Cool evening breezes rolled off the San Francisco Bay to play amid Dion's blue-black hair and ask him, "What are you doing here?" The winking starscape of harbor lights like corpse candles at his back joined the night, inquiring, "Why have you come?" The Prussian blue two-story seemed to have a question as well; one that went unasked as he ascended its steps.
"You tell me, and we'll all know," Dion answered them, ringing the doorbell of the leaning Victorian. He paced along the whining porch until the door opened. When it did, he strode inside without speaking to the man who greeted him.
Why the fuck had he come here?
***
"Don't sleep," the demons whispered through the mad pretty boy's lips when Dion arrived, prompting Tristan to burst into fresh tears. Dion ignored the tears as he always did, because concentration was survival in paranormal cleansing, and because it disgusted him that self-reliance remained an apparent stranger to Tristan, even now that their relationship was more than a year ended.
"Thad," Tristan croaked, hugging himself. His face was a wound from which the faint word fluttered and fell like a drop of putrid blood, like a bird dying in flight. Dion eyed the inky black mane of hair tickling Thad's shoulders, noted the narrow waist and skin tautly stretched across shoulder blades that threatened to slice their way into the moonlight. Tristan's taste in lovers would never change. Dion swept a rope of his own jet hair away from his black-painted lips. At his ears and wrists, silver chimed.
Dion tried again to forget that Tristan had spent the last thirteen months of their relationship fucking Thad in his pretty van, and spoke to the demons. His voice remained level. Tristan remembered that it always did, even during the kind of fuck that sears away all of life's insecurities with its heat and daring. It was good of Dion to come over tonight.
The whip-thin paranormal investigator approached the naked pretty boy who crouched in a corner of the bedroom that he shared with Tristan. "In the name and authority of the Creator Energy, governing force of order, we renounce the chaos presiding in the life of this man. We bind all evil spirits assigned to this man, Thad Pryce, and forbid you to operate in any way, in the name of the Creator Force."
"We'll steal from your nightmares to rip out your heart, yesss," the voices hissed from between Thad's teeth, sounding like rain against a tin roof, "Don't sleep. We'll choke you, yesss, with our cock. Don't sleep." Thad's pretty grin flickered. His meticulously-blanched face contorted, flesh flattening as if seeking to divorce his skull and flee the scene. Milky fluid overflowed his mouth, collecting in thick globs beneath his chin. Stinking globs of it splattered the carpet like spoiled milk. Pumping his mutilated erection in one furious fist the way he'd been doing for hours, he leered up at Dion and scattered droplets of bloody semen-piss in his vicinity.
"Oh God, oh my God," Tristan sniffed.
The demons laughed and parroted Tristan's words. Their humor remained lost to all but the evil spirits crowding Thad's skull.
"In the name of Creation, I command all evil to leave this place now!" Dion said, and tried not to hold past pretty lies against the naked man defecating at his feet. Dion no longer held to convenient lies the way some people did in order just to make it through life.
Tristan shuddered as the black velvet room reeled around him. Just standing still was like trying to balance himself on the head of a pin, as if some nightmare found him trapped in this room upon this floor that felt like the deck of a storm-tossed ocean liner.
"How does this happen?" he demanded, "Dion, tell me how this kind of thing happens!"
"Later. Right now, take this and hold it steady".
Tristan took the compact video camera from Dion and brought Thad into its frame. His naked lover snarled at him as Dion reissued to the demons his commands to vacate. Dion hated cameras from both ends, with passion enough to fill twelve hearts, but recording phenomena of this nature, he hoped, would prove beneficial. Dion intended to utilize this data for the weekly paranormal cleansing lessons he taught after hours in the basement of his occult bookstore called The JuJu Den. With luck, the growing library of video footage taken from his cases would imbue the practice with greater credibility.
"We will rip out your heart, yesss," the presence inside Thad cooed.
"Evil, we return you to the abyss," Dion intoned in a firm voice. Thad spat on Dion's boot and laughed like an infant being tickled, only the sound that came out was more like a dying man retching. Thad's infant, however, sounded more like a dying man retching, possessing none of the crystal lilt to be noted in any human child's laughter.
Tristan ventured a sulking "I should have called a priest," and Dion's silence cut him down immediately. Dion was the only person he'd ever met who could wound him to the bone without making a sound. It was the same silence he'd used to reserve in the days when they'd belonged to one another, for anytime Tristan mentioned ex-lovers.
When Dion's rage did find voice, his tone was scathing.
"Then call one. I'm only here because you roused me from sleep at 2 a.m. and begged me to come. Call your priest and we'll all join hands and pray to his god of hefty collection plate contributions intended to buy a place in Heaven," Dion told him. "If you're not going to take this seriously, I can walk the hell out of here and you're on your own," Tristan knew he meant it.
His words cut all the deeper for Dion's issuing the ultimatum with his back turned, as if Tristan were a dog he'd tired of kicking, a whore he could soil no further and could no longer bear sight of. That he'd missed Dion, and that Dion was doing him and Thad no small favor in coming over tonight were the only reasons Tristan put up with it. Or so he told himself. Leaving Dion for Thad was nothing, after all, if not Tristan's declaration that his days of tolerating the timeless ebb and flow of Dion's moods, which shifted as unpredictably as the tides, were over. Still if there existed any period in his life to which it were possible for Tristan to return and explore roads not taken, he would choose to revisit their breakup and handle things nobly; the way Dion would have, had their roles been exchanged.
"I apologize," Tristan told him flatly, foregoing the petulant tone to which he'd grown accustomed. That crap might fly in arguments with Thad, but Dion wouldn't tolerate it. Never had. With Dion, Tristan had to damn well mean whatever he said. The fading sincerity contained in his I love you's and forever's had served Dion as first indication that their relationship was a scuttled ship intent on drowning them; one from which neither man would escape. Tristan always had been a poor liar.
Dion ignored the apology. "You wouldn't have a decent single-malt on hand, would you?"
"You know I don't drink the stuff," Tristan clutched himself as he spoke, never removing his eyes from Thad for fear of what his demon-infected lover might do.
Dion left the room, intent on surveying the liquors cradled in the new mahogany bar setup he'd noticed on passing through the salon. He disappeared into the corridor and into darkness that seemed to caress him. Silver charms adorning his boots jingled, their music echoing along the unfurnished hallway. Tristan knew the absence of an additional snipe from Dion was as close as he would get to an apology. The absence of an additional snipe from him was as close to an apology as Tristan would receive and he knew it.
"Rings on her fingers, yessss, and bells on her toes, she shall have music wherever she goes, yessss..." laughed the spirits as they evacuated Thad Pryce's bowels on the carpet another time. The rising stench of blood and ichor stung Tristan's eyes, seeming to further darken the room.
Either spiritual cleansing was thirsty work, or this case was proving more difficult than Dion was letting on. The snifter of brandy—alas, there was no scotch to be had—that returned with him to the bedroom evidenced as much. There was love in the way he clutched it. It echoed the way he'd used to seize Tristan's chin before a kiss. The hold he maintained on a familiar bottle he'd retrieved from the bar held considerably less affection.
"You opened. . .this?" Dion asked Tristan, lifting the red carved glass vessel into view. Its mute indictment hung between the two men. Tristan recognized it immediately.
"I. . .I didn't think you'd mind," Tristan lied, as a strange kind of shamed vindication set his veins throbbing, "You and I weren't together anymore."
Dion, for the first time in Tristan's recollection, looked hurt. Stinging with the knowledge that Tristan had opened the bottle they'd sealed together last year on the night of their anniversary, Dion felt his stomach begin to burn. He tipped its opened end toward the carpet, shaking out dust motes from where once something precious had dwelled.
Good, Tristan thought. It was about time something hurt him.
"I can't believe you. . .did that," Dion sighed. His gaze loathed; it damned the world like eyes belonging to the mother of a murdered child. If he could have crawled inside that bottle dangling from Dion's silver-hugged wrist and sealed himself inside forever, Tristan would have. Anything to escape the mounting frost growing in the dusty air between them. But damn if he was sorry for what he'd done.
The fucking thing meant as much to him as it did to Dion. The bottle of 1982 Guigal Cote Rotie la Landonne Cote Rotie had cost them $355 dollars on the auction block. They had leapt at the purchase.
At the time, the sum seemed a pittance to pay for the enjoyment of sharing such a tasting experience at year's end on their anniversary. So the lovers had purchased the elegant red bottle they found among the offerings of the flea market they'd stopped at en route home from the auction. Once home, they'd emptied the vintage wine into the more attractive bottle. Dion had used the miniature misericord he carried everywhere in his boot to lance his ring finger and Tristan's. The welling blood droplets that ensued, they'd contributed to the bottle as well, at Dion's suggestion. At the time, he joked that this act and the intimacy of which it was representative made the wine sacramental. Then they'd corked the bottle, and kept it in their kitchen's spirit cupboard, not to be opened until the evening of their five-year anniversary. It would be a special treat to enjoy on that night devoted to celebrating their love.
But Dion's kind of man made love a curse and sentimentality a liability. Where the fuck did he get off acting as if he was the only member of their relationship who'd been victimized? No, Tristan did not regret having opened the bottle with his new lover Thad, as he'd once planned to do with Dion, back when it was Dion upon whom Tristan's world depended.
The red glass vessel, etched with the kinds of ornate fluting flourishes that only artisans of Italian descent can render with conviction, looked nothing like the one-time testimony to affectionate trust that it had been. It looked chintzy; just an inexpensive, badly-crafted wine jug. A bargain-store bauble.
"We took an oath, Tristan. A blood oath," Dion seethed, "A blood. Fucking. Oath."
Dion's chest heaved. Had Tristan just witnessed a sob? He couldn't be certain, but remained unabashedly hopeful.
"I'm not sorry," Tristan told him.
"In the history of the world, no greater untruth was ever spoken," Dion murmured as he turned on his heel, carrying the bottle with him like a warrior's trophy. His tone had turned vitriolic, the sound of a rape victim confronting an assailant. Tristan watched him go, too angry to call after him. The slamming of the Victorian's front door reported like a shotgun blast.
***
Dion felt the night embrace him as he stepped onto the sidewalk leading toward San Francisco Bay. He would answer no more calls from Tristan. Their association had ended in the only way it could. Dion had taken steps to ensure this above all else.
The aging Prussian Blue Victorian no longer seemed to house an unspoken question. Nor did the starry night sky ask anything of Dion as he left it behind without a backward glance. When he spoke, he did not wonder whether his message would be received by the party he addressed. Tipping the red carved bottle to his lips, Dion spoke softly into it.
"You are indentured to me no longer," Dion whispered to the three malevolent entities he'd left wrestling inside a bottle of wine more than a year ago, the ones still ravaging the body and soul of Thad Pryce. That he'd not only left without concluding his cleansing ritual, but left behind his video camera was of no greater concern to him than was Tristan's opinion of him. Both Thad and Tristan could go to hell as far as he was concerned. He heard Thad roar, a pitiful, bloody sound, and mused that it seemed the two were already there.
The howls of the demons, greeted him from within the vessel just as they did the day he whispered their names into the bottle for the first time, sealing the three damned souls under his charge inside its confines. On that day when he and Tristan purchased the red bottle, on that day when weeks of skullduggery finally rewarded Dion with the name of the man with whom Tristan had been cheating on him, Dion had set a trap.
The expert spiritual cleanser also knew a thing or two about conjuration. Manifesting the three spirits within the bottle without Tristan's knowledge, he'd watched him transfer their red wine purchase into it. There was no way Tristan could have known the real reason behind Dion's addition of their mingled blood. There was no way he could have known that once sealed, the bottle, if opened by any person other than he who'd sealed the malevolent spirits within its ruby confines, would release those entities to wreak spiritual havoc upon their emancipator. Dion didn't have to wonder whether Tristan would, should their relationship falter as predicted, open the bottle and damn himself and his new lover. Try as he might to seem in control of his whims and fancies, he was a predictable one, Tristan was.
Dion was almost sorry he'd conjured the demons and set them upon the couple.
Almost.
Harbor lights winked at Dion from the blackness at the horizon's edge. Silver at Dion's ears and wrists winked back.
***
Nearly an hour passed before Tristan dared consider leaving the master bedroom's locked bath. Huddled in a corner, he winced and splashed peroxide over his ravaged forearm again, watching its frothing pools fill the deep meaty wounds ripped by the talons Thad had grown. He would not again commit the crime of approaching the naked madman with a warm soapy washcloth, nor would he repeat the mistake of seeking to physically overpower a possessed individual, but everything had happened so fast. Such a feral reaction to the warm washcloth was a thing Tristan could not possibly have anticipated, or so he assured himself. He rewrapped his forearm in the bath towel he'd yanked down from the shower rod, and ignored the voice within his head berating him for being taken by surprise in a way that Dion never would have.
He wondered whether Thad would remember attacking him. With luck, the sound of exploding glass as Thad shattered the bedroom's only window meant that his lover had fled. The knowledge that he couldn't very well spend the remainder of his life cowering in the potty did little to alter the fact that that was exactly what Tristan felt prepared to do, rather than risk facing the demons inside Thad a second time. Tristan hugged himself and began his twelfth recitation of the Lord's Prayer as it occurred for the first time to him just how large and dark and terrifying was the four-bedroom house on the other side of the bathroom door.
***
Dion got to bed around 4:30 a.m., prepared to sleep the sleep of the vindicated. Spiritual cleansing really did take a lot out of him, though this was something he'd have died smiling before admitting to anyone, Tristan in particular. He thought of his former lover his cheating former lover, he amended, and savored the emotional cocktail swirling in his gut. Anger and loss, a sense of closure he hadn't realized he missed until tonight, the faintest of amusement; these were his bedmates tonight, and Dion embraced them with affection.
He had no idea how long he'd been asleep when the first whisper captured his ear.
"Warned you..." it said, "yessss...you were warned not to sleep."
Dion sat up in bed, searching the somnolent darkness for a sound he questioned having heard in the first place. The darkness gaped back at him, expectant, waiting. Dion made up his mind that he'd dreamed the sound into being. Then the room's darkness spoke to him, and his eyes adjusted to the motionless figure standing immersed in the shadows at the foot of his bed.
"Prisoners no more... free, yessss... freed by you... Nice..." hissed the three voices joining his.
Dion managed a brazen "What the fuck"- before the motionless figure leapt at him, slicing his biceps with its inhumanly strong grip. Dion felt his bones splinter beneath the crushed muscles as the figure's weight came down on his chest to pin him into place.
"Nice to have flesh again to repay you, yessss, repay you...don't sleep..." crooned the demons residing behind the familiar face as Dion choked on Thad's cock.
