Forrest had the oddest taste in his mouth right now. It was strangely familiar, even though it was also shockingly new and different from anything he was used to--there were notes of rust and rot and moldering dirt in there, things that should have tasted downright awful, but at the same time something about it felt almost addictively compelling. Forrest found himself swallowing gulp after great thirsty gulp of it as though his life depended on it.

That sounded odd inside his head, possibly even a little ominous in its own way; whatever it was he was drinking, wherever it was he was drinking it from, Forrest didn't like to think about what might happen if his real, literal life depended on more of it. That odd, rusty, unpleasant flavor was so strong in his nostrils, so intense on his tongue, that a part of him wanted to retch and spit and gag on the stuff as if it were poison. And yet he couldn't stop himself from guzzling it. And yet he put his warm lips against cool flesh and willingly, desperately swallowed it down until his whole body felt icy and numb with the constant influx of it. That was... that was odd, wasn't it? All of that was definitely anything but normal.

And yet it felt familiar. Forrest recognized the taste of it. He was drinking--he was drinking from flesh, he realized yet again, the revelation sliding so smoothly into his mind that he instantly knew it wasn't the first time his muddled consciousness came to that exact same conclusion--he was drinking blood from someone else's body and he recognized the flavor. How could that be? How could he know what it was like to drink another person's blood? Even with Afanasiy, even with the intimate link that bound them together as tightly as two people could ever experience, he never knew what it was like to feed. Their connection only went one way....

He'd forgotten Afanasiy, Forrest realized. Only for a few moments, but somehow the liquid coursing down his throat had distracted him from the immortal vampire who held him in an inescapable, blood-bonded thrall. That didn't seem possible, not really; there hadn't been a second in the last six months when he wasn't acutely aware both of the existence of the undead in a world that knew nothing of their presence beyond myth and folklore, and of the presence of Antony Voronin pulsing away in his own mind like a second heartbeat. He knew the secret name of his Master, and his Master knew everything about him. And yet, just for a moment, it had all simply slipped his mind. What else was he forgetting?

As Forrest slowly, gradually began to piece together the details that eluded him, he started to notice little things. A tiny little sound, somewhere between a moan and a thirsty gulp--not his own, although he could hear that as well, but the sound of another man drinking deeply and well from a vessel filled with glorious richness. Forrest recognized that sound, from a vacation in Greece at the end of a long day of hiking through the mountains. They'd gotten ouzo together from a little restaurant nestled into the foothills overlooking a tiny fishing village, and both of them were so tired and footsore and sweaty and rank that the strong liquor tasted like the best thing either one of them could possibly imagine. Neil made that exact same sound when he drank it. Forrest would never forget it.

He was drinking... something. So was Forrest. They were close, both of them drinking at the same time, and Neil--Neil smelled different than he usually did. It was a small, subtle thing, almost undetectable under the wafting scent of rust and dead earth that clogged his nostrils, but as Forrest paid more attention and his senses sharpened in fascinated interest, he realized that his lover had always possessed a distinct and particular aroma. Nothing bad, nothing he could even necessarily describe, but simply an identifying scent of self-ness that every human being gave off as identifiably as a fingerprint. He smelled like Neil. But he didn't anymore.

Now he smelled like....

The moment the thought popped into Forrest's head, his whole body convulsed with a start that made his neck burn with pain until the hands holding him in place gripped him tightly enough to cease his struggles. Neil smelled like Afanasiy. He smelled--not bad, exactly, but uniquely unalive in a way that only the undead possessed. Like must and age and that tiny hint of decay that gave certain cheeses their distinct flavors. It was the aroma Forrest had come to know as the unmistakable tang of the vampire; Afanasiy wore cologne to cover it up most of the time, but Forrest had gotten close enough to smell what was underneath it. Like when he drank--

Oh. Shit. That was where he knew the taste in his mouth from, wasn't it? From the singular occasion when he was allowed to drink Afanasiy's blood and bond himself to the Master's will. It was a memorable evening, to be sure, but it was only the once and Forrest had a lot of other things on his mind at the moment. Like the coolness in his extremities. Like the pain in his neck whenever he moved. It was so distracting that he almost forgot that he was guzzling down the elixir of immortality that was the blood in a vampire's veins. That seemed very important. Forrest hoped he didn't forget again.

Because Afanasiy needed to know. He probably did know, at least some of it; Forrest's eyes refused to open, but the bond between them conveyed all of Forrest's thoughts and perceptions to his vampiric Master and he undoubtedly recognized the flavor of another vampire's blood. He probably also knew that it was Neil who was feeding it to him, Neil who had the unforgettable scent of the undead--did, did that mean that Neil was a vampire too, now? It was such an odd secret to keep. Forrest wondered why he hadn't said anything before.

Probably because everything Forrest knew, Afanasiy knew as well. The bond between them ensured that. If Neil didn't want Afanasiy finding out about his new state of being, if he had... had something special he wanted to do, for example... he'd have to make sure to keep it from Forrest. Until it was too late to stop him. That sounded oddly ominous, just like that odd notion of his life depending on the vampire blood flowing down his throat that kept rattling around in Forrest's brain, but he couldn't really seem to focus very well right now. Like he was growing faint. Like he was getting light-headed.

"You'll need to give him more," a voice said. Forrest didn't recognize it. "Otherwise you're going to lose him." The flesh that pressed against his lips went away for a moment, and Forrest felt that sense of coldness intensify as his veins emptied out under the force of Neil's suckling kiss on his throat. Then he felt Neil's wrist return, the gash in it wider now, and Forrest was finally able to recover his wits as he suckled great rushing rivers of his lover's undead blood.

*    *    *    *    *

Afanasiy kicked in the door so hard it rebounded against the far wall and shattered into splinters. He didn't care; he'd bought the apartment building Neil and Forrest lived in a few months back, simply to make sure he knew at all times who was going in and out, and he could write off the property damage without batting an eye. He had more important things on his mind at the moment... like the smug blond man sitting at the kitchen table, watching with wry merriment sparkling in his bright blue eyes as Forrest awkwardly yet eagerly lapped at the blood spurting out of the body of a dying stranger and onto a plastic tarp covering the carpet.

He fixed them all--Neil, Forrest, and a third vampire he recognized all too well--with his iciest stare and snarled out, "So what was the plan, Magnus?" Inwardly, he was calculating odds. Forrest and Neil were newly blooded, unfamiliar with their power and still deferential even though his stare no longer held them in thrall. Forrest was still bonded to him, and although someday that could wind up being as much a vulnerability as a strength, right now the young vampire didn't know how to keep Afanasiy out of his head any more than he knew how to force their connection to work in reverse. He could have fought both of them at once without concern. But Magnus....

Magnus was four hundred years older than he was--and that was at least. He'd never found any records of the man's human life, and he knew better than to trust a single word that came from the trickster's mouth. He knew powers he'd never taught any of the vampires he sired, and Afanasiy heard whispers that the gifts of the undead weren't the only thing he could draw upon. He was cunning, wicked, skilled in battle beyond measure, and even one-on-one, Afanasiy didn't know if he could take him. With help on his side... no, this was a dangerous situation to be in. He had only one advantage right now.

"Oh, good grief. Bad enough that I had to be subtle, now I have to have a plan, too?" Magnus was capricious as fuck. That might just be enough to keep Afanasiy alive.

The burly blond vampire sighed, looking down at Forrest's naked, blood-soaked form as the younger man came out of his feeding trance and looked at himself in horror--but, Afanasiy knew, not nearly as much horror as he wanted to believe. "Look, I'll be honest," Magnus said, spreading his hands wide in a placating gesture. "And you know how much that pains me. The fact of the matter is, the most interesting thing about you in the past twenty years has been these two young men and we both know it... and crucially, their entire presence in your life has been a happy accident. They were a little storm of random, glorious chaos in an existence you've worked very hard to make as dull as inhumanly possible, and I knew very well that if I didn't do anything, in a year or two you'd start to feel threatened by them the same way you've been threatened by anything outside of your stultifying control. And then you'd make them vanish and go back to entombing yourself in money and power and layer upon layer of insulation between you and anything approaching real risk."

Afanasiy knew it was a deliberate goad. He knew Magnus was poking a bear with a short stick just to hear what the growls sounded like. But none of that quelled the raging fury inside him. He picked up a sofa and flung it as hard as he could at the older man, hoping that for just an instant, he could wipe the smug little grin from Magnus's face.

Of course it didn't work. Oh, it got Neil and Forrest's attention. They'd never seen him enraged before, never seen him use his power in anything other than the meticulously controlled manner he had to employ when dealing with something as absurdly fragile as a human being, and it clearly terrified them despite their new-found immortality. But Magnus simply caught the entire couch one-handed and held it as casually as if he was holding a wineglass while they talked. "That's a bit more like it," he said, his smile widening into a wild, joyous grin. "That's the Afanasiy I remember. Is he all done hiding now, or do you need a few more decades before you can let yourself be the man you were?"

Afanasiy lunged forward, smacking the sofa aside and sending it smashing into the kitchen table with a crash while he grabbed Magnus by the throat and pushed him up against the wall. "You don't know what it was like!" he roared, anguish turning his voice into a raw sob of grief that threatened to tear his chest in half with the force of it. "You didn't spend two weeks being hunted, clinging to the last handfuls of soil from your homeland while everyone you spent the last two centuries caring about got staked and burned and buried at the crossroads without a head! You didn't have to sleep in cargo crates weighted down with stones at the bottom of the Baltic Sea when they hounded you from Prague all the way to Copenhagen! I am doing what I have to do, Magnus. I am making myself safe--"

Magnus broke his grip effortlessly, grabbing both his hands and holding him up so his feet barely touched the ground. "You are dying," he snarled, the humor gone from his face. "You're killing yourself by degrees. Did you think I haven't seen it before? Did you think you were the first one to turn from the hunter to the hunted? Oh, it's always the same. 'I have to stay safe,' they say, and so they build their fortunes and amass their power and find ever more inventive ways to conceal the bodies they leave behind. And slowly but surely, that fear begins to rule them until even the thought of leaving their fortresses fills them with dread, and they lurk in their own basements and cringe at the thought of ever meeting anyone they don't control. And then one day, it occurs to them that the safest thing of all would be to burrow into the dirt and never come out."

He turned his head and spat. "To let you break yourself like that would be a waste of too much fine potential. I see more in you than fear."

Afanasiy opened his mouth, wanting to say something--he wasn't defeated, he told himself. He wasn't broken, he was merely biding his time and gathering his strength to find the ones that hunted him in Prague and make them know fear the way he did... but even as he formed the notion, the pit of dread that formed in his stomach told him he would never find the will to hunt them back, not on his current path. He'd never dare to send his lieutenants after vampire hunters, not if there was even the slightest chance that they might come away learning secrets they could use to harm him. And he'd never risk letting them know that he'd escaped across the ocean to America. "What do I do?" he asked, his voice soft and meek and almost broken.

Magnus snorted, tearing off Afanasiy's clothes in a single swift motion. "You get your fucking mojo back, man, that's what you do." He shredded his own outfit just as casually, stepping in and embracing his old lover with a passionate kiss that made their fangs clack against one another. "You show these two that you're still Antony Voronin, the Thunderer of Saint Petersburg, and just because they're vampires now that doesn't mean they're not still your bitches. And then you take that rush of power you get from fucking them and you go find those motherfuckers and you come down on them with the wrath of the un-motherfucking-dead."

He spun Afanasiy around, shoving him roughly at Forrest, but the vampire hadn't lived six hundred years without being able to regain his balance quickly. He came down on top of the blood-coated man, pinning him effortlessly on his belly and hooking his ankles around Forrest's legs to pull them apart... and he could still feel, through the bond they shared, that sense of meek and lusty helplessness that told him Forrest wanted to be overpowered like this. Afanasiy's erection throbbed to life as he slid into his submissive lover's ass in a single, swift stroke.

Behind him, Afanasiy heard Magnus take Neil with the same easy confidence, grabbing the younger vampire and manhandling him into a kneeling position on the shattered remains of the sofa. Neil moaned and whimpered as fangs sank into his shoulder, as the ancient vampire's cock sank between his buttocks just as easily, and the two newly-blooded undead let themselves collapse back into the roles they'd become accustomed to over the last nine months of serving Afanasiy as his thralls. They'd never be fully able to erase that instinctive servitude, any more than Afanasiy could look at Magnus as an equal... but sometimes, he had to admit that it was nice to have an authority figure to look up to.

Or look up at, he thought, as Magnus decided to interrupt Afanasiy's sex with Forrest to flip him over and give him the good hard fucking he'd been dreaming of for decades.

THE END