Manikin

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin Jordan Castillo Price All rights reserved.

Copyright ©2008 Jordan Castillo Price

Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is

illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary

gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison

and a fine of $250,000.

ISBN: 978-1-59596-419-9

Formats Available:

HTML, Adobe PDF,

MobiPocket, Microsoft Reader

Publisher:

Changeling Press LLC

PO Box 1046

Martinsburg, WV 25402-1046

www.ChangelingPress.com

Editor: Margaret Riley

Cover Artist: Bryan Keller

This e-book file contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language which some may find offensive and which is not appropriate for a young audience. Changeling Press E-Books are for sale to adults, only, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin Jordan Castillo Price Marushka loves pretty things: lace and velvet, porcelain and pearls. She sews elaborate costumes for all of her dolls, and she spends hours arranging their hair just so. Her collection is growing; she’s added a very pretty trinket, and his name is Michael. She can’t wait to dress him up. Michael always suspected mentally ill vampires grew worse and worse as the years went by. He’d never realized how unhinged they could get. Now Michael is in way over his head. Will Wild Bill save him? Or was it only wishful thinking on Michael’s part that their connection ran deeper than sex… or blood?

Chapter One The straight razor slid along the tops of the toes on my right foot. “Shoosh, shoosh, darlink. If you tremble, I might nick you. We mustn’t ruin your skin.” I rolled my eyes down in my head, which I couldn’t move even a fragment of an inch, and told myself not to freak out. The vampire would keel over any minute. I’d slipped her three tablets of Rohypnol, and I knew from experience that three was more than enough. Part of her, the edge of her hair, was visible in the dim streetlight that threaded through a window high in the bathroom wall. Her hair was flame red, in long, smooth curls like Shirley Temple. It was so dim in the bathroom that the red looked brown, or even black. I swallowed. The metal apparatus that she’d clamped around my head and neck put so much pressure on my Adam’s apple, even that small motion was painful. The razor slid up my calf. The steel was cold. The tub was cold, the water was cold, too -- and I couldn’t stop shivering. “Marushka? Can we take a break? I’m freezing.” If she let me warm up for a second, I’d probably still be shaking from the realization that the Rohypnol was taking its sweet time in knocking her out. But I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. “I know.” Her voice oozed sympathy, and she was probably even sincere. “But this is better for your pores. Once the gooseflesh smoothes out, your body will be like silk.” She wielded the razor around the curve of my knee with such delicacy that it was only the merest whisper of cold metal. I ached to shove her away -- she hadn’t strapped down my arms, even though the ancient leather restraints were in plain view, because I’d managed to convince her that I was just as crazy as she was. That I was into it. Whatever it was she was doing.

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

-6-

It wouldn’t have mattered if my hands were free or not. She was so much stronger than me that I’d never be able to fend her off, even if she didn’t have a length of freshly-honed steel in her tiny white hand. I gritted my teeth, and I waited for the Rohypnol to do its job. The razor skimmed my thigh. Now both my legs were completely hairless. “Such lovely skin. Your hair -- why do you dye it black? What color was it before?” “Just brown.” “Yes, brown. Brown is better. I will make you a fine wig, long, with curls. Brown. It will suit you. What color are your eyes?” I’d thought she could see in the near-dark. Maybe not in full color. I filed that thought away with everything else I knew about vampires which, at the moment, didn’t seem nearly enough. “Grayish.” She snorted. “I will give you a pair of emerald green eyes that you will adore.” I’d seen Marushka’s bell-jar collection of eyes -- glass, dozens of them, staring every which way -- when she’d led me through the old fabric store and the apartment above. They were tucked behind the dress forms and sheet-draped furniture, and the bolts of dusty fabric, the shelves of patterns and rickrack. I was fairly confident that I liked my own eyes much, much better. But I wasn’t about to contradict her -- she had my balls in her hand. Her fingers were as cold as the razor. “Open your legs.” I wasn’t sure if I could, but in the spirit of going along with her vision of me, transformed and perfect, I did my best to oblige. I forced my knees against the walls of the cold porcelain tub, and I told myself she wasn’t interested in my ass. The other vampires I’d taken up with? Sure. But not Marushka. She was in her very own league. The blade swept along the crease of my thigh and I had to force myself not to slam my legs shut. There were ankle restraints within reach of the tub, too. “Shoosh, Michael. My hand is steady.” No kidding. At the rate she was going, I’d be slippery smooth all over in about ten minutes. “Will I get to keep my own clothes?”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

-7-

She stroked away the fine hairs behind my balls and flicked them into the five inches of frigid water with a practiced snap of her wrist. “Of course not. Your clothing is filthy. I will dress you in something fine.” I reminded myself to act fascinated. “Like what?” Marushka sat back on her heels and planted her elbows on the rim of the bath. If I rolled my eyes down and to the side, I could see her, barely. Her carefully painted face looked like a kewpie doll mask. “It would be a shame to cover you up too much. Perhaps a silk shirt, open at the front. And a vest of embroidered velvet.” She reached into the tub, grabbed on to a single chest hair, and yanked. I flinched. “Too bad I didn’t meet you before you grew all this… fur.” “ ’Sokay. My teeth looked like they were too big for my face until I was eighteen, at least.” She plucked another chest hair and twirled it between her thumb and forefinger, directly in front of her face. Her eyes crossed slightly. I noticed that her eyebrows weren’t actually eyebrows at all, just a pair of thin, curved lines she’d drawn on -perpetually surprised. “So, uh, tell me about the vest. What color is it?” “I don’t have it yet. I must make it. Especially for you.” Unfortunately, my question about the vest seemed to galvanize her back into action, which was the opposite of what I’d been hoping for. She cupped her frigid hand over my cock and swept the razor over my pubic hair. For the first time that night, I wondered whether I really did want the drugs I’d slipped her to take effect. I might survive the vampire encounter, but find myself a eunuch in the process. “Black.” My teeth chattered as I spoke. “The shirt, too.” “Black, black, always black.” Marushka gestured like she was sending back an overcooked steak at Ponderosa. “You have no vision.” I certainly wouldn’t, if I took her up on the offer of those green glass eyes she had in mind. “Okay, what color then? Tell me.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

-8-

There was a flick, and a splash, and when she took her hand from me, the cold air felt even sharper against my naked groin. “Purple. Very dark. Like the skin of grape.” She pressed her chin into her forearm and leaned heavily into the tub. “And embroidered in… in gold, with…” The straight razor splashed into the tub. Marushka slumped to the floor. “Michael?” Her voice sounded very innocent and small. I almost felt bad for her. I groped my hands up the side of the metal brace and felt for the latch. I couldn’t imagine what the thing must have been, originally. Something a dentist might use while he was boring through a patient’s molars with a hand drill? Maybe a piece of medical equipment that heralded the dawn of brain surgery. I shuddered. I found some screws and springs and knobs. I wished I’d gotten a better look when Marushka had lowered me down, placed a kiss on my forehead, and snapped the cold metal around my neck. Water sloshed against the side of the bath as I pushed at the tub wall with my bare foot and tried to extend my reach. She’d even shaved my toes. It had never occurred to me that there was hair on my toes. I stretched, and I felt something that protruded a good inch out of the mess of metal. A key. It was tightly seated. From my which-way’s-up position, I couldn’t tell clockwise from counterclockwise. My fingers were numb on the key and I couldn’t stop shaking. Concentrate, I told myself. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey. A couple of turns and I’d be out of there. I grabbed the key, and I twisted it. It fell out of the brace and clattered to the floor. “No…” My voice sounded as small and pathetic as Marushka’s had when the Rohypnol finally hit her system. The important thing, I decided, was not to panic. I’m tall. I have long arms. I’d figure out a way to get the key back. Never mind that the chances of me then fitting it into the right slot without being able to see it -- and turning it in the proper direction

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

-9-

with cold-numbed fingers -- were slim to none. I’d get that key, because if I didn’t recover it by the time Marushka woke up, I was dead. My shaking had intensified to the point where it made the water ripple in the bath. I strained to rotate within the brace, but it was too tight, and too solidly mounted. I reached back. My fingertips brushed the crumbling plaster wall. There was no way I’d ever reach the floor.

Chapter Two “Damn it.” Okay. If I couldn’t reach the key, then I’d have to break the brace off its mounting. So what if it’d been specifically built to immobilize people so that their heads couldn’t move. It had to have a weak spot in it -- something that would break, something that would shift. I pushed harder against the tub wall, and I strained, and I… Struggled. Nothing. It didn’t budge. I flailed some more, and cut my hand on a raw metal edge. Hot blood trickled down my arm, and I remembered how cold I was. And then the shivering started again. My teeth chattered so hard I bit down on the inside of my cheek and tasted copper. I flailed harder, cracked my knuckles on the tub. Maybe broke something. My feet skidded against wet porcelain. Fuck, oh fuck, what a fucking stupid way to die, shaved bare with my head in a vise. “Boy. You’ve got me at a loss for a smartass remark here. Not many people can make that claim.” My eyes shot open. I hadn’t even realized I’d clenched them shut. Oh God. Wild Bill. He stood over me with his head cocked to one side. He had his hair combed back rockabilly-style and a cigarette tucked behind one ear. His eyebrows were all twisted up, as if he couldn’t quite figure out what to make of me. Was it really him standing over me, or was it just a dream? It seemed like a dream, wishful thinking and all, although he never really glowered at me quite like that in my dreams. And I wouldn’t have thought about giving him a new hairstyle either -mostly dark roots and pomade-slick. Oh, man. Even making that face at me, he looked smokin’-hot. “What the fuck?”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 11 -

Okay, and I know I wasn’t hallucinating that, because if I were dreaming it up, I would’ve had him say something a hell of a lot more witty and urbane. “K-k-key… behind the tub.” Bill leaned over the bath, and the thought flickered through my mind that he might take up where Marushka had left off and keep on shaving me until I was entirely hairless. I laughed, a sharp little yip. Or maybe it was a sob. “The key…” He took the vise in both hands and pulled. Metal shrieked, and tiny pieces -springs and bolts and knobs -- splashed into the tub, bounced off the rounded porcelain edge and tinkled to the floor. He grabbed me by the forearm, and somehow I managed to grab back, and he hauled me up. The cold water sucked at me, as if it could keep me there, waiting for Marushka to wake up and finish her sick makeover. Bill just pulled harder, hard enough to yank my humerus out of joint if I didn’t wise up, and give him a little something to work with. I clenched my muscles and gave over to the motion, the feel of him pulling me up, up, from the freezing abyss. And there he was, smelling like leather and cigarettes -and even that didn’t matter, as long as I could fall into his arms, and everything would be… Bill turned and walked away, and left me teetering on the edge of the bath. I ran my hands through my hair, tried to wring out some of the water. My teeth clacked together. I put a foot on the floor, and oh God, there was Marushka, fallen on her side like a broken doll. There was nowhere to step where I wouldn’t touch her silky ruffled blouse, or worse, her Shirley Temple hair. I aimed for the clearest spot and did my best not to think about it. “Bill?” I heard the sound of things clattering together, as if he were walking through the dusty flat, picking things up and putting them back down, maybe harder than he needed to. He’d come to Sioux Falls for me, though. Wild Bill was here. That’s all that mattered.

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 12 -

I got both of my feet on the floor. Marushka’s hair clung to my cold, wet feet like cobwebs. I looked for Will Bill, but I couldn’t see much. There were plenty of Bill-sized things in the main room -- dressmaker’s dummies and furniture draped in sheets, and behind them, floor to ceiling brocade curtains that cast confusing shadows in the dim, ambient light. But nothing that could move. “Bill?” A cold draft stung the backs of my thighs, but the thought of drying myself in one of those dusty sheets made my throat flutter with nausea. Too much like a shroud. I’d just pull my clothes on, and eventually they’d dry. Finding them -- that was the problem.

*** I tried to remember. The whole night was a blur of anticipation and panic. There was the antique toy shop where I’d met Marushka, and then the dark alleyway where she’d spun stories about her beautiful dolls, the abandoned fabric store, the apartment above, and then… “What’d you knock her out with?” Bill stood in one of the doorways that led deeper into the narrow apartment. “Roofies?” I nodded. I felt twice as naked with him looking at me, and I couldn’t read his expression. “How?” I thought I spotted my clothes, but when I touched them, my fingers sunk into a pile of crumbling velvet. The smell of mildew billowed out, and I turned my head to avoid breathing in any more than I already had. “How did you drug her?” I pointed at a dainty filigreed table beside the bathroom. There was only one thing on it, an aperitif glass, dead center. Bill picked up the glass with his pinky extended and gave it a sniff. “This is yours. It’s not from that cut on your hand -- this thing’s been sitting around for almost an hour. How’d she draw it?” “Syringe. Under my tongue. She didn’t want to mark me up.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 13 -

He twirled the fancy little glass between his fingertips, and stared into it as if there were something there only he could see. And then he threw it to the floor so hard that it shattered explosively in shards that sprayed against the wall like sand whipped up by a hurricane. “God, Bill, I’m barefoot.” Glass crunched as he stomped out of the room. I stared at the floor and wondered how I was supposed to walk out of there, and what his Jewish wedding imitation was all about. And I shivered. Wild Bill came back into the room, walked past me, and dropped something heavy on the floor. My boots, just out of reach. He kept on walking without slowing down. I strained toward them, snagged a bootstrap, then slipped it on my bare, wet foot. I hopped forward and got the other boot on, too. The broken glass felt like spilled sugar under the soles of my boots. I walked slowly, one hand cupped over my groin, the other feeling for the wall. A breeze hit me from the right. I hadn’t noticed that the apartment was particularly drafty while Marushka was making small-talk with me and stropping the razor, but then again, I wasn’t shaved and wet at the time. I looked through a doorway into an ancient galley kitchen. Cobwebs hung thick from the ceiling, and the shapes of several dozen knives -- more knives than anyone should ever need -- covered the walls. Bill sat in an open window at the far end of the narrow room, one knee bent with his foot planted on the windowsill, other foot touching the floor. A cloud of cigarette smoke surrounded him for just a moment, luminescent in reflected streetlight, and then it dissipated as the wind stole it away. “I’m thinking a pair of jeans would feel pretty good right about now,” he said. He was backlit, and I couldn’t tell if he was looking out the window, or at me. My teeth clattered together hard. I clenched my jaw in an attempt to get the shaking under control long enough to speak. “It’s too dark. I can’t find my stuff.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 14 -

Something small bounced off my chest and dropped to the floor. I squatted and picked it up. Bill’s lighter. I hadn’t even seen him move to throw it. I turned it around in my hand and flicked it. Flame. I wanted to run over to Wild Bill, hold that lighter right up to his face, and look into his eyes and see why he was acting so standoffish and weird. But then another breeze played over my bare, wet legs. I decided Bill was right; I needed my clothes. Marushka hadn’t needed any light to navigate her lair. She’d just towed me along, whispering promises of immortality and beauty, and I’d followed. Lots of other people had before me, too, judging by the disproportionately high number of missing persons I’d dug up. I shone the lighter over a wall of shelves. It was completely filled with boxes and jars. I spotted the stub of a candle teetering on the edge of a warped, faded cigar box, and I lit it. My shirts -- a regular T-shirt and a thermal long-sleeve, both black -- were draped over a candelabra covered in decades of hardened wax. I pulled them on. Marushka’d been right. They could have used a wash. But they were the only shirts I had. My jeans, socks and underwear were in a wad next to the fireplace. Marushka’d meant to burn them. A stupid, small detail, but my situation really hit home when I saw it. I concentrated on putting in one leg, then the other. My skin was so smooth, my jeans slid up as if they were someone else’s legs connected to my body. Doll legs. I shuddered, and my teeth clacked together hard. I turned and scanned the room. The dress forms cast creepy shadows in the candlelight. No Wild Bill. The smell of cigarette smoke wafted in from the kitchen. Bill was still in the same position, more or less -- one knee bent, one foot on the floor. Only now he was lighting a new cigarette from the butt of the first one. He squinted at me as he inhaled, and a quarter of the cigarette burned, crumpled and sagged from the end as it turned to ash. “I have to kill her,” I said.

Chapter Three Bill blew smoke out through his nose and squinted even harder. He didn’t say anything. “Well?” Another drag. Smoke framed him. “So, kill her.” I glanced back toward the bathroom. The old apartment was still and quiet, other than the wind whistling through the open window, and the crackle of the deep drags Bill took from his cigarette. “You don’t have to try and stop me? You know, ’cos…” He looked up sharply. “ ’Cos what?” I shrugged. My back slammed into the wall, and knives rattled all around me, the blades glinting in the stream of faint yellow light let in by the open window. I hadn’t even seen Bill move. His hand was on my throat, as hard and as cold as the metal brace. “You think I’m like her? You think I’m anything like her?” I tried to shake my head, but it wouldn’t move. “No. Not at all.” His grip tightened. It felt like my windpipe might collapse. “You think I got some kind of moral obligation to protect her, just ’cos we both ended up on the wrong side of a pair of fangs and then lived to tell about it?” “N-no.” Okay, I got it. It was a stupid question. I wished I could take it back. I tried to loosen his fingers. They were like steel. Bill lunged, and his eyelashes brushed my cheekbone. “I’m not like her,” he said in my ear. “I know.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 16 -

He stayed there, that close -- almost touching, but not. I felt his breath against my wet scalp. His grip tightened and I started to see stars. When I spoke, my voice sounded strangled. “Kiss me.” I didn’t want to think about what would happen if he didn’t. And for a second there, I thought he might not, that he’d just keep squeezing and put me out of his misery. Air whooshed into my lungs as he let go, and his mouth covered mine as if he hadn’t realized what he’d been doing, and was trying to remedy it by keeping my vitality inside me, where it belonged. And then his tongue. Cigarettes and… I hate to say it… cigarettes and vampire. They have a flavor. It’s hard to describe. Mineral ice. Pewter. Something subtle, and elusive, and cold. I slid my tongue over his and caught it on his fang, and the taste of my blood mixed with the taste of Bill’s mouth. He made a small sound that could have been pleasure or pain. He flicked his half-smoked cigarette out the window with stunning accuracy. His fingertips brushed my face, gentle touches I could hardly feel. I slipped my arms around him and pulled him closer. I was tough. He didn’t have to worry about breaking me. He pressed his body against mine, and he kissed me. He threaded his fingers through my wet hair and explored my coppery mouth. My tongue bled. We both gasped for air when he finally broke the kiss. “Just a little taste,” he said. “That’s what I keep telling myself. I can stop any time.” He pressed his forehead into mine and breathed carefully. “Any time.” “Drink,” I said. “I can spare it. She didn’t take much.” He smiled, I think. He was hard to read in the near-dark, and so close. “I’m not talking about blood.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 17 -

So… was that good, or bad? I figured I’d better not ask, given that he was touchy enough to leave me with a necklace of bruises. He lingered over my mouth, and teased my lower lip with his tongue. “I’m cold,” I said. What I didn’t say was that I didn’t know exactly how long I had before Marushka woke up. I didn’t know how quickly vampires metabolized Rohypnol. We’d killed Gray within the first few minutes, and I had no idea how long Bill had been incapacitated by the dose he’d licked out of my palm. I wondered if he’d answer me truthfully if I got up the nerve to ask him someday. “I’m not closing the window. This whole place stinks like death.” He curled his fingers into the neck of my T-shirt and went right back to kissing me, as if it were a totally normal topic for two people to talk about while they were making out. I turned my head to the side. “Maybe we should finish up and go.” “I should probably do plenty of things. Doesn’t mean I will.” He dragged his other hand down my side, slid his fingers into the waistband of my jeans. “How far did she get?” “What?” “Treasure trail’s gone. Pubes are gone.” He worked his fingers into the crease of my thigh. “What else is shaved?” My cheeks burned. “Your nutsack? Hmm?” I wished I could force myself to not respond to his hand. Which would be like forcing the moon to cross the sky backwards. “Your hole?” He petted my shaft with his fingertip. I hissed. “Just goes to show… it’s never too late to teach an old dog new kinks. I had no idea shaving would get my rocks off.” I wondered how old he really was. He’d probably still get carded, if he were able to drink. He pressed his mouth into my wet hair. “I didn’t know you’d be this smooth.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 18 -

“I don’t think I can do this, not here.” With Marushka just a few yards and a few pills away. “Don’t worry. Just wanna cop a little feel. Damn, that’s sweet.” I couldn’t imagine how he’d gotten his hand that far down my pants without unbuttoning them. He must have been double-jointed. “I could lose myself in your thighs.” If Bill kept talking like that, maybe I would be able to perform, in spite of the knives, the glass eyes, and the vampire on the floor. Bill stretched the neck hole of my shirts. Threads snapped. He pressed his lips against the shoulder he’d bared, and all the while, his fingers teased me, stroke upon stroke, just to the side of my cock. He kissed my collarbone, fondling the shape of it with his lips. He tilted his head and fit his mouth against the side of my neck. The touch of his mouth was maddeningly gentle. I wondered if he could tell where he’d bruised me, if he could sense the broken blood vessels beneath the surface of my skin. I imagined him biting me, then and there. A rush of warmth surged to my groin. He snuck a finger between my legs and caressed my balls. “Another vamp drinks you again, I’ll be seriously pissed.” “It wasn’t sexual. She wasn’t even touching me.” His voice was a low purr, right in my ear. “Don’t care.” The idea of me being Wild Bill’s exclusive property? I could pretend it didn’t turn me on… but my dick couldn’t. And it was pressed right up against the side of his hand, so he knew I was up for it as soon as I did. I felt him smile into my hair. “Right. Glad we got that all straightened out.” He stepped back and I nearly slid down the wall. He gave me an affectionate pat on the cheek. It was pretty firm -- nearly a slap. I think it was affectionate. Mostly. He breezed out of the kitchen and crunched through the shard-covered living room floor. “I’ll wait in the van while you finish up.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 19 -

I stared at one of the knives hanging across from me -- a foot long with a serrated edge and a couple of prongs at the tip -- and tried to process what Bill had just said. “Van?” “I’ll run the heat for you.” The front door slammed, and the kitchen doorway went dark as the candle snuffed itself.

Chapter Four Saliva-tinged blood frothed from Marushka’s mouth. Maybe I’d overshot and three Rohypnol was too large a dose, and her body was trying to reject the drug. I stared down at her by the meager light Wild Bill’s plastic lighter cast and told myself that I shouldn’t feel bad for her. She’d killed others. She would have killed me. Too bad the drug wouldn’t just stop her heart and spare me the duty of staking her. I found my leather jacket and picked apart the lining to get at the hickory stake I’d duct-taped down the side. It was a much better system than the entire bag of stakes had been -- after all, you only needed one -- but there were still a few kinks to iron out. The jacket had hung strangely, and I’d been paranoid that the stake showed. I could try a stake on either side next time. It would feel stiff, but at least it would be symmetrical. I also had no mallet. I still remembered the way the sharpened wood slid right through flesh, sinew and muscle the night we killed Gray. Marushka was on the floor, exactly where I’d left her. I knelt beside her and pushed up her blouse. Her stomach was flat and pale, and her ribcage was a gentle ridge. I placed the tip of the stake over the point of entry, angled it, held it there… then sat back and sighed. Staking a vampire by myself was a lot harder than I thought it would be. The apartment was teeming with my fingerprints, probably Wild Bill’s, too -though as far as I knew, he wasn’t on the national missing persons database. I figured that I should wipe down everything I’d handled as best I could. Then I could leave right away, once I actually killed Marushka. I wondered if Bill would come upstairs and help me. I doubted it.

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 21 -

The room was full of fluttering shadows cast by Bill’s lighter. I got the candle stub lit again and did my best to remember what I’d touched. The table, the chair. The door, the doorframe. The mantle, where I’d wrestled with jeans and boots on a floor covered in minute bits of broken glass. Wiping up my fingerprints would take a lot longer than I thought. I’d better get started. I pulled a sheet off one of the dressmaker’s forms with my eyes squinted shut and my breath held, in case the fabric disintegrated in a web of rotten fibers. It stayed intact, which was good. But I suspected it was full of mildew, because it gave off a stink that I could taste when I breathed through my mouth, something like an old refrigerator, or a damp gym bag with a ripe pair of sneakers inside. I ducked my nose into the collar of my leather jacket. Better. I wiped down the doorframe, and the table, and then the kitchen wall -- just in case I’d left fingerprints on it while Wild Bill kissed me. I didn’t remember touching it, but when Wild Bill worked his magic on me -- figuratively speaking, of course -- I didn’t really remember much of anything other than him. I’d need to be extra vigilant about wiping down the area around the tub. I’d probably left hundreds of prints behind as I was groping for that key. The mildewy sheet stunk worse and worse the longer I held it, so I went back into the main room to hunt down a different piece of fabric that hopefully wouldn’t smell quite as bad. The far end of the room had a sour, thick, chemical odor to it. I wished Bill was there, smoking. At least I’d be able to identify the smell of burning tobacco. I told myself to finish wiping up and get out of there; I’d see him soon enough. I held up my candle stub and reached for a cloth-covered dressmaker’s form that looked relatively new. The muslin caught on the form, and it tipped toward me. It fell with a meaty thud, and dust billowed up around it. I almost neglected to look at it as I turned away with the fabric, since I was so eager to go downstairs and join Wild Bill. But the small hairs at the back of my neck -- hairs that I still possessed, thankfully -prickled as I turned away.

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 22 -

I looked down. Tiny seams joined with black stitches criss-crossed the slim, androgynous shape of the dressmaker’s dummy. Dark, leathery circlets decorated the chest, carefully stitched on where the nipples would be. I leaned closer and held the candle stub high. The sour odor was strong. And beneath it, the sweet undertone of rot. It was a torso -- a real human torso -- cut apart and reassembled. I dropped the cloth and staggered back, tangled myself in the brocade curtains. The fabric was old and rotten, like everything else in Marushka’s flat. It clung to me like her hair had my wet flesh, as if it could suck me in and keep me there until she woke up. The candle smoldered, and I thrust it away from the folds of the fabric, horrified at the thought of being there, alone, in the dark, with Marushka and her “dolls.” Dust rose in clouds as I slapped at the fibers that started to crawl with orange sparks where the flame had touched it. A drape of brocade gave way as the rotten fibers snapped from their suspension, and another, and another. And soon I was swimming in the wall of fabric, trying desperately to keep from burning myself alive without snuffing my only light source. I retched as putrid dust filled my lungs, and my eyes teared. There wasn’t a wall or a window behind the curtain -- it was a room. An old-fashioned parlor brimming with trinkets and toys, and full of people, as if a grand party were being held. In the dust and the dark. And nobody moving. I pressed my fist against my mouth to keep from screaming, and tasted my own blood. Candlelight played off the frozen forms in elaborate curled wigs, and satin and lace, reflecting back at me from dozens upon dozens of vacant glass eyes. I stared for a long moment, and then behind me, I heard a wheeze coming from the bathroom. Screw the fingerprints. I needed to finish off the vampire.

*** True to his word, Wild Bill had the engine running and the heat going full blast. His bucket seat was swiveled sideways, his ankles were crossed on the slope of the center console, and he bided his time by smoking and painting his nails black. I almost mentioned something about acetone being flammable, but just couldn’t.

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 23 -

The van was old. And red. And that was about all I noticed. I climbed into the passenger seat, and slapped my hickory stake on the console. I glanced into the side view mirror. Marushka’s bathroom window glowed yellow. The flame had caught. Good. Not that I was worried that I hadn’t done the job properly. She was dead, very dead, whether or not I had garlic to stuff into her mouth. I’d set the fire on impulse, since everything had seemed so old and dry, and eager to embrace the flame. It was something I could do to burn away her evil, and give her victims some sort of dignified end. Wild Bill screwed the top onto the nail polish and dropped the bottle on the floor. “What’s with the stake?” “Look at it.” I kept my face averted; I didn’t need to see it again. The tip had cracked off like the point of a cheap pencil. Staking Marushka was like trying to drive a tent spike into a steel-belted radial. The only reason I’d been able to kill Gray with a wooden stake was that Bill’s vampire strength had been behind the killing blow. Wild Bill left the engine running and hopped out of the van. He sprinted up to the building next to Marushka’s shop and kicked the front door, so as not to smear off his nail polish. After many kicks, the door opened and a man stuck his head out. Bill pointed at Marushka’s flat and the neighbor ducked back inside. Bill returned to the van, put it in gear carefully, with only two fingertips, and pulled away. “You might want to consider the peanut gallery next time you channel Mrs. O’Leary’s cow,” he said. I swallowed, and swallowed again, and did my best not to throw up. I closed my eyes, as if that would help me explain to him. “It was full…” I cleared my throat and tried again. “Her apartment was full of bodies. Dead bodies. With glass eyes. Staring. And I could see… their eyelashes. And eyebrows. Sticking out, like toothbrush bristles. And their lips, painted red, sewn shut with tiny little stitches.” I rolled down my window and took very deep breaths. A siren wailed in the distance. “No shit. Right there in the house? I thought maybe she had ’em stacked in the basement.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 24 -

“That was almost me.” I heard the click of a lighter, and smelled a freshly-lit cigarette, which smelled a hell of a lot better than a room full of human taxidermy. Bill turned onto a main street. We were the only ones on the road. “So you didn’t stake ’er?” I shook my head. “You burned her alive?” I shook my head again. “Is this one of those car games, like I Spy, or Padiddle, or Punch Bug Blue? When I figure out how the fuck you killed her, do I get to smack you?” I glanced at him to see if he was kidding, or if he wanted to lay me out. Probably a little of both. He was sprawled in his seat, one black-nailed hand perched beside the overfull ashtray with a cigarette balanced at the edge, the other draped over the steering wheel, where he guided the van with the underside of his wrist.

*** “Are you ready?” As ready as I’d ever be. My finger was already freakishly swollen, mottled purple and brown. I might lose my ability to perform certain rude gestures if I didn’t visit the emergency room, but I didn’t want to go there unless I was in actual danger of dying. I had no paper trail and I wanted to keep it that way. Wild Bill tilted the camping lantern so that it shone directly on my hand, then he lined up a pair of wooden coffee stirrers and a strip of duct tape. “Okay. On three.” I nodded. “One…” He yanked my finger and everything went red. I jumped hard enough that I would have pulled my hand from anyone else’s grasp. Bill must’ve been ready, though. He had the splints in place before I could think straight enough to yell at him. “Fuck, you said three!” He wound the duct tape around my finger. It throbbed.

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 25 -

“You enjoyed that.” “Then you should be flattered. There’s not much left to feel good about in this sorry-assed world.” He gave me a shove to the chest, and I toppled over backwards. The back of the van smelled like a hardware store. My fall was padded, barely, by a ragged scrap of indoor-outdoor carpeting that was too wide for the floor space, its frayed edges curving up the side, and too short front-to-back, which left the rusty, slatmetal floor exposed by our feet. Whatever the van had been hauling, Bill had emptied it out, God-only-knowswhere. Now it held only the camping lantern, an armload of bottled water he’d scored at a twenty-four-hour truck stop while he gassed up, the sleeping bag I’d found for him in Minnesota, and the two of us. Me on my back, him straddling my thighs. He grabbed me by the jaw and kissed me, and pain flared along my neck, the finger marks he’d made in Marushka’s kitchen. The ache distracted me to the point where it took me an extra couple of seconds to notice something that wasn’t quite right -- but when I did, I gave Bill a shove of my own. That hurt, too. Both of my hands were mangled. Wild Bill backed up enough to stare me in the eye. “What now?” “You taste like blood.” He smiled, showing fang. It wasn’t a very pleasant smile, either. “Newsflash. That’s the only thing on my menu.” “Whose blood?” “Some guy in the truck stop bathroom. What does it matter?” “Oh my God.” I’d heard the expression “backpedal” before, but I’d never physically done it. Wild Bill didn’t budge, and I only succeeded in making the carpet remnant shift on the bed of the van. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. I said no one else is gonna drink you. I didn’t say anything about me. I’ve got to spread myself around, kiddo, no two ways about it. I’d tap you out in a week if I tried to live off the fruits of your circulatory system.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 26 -

What had he said, back there in the kitchen, when my pulse was pounding in my ears and I was surrounded by the dancing glint of streetlight off a thousand dangling knives? It’s not about the blood. Bill cocked his head and looked down at me. “And now you’re mad.” “Don’t mock me.” He walked back on his knees and pushed up my shirts. “Who said I was?” He lowered his mouth to my chest. His lips were warm. No, hot. Great. Now I’d always be hyperaware of how warm his lips were, so I could calculate back to the last time he’d fed, and wonder who the lucky donor was. “Right here.” I felt small puffs of air as Bill spoke against my stomach. “From here on down, there’s not a hair on you.” He rubbed one cheek on my belly, then nuzzled me and rubbed me with the other. He slipped a hand between my thighs and fingered the center seam of my jeans. “I understand jealousy, Mikey. Believe me.” A snap, a tug, and my jeans were around my knees. “Back there in the apartment -- if you’d been hard, from her handling you? I woulda staked the bitch myself.” “Don’t worry. That was the least fun I’ve ever had naked.” I did my best to play it cool, but the gut-churning jealousy I’d been feeling turned to lust at the idea of my not-boyfriend killing someone just for touching me. And I reminded myself that it hadn’t happened that way. I’d taken care of Marushka myself. He was probably exaggerating about killing her anyway, and even if he wasn’t, that’d be a pretty warped reason for me to be attracted to somebody. He ran his cheek over the crease of my thigh. His chin nudged my balls, and when he sighed, I felt his breath over the entirety of my smooth, naked groin. My cock shifted and started to grow heavy. Wild Bill sat up. His biker jacket jingled against the wall of the van, and he peeled off his holey T-shirt with one hand. The lantern shone on him. His cock, hard and ready, cast a stark shadow in his faded jeans. I reached out to touch it, had to twist my hand to brush it with my thumb and avoid poking it with my duct-taped finger. My

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 27 -

other hand wasn’t much better. It had a V-shaped skin flap that Bill had closed with five stitches of unwaxed dental floss. “Those the only clothes you have -- the ones on your back?” I nodded. “They’re full of blood. Not yours. Better get them off before I deconstruct them.” I got naked. Fast.

Chapter Five Wild Bill crawled between my legs and shoved me back into the carpet again. You’d think he’d be a little more gentle, given what I’d been through that night. But you’d be wrong. He reached over and turned off the lantern. It was pitch black where we were parked. The van had no windows in back, and a flap made from a black rubber nonskid floor mat separated the back from the front. I don’t think either one of us could see, but I suspected that was the whole idea. Fingers lit on my hipbones, dragged down my thighs. “Oh, sweet Jesus.” I hoped that was good. Bill stroked my legs, down, then up, over and over, and pretty soon I was warm, too. He fit himself over me -- and oh my God, I’d never been completely naked, just with him. I was so sleek and bare that I felt small hairs on his thighs and belly that I’d never noticed before. And his cock. I felt that plain as anything, maybe even down to the veins, pressed against my pelvis. “Squeeze your thighs together,” Bill said. That was more of an order than a request, I think, because he got his knees around me and clamped my legs together tight. His breathing was shallow and rapid. The blunt nudge of his cockhead was unmistakable against my thighs. “Fuck, oh fuck,” he muttered, and I would’ve opened my legs to let him ease himself in, but he wouldn’t let me. He crammed his cock in and let his whole weight fall on me, breathing hard in my ear. “Oh, man. You feel incredible. If I’da known… I woulda grabbed a razor and shaved my bush down to the skin, too.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 29 -

“Where, back at the truck stop? Where you drank some other guy’s blood in the public bathroom?” Wild Bill’s breathy panting altered. A laugh. Maybe. “You act like I sucked his dick back there. Not his blood.” “Did you?” He grabbed my hair hard, and moved against me. He was fucking my thighs. He placed his mouth just over my ear. “Play it that way, if you want. Maybe when I was a pup like you, I got off on making people crazy when they shared my bed. But it was only mind-games, never biology. Not then.” Damn him for being able to talk so much and say so little. Would it kill him to actually say what he meant? He crammed his forehead into my hair and nailed my thighs to the floorboards so hard that the van squeaked. I’d have bruised hipbones the next day. I wasn’t sure about Bill. I didn’t know if vampires bruised. His hard stomach nudged my cock every time he slammed his hips into me, and I felt the ridge of his cockhead tickling my baby-smooth ass cheeks. Our silkiest parts slipped and slid together, and yeah, it would have been wild if he’d just shaved too, and my nuts clenched together at the thought of that, and the idea that the whole van shook from the force of his thrusts. He stopped on the downstroke, and pressed his mouth against my ear. “How do you wanna do this? We got the whole Kama Sutra to run through. Only three rubbers, though. Limited selection in the bathroom vending machine.” “I want to kiss you, that’s what I want. But you taste like someone else.” Wild Bill rolled off me. I couldn’t see him, but I imagined he was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling as if he were stargazing through the top of the van. “You’re the science whiz, so you know damn well that no one can spare a pint a day. Not for long, anyhow.” Not long at all. Crap. Maybe if I didn’t have to see the act of him drinking from someone else, and if I didn’t have to taste it, ignoring it would be a heck of a lot easier.

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 30 -

“What if you… finished. With me. Just a swallow. So that I know it’s my blood in your mouth, and not some stranger’s.” “You really are determined to live a Harlequin Romance.” And he’d keep trying to see everything so much tawdrier than it really was. Maybe we’d strike a balance somewhere in between. I tongued the inside of my cheek, which I’d bit earlier. It was sore and clotted. My tongue smarted, too, but it had stopped bleeding seconds after I’d dragged it over Bill’s fang. Even my hand was done bleeding, now that it had its Frankenstein stitches. “So… where do you usually bite people?” “Only in your oversexed, adolescent jerk-off fantasies.” I acted as if he hadn’t just said that. “On the arm? The chest? The neck?” Wild Bill sighed loudly, reached over me and grabbed his jacket, which jingled. A few small packets dropped onto my chest. I put my hand over them. Square, with a round shape inside. Condoms. He climbed onto my thighs again. “I don’t bite -- too dirty, too painful.” There was a spark, a whiff of lighter fluid, and a dazzling yellow-orange glow. The sight of him straddling me, knife in one hand, lighter in the other? Oh, man. “I cut.” It was small, as knives went -- a butterfly knife, the kind where the sheath splits open and flips around to become the handle. I’d had one when I was twelve. So did practically every other kid on the block. They were cheap Chinese imports, too dull to cut butter, but we all thought we were pretty damn cool, flipping them open and shut, and sneaking them into class in the pockets of our chinos. Bill’s knife fit his hand perfectly. “Where should I start cutting you?” I stared. My heart stuttered in my chest. I wondered if I was scared of him, or just so turned on I couldn’t tell the difference between excitement and terror. I looked from the blade to his eyes, and his pupils were so huge that his irises looked black, with just a thin sliver of blue around the edge. “You call it,” he said. “The arm? The chest?” He wet his lips. “The neck?” I nodded.

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 31 -

The lighter flame dimmed and faded to blue. “You’re one sick puppy.” The lighter died and left us in the dark. “I suppose you want me to be fucking you… excuse me, making love to you… while I do it.” Normally, he probably would have been able to bait me by talking like that, warping everything about him, about us, into something dirty. But I’d come too far and been through too much to let him convince me that what we were doing was wrong. I tore open one of the foil packets with my teeth. The wrapper split easily, and squirted the slimy condom into my hand. It stank of spermicide. Wild Bill hissed when I rolled it on. I was less facile than usual, my dominant hand stiff with stitches and the other one taped to a bunch of coffee stirrers, but I managed. “Come on, Wild Bill. Pound me good while you suck my blood.” That came out really jaded. Maybe he had succeeded in baiting me a little. He knocked my legs apart with his knee, picked me up by my hips and dragged me toward him. His cock prodded my balls, my ass. “Aim it,” he said. His voice was ragged. I reached down between my legs and fumbled with his cock. Go slow, that’s what I thought. Because it was going to hurt. But maybe that was fine -- maybe I didn’t give a damn. Bill let go of my hip and took himself in hand. The reservoir tip crinkled as he swirled his cockhead over my ass. He breathed slow and deep, forcing the air out through pursed lips. “Can you reach the lantern? I wanna see you.” Undoubtedly, he’d follow that up with something nasty, like, “when I split you in half with my bad boy.” Oh, hell, I was starting to think like Wild Bill talked. But I reached over and turned the lantern on low, and the nasty part of the sentiment never came. He took me by the hip again, left his cock poised against my ass, and stared down at me. “You’re so fucking pretty.” How was I supposed to answer that?

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 32 -

He nudged his cock into me, just the tip, and that stretched-tight feeling, the invasive burn of getting fucked up the ass, competed for my attention with the throbbing in my broken finger and my cut hand and my other cut hand and my bitten cheek and my bruised neck. The cut he’d drink from? That was nothing. I waited for the big push with my hands clutching the plasticky carpet fiber and my molars clenched together. And I waited. I realized I’d closed my eyes. I opened them. Bill was there between my bent knees, my insanely smooth bent knees, watching me. “What, I’m supposed to beg?” He swallowed hard enough that his Adam’s apple bobbed. “No. Just checking.” He caught his lower lip between his teeth -- I’m assuming he didn’t know he flashed a single fang -- and prodded in, shallow and slow. My eyes squinched shut again. “We can switch,” he said. I opened one eye. “Let’s just do this. I’ll get used to it.” The pressure was gone, and I thought for a minute that he’d changed his mind and was going to insist that I trade places with him, but then he thrust again, pushed himself into me a good couple of inches, and I arched up off the carpeting and into his hands. He smoothed his fingers over my shaved hips and belly, my naked thighs, and when I finally got my eyes open again, he had a look on his face I’d be tempted to call tender. “Okay?” he asked. I nodded. Wild Bill folded his body over mine, laid his cheek against my chest. He couldn’t thrust that way, not much, but I wonder if that was even the point. He knelt there with his body clasped against mine, and I felt splayed open and awkward, on my back with my butt on his lap, my hips in his hands, and nothing to grab onto or push against to adjust my position. It was all up to him. He rubbed his cheek against my chest, and he rocked our bodies together. I felt him inside me, big and hard, and moving so gently that it surprised me that I could feel such a subtle motion. I draped my arms over his tattooed back and let out a careful

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 33 -

breath. His butterfly knife glinted on the carpet beside my head. “I don’t drink from necks. Too dangerous.” “Then why did you mention…” “Too intimate. Kinda like kissing.” Kissing? I could think of a half dozen things he’d done to me that were way more intimate than kissing. He steered my hips, rocked into me, and oh… Oh. I had a handful of his hair squeezed so hard I almost popped my stitches. “We even fit where it counts,” he said. And not like it was a good thing. Why wouldn’t it be? I was so hard that a couple of strokes would finish me if he touched my dick. Or if he drank. Yeah, if he drank, I was gone for sure. I spread my hands on his bare back, pressed them flat -- well, as flat as I could, given how mangled they were -- and felt the play of his shoulder blades as they shifted under his skin, the muscles taut, hard and defined. I’d known just by looking at him, the way his clothes hung on him, and the way he moved, that I’d be totally into what was hidden under that tattered leather jacket. It was the unexpected details that really struck me, though. Like the way he could be so rough, and yet so sweet. And the vampire-taste. I couldn’t have dreamt that up myself, not in a million years. Wild Bill sighed against my chest. He was in deep, and yeah, I still felt that burn of something big and stiff up my ass. But that was nothing compared to the rush I got when he rocked into me just right. “You’re a hell of a sexy breather,” he said. “You know that?” I held my breath, self-conscious of the way I inhaled and exhaled now that he’d said something about it. I’d never thought about breathing -- just like I’d never thought about having hair on my toes. I’d rubbed off another guy on the varsity track team. I’d blown my neighbor the first Christmas he’d been home from college. I’d fumbled through some awkward anal

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 34 -

sex with a kid I met at a concert who’d turned out to be even younger than I was. But I’d never been with someone who was into the way I breathed. “I want to kiss you,” I said. “But not with someone else’s blood in your mouth.” “It’s long gone.” “But I know it was there. I’ll taste it.” Bill pulled out, slow and still strangely gentle, and laid me down on the filthy scrap of carpet. He kept petting me, over and over, my belly, my sides, my thighs. I felt self-conscious of my body now, too, because I was nowhere near as cut as he was, and maybe I should’ve done a little less web surfing and a few more crunches, even fifteen minutes a day. But he didn’t seem to care about that. Not at all. His mouth closed over my cock, and his fangs stroked the sides. Not only did I gasp, but I made a noise in my throat, too. He treated me to an encouraging purr. Oh, man. I rode that spike of pleasure for about a second, and then realized I wouldn’t be able to hold back much longer. “Wait a minute.” I shoved at his head. My finger throbbed. Wild Bill settled his chin on my groin and tapped my dick against his face. Without any hair around it, my cock looked strange. And bigger. Kind of. “What now?” he said. “I sort of wanted to… you know, while you, um, drank, and um…” He rubbed his cheek against the shaft. “But I like getting you off two, three times. It’s fun.” “I just thought, if you were --” I wanted to say “inside me,” but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, “-- drinking from me, it would be a little more intense.” I think he inferred my meaning anyway. “That’s so porno movie. Maybe I should show up with a pizza in my hands and keep my tube socks on while a wah-wah pedal plays in the background, and we both pull out at the last second and whack off on each other’s faces.” “I don’t know what you…”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 35 -

“Aw, fuck, never mind.” He flopped down next to me and pulled me onto my side, so we were facing each other. “Here. Wrap those hot fuckin’ legs around my ass.” I slung my upper leg over him. Oh. It hadn’t occurred to me we could… The condom crinkled, and Wild Bill flicked his hips, and there was that burn, familiar now, and oh, man, he was halfway in like it was nothing at all, and if I looked up his eyes were right there, staring into mine. “That how you want it?” I may have been breathing again. Hard to say. Bill shimmied into position. I just gawked, and tried not to breathe too obtrusively. “What does that face mean?” he asked. He sunk his cock in while he said it, too -not as deep as if we’d been missionary, or doggy-style, but I sure felt it. And I had no idea what my face meant. There was nowhere to hide it, and maybe that’s what he meant by intimate, the feeling of being exposed and hairless before your lover, and hoping he doesn’t laugh at you. Or leave. Wild Bill slipped his upper arm under mine and grabbed my butt cheek. “She even got your crack with that straight razor. Know that? Know how smooth you feel?” I was sure it would feel delightful when it grew out. But I was glad Bill enjoyed the sensation, at least. “Like you’re not dope enough as it is.” I didn’t answer him with words, but another breathy sound escaped me. I hadn’t thought having something so big up my ass could feel so incredible, and especially that I’d get off on the feeling of his fingertips raking up and down my shaved crack. Wild Bill pressed his cheek against mine while he moved his hips, and went in and out, in and out. “You want me to suck your blood and make you come?” I had no idea what he was trying to prove, to himself, or me. “I want you to come. But it’d be better if you didn’t sound so disappointed.” “Don’t worry, sweet thing.” He pulled back and looked me in the eye. His pupils didn’t look as weird in the lantern light as they had by the dim glow of the lighter. “Disappointed? No. I’m lots of things. But not that.” He pushed in deep, and I couldn’t

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 36 -

keep the eye contact. My eyelids fluttered shut, and when I pried them open again, he was reaching over me for the knife.

Chapter Six Wild Bill’s butterfly knife was no cheap Chinese import. It was sharp, as sharp as Marushka’s straight razor. I realized as Bill was opening my skin that maybe the neck really wasn’t the best place in the world to cut someone -- especially considering how I’d finished Marushka. But Bill moved fast, the cut was made, and before I knew it I had his dick up my ass and his mouth on my throat, and then the indescribable waves of pleasure started sweeping through me. Bill fucked my ass, and he drank. I held myself against him with my arm and my leg. I was whimpering and I didn’t care. I peaked, and Bill kept right on drinking. Every suck pulled another heaving spurt from me until there was nothing to shoot anymore, and still the contractions kept coming. He thrust hard now, and that didn’t hurt a bit, not anymore, not with my whole body wracked in orgasm all around his cock. And then he sank in deep and held it there, and I felt his fangs press in on either side of the cut. His breath hissed out over my throat, and he shuddered. My neck throbbed where his fangs had marked it. But he hadn’t broken skin with them. I don’t think. Bill maneuvered out of me carefully, tied off the condom and flung it not-socarefully into the corner of the van. I would’ve normally said something about proper disposal, but I was too wrung out to do any more than notice. My abs ached like I’d done a hundred crunches. I felt light-headed and woozy. I wondered if it was dangerous to orgasm too long. Or if maybe I’d lost too much blood that night, between the shot I’d given Marushka, and the cut on my hand, and whatever token amount Wild Bill had just swallowed. At least, I

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 38 -

thought it was a token amount. I touched the side of my neck. My fingertip came away damp and red. “You still want to kiss me?” Bill said it as if it was preposterous. “God, yes.” He sank down beside me and took me in his arms. Hard to say exactly what his expression meant. Something wry, and not entirely pleased. I touched his cheek -- not very romantic with duct-taped, bloody fingers -- and pulled his face toward mine. Our lips brushed. “Why don’t you want to be with me?” I said. “The first night I met you, you really seemed like you were into it. Was that just an act, or what?” “No act.” He stared at my mouth. “Well, not that part.” Another kiss. Chaste. Just lips. It hadn’t been necessary to drink my blood and wash away the taste of a stranger, not if he was going to kiss me like that. But I was glad he’d done it anyway -for the principle, and not for the minute-long orgasm. Which was mind-blowing. I kissed him again, and ran my tongue over his lower lip. He sighed into my mouth. Knowing it was my blood in there made a huge difference, whether Bill would admit that it mattered, or not. It mattered to me. Wild Bill slipped his arm under my head. I lay there, and he ran his fingers over my cheek, my shoulder, my biceps, as if he could figure something out by tracing my outline. “I think you saved my life tonight,” I told him. “Probably.” I listened hard for sarcasm, but I couldn’t detect any. “So, what’s the plan? Do we have to ditch the van somewhere?” “Hell, no. I bought it, fair and square.” “Oh.” Because I saw, back at the truck stop, how Wild Bill got groceries and gas with a vampire-look, a wink and a smile. Which was possibly how he’d secured the money to buy the van. And probably how he’d gotten the blood, too. “I’d prefer to sleep in a place with a bed and a TV,” he said, “but in a pinch, we can play house in this rust bucket.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 39 -

I had no doubt the “play house” remark was supposed to be cynical, but the idea appealed to me anyway. I let it slide. I figured I’d better pick my battles, since arguing with Wild Bill would more likely than not leave me both defeated and confused. “I’m going to keep hunting bad vampires.”

He snorted. “And here I thought you’d rather be a dentist.”

Fine, mock. Better than him shutting down and going all quiet, like he’d been in

the kitchen. “You can do it… with me.” “My guidance counselor told me that my serial killer skills were totally lacking. He recommended I look into food services for a rewarding career. This was back when wooly mammoths roamed the earth, but I’m guessing it still holds true today.” “What are you talking about?”

“You know. Busboy. Fry cook.”

“Not that -- the serial killer part.”

He trailed his fingertip down my ribs and drew a spiral in the curve of my waist.

“You killed two people that I know of, and you’re already itching to find a fresh target.” “But they were…” Vampires. And so was Wild Bill. Damn it. “They were murderers,” I said, a pretty good save, considering what I’d almost said. “Uh-huh.” Or not. I reached for him, tried to fit the two of us together, but he’d just ejaculated, and I wasn’t really sure what was safe to touch and what wasn’t, especially with me so banged up. Plus I was shaved, probably full of minute abrasions and cuts that I’d only feel if I swiped an alcohol pad over my legs or groin. Wild Bill disentangled himself from me, grabbed a fresh pack of cigarettes he’d scored at the truck stop, whacked it on the heel of his hand a few times, tapped one out and lit up. He sat naked with his knees bent to his chest and his elbows resting on them. I tried not to stare at his body, and failed. He ashed into his cupped palm.

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 40 -

He’d stopped looking at me. When the cigarette was about half gone, he said, “I think I vamped your head. Didn’t mean to. But I think I did.” I hoped he was talking about the marathon orgasm, and not me and him, in general. “It felt really good.” “Yeah. I was human once, too. I remember.” I wondered what it would take to get Ambrose Gray out of our relationship. Evidently, killing him wasn’t enough. Wild Bill opened the back door and flicked his still-smoldering cigarette butt into the grass. The cool night air felt good in the close, damp smokiness of the van. The overhead light shone a different color than the yellow glow of the lantern, brighter, harsher somehow. Bill’s voice seemed harsher now, too. “We’ve got a few more hours to find a place. You need a soak. You’re covered in blood.” Was I? I touched my neck. The cut he’d made had closed. I looked at my hands. I’d washed them in Marushka’s tub before I let the water out and set the fire, but I hadn’t done a very good job in my haste, in the dark. Dried blood crusted in a brown crescent under every fingernail, and in the crease of each of my knuckles. And worse, it looked like I’d stopped washing a couple of inches past my wrists. The hair on my forearms -- which she hadn’t managed to shave off before the Rohypnol kicked in -- was clotted with streaks and spatters of blood. Some of it was mine. But most of it wasn’t. Wild Bill was totally dressed by the time I got my jeans buttoned. My hands felt painful and awkward, and now that he’d pointed it out, filthy. A new cigarette dangled from his mouth. He squinted as the smoke drifted up toward his eyes. “It’d be prudent to make ourselves scarce, given that you left a gigantic flaming beacon behind.” The cigarette bobbed when he talked. “You got a preference? East? West? North? South?” I shook my head. I didn’t. “We won’t make Omaha by morning. But Sioux City would work. If I do ninety all the way.” I shrugged.

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 41 -

“Then take care of all your human bodily functions now. The Iowa Express ain’t stopping so you can tinkle.” Bill hopped out the back and stretched his legs. I’d never thought about vampires needing to stretch their legs. Or smoking like chimneys. Or being haunted by the memories of the vampire who’d made them that way. For someone who thinks as much as I do, I sure hadn’t noticed a hell of a lot, until now. I hid behind a tree and relieved myself. Did vampires urinate? I could hardly ask him, but judging by the way he made it sound like my problem and not his, I was guessing not. I zipped up my fly, and noticed that by the moonlight, my jeans looked like they were splattered with black paint. Blood. He was right. I was covered in it. The van’s engine started. I climbed into the passenger seat, and Wild Bill pulled onto a gravel path that led to a dirt road, that led to a paved road, that led to a highway. He lit one cigarette from the other, and even with his window open, the cab filled with smoke. I picked at the dashboard to give myself something to do. I burnt my finger looking at the lighter, a glowing coil inside a tube, attached to a handle. I had always called that hole in the dash the “lighter,” but I’d never thought of it as anything other than the place you charge your cell and MP3 player. I adjusted my heating vent. A brittle plastic slat snapped off. I glanced at Wild Bill to see if he’d comment, but he just squinted ahead through the cigarette smoke, and drove. I dropped the piece of plastic out the window. The latch on the glovebox stuck, but with nothing to do but breathe secondhand smoke, I was willing to jimmy it until it opened. A stack of papers tumbled into my lap. The papers on the bottom were weathered and stained, but the top few were fresh, yellow and pink copies of carbonless forms. Title. Registration. I opened up the title and stared. Michael McKinnon Davies. “You registered the van to me.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 42 -

“Uh-huh.” I blinked. My name didn’t go away. “Are you crazy?” Wild Bill didn’t answer. I looked at him. He stared at the road, expressionless. “I couldn’t give ’em my own John Hancock. I’m dead. Even got a headstone outside Rockford.” “You could’ve used a fake name. My family’s looking for me. God. Now I’ll pop up on some DMV database.” “Send mommy and daddy a postcard and tell ’em you’re off finding yourself. It’s better than letting them think you’re dead in a ditch.” I stared hard at the form and tried to will my name off it. Damn it. “So what’s your name?” “It’s Bill.” “Bill what?” “What’s it matter? That Bill died in 1987.” I propped my feet on the dash in an attempt to curl in on myself and stared at the title by the on-again, off-again illumination of the passing streetlights. I couldn’t believe I’d need to deal with my family now. I didn’t have time for it. And they’d never be satisfied with a postcard. On the other hand, the mere idea of having the van in my name made me weakkneed and giddy. Sure, Wild Bill could still duck out in Sioux City, or any other city, for that matter. But he wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of sun proofing the back if he was planning on taking off. Bill pulled off the interstate and into a shabby motor court. The adjacent gas station sold lottery tickets and diesel fuel. A hand-lettered sign hung in the diner window, biscuits and gravy for $2.99. The motel hadn’t seen a paint job since the year Bill was turned, or earlier. Wild Bill cut the engine and stared at the gas station. It was quarter past five, and the sky was pre-dawn opaque. I wondered what would happen if he were caught in the sunlight. I suspected he wouldn’t tell me, not in so many words. But even though he

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 43 -

wouldn’t just come out and tutor me in Vampirism 101, it didn’t mean I couldn’t figure out a thing or two, if I just paid attention. “Do I have to sleep with one eye open?” he said. “Huh?” “You heard me.” “But I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He sagged back into his seat and looked into the pack of cigarettes he’d opened after we made love. It was empty. He threw it on the floor. “Maybe you thought you were being subtle, but I picked up on your mission statement anyway.” Was he asking me what I thought he was asking? “You don’t count. I told you, I’m just after the bad vampires.” “Define bad.” “Well… they kill people, enough of them that I can spot a pattern, and use it to find them.” Bill fiddled with the dashboard lighter. “What if you’ve got the wrong vamp?” I’ll admit, a couple of months ago I wouldn’t have cared. I’d thought they were all monsters and figured that the only good vampire was a vampire with a stake through his heart and a mouth stuffed with garlic. Then I met Wild Bill, and I needed to take stock and admit that vampires were as different from one another as people. That they are people. “I’ll need to make sure I’m not wrong. I was right about Marushka.” “Uh-huh.” He picked up the broken stake from the console, looked at it, and put it back down. “So how’d you kill her?” It’s not as if there were tons of options available at the time. The stake hadn’t worked, so obviously… I pulled Marushka’s straight razor from my pocket and dropped it beside the stake. “I cut off her head.” He hardly glanced at it. “Right. Wait here a sec.” He strode to the office, was inside maybe three minutes, came back to the van, opened the door, and nailed me in the side of the head with a room key.

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 44 -

“Jesus -- that really hurt.” No sense in complaining. Bill wasn’t listening. He’d already slammed the driver’s side door shut. I tucked the broken stake under the seat and pocketed Marushka’s razor, and then I went to our room and tried the door. One bed. Something fluttered inside my chest. I was grinning like a moron. I gnawed at the swollen clot on the inside of my cheek until I subdued my expression, and then I turned around and looked for Bill. He was way across the lot in the gas station. I watched him through the plate glass window. He pointed at the cigarettes, and then the candy bars, and the clerk stacked them on the counter. Bill pointed at something else, and the attendant shook his head. Bill leaned in close. He looked pretty motivated. The guy behind the counter gave an “oh well” kind of shrug, unlocked a cabinet and handed him a small bottle from it. Bill walked out without paying. “What was that all about?” “Some dumbass liquor law. No sales after two a.m.” He handed me a Kit Kat and shrugged out of his jacket. It sounded like chain mail when it hit the floor. “That’s okay,” I said. “I don’t want a drink right n…” The black plastic top cracked like knuckles when he twisted it off. He dropped it beside his jacket, tipped his head back, and chugged. I watched his throat work. A big bubble traveled up from the neck of the bottle, then another, and another. When the bottle was completely drained, Bill dropped that on the floor, too. “I thought you couldn’t drink.” He went in the bathroom and slammed the door shut. I looked down at the bottle. Jack Daniels. I picked it up and sniffed it, figuring it was some kind of gag, colored water, maybe. I blinked. No gag. That was whiskey. And then the vomiting started. I tried the bathroom door. It was locked. I guess he didn’t want anyone to hold his head. I sniffed the bottle again, and tried to trace my steps backwards, kind of like I did when I lost my house keys. It was no good. Everything that had happened since we

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 45 -

got to the motel made as much sense to me as a videotape with random bits and pieces of TV taped over the original content. I opened the Kit Kat and inhaled it before I even realized I was starving. Even the sound of retching hadn’t dampened my appetite. For lack of anything useful to do, I paced the room. In the light, my jeans looked like they’d just come through that prom scene from Carrie. I perched on the edge of one of the chairs and leaned back carefully. There was a plastic sign on the table that read “Thanks for not smoking.” I laughed. My voice was rough from secondhand smoke. I knuckled something out of my eye that could have been sleep, old eyeliner, or maybe dried blood. I’d never seen so much blood. It looked blackish red in the candlelight. I’m not sure if that was because it was vampire blood, or because it was so dark in the room. I could ask Wild Bill what color vampire blood was, but would he tell me? Fat chance. Eventually, the vomiting stopped. The shower ran for a few minutes, and finally Wild Bill emerged -- naked, with his hair towel-dried and sticking out every which way. He crammed the corner of a washcloth into his ear and screwed it in deep. “Normally I would’ve invited you to join me,” he glanced at my jeans, “but not tonight.” He got into bed. The whiskey must’ve left him pretty nauseated if he couldn’t scrape up the motivation to disobey the little plastic sign. Something was bothering him, obviously, but I doubted that he’d just lay it all out there if I asked. Probably the opposite. I’d get some cryptic remark that just made things more convoluted. I couldn’t help but check the toilet for blood spatter. There was none. Either he’d aimed well, or he’d cleaned up after himself. Me, on the other hand? I got a look at myself in the mirror. The vampire blood on my forehead and cheeks was plenty red. Even dried. I turned on the tub faucet and peeled off my T-shirt. Wringing it out was a bitch, and it made my stitches ooze. I stood no chance of getting my shirt clean, let alone my jeans, not if I was wringing them with my mangled hands.

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 46 -

I took off my boots, pulled the shower toggle, and stepped in. Red water pooled around my feet, stained my socks fleshy pink. It was sort of like dyeing my hair. Except the water wasn’t tinted with hair dye. And I didn’t rinse hair dye off with my clothes on. I turned and let the water pound my back. My hand wasn’t fit to steady me against the shower wall, so I leaned into it with my shoulder, staring at the water at my feet. Red, red, red, like it would never run clear. When I’d seen water running red with blood in movies, it had always looked scary. But I wasn’t scared. Mostly I was tired, and I wished it would hurry up and wash away. Blood bothered Bill, though, which didn’t really make sense. He was a vampire, and blood was supposed to appeal to him. Maybe it was the sight of the straight razor that had done it. I’d shown him that, and he went for a pint of Jack. I hunted vampires. That’s what I did. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know that when he met up with me in South Dakota. Eventually, the water turned pale pink. I stripped off my clothes and hung them over the shower rod. I faced the shower spray and opened my mouth, let the warm water beat against my teeth and tongue, my eyes, my hair. Blood had misted me everywhere. I scrubbed myself with the cheap hotel soap, because if I overlooked anything, Bill would notice and be weird about it. I scoured my whole body from my naked toes to my stubbly face. I needed a shave. Which was pretty ironic. I dreaded the idea of climbing into soaking wet clothes later on, but I couldn’t wring them out myself, either. Not with my stitches and my splint. I considered asking Wild Bill to help me, but thought better of it. Rolling my jeans in Bill’s discarded towel, I tried to wick as much moisture out of them as I could, then I hung them over the towel bar. I did the same with my socks and underwear and draped them over the heater vent. I did my best to reshape the necks of my stretched-out shirts where they hung over the shower curtain rod. And then I figured I couldn’t put it off any longer. I’d have to go find out if Bill had changed his mind while I was in the shower.

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 47 -

Dressed in nothing but the last dry towel, I went to see if he was even in the room anymore, or if he’d decided I was more trouble than I was worth. An infomercial for the latest and greatest food storage bags played on the TV, and Bill was in bed with the covers pulled up over his head. I looked at the curtains. They were the rubber-backed, room-darkening type that’s typical of motels. Ugly and functional. They covered the windows fairly well, but there were gaps around the edges where some light could filter in. “Do we need to lightproof the room?” “It faces north. We’re fine.” He’d positioned himself on one side of the bed. I took that to mean that I was welcome to the other. I turned off the TV, got in, lay on my back, and pulled the sheets up to my neck. Wild Bill rolled to face me, grabbed the damp towel and shoved it to the foot of the bed. He pressed into my side, and we were skin to skin, the whole length of us. His body temperature seemed low. I wasn’t sure if that was from throwing up whatever blood he hadn’t yet digested, or if he just felt that way to me because I was overly warm from my marathon hot shower. He pressed his cool lips to the cut on my throat he’d fed from, and said, “That story about vamps being unconscious and completely helpless from sunup to sundown? Not true. I meant what I said about sleeping with one eye open. In case you were thinking of trying something stupid.” I tried to analyze the sound of his voice, the inflection, and figure out if he was serious, or kidding. I hoped he was kidding. “I’m out of stakes, anyway.” He sniffed. A half-laugh. Thank God. Relief flooded me. I thought I’d been steeled to see an empty bed when I came out of the bathroom, but I hadn’t, I totally hadn’t. I turned onto my side, peeled down the covers, and tried to see him by the glow of the digital clock. I touched his cheek, his jaw. “I would never hurt you.” “I’m doing my best not to think about where your hands’ve been, and you keep on bringing it up.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 48 -

I was tired, and sore, and I really, really didn’t want to fight with him. I pressed my lips against his. Things worked a lot better between us when neither of us was talking. I parted his lips with mine, and tasted a residual Jack Daniels alcoholic sweetness. I wished he could have a drink, if that would make him feel better. He burrowed his hand through the covers until he found my shaved thigh. He stroked it, and sighed into my mouth. I reached down between us and took his dick in my hand, pumped it loosely. His body responded to my touch. Once he was hard, I guided him between my thighs since he seemed so fascinated by the feel of them. I pressed my legs together. “Uhn, yeah.” He spoke against my mouth, breathing hard now, and still kissing me, too. Loose, tired kisses, exhausted kisses. Needy and wet. We laced our arms over each other’s bodies and held one another by the rump. I loved the way his butt felt, smooth and muscular, the round curve of it, and the concavity at the side when he flexed, when he pushed himself between my sleek thighs. He sank his fingers into my shaved crack and moaned against my mouth. I thought I should probably get a condom. But whatever little nicks or cuts I’d had from being shaved, I was sure they were closed. Unless they’d opened again in the shower. I felt the length of Bill’s cock, the ridge under the head gliding over my shaved butt cheeks, and I got a little rush from the idea of him coming on me. Vampire come. Which would probably smell… and taste… like vampire. My mouth watered. Bad idea. My entire inner cheek was a giant blood clot, and I’d cut my tongue earlier on one of his fangs. Whatever pathogens his semen carried would have an open invitation to my bloodstream through my mouth. But how bad would that be, really? Vampires weren’t inherently evil, and I wouldn’t mind being stronger, faster… A fang brushed my lip, and my body stiffened. I’d just considered letting Bill turn me. Encouraging him to do it. I forced my body to relax against Bill’s, to resume

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 49 -

the sweaty, smooth grind that had us both breathing hard and loud. If I were to let him turn me, it shouldn’t be something I did on the spur of the moment where I indulged myself in a greedy impulse to swallow his come. I arched my back and stroked Bill’s cock between my thighs. I don’t think he noticed the pause, the half second where I’d almost told him to make a vampire out of me. His tongue glided over mine. He sucked my top lip into his mouth, worked it, then switched to my lower lip. My mouth felt tingly and hot. He snuck a fingertip up my ass. A thrill shot through me. I’d only slept with him a few times, and already my body was figuring out what to do, what to feel, when we touched. I slid my fingers into his butt crack and stroked his ass. He shuddered against me, and pumped his hips harder. He pressed his forehead against mine and breathed hard. I think his body was streamlining its messages to his brain, too. How else could we account for the fact that every time we made love, it was better, more intense? “Are you close?” I whispered. “You feel close.” “I can’t tell you the last time I had a two-fer.” His voice shook. “But… yeah.” My cock ached for him, all the years he’d denied himself pleasure and subverted his desires into… whatever it was he’d done with himself. I didn’t think he’d tell me, not just yet. He wouldn’t even tell me his last name. I wanted to be the one to make him come, but every place on my body that I could offer was either sliced up or newly shaved. “I’ll get a condom,” I said. Wild Bill grabbed my butt hard enough to bruise. “Don’t go,” he breathed into my mouth. My cock throbbed, and left a damp spot of pre-ejaculate on his stomach. “I want to make you come.” He rolled onto his back and pulled me along with him. My body covered his, and my hair fell forward to shield both our faces from the glow of the clock radio. “Make me come,” he said. “Fuck me ’til I shoot.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 50 -

I hesitated.

“What, is that too crude for your tender sensibilities?”

“No, I mean…” How was it safe for me to penetrate him, but not the other way

around? It made no sense to me that vampirism was transmitted via semen, and semen only. What about blood? Or lymph? Or saliva? Did we even need to bother with condoms, when every time we kissed, I sliced my tongue open on his fangs -- on purpose? “We don’t have any lube.” Wild Bill let go of my butt and flung his arms open on the bed. “Fine. Get a rubber. At least we won’t have to do contortions around the wet spot all day.” I found a condom in my jacket pocket, tore open the packet and rolled it on. I saw Bill only as a few gentle green highlights. He lay on his back with his knees bent, watching me. I’m guessing he saw me just fine. I climbed into bed. He urged me into place between his legs, and then he pulled his knees to his chest. “I liked the way we did it in the van,” I said. Holding each other. Kissing. “I thought you would, loverboy. Get it started, and then we’ll tangle ourselves up and make out. ’Kay?” I ran my fingertips over his balls and ass, and wondered if I’d manage to do it wrong. I eased my finger into him, and his breath hissed in. He was a sexy breather, too. I took hold of my cock and lined it up, and pushed. And made a really loud, satisfied noise.

“Fuck, yeah.” Wild Bill undulated, and his body rode up my hard cock.

Tight, oh God, so tight. I’d never last. Damn. “I’m gonna come…”

“Relax.” He let his legs drop to the mattress with my dick deep inside him, and

pulled me down against his chest. I rested my cheek on his shoulder, and breathed carefully. He stroked my back, from my shoulder to my butt, and then it was as if he just remembered my shaved parts, and started stroking my thighs eagerly. I brushed my lips along his jaw, his throat.

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 51 -

I wondered what would happen if I drank his blood. That’s how people became vampires in the movies. Or sometimes just by letting the vampires drink from them night after night. I found some leverage with my knees, and I rocked into him. “So fuckin’ sweet,” he muttered, and he pressed kisses into my hair. “I’m gonna jack myself. You put your hand over mine.” Did he know I was worried about him contaminating my hand? Or did he just figure that my grip was clumsy from my injuries? I rounded my back so we could slip our hands between us, and hoped it was the second reason, and not the first. Wild Bill pumped his cock, and his body squeezed at me. I groaned and turned my face up for a kiss. His mouth fastened over mine. He gripped my butt with his free hand and guided my hips, his body straining, encouraging me to bury my cock deep inside. I found an angle, a rhythm, and the feel of him under me -- writhing, trembling - was indescribably heady. I thrust faster, closer in time to the punishing rhythm he’d set on himself with his hand, and we spiraled up quickly. I moved gently, then, so we could linger over each other’s mouths, with our bodies tensed and sweat sliding between us. When the knifeedge of pleasure flagged, I sped up again, angling myself differently to keep it fresh, to make sure we rubbed together everywhere we could rub. And then I slowed, and worshipped his mouth again. Wild Bill turned his head and panted. “Finish me, kid. You’re killing me.” Instead I stirred myself around, found a new angle of attack. I thrust slow and deep, and raked my teeth over his jaw until he turned his face to mine and let me have his mouth again. We kissed, hard. Our hands made jerky motions on his cock, in no particular rhythm, and his abdominal muscles went rigid as he flexed his back and pled with his body for release. My hair was stuck to my forehead, and my chest was slick against Bill’s. I pulled my mouth from his, and he gasped, panted. I angled myself for the final climb and picked up my pace. “Fuck, yeah, right there, sweet mercy…”

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 52 -

Wild Bill, saying that to me… oh, man. I saw my peak coming, and I kept going, pushed toward it. I buried my face in the crook of his neck and thrust hard, trembling with the effort of keeping it even and deep, and his arm went stiff, and he made the most beautiful sound, deep in his throat. I clamped down on his neck and thrust deep, careless now, because he was there already and all I had to do was join him. I sucked at his flesh, sweet and strange, like green moss, like a cool freshwater lake. And I came hard, heedless of how mercilessly I was thrusting now -- and if vampires could bruise, I was probably bruising him. And all the while he murmured in my ear, “Yeah, baby, yeah, come hard, come inside me…” I peaked, and it was like a lightning strike, swift and intense. And then a thunderclap of excruciating fatigue followed. I almost collapsed on him. Almost. But at the last minute I levered myself away from his vampire seed and landed on my back beside him. “Holy hell, kid. Way to own my ass.” “Don’t call me ‘kid’.” I couldn’t bear to let him know how much it had meant to me to make him feel good. I was in no shape for a victory dance. Even if I couldn’t squelch the urge to do one, I was so exhausted, hurt so badly all over my body, that I was slurring my words. He fished my bath towel from the foot of the bed and wiped off his belly. I couldn’t see the trashcan, so I dropped my condom over the side of the mattress. “Can you reach my smokes?” I contemplated moving my arm. “No.” We lay there and stared in the general direction of the ceiling, and I realized that I could sort of see it. The edges of the curtains glowed gently. Bill rolled out of bed, groaned, and headed for the bathroom. My sweat cooled and dried, and I drifted in and out of the early stages of sleep to the sound of running water. He came back to bed warm and wet. “You used up all the towels.” He settled against me and hooked his leg over mine.

Jordan Castillo Price

Channeling Morpheus 3: Manikin

- 53 -

I pulled the corner of the blanket over my head. Once I’d made sure we were both tucked in, I took a deep, slow breath, let it out, and tried to convince myself that it was only my exhaustion that made voluntary vampirism seem like a workable plan. The alkaline scent of bleach pervaded the sheets, and the two of us smelled like cheap motel soap. I smelled of sex. And Bill still smelled vaguely like whiskey -- but also like wet stone with a hint of patchouli. Like vampire.

Jordan Castillo Price Jordan Castillo Price grew up in the steel mill warrens of Buffalo, NY, spent some formative drinking years in Chicago, and migrated north to small-town rural Wisconsin once she realized she was going to kill the next person who bumped into her with a shopping cart. She did a six-year stint in art school and played bass in a punk band that crashed and burned just before their first CD was pressed. At least she got a cool boyfriend out of the deal, since she ran off with the drummer. Jordan has a weekly show on erotica writing tips and techniques at www.packingheat.net. She suspects some of her listeners aren’t much interested in writing, and just tune in to hear her say naughty words. Readers interested in freebies, snippets, and peeks into the writing process should check out JCP News, a monthly newsletter where Jordan posts links to free eBooks and serialized M/M stories. Visit www.jordancastilloprice.com to sign up.