Los Angles, 2085 AD, A few days before Halloween.

"Nice fangs," said the young man on the barstool. His name was Daniel, at least, he responded well to it, and he disguised his drunken snicker then by taking a sip from his glass. "Sorry, couldn't help it," he said. His cheeks were very red. Maybe it was only the alcohol (the years of drinking having burst so many capillaries in his fine pale skin), and maybe it wasn't.

"I accept your apology," said the man who had fangs. The words were all very crisp, spoken like someone who spoke English as a second language and spoke it well, too well. Daniel smiled unseen as he watched the dark-skinned man lift his right arm from the bar drawing a cigarette up to his mouth. It smelled like...a clove cigarette he was smoking. His hand hung at the wrist as he exhaled in rings. The show off, Daniel thought.

And then this man made a slight turn of his head, looking Daniel face to face for the first time. Daniel wasn't used to seeing such striking eyes aside from mirrors. These were black, deep and liquid; the right one catching a starry glint of light from behind the bar. Daniel had certainly never seen eyes quite like these except in the comic books picked up off the floor on which he'd recently been sleeping. And then the black man let the tip of his pale tongue touch the point of the left fang, and Daniel forgot all about the eyes. The teeth really were extraordinarily long.

"Egyptian?" Asked Daniel with only a slight catch in his throat.

"Yes. I am Egyptian."

"You speak too correctly to be American...but it's not really an English accent either...I'm usually pretty good with accents."

"I've good ears, let me guess where you come from," said the Egyptian.

"Go on," said Daniel. He raised an eyebrow slightly and took another sip of whiskey.

"Chi town." It wasn't even a question, definitely a statement of fact. Definitely.

A bartender seemed to materialise across the bar. He posed some silent question using eyes and hand, asking Daniel if he'd like his glass filled. And Daniel responded in the same language, shook his head slightly to let the bartender know he knew he'd had enough. The Egyptian next to him was taking a drag of his cigarette again, it had burnt down quite a lot and it was held between thumb and forefinger of his left hand. There was a gold band on the ring finger. Daniel found himself staring at the stranger's mouth again. The way the full lips hid the tips of the fangs when he was not speaking. Yet it occurred to Daniel that he had been speaking.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you," said Daniel, "it's so loud in here."

The other man looked right up at him, exhaling smoke above their heads. The scent of clove was very strong. "Nothing. You never told me where you were from. I guessed Chicago, and I'd bet your mother was Irish."

Shock. "Yeah, she was."

The stranger nodded slowly. "My mother was Ethiopian." He ground his cigarette out in a nearby ashtray, looking down for just a moment, then returning to catch Daniel's gaze.

Daniel found himself nodding, his eyelids a bit heavy. "Ah, I didn't think you looked like an Arab." He looked up. "What's your name?"

A breath, and then: "Chris." He held his right hand forward, palm down, almost as if he expected it to be taken and kissed. There were three gold rings on this hand. The fingers seemed very long. But it made sense finally, they matched the rest of him.

Daniel shook the hand firmly then, and dropped his hand quickly. "You can call me Daniel."

"You don't think I look like a Chris, do you?" He was laughing. His teeth were very white and straight if not frightening.

"Don't I look like a Daniel?"

"Yes, yes, you do...I think I've known a few Daniels."

Daniel rolled his eyes back into the bar. "It's getting crowded in here," he said. He heard another laugh.

"Would you like to go now, Daniel?"

"Pardon?"

"To go, to leave here with me?"

Daniel's cheeks went red. It definitely wasn't just the alcohol.

---

They stepped out onto the sidewalk, Daniel looking up to the dark-red and starless sky. The air smelt sweet and he wondered if it the palm trees were responsible. "This way," Chris whispered and took a side step to his left. Daniel began to walk then stopped short the hairs of his neck on end as a low yap sounded behind.

He saw the silvery shape emerge from the black shadow of an automobile...an animal. It licked at its teeth quickly then padded quickly toward Chris. "Watch out..." Daniel said, trailing off as he realised the two creatures walking away from him were familiar. He rushed forward to Chris's side, heard a laugh.

"Yes," Chris said, the question not really needing to be asked. "His name is Troy."

"Uh, nice name."

"It's short for Destroyer, but I only call him by that name when I want him to kill people."

Daniel raked his fingers back through his hair nervously. He forced a laugh. "Didn't care for Geri or Freki?"

Chris only shrugged.

Daniel let his eyes stray to the buildings they were passing. A dark-haired girl in the window looked up at him. He blinked, under her stare. Daniel looked up, read the gold letters on the plate glass window: Fell's Antique Books.

"You like her?" Chris asked, startling Daniel with his closeness.

"I-uh..."

"C'mon, we're going upstairs."

The girl inside the bookshop stood smiling, velvet-covered book in her arms. Daniel smiled back, fingers brushing hair from his cheek. He felt other eyes on him and tore himself from the window. There was an open door there and from the shadowy staircase within Chris smiled sharply.

Daniel's heart sped. And then he followed Chris up the dark stairs.

---

Tracklights came up as Chris stepped from the landing onto the large Oriental-looking rug that covered most of the floor. "My office," He said. But the room didn't seem an office as Daniel first glimpsed it from the stairs. There were bookcases, and a small reading table, but then there was a daybed draped in something like black gossamer.

Chris was standing at a small bar between two narrow doors. The open one to his right led to a small bathroom. That dog, or wolf, was sitting in front of the other. "Drink?" Chris asked.

"Have any bourbon?"

"I have, would you like some?"

Daniel nodded, then realised Chris hadn't been watching, "Uh, yeah, that'd be fine," he said.

He wandered over to one of the bookcases. It was on the long wall, pretty close to the daybed. Attempting to read the titles Daniel realised how very dimly lit the room was. He looked up at the black fixtures and tracks. The ceiling was dark blue, almost violet, it looked strange to Daniel; most ceilings tended to be white. And with the black walls and trim the entire room felt close.

Daniel shrugged off the feeling and turned. The case of shelves to his right held neat stacks of comic books. Daniel noticed in particular the stack of graphic novels and hardbound collections with their spines outward. Two small statues stood either side of the stack, one a man with a bird, the other of a seated girl wearing an ankh. Daniel smiled to himself. He had read these books. Daniel thought that girl who had taken him in would be pleased were she in his place. She had said the books were over a century old, valuable. The stories had felt too familiar to be old, but a lot of things felt like that to Daniel.

Chris stood at his side now. He put a glass in Daniel's hand. And then he moved away.

"Some people say I have strange taste in books," Chris said from behind.

Daniel turned from a shelf dedicated to Rice novels. Chris was sitting at the small round reading table, a bottle of Japanese beer in his hand, a cigarette that smelt purely of tobacco lit and sitting in a glass ashtray at his side. "I don't know," said Daniel.

Chris gestured to the chair opposite. "Then perhaps you are not like some people."

Daniel sat in the chair. He looked up at Chris, noticing the eyes again, thought of the comic books and smiled. Chris rather had the hair to go with the eyes, black and rather orchid-like. Actually, he looked as if he belonged on the wall of one of those black or red-lit teen bedrooms that smelled invariably of incense, sex, and sweat. (Daniel was always making girlfriends of girls with rooms like that.) Only, Chris wasn't pale. His skin was a very dark gold, Daniel didn't think it looked quite brown. It made him wonder if Chris had meant when he had said his mother was Ethiopian that his father was not.

"So, what do you do?" Daniel asked looking into his glass to avoid those eyes.

"Well, right now I'm a writer. I've never had a real sort of job, I mean, one where you work for the same person all the time."

"Unreal," Daniel breathed. He cleared his throat with a small cough, felt those eyes on him as he covered his mouth. "What do you write?" Daniel asked, then added, "I used to do some writing."

"Oh, mostly fiction."

"Mostly?"

"Well, it all supposes to be fiction, but I usually end up writing about people I know. Only, I change their names and hair colours quite a lot."

Daniel laughed then. "Is your name really Chris?"

He took a drag off the cigarette then placed it back in the tray. Daniel noticed the Dennis Cooper lying on top of a Poppy Z. Brite near the ashtray. Funny that he should know all the authors Chris read? "No."

Chris' eyes found Daniel's and stared. "I'm superstitious about things like that. I guess it could be all the stuff I read, I don't know, but I really believe in magic and overnormal happenings. I believe in Angels. I don't tell anyone my real name. Sometimes people get close to me, thinking they know it, but no one really does...and yet, if they name me that, then it becomes my name, doesn't it, and they have some power over me, because they have named me?"

"Yeah, I think I do know what you mean...I haven't always been Daniel, someone just named me it, and I guess I became Daniel, because I feel like him now." He laughed, nervously. "That didn't make much sense I guess." It didn't actually make much sense to Daniel. He glanced at the books lying on the table, tried not to think of queer serial killers. He wondered if Chris would kill him, if some other man wouldn't do it soon if Chris didn't.

"It made sense, perfectly," Chris said, exhaled smoke in something of a kiss, he looked so young, smoking, slightly hollowed hairless cheeks...he looked younger than Daniel. "Now, I don't feel like a Chris," he said, "it's just not me, being named Christopher. I've been Alexander sometimes, but I never really feel like him. But Robert, I've been Robert quite a lot of times, and if you call that name on the street, I'll turn."

Daniel watched Chris ground the cigarette butt into the glass. "They'll kill ya," he said.

Chris shook his head.

Daniel shrugged one shoulder. He wondered for a moment if their cave dwelling ancestors had spoken in shrugs and nods before their grunts. And then it dawned on him that the room was windowless, like a cave. This wooden room that looked all the closer in its dark colours. It was like being shut in a great wooden box. Suddenly they were staring at each other again. And again Daniel felt his heart race. Fuck it, if he was going to die, he was just going to. "You can drink my blood if you want," Daniel said quickly.

---

Daniel moved his hands over the deep reddish-brown arm of the day bed. He'd seen church pews made of this wood and stained this colour. It felt like a piece of a church, and yet it had a thin soft mattress lying between the two tall scrolled arms...and so many pillows, and gauzy drapes. He lowered himself down and twisted to sit sideways.

"Take your shoes off please," Chris said to him. Daniel looked down to the floor where Chris was crouched unlacing his Doc Marten's, quite old school from the treads. "You don't have to undress, but I don't like people to sit on my bed with shoes on." Daniel kicked the loafers onto the floor.

Daniel looked up as Chris came through the curtain. He sat opposite Daniel and reached behind some pillows. Daniel saw then that Chris had taken out a small box, a case for make up or a manicuring set maybe. He lay it down between them and opened it. Daniel could just see over the lid. There were all manner of sharps within, utility razors, pins, an old fashioned straight razor, a small auto-lancet, an exquisite knife with shining blade and engraved gold handle. Daniel's heart fluttered within his chest. He had known back in the bar that this would happen. It wasn't like he hadn't done it before. London, New York, San Francisco...Los Angeles.

Picked up in bars by people whose kinks included blood drinking...Daniel's life was a cliché. Once Daniel had begun writing a story he titled, Cliché, Dans Nos Pyjamas! in which he included every cliché of horror stories he could find but he had thought it much too camp to sell.

Chris raised his eyes. "I could always bite you...it wouldn't hurt much more or less than any of these."

"The knife," breathed Daniel, "is it sharp?"

Chris lifted the knife, closing the box with his other hand. Daniel watched as he pressed his thumb to the blade and drew blood. Chris' brows drew together for an instant and then relaxed as he sucked at the blood. His lips left his thumb before his tongue. Daniel looked at Chris' low eyelids. There was a bit of black eyeliner there that had been all but smudged away some time ago.

Chris looked up. "It'll cut fine, if you want me to use it."

"It's a nice knife."

"Was a gift from my son."

"You have a son?"

"Previous marriage," said Chris, sort of waving the whole topic away with his hand. "Do you care how I do it? Where I mean?"

"No."

Chris crept closer to him. He was up on his knees leaning over Daniel, the knife in his right hand. Daniel closed his eyes. The flat of the blade touched his jaw, it really made his heart race, but he suspected any piece of cold metal might do the same. And then the blade scraped his throat.

"You have to trust I won't hurt you," Chris whispered. He was so very close. His left hand put weight on Daniel's shoulder.

"I'm-uh, I guess I'm a little nervous."

"Open your eyes," Chris said. And when Daniel did he saw Chris was only about an inch or two away from him, a bit out of focus. "Are you going to be all right?" He asked.

It was Daniel who closed the space, reaching blindly to kiss Chris. Daniel let himself relax then, because he could tell Chris didn't mind him doing it. Daniel closed his eyes again and let his hands find their own way up to Chris' chest, and then one slid upward and around Chris' neck. He spoke in that language that had no words, sucking hard at all of Chris' mouth then slowly drawing back, and Chris understood that Daniel wanted to be kissed just so hard, and told him so.

Daniel could feel the knife against his arm, saying, move away, and so he let his left arm slip. The knife touched his side then, he could feel the sharpness of the blade through his shirt. And then he felt the fangs touched his skin for the first time. Chris pressed them to his jaw, drew back, then slid his lips down Daniel's neck.

Chris was sucking as hard at his neck as he had at Daniel's mouth. And then the fangs went into his flesh.

Ah, it was all so much more intense when they had fangs. Daniel felt his fingers curl, he pressed forward, suddenly and involuntarily, and felt the knife cut into his side. The fangs breaking through your skin...it was like getting a piercing done, hearing the snap and crunch of your own skin breaking. He set his teeth. The fangs were drawn out of the small wounds so slowly it hurt. Daniel took a breath in a gasp as Chris began to suck blood up from his neck.

Daniel's heart was pounding against the wall of his chest. The knife touched his side still. Chris reached from behind and pulled Daniel's long hair away from his neck. Daniel heard himself gasp, he hadn't meant to do it. And then again.

Daniel tried just to lie still as his fingers pulled at the kinky hair at the nape of Chris' neck. But it never worked that way on him. Playing donor to any sort of blood drinker inexplicably aroused him. Always. He drew his right leg up, guessing Chris knew he'd be dragging his heels across the sheets when he'd asked him to take his shoes off.

Chris drew away from Daniel suddenly. The room was silent until Troy growled from the top of the stairs. Chris made some sort of hand signal to the animal and it jogged away from the stairs to lie under the table.

"What is it?" Daniel asked.

Chris silenced him with a wave. He lifted some of the drapes from the wall, revealing closed shutters. Daniel almost said something about not having realised the windows were there, but it was dawning on him that he'd reacted to a hand signal just like the wolf. Chris had treated him like an animal...

"I better go down. Don't worry, I'll be back up shortly."

Daniel stared mutely as Chris stepped into his boots and crossed the room. He didn't even walk to the top of the staircase but hopped directly from wooden floor to its middle.

Daniel was alone. He touched the left side of his neck then drew his fingers away. They were wet with blood. It tasted almost sweet. And his side, stinging with pain, bleeding through his shirt...Daniel got up slowly and made his way to the bathroom. Chris couldn't have taken much blood at all, usually Daniel would be feeling so light-headed.

He took his shirt off and let it drop to the floor; it was ruined anyway. Maybe Chris would be as nice as some of the other people he gave blood to. Maybe he'd give him a shirt to wear.

Daniel poked at the wound in his side. It wasn't very deep after all. It probably wouldn't even scar.

---

The mirror wasn't modern. In a bathroom, even in an old house, you would expect the mirror to be one of those coated glass things. This was polished silver, though it was amazingly flat and smooth, and its frame was rather like a picture frame, gilt carved wood. Daniel's reflection looked just like the reflection he'd been seeing for months in newer mirrors, the fine platinum blonde hair falling just below the shoulders, smooth matte skin stretched over well balanced bone, and the violet eyes of course...though he had always thought them indigo.

Daniel had seen pretty boys in anime with his face, though their eyes were invariably bigger than his. There was one in an episode of Vampire Princess Miyu, Kei or something that sounded like that. The Vampire Princess had fought with a demon over the boy, and lost. Kei had ended up turned into a doll, the demon's puppet. As he stood recalling the climactic scenes of the Japanese cartoon, Daniel realised Chris was in the doorway.

He looked Daniel up and down, smiled, then broke into a laugh. "Sorry," he said. "May I come in?"

"I guess, I left the door open, I just wanted to see how bad this cut was, you know, the light's better."

"I'll look at it," Chris said. He stepped onto the bathroom tile and stood between Daniel and the mirror, his hand probing Daniel's side.

Daniel raised his eyes just enough to look at their reflection. It was rather pretty.

"It'll be just fine." Chris licked at Daniel's neck then, his tongue warm and dragging across the wounds his fangs had made. Daniel liked that Chris hadn't once told him he was pretty. He heard that too often to really believe it. If it weren't for mirrors Daniel would probably have acquired some sort of inferiority complex from being too often assured he was exquisitely beautiful. He just wasn't sure if he knew how to tell Chris what he wanted without words.

Chris was sucking at Daniel's chest. His arms braced Daniel then, for something, and a second later a fang pierced Daniel's left nipple. He looked down through pain and low lashes and watched Chris lick a scarlet bead of blood from his nipple.

Daniel sank lower against the wall, thinking it very nice of the wall to hold him up as it was. After all, molecules and atoms were excitable things; they might every once in a while just decide to let you fall through a wall or floor if they pleased. They might even trap you halfway inside. He took in a long breath then. Chris was lapping at his wounded side.

Was there never a way to be rid of the Christ comparisons, Daniel wondered? Seems any sacrifice, and wound, any act of submission brought the mind of anyone in Western Civilisation to Christ. It made Daniel wonder, if there had been sex scenes in the New Testament would it have been Jesus and Mary Magdalene or Jesus and his beloved disciple John? It had to be John, really, that or it was the both of them.

But maybe it was all Daniel's imagination. Maybe it was all being Irish Catholic.

His pants were pulled open then, he let his head roll back as Chris took his dick in his hands, and then into his mouth, and Daniel stopped thinking.

It was all just feeling then. Feeling and trying not to let a coherent train of thought come between him and that. He raised his arms and let them fold down over his head, shut his eyes, and just went sort of fuzzy. Mind numb and pleasure speedballing through the body. No language but the few silent responses left that said, "Oh, fuck yes, just like that," and "faster." And then more, I want it, more. Then moaning as his body went into nuclear melt down.

Daniel was hovering at that point where he might agree to absolutely anything anyone asked of him, (The point in The Movie of Your Life in which they play your favourite song and you go rigid, turn slowly, and see your lover at the stereo.) And then his eyes opened on the mirror and all Daniel could do was think: you look just so stupid. And more wounding than seeing his own reflection was standing there as Chris stood, turned, and spit in the sink. He picked up a bottle of Absolut vodka took a swig, let is swirl through his mouth and spit again, as if it were nothing but cheap mouthwash.

Chris didn't say anything, but looked at Daniel in an almost apologetic way. Then he left Daniel alone in the bathroom.

Daniel fixed his pants and combed his hair with his fingers. He could see Chris at one of the bookcases through the half open door. There was a very small audio system there that he was placing a disc in. The music started as Daniel entered the room. "3, 5, 0, 1, 2, 5, go," Ian shouted and then all the guitars began to play. Daniel recognised it immediately: Joy Division. For a second he questioned why he would know such an old song, only a second, and then it was forgotten.

---

Daniel hugged himself as he walked across the room. He wasn't sure if he should stay, but truthfully, he didn't have a place to sleep; he was living out of hotels and on the mercy of cute girls with black hair and creepy stage names when money ran out. He was going to have to sell something soon, song lyrics, a short story, a magazine article, his body.

"You can stay here a while if you want," Chris said. "I don't actually live here all the time myself."

Daniel nodded. He went to the daybed and sat down near one arm. Chris was moving around the room lighting candles. Already it was becoming obvious they were all scented. And he'd taken his shirt off somewhere along the way. Daniel could see his bare back now, not a scar anywhere. And things like that impressed Daniel. Imagine someone who was a blood fetishist possessing such flawless skin. Daniel noticed he had a large gold ankh hanging from a gold rope chain about his neck; it made him think at once of Pharaohs and boys skilled at rhyming.

Daniel smelled vanilla...and opium, or maybe that came from the couple of smouldering sticks of incense he saw on the table, and there were rose and strawberry scents wafting through the dim room.

Daniel watched as Chris lit a cigarette from a candle flame. He walked across the room then and sat up against the other arm of the daybed. Daniel twisted slightly to be able to face him. They were quiet, taking in breaths. The room had really become heavy with the smell of scented wax, smoke, and incense. The different scents didn't fight each other; instead they swirled and blended together, so that when Daniel closed his eyes, he almost believed he was in a garden.

"Who was at the door?"

Ring of smoke. "Curious?"

"Absolutely."

Chris laughed. Then he settled down against some pillows and put his cigarette out on the wall. "I'll tell you a story then."

Daniel stifled a laugh, "Not only do you drink blood but you bring young men to small rooms and tell them stories...?"

"Yes." Definite glint of light in one eye.

Daniel raised his eyebrows slightly, smiled. The answer was silent, but understood.

Chris sat looking through the gauzy curtain slack-jawed, seeming about to speak. He looked back to Daniel, laughed softly. And then he began.

------

Note: Edited 3/9/2016 to insert descriptive chapter title and correct the scene dividers which readers had commented on.

I sometimes get questions or comments on there being sex in the first chapter. The intent is  to show how one character isn't particularly concerned with being safe and that the other feels a need to return a perceived favor. Is there a way I could show this better?