LeCroix 13: Hard Decisions

Three days later, consumed by a grief that surprised and concerned him, Chas found himself lingering a few steps away from the assembled group of mourners at a burial at dusk in New Orlean's St. Louis #3 cemetery of a lover of his from his earlier life. Jake had been his bike mate in the biker's club Chas had ridden with before Philippe possessed him. They had been inseparable and had been enthusiastic lovers. After Chas had disappeared into Philippe's world, Jake had left the biker club, had married, and had developed a highly successful automobile dealership from an initial startup of a bike repair shop. Then, old, fat, and overindulged, he had died of a hardened-arteries-induced heart attack.

Chas recognized many of the men who attended the funeral; he had ridden with them alongside Jake in that earlier life, so many worlds ago. But they didn't recognize him and would not have even if he had stepped into the grouping around the grave site. They were all well into their fifties, and Chas had aged, certainly, but not farther then into his early thirties yet. He was still basically the same young, beefy blond stud he'd been back then. They were all well into the middle ages now.

Chas ached in his mourning for his lost lover and his loins took a lurch when the mourners began to disperse and pulled away from a young man persistent in remaining standing at the grave. Jake's son. There was no doubt that it was Jake's son. A handsome, olive-skinned, dark-haired, lithe youth of delicate facial features and almost a dancing quality of movement.

Chas stood, transfixed. And the buzzing in his ears from the long delay in his necessary feeding began to turn into voices inside his head telling him that this wasn't Jake's son at all—it was Jake himself. Here to reunite with his long-lost lover. Waiting on Chas; wanting to be taken by Chas as he had been so many times before. Open to his lover.

Everyone but the two of them were gone now. It was growing dark and mist was coming in from the river and filtering through the silent cemetery. The voices were winning. Chas approached the young Jake and turned him around so that they were facing each other. The voices were right. This was the face of the youthful Jake, and his expression was one of surprise, certainly, but Chas could see the unmistakable signs of recognition and welcome. The voices buzzing in his head were assuring Chas that Jake knew who he was and what he had come for—and that Jake wanted this as much as Chas did.

Chas lowered his lips to Jake's and took him with a deep kiss, swabbing his mouth cavity with that intoxicating and numbing toxin of his. Jake seemed to be struggling with him, trying to push him away, but that had always been Jake's game. They had liked to play games of captivity and overpowering in their love making. This was just like old times. This truly was Jake.

Chas sank his teeth into Jake's neck and fed, and Jake increasingly accepted Chas's love making, letting Chas take him to the ground and cover his body closely.

Chas frantically adjusted both his and Jake's clothing and took familiar possession of his lover's ass passage with his searching cock. Deeper and deeper he went into his lover, who was moaning and groaning his passion and love for what was happening to him. Jake was weakly bucking against Chas, as always writhing in that sexy reluctance of being taken way he had to inflame his insistent lover and to urge him to fuck him more vigorously and deeper. Chas followed the old game. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen thick inches, drawing out with a sucking sound and then ramming home inside his lover, going deeper with each stroke, each stroke met with a groan of passion and desire from his lover.

And Chas—Chas the convert of Philippe—was also feeding on his Jake. He left off fucking him twice to lower his lips to his lover's cock and to milk his essences. And he also took time out from stroking his cock in and out of his lover to seek out and feed on veins.

When Chas came at last some two feet up into his lover's gut, he lowered his lips to Jake's for a kiss of ultimate merger, but Jake didn't return the pressure. His lips were slack, and when Chas looked into his lover's eyes, all he saw were the whites—the pupils had rolled back into his head as he had breathed his last, sometime earlier in Chas's frenzied love making.

With a flood of recognition, Chas realized what he had done. He no longer was possessed by the buzzing in his ears. He had fed his full now—just as he was supposed to—and thus he once more was totally rejuvenated. But the clearing of his mind only helped the reality of where he was and what he had done flow into him.

This wasn't Jake broken and drained lying in his embrace. This was Jake's son. Dead. What had Chas done? His affliction had caused him to take the life of his own lover's son.

The horror of what he had done, of what he would have to do to lead the life that Philippe had forced on him was overwhelming. With a cry of anguish, Chas rose and ran into the mists swirling around the grounds of the cemetery, leaving the broken and drained body of his best friend lying across the newly dug grave of the young man's father.

Chas found his bike and raced back to the plantation house. He ran up the stairs, full of hatred and self-loathing, prepared to vent all of his anger on the man who had brought him to this point.

But all he found was a whimpering old man, a Philippe who had not fed in many days and who was slowly decaying back into nothingness.

Philippe held out his shackled arms in despair and entreaty to his protégé, begging him for relief and affection. And Chas took Philippe into his arms and made tender love to him, bringing a spark of life into the ancient one by transferring some of the vitality and youthful essences that he had just stolen from Jake's son.

But in those tender moments of merging their body into a deep fuck with magnificent cocks, revived by the essence of stolen youth, Chas came to another hard decision. When he had filled Philippe with the flow of his manhood, he left him there, sighing and growing younger and stronger, and moved down the stairs for the last time.

He would leave the imprisoning plantation house now and the possessive arms and influence of Philippe and prove to Philippe and to himself that he could reject Philippe's way. He would gladly become fully human again and age naturally and grow old and die at a natural rate. He would fight the urges of perpetual youth and the taking of life and its essences that this demanded. And he would just walk away from this house and let Philippe die naturally too, shackled in his bedroom, no one to hear his cries or to save him.

Chas stopped briefly at a window in the music room and lit up a cigarette, trying to gain courage to follow up his hard decision with action. A gust of wind caught the curtain at the window and the flaring match touched on the dry, rotting, silk. In an instant, flames were running up the wooden paneling of the wall.

There was a brief moment when Chas could have done something about the fire, but in the same instant it dawned on him that this was a much more humane death for Philippe than slowly rotting away from lack of feeding.

And, so, Chas just walked out of the house to where the grand oaks started at the base of the driveway and turned. The house was fully engulfed in flames. Who would have known that it would flare up so quickly? Despite the roaring of the fire, Chas could hear the plaintive cries of Philippe. His mentor was calling for him; begging him to come.

Who knows whether Philippe was working his magic on Chas one last time, if Chas had last-second thoughts of saving Philippe, or if Chas realized that he was much too weak to will himself to grow old and die when eternal youth was within his power? But something made him make that last hard decision, the hardest decision of all.

After the idiotic gesture of dropping his cigarette to the ground and stamping it out with the heel of his boot, Chas strode back into the house and mounted the flaming staircase. He entered Philippe's bedroom, and the two clung to each other as their world was consumed and evaporated in purifying flames.