Deep Desire: The Deep Series, Book 1 (4 page)

“How did you know I drink Bushmills?” Adin asked finally.

“I tasted it on your skin in the airplane bathroom,” Donte said matter-of-factly, which drew a stare from an older man close by. Donte waved an impatient hand and the man looked away.

“You are still angry with me.” Donte clipped and lit his cigar, then nodded his thanks to the waiter as he returned the implements to him.

Adin remained stubbornly silent, yet he was taken by the way Donte held court in this venue, an aristocrat with his cigar and after-dinner cognac. He was stunningly attractive, and he knew it. Adin sighed. He had moment’s fear that Donte was having him on again, and then realized he was just intrigued by the man, who literally, and figuratively, took his breath away.

“Caro, you make me feel like a child who has played just a little too hard with a bird. I am all contrition. Look at me again with brave eyes, or I shall hate myself.”

Adin didn’t know what to feel. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“
P
iù amato.
What can I do to find forgiveness in your eyes? Would you like to tie me up and have your way with me? This might be what you call a win-win.”

Adin stared at him.

“I see I shall have to work harder then.” He smoked in silence while Adin sipped his whiskey. “I know. Will you go somewhere with me on faith, Adin? Will you let me show you something special? Something that perhaps only I can show you?”

“You’ve already shown me things only you can show me.” He thought about his damp trousers. “I’m not exactly standing for the encore.”

Donte processed this. “I am truly sorry, Adin.”

“I know.” Adin tossed back the rest of his drink. “
I know.
It’s only that I wasn’t afraid until that moment.”

Donte’s dark eyes found his as he stubbed out his cigar. “You should have been.”

He got up and walked away without turning to see if Adin followed. To Adin’s everlasting shame, he got to his feet and tagged right along behind Donte.

The valet called a taxi for them, and they waited in silence.

Once they were underway, Adin looked out the cab window. He checked his watch. Almost one a.m. Donte remained silent except for a brief phone call during which he spoke in hushed tones. Adin paid little attention to it, preferring to give Donte his privacy. Donte disconnected the call shut and said nothing further. They traveled only a few more minutes on Santa Monica Boulevard before the cab stopped near Gower, at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. They exited the cab, and Donte paid the driver handsomely to stay where he was until they returned.

A security guard stood at the gate, waiting to greet Donte. “Welcome back, Mr. Fedeltà.”

“Hello, Michael,” said Donte in a warm voice. “Thank you for this.”

“My pleasure. I’m glad I could help.” He unlocked the gate and pulled it open, allowing the men to enter. Donte walked along, seeming to know where he was going, so Adin followed. He comprehended that this silent, contemplative Donte was someone he didn’t yet know. Most of the grounds were lit by the ambient city lights, but Donte was leading him to shadowy places, niches where the overarching trees or monuments blocked the light.

Adin picked his way carefully. “Can’t we take the path?”

“I can see perfectly here. Walk where I walk, and you will be fine. I am at home in the darkness, as you might imagine. I have the permission of the family that owns this cemetery, and others like it, to research some of the names that are found here. They believe it is for a nonfiction book about Los Angeles.”

Adin could almost feel his smile.

“My credentials
were
impressive. At any rate, I’ve made friends with the guards.”

“Why would you do that?” Adin asked as he followed along, careful to step where Donte walked rather than stumble in the darkness.

“It suits me to walk among the dead.” Donte caught Adin’s hand and led him around a metal grid where water drained from the landscape. “I know that’s vaguely cliché, but believe me, it’s a delight to find a quiet place to think in a city this size.”

“You could try the botanical gardens,” Adin told him. “Far less cliché, and they have things you can eat there.”

Donte looked at Adin pointedly. “I have
things
I can eat here. Besides, as you can see, I have the run of the place at night. This cemetery was opened in 1899. That is comparable to the Dark Ages in terms of Los Angeles history. This is a city with little or no memory. Actually, I don’t like it much but I like this place, this city of the dead.”

He led Adin across a footbridge to a small building that seemed to float in the center of a lake. Donte urged Adin to sit with him on the steps.

“This is the Clark mausoleum. Frankly, I neither know nor care who William A. Clark, Jr., was.”

“He was the founder of the Los Angeles Philharmonic,” said Adin. “I come here mostly in the daylight when I’m in town to visit my sister, although last year they did
Hamlet
here in the summer evenings. That was fun. You’re going to get your nice suit all dirty, like my trousers, which will require dry cleaning thanks to you.”

“I said I was sorry, caro.”

They stayed silent for a few minutes, absorbing the sounds of the night: the city traffic and the soft music of the fountain in the small lake before them. The air smelled like earth and grass, and Adin shifted, leaning into the windbreak Donte provided. Donte put his arm around Adin and kissed his forehead with unexpected kindness.

“Fraternizing with the enemy?”

“Me or you?” asked Donte.

“Both.” Adin was afraid to take his hand. “Can you do that thing if you’re not touching me?”

“Yes.”

“I see. Please don’t.”

“Never again. Not to you, anyway. I started out to teach a lesson and learned one of my own.”

“Did you?” Adin asked. “What?”

“I might be a monster but I’m not really ready for you to see me that way. It is an uncomfortable curiosity. One I don’t have time to delve into.”

Adin sighed and took Donte’s hand in his, finding it cool to the touch. He interlaced their fingers and lifted them up in the dim light. “You have lovely hands. I was going to mention it. Artist’s hands. Your work in the journal is so wonderful.”

“I was a young man who found endless fascination in drawing the boy he loved. That is all.”

“It was lovely. Proof that men who loved men carried on grand affairs at a time when to do so would risk their lives. Why not leave it with me? Let it become public knowledge.”

“What you have is the only surviving proof that Auselmo lived. My—the woman I was married to, Renata, destroyed the rest.
Notturno
was hidden, along with some other things of mine to which I didn’t choose to allow her access.”

“Why did you call it
Notturno
? I’ve wondered because the musical meaning of
Notturno
came later, and—” Donte’s rumble of laughter cut off Adin’s words. “What?”

“That was my private joke, a kind of blasphemy. Of course, I was to make my nightly supplications to God, say my prayers like a good boy and shun vice and temptations. Yet I often found myself reliving the time I was able to spend with Auselmo. So the nightly vigil, the
nocturni
, became the time I used to ruminate on the boy I loved. I mouthed words by rote and let my mind wander. Mea culpa. I gave the journal the name to flaunt my transgression.” Donte shrugged. “I was young.”

Adin swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For your loss. It must have been terribly painful.” Donte said nothing. “What happened?”

“Renata had Auselmo killed. As you can see, she had a particularly spiteful way of dealing with me.” He flicked a moth off his jacket.

“
She
made you what you are?”

“Not personally, no. She outsourced—isn’t that what they call it now? She hired a foreigner.” Adin shivered, whether from cold or fear, he didn’t know, but Donte gave him a squeeze. “The joke was on her, though. I renewed our acquaintance at a masked ball she gave some years later. I invited her out to the garden and she went with me quietly, thinking I was someone else. I gave her no pleasure and it was like drinking battery acid, but she had a nice finish, which went rather well with a quite good Chianti they were serving that evening.”

“You are
making that up
,” said Adin, shocked.

“Only the part about the Chianti. I’m a rather-devoted cinemaphile and always liked that line.” Adin couldn’t help his laughter. “Now, have you forgiven me?”

“No.”

“Ah well. The reason I brought you here is to show you something, and show you I mean to do, whether you like it or not.”

“All right.”

“So acquiescent sometimes…so stubborn at others.” Donte gave his hand a firm tug but didn’t rise. An eerie glow began over the lake, as though Adin were looking through weak night-vision goggles. He could perceive the movement of things…insects and small animals where before he’d seen only darkness.

“Donte…”

“Shh…wait,” said Donte, still holding his hand.

As if the dawn were breaking, Adin now saw the cemetery itself, the lake, the fountain, the pathways… It was incredible. He felt the grass trembling in the breeze, saw and heard a cat moving stealthily behind some bushes. Farther away, he heard Michael, the security guard, humming the “Macarena” in his office where he watched the monitors. Adin caught far away scents like doughnuts frying in some distant shop and up close, the musk of the arousal that Donte had hidden all evening. He heard the beating of a number of hearts, only vaguely aware that Donte’s was not one of them. He heard birds rustling and exoskeletal insects scuttling along.

Adin turned to Donte with awe.

“Why are you doing this?” He saw Donte as if for the first time, his newly heightened senses drowned by the nearness of this man who attracted him so powerfully.

“Because I can. Because I thought it might please you.” Donte kissed the palm of his hand. “Does it?”

“Yes. Oh, yes. I want—” Adin turned in Donte’s arms and kissed him, pressing the advantage he gained by rising to his knees and looking down at the taller man. He cupped Donte’s face with his hands and looked into his eyes, finding surprise and subtle curiosity, in their depths.

Adin used his thumbs to trace the dignified sweep of Donte’s brow and once again touched his lips to the vampire’s, running his tongue carefully along the teeth and finding nothing more unusual in the act than the unfamiliar taste of cigars.

“No vampire teeth?” he murmured against Donte’s lips.

“Not when I’m not planning to use them,” Donte whispered back.

Adin felt wrapped in a cocoon of night and sensation with him.

“And you’re not?”

“Not now, anyway.” Donte hesitated. “I brought you here so you could see things as I see them.”

Adin was quiet for a while, listening at what he considered the closed door of something he could never possibly comprehend. This was what Donte was privy to all the time, the thrumming, vibrant exchange of air and rushing of fluids that was life itself at its most primitive. Adin was unprepared for the fear it evoked.

“It’s immense,” he said at last.

“It frightens you,” said Donte. “I can taste your fear on the air around you.”

“Yes.” Adin pressed his face against Donte’s cheek, allowing a shuddering sigh to escape his lips. It sounded terribly loud to his newly keen senses.

“Caro, you must understand that while I was once a human man, I am no longer anything of the kind. That which made me human, and sympathy for humans themselves, that elusive quality of empathy, was eradicated long ago.”

“I find it difficult to believe that your humanity was completely eradicated.” Adin sat back down, straddling Donte in an unseemly thrilling way.

“Believe it,” Donte said implacably. “We perceive things in an entirely different way.”

“Yes, but—”

“Please, Adin.” Donte took Adin’s hands off his face and laced them with his own in his lap. “Please don’t underestimate me. It would be the height of foolishness to see me as a man, and I don’t believe you are a fool.”

“You look like a man.”

“Looks deceive.” The mist coming off the grass made Donte’s hair curl up in the front, where it was longer. It gave him such a boyish, vulnerable air that Adin ached to put his hands in it.

“They do. That’s very true.” Adin gave Donte’s hands a gentle squeeze.

“I am no longer capable of compassion, Adin.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” Donte asked. “Do you really understand what it means? The book you bought with
money
, transported in
plastic
, looked at under a
microscope
, and joked about with your friends is all that is left of my soul.”

“Your soul.” Adin could almost feel the individual pistons firing in the cars going down Santa Monica Boulevard as they sat, experiencing everything at the same time and nothing at all
together
. “Donte?”

“What?”

“Do the dead walk? Are there ghosts here I can’t see?”

Donte gave a small smile. “No, caro. I don’t think so, although often I have wished they would walk with me if they did. I think only the undead walk, the living with them, and those that are in between, who are alive but do not know how precious that is.”

He pushed Adin back and got up off the cold stone step.

“Come, caro. I fear I’ve been thoughtless. You’re cold. It’s time to take you home.” He tugged at Adin’s hand, and they began along the path again. Adin made the most of the experience. Adin’s new awareness pressed in all around him, crushing him as he sank deeper and deeper into Donte’s world.

The cool familiarity of Donte’s hand in his was vaguely reassuring. It was a moment of tenderness in a place made up of nothing but sensation.

“Donte, in all this time, there’s never been anyone but Auselmo?”

“Oh, caro. There have been many, many, many…and none.” They walked back to the gate where Donte had left the cab waiting for them and said good night to Michael. Adin’s senses returned slowly to normal. He entered the cab and was glad for the loss; even with his normal senses, the smoke clinging to the driver’s clothing overcame him.