A Few Words Were All It Took

**Content Warning: erotic horror; blood and feeding; violence; coercive relationship dynamics; references to domestic abuse.

I should have known Rafael wasn’t human the moment I saw him onstage, but it wouldn’t have mattered. All that mattered then was the sway of his angular hips and the way he licked his lips between every song, as if even he couldn’t resist himself.

I tried my hardest not to let him in on my obsession. When he appeared after his set, dripping sweat and vodka, leaning over the bar toward me, I pretended to ignore him—pretended not to care. The crowd swarmed the space, bodies pressing in, but his blue eyes were on me.

“Did you like the show?”

My eyes widened before I cleared my throat, looked down at the glass in my hand, and poured something for the two men canoodling at the end of the bar.

Then I drifted right back into Rafael’s gravity, exactly where he wanted me.

“What’s your name, pretty boy?” he shouted over the noise.

I hesitated, gripping the edge of the bar—my one moment of resistance.

He trailed a finger over the back of my hand, tracing the edges of my fingers down to my chipped black nail polish. He lingered on the scabs at my knuckles.

I shuddered. “Archeron.”

He didn’t wait for me to say it—he pulled it out of me with presence alone.

“Will you have some fun with me, Archeron?” he asked. His voice was playful but with dark edges. My hackles rose, but I shook with need. I remember thinking how insane it was that his voice alone could move me. I wanted to kneel and grovel right there on the sticky bar mat as much as I hated to admit it. I pushed my dark hair from my eyes and moved on to the next patron.

As I stepped into the dark alley behind Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, there was nothing but the smell of him. He chuckled as he approached, wrapping his arms around my middle.

“Such a good boy, Archeron.”

A few words were all it took.

He knelt before me, and I didn’t even flinch as his teeth sank into my exposed thigh. A sigh slipped out of me, slow and helpless, silk over skin. My hand rested on his blonde head, gentle now, guiding nothing and everything. The sight of him beneath me was almost unbearable. My veins ran with fire as he drank – until the ocean rushed in my ears and the world narrowed to heat.

I panted before his hand covered my mouth. “Now, now.”

He slipped a silver flask from his peacoat pocket and took a long drink before offering it to me. I took a swig. Vodka. My thigh burned worse than my throat.

Obsession wasn’t even the word—I was lost in him.

That was only the beginning.

The next night, he was there, guiding me to the VIP table at the back of the club, his hand gentle on the small of my back.

"Tell me, Archeron. Do you like to fight?"

I glanced down at my knuckles and attempted to pull my sleeves over what my father would have termed "inappropriate."

He pulled my hand toward him and kissed the healing places. "I like a boy with bite." He smirked. "In fact, I need one."

My stomach clenched. In the alley, we kissed, but this time, when his fingers curled around my neck, my typical instincts took over. My hand shot up to his neck, slamming him against the brick wall of the club. His laugh bounced off the stone.

“This is why I like you, Archeron. You are defiant!” He shouted the last word into the night air. The hair on my arms and legs stood on end. He laughed again at the look of shock on my face until I couldn’t stop the giggle roiling up from inside me. We stumbled hand in hand that night through the streets of a city not even worth mentioning.

Rafael didn’t need to convince me to fight for him. I jumped at the chance. When we arrived for the first time at the abandoned warehouse, there was an undeniable thrill thrumming in the back of my throat. Men and women of all shapes circled a makeshift ring of rope and crates, shouting over one another as two half-drunk fighters swung at shadows. Their feral hollering called to me.

In the blink of an eye, they were all around me as I peeled my soaking shirt from my body. It slapped to the ground, weighed down by sweat and blood. The man across from me held his shirt to his nose as it continued to gush. The swish of arms and the connection of flesh thumping flesh filled the air. Our grunting punctuated every move. Rafael’s voice bounced into my head. “Be a good boy, Archeron.”

As the final blow landed, I sighed in relief, knowing that it was over before the other guy hit the floor. The crowd erupted, and so did the inside of my chest. I couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across my blood-stained face. Rafael appeared next to me, laughing and shoving hundred-dollar bills into the pockets of my jeans. There was no denying it – I was addicted.

We celebrated that first time well into the morning, eating, and drinking, and, dancing, and touching. Consuming as much as we could get our hands on, trying to fill the hole that kept yawning wider in our souls. It was never enough to satiate the emptiness.

When dawn came that morning, I watched Rafael crawl into the sleek black coffin at the back of the high-rise apartment. I didn’t even question my desire to slide the iron latch closed. That night started the first of many. As the sun rose, Rafael disappeared to his safe place, and I watched over him as the night waned ahead of us – a ritual I never resisted. Again and again and again, we did this until my life blurred into the montage of some movie I wasn’t even watching.

In the evenings, I woke in a panic as the sun set, twisted images floating away behind my eyelids before I could grasp their sentiment. The fear in me pushed me to the coffin's edge, lifting the lid as light disappeared behind the horizon. Something inside of me whispered, but I pushed it down, enamored by the porcelain face of a man who couldn’t face the day.

“You’re my favorite, Archeron.”

I tried to let go of what “favorite” meant. One of many? Sometimes, he was gone for days, and when I wasn’t pondering his whereabouts, I was questioning his loyalty. My thoughts came like lightning bolts, jagged and hot.

Who was he with?

Where did he go?

When would he get back?

Why was I here?

The last one rang out with clarity as the cuckoo clock in the hallway shouted the five o'clock hour.

How did I get here?

Then he was behind me—arms wrapping around my middle, pressing himself into me with all the heat and power he radiated. A force to be reckoned with. He coaxed me into his study, pushed me against the fireplace mantle. My body arched into him without hesitation.

Did I love this man? How did he do this to me?

There was such control in him—such intensity behind his eyes—that my body moved to the beat of his drum. He said turn, and I obeyed. He said lie down, and I melted. His attention was a white-hot pleasure simmering beneath my skin, a heat that made my thoughts unravel one by one.

On occasion, he would dress me—leather, taffeta, silk—sliding diamond bracelets onto my wrist as a tailor circled me with a tape measure. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love it.

The clubs pulsed like they existed just for us, bodies circling and grinding in every direction. Rafael tugged the sleeve of my tank top down over my shoulder, exposing the puncture wounds at my clavicle. He gripped my jaw.

“You’re mine, pretty boy.”

A few words were all it took. I wanted to drop to my knees right there and beg for more. I wanted everyone to see. I cried my pleasures into the pulse of music, thought of nothing but the man pressed against me.

Until I was alone.

That’s when she appeared.

“Archie, come home.” My sister’s voice cut through the music, raw and terrified. I tried to ignore the black eye her husband had probably given her since I left, but heat sparked low in my gut, pulsing, ugly. I scanned the club, looking for him.

I grabbed Clara’s frail shoulders. “You can’t be here. You have to go.”

She tore away from me, her brown eyes searching mine. “What has he done to you, Archie?”

Clara traced a thumb over the scar at my clavicle, her thin lips quivering. I pulled her hand away and looked around again.

“Clara, please.”

Then, I felt it. His presence. Like a shadow made solid – thick, and oppressive. Even over the music, his voice slid into us, and I knew Clara heard it too.

“And to whom do we owe this pleasure?”

I pushed at her. “Clara, go!”

Her fear hit the air between us like static. She hugged me anyway—quick, desperate—and something cold slipped into the back pocket of my pants.

She vanished into the crowd, swallowed whole.

“Did I scare her?” He appeared behind me, as he always did.

For the first time, the amusement in his voice didn’t convince me. I stayed silent, wrapped my arms around his neck, and pulled him into me.

As he opened the door to his apartment that night, the smell of death and blood hit me harder than before. I held back a gag and tended to Rafael as I had every night prior. But a different thought came to me as I moved toward his room.

What if I opened the coffin before the sun set?

My mind raced through scenarios in the span of a second.

But Rafael’s face contorted. “That silly little girl put thoughts into your head, didn’t she?”

I shook my head, but knew we’d had the same thought. He closed the door to his bedroom, and the deadbolt slotted into place, leaving me alone in the hallway. A part of me shattered, knowing I angered him, knowing I would not get the chance to do what we had done so many nights before. My desire reared, and I slowly slid down the door. Failure carved at my ribs. But still, I heard my sister’s voice.

“Archie, come home.”

I reached into the back pocket of my pants and pulled out a glass vial. A black cross had been etched into the surface.

|||||||

I didn’t sleep that night. I paced, continuously glancing at the emboldened black cross. I had set the vial on the shelf in Rafael’s study just to prove to myself it was still there. Every time I turned away, I felt a tug at my skull, as if something inside me was trying to suck the memory right out of my head.

As light drained from the sky, my breathing shallowed with the enormity of what I was about to do. I licked my chapped lips, attempting to nullify the undeniable thirst scratching at my throat. There was a need to be with him, to do the things I had always done for him, but this time, there was a clarity I’d never had before, and it hit home every time I saw that vial – every time her voice slid through my mind.

Archie, come home.

Rafael appeared in the hallway much later than usual, a blanket draped over his shoulders as he shuffled through the tiled kitchen in bare feet. I didn’t move a muscle in the entryway, but he still shot me an angry glance as he pulled the little silver flask from somewhere inside the huddled blanket. His eyes were bloodshot. Without feeding from me before bed, he always looked a little rough. Normally, he would have commanded me to fill the flask for him, but his trust in me had been weakened.

My heart punched at my ribs. He pulled the bottle of vodka from the fridge and analyzed its contents. His chin dipped to his chest.

“Acheron,” he sing-songed.

I stepped forward into the kitchen.

He cocked his head to look at me. “Since when do we let our vodka get this low?”

I swallowed and looked down. “I– I–”

Rafael growled, not even bothering to pour the liquid into his flask before lifting the bottle to his lips. Two gulps was all it took.

Holy water slid down the side of his mouth. He let the bottle fall from his fingers, and it hit the ground with a hollow sound, spinning across the tiled floor. He started laughing then, an awareness settling behind his eyes—one that gave me hope.

His laughter snapped into coughing, a desperate, ripping hack that shook his entire body. His eyes narrowed as he fell to the floor, and the liquid running down his chin smoldered as the screams started, each one cut off by his need to keep expelling the burning wetness from his insides.

Rafael crawled toward me, hand outstretched, and I backed away until I fell to the floor. I scrambled backward until I reached the apartment door. I didn’t hesitate; I didn’t need a key, or a code, or a secret word to get out. I just needed my own will back. I scuffled into the hallway, but turned back to watch as Rafael continued, his voice scratching from his throat like a crab caught in a bucket.

He reached the threshold.

I slammed the door in his face. My breath shook out of me in ragged gasps as I stared at the white paneling, waiting for the handle to rattle, for the knock, for the command that would drag me back.

It never came.

Only Clara’s voice echoed through my mind. Come. Home.

I took off running.

A few words were all it took.