Dominic Warren, a mad, gay peer from the North of England, who had taken Simon under his wing when he first became involved with the charity. 

Simon's initial reservations that he would have nothing in common with a Peer of the realm some twenty years his senior were quickly relegated to a distant second place when they met up. Lord Warren was easily the most effusive person Simon had ever met (even counting some of Whipsnade's more obsessive fans!). His concerns about having nothing to say to the man were soon overwhelmed by the doubt that he would ever get a word in edgeways. 

Within an hour of meeting his mentor he knew that Lord Warren was single, as well as gay (so they had at least one thing in common). Also that he was a White Witch and High Priest of a Coven that was well-regarded in Wiccan circles. Since then others had backed up his claims and even vouched for his spells and (in one case) for his powers of exorcism. 

One afternoon in the bar at Westminster, they had a bizarre conversation about Vampires. Until that day Simon had been quite happy to disregard such things as folk tales and the kind of nonsense normally only found in horror movies. On discovering that Dominic Warren not only believed in them, but also actually professed to know someone who was a Vampire, he was not sure whether to take him at face value or politely excuse himself and run away. This conversation occupied Simon Hathaway's mind as he and Rayne motored north in the back of the Merc (with a most disgruntled Chaz Collister at the wheel, having had his weekend disrupted by work). 

"D'you reckon this bloke will even talk to us?" Rayne wanted to know. He was sprawled across the back seat of the limousine in dark sunglasses and a tee shirt and jeans, taking advantage of the superior air conditioning offered by the Mercedes Benz. 

"We don't know anything until we try. I do know that he's the only person I can think of who won't laugh us out of town if we ask him about the Undead," Simon said in grim tones. 

He had tried to contact Lord Warren at his London address but got no reply. He then tried the House of Lords, and was informed that they were in their summer recess and that Lord Warren was most likely in Biarritz. Only slightly daunted, he then called Garry at the Pharos Foundation. It had been this last contact who gave him the details of Dominic Warren's Cheshire estate and suggested that he try there.

"And you reckon he'll be able to 'elp?" Rayne stretched languidly across the leather seat and Simon attempted to ignore him, even though the sight of his friend's bared midriff was giving him a hard-on.

"I don't know, Ray," he said bluntly. "I just don't know, all right!"

They reached the outskirts of the Black Country long before lunchtime. At half-past two they were still sitting in a jam, five miles north, just outside West Bromwich.

"What the fuck is wrong with this country?" Rayne wanted to know, peering out of the window at the queues of stationary vehicles on the M6.

"If you could control the fucking traffic, chief, you should have let me know!" Charley snapped back thoroughly fed up with the situation already. "There's been a spill - lorry jack-knifed up near Willenhall, or so the radio says. We could be here all day!"

Simon sighed heavily. Rayne was not quite so defeatist. "We can come off somewhere and avoid it, surely?" he demanded.

"Do you have the faintest idea where you are?" Charley barked at him.

"Birmingham?" suggested Rayne innocently.

"That's still a dirty word in my vocabulary," Simon murmured, pressing a button to wind down the window. Since midday the temperature had been rising, both in and outside of the car. Within minutes, he had closed it again. Heat was infinitely preferable to being gassed by exhaust fumes!

"For your information, children, we're just outside Handsworth... where the prison is," Charley told them in cutting tones. "If you'd like me to drop you there, just say the word."

Simon closed his eyes and stretched out with his feet up on the opposite seat by Rayne's head. "Aston Villa," he murmured.




Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 04



"I'm sorry?" Rayne queried, shaking his head.

"Aston Villa.... The football team. That's round here somewhere!"

"Hoo-bloody-ray!" his colleague remarked sarcastically. "God, Chaz! Isn't there any way we can get off this fuckin' three-lane car park? I'm fuckin' ravenous!"

Another half an hour elapsed before they crawled within sight of junction six and the Merc pulled off the motorway, up the hard shoulder, into Perry Barr. Charley was in a fine temper by this time. He had not been deliriously happy being summoned at such short notice, on a weekend, to drive Rayne Wylde (who was currently not his favourite client) half-way round the UK. Now he was fuming privately. He stopped at a cafe - a greasy spoon if ever there was one – on the road to Market Drayton. The forecourt was a lorry park but that was the least of their worries. 

Simon was concerned straight away, since Rayne (who had complained non-stop since Leamington Spa about his empty belly) now picked at his food like a sparrow on a diet. Charley devoured enough for the both of them and ignored Ray completely once they were out of the car. 

"Are you all right?" the drummer asked his colleague quietly.

Rayne shrugged. "Tired... I guess. I've not slept well lately."

"I thought you were hungry?"

"I was," the other man replied flatly, without looking at him. Nevertheless, he did not eat, and kept his sunglasses on even though they were indoors.

Having downed a mug of scalding coffee, Ray pushed himself to his feet and muttered something about needing the bathroom. Simon frowned but let him go. Rayne had no idea where he was. He was hardly going to run out on them now.

RAYNE

As he left the cubicle - where he had thrown up the little food and drink he had managed to consume - Rayne Wylde's eye was taken by the young Salesman who had been sitting at the table by the window, behind their own. He was washing his hands slowly and deliberately as Rayne came over and ran the cold tap. The singer propped his shades on top of his head and splashed his cheeks and forehead with refreshingly icy water, running his wrists under the flow, lingeringly. 

The dove-grey suit the other fellow wore was a little heat-rumpled, he noted. The guy was already showing signs of five-o-clock shadow (although it was not yet half past three!) but he was good-looking, in a tame, suburban sort of way. Currently, he was giving Rayne the eye, via the mirrors, as he ran the battery shaver from his briefcase over his lower jaw and the singer straightened from the basins and rubbed his face with one hand. Probably, the kid was no more than twenty three or four.

"Have I seen you somewhere before?" the young man asked in a curious accent that was half Glaswegian, (with a hint of Solihull) as Rayne turned to search for the roller towel and rubbed his face and hands dry.

"I doubt it!"

"No. I'm sure I have... It'll come to me in a minute."

As Rayne turned around, the fellow was standing just behind him. He smelled of heat and frustration, and cheap after-shave. His eyes were dark brown, flecked with gold, under straight, mahogany brows. Thick, dark hair was slicked back from his broad forehead with water and he had a small razor nick under his chin on the left-hand side of his face. Rayne could smell the blood still. He must have re-opened the cut whilst he was tidying himself up.

If it had not been for that small factor, Rayne Wylde might have been able to walk away without being tempted. As it was, he hesitated, and that was enough to give the fellow an opening. Gently now the other man touched his cheek and neck and within a moment they were kissing one another fiercely and the stranger was fumbling at Rayne's fly buttons.

Somehow, Rayne got him into one of the cubicles and closed the door before the stranger got his pants undone and began to wank him hard, with hot, sweaty fingers. Clearly he wanted this as much as the singer did. Rayne dextrously stripped him, pushing him back roughly against the cubicle wall as he unbuttoned the younger man's shirt and pants; forcing his tongue down the stranger's throat as he did so. The Rep's mouth tasted of black coffee and whiskey and Indian spices.

"I want to fuck you up the arse," Rayne whispered huskily to him now. 

His partner just moaned softly and Rayne took that for assent. Turning the other man firmly to face the back of the cubicle, he forced him up against the cistern with his legs astride the toilet bowl and yanked the stranger's pants down to mid-thigh. Spitting in the palm of his hand, he used the saliva to lubricate the hot, swollen head of his erect cock. Snaking long, powerful fingers around hips becoming prematurely fleshy, Rayne parted the Rep's soft, hairy buttocks with his thumbs and penetrated his partner quickly and non-too-gently. 

The younger man was tight but accommodating and his mate was soon fully inside him, thrusting away fiercely into the soft, wetness of his body and pressing his face into the crook of his partner's neck. The Rep' uttered a barely audible groan of pleasure at the intrusion and Rayne found that his submission to this crude and savage act of buggery carried him to a rapid and satisfying climax. He rarely lingered over dalliances like this one, in any case, and pulled out of him quickly, wiping his prick on a length of toilet paper hanging from the dispenser to his right. Roughly, he hauled the lad around to face him again, pushing him back against the wall and sinking to his knees to take the salesman's short, chunky, throbbing cock in his mouth.

Rayne took his time, nodding his dark, tousled head slowly into the younger man's hot, hairy crotch and stroking his soft, wet lips over that meaty shaft. He was always vaguely surprised at how fantastic it felt to let a complete stranger come hard over his tongue and took his time stroking his tongue over the throbbing shaft in his mouth. His nameless mate groaned wordlessly somewhere up above his head and he felt sweaty fingers snarl his hair, pulling him closer. Opening wider, Rayne stroked his tongue across the underside of his partner's thrusting cock, flickering back and forth from the ridge of flesh where his foreskin rolled back to bare the slippery, purple head, and caressing slowly down to the base of his lovely tool. He could almost forget his agitation, down here on his knees, obeying the whim that drove them both onward.

The flood of hot, slightly spicy semen was yet another revelation. Rayne closed his eyes and swallowed rhythmically. Now the younger fellow was crying out in a soft voice; "Oh god... oh god, that's good!" trying hard not to be overheard, although plainly it had been a gratifying experience for him too. Rayne curtailed the pleasure of sucking him a little longer and pulled himself to his feet, stifling his lover's gasps of satisfaction with his own mouth. 

The whole session lasted barely more than a handful of minutes, but Rayne felt reinvigorated by it. He could still taste his partner's semen, like sour cream, chilli and salt on his tongue. It reminded him of the flavours of Simon's blood during the previous afternoon. Now he lapped gently at the nick under the young man's chin, teasing and licking at it where the blood had begun to trickle down slowly. It tasted wonderful (even better than his cum) so intense and peppery that he wanted more. Instinctively, he let his dog-teeth extend and nipped at the boy's exposed neck and throat, drawing greedily on his conquest's precious blood. 

The young man started to protest when he bit deeper, but Rayne slapped a hand over his mouth and forced him down onto the toilet seat. Crouching over him he pushed the rep's head back hungrily against the top of the cistern. The fellow's ejaculation had whetted his appetite, but this was what Rayne truly desired. Once the taste of the young salesman's hot, delicious blood was in his mouth and his throat, he could not let up until his gnawing hunger had been slaked. He felt the salesman struggle and pressed down harder, restraining him and taking a curious pleasure in the fellow's inability to fight him off. All his life, Rayne had longed for this level of control and now it had come to him he was dizzy with the pleasure of it. 

SIMON

Simon glanced at his watch and figured that Rayne had been an unfeasible length of time coming back from the bathroom. Charley was reading someone's discarded Daily Mail and did not seem to care, but Simon was growing worried.

"I'm going to see if he's all right," he said aloud, at last.

"Can't he take a piss on his own now?" The other fellow did not look up from his paper as he said it. Simon drew a short, impatient breath.

"He's been ill. I should be taking care of him."

"He should be in a Nut House where they can take 'proper' care of him!" Charley responded acerbically, but he folded the tabloid on the table top and pushed himself wearily to his feet all the same.

RAYNE

The sound of the cubicle door slamming hard against the wall was possibly the saving of his partner's life. Rayne pulled free of his mate seconds before Charley Collister's hands closed around his neck and yanked his head back with a violence that might have done lasting damage had he not already been beyond that. 

Within the cubicle the young salesman sank down astride the toilet bowl and clutched at his own neck in disbelief. He was moaning quietly, shaking his head, his hair tousled and his clothing still disarrayed and spotted with blood and cum. 

Chaz threw Rayne to the floor just outside the stall, with a snort of disgust. Beyond him, Simon put both hands to his mouth, backing away in horror and dismay. Rayne crawled several paces towards the basins on all fours, like a beaten dog, then pulled himself to his feet, staring at his blood-streaked face in the mirrors as though he had never seen his reflection before. The incredulous smile that had lingered on his gory lips faded and he lurched forward, over the sinks, reaching for the taps as he retched violently. All the while he attempted to scrub the evidence of what he had done from his face, arms and hands. Simon merely stared in growing horror at him.

Turning from the basins, Rayne found himself confronted by their dismay and shock once more. Charley was supporting the trembling Rep in the cubicle, and glaring at him as if he could kill with his eyes. Simon's transfixed, accusing gaze was like no expression he had seen on his friend's face before. Rayne sagged back against the washbasins lowering his dripping hands in a gesture of defeat. 

"Is he on drugs?" the Salesman exhaled fearfully, at last. "He's fucking mad! He's a lunatic!"

"We'll sort it," Chaz was saying rationally. "Look, whatever the damage, we'll pay for it. But it needs to stay out of the courts, you know what I'm saying?"

Rayne met and held the young man's petrified stare, even as he touched a hand to his neck and it came away dry. The bite wounds were already healing, just as Matty's injuries had healed long before he could bleed to death. The Rep stared at his hand as though he did not quite believe it himself. 

"You fuckin' bit me!" he declared as though they had denied him his proper rights as a victim. "I 'know' you did!"

"You'll 'ave to prove it, though," Rayne told him, recovering more quickly. He ran his tongue over his receding fangs, then licked his lips slowly, savouring the taste of his mate's blood and semen. "You try and take me on, mate, and I'll tell the cops you cruised me. 'cos that's the gods' honest truth."

The Rep looked a question at Charley, who was still scowling. The big man shrugged apologetically in his direction when he realised that he was being asked for support. "I didn't see nuffin', mate," he said gruffly. "You seem all right. Like I said, we'll pay for the damage to yer whistle."

"Give 'im a ton and meet me outside," Rayne said curtly. "I need some air."

Simon was still hovering in the doorway as he made his way out, his face pale and horrified. Rayne forced a smile that did not make it all the way across his face. 

"Sorry, Si," he muttered, in a more repentant tone. "Once a fuck-up, always a fuck-up, I guess."

"Y-y-you've got blood on your shirt," Simon forced out as he eased past. 

"Get used to it," the singer exhaled flatly, and the doors swung to behind him. 

To Be Continued...



Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 05



JABEZ

28th June, 1999 – Deptford, S.London

When the Evermann strode out of the room where they had been keeping the boy, the sound of stifled weeping followed him briefly, then was silenced by the closing of the heavy fire-door between himself and his captive. Mersen did not look up from the bench where he knelt, industriously cleaning his semi-automatic, although the weapon was so immaculately maintained that it did not require service. Jabez watched him for a little while, understanding that the activity was a consolation to the mortal. Mersen had worked with him for many years but even now, there were some things that the man found hard to stomach. 

"Why didn't you tell him the truth?" Mers asked at last, without looking up. "He thinks he's a murderer."

Jabez was silent for a moment, mulling over his lieutenant's words. That Mersen had been eavesdropping on his conversation with the boy they brought back from the Midland Hotel was no great surprise. It was Mersen's job to cover his back, and he did it well. Had he not been listening, Jabez would probably have found reasons to fire him later. The question was unexpected however. 

"Wylde 'is' dead," he answered at last, impassively. "I told him the truth. And it 'is' his fault."

"He's as 'dead' as you are," Mers' grumbled, slamming the ammunition clip back into place vigorously. "An' you're still talkin'!"

"Dead enough," the Vampire sighed. "Stripped of his soul and condemned to a life of blood and slaughter."

"Bollocks! What d'you bite him for, if that's your gripe?" The lean, angry mortal sighted down the barrel, out through the mesh-protected window of the warehouse and pumped the trigger mechanism of his weapon with more aggression than he would normally employ to kill a man. 

"Because I could not let him go," Jabez answered at once. He saw no point in lying to Mersen. The man had been with him for fifteen years and knew him as well as anyone bar Zelarin ever had. "What was my option? To admit that he has won again... that I must wait alone for another fifty miserable years or more. If Rayne Wylde will love me, living or dead, I regain my soul. I can die a mortal death."

"And what about him?" Mersen did not look up.

Jabez glared at him with narrowed eyes, nonetheless. "You ask too many questions, Mers."

"Because they 'need' asking," the mortal raised his head at last, setting his gun aside. He rubbed his neat, dark moustache with the back of one finger and rose to his feet. Even standing he was more than a head shorter than his employer. "And because 'someone' has to stand up to you."

The Vampire lowered his head, controlling his temper. That was what he liked about Mersen, he reminded himself grimly; the mortal always spoke his mind. He could not recall a time when Mersen had ever been afraid of him. 

"Rayne will do what I have done. He will make the best of his situation, or he will fail," he said neutrally.

"And if he 'does' fall in love with you...?" Mersen left the enquiry unfinished. 

"His soul has passed on. He is no longer my Neferuaten," the Vampire stated.

"And you are no longer her Akti...Rakti... 'whatever the fuck your name was', either!" Mers' pointed out bluntly. "Does that mean 'he' should suffer for it? And what about the kid? What are you gonna do with that poor little bastard?"

"Shut up, Mersen." Jabez Evermann looked appraisingly down his nose at his bodyguard.

John Joseph Mersen allowed himself a humourless smile and went back to polishing his gun. That was as close as the boss would ever come to admitting he had a point. For now, he thought, it would have to do.

SIMON

Simon Hathaway was unable to think of anything but the terrible scene that met his eyes when he walked into the Gents toilets of the roadside cafeteria in Perry Barr. The image of Rayne, sprawled where Charley had thrown him on the tiled floor, his shirt open to the loosely buttoned waistband of his black hipsters, blood running down his bare chest and masking his handsome, angular face, left him shuddering uncontrollably. He could not get the picture out of his head. 

The singer's extended dog teeth were exposed briefly in a vicious snarl, before Rayne scrambled away towards the washbasins, seeming to deflate a little as he caught sight of himself in the line of mirrors there. He washed his face quickly then, splashing his arms and chest as if ashamed of himself. 

In the doorway of the nearest cubicle, a young man in a rumpled suit clutched at the Formica panelling for support, looking very much as if he might faint if they so much as said 'boo' to him. There was blood on his open shirt collar and smeared on his cheek, but apart from this he did not seem to be physically wounded. Charley Collister, who had taken prompt control of the situation from the moment they entered the toilets, now asked if he was okay. Simon had expected big Chaz to walk away and not come back. He was mildly relieved that their driver had elected to stick around.

"H...he 'bit' me!" the young fellow was stammering now, putting a hand to the side of his neck. When he drew it away, he seemed surprised that there was not more blood. 

As Rayne turned from the basins still dripping, his body randomly gore-spotted (although his features were now back to normal) Charley scowled his disgust at the singer. 

"You've blown a fucking fuse, Raymonde! What happened this time, eh? Your teeth slipped whilst you were nibbling his fucking ear?" The burly fellow held up a dismissive hand at once. "Don't tell me!"

Rayne pulled down the roller towel, rubbing his face with it, apparently disinterested. He wiped his hands and dabbed ineffectually at the spots of blood on his chest and shirt collar with an unfeeling smile. Simon stared at him numbly, consumed by the awareness that Rayne was conceding defeat; that he was 'glad' they had caught him in the act. He felt ill, recalling Ray's behaviour in the flat just yesterday; wondering how close he had come to ending up like this poor, startled bastard in the cubicle.

"Sort 'im out some money for the dry cleaning, Chaz," the singer muttered dispassionately, running both hands back through his dishevelled hair.

"You what? You seriously think we can push him a fiver and hope he'll keep his mouth shut?" Charley exploded, glaring at Ray incredulously. "After what happened to Matt? You're a bloody lunatic, Wylde!"

Simon felt his recently consumed dinner lurch in his stomach at the memory of Matty's pale, unconscious face on the morning after Rayne allegedly attacked him. Beside him, the singer merely shrugged his slim shoulders.

"What's to argue about? He's alive; He's not hurt. He's just a bit... shop-soiled." Rayne was still picking at the spilt blood on his shirt, refusing to look at either of them.

The young man in the toilet stall made a small, nervous, negative-sounding noise in the back of his throat. He sat down rather heavily on the seat of the WC, still shaking. Charley snorted disbelievingly through his nostrils at Rayne Wylde. "You reckon you can get away with this? Forget it! You are 'fucked', Raymondo!" he announced at last.

Rayne leaned back almost languidly against the edge of the washstand to survey the older man through his lowered eyelashes. Glibly, he pointed a finger at the Rep; "'Actually', Chaz love, 'he' was the one who got fucked!"

Charley Collister went for him like a raging bull. His flying back-hander caught Rayne a tremendous, crunching blow across the face and the singer staggered sideways, blood gushing from his broken nose, through his fingers. Charley flexed his right hand with some satisfaction.

"That's better," he remarked insouciantly, as though he had just straightened the younger man's hair or buttoned his collar for him. "Now, 'you' are going to apologise to our friend here and sort this out on your fuckin' own. 'I'm 'goin' out to the car to finish readin' my paper. If you've not sorted it in five minutes, I'm leavin' without you. Capiche?"

Rayne straightened, with his back to the wall, his fingers still curled protectively over his smashed and battered face. All the same, he nodded his head once.

"Good," their burly driver grunted, glancing at Simon now. "You comin' Hathaway?" 

Simon shook his head struggling for words. "Maybe... um... maybe one of us should stay. You know... Just in case..." he faltered at last. 

"Your funeral," Chaz remarked grimly. 

He wanted to ask precisely what the other man meant by that, but Charley was gone before he could even open his mouth. Rayne closed his eyes briefly as the door swung shut, tilting his head back against the wall behind him, and then he leaned over the sink and spat a little black blood out of his mouth. Simon blinked; already the blood on his face was drying and coming off like a fine, dark powder, as it had from his wrist back in London. Rayne splashed his face and rinsed his mouth cautiously, then pinched the bridge of his nose between the forefinger and thumb of his right hand.

"If this heals crooked, I'll fuckin' 'have' him!" he muttered to himself bitterly. 

The Rep whimpered, still cowering in the toilet cubicle, not daring to make a run for it. Simon moved towards him, contemplating obscurely that there was safety in numbers. "What happened...?" he forced out lamely, at last.

Pale green eyes, like ice in chartreuse, looked sidelong at him and Rayne said; "You can 'see' what fuckin' happened, Si."

"He bit me," the young man said again, more adamantly this time. 

"I got carried away. Sorry." Rayne did not sound as much. 

"You're all right though?" Simon was trying to examine the guy without unnerving him any more than necessary. 

"Only 'cause you came in when you did," the Rep exhaled tremulously. "God knows what he would have done!"

"Cut the amateur dramatics, already!" Rayne growled at him, still pinching his nose irritably. "Are you wounded? No! Are you dead? Not a bit of it... 'unfortunately'!" He rolled his vividly green eyes and turned back to the mirror, examining his damaged face.

"You bastard! I'll sue!" the Rep threatened, finding the energy to pull himself to his feet now. 

"For what?" Rayne turned from the basins with a gleam in his eyes. His nose seemed to be healing quite rapidly, Simon thought. Beside him, the younger man took a step backward. "You've no sign of physical injury. The blood on you is all your own. 'You' solicited me for sex in a public place and 'that's' what I'll tell the police if they come knocking. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

From the way his face drained of colour, Simon could be sure that the young fellow understood perfectly. He probably had a wife, maybe even children. Whipsnade's drummer tried not to think of what would have befallen them if he had not survived. But then... Matty was still alive, so was he. Were they being unnecessarily hard on Rayne?

"We'll sort out the damage to your suit," he heard himself saying, rationally. It was as if another being had taken over control of his body. His mind was whirling as he reached into a back pocket for his wallet and counted a handful of twenties; the money he had taken out at a cash machine this morning in case of emergencies. 

Well, this 'was' an emergency. 

At finish, they had to go and find another cash machine. The Rep (Alastair McCaughtrie, he introduced himself as Simon keyed in his pin number and Rayne leaned against the wall beside the machine looking thoroughly disgusted) insisted that his suit was worth nearly two hundred pounds! Ray had plenty to say about that, though he muttered most of it in a dark undertone, all that was clearly audible being the words "'Marks and fuckin' Sparks'!"

When they got into the Mercedes some twenty minutes later, Charley turned over the engine without another word. They were back on the M6 before he announced; "When we get back to the Smoke I don't 'ever' want to see you again, Wylde. Is that clear?"

"Crystal!" Rayne told him, stretching out insolently on the back seat. Then he folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes.

Simon sat across from him in stunned silence, just staring at him as he slept, for what seemed to be an impossibly long time. 

JABEZ

29th June, 1999 – Soho, London.

'Flesh for Favours' resided in a faceless, five-storey warehouse building on an alleyway off Old Compton Street. A small, brass plaque by the featureless metal fire doors was all that identified Khaled Zelarin's UK business enterprise. Jabez Evermann had never been there before but he had deftly plucked the whereabouts of the club from the mind of the blond boy he had taken from the Midland Hotel, last night as he fed from the youngster. Today he had left the youth sleeping; rest was the best form of regeneration for his red blood cells right now. He would bring the child something to eat later in the evening, if his schedule permitted it. 

Mersen, his mortal driver and bodyguard, parked the Lexus illegally at the farthest end of the street from the doors and as he disembarked, the tall, blond Vampire leaned in at the driver's window briefly.

"I might be a while. I'll call if I need you."

"You're sure you wanna go in there on your own, boss?" Mersen looked up at him with a little frown; part disapproval, part genuine concern. They had worked together for many years now and the man knew him and his secrets as well as anyone currently alive. 

"These creatures are 'my' kind, Mers'. You can't help me against the likes of Zelarin." Jabez smiled humourlessly. 

"I've tackled Vamps, boss," Mersen reminded him stoically. 

"I'm prepared to wager my mortality that you never took on a being quite so old, or so malevolent as the serpent in 'this' cage," the blond creature told him evenly, shaking his head. "Look after my car, Mers'... and come for me when I call."

A panel slid aside in one of the heavy, double doors when he rang the bell for the third time. Narrowed, red-tinged eyes glared balefully out at him.

"We're shut!"

"I am not here to buy your sordid commodities. I have come to speak with Zel'Arin," Jabez said in frigid tones. 

The eyes did not waver, nor did they blink. "'E's not 'ere!"

"Then I will wait." The Evermann held that resentful stare until the bristling fledgling finally averted its venomous gaze. "Tell your master that I have something which belongs to him."

The panel snapped shut with a clang. Jabez leaned in the doorway nonchalantly. He hugged his long, dark, wool coat snugly around himself, however. One day the Gods would see fit to release him from this freezing hell-on-earth. He prayed that the day was not far off. 

After a double handful of minutes, he rang the bell again, keeping his thumb obdurately on the button until the panel snapped back once more and the same pair of hate-filled eyes glared out at him. The Fledge was brethren to him... of a kind. They shared a Sire; Jabez could feel it in his veins, just as surely as he knew his own heritage. He did not doubt that this miserable creature felt their kinship also; and hated him for it. There was precious little love lost between the offspring of a Vampire's Immortal Kiss. Another blood brother was nothing more than further competition for sustenance in most cases. 

Now, this one glowered at him defiantly. 

"Mister Zelarin sez 'whaddaya want?'"

Jabez was fairly certain that his Sire had said nothing of the sort, but he maintained his composure. 

"If you let me in, I can tell him myself, can't I?" he remarked coolly. 

The intercom to his left crackled into life unexpectedly and he turned his head to examine it, even as a familiar tone rode the static rustle to his ears.

"Akhenaten, you never change! So, stop playing games and tell me what it 'is' that you have."

"I have one of your boys. Your imprint is all over him," Jabez retorted, feeling his skin prickle oddly as he heard the cold, unemotional voice of his vampiric Sire. They had not spoken in many moons but still Zelarin left him feeling charged with an anger he could not channel away.

"And why should 'that' concern me?" Zelarin retorted, managing to project a chill, even through the electronic system of the speaker on the wall. "I can replace a mortal boy anytime it pleases me. Do as you will with him."

"I already did so." Jabez leaned closer to the grille, keeping his tone quiet and neutral. "His blood and seed were delicious. You trained him well. I tasted your taint upon his lips and his body." He bent his head, controlling the slow burning anger inside him. "Why send a concubine... and a mere boy at that, to do a man's task?"

"What on earth are you rambling about now?" Zelarin drawled silkily. His voice, distorted by the machine, was an icy breeze stirring dry, dead leaves. 

Jabez suppressed the urge to shudder. "You know full well! Keep away from the singer, I'm warning you."

"Or you will do 'what', precisely?" A cold, disembodied chuckle emanated from the grille. "Oh... do go away, Akhenaten! You bore me. In life, you had precious little imagination. Three thousand years has taught you nothing. The boy is an irrelevance. He failed me, and he will be punished for that failure. Whether he receives his chastisement from you, or from another of my children... it is of no great concern to me."

In the shadowy doorway, the tall, white-maned Vampire seethed quietly. His long, powerful hands clenched into fists in the deep pockets of his expensive coat. 

"Zel'Arin, I am warning you... touch the singer again and I will see your dust blow on the wind!" he snarled. 

"Empty threats, 'Evermann'," his nemesis sighed theatrically. "How many times have we stood at this place before? You cannot touch me now, and we 'both' know it." Before Jabez could even verbalise a response to this remark, he added; "Paul, Mister Evermann is leaving now. Do not delay him further."

The speaker cracked and died. With a malicious glint in his reddened eyes, the Fledge slammed the viewing panel closed once more. Silence enveloped the doorway and Jabez Evermann fumed for a moment then turned on his heel and stalked off down the alleyway plotting bloody murder as he went. 

SIMON

It was dark when they finally glided into a lay-by off a quiet road, over a hundred miles from Perry Barr and central Birmingham. This time Charley was less restrained when he yanked his emotionally exhausted employer from the back seat of the limousine. Simon crawled out and slumped against the flanks of the Merc, watching numbly as the big man systematically beat Rayne bloody. His colleague did not even try to resist. He was on his knees by the time Charley hauled him upright and virtually threw him against the raised grass verge by the roadside. From the car, Simon heard Rayne whimpering in pain and felt cold inside. As a boy he had once held Ray and listened to him cry after the beatings, and worse, dealt to him at the hands of his Uncle Bryan. The sound took him back sixteen years to Dymchurch, and left him feeling sick and helpless again.

Whenever he wondered what the hell he was doing here, his thoughts always came back to that same memory. He and Ray had grown up together in that little seaside town in Kent where everyone knew everyone else's business. Si's parents disapproved of his friendship with Ray much of the time. His mother told him repeatedly that Ray was a bad influence, but Simon did not care. Rayne Wilde (he did not begin to spell the name with a 'y' until his late teens) lived up to his parental surname. He was crazy, and funny, and quite simply the best friend that Simon Hathaway had ever known. He did not give a damn what anyone else thought of him, and he was just like his mum and dad in that respect. Lily Wilde was a painter, she loved nothing more than taking her easel out onto the marshes or down along the coast to make her sketches and watercolours. She wore her hair long, like the hippies and put flowers behind her ears. When she walked Rayne and his sister Skye to school in the spring and summer, she never wore shoes and her long, peasant skirts swished around her ankles like colourful banners, proclaiming her independence. 




Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 05



Jimmy and Lily had a tempestuous relationship from the start. They were always either hugging or fighting. Rayne often told him that he would sit on the stairs with Skye well into the night, listening to them as they shouted and screamed at one another. Ray never cried though. Until he was about twelve years old, Simon had never once seen his best friend shed a tear. He did not even cry when Lily packed her bags one night, fed up with the arguments and Jimmy's drinking, and took her children to live at her sister's house in New Romney, a few miles down the coast. 

He and Ray still saw one another at school and Ray came to stay with Simon at the weekends. (There was no room at his aunt and uncle's house. Uncle Bryan and Aunt Iris had twin daughters of their own already and the Romney semi was filled to capacity by the addition of Lily and her small brood.) Puberty had driven Rayne's weight up briefly until he was about eleven years old. After the move, he started to lose it again, quite rapidly. By the time he was fifteen, Rayne Wilde weighed less than seven stone. 

The change in circumstances was not the only personal upheaval he had to contest. Within two years, Skye ran away from home to London – allegedly to have an abortion. She severed contact with her family and refused to come home. The neighbours' tongues wagged endlessly about that. 

Simon knew that his friend had a vivid imagination, but even he could not quite believe that Ray would make up the tearful allegations that his Uncle interfered with the pair of them and was responsible for Skye's pregnancy. Perhaps Ray sensed that, for he did not mention it beyond the first couple of times when Simon just looked at him strangely. Life went on for the pair of them but Rayne seemed to grow increasingly distant. He hung out with an older crowd who drank cider and smoked tabs down on the seafront late at night. Ray began to skip school and was constantly in trouble. Simon drew back into himself. Being an only child, he often envied Rayne the bustle and chaos of family life. His own parents were older and more formal. His father worked in the city and vanished early in the mornings, often not returning until late evening. On Saturday mornings he played golf and Simon's mother went shopping. On Sundays, there was church and a walk and lunch. It was all very ordered and sensible. 

His mother never went out without her shoes on. 

But then, his mother had never taken the family car to Beachy Head and gassed herself following on from her son's ultimate allegations to the police that his Uncle had sexually assaulted and frequently buggered him against his will. Rayne was with Simon when it happened. He had fled back to Dymchurch in confusion and terror when the police arrested Bryan. Lily killed herself, unable to live with the sense of having failed her children. Simon's mother, sensible to the last, called the police and told them to collect Ray from the house. 

Si remembered how his mother had put her arms around Rayne, holding him as the young policewoman tried to explain to him that his mum was dead. He had not even cried when they told him the news. To this day, Simon was not sure that he understood what the policewoman was saying to him. 

Simon sank down on the opposite verge and put his head in his hands, wishing the memories would go away. He knew that if it was bad for him, then for Ray it must be a hundred times worse, but he could not cope with the past right now. The present was nightmarish enough. Beyond the softly pinking engine of the cooling Mercedes, he could hear Rayne moaning quietly to himself on the other side of the road. 

Once, when they were both fifteen, he had promised himself solemnly that he would never let anyone else hurt Rayne Wylde. He wondered now if he could keep that promise. 

DANNY

30th June, 1999 – Deptford, S. London.

"You do know, don't you... of course... you must... that we are going to 'have' to kill him."

Daniel had managed to switch off since the huge, blond Vamp came to his cell earlier in the evening. He was professionally immune by now – able to block them from his mind at will and pretend delight and affection as they lurched and bucked between his thighs. It was what made him so good at his job. They all wanted the same thing at the end of the day; they wanted reassurance; to know that they were the biggest or the best lay he had ever had. They wanted the satisfaction of planting their seed in a pretty bedmate and walking away to brag about it to their friends without the threat of that seed growing to trouble their perfect futures. 

Most of his clients were married men. Danny supposed he ought to find the idea repellent. He guessed that some of them even had sons or daughters his own age. It was another of those things that got shut away in a dark place in the back of his mind whilst he lay, naked and submissive beneath them. If they were disgusting, what did that make him?

Evermann was the biggest, without a shadow of uncertainty. He seemed to require no assurances of that from Daniel Weston but the young man told him so anyway; vacantly, breathlessly, as the powerful, blond Vampire impaled him deeper and deeper. He could not remember any man getting so far inside him before that first coherent night with his captor. Danny knew that it would hurt in the morning, but for now he was numb to it. Just a piece of meat – no fears; no feelings. 

He resisted a little as Evermann bit down on his bare shoulder and he felt the fangs extend within his flesh. His assailant's soft, wet mouth clamped down over the bite, lapping at the spill of fresh blood and sucking greedily from the wound. Strong hands eased Daniel's naked thighs higher and wider as the vast, broad-shouldered Vampire male began to pump away faster and harder between his legs. Danny knew that blood made them impossibly randy. Mister Zelarin always rested him before a Vampire client, and made sure that there was plenty of iron and protein in his diet before 'and' after. He also had an undead bodyguard on hand in case the customer tried to go too far. 

This was very different. If Evermann wanted to drain him tonight, there was no way on earth that Danny could stop him. The first trickle of anxiety ran down his spine as Evermann's ravenous mouth worked at the punctures in his left shoulder. He felt sick. 

'I don't want to die. I don't want to die.' He said the words to himself over and over, like a mantra. So bound up was he in his chant that when Jabez Evermann's lips finally lifted from his trembling flesh, he did not even feel it.

He tasted the raw meaty tang of his own blood on Evermann's tongue when those cool, wet lips touched his in a long, insistent kiss. The Vampire bucked once more, pressing himself fiercely and interminably into Daniel's rectum. His own body quivered like a tensioned rope as he held the thrust deep within the boy's hot, snug passage. Danny experienced a warm, slow flooding sensation a long way up inside him. Evermann's mouth left his own and a growl of satisfaction escaped the Vampire as he steadily pushed himself back onto his hands and knees. 

Danny shivered as that gigantic prick pulled slowly out of him. He was left feeling hollow and sore, as though something he could not describe had been stolen from him and he would never get it back. Evermann drew the soft, warm covers over him. A large hand stroked his tangled hair now. 

"Thank you," the Vampire whispered. That brought him back abruptly. 

His clients hardly ever expressed gratitude, at least, not in words. Some bought him presents afterwards, or left him excessive tips. If they spoke during the act, he was professionally deaf to the words. They were all the same, in any case. 

Evermann reached for the silk robe he had discarded at the foot of the bed when he prowled onto the mattress and began to undress his struggling captive. Danny shivered again as he wrapped that muscular, sun-gilt, hairless body in fabric that seemed to mould itself to his imposing frame. He pushed the heavy fall of his long, pale hair back over his broad shoulders with both hands and looked directly into Daniel's eyes. His unblinking gaze was the colour of old gold, or two vast chunks of amber.

It was at this precise moment that he spoke those words; the ones that set a fire raging in Danny's veins. 

"You do know, don't you... of course, you must... that we are going to 'have' to kill him."

It took him a long while to understand exactly what the Evermann was proposing. Who were they going to kill? Danny thought of Rayne Wylde's startled, ashen face; those terrified, ice-green eyes pleading silently with him as he realised that he was about to die. Danny huddled deeper into the covers, retreating from the image. He could not go through something like that again. He 'would' not; not even to save his own life.

Evermann stroked his hair once more as if it was all agreed and he was assured of Daniel's compliance. When the boy looked up at him, the expression on his quietly handsome face was almost sympathetic. 

"We 'both' know," Evermann said very softly. "If he thinks you have walked away from him, he will come after you and kill you."

In an instant, Daniel understood. His blood briefly ran cold. 'Mister Zelarin' – this bastard meant to kill Zelarin. 

"Then... Then..." Danny stammered, suddenly finding words. "Y-you should let me go back to him."

Evermann shook his head slowly. A tendril of light blond hair tumbled down into his eyes and he pushed it aside. "Not a good idea, young one. I know him well. I know that even if he allows you to live, you will not go unpunished for failing him. Wylde was not stopped. Zelarin will be aware of that by now. A beating would be the 'best' you could hope for."

Danny stared back at him, helpless with fury and disbelief. 

"You told me the singer was dead!" he exploded, sitting up at once. "You said I killed him!" In a fury he laid into the Evermann, no longer caring if he was signing his own death warrant by so doing. "You liar! You fuckin' cunt!" he snarled, slapping and punching that broad, golden torso until Evermann caught his wrists and raised them firmly above his head, lifting the struggling youth to his knees. The covers fell away from his nude, sweat-damp body and Daniel tried to kick out at him but could not get his feet under him. His cheeks heated in fury and embarrassment as the Vampire merely surveyed him with a cool detachment. 

"You said he was dead!" he yelled, close to tears. He had stopped struggling though. Finally, the Evermann lowered and released him. At once, Daniel snatched at one of the fallen coverlets and pulled it to his waist, his face still burning. "Bastard! Lying bastard!"

"I did not lie. He 'is' dead," Jabez Evermann told him coolly. "Rayne Wylde is as dead as I am, and as your master, Zelarin, also. Do you understand me, child?"

He blinked, feeling tears well up behind his eyes and fighting them back. He understood all right. 

"You... you 'bit' him! You... 'infused' him!"

Evermann nodded his head once. "Zelarin cannot have discovered this yet. Nevertheless, he 'will' find out. And Zelarin knows well enough how to murder Vampires, child." He looked solemnly at Daniel. 

"Why?" Danny demanded, only half listening to this. His mind was racing over a field of increasingly improbably reasons why Zelarin should want Wylde dead and just why it was that Evermann was so keen to see him survive. "Why bite him? Why not let him die? What is he to you?"

He realised that the idea of Wylde and Evermann together left him furiously jealous... and also just a little bit horny. He had not forgotten how good the sex had been that night, before Rayne began to choke. Imagining Rayne Wylde submitting to the Vampire as he had just done, caused him to bunch up the coverlet in his lap in an effort to disguise what was growing there. 

"I have waited for Rayne Wylde for over fifty years," Evermann replied, rather evasively – or so Danny thought. "Our connection is more... complex than simply that of lovers."

"You could bite me too," the young man suggested, still glaring at him. "Then it would be harder for Mister Zelarin to kill me."

Evermann shook his head again. His blond hair swayed like a curtain of silvery silk in a breeze. The look on his face, however, said that he found the comment amusing. 

"What's so bloody funny?" Danny snapped. "Why not bite me? What's wrong with me? I was fine for you a few minutes ago!"

"Ah, child... it would not save you for long," Evermann sighed, still smiling ruefully. "After he and his men had... 'enjoyed' you, it would be a small task indeed to have them hold you down whilst he severed your pretty head from your delicious neck. For that is the most efficacious means for the disposal of Vampires."

Daniel winced at this graphic description. Jabez Evermann's smile did not fade as he added; "And in any case, when you taste so good alive, what use could you possibly be to me as another cold-blooded fledgling?"

The young man fumed visibly at this. 

"You bastard! You just want to keep me alive so that you can feed on me! I'm just a pretty snack to you! Is that it?"

"Not 'just' that," Evermann retaliated in cool, unflustered tones. He looked Danny up and down in a way that heated the mortal's blood, in spite of his disgust. 

"You cold-hearted, undead pervert!"

Evermann laughed quietly at that. "Oh, young one! You are a joy, for sure. And a deliciously accommodating guest, I will not deny it."

"You're keeping me here to fuck and feed you!" Danny growled at him. "You're disgusting. You're no better than any of Mister Zelarin's clients. At least they 'paid' for me!"

One pale eyebrow twitched upward at that. Jabez looked thoughtfully at him, the smile finally fading from his handsome, leonine face. 

"You would prefer it if I gave you gifts? Did Zelarin do so when 'he' spread your legs?" he enquired.

Danny looked away, muttering; "Fuck off!"

"Just so," Evermann nodded. If he was offended, it did not show in his expression or his voice. "Then I shall explain something to you, child. You are alive today because Rayne Wylde had the compassion in him, even as a Vampire, to stay my hand when I would have bled you dry. It would have been in his best interests to take as much sustenance from you as your feeble body would give him, but he was merciful. And because I hold him in such high regard, I heeded his request."

"I don't understand..." Daniel faltered, a little awkwardly. 'What was Evermann saying? Had Rayne Wylde actually saved his life?

"Then I will speak plainly," the Vampire said. "Wylde is clearly a sentimental creature. Our kind are soul-less, as you presumably know. When we receive the Eternal Kiss what we were in life should cease to be. Of course, the memory prevails and for some this is a difficult transition. Rayne Wylde has tried to cling to his mortal habits. He obviously felt 'sorry' for you. If he has feelings for you then you are useful to me. Should his affection wane, then I might have to reconsider my hospitality." His smile became somewhat clinical as he added; "For now you are entertaining enough."

Danny shuddered as the Vampire shrugged off his robe once more and reached forward to pull the coverlet from his hands. Long, powerful fingers curled with impossible gentleness around his hardening cock and stroked it steadily to full erection. He let himself be drawn back towards that muscular body and closed his eyes as two more intrusive digits probed deliberately between his cheeks, pressing easily past the puckered ring of muscle and on into his twitching passage. He inhaled a sharp breath as he felt Evermann's deft fingers quicken their inward thrusting and the hand around his prick rubbed faster and more firmly. Soon the enticing tickle of smooth flesh against the sensitive gland deep inside his anus left him gasping more frantically and writhing in the Vampire's careful embrace. He rode on the Evermann's pumping hand shamelessly and whimpered his need and disappointment when those clever fingers were so abruptly withdrawn. 

A small, hungry moan escaped his lips as he found those skilful probes promptly replaced by Evermann's glossy, silken cock-head. The Vampire's impressive hard-on met little resistance as it eased back into him slowly from behind. Danny shivered with pleasure as he was drawn back into his captor's arms and the fingers which so recently pleasured his anus, now cupped and caressed his throbbing balls and pulled him down firmly onto Evermann's huge, tumescent cock. 

His moans grew more urgent and frequent as Jabez began to thrust again, his mouth soft and wet and hungry on Danny's bare neck and shoulder, sowing fresh shivers of lust through his skin. In spite of his determination to shut the Vampire out, he found himself growing more intensely aroused with every inbound stroke of the Evermann's huge erection. In a last ditch effort not to completely embarrass himself he closed his eyes tightly and imagined Rayne Wylde kneeling behind him like this, impaling him roughly on an insatiable, twelve inch dick. 

His lover nipped lightly at the soft flesh in the hollow of his neck and shoulder, licking at the beads of blood he had drawn with a rough tongue. The constant, internal friction against his prostate, coupled with the kissing and tonguing of his sensitive neck and the intimately fondling hands on his genitals robbed Danny of all his self-control. Forcing his arse down furiously into his mate's shaven crotch, he writhed and ground his hips on that enormous cock for all he was worth. 

As Daniel spurted over and over, spraying the bedcovers with hot cum, he keened his lover's name breathlessly. 

"Rayne! Oh god... Rayne, Rayne, yessssss!"

SIMON

He started out of his own contemplation to the realisation that it had gone quiet and there were gentle hands on his arms, shaking him almost tentatively. Simon shrank back, lifting his hands to rub at his face. Until then, he had not even known that he had been crying.

"'S alright, Hathaway," Charley told him gently. He seemed a little fazed by Simon's reaction. "Don't get upset. We'll sort it."

"I'm sorry..." Simon sniffed, wiping his nose on his sleeve quickly. 

"You ain't got nothin' to be sorry about," Charley reassured him a little more gruffly. "Not like Himself over there!"

Rayne was leaning against the car, arms folded across his chest, watching them impassively. There was a trickle of dried blood between his nostrils and upper lip. The singer smiled coldly now. Simon looked away with a barely perceptible shudder. "You didn't need to get involved in all of this, Chaz" he murmured, still a bit tearfully. "If you loathe him so much...."

"Sshhh!" Charley shook his head quickly. "Lovin' and loathin' haven't nothin' to do with it. You do what you gotta do to get by. I've never been what you'd call a shinin' example to others. But believe me, I never did nothin' to no one that wasn't expectin' it. Sure, I did my time in the Nick - but I had a spell in the Forces too; that was good for me. Taught me to look after me self! Thing was, 'I' was never all that good at takin' orders neither. When I come out of prison, workin' for Whipsnade paid for the Merc and looked after me, even if it meant putting up with that little shit, Wylde! I never was completely self-sufficient before then - and I've got kinda used to it!"

"You could get another driving contract, easy," Simon whispered, shaking his head incredulously. "I don't get it...."

Rayne laughed bitterly, his boots crunching on the gravel of the track as he walked slowly across to them. His arms were still folded tightly across his chest and he wore a coldly cynical expression on his pale, chiselled face now. "Si, sweetheart! He's not got a fuckin' record just for shopliftin', has he!" the singer exclaimed as though this should be something his drummer knew about. "What was it, eh - Chaz love? A bit of GBH that got out of hand?" Rayne laughed huskily to himself. "Did someone over a little bit 'too much'? Anyway - he's done his time for it, like the man says! What d'you get, Charley? Seven years, was'n it?"




Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 05



The older man moved his shoulders in an approximation of a shrug. "Ten," he responded at last, rather reluctantly. "I was out in eight!"

"Close!" Rayne breathed, insouciantly. "Not bad for 'Unlawful Killing', anyway!"

"There was a fight..." Charley protested, an edge of anger in his voice as he turned his head to look up at Rayne. "It was self-defence. He had a knife..."

"And so did you," replied Rayne Wylde coldly. "You stabbed the poor fucker and he died, Chaz."

Simon shook his head at them both, bewildered. "I don't understand. How do 'you' know so much about it?"

"Matty told me," Rayne responded casually. "Didn't you ever wonder how that big ape got a job like this?"

"Matt took me on, sure!" Charley put in quickly, although he sounded a little bit awkward. "I knew him as a kid; knew his family, up round White Hart Lane. Used to do a few little jobs for Solly Greening and the boys."

"And our Chaz was 'more' than just 'friendly' with young Matty. Weren't you Chaz?" Rayne sneered cynically. "Very sweet on pretty little Matty! Before and 'after' you went to prison. Of course the Cops didn't know about you touching up little boys..."

Charley pushed himself to his feet, his face dark with anger. In the waning light from the car, Rayne faced him down - utterly composed. Already the cuts and bruises the bigger man had given him earlier were fading. Charley must have seen that for his features paled now.

"I never laid a hand on 'im! Not 'like that', you fuckin' dirty little bastard! Not like 'you'!"

"But you would have 'liked' to," Rayne taunted him, apparently impervious to the danger of such an endeavour. "Matt was never the naïf you thought he was! I wouldn't have let him manage Whipsnade if that was true. He knew what you were after, Charley! He always knew it. Long before he ran away. Long before I met him in Manchester. D'you know, Matt was on the 'streets' when I hooked up with him. He was beggin', and selling himself to dirty old men like you, just to survive. He was just a kid, for fuck's sake!" He caught his breath, shaking his head adamantly. In the darkness, his pale eyes glittered with emotion. Now he hissed; "Matt sussed you, Chaz. He knew what you were after and he ran so's you would never get it. Perhaps he grew up a little bit too much on the Game. When I brought him back home an' put some cash in his pockets, and some self-esteem in that great big heart of his, he took it on himself to give you a job. He said to me; 'Uncle Charley's been in prison, Ray. I can't let him walk the streets.' And like the idiot I am, I said 'okay' to him." 

Rayne pulled a disdainful face. "He told me you'd been up on a Manslaughter charge and they reduced it to Unlawful. He told me a 'lot' more, Chaz. I guessed what you'd been up to with him a long time ago!" His pale green eyes met and held the older man's glare. In a soft, husky voice he mocked; "'Uncle Charley'!"

With a growl of frustration, Chaz ran at him, swinging a fist... and Rayne blocked it. The young singer's hand came up so fast that Simon did not see it until Charley's knuckles connected with Rayne's palm. Again, the older, heavier man lashed out... and again. Each time Rayne caught or deflected him. He was so in control by now that it seemed almost like a game to him. Simon watched the small cruel smile on his face with an increasing sense of chill. He did not disbelieve Rayne, but he did not want to believe him all the same. After the nightmare of Rayne's childhood he could easily envisage the singer killing Charley here and now. For years he had wondered why Ray went out of his way to deprecate their driver and at last he thought he understood.

One thing Rayne Wylde had never tolerated before all this Vampire business was the physical abuse of those who could not defend themselves. He understood their anguish all too well.

"Is that 'good' for you, Chaz?" the singer was taunting, huskily, as Charley went for the head and Rayne stopped him, then dropped his free hand to block a gut-level punch. "Does that feel 'good', Charley, 'sweetheart'?"

Faster and fiercer, Charley laid into him but Rayne only seemed to grow in strength and control. He held off the other fellow's attack with apparent ease. "You wanna 'give' it to me some more, 'uncle Charley'?" he taunted viciously. "You wanna 'give' it to me? Well come on then. I'm hot for you! I'm ready! I 'want' you, sweetheart!"

Roaring with fury, Charley rushed him, barrelling into Rayne and they both dropped to the ground, wrestling one another fiercely. Somehow, impossibly, Rayne got the bigger man under him and pushed him to the gravel, crouching over him with his long-boned hands on Charley's shoulders. In the gleam of light from the headlamps, Simon saw the fangs distend from Rayne's upper jaw, flashing, spittle-wet in the phosphorescent glow as his mouth opened wide in an animal snarl. He screamed aloud and stumbled towards them both, thoughts of his own safety pushed to the back of his mind by that sight. His only rational idea was to keep Rayne from killing Charley.

Before he reached them, the Vampire pushed his opponent away from him and Charley slumped back to the ground, panting; his eyes wide and glazed with shock. As Simon slid to a halt beside them, Rayne scrambled to his feet, still standing over their driver and hissed softly; "How 'do' you imagine I managed 'that', Chaz love?"

ZELARIN

Khaled Zelarin tapped his fingers on the leather-upholstered surface of his desk irritably for a long time after Akhenaten had gone. One of the more annoying aspects of the late pharaoh's continued existence was that, after three and a half thousand years spent baiting one another, the bastard really knew how to get under his skin. Zelarin was a businessman, first and foremost; he prided himself on his cool head and his control of the market-place. It riled him beyond words to think that the Evermann (God, even his choice of name was pretentious!) could just step in and steal one of his most precious commodities from under his nose, then imagine that he, Khaled Zelarin, could be blackmailed. 

The loss of Daniel Welton rankled. Danny was that rare combination in a working boy, he was pretty 'and' he was smart. Of course, Zelarin read the newspapers and the continued reports of Whipsnade's ongoing concert tour told him - long before Akhenaten appeared on his doorstep – that the boy had failed in his appointed task. At first, he had merely believed that Daniel was too ashamed to face him after letting him down. Zelarin had no use for failures and all his employees knew it. As the days went by, he had begun to suspect that there was more to Danny's disappearance than mere embarrassment. He heaved an unnecessary sigh and pushed himself to his feet. Maybe Akhenaten had saved him a task. Still, Daniel's punishment 'might' have been entertaining for a day or two. 

Mulling this over with a disgruntled expression on his pale, narrow, ascetic face, the ancient Vampire crossed to the filing cabinet where all his employee records were kept. More irritating to him right now was the fact that Wylde had survived. It meant that Akhenaten would persevere in his lame and obsessive quest to win the singer's love, believing him to be the reincarnation of his precious Nefertiti. The idea that he might one day be successful fired all of Zelarin's moves to ensure that he failed. 


It was not so much that he wanted mortality for himself. Good God, no! He had lived for so long now that the idea of actually 'dying' seemed a bit of a joke. However, he and Akhenaten had been opponents for over three millennia. For three thousand five hundred years and change, the jumped up Sun King had been the one constant factor in his Un-life. And for every year of that span, he had managed to thwart Akhenaten's aims and ambitions. By this time, Zelarin was adamant that the pharaoh would not beat him. His bride would be forced to reincarnate time and time again, as she had since his mercenaries stabbed and strangled her in year fourteen of the Sun King's inglorious, heathen reign. That ought to teach the pompous ass a thing or two.

He rifled through the files, shaking his head slowly and running one hand over his closely cropped, silver stubbled skull. That was the trouble with pharaohs. They were so far up themselves it was unbelievable. He had never yet encountered a King of the Two Lands with a sense of humour (and Zelarin had known plenty of pharaohs!) Still, Akhenaten could have made so much more of himself instead of messing around with art and this silly quest. He was a passably handsome fellow and these miserable twentieth century mortals were obsessed with image and had been wetting themselves over anything ancient and Egyptian ever since that wretch Carter opened the Tut boy's tomb and discovered one of Zelarin's more potent curses. 

Just imagine what the media would make of a glamorous, immortal pharaoh, he though with another sigh. The genuine article! Evermann, with his chiselled good looks and that long, luscious, girly-girly hair was just made for the TV generation. It was kind of a shame he had apparently suffered a personality bypass, but hey... that kind of handicap had never done David Beckham any harm!

Zelarin located Daniel's employment folder with a grunt of satisfaction. It was quite a thick file but then the boy 'had' worked for him since he was pre-pubescent. The Vampire had 'bought' him in 1987 from some serial broodmare with more brats than she could manage and a heroin habit that she handled even less successfully than she did her nine children. He had been an exceptionally fast learner. It was a bloody shame to let him go. Okay, at nineteen, he was a bit long in the tooth now for many of the 'Flesh for Favours' regulars, but he still had those boyish good looks. The punters still asked for him by name and so long as Danny kept on telling them that he was only fifteen, they did not complain. 

Ultimately, he would have been groomed to host one of Zelarin's clubs. He had no doubt that Daniel would have excelled in that profession; he was good with people, even on his back! Nevertheless, Zelarin's managers had to be capable of 'anything' he asked of them. Danny had fallen at the very first hurdle on his new career path. Rayne Wylde was still alive. 

Zelarin ground his teeth. He dropped the file into the ornate, hammered silver waste bin beside his desk and unscrewed the cap from a bottle of exceptionally fine whisky that he kept in a drawer there. He poured himself a large glass, then decanted the remaining quarter of a litre over the discarded file, dropping the bottle after it. Almost carelessly he struck a match and flicked it into the depths of the litter bin, then sat back in his chair again, watching the bright flames bloom, destroying every last trace of Daniel Weston's carefully constructed identity. 

When he found the boy, he promised himself grimly, Daniel's body would share its fate. No one 'ever' left Khaled Zelarin's employment alive. There was no telling whom they might talk to and what they might say. He was running a highly illegal enterprise here, after all. No, it was far too dangerous to let him live.

He would have to call his best operatives off the hunt for Wylde for the time being, in order to retrieve the boy. Nonetheless, Zelarin promised himself, once Danny Weston was safely scattered in the Thames, Wylde was going to pay him back in blood. He smiled coldly at the thought of it. The singer was past the first flush of youth but he was still pretty enough to be entertaining for a few days. Moreover, Zelarin planned to 'entertain' him quite vigorously. Perhaps he could even make a little video recording to show Akhenaten how satisfying his precious beloved could be, 'before' they cut his throat and drank his blood. 

His smile quickened cruelly, exposing long, curved fangs that extended rapidly at the thought of how he would use and ultimately bleed Rayne Wylde. They would pleasure themselves with the singer until semen oozed from every orifice; until the last drop of blood was sucked from his stiffening body and the final breath rattled in his throat. Sinking back in his leather chair, he watched the flames dwindle and unfastened his fly to attend to the more immediate stiffness rising between his legs at that thought.

SIMON

They sped north through the night as far as Keele Services, where Charley finally felt the need for sleep too. In the car park of the service station with his chauffeur snoring quietly beside him and Rayne huddled like a dead thing in the back of the Mercedes, Simon started to tremble uncontrollably. He wept for real now, with his face pressed into the crook of his arm, up against the window so that he did not disturb anyone. When his sobs got out of control he let himself quietly out of the car and stumbled across to the silent, empty children's' play area, sinking down onto one of the tyre swings to cry properly. 

It was like some terrible nightmare, even here - especially here - alone in the darkness in this weirdly artificial place. The playground was a little manmade oddity in the midst of a concrete plateau, rising up in strange, twisted plastic shapes from the sand underfoot. He tilted his salt-wet cheek into the cold iron chain of the swing support and breathed in the crisp, petrol-tinged air. This time he shivered with cold. It was a clear, bright night, but not as warm as the day had been, by a long stretch. He only had a T-shirt and jeans on and his arms were rough with gooseflesh when Rayne's fingers gently brushed the back of his neck and sent him starting to his feet in shock.

"What are you doing out here?" the Vampire whispered, meeting his wide eyes in the darkness. 

Simon backed away from him, conscious all the while of where his companion was. Never in his life had he been as confused as he was tonight. For so many years he had loved and trusted Rayne Wylde and now he found himself petrified of the other man, unable to stand his touch. His heart raced uncontrollably. 

"Leave me alone!"

"It's cold," Rayne breathed tenderly. "At least let me get you a blanket or something."

"I don't want 'anything' from you," Simon told him, although the words hurt him inside like tiny knives against his lungs. "Go back to the car."

Rayne sat down on the swing next to his own and closed his fingers around the chains, swaying quietly back and forth for a while without speaking. When Simon did not move away, he lifted his head to look at the drummer quizzically.

"D'you remember... they had swings like this on Dymchurch seafront when we were kids?" he whispered reflectively. "We used to go there every afternoon after school. My mum and yours sitting on a bench eating ice-cream and talking, and me and you going nuts on the swings!"

He smiled incredulously, shaking his head so that his dark hair spilled down over his eyes and he had to push it out of the way with one hand. Leaning back, he swung a little higher and a short laugh escaped him. "Can you believe it, Si?" The words sounded odd; choked. "Can you believe that was 'us'?"

His heels dug into the sand and he stopped the swing abruptly, pitching forward with his hands drawn up to his face. He was biting the knuckle at the base of his thumb to stop himself crying, as he had once done when they were boys. As he had done on the night he told Simon how Uncle Bryan had come into his room, held him down on the bed with one hand over his mouth and raped him as his mum slept on the couch downstairs. Simon swallowed his fear and came back to the swings, crouching in front of him. Very, very tentatively he rested one hand on Rayne's slim, black-clad thigh, just beyond his bony knee where his denims had been ripped during the scuffle with Charley.

Pale eyes met his own, wide and white rimmed, the pupils dilated fully in the darkness. He thought he felt a tremor run through Rayne's body beneath his hand and whispered; "Are you scared, Ray? Are you as scared as I am?"

His friend quivered again, more noticeably this time and Simon thought he saw the tiniest of nods in response. Then, Rayne drew his hand away from his mouth and murmured; "Maybe even more!"

Simon smiled weakly. "I can hardly believe that!"

His companion grimaced slightly in the darkness. "You don't know the half of it," he sighed wearily, looking away into the night. In a distracted voice he murmured; "I've been having the weirdest dreams too. I've followed a stranger through some woods, on the banks of a river or a beach, maybe. Every night I lose him and when I come to sit by the water he creeps up behind me, so quietly that I can't hear him coming. He touches my neck, there..." His fingers rose to a point just beneath his ear. "...just where he bit me... and I wake up..."

Simon was looking back at him warily. "What are you saying? That you're crazy? You won't get away with claiming Diminished Responsibility if you do it again, Ray," he told the singer anxiously.

"No..." Rayne stopped then shook his head. "I don't 'know', Si. I don't know 'anything' any more. I'm so fucking scared!"

"You're strong enough to kill a man like Charley! What could you possibly be afraid of?" Simon laughed nervously. "I wouldn't stand a chance with you if you decided to go for 'me' like that."

He thought he saw a flash of cynicism in Rayne's huge, expressive eyes, then the other man breathed; "You're not in any danger from me, I wish you'd believe that. I could never hurt you. What I'm afraid of is... is that I'll never be able to go back from this. I'll never get my life back. You know what you are and where you're going, Si. I don't even know that anymore!"

"I know I'm under a slow death sentence," Simon told him bitterly. "I'm HIV Positive, Ray. How wonderful is 'that'? You don't 'have' to kill them! You can 'do' something for yourself. What can 'I' do?"

Rayne's long hands moved down and stroked his hair silently. For a moment Simon buried his face in the worn denim of his friend's thigh and let himself be soothed. He closed his eyes and prayed for an end to the nightmare. 

In his mind, he slipped back to a summer nearly sixteen years before. On a morning in late July he had held Rayne in his arms, begging his best friend to go to the police or to the Headmaster at school and tell them the truth... to tell anyone but 'him' about what was happening when he went home. For the past three years, Rayne had lived in a state of chaos. Simon Hathaway had watched him lose weight and sink into a deeper state of depression with every week that went by, until the boy he loved was nothing more than skin and bone.

For Simon, coming to terms with his own homosexuality, it was doubly confusing. He knew, from an early age that he was madly in love with Ray, and would do anything for him. It hurt to listen to his friend's choked accounts of his abuse, when he longed to just stroke Ray's trembling body all over and show him how wonderful it could be to lie with another man, one who cared about how he felt inside. Night after night, he dreamed of making love to Rayne and kissing away his tears. 

Dreams were the closest he had ever come to his best friend's body. Until the other day in his kitchen, they had never even kissed. 

"I swear to God, I'd never hurt you." Rayne was bent over him now, breathing the words into his hair. 

Simon looked up at him helplessly, turning his head until their lips touched. Rayne did not pull back as Simon's mouth moved softly against his own. As he struggled to his knees between the singer's lean thighs, Si reached up, running his hands through Rayne's dishevelled hair, pulling him closer. They kissed one another more ravenously, heedless of who might be watching. It was three in the morning and after the day they had endured, neither of them cared any more. 




Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 05



Rayne leaned forward against the edge of the tyre swing and Simon's groping hands explored beneath his shirt and snug-fitting Tee, pushing the material higher and kissing the cool softness of his exposed skin. His tongue flickered over and around Rayne's stiff, tiny nipples and he teased them with his teeth now until the singer moaned enticingly. 

"The other day..." he panted, still licking and nibbling between words. "You said it didn't matter... about touching my blood..."

"I'm 'dead', Si," the Vampire exhaled ever so softly. "You can't infect me with a virus if I'm dead. A virus is like... a parasite, it needs a livin' host to survive. You should know that!"

Simon kissed the smooth expanse of his companion's exposed belly and wriggled his tongue into the singer's navel. He eased one hand between Rayne's legs and caressed his crotch steadily. His groping fingers met a satisfying hardness beyond the worn, black denim and he rubbed the length of Rayne's stiffening cock through his jeans until the glossy head of his friend's erection poked out of his waistband and Simon was able to brush it tenderly with his tongue. Eagerly he rubbed the length of Rayne's shaft through his jeans with one hand and unbuttoned the singer's fly decisively. He knew that Ray invariably went commando and was immediately rewarded for his enterprise by the sight of his best friend's gorgeous, uncircumcised cock standing proudly to attention. 

"You are incredible," Rayne exhaled delightedly, as Simon's fingers closed around his sex, easing back the foreskin so that he could kiss and lick the smooth, shiny dome all over. The tip of his tongue explored the sensitive 'eye' of his friend's urethra and curled down around the underside of his magnificent, purple bell-end, caressing the ridge of flesh beneath his head where the looser foreskin joined the shaft of his prick. His lips parted around it and stroked the top few inches experimentally. He felt Rayne catch his breath then a firm hand came to rest on the back of his head, stroking the nape of his neck and urging him lower. Simon obeyed the impetus and was immediately treated to a mouthful of prime, thrusting sex. The swing rocked a little beneath them as Rayne pulsed steadily in his mouth and Simon tried to get his hands into the singer's jeans and ease them down off his lean hips whilst sucking on his eight, hot inches of meat. 

Rayne adjusted himself so that his arms were braced around the chains of the swing and he was leaning back into the tyre with both hands flat on Simon's head and his feet planted a good half metre apart. He was urging his friend's mouth up and down on his throbbing tool as Si got a hand between his thighs and began to grope his balls firmly. The other snaked down between his cheeks, touching and exploring Ray's smooth, hairless crack. Simon could feel his own stiffening prick pushing hard against the zipper of his pants as he rubbed his crotch up and down Rayne's left leg, sucking and licking on his best friend's delicious boner. 

When he struggled to bring his head up, Rayne released the pressure and bent down to kiss him as he lifted his face, breaking the delicate tendril of saliva and pre-cum that trailed from Simon's lips to his cock head. His tongue eased into Simon's mouth and their lips moved soundlessly together for a long, satisfying time. As they kissed, Rayne's fingers eased down to rub Si's erection through his pants and unzip him deftly. Simon pulled himself up onto the swing, kneeling astride Rayne's thighs and bending his head to continue the slow, hungry meeting of mouths. He was holding both chains to keep his balance but as they kissed one another, Ray's fingers closed around his own cock 'and' Simon's, fisting them both simultaneously. 

"Stop!" Si whispered breathlessly into the other man's mouth after several minutes of this joint masturbation. 

"Don't you like it?" Rayne had a wicked expression on his face. 

"I like it too much," Simon panted. 

"Good, that was the idea!" Ray pushed up his T-shirt with one hand and kissed Simon's bared torso, teasing his nipples with teeth and tongue. "Kneel up higher, I want to suck you off."

That was an invitation he could not resist. Simon knelt upright on the swing and wrapped one arm around the rusty chain links so that he could stroke Rayne's hair as his best friend's full, seductive lips began to kiss his throbbing cock. Ray nibbled him teasingly, then stroked his tongue all over Simon's glans, drawing it into his mouth and glancing up with mischievous, icy-green eyes the whole time. He knew full well that giving head was one of Ray's favourite pastimes. Allegedly, he was bloody good at it, too. 

Within a few moments of Rayne's lips wrapping themselves around his shaft, Simon knew that the allegations were all true. He closed his eyes and gripped the chains in both hands as his friend's dark head nodded slowly against his crotch and belly. Ray's hair tickled him as the singer swallowed all seven inches without even gagging, and Simon pulsed faster, loving the tight sensation of his lover's throat around the head of his erect penis. For a little while he thought that he surely must be dreaming. He was kneeling on a swing in a very public place, with his pants around his knees, getting blown by his best friend in the whole world; the man he had sexually fantasised about since he was ten or eleven years old. What could be better than this?

He was soon to find out. Even as his balls tightened in Rayne's fondling hand to shoot their load into his steadily sucking mouth, Ray was stroking his legs with the other hand and urging his pants right down to his ankles. He kicked them off as his cock blew a thick, pulsating fountain of cum into the other man's mouth and throat. Simon groaned with intense satisfaction, easing back to watch the way that his semen trickled down Ray's chin, even as the singer carried on licking his throbbing, jism-slick tool. As Simon watched, he also put two fingers into his mouth and withdrew them sticky with spunk and spittle, like his glossy lips. 

"I want to fuck you," Si told him breathlessly.

Rayne said nothing, only smiled up at him incredulously. Si felt those slippery fingers probe roughly between his buttocks and thrust firmly into his arse. Lowering his eyes, Rayne swallowed his cock again and carried on sucking and frigging him industriously. Simon Hathaway stripped off his T-shirt, no longer caring about the cold and knelt astride him, naked except for his boots. Hooking his arms around the chains once more, he pushed Rayne's head down firmly into his groin and bucked like a stallion into his mouth. The pulsing fingers in his rectum sent a charge through him like an electric shock to his bollocks and he came quickly this time. 

Even as the spunk was trickling from Rayne's nostrils and the corners of his mouth, Simon rose to his feet, standing on the edges of the tyre with his legs spread. Rayne needed no guidance, his dark head was already between Simon's legs and he caught his breath as Rayne's clever tongue teased his crack and wormed up into his anus, rimming him with a will. The singer's long, deft hands worked up and down his thighs and over his scrotum and ball sac, caressing until he thought he would go crazy with lust. At last, Rayne pulled him down, kissing his prick some more. He was rubbing himself too and his cock was rock hard again.

Simon sank into his lap, wrapping his thighs around Rayne's slim waist and feeling that glossy phallic probe jabbing between his cheeks. It had been years since he had been on the receiving end of a good fucking, but he knew Ray to be an even less enthusiastic submissive than he was. Once that hot cock began to pump deeper inside him, Simon lost his reservations. Gripping the chains of the swing, he rode Ray's thrusting dick as hard and fast as he could. Rayne had his head thrown back, green eyes closed tightly and his teeth bared in an animal display of lust. Sweat-soaked and fiercely turned on, he was even more beautiful than usual. Simon could see that those upper canines were dangerously long and sharp, but for the moment, Ray seemed primarily concerned with getting off inside him and the longing to satisfy that urge for him overrode all his lover's fears. Rayne's fingers were gripping Simon's shoulders fiercely as he bucked hard underneath the naked mortal, his heels scrabbling for better purchase in the sand beneath them.

"Oh... God...! Yes...!" he gasped deep in his throat, stiffening and ramming himself upward even harder; once, twice... 

Simon's arse felt stretched and deliciously sore. His balls were throbbing fit to burst from the vigorous stimulation within his rectum and he knew that he would let go of the chains from sheer exhaustion in a moment or so. Rayne bucked a third time and kept his cock pressed up deep into Simon's twitching body.

With a little yelp of amazement that slowly turned into a growl of satisfaction, Simon Hathaway watched his own cock eject a great streamer of gushing cum over his lover's exposed belly and chest. The answering flood of heat inside him oozed down slowly over Rayne's slowly pumping cock and trickled out along his crack like a hot river. 

Simon's fingers released the chains and the two young men fell from the swing in a tangle of limbs and panting, heaving bodies. In the east it was beginning to get light but they did not care. Simon wrapped his arms around Rayne Wylde and kissed his unprotesting mouth for a long, breathless time as they clung to one another. 

To be continued...