The Neverloving Dead, page 6
Had he been saying there was another way to build strength? One that didn’t involve living people?
Believe me, I’d want that even less than you would.
Like, Gethin doubted that. The last thing he wanted to be anywhere near, in his state, was a sodding incubus. On the other hand, he didn’t know what the priest had meant – what feeding a ghost involved. And if he didn’t at least find out, he’d just be letting the killer kill again, wouldn’t he, since there was bugger all that he could do otherwise. He’d tried, hadn’t he? Over and bloody over.
It struck him that the priest had just said something. Asked him if something was wrong, maybe. Probably cos Gethin was still leaking rainbows all over the flipping place.
Stuart clunked the laptop shut, reaching for some tissues and wiping his belly, folding the tissues around the jizz, frowning again.
Gethin looked back at the priest, hoping whatever it was wasn’t too, well... incubussy. “What did you mean,” he asked, “when you said about feeding me yourself?”
In thirty-six years of life and three years of death, Gethin had never seen a flatter look from anyone.
“No,” the priest replied. “Absolutely not.”
CHAPTER 5
RULE 3: NEVER GET SUCKED IN
PATRICK
“So there we have it,” Patrick said, purposefully not looking at Gethin, whose name he knew now, anyway. “We’ll find another way.” They were sitting in two leather Chesterfield chairs in Stuart’s lounge, which Patrick had insisted upon so this ‘Gethin’ wouldn’t have to travel back through a wall when he was so weak. He’d explained most of the problem: how feeding a ghost would drain his energy; how it would set him back; how he, Patrick, might lose his mind if he had to stay here much longer; how it would be difficult to do anyway. Dangerous.
For Gethin, he’d stressed.
He hadn’t mentioned some distant, inexplicable sense that it might be dangerous for him, too, for reasons other than draining his energy, which made no sense.
Nor had he mentioned what had happened to him after Stuart had climaxed – the fact he’d felt almost visible at the same time as being solid. That he’d even thought Stuart had seen him. Just briefly.
Or an impression of him.
That meant he was nearly there. Now, more than ever, he mustn’t jeopardise his one path out of this unending, meaningless emptiness. How long had solidity and visibility together been his Holy Grail? How long had he worked for them? The living had no idea what they possessed, just in those two simple things.
There could be no better way to ruin that than regularly siphoning off his energy to build another ghost’s solidity for them. Let alone a ghost who was already on the razor’s edge of oblivion. The only reason Patrick knew it was even possible was because a ghost had once done it for him. Once. When he’d nearly starved himself after his accidental killing.
The ghost who’d saved him hadn’t fed him repeatedly though, as a way to make him solid. If he, Patrick, did that for Gethin, he’d have to find sleeping men nearly constantly to make up for it. And that was without the idea of this ghost sucking his cock over and over. Again and again. His lips wrapped around it.
Patrick swallowed, unnecessarily. The thought was almost intolerable.
Unsettling.
That was without the fact it would clearly traumatise Gethin to do it.
He folded his hands, doing his best to process the frankly horrendous tale the Welshman had just told him – with almost none of his customary anger – about what had happened to him. How he’d died. Why he couldn’t get his form the way Patrick did.
Even by the standards of some of the many, many horrible deaths Patrick had heard about in nearly two and half centuries of existence, it was appalling.
And he understood, at last, the Welshman’s difficulty with how he fed. Why he saw Patrick as a monster.
Again, Patrick wasn’t sure he wasn’t one.
He looked at Gethin across the coffee table, a little guiltily, wishing he could scrub the Welshman’s words from his ears. Again, he thought of how he’d drilled down, thirsty and unknowing, into that last spark of life. Of the sheer amount of energy it had given him. Of how he wished, even now, that he could give it back.
“Right?” Gethin said, as if he’d been waiting. His arms were folded, colours still oozing faintly from him. “What other way?”
Patrick stroked the cover of his book gently, uncomfortable. The fact was he didn’t know many other ways – not if the other ghost was sickened by human bodies. Gethin had already ruled out blood banks on the grounds he’d probably take more lives than he saved, and now sperm banks too, after what Patrick had said. “Animals?” he suggested.
“Animals?”
“Their blood, I mean,” he added hastily. “Though you’d have to get them to stay still. They tend to spook at ghosts.” He hadn’t intended the pun.
Gethin’s lip curled as if he lacked words heinous enough to describe Patrick.
Patrick looked downwards, drumming his fingers on the book. “And you’re certain he’s going to kill again?”
“Crikey, can you just stop with the whole supercilious thing? Of course I’m bloody certain.” He sighed, rubbing his throat, which he did a lot.
Patrick hadn’t really doubted the killing thing. Not after the story. It had just been a hope. He stroked the book, comforted, as always, to feel its leather cover under his fingertips. It had once been his Bible. He’d died with it stuffed in his robes, his way of holding onto God as he’d gone. The words had faded over time, as they’d left his memory; and he couldn’t write new ones, since even if he’d had a pen, the only shapes ghosts could form in limbo were circles, reflecting the maddening pointlessness of ‘life’ here. The pages displayed whatever he remembered, though. Some biblical passages, yes, but also snippets of philosophy or poetry, even parts of some novels he’d read: A Picture of Dorian Grey, Orlando, The Well of Loneliness.
“The feelings usually kick in each morning, then get worse as the day goes on.” Gethin rubbed his face. “I dunno what the fuck to do.”
Patrick didn’t reply. What was there to say?
Gethin huffed, rubbing his throat again. “I mean one thing I do know is I don’t want to suck your ghost-dick. Like fair play, I’m sorry I asked. I didn’t realise that’s what this ‘feeding’ thing would involve. For ghosts too, I mean.” He ground his eyes into his palms, then looked up, blinking. “Can I not just suck your finger or something?”
It annoyed Patrick. Not so much the fact his plan had been going perfectly well until he’d selected Stuart as a meal – but the reminder of how hideous the Welshman plainly found him. He held up an ugly hand. Wiggled his ghastly, bloodless fingers. “You’re welcome to try.”
And why in all heaven had he said that? He knew it wouldn’t work. All that would happen was that he’d have to watch a beautiful, angry man suck his finger. “But there’d be no point,” he added. “It’s the orgasm that matters.” He set his hand awkwardly back onto the book. “It’s a large release of energy. Without that, I’d be taking your energy, since mine is stronger. Whatever you sucked.”
Had his voice gone quieter as he’d said the last three words? Lower? He swallowed, again forgetting he didn’t need to.
Gethin gave him a long look. Patrick felt rather as if he were having his soul weighed. He felt monstrous. Gethin had told him what had happened, and what had he done? Waggled his fingers and started talking about orgasms.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “How can a ghost have an orgasm?”
Patrick winced. He was feckless and insensitive. Of course the Welshman hadn’t tried – not with how he’d died. It would have been the last thing he wanted. He should probably change the subject. Stop making everything worse. “Memory, I think. The mind is powerful.” He realised he was stroking the book again and stopped. “Though there’s more to it than that. Orgasms are stronger the more energy one has.” He’d masturbated a few times since he’d died – sometimes in solid form, sometimes not. He’d eventually given up on both, since he needed all his energy for rebuilding his form. The truth was, he’d had more orgasms when he’d been alive than in his entire, long death.
Though it was better not to think about that. Or to tell Gethin. The man didn’t need to hear about his piteous orgasm count.
“Is there jizz?”
“Is there...?”
“Come,” Gethin said. “Ejaculate. Sperm. When a ghost orgasms.”
Patrick tried not to think about that either. “Obviously not.”
“Can you try not to patr– You know what? Never mind. I just thought I might be able to manage the sucking if I knew there wouldn’t be any come. I was just trying to think of ways to get stronger, to do something, you know? Like I can’t go anywhere so, short of my killer turning up and attacking Stuart here, I’m not going to find him, am I?” He huffed again. “And even if he did, how the sodding heck would I stop him?”
He wasn’t actually considering it, was he?
Gethin raised a broad, tanned hand. “Don’t worry. I told you I don’t want to suck you off.”
Again, Patrick tried not to let his ranklement show. Gethin had looked so contemptuous as he’d spoken. Of course he had. “Well,” he said, hearing his own cool drawl. “There I was thinking stopping your killer was your priority – the entire reason you’re holding yourself in limbo. But apparently, your commitment stops short of fellating one consenting man who can’t even ejaculate!” He broke off, reminding himself: anger lost energy.
He’d get his body back. His chance.
Gethin flinched. Or possibly it was just a frown. “One consenting man? You just said you didn’t want me to!”
“That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t,” he snapped. And what the fuck was he doing now? He didn’t consent. He had said that. He was finally getting close to his future – the last thing he needed was to be drained. Especially whilst watching Gethin’s disgust.
“Gosh, well, aren’t you the gracious one?” Gethin replied, as if Patrick had somehow offended him. He rubbed the back of his head. “Look, forget it. It’s not your problem. I don’t want it, you don’t want it and it sounds like it’d make a pig’s ear of your plans.”
Your foul incubus plans, he might as well have said. Patrick drummed the book cover again, more sharply. “Well, if you’re going to solve your problem, it looks like it’s an incubus, your delicious, handsome flatmate, straws of semen, or getting animals to stand still while you drink their blood like a vampire, doesn’t it?” He knew he was deflecting. He didn’t need to care that Gethin thought him grotesque, he told himself. It didn’t mean nobody else would ever choose him.
“Delicious, is he? I thought you said you didn’t do it for pleasure.”
“I was being flippant. This is purely about practicalities: bringing your killer to justice enables us both to move on. In opposite directions,” he added pointedly.
Gethin scowled, as if he found Patrick confusing. Another thin ribbon of colour floated up from his shirt, wrapping back around his bicep. “Only one of us is trying to move on,” he said eventually. “You want to go backwards.”
“I’m damned,” Patrick returned. Again, he sounded more snappish than he’d have liked. “So my choice of direction is limited.”
He had to stop letting his feelings rise. Stop letting this ghost get to him. Emotions are dangerous, he reminded himself. He packed them down.
“Right, well, in that case.” Gethin stood, continuing to glower in the same strange way. As if Patrick had said the exact, awful thing he’d been priming himself to hear. Patrick couldn’t see what.
“What?” he said. Was Gethin about to fly into another rage? Leap across the coffee table and attack him? Unravel and move on after all, beaten by the very circumstances that had kept him here?
Gethin began moving closer, footfalls as silent as any ghost, despite the fact he still used his human gait. From his expression, the bootheels should have echoed on Stuart’s floorboards like gallows drums. He stopped about a foot away, navel level with Patrick’s eyes, looking down, as if Patrick were a wall. “You’re right,” he said. “If this is what I have to do, it’s what I have to do.” He lifted his eyebrows, barely. “How does it work?”
Patrick tried to dampen some stray feeling or another, reminding himself: feelings were for when he had his body.
“We can only touch when we’re both solid or both non-solid, right?” Gethin pressed.
What on earth was he doing? He couldn’t mean... “Yes,” Patrick said anyway. He paused, evening out his tone. “Though you lack control and you’re too weak to maintain solidity right now. If yours dropped, I could kill you.” He forced himself to keep looking stoically upwards, as if he didn’t find Gethin standing this close odd in the slightest.
“Right, so we’d both have to stay like this, would we: non-solid?”
He just couldn’t be suggesting... “Yes.” This wasn’t really about to happen, was it? Gethin wasn’t actually saying he wanted Patrick to feed him? He had a fleeting imagination of Gethin going to his knees. Or was he waiting for Patrick to stand?
Everything suddenly seemed equally unlikely.
“Do you still consent?”
Did he still... he had implied he would, hadn’t he?
He realised his thumbs were stroking the cover again. He should say no, he thought. Because Gethin shouldn’t – though he supposed that was Gethin’s business. But also because he, Patrick, was meant to be saving energy. Building it.
For the future.
To enjoy it.
To enjoy men.
He looked up at the one in front of him: mostly see-through, yes, but muscular, comely, vibrant.
Even the thought made him feel vile and immoral. Everything Gethin already thought he was.
Would it help atone for the man he’d killed, he wondered, if he was giving life force instead of taking it? It would help stop a serial killer, some part of him added, unhelpfully.
And it had been so very, very long. Would one feeding really set him back so much? Just as a trial?
Gethin looked like he was steeling himself to wrestle lions. “Do you?”
Under the gaze, Patrick was stunned by how small his objections looked. How hard they were to see. “Yes.”
It came out so quietly he might not have known he’d said it, had it not been for Gethin pressing the button through on his fly and lowering the zip. Patrick didn’t know where to look. Gethin parted the material and pushed the jeans down. The entire groin area of the jeans vanished, leaving denim material around Gethin’s thighs only, fabric fading into the skin. One never really took off one’s death clothes in limbo, but they could be disappeared. Like this.
Patrick might not know where to look, but his eyes weren’t having the same doubts. They roved hungrily over the toned muscle and bare skin, as if they didn’t see naked groins every single night. This was no different, he told them. To no avail.
He has an aversion to sex, he reminded himself instead.
Perhaps because of that, it was something of a shock to see Gethin’s entire pubic area was shaven, as it must have been on the night of his death. His hipbones were forward-facing, rude-looking, somehow. His cock was soft, the foreskin hugging the head like a cowl. The ridge was visible beneath, even in the gloom with Gethin himself partly transparent.
“Would you mind going first, then?” Gethin said in a rather transactional tone. He made no move to touch himself. His cock just hung there, resting on his naked balls.
Patrick forced his gaze up. It was probably just the fact Gethin was standing up, he told himself. He wasn’t accustomed to vertical men. Or maybe it was because it was the first penis someone had offered him since the ghost who’d saved him, centuries ago. Obviously, he’d have some sort of reaction, even if Gethin looked more determined than desirous. “You don’t have enough energy,” Patrick said, throat tight. Again, he felt the dim, creeping memory of the noose.
As if there were a threat. As if Gethin were a threat.
Just the fear of killing him, he told himself. Or of me losing more energy when it’s my turn. Naturally, those things would make him feel strange – as if his future was shrinking to nothing all over again. His groin throbbed. His throat seemed to burn. “I’d drain you,” he added. “That’s the opposite of what you’re trying to achieve.”
Gethin frowned, jaw setting. “I don’t mean me coming,” he said. “I get that that would drain me, but neither of us are solid, so it should be okay otherwise, shouldn’t it?”
He was right, of course. If Patrick didn’t get carried away...
Which did feel like an ‘if’.
He looked back at Gethin’s penis. He could still see straight through it, and it hadn’t got any harder. He did have an urge to take it in his mouth, to make it hard, to see if he could taste anything from a ghost and, if so, what Gethin would taste like. He pushed the urge down. Gethin had said he didn’t want this. He plainly found Patrick repugnant. And besides which, he reminded himself yet again, he didn’t want to lose his future.
He needed it.
“I’m sorry,” he said, surprised at the soft flutter of disappointment in his chest. “I can’t.”
Gethin’s expression was a little too level, a little too hard. “I see. Incubi can’t suck people unless they’re unconscious, is it?”
Patrick knew the “is it” was just something Welsh people added sometimes, but it sat awkwardly anyway: as if Gethin wanted him to agree about how awful he was. He looked away. “Actually, I meant...” But what more was there to say? He’d already told Gethin he’d waited a long time. It hardly seemed as important as a killer on the loose.
It wasn’t as important as a killer on the loose.
Or Gethin bravely baring himself, after what had happened to him.
Gethin sighed, rubbing his eyes. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for. Look, it’s not... I just needed to see if I could do it, you know? If I went first... well, I thought it might even things up, give me a bit of control over things. Trust me, I wouldn’t have asked otherwise. I’d have just got on with sucking you.” He ran a hand down his prick, pulling and releasing the foreskin a few times, looking troubled.
