Bound & Bound – the Curse and the Captives – - 14. Chapter 14: Spider's Web

Chapter 14: Spider's Web

My new vamp friends have just shocked me.

The sexy and handsome Cezar has responded to my inquiry as to why they do not wear press-on fangs, like the other vamp kids, by telling me "We don’t need them."

Then Dida, his charming and willowy girlfriend, walked her fingers up my chest, and has pulled my ear down so she could whisper "We have real ones. And you'll see them later."

Now she lets go, and as if in slow motion, I raise my head, swallow and feel my eyes grow round.

Into my apert gaze, they both laugh like the joke's all on me. I feel like a rube, but then sense something different as Cezar's hand settles onto my lower right arm. He massages it, gently, and my gaze falls onto his now-intensifying blue eyes. His touch lifts my drink up, and he does the same with his own. We sip in unison, our sightlines trained and locked.

My combined attention that is both aroused and mellowing darts over various aspects of his appearance. His fingernails are 'boy-length,' but shellacked in a solid, glossy black. Half a dozen leather braids circle the wrist above the powerful hand that he now uses to touch me softly.

The paleness of his face speaks of a remarkable beauty. The liquor's doing its job of further stilling my heartbeat to be in sync with the club's pulsation, but my brain can only regard Cezar and pull up a single word, an odd one. Aquarelle drifts nearer the surface of my thoughts, for it's a term to describe the subtle transparency of watercolors – how thin washes of sanguine colors like red and pink can work with the purity of the white paper underneath to add unbelievable depth. Such is the effect seen on Cezar's cheeks: youthful, alive with undertones of vermillion health and vitality. His black eyeliner only enhances the limpid sapphire of his crystalline gaze, and his red lips are full and supple without any enhancements.

"Hey, what about me?" Dida pouts at my rapt attention on her boyfriend. She raises her tumbler, and interlocks arms with mine.

We touch glasses, and sip deeply while bringing heads and eyes close together.

She is just as beautiful as Cezar, but in a girly way. Her hair-swoops frame her gaze in a provocative way, and her eyes are as deep as melted chocolate. The earthy-red mascara accenting them only highlights a sense of active perception; 'I'm watching you,' her gaze proclaims. Her face makeup is scant, just a light-toned base with no blush, but with lipstick that is a natural shade of crimson.

As we begin to untangle our arms, my attention falls to her long red nails that are the color of bricks, and to her rings. The one on her right ring finger is…large. Something seems slightly familiar about it…suddenly, I feel dizzy.

I reel back a half-step and am only stopped by the standing-height bar smacking into my kidneys. That pain revives me a little.

What was I just doing; thinking? I don’t know.

The vamp couple put out reassuring hands to help me stand fully upright.

"I'm all right," I assure them.

They simply smile at me and do not turn to look at one another.

'Where is Silviu?' I think fleetingly, but get distracted by the fact that my two companions both wear the same neck gear – a large Egyptian ankh on a leather cord, only this ankh is unlike any others I have ever seen. It has droopy arms: straight at the top, but slightly sweltering as if being melted by unseen hellfires from the underside.

"I think…" I say, swallowing down a lump. "I think I better go find my friend." Why did he abandon me? Or, was it me who left his side? I'm confused; I can't think.

Cezar starts saying softly, seductively, and stroking my arm, "He's all right…"

"…Without you…" Dida concludes in just the same tone, petting my other forearm.

I glance down at my drink, and perceive a partial blackout threatening from near the front of my head. I fight it off.

"You're not leaving us." Cezar's tone is no longer conversational. There's also a worrying change in his expression; gone is the charming invite, instead replaced by a steely reserve that I had better bend to his willful demands. His stroke morphs into a grip.

The couple exchanges a hasty pair of sentences in Romanian.

That moment of blackout threatens me again. I turn and prop elbows on the bar for support.

My sight catches the blue Chagall painting one more time. Now the figures look downright menacing, like werewolves with quiet and collective personas lying in wait to attack, and then rip to shreds.

Hands support me from behind.

"Ummm." I'm lost and stammering. "I don’t feel so well."

Cezar leans full in and croons in my ear, "Then, we'll take you home."

They lace arms under mine, and move me across the rear of the dance floor. By the time we're standing on the threshold of the back door, I suddenly remember something.

"But, how do you know where I'm staying?"

Cezar kicks the door open and we stumble into the cool night. He says manically, "We do know, but you're coming home with us."

˚˚˚˚˚

Where am I? How come I feel like I'm awake, and yet in some sort of shady oasis of sleep at the same time..? A persistent thought fights for attention, 'Where is Silviu..? Come help me…'

I blink several times, and feeling groggy, somehow find myself back where I was watching the activity roll past my eyes.

Out on the dance floor, Club Nosferatu patrons slowly bump and grind. Their hips and torsos compete with raised arms and bending knees for mastery of their partner's body. The ineffable heartbeat of the mass of Romanian blood-Bacchanals drones on in my skull like a splitting headache.

The revelers' attention seems to drift to me in the form of languid, half-shut eyes. Holding my gaze, mouths inch toward the craned necks of their partners. There is a frightening flash of pointed teeth, and then those daggers of bone sink into the flesh of throats.

As the crowd still pulses in their dance moves, blood gushes from ripped wounds. It coats lips, teeth, and falls in free torrents down sweaty and glistening chests. There is almost the ecstatic moan of a mutually felt climax while the couples embrace and feed off of one another.

Suddenly, the blue mural of Chagall-like figures catches my eye; it catches it through movement.

The rapacious forms with the wolfish features step forward. As if emerging from a sea of blue-green algae, they climb down from the edge of the frame and onto the tops of the booth.

The crowd reacts in a slowly cresting wave of panicked anticipation. They stand and wait. In another moment, the were-creatures from the painting bare teeth and attack.

The vamp kids closest to them are clawed and dragged to the side where canine jaws tear them to shreds.

Everyone screams. The dance floor turns into one pushing mass of humanity trying to get to the back exit.

The werewolf victims are tossed into this crowd, and writhe in anguished spurts of gore on the backs and heads of the fleeing vamp kids.

The lycanthropes do not care about the escaping masses, for all of their eyes are trained on me.

I back away from the standing-height bar and turn. I start to run, and the blackness of the club effortlessly gives way to the blackness of night.

I run through a forest.

The trees have oddly distorted trunks and look like upside question marks as they rise from the earth, and then form huge bends before eventually righting themselves to straight lines. These trees zoom past me as I heave my arms in a determined flight to get away. I dare not turn my head, for I have a feeling my pursuers are matching me step for step. In the near distance, a blood-shivering howl erupts. It is like that of a wolf, but one invested with all the angst and fate-cursing bootlessness of human woe.

Up ahead of me looms a formless void. I realize it is an opening; the trees are ending in a clearing of some kind.

I run into this.

It is a circle where no plants grow other than grass. I glance to the side, and lurking at the tree line are crouching and hairy figures. I am surrounded by the unseen, but can run no more; I am exhausted and breathless.

I slow my jog, almost giving up hope. As I approach the center of the clearing, I know without looking that the 'things' from the woods are slowly coming in like a web to snare me.

I collapse on the ground, turning on my back with arms and lags splayed open.

My eyes gaze hopelessly up into the starless sky, but oddly, some form of light slowly descends upon me.

I glance at my hands. They are stuck.

I glance at my ankles. They are stuck too.

I gaze around and see I am caught in a giant spider's web.

˚˚˚˚˚

I awake with a gasp.

I raise my head and take in a million things at once.

I am alone, lying on the floor of a room with a couch and chairs in it; I am naked except for my gold chain and coin and the pair of briefs I put on before going to the club; the window is open and a light breeze wafts in; there is the smell of sweat and burning candle wax in the air.

Lit tapers provide the only illumination in the space, and circle my body completely. My hands and feet are strapped to the wooden floor with leather cuffs. I pull on one – it is strung with rope through a ringbolt screwed to the floor plank. Looking around full circuit, and almost getting an out-of-body perspective above me, I suddenly come to realize that I am pinned within this circuit of candle flame to the points of a giant pentagram.

I lower my head in abject fear, and then, I hear voices.

Cezar and Dida appear. The vamp girl wears only a black teddy; her pale skin shows through all the dark webbing of lace like moon glow behind a curtain. Cezar is shirtless, but still wearing his tight leather pants. Their droopy-armed ankhs ride pronounced against their bare skin and appear menacing, so does the large ritualistic knife in Cezar's hand.

"Let me go." I try to sound unphased and not too demanding.

"Look who's awake, Dida."

"Yes, let me see closer…"

As Dida saunters towards me, I notice Cezar slide his blade into a long pocket along his lower leg.

My attention drifts back to Dida. There is a stoned collectedness in the expression she wears, the kind of look I imagine Sharon Tate saw as she drew her last breath.

The vamp girl straddles my midsection and slowly sits. Her countenance is determined and dark as she tilts her head slightly and makes her hair caress one side of her cheek. Dida's hands begin a rhythmic dance over my abdomen and chest. The funny thing is, she does not touch me. Her red-nailed fingertips stay suspended above my flesh, however, her inner thighs and backside ride me like a pony with contracting and relaxing grips from her muscles down there.

I find myself ignoring that friction, because where this girl's digits almost touch me, an indescribable tingle arises and slowly tracks across my pecs and ribs while she moves her hands.

Cezar begins to talk and walk from side to side outside the ring of candlelight.

I glance a lingering pause on Dida's ecstatic face. She is lolling her head back in something that looks near orgasmic, and her insistent grinding on my package is having some unwanted reactions.

"Did you know," Cezar asks me. "That there are two kinds of vampires?"

He does not expect an answer, so I do not bother with one. Instead, I try not to focus on Dida's powerful 'touch' from her hands raking above my skin. At times it almost borders on the painful.

"There are psychic vampires, and sanguine vampires."

My eyes flicker in a sudden sharp pain – the girl's fingers are getting too much to bear. The tingling sensation is growing to be a wandering one of burning heat. It feels like my strength is being tapped. Dida's inner thighs grow hot and grip me harder.

"Dida," he informs me. "Is drawing sustenance from your aura. Her spikes of energy are right this very moment penetrating yours and sucking the life force out of you."

In fleeting glimpses my eyes fall on Cezar's excitement; he is toying with himself through this leather and apparently becoming aroused to see Dida grinding on me.

The vamp boy steps over the candlewicks and strides through the circle. I feel his bare feet brush against the outside of my upper thighs.

He stands with his lower body pressed tight to Dida's back.

Cezar places his hands so he can scoop aside her hair and then fondles her neck and cheeks with rough strokes. He slowly descends to sit on my legs, and kisses his girlfriend from behind.

His weight is a little painful, and I try to move a bit, but he only bears down more, so I stop resisting.

Dida rotates her neck to the side so her mouth can meet his; her hand raises back and up to caress the side of his long hair by the ear.

As they French kiss, I am horrified to see both now have long fangs flickering from the interior of their dark mouths – these do not look to be the press-on type.

Dida grows passionate. She lets Cezar reach around her belly and grab her left thigh with his right hand. She lifts her legs, puts all her weight on me, and allows her boyfriend to rotate her.

Now face to face, Cezar pulls her a bit so her butt slides lower on my privates; I don’t have time to think that it hurts, for Cezar lifts her legs by the underside of her thighs and make her straddle his waist. He lays her down on top of me.

Cezar places his palms on my biceps to support himself. Dida's head is slightly to the right of my chest and nestled near the crook of my armpit. His ankh hits my chest and I have an unobstructed view of Cezar's intimidatingly handsome face right above mine.

His eyes are closed as he kisses Dida with open mouth and glinting fangs. Suddenly, while still lip-locked, he opens them. He is staring me straight in the eyes, and I see one corner of his mouth rise in a smirk as he presses his weight more heavily on my body while ravages his girlfriend's mouth with greater ferociously. He watches my reaction with twinkling eyes, and I feel his dick suddenly growing rock hard against mine.

He breaks away from Dida's mouth for a moment. He grinds on me, making me involuntarily flicker my eyelids and swallow. "You like to watch, don’t you?" he says in a gravelly voice. "You can't deny it; I can feel you getting hard."

"Look," I try to reason with him, and not stare at his teeth. "Your fun and games are over. You can let me go now."

A truly lustful glint in his eye pauses for a moment on mine. His evil-seeming talisman hovers over my face while it appears like he is debating some 'to do or not to do' question in his head.

Cezar lightly kisses his girlfriend, and I can feel his right hand tap her flank two times. He helps her slide from between us.

Now Cezar's naked upper body is in full contact with mine. He eyes me frankly with his dark-blue peepers, and a little glimmer of unrepressed excitement plays on his glossy lips as he methodically rubs the erection in his leather pants over mine in my briefs; he does it with maddening slowness and precision.

"It was no accident," he states as a whispering growl. "That you were our target for the night."

"Target? Who told you to target me?"

Cezar pushes himself up with his left hand on my chest. He slaps me with his free hand. "You know who. Him!"

I hate-stare him. "I don’t know. Who?"

Cezar sits up on my waist. He glances around, and once he finds Dida's smirking face, they begin to howl with laughter. She goes to stand right behind him, and Cezar's glare falls back to my eyes.

"I told you there are two kinds of vampires: the psychic kind, and then there are the sanguine kind."

He kicks back so his legs slide between Dida's, and leans forward to place his hands by the sides of my chest, as if he were about to do pushups.

He comes down close to my mouth, his hair falls forward, and he cocks his head slightly, asking, "Do you know what I mean by sanguine?" His blue eyes are shiningly beautiful in a dangerous way.

"Do you mean, blood?"

He bites his lower lip in a sexy way before growling out a whispered, "I mean your blood." He flashes his fangs at me.

Dida crouches down with a supporting hand on her boyfriend's shoulder and reaches into his leg pocket. She extracts the knife, then contorts around Cezar's body to lay the blade on my chest above my sternum. The tip of the blade points up to my throat and rests on top of my old coin. Hearing and feeling the metal clash I suddenly have an odd and insistent thought: 'Silviu! I need you, now!'

"Do you know, Emeric…" Cezar sounds rueful. "We vamps are outcasts, shunned by society and looked down upon as 'freaks?' We were the cunning sexual strangers of 19^th century nightmares, and the blood-dripping teen idols to audiences at the end of the 20^th century, but do you know what we are now?"

His lips brush mine. I swallow and slowly shake my head.

"We are the dark heroes of a new age. People will come to lust after us." His breath caresses my lips. "Lust after our power and our control."

Cezar's mouth encloses mine, and his body weight puts pressure on the sharp edge of the blade against my skin.

He pushes up a moment, never looking more lust-ridden. He licks his lips seductively, and says breathlessly, "You have been violated by having your life-force raped by Dida. Now, it's my turn, to have your body."

"He's queer, Cezar." Dida says out of the blue. When I finally see her face, it is awash with jealous fury; she must not have liked the way her boyfriend was rubbing and kissing all over me.

Suddenly Cezar's weight lifts off of me. He rises so fast, he partially knees me in the groin.

"What!" he spits out, half at her, half at me. "You are a fucking pervert?!" It's clear by his tone that he'll brook no reply, so I am silent and he begins to pace within the circle, muttering, "I should gut you right here and now, leading me on like that." He wipes his mouth in disgust with the back of his hand.

I nervously glance at the knife still on my chest. My left hand spasms in fear, and I realize that the rope binding me to the ringbolt is noticeably looser than it had been.

Cezar stalks over to me again; a sweat has risen to coat his chest in a matter of moments.

"I want to open a leg artery and drain you of your pathetic mistake of a life."

He reaches hurriedly for the knife, but Dida's stays his hand.

She says with sexy calmness, "We were told not to kill him."

Cezar seems to forget about me for a moment. He turns and pulls her into him so that their fronts touch. He lays his hands tightly on her butt cheeks and draws her up into wild Frenching. I know it's all a performance for me to watch; the homophobe's classic overcompensating of "See – I'm not like you." Sadly, it seems like I've seen it too many times before from guys in total self-denial.

However, while their eyes are closed, I use this time to gently tug on my left hand restraint, and I feel it give way even more. I restore my attention to watching them, yet slowly but surely loosen the knot.

Their passion increases, and Dida uses a seductive hand to lead Cezar out of the circle, and back towards the door from which they had appeared.

Cezar lets himself be drawn by her pulling, but sneers at me with a hateful irony. "Stay put, queer boy."

Once I hear a door close, I yank on the left restraint with all my might. It begins to come free, but just as the rope undoes its knot and slips out of the ringbolt, I hear a noise.

I freeze.

I think it came from the direction of the window. I use my free hand to untie my right wrist. As it slips out of the bindings, I sit up and feel the knife settle in my lap; I pause because there is a definite clack from just outside the window.

I frantically lunge to untie my right foot with both hands, and hear the horrible sound of the knife striking the wooden floor. I'm overwhelmed with panic – what if the maniac kids heard that, and what the fuck is making that sound on the balcony! I dare not look over that way, but then again I do not need to in order to know a hooded figure is stepping through the open window and into the shadowy dark of the room.

My one leg is free. I switch all my attention to my other foot.

The figure moves as silently as a cat towards the circle of light that I am in.

I free my second ankle, spring to my feet and scramble to pick up the knife.

I brandish it wildly at the hooded figure. "Stay away."

A slightly amused voice comes from beneath the hood, saying, "Idiot."

The figure raises his hands and lowers his hood – it's Silviu.

"Let's go," he says, and lunges for my clothes that he spots draped over a chair. I slip on my pants and shoes, and grab the rest to hug to my chest as I climb out the window.

˚˚˚˚˚

My Gypsy 'protector' and I are running down a Bucharest street in the middle of the night.

I have threaded arms through shirtsleeves, but the front is still completely open and flaps in the night as we run.

Silviu is about six paces ahead of me. He ducks into an alley, and I follow.

He pushes me against a wall. "You left with them?!" Silviu is angry.

I try to explain. "They drugged me, and you – "

He didn’t let me rebuke him for chatting up some vampiric skank-man.

"After I warned you? You, you still – "

"That's not fair, you're not the boss of me!" I'm getting pissed, and try to break out of his hold.

He pins me with more force and startles me by looking to be on the verge of tears.

"Stop it, Emeric! You have to stop this stuck-up bullshit, grow the fuck up, and stop blaming everyone else for your decisions! Enough of the spoiled rich-kid, victim routine; it's time to start using common sense. Or are you seriously going to tell me you have no more common sense than your old nanny could beat into you with a spoonful of sugar?!"

"Woah." I'm instantly drained of all my animosity for him. "Dude, that's a little hostile. What did I ever do to you?"

"What..?" he stammers, but instead of sounding irritated and loud, his tone is soft and pregnant with emotion. "How did you think I felt when I turned around in the club and you were missing?"

I shrug and try to avert his gaze.

"I felt like shit. That, and scared shitless."

I suddenly wonder about a profoundly rocking thing, and he must see the shift on my face, for he steps back and lets me go. "Silviu – " I ask. "How did you know where I was?"

My companion blinks in surprise, then engages in some pettish deflection. His hand goes to the back of my neck and draws me in to receive a pissed-off kiss on the cheek. "You had me scared!"

All of a sudden, as his musky body scent tickles the roof of my mouth, and as I gaze into his eyes, I see that he means it. He was truly scared.

He went on beginning to tear up. "I told you, Emeric. You just don’t know who you are."

"And you, do you know who I am?"

He nods, reluctantly.

"Silviu, how did you – "

"How did I find you?!"

The Gypsy guy reaches out and lifts up the gold pendant from my chest. The back of his fingers are warm between the gold and my skin.

"This," he says.

"This..?" I ask dumbly.

With his free hand, Silviu rips the buttons off of his own shirt to expose his chest to me. Besides a blessing of dark hair, there is a glint of gold there too.

Stunned, I let the clothes I am still holding from our vampire apartment escape tumble to the pavement. My fingers reach out and lift the pendant away from Sil's warm body in disbelief. It is a gold coin and chain exactly like mine.

"You called for help, didn't you?" he asks.

I blink. How did he know that..?

He lightly jostles the coin in his grip until I re-hold his blue-eyed gaze.

"Emeric, don’t you see? You and I, we are connected."