Serpent's Salvation Ch. 02

This work is copyrighted and is property of the author. If gay stories offend you or if they are illegal in your area, leave. Any resemblance to any people alive or dead, or any event is purely coincidental. If any of the main characters resemble you...well, lemme find my number...

Chapter 2

Sebastian was in a bitch of a mood. He maneuvered his utility rental into one of the less trafficked campus parking lots and came to an abrupt stop under the shade of a large, half denuded tree. He killed the engine then fumbled with the clasps and mesh pockets of his dull grey canvas gear vest in a habitual check for film and other necessities. He found his lighter, but the search for cigarettes came to naught.

Motherfucker.

He didn't smoke much, and never in the field, but sometimes a man just needed something to soothe frayed nerves. As Sebastian saw it, smoking was a hell of a lot better than some of the alternatives he had been offered. He resigned himself to a nicotine-free morning and got out of the vehicle, shouldering a large pack and tripod, mounting the pavement for the trek to the photography building.

Several people took note of him as he passed. One girl broke away from her friends and jogged up to him even though he deliberately shunned eye contact.

"Mr. Fell! I..." She broke off her tentative English as he raised his face to hers. "Ah. Perhaps I'll talk to you later," she said, as he hurried away.

Several others started to approach as he made his way through the quad, but they all retreated at the sight of his scowl. Their brightly expectant faces fell a bit and they retreated without saying a word. The last few weeks he had been so open, smiling, practically inviting you to say hello or venture a question. This new Sebastian was, well....new.

He had never cared about how he looked. In his line of work function was definitely preferred to form. Depending on the place, the weather or the assignment, you could find him in white button down and khakis, fatigues, or even a parka and snowshoes. Today was khaki day. He could go months without being able have a proper haircut so he resigned himself to a shoulder length style that was really no style at all. It was casually pulled back into a ponytail, but tendrils of his slightly curling dark hair usually escaped their insufficient prison to get in his eyes and annoy him.

He might not have cared about his appearance, but many others cared about little else having to do with him. He was a knockout. Nothing he did to himself, not the studious silver-framed glasses, not the broken nose he had gotten in an embarrassing incident in Brazil, detracted from his magnetism. The fact that he didn't realize his appeal made him all the more charming. Usually charming that is. Until today.

Whereas most days he found himself followed by a mixed bag of photo majors and predatory females, today they left him blessedly alone. He smiled with fierce satisfaction blazing in his green cat's eyes. Maybe some of them weren't as dumb as they looked. He wasn't feeling up to small talk and the polite dismissal of increasingly overt sexual innuendo.

I wonder what they would say if I suddenly said sorry, honey, but I like cock. Can't get enough of it.

He entertained himself with the idea briefly before discarding it. He already had a few male students orbiting around him. No need to trade in the gaggle of biddies for a parade of sycophantic twinks. They were all much of a muchness. It wasn't like he was closeted really, he just didn't wave any rainbow flags. And it wouldn't do to poach in his own preserve.

Besides, the irony would be too much. If he didn't have one of his own firmly attached he would have forgotten what a penis looked like. He had lived like a monk since Jared made that spectacularly dramatic exit from relationshipdom a few years ago.

Sebastian tried to shake off his more morose thoughts as he entered one of the newer buildings that housed the photo lab and several studio classrooms. He searched for the key to the rather bare temporary office that was given to him but gave up the hunt when he saw that the door was already ajar. The smell of coffee wafted into the hallway. He closed his eyes, savoring the aroma for a regretful second.Water of the gods. He nudged open the door and glared at the rooms lone occupant.

"You jerk."

"What?"

His assistant Rob tried to look innocent, batting his pale blue eyes. He failed miserably.

"You know what. You know I can't drink it and you deliberately ambushed me with it. You....you..." Words almost failed him. "Coffee guerilla!"

Sebastian set down his equipment and dropped himself into an ergonomic nightmare of an institutional chair, glaring at his so-called friend. Rob only blinked.

"Well, who pissed in yer chili this mornin," Rob drawled, deliberately mimicking Sebastian's softly slurred southern accent and one of his favorite sayings. Sebastian just flipped Rob off and opened up the caffeine-free coke Rob handed to him from the tiny fridge in the corner. Friends could be the very devil.

"Darlin, who needs other people when I can piss in my own?" Sebastian deliberately matched Rob's teasing exaggeration. He was used to the grief his accent caused, and had actually come to enjoy it. He loved it when people naturally assumed that southern meant stupid. Almost as much as he loved proving them wrong. And when he traveled abroad like now; well, everyone loves a cowboy, even if he doesn't look the part.

Maybe not everyone. He winced at the memory.

"Ah. Just trying to get in touch with your inner asshole then?"

Even in the midst of a raging bitch fit, Sebastian couldn't quite turn off the banter he always fell into with Rob. "Yes Rob. Yes, that's it. You've found me out. That sabbatical I took last year was all a front. Instead of Spain I went to the highest reaches of the Himalayas where I was initiated into secret rites by monks trained in the shit-throwing-monkey style of ninjitsu. They realigned my chakras and made me a master of asshole kung fu. Happy?"

Rob licked his finger and fired an imaginary gun at Sebastian, an acknowledgement of a hit in their ongoing game of competitive one-upmanship. Score one for Seb; the first hit of the day.

"Very. So how did things go last night, or do I really need to ask?"

Sebastian groaned as he thought about how to best answer Rob's question. He had hoped to avoid this. Trust Rob to get to the heart of the matter.

"C'mon, you've been calling him for weeks, what happened when you just showed up on his doorstep?"

"How do you know that I went to his royal highness' last night? Maybe I had a hot date instead."

Rob snorted. "With what, your right hand? Quit feeding me a line of bull Seb. You haven't had a hot date in..."

"Ok, Ok! Uncle!"

"You haven't even had a lukewarm date in God knows how-" Rob's opinion was cut off as Sebastian covered Rob's mouth with his hand.

Rob was like a terrier sometimes. Sebastian wiped Rob's spit off of his palm while he indulged in a little fantasizing involving his knee and Rob's groin.

" It was even more imposing than I'd been told. Real eerie in a vintage horror way, but it was a gorgeous house if you're into that sort of thing."

"I'm not," Rob said. He had a fifties ranch home with a tiki bar.

"Shut up. I didn't ask you. I'd say it was rhetorical but it wasn't even a question you dumb Yankee."

"White trash fag."

"Carpetbagging breeder."

Rob's eyes twinkled at Sebastian's insult. "You really do need to get laid. Maybe a one night stand could find that bug up your ass and replace it with something bigger and better." Sebastian gave Rob what he hoped was a withering look and ignored him in favor of continuing his story.

"I was surprised that there wasn't a fence and a security gate." And he had been. There had been a lot of selective planting, but nothing close to a live barrier and nothing to bar the grounds from the outside world.

Nothing to bar the outside world from it, either.

"I've never seen a place quite like it. It was so melodramatic, like a palace for a modern-day Heathcliff." If Heathcliff was surrounded by armed men guarding the fortress. Hmmm. That was another odd thing. On reflection he didn't think that the men were really armed at all. But it had felt that way.

"Heathcliff? Isn't that a comic or something?" Rob looked confused. Sebastian smirked.

"Heathcliff. You know, Wuthering Heights? The Brontes?" The look on Robs face was blank.

"Jeezus Rob, don't you read anything but photography magazines?" Sebastian said, disgusted. "You must've read it in school."

Rob drew himself up to his less than imposing height of 5'7, pulling on a careful mantle of offended dignity. "Of course I read." He returned Sebastian's skeptical look with a haughty one of his own and a toss of his hair before a lopsided grin cracked the whole sham to pieces. " I just finished another Playboy Letters anthology."

The laughter was just what Sebastian needed. He shook with almost hysterical mirth for several minutes, laughing until his sides ached. Rob hovered nearby, giving him a pat on the back, clearly confused. "Seb, it really wasn't that funny."

Sebastian wiped at a tear as he got himself under control and smiled his first real smile of the day. "I know, it just felt good."

"Do you want to tell me what it's all about?"

Sebastian felt guilty for a moment because he couldn't put his complete trust in his best friend. But only for a moment. He knew that any omission he made was for Rob's own welfare.

"I can't. It...it's personal." He couldn't quite meet Rob's eyes.

"So it doesn't have anything to do with last night?"

Sebastian shook his head mutely, unwilling to perjure himself outright. If Rob realized that he was lying he was kind enough to keep his suspicions to himself. Friends could be wonderful.

Sebastian decided to break the silence before Rob could ask any more questions. "Anyway, He has a circular drive so I just parked in front of the door, got out, and knocked." That sounded good. No mention of that curious tension that had held him as he approached the house, not a word about...them. "It took a while for someone to answer though". Someone had been just on the other side of the door, he could feel it. He had felt their alarm and something more, something he couldn't quite define. "Maybe the house is short staffed."

"Maybe it's just staffed with a group of pricks."

If he only knew.

Sebastian hated deception, but he was also a pragmatist when it came to applying the 'fine art of Texas bullshittery' as his granddaddy had so eloquently put it. Needing it and accepting it didn't make it any easier though. He had to physically restrain himself from squirming like a naughty kid in a corner, because here was The Big Lie.

"The butler looked at me like I was day old vomit and held my card like it was infected with every venereal disease known to man. Never trust someone who speaks in the third person."

"Maybe they teach it in Butler school." Rob looked thoughtful as he lightly scratched his day old growth of auburn scruff. "Are there butler schools? Hell, do people still have butlers?"

Sebastian ignored him in favor of finishing his story. He put on his best chi-chi tone and stared down his nose as he delivered up a snobby caricature. " I regret to inform you that Mr.Draco is not receiving anyone. No, we are not at liberty to divulge Mr.Draco's whereabouts at this time sir. He is a very busy man. We will, however, see that Mr.Draco receives your card and hears of your request." He had Rob in stitches with his sour look.

"I think I can translate all of that for you. In other words", Rob said, "Go away, don't call us we'll call you and get shankered."

"Very succinct of you." Sebastian said as he gave a silent sigh of relief. "And much better I think."

They went on to talk about other things; the rest of the seminar, places to visit during their stay, and Rob's potential female conquests, whose numbers, if Rob was too be believed, were legion. Sebastian was almost absurdly grateful for the reprieve but he couldn't help but dwell on last night's events. The real events, not the tissue of lies he had spun.

He had driven up the circular drive and parked as he said, but he had felt eyes on him, and those eyes had felt...different. He was used to sensing animals, almost communicating with them on some level apart from everyone else. He never told anyone about it, even though many called him a magician or some sort of witch doctor for his ability to get the pictures that he did; for the sixth sense and the ability to shield his presence that had helped him capture the impossible.

It had put him at the top of the heap career wise, but it also set him apart from 'normal' people and he was damn careful to keep that knowledge to himself. He had visions of witch-hunts and scientists herding him with cattle prods.

Never before had he felt something so profoundly cunning. Intelligent, even. Perhaps human. He couldn't normally sense people but he knew instinctively that what he felt was no mere animal. It made him feel hunted, like a nervous rabbit. It wasn't a feeling he was fond of.

He had barely made it to the door when he felt the person on the other side. The door almost vibrated with a barely suppressed cocktail of curiosity, disbelief, anger and distrust. And that was only one of them. The buzzing in his head was slowly gaining volume as others added their discordant feelings. He couldn't quite catch thoughts, but he could feel them, like hushed whispers just out of hearing range. They were upset. Something out of the ordinary had set them on edge.

It couldn't be him.

He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye as he knocked and found himself looking at a man near the corner of the house, and then another. A shaft of fear raced down his spine as another, then another appeared as if by magic, stepping from the shadows to loosely surround him. They were dressed identically in dark grey pullovers and cargo pants.

They weren't close enough to make out individuals, but their shared expressions were identical and belied their almost casual stance. Sebastian wasn't fooled. He knew how to fight and he recognized that relaxed looking pose. It would have been easy to let himself fall into the same position, but he was definitely outnumbered and wanted to show them that he posed no threat.

He opened his mouth. Whatever it was he was going to say to try and placate them died before ever leaving his lips as the heavy door swung open to reveal another man in the same uniform. He watched the silent communication between the members of security with trepidation and not just a little amazement. He kept his face carefully blank. Sebastian couldn't begin to imagine what would happen if they knew that he realized...what?

He still wasn't sure. Were they human psychics much like him? Military experiments? Aliens?

"What do you want?" Sebastian gave a little start at the guard's abrupt question.

"I...I..." Smooth Seb, very smooth. He started to reach into his pocket for a card but froze as the man made a small move towards him. He quickly put up both hands in the universal gesture for harmlessness. "I have a business card that I would like you to give Mr. Draco. I've heard about his collection and I would love the chance to see it. I'm quite well known for my work." His nervous laugh was a bit self-deprecating, his attempt at a smile feeble at best. "I don't really do studio work but snakes are a bit of a hobby of mine and..." Great, now he was babbling while Mr. Testosterone Psychic debated killing him and devouring the corpse. He looked like he would relish the experience then go back for seconds and thirds.

"Give me the card."

Sebastian removed a card and a pencil, quickly jotting down his number at the university under the guard's distrustful gaze. The man practically snatched it from him before closing the door in his face. Sebastian was open mouthed at the rudeness he was shown and turned toward his car with a fulminating look at the other guards, who had edged closer. They herded him into his vehicle, the savage whispers in his mind never abating.

He had never been so happy to make a get away in his life, not even when Maggie O'Connor surprised him on prom night by getting naked in the park and grabbing his dick. He did the same thing now that he did back then; got into his car and drove away like all the creatures of hell were chasing him.

Perhaps they were.

The feeling of being watched didn't leave him on the trip back to the city. He felt the soft hairs on his nape lift as he parked, felt the eyes on him as he entered his apartment. The soft hiss of their silent communication was a wispy tendril in his brain. As he huddled under the sheets that night, willing sleep to come, he could feel them out there in the darkness.

It was a very long night. He had spent the greater part of it trying to analyze just who and what they could be, when he wasn't plotting to send them Jehovah's Witnesses. Mormon missionaries. Fine copies of the Bhagavad Gita. He also spent a goodly amount of time castigating himself for not kicking some ass. The result was no sleep and circles making his eyes stand out in harsh relief.

Sebastian had been so lost in his thoughts that he completely missed Rob's question.

"Huh?"

"I said, I'm heading to the store for some supplies, would you like anything?"

"Uh, no, no thanks." Sebastian flushed at being caught woolgathering.

" Not even a Mountain Dew?" Rob was and evil man.

"Bite me."

"Sorry hot stuff, I like boobies. Your extravagant blandishments and sweet nothings are wasted. Ain't no way I'm gettin on your dick." Rob got up and walked to the door with his typical loose-limbed stride, stopping with his hand on the knob. He turned to Sebastian with a grin like a cheeky monkey Seb had once shot pictures of in the Amazon. Seb had really hated that monkey.

"You know, you tell a really good story there Seb. It even had me fooled for a minute. It's too bad that you always physically deflate a bit when you're done being full of it. Throw in a blue ox next time and you might even have a genuine tall tale." Rob licked his finger and fired the invisible six-shooter at himself. He pointed his index fingers towards the ceiling, sticking out his chest cockily in an arrogant 'I'm-number-one' pose as he left, leaving Sebastian groaning and cradling his head in his hands.

Motherfucker.

Thank you for the kind emails, you have no idea how inspiring just one can be, so keep sending them. Chapter three will be posted soon and four is almost finished. Don't worry about me leaving you hanging; I know exactly where the story is going. I don't have an editor, so any mistakes are purely my own.