Patteran Ch. 01

Sara thought of how she had floated across the waters from France to warn the saints, and how Lazarus, who had risen from the dead, had shared his secret with her, had taught her how to cheat death through drinking blood. It was just like the sacrament, he had sworn. She would share this sacrament with Joe Lowell. He would be only the fourth one in the last century, and she figured that he might be with her a while.

She leaned over him. She did not want to con him into following her. It had to be his decision. She had not given the skateboarder that same choice, but he was not one of her People. This man was, and deserved at least the respect of an honest choice. She spoke quickly. Her words were low, their tone serious, each word designed to bring him to his senses. "I am saying this to you now because I want you to make the decision on your own. I want you to be mine, but I will not insist on it. That would not be a fair choice. I leave the decision up to you." She ran a hand over his cock, and he shivered in response to her touch. His eyes had dulled their spark a long time ago, and he looked at her with twin black pools of nothingness, his mouth forming a silent plea for her to continue.

"If you choose to become mine," she said, her black form swaying above him, naked and angular, "I will treat you as a consort should be treated. You will not have to run anymore. You will not have to worry about your company, because I will take care of them. The only thing you will have to worry about is pleasing me, and letting me partake of you whenever I want. In return, I will show you more ecstasy than you've ever known."

He was the first one of very, very many to show doubt. His mouth twisted up curiously, although his eyes were still fixed upon her. His body tensed, and he shook his head. "Ni baxt," he responded, and then repeated the same in English, as if she did not understand his own language. "No good."

She felt angry at first. How dare he condemn her and turn her away? In his world, she was venerated as a saint, and he was little more than a cast-off, unclean wretch from one of the lesser families. He had already condemned his soul by dishonoring a gravesite, even if it was a graveyard of the outsiders. Now, he was deigning to think her unworthy of his obedience, and she would show him otherwise.

He was not afraid. His shoulders did not shake. His eyes did not blink. Then she realized he was only doing as he had promised earlier, and admiration replaced anger. The man was not easily fooled. She would have to go about the process another way. She would have to make him lose control, and lose enough of it to agree to the bargain, and she knew precisely how to go about it.

She raked his mind for previous experiences that stuck in his memory. He had a surprising variety. There was a girl in Florida who had been summery, young, and fresh as a peach, and when he wintered in Gibtown with the carnival, he had spent many long nights on the beach with her. She had been a virgin, but she had not been foolish, and they had been tender with one another, like any good teenage romance. A college student up north, in one of the hallowed, vine-covered halls, who had been looking for adventure and for exotic appeal. He had played his part to the hilt. He had written poetry for her. Their affair had been just as poetic, and just as full of sharp melodrama. She had broken things off with him when a professor caught her eye, but she had used him in one of her poems, and he had read it in a coffee shop a few towns away.

Other similar romances were intertwined with quicker, needier affairs. A quick exchange at a motel off the interstate in some nameless Midwestern state, with the only thing separating it from prostitution the fact that no money was exchanged. Most were female, but there were a few men in there too, more for curiosity and thrill than out of any actual connection. He was not selective for any prejudice, but he was particular, and all of his partners were good-looking, as he was.

Why was that? She wondered, as she stared down at him, why he was so meticulous about others' looks. Could he not bear to look at the ugliness around him every day? Was that where he was weak? He had stood up so well to her, and so defiantly, and she had imagined, for a moment or two, that perhaps he really had no weakness. He was afraid of half of humanity. She had not expected that. She wanted him to realize his shortcomings now, rather than later, when he had a lesser version of her powers. She knew exactly where to send him. He would need her to save him, and she would be there when he needed.

She turned back to Joe, her hair streaming out behind her, and let him see the starkness of the rabbit-bone bracelet. He was not ready for the sight of the skulls, she knew. She knelt above him, her body contorted, her posture weird. She saw the change in his face as he realized the unnatural position she had taken. Staring, he swallowed hard but only gulped air. She let her expression grow hard and sharp, and her fangs gleamed white through the darkness of her face, traces of his blood on her lower lip. Her nails sharpened to claws, and she drew a long diagonal slash down his front. It scarred over instantly, and it did not hurt him. She did not mean to hurt him.

She only meant it as a sign of possession for him to bear to others who knew the mark. She suspected, from the dry little smile that he gave her, that he already knew the meaning. She waited, her eyes on him, and then he nodded acceptance. "For now," he said quietly, and she saw a warning in his eyes, and knew that he meant it. She would let him choose his own path now, but she would always be able to find him, and she would always know where he was. He was not meant to be a consort, but he was meant to be more than a servant. He would leave her soon enough, probably in a few days, and he would come back to her when he was ready.

She would make him more than a consort when he was ready. She would make him the same as her. He would have to find his way there, though, and she wanted to see how far he could go without her help, and how far he would go.

#

During the sixth time that they slept together, he knew that something had to be done. They had spent the last three days in an orgy of fucking, consuming one another's bodies with a passion deeper than lust. Somehow, he suspected she did not feel love. She was removed from the encounter, and although he had not expected a vampire godling to yell his name, her strange response to him had been a challenge at first. It had been hard to slip inside her initially, but he had slicked himself down and entered her, and she was warm, if dry. Her breath was fitful, occurring only when she remembered that he liked to see her breathe, and she had drawn blood from him along with semen each time they'd had sex.

Much to his relief, they had moved away from the graveyard and onto the comfort of a decent hotel bed. She had dressed herself in the long skirt again, and had wiped the blood off herself enough to check into the Holiday Inn over in Knoxville.

The seventh time was starting now, though, and the gorgeous black woman above him was riding him hard and fast. Neither of them was much for foreplay, and she was going about this latest fuck with a grim determination. He watched the curve of her breasts and the fierce expression that always came over her face when they had sex. Sara-la-Kali wanted him for her own use, Joe knew, but he would not give himself wholly to her. She rode him hard enough that, if he'd been a few years younger, he would have come simply from the sharp, swift strokes. Her hands held him steady, and her body was smooth and solid as she moved atop him.

He thrust back, and the sparring made her clutch him tighter inside herself. She grabbed him by the shoulders to steady herself. Her gaze was steady. Her body pistoned atop him even as he felt himself start to shake.

Her movements slowed, and she traced over the scars that she had left on his neck. He flinched a little, but let her scratch open a new channel of blood. She had not tried to turn him into one of her people, but he suspected that it would not be long now. He would have to get out of the --

Any thoughts Joe might have had disappeared in a rush as she lifted upwards, pulling on him a little. He was clay to her, supple and malleable. His cock jumped, and he felt the shaky, unsteady rush as he ejaculated, his body driving against her in a final stroke. He let himself go inside her, and she squeezed against him, blood that was not her own causing sparks in her body too. She hovered over him, leaning in and pressing her lips to the wound that she had opened up. She drank deeply of him, murmurs and suckling sounds issuing from her, her long black body bending over him with that same remarkable, gymnastic ease. Her lips burned his skin, and he whimpered with the twin intense feelings of orgasm and pain surging through him. Her body stiffened around his, trapping him there as she drank and he grew lightheaded, his mouth going dry. She was going to use him all, he realized as his vision started to blur. If it didn't happen today, it would happen another time. She would kill him. He would die unseen by anyone else, and he would become a mullo as well.

"You're free," Sara whispered in his ear. "You'll come back in a year and a day, though."

Joe didn't hear her at first. His blood was trickling down his neck and he was still deep inside her warmth, and he was not quite in his right mind. When she pulled away from his neck, and then eased him out of her, he stared, uncomprehending, unhappy that he had been turned down. Why was she leaving him alone? Why wasn't she killing him or claiming him? What did she gain from letting him go?

His insides still churned with confusion and chaos, and he saw blood begin to glisten from its track down his neck and onto his collarbone. He did not need to be asked twice, though. He rolled himself off the bed, picked up his clothes, and pulled the shirt over his head, breathing heavily. His head spun with all the questions he had for her, but he knew that they were the type of questions that you don't ask someone who has just spared your life for three hundred and sixty-six days.

When he could see again, the fabric of his shirt pulled over his head, she was gone. He stood alone, scarred, bleeding, having given his essence to her, but, as she had promised, free. He was alive, and he started to head for the door, nearly collapsing as his hand touched the steel door handle. It sizzled to the touch, and when he pulled his hand away, it was red with a burn. He realized what she had done to him, and sprung away as if the door had stung him, leaving the hotel room in disarray, sheets stripped off the bed and blood staining the mattress slightly.

He had everywhere in the known world to go, and it stretched out before him, as fierce as Black Sara had been. Joe Camlo, a member of the dark and comely Lowell tribe, started for the interstate with a wounded neck, a curse on him, and a vampire saint still watching him from somewhere just ahead of his awareness.

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Author's note: Based on the traditional Romani Sara-la-Kali belief of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, but with considerable liberty given to the belief and an acceptance of the merging of Sara-la-Kali and the Hindu goddess Kali. Many theologians say that Sara is a cover for goddess worship of Kali, and as the Roma are from India, I decided to use the theory, as well as certain gnostic beliefs that will figure in the second part. If you liked this, please comment and look for the upcoming, more explicit parts. This part was more about sensuality than sex; hopefully I achieved that.