Red Kisses
by elfin
 

“Imp!”

Eyes widening, I looked up.  Never, in my long existence, had I expected to hear an accusation like that uttered from LaCroix’s lips.

Mind you, never in my eternal life did I expect to see my patrician master sitting on the floor, playing poker in such a way.  The poker game in itself wasn’t unusual.  But he was sat with his legs stretched out in front of him and back against the couch, while the cards were placed on the carpet next to him.

Christian, his beloved new child, was sitting cross-legged in front of the fire, and was beating LaCroix easily, despite the fact I’d only taught him how to play two days ago.

I was happy to watch.  More than happy.  I, like LaCroix, adored the newest member of our family.

It had been five months since Christian’s birth.  For the first four, he’d mourned, for Satine, for himself, for his beliefs.

He’d written their story, and after much asking, I’d read it.  For days, I was lost in the greatest, deepest love I had ever known.  His heart spilled on to the page.  I understood then why he’d grieved for so long, why he’d been so devastated by Satine’s death.  And before that, why what had happened on the final night of the Moulin Rouge… happened.

The night he finally finished writing it was the first night he came to my bed.

Before then, the closest we’d been was a feeding embrace.  And I knew the same was true for he and LaCroix, because my master and I had been losing ourselves in one another most days.

But just as I’d finished reading the last pages that he’d typed that same day, I heard a knock at my bedroom door, and Christian had put his head around it.

**flashback**

“Nicholas?”

I looked up, placing the last page face-down on the pile next to the bed.  “Christian… come in.”

“I was… wondering….  I didn’t know if you and Lucien were…”

“…exclusive.”  He looked so embarrassed, that my heart went out to him as it had so often in the last few weeks.  “We’re not.”  I stretched out my hand, fingers spread, beckoning him to me.

He came forward, nervously stepping up to the foot of the bed.  “I haven’t forgotten the night he brought me across.  When you and I… kissed.”

I smiled.  “I haven’t forgotten either.”

“So… is this…?  I mean… I’ve never… but I know Lucien says it’s different now….”

Wearing only my white sleeping shirt, I knelt up.  “Christian, you only have to do what you want to do.”

“But do you… even… want me?”

I could have laughed.  “You have no idea how much.”

Nodding, Christian knelt up on the bed with me.  He wore one of the white cotton shirts that LaCroix had bought him, top two buttons open.  He’d requested one – this one – three sizes too large for him so that it fell open to reveal his collarbone and the top of his lightly-haired chest.  He said it was more comfortable.  For LaCroix and I, that shirt was the object of many fantasies shared between us.

I kissed him then, as I had that first night in Montmartre, and from there, we made love.

LaCroix would be amused at my use of that phrase, but it best described what we shared that day.  He was the most responsive, sensual creature I’d ever been with.  His lips were gentle, his kisses soft.  His voice, his skin, his eyes… all so beautiful that I ached to look at him and touch him.

Such young looks, so innocent with those wide eyes and that almost pleading tone….  I wasn’t expecting him to be… so well endowed.

We kissed and touched, rubbed against one another almost like horny teenagers.  Then with a single, shared glance, we bit one another, each burying our fangs in the other’s neck.

Everything else became irrelevant.  Time seemed to stop.  I drank from him, reading his overwhelming love for Satine, his broken beliefs and shattered heart.  It was little wonder LaCroix was so enraptured with his new son.

We wrapped around one another, our bodies becoming entwined, erections sliding together.

Orgasms rippled through both of us, although what pleasure was his and what was mine, I couldn’t tell.  It flowed between us, in a never-ending circle.

Somewhere in it all, I could feel LaCroix touching our minds, adding something to our joining, but remaining very much as a spectator.  Or voyeur.
 

Afterwards, I took Christian into my arms and simply lay us back on the bed.  He draped himself over me, still wearing his white shirt.  I’d got no further than unfastening the buttons and pushing the right side of it away from his shoulder to nuzzle his throat.

“You are so beautiful,” I couldn’t help but murmur to him.  //Je t’aime//  I felt him stiffen in my embrace.  “Je suis désolé.”

He lifted his head, startling blue eyes catching mine.  “You can do that too?”

“Yes, we’re both LaCroix’s family.  His bond with you will be so much stronger than mine, but you and I are connected.”

“Are there… any more of his family?”

I smiled, swept my hand over his sweat-damp hair.  “Don’t worry, we can’t read your thoughts.  Well… LaCroix can.  There’s one other.  Janette, our sister.  He used her to draw me to him.”

Christian settled on me again, closer than before, if that were possible.  “And he used you to draw me.”

I thought back to that night and nodded.  “You could see it that way.  We didn’t mean it to happen like that, I just… when I saw you, I wanted you.”

I closed my eyes, more content than I’d felt in a very long time, and let myself drift.  I was on the edge of sleep when I heard,

“Will Janette… like me?”

I tightened my arms around him, holding my angel closer.  “Christian… mon beau, she will love you.  Just like we do.”

**end flashback**

Another hand of poker lost, LaCroix threw his cards down on to the carpet.  “You are cheating, my little demon,” he muttered, a smile in his voice as he reached for Christian.

Putting his hands on LaCroix’s arms, Christian let himself be hoisted bodily into his father’s lap.

“I think Nicholas has been teaching you some bad habits,” he continued, obviously happy just to hold his son for a time.  To watch my often brutal master show such tenderness was strangely moving.  LaCroix was incredible with Christian, patient, gentle, submissive even.

Something that was evident in the way LaCroix was feeding the newest member of his family.  We both knew that Christian was never going to be a killer, not in the true sense of his nature.

For the last couple of years, LaCroix had been involved with what he termed a ‘blood railroad’, and it was growing now.  Started in Paris, the railroad was a way of getting blood to vampires who couldn’t or wouldn’t continue to kill in these enlightened times.

I was amazed at him actually being a founder of the railroad, and guessed – correctly, as it turned out - that I was his inspiration.  But it had turned out to be very useful in the last few weeks.  We fed Christian ourselves many times, but the bottled blood was fast becoming his staple diet.

For a few minutes, I simply watched as Christian linked his arms around LaCroix’s neck and leaned into him, forehead to forehead.  Having known the ancient for nearly seven hundred years, to see someone so comfortable with him, so trusting and close, was really a strange but delightful surprise.

LaCroix swept one large hand over Christian’s hair.  “Nicholas has been telling me about your book,” he started, immediately rousing my suspicions.  I’d learned the hard way that it was a big mistake to let my guard down in the presence of my father for even a second.

“He told me that the reason you and Satine weren’t together for her last fatal days, was a man you knew only as… The Duke.”  Christian nodded against LaCroix’s head.  “He was the Duke of Worcester.  And he’s come home to England.”

My watchful gaze turned hard.  //LaCroix….//

He ignored me.  “How do you feel about him, mon aime?  Truly?”

My heart started to beat.

“I… I don’t know.”  I could have murdered my sire at that moment, simply for wiping the rare smile from Christian’s lovely face.  “He didn’t kill her….”

“But he took her from you, tried to rape her?  And when she refused him, he tried to have you killed?”

“Yes.”  The word was softly spoken.

Raising his head, letting Christian’s fall forward, LaCroix kissed the boy’s forehead.  “Mon fils, if anyone tries to hurt you now, I will kill them myself.  But this Duke… he could do to others what he did to you and Satine.  He’s a very dangerous man, especially to women, you must see that?  Wouldn’t you say that he deserves nothing less than to live out his life in peace?  Wouldn’t you agree that he deserves… to die?”

There was silence for a few minutes, and then I heard that beautiful voice say, “You want me to kill him.”

“Yes.”

I saw the expression on Christian's angelic face, those big blue eyes filled with so much innocence and pain grow wider with fear.

"LaCroix, no!"  But he shot me a look then that was as threatening as any he’d ever given me during our years in battle before and spoke instead to Christian's own silent protest.  For what I didn't know, what I couldn't have heard, was my newborn brother's heartbreaking question spoken straight into our father's mind.

"I know it is not your wish to kill, mon fils."  LaCroix's words were directed to Christian, but through his close bond with me, he reached out, drawing me in and making his explanation as much for his eldest son as his youngest.  "But you’re a vampire now, and it can be a dangerous life.  There are many threats to us.  And I would have failed in my duty to you as a father - as your master - if I did not teach you to defend yourself.  Like it or not, killing can be, for us, a method of defence as well as a method of survival."

I tried to remember how many times he'd killed in self-defence.  Of course I knew LaCroix was telling the truth, talking sense on at least one level.  But there was no doubt in my mind that my opportunistic sire wanted to see the latest, beautiful addition to his family accept his new nature completely, and not run from it as I did for so long.

But I didn’t want to do this to Christian, because I knew it was going to destroy something within him that he would never get back.

Christian too did not look convinced.  "Please... Lucien, I don't think I could!"

I watched, touched, as LaCroix stroked one lean hand over his beloved new son's hair.  The pale translucence of the ancient vampire's skin was a striking contrast to Christian's raven black hair.

"You can do anything, mon choisi.  Never doubt the power you have now."

"But... the Duke...."

"Think of the misery he has caused….”

Christian shook his head, detaching himself from his father and moving toward me. Reaching out, I let him come to me as I scowled at LaCroix, furious with him despite understanding.

//you know I'm right, mon amie, you know I don't want to make the same mistakes twice but he must learn//

Sighing, I mentally nodded.  //Just the once, LaCroix//  I knew the warning with which I'd underlined the words was probably pushing my luck with him slightly, but to lose Christian now would be... a tragedy.

I felt LaCroix's smile.  //Indeed it would, mon cher//

*

From the doorway, I watched the scrawny figure of the Duke as he leaned forward, picking up another log and throwing it onto the fire.

Despite the hot flames, he suppressed a shiver and pulled the blanket around his shoulders as he leaned back in the high-backed chair.

In my mind, I could feel Christian, but only just.  In his short time with us, he’d learnt quickly how to shield from intrusions in his mind.

Sighing softly to myself, I shifted in the shadows and reached out, attempting to touch the mind of the man sitting in the front lounge of this sprawling house.

His thoughts were very ordered, shadowed with a darkness that seemed to come from more than one facet of his soul.  Seeking to go deeper, I moved again, almost stepping out of the shadows.  Christian surprised me by stepping deliberately hard on one of the floorboards.

I quickly moved back as the Duke looked up from his book.

“Who’s there?” he called, a tremor touching his voice.  “Warner?”

Oh, no.  Not Warner.  Warner, whom Christian had informed us had tried to kill him back in Paris, under orders from the Duke, had stayed behind with LaCroix.  I knew, but hoped Christian did not, that the Duke’s manservant was dead.

Stepping around into the lounge, Christian shook his head.  “Not quite.”

The Duke’s beady eyes widened.  “You….”  A nod.  I watched the amber of the fire’s flames dance in Christian’s hair.  “What are you doing here?”

“I came for you.”  I felt a slight crack in Christian’s mental shields.  LaCroix was reaching for me too, but I gently ignored him and touched my brother’s mind in a reassuring caress.

But the Duke only saw the fierce light in Christian’s ice-blue gaze.

“I… I don’t understand.”  I watched the Duke’s expression, not needing to read his thoughts in order to know them.  “You won,” he spat, “why are you here? You should be with her.”

Christian glanced aside, at the long tall windows.  Outside, it was dark and wet.  “She’s dead,” I heard him whisper.

The Duke stared.  “What?”  Christian didn’t repeat himself.  “Dead?”  His tone puzzled me.  There was no mocking, just emotion; sudden, inexplicable grief.

“She died that night.  On the first night of the show, when the curtain fell.  When you tried to kill me.  Not that you hadn’t tried before then, when your threats made her believe she had to protect me.”

He was silent for a moment then.  And the Duke spoke quietly, “It seems that we all died that night.”

‘Not quite,’ I thought, ironically.

“You have no idea,” Christian stated, suddenly angry.  “You never loved her.  You just wanted to own her.”  He stepped closer to the Duke, and I could feel him starting to struggle to hold his nature in check.

“I thought…” but the Duke bite off his own words, shaking his head, “…I thought she loved me.”  His tone was one of defeat.

“How could anyone love such a cold hearted monster?” Christian accused, the other man’s obvious sadness making no impact on him.

LaCroix was right.  Deep in the dark places in Christian’s heart there was nothing but hatred for his victim.

The Duke had placed his book on the floor and was rising to his feet, wary eyes never leaving Christian’s face.  “Why are you here then?” he asked, cocking his head to one side.

“Revenge.”

In a blur, Christian moved to the Duke’s side and took him in a feeding embrace.  Before the other man had a chance to utter a single sound, Christian’s slim fingers were curled around his neck.  Slowly, his anger fading to a gentle smile, the young vampire pushed his captive’s head to one side, baring the throat.

I felt LaCroix catch a breath, his excitement building quickly.  From somewhere close by he was ‘watching’ his son.  //yessss//

I didn’t answer his delighted hiss with words or thoughts, just a single emotion.  Hope.

As Christian freed the beast and let the change come over him, I had to stop myself from flying to him.  In a moment, I had changed my mind.

//I don’t want this for him!//  I heard my own thoughts, almost desperate in their hurry.

LaCroix’s reply was calm.  //we spoke of this//

I heard the Duke’s scream, and saw Christian bare his fangs, opening his mouth, stroking his thumb over the wrinkled skin of the scrawny neck.

//Please, mon pere…//

But I knew he wasn’t going to stop this.

Held back by my father’s mental embrace, I could only watch, filled with dread, as my dark angel lowered his head and sank the sharp points of his teeth into the thin flesh.

As I knew he would, as they always did when not held in thrall, the Duke started to fight in Christian’s arms.  His struggles tore his skin on the teeth buried within it.

Outwardly, Christian kept him firmly in his arms, but inwardly I could feel my brother’s balance being upset, his own struggles beginning.

I tried to pull away from LaCroix, but he held me as surely as Christian held his prey.

//LaCroix!//

//no, mon fils, he must learn!//

One of the Duke’s weak attempts to break free succeeded.

Still caught in Christian’s grip, he managed to angle his head so that the feeding bite was dislodged.

With the stopper pulled from the wound, the natural spurting of blood being pumped away from the heart burst into Christian’s face.

His howl was more painful to hear than his swipes at his eyes and nose were to see.

He’d released the Duke to drop to the floor, and the man was now desperately trying to claw his escape across the polished boards.

I moved then, as if I too had just broken free of my bonds.  As Christian’s wrenching sobs began, I flew from the shadows.  In the next moment I had my beautiful brother in my arms, was reaching for him through our bond.

LaCroix appeared from nowhere, stepping casually on the Duke’s hand, smiling thinly as a screeching yell came from between his victim’s pale lips.

“Ssh.”  //Ssh, mon cher, mon beau, it’s all right//

Not even glancing at LaCroix, I lowered us both to the floor, tucking Christian’s head in the crook of my neck, holding him as he sobbed.

I surrounded him with myself, reassuring him, promising him that everything was all right.  In my mind, his presence was a jumble of dislocated thoughts and emotions.

“Christian, it’s all right my love, it’s all right….”  Lovingly, I combed my fingers through his feather-soft hair, feeling the spots of blood that had reached that high.

A few feet from us, LaCroix had squatted down and was studying the Duke the way a collector would a specimen.

“He’s not worth your tears, my little one,” the ancient spoke quietly.  “He has the heart of a murderer.”

Christian only attempted to bury himself further under my coat, and I wondered if he were as frightened of LaCroix at that moment as he was of what he’d been about to do.

I looked up to see our father trailing his index finger over the Duke’s cheek.  “Come, mon fils, finish him.”

I couldn’t believe I’d heard that.  And I couldn’t believe how fast Christian had left my arms.  The first I knew was the cold of the room as the glass in the window was smashed and the body of the vampire tore itself on the shards in the frame to escape us.

*

Our history was littered with conflicts, battles and wars.  We had passion, our hearts fairly sang with it.  But it swung between anger and desire.

Tonight, I yelled, he bore it.  We were both desperate to find Christian.

For one so young, he knew more than we could remember teaching him.

“How could you say that?!”  I asked uselessly, “You could see, you could feel how upset he was!”  LaCroix was silent, as he had been since ending the Duke’s life and leading me away from the estate.  “I don’t know what reaction you expected to that little suggestion!”

I knew he was listening, not to me, but to the whispers of his newborn in his mind.  His calls to Christian were the most gentle I’d ever heard from him, and that was fast muting my fury toward him.

The night was growing old.  Christian was somewhere in the cold and the rain.  We were getting closer but whether we’d find him by sunrise was starting to become a dreaded question.

For a moment, all I could see were those big blue eyes gazing up at me from where he lay across my naked torso.

//we will find him, mon fils//  It was the first thing he’d said to me during our search, and I took comfort from it.

Flying over the city, we took in the blur of the lights.  From so high up, one place looked much like the next.  Somewhere down there, Christian was trying to escape the terrible truth of his new nature.  I could feel his pain ebbing through the cracks of his mental shielding and desperately I tried to send back reassurance and love.

Suddenly, LaCroix paused in mid-flight.  The cool air caressed us as we hovered, LaCroix’s index finger dancing in front of his face.

“What?”

He didn’t answer, but without warning, he dove to the right and started a sudden and stomach-churning decent.

When we landed on the deserted road, the expression on LaCroix’s face would have been comical had I not realised its significance.

“Lucien….”  It came out as a whisper, and for once, my fear was mirrored on his face.  Even I’d never grasped the ability to leave my mental signature in a single place to mask my true movements.

“I know….”  I could sense him wildly casting out for any sign of where Christian was.  But he’d managed to desert even us, his closest family.  Fifteen long minutes later, the sunrise so close now we could feel it, LaCroix insisted silently that we should return to the hotel rooms.  I shook my head ‘no’, but even as I did I knew he had no choice.

Gently his hand touched my shoulder.  “I couldn’t bare to lose you too,” he whispered, so softly I know it was meant only for me.

Nodding reluctantly, I followed him into the lightening sky.

Staying low, we knew we were starting to singe.  I could feel the burning pain of the sunlight touching us.  And fear flooded my mind.

//Nicholas, mon fils, we will make it, we will be well//

Confused, I searched the flood.  //I know, I… it’s not me….  Christian!//

I started to turn in mid-flight, but LaCroix stopped me.  “Return to the hotel.”

We flew down, taking shelter from the rising sun in a dark alley.  I shook my head, facing him as my feet touched the ground.  “No!  LaCroix, I’m sorry, but you’re the reason he’s out there.”  Another sharp stab of pain, I had to get to my brother.  “If you go, you’ll just…” I searched for the right word and failed.  “…antagonise him.”

LaCroix pursed his lips but didn’t argue.  “All right, mon petit demon, we’ll both go.”

Pulling my thick coat up until it covered my head, I followed LaCroix back out into the dawn rays.

We might not have been able to follow his mental signature, but we could follow the increasing scrapes of pain in our minds.  It scraped across our own nerve endings, becoming indistinguishable from our the sensations caused by our own burning skin.

In the centre of the city was a square.  In the centre of the square, a memorial cross.  That was where we found him.

Our angel was sitting on the top of the three stone steps leading up to the cross.  He’d pulled his coat closer around him, covered the top of his head, but his hands were burnt raw and there was smoke rising in small plumes from tears in the black wool made by his escape from the house.

“Christian,” I stepped forward, sheltering my face as best I could, reaching for him.  “Please, come with us.  You have to get out of the sun.”

He raised his head and I couldn’t help the gasp that escaped my lips.  It took a moment for me to realise that his eyes weren’t burnt, but were red from his unending sobs that were still wracking his slim frame.

“I can’t,” he told me, the plea in his voice.  “I can’t do it….”

“You don’t have to, Christian, please.”  LaCroix was hovering in the shadows, becoming an ever- increasing presence in the back of my mind.  Christian’s reluctance to kill was a point of argument for later.  We couldn’t survive for much longer in the sun.

“We won’t make you do anything,” I told Christian, stroking his face gently.  “I promise you.  We love you so much….  We don’t want to lose you.  I don’t want to lose you.”  Reaching an arm under his coat, at the same time reaching for him in his mind, I wrapped myself around him.  “Come back with us.”

*

LaCroix  stroked the back of his finger over Christian’s cheek.

The young vampire was asleep across the centre of the double bed in LaCroix’s room.  I’d fed him and he’d fallen asleep just after that.  His wounds – like ours – were healing quickly.  Physically, he would survive.

“He must learn to defend himself, mon fils.”

I watched LaCroix sit up and tuck the expensive white sheets around his beloved child.  There was no venom in his words, just concern.

“He will,” I assured.  “I will teach him.  Just… let me go about it in my own way?”

Sighing, LaCroix relented.  “All right.  Be sure you cover everything, Nicholas.  His mortal life left him shattered, I don’t wish his immortality to end the same way.”

I watched him leave the room, my gaze moving to settle on the still figure of my brother, pale against the white cotton surrounding him.  I leaned forward to place a tender kiss on his head before rising to spend the day with LaCroix.

Eternity was a long time.  I hoped I could spend some of it in the company of this beautiful man.  I hoped Christian would let me.
 

fin
elfin