Underwear Ch. 05

"Okay," he told them reluctantly. "I'll give it a go."

***

Paul helped him to prepare. Rayne was adamant that Kevan's idea of what was feminine would not work in this context. Having seen the more decent pictures of the girls who survived, Paul agreed with the Vampire. They were back at Rayne's apartment discussing wardrobe requirements with the young shop-keeper. The blond man had appointed himself Rayne's dresser straight away and Rayne had a little more confidence in his choices.

"These kids look like students," Paul pointed out, with a little frown. "He's not going for classy girls, or even for those that like to show a bit of flesh, I reckon. You said this is the kind of thing she was wearing on the night she was attacked?"

"Yeah," Kev nodded gravely.

The Manchester girl's shirt was open and off the shoulders to show the extent of her bruises but fastened it was probably quite a demure item. She was wearing jeans and Timberland boots. Her short, bobbed hair was dark and plain with no adornment and her makeup was very simple; a little eyeliner and a dab of lipgloss. In contrast the kid from Newark wore no makeup at all, though her round, pretty face probably did not need it. Her hair was slightly longer; dark and straight like some of the oriental students wore theirs. There was a streak of pink in it. She was clad in a knee-length, button-up dress with a black cardigan, black over knee socks and hi-top style trainers. There were countless little strings of coloured beads around her slim wrists. Rayne chewed on his lips in silent condemnation. She looked younger than her alleged sixteen years, he thought.

He realised that Paul was looking contemplatively at him and nodding his head. Now the blond man murmured; "I think we can manage this."

Rayne closed his eyes. The girl was a kindred soul. As a child he would have dressed in a similar way, casual jeans and hand-me down shirts without the uniform regularity of labels and stamp of commercial fashion. He loved the stripe of bright colour and her black painted fingernails. Kids like this had come to Whipsnade's shows all the time; they were his children and he owed it to them now to catch the bastard who had taken her innocence in his bare hands and ripped it to shreds.

"Let's do it," he said in a grim tone of voice.

Paul took him upstairs to a little office room in Amberley's to perform the transformation whilst Dave and Kevan waited down in the deserted store. Outside, Rayne could dimly hear the steady clamour of the city as it carried on with its day to day business. He knew that they were groping in the darkness with this attempt to catch their rapist. There was an easier way, which he would have mentioned if he did not think that Kev would turn up his nose at it. He could meet the girl and taste her blood, recover her memories and use them to hunt her attacker to the death. Rayne would have preferred to do things his way but he knew that Kev was likely to veto any such suggestions. The police wanted the rapist behind bars, even if Rayne doubted that he would stay there quite as long as he deserved to. He was not in the mood for an argument with Kevan Delaney, so soon after their recent bust up over McCall. Things were only just getting back to normal between them. Kev had been as good as his word over the promise he made. There had been no mention of Brian and no further attempts to persuade him to play 'virgin'.

But, Kevan was a dedicated copper. He would do anything in his power to ensure that they caught this menace; even keeping his boyfriend sweet so that he played along with their plan.

"Don't scowl," Paul said quietly, struggling to keep his makeup minimal and yet still feminine. "I'll fuck up your eyeline."

"Sorry," he muttered. "I was... somewhere else."

"Are you scared?" Paul asked him, dabbing a moisturised tissue in the corner of Rayne's eye and drawing another line of black over the first to define it firmly.

"No," the Vampire said atonally, reminding himself at the last minute that Paul had no idea what he was dealing with. This ignorance was reinforced when the blond man whispered;

"I'd be bricking it! What makes Kev think that you'll fare any better with this pervert? I mean, I know you're a man, but..."

Rayne raised an enquiring eyebrow.

"But...?"

"Well, you're tiny!" Paul said apologetically. "I'm sorry, but you are. There's nothing to you! And what are you gonna do when he pulls your skirt up and finds out you're a boy? He'll freak out!"

"Maybe he won't find out," Rayne said with a challenging look.

"You've got a cock!"

"And you can help me hide it, like you did before," Rayne reminded him. "That afternoon when we went back to yours."

Paul shook his head solemnly.

"He's still going to find out you've no pussy!" he argued.

"Maybe, but then he doesn't fuck them in the pussy does he!" the Vampire explained with a little sigh. "That's why I'm up for this detail, soldier! Both the girls that got away said they were raped in the arse. One of them was fucked in the mouth as well but he doesn't touch their cunts. He might never even twig."

"What if Kev and the cops don't show up in time?" Paul asked nervously.

He shrugged again, examining the dark green nails that Paul had manicured and painted for him before he began on Rayne's makeup.

"I'm in trouble," he said casually. "Or he is."

"What do you mean?" Paul asked, narrow-eyed.

"Nothing... forget it. Kev'll be tailing me like a fuckin' bloodhound. He'll show up with the cavalry and we'll get the guy in the Paddy-Wagon bang to rights! End of story!"

"You trust him that much?" Paul sighed, a dreamy look on his face all of a sudden. "That is so adorable!"

"I trust him with my life," Rayne lied, seeing no reason to disabuse the blond man of his innocent fantasies.

***

Kev and Dave escorted him as far as the edge of the city centre and left him at the top of Princess Street to make the walk back into the student quarter alone. Paul had come up trumps with his outfit which was a mix and match of masculine and feminine styles; a long, black shirt that came to his knees, belted and worn as a dress, over dark, woollen thigh-high socks and plain white cotton knickers with a small, strappy jersey top under the upper part of the shirt so that it could be worn open. He wore his own 16 hole Doc Martens and a three-quarter length black coat over the shirt. On Dave Ramsey's insistence, Rayne was also wearing a discreet wire disguised as an MP3 player so they could communicate with him and he could keep them appraised of his location.

He took a criss cross route back and forth through the side streets off the main road, feeling happier oddly enough once he was on his own. Rayne had lived in this part of town long enough to appreciate the darkness and the city's seamier side no longer held any fears for him. Even so his adrenaline was high tonight. He loved to hunt, although he tried to play down his enthusiasm for Kevan's benefit. Rayne was still not sure how the big fool would react to the idea that his lover was a ruthlessly efficient killing machine. It had not been a lie when he told his mate that he tried not to drain the people he fed from. Such recklessness was enough to put him in danger from hysterical Vampire hunters and as such it was a way of life he could avoid when necessary. But that was not to say that there weren't certain elements who thoroughly deserved to donate their life's blood to a worthy cause.

Rayne considered himself a more than worthy recipient under those circumstances.

He came back out onto the main thoroughfare near to the multistorey car park off Brook Street, and waited there for a little while under the golden cone of sodium streetlight as if he was meeting someone. A couple of cars pulled in to the kerb whilst he was waiting and he made small talk with the cruisers but also made it plain that he wasn't working. His man operated on foot. Neither of his surviving victims mentioned a car.

Generally the men were disappointed but good humoured and moved on in search of fresh meat. Rayne lit a cigarette and made his way up Brook Street then walked down by the hospital and cut through the car parks there back towards the student flats beyond St. Mary's. He was already beginning to think that this was a lost cause. Their man might have moved on. He had already attacked four girls in Manchester, maybe he had reached his limit.

"Where are you?" Kev's voice crackled in his ear.

"Outside the hospital, just off Oxford Road," he said quietly.

"I think we've gone on past you. We'll double back and come down the main road," his lover told him.

"Okay. I'm gonna walk over towards the Contact then round to the back of their car park, then I'm quitting. There's nothing doing out here and I feel like a plant-pot in this get up, Kev!" Rayne stepped out into the lights of Oxford Road and crossed to the other side of the main thoroughfare. There was something going on up at the Academy and for a moment he felt an age-old longing to join in, to go and watch a band and have a drink. It would be nice just to be normal for an evening.

He walked down to the front of the venue and scanned the posters, exchanging light-hearted chat with the touts outside. To his chagrin he had never heard of the band who were playing but the kids flowing into the venue looked like his kind of people, dark-clad and made up with dyed hair and a wardrobe put together from countless charity bins. Rayne made himself walk on by, feeling suddenly quite disheartened. In the ten plus years since Whipsnade stopped recording he had rarely missed the chaos of that lifestyle, but tonight he was filled with a strange yearning that would not go away. He wanted to be swallowed up by that eager crowd, to feel the energy of a live performance again.

Stubbing out his cigarette against the wall by the Student Union building he touched the little button on his MP3 player and said; "Change of plan. I want to go and see the band. I'll meet you at mine tomorrow night."

"What band?" Kev asked in his ear, but he never got an answer.

As Rayne turned back towards the road, fully intending to inveigle a ticket off one of the touts, a hand snaked out from the darkness and slapped over his mouth, dragging him off his feet and hauling him into the shadows behind the Union block. His captor snaked an arm around his upper body, pinning him tightly to his torso and kept the other hand clamped hard over his mouth and nose as he hurriedly got his quarry out of sight behind the bins in the darkened courtyard.

"They'll lock you up talking to yourself," a gruff voice said quietly in his ear. The man's accent was unfamiliar, not local but not a regional cadence that he was familiar with either.

Rayne tried to turn his head, to get that hand off his mouth without having to bite. If he could just let Kev know where he was then this might not have to get messy. He struggled furiously and his assailant rammed him up against the wall of the small, concrete bin-enclosure then tried to pull up the hem of his shirt with one hand to grope him.

"No!" Rayne growled, his negation muffled by the hand that gripped his lower jaw.

"Keep still you little slut!" his attacker warned coarsely, panting as he tried to get Rayne's knickers down with one hand. "You know who I am, by now, yeah? You know I'll hurt you if you scream!"

Desperately he nodded his head.

'I hope you can hear this, Kev Delaney!' he thought frantically.

The rapist eased his grip on Rayne's jaw and took hold of his shoulder, turning him roughly with his back to the wall. He ripped his victim's shirt open and tried to pull it off. Rayne ducked to his knees at once and tried to scrabble away but was caught by the ankle and towed back into the concrete bunker, kicking and yelping.

"No! Please! I just want to watch the band! Please! The band, 'Next Door'! At the 'Academy'!"

The man kneeling over him in the darkness was squat and stocky, his short hair slicked back so that the colour was indeterminate. He wore a puffa jacket and faded jeans. Rayne registered the gold rings on the thick fingers of his left hand before the man punched him in the face and almost knocked him senseless.

He tasted blood in his mouth as his head stopped spinning and he realised he was lying on his belly on the concrete floor as the man yanked his belted shirt up over his waist and pulled his knickers down fast and hard.

"Don't..." he choked out, trying to get up.

A hand pushed him down firmly and his forehead hit the ground as he heard the sound of a zipper and the rustle of his attacker's jeans being lowered.

" 'Don't'!" he warned now, through gritted teeth, fangs extending until he felt them prick the gums of his lower jaw.

"I told you to shut up, you stupid bitch!" the rapist grunted, prying his arse cheeks apart roughly and spitting into the exposed valley between them.

Rayne got his hands to the ground under his shoulders and pushed back against him furiously. He felt the grip on his bum release and the man's hands found his throat and began to squeeze.

"I warned you, bitch!" he growled, throttling the little Vampire as he persisted in his efforts to mount his captive. "I don't care if you're breathing or not when I cum. We can do this the nice way or the nasty way, darlin'!"

Rayne twisted like a serpent in his grasp, bracing one arm against the wall as he felt his eyes fill with stars. He didn't need the air but this was cutting off the blood to his brain and he knew he was going to pass out if he couldn't get the bastard's hands off his throat very soon. He kicked out furiously, his booted foot connecting with something softer than concrete. The man on top of him howled and let go. Rayne Wylde did not give him a second chance.

If the bastard expected his victim to wriggle away from him he got a fairly substantial wake-up call. The Vampire twisted right around onto his back and lashed out with one hand, snaring the back of the man's head in his long fingers. The guy got a hand to his neck but that was as far as he got. Rayne was conscious of the vivid tattoo of a nude woman splayed across his chest, unveiled by his open shirt. Her legs were open wide and her mouth open too. He never stopped to wonder who would etch such a tattoo on a man without questioning it. His fingers pulled the rapist's head down to his level and he bit down hard on the man's throat, sinking his fangs in deep and bringing his right leg up at the same time as his attacker still persisted in trying to spread him.

He felt the bastard's whole body jerk and shudder as his knee made contact. Now he managed to grip the man's clothing in both hands and push him back, rolling over hard so that he could pin the guy to the ground and kneel on his chest.

"Bitch!" the rapist hissed at him breathlessly. His hands ripped at Rayne's shirt blindly and the Vampire pulled back from him with his jaws wide and blood dripping from his extended fangs.

"You wanted to play 'nasty'!" The Vampire snarled. "Well 'this' is nasty! And this is how 'I' play it!"

He dropped like a stone onto his attacker and would have ripped his throat out but at that very moment a pair of strong hands caught his shuddering shoulders and yanked him violently away.

"Easy tiger!" Kev Delaney called out, letting go automatically as he felt his frantic, Undead lover twist like a small tornado in his grasp. "We've got him covered!"

"He's 'mine'!" Rayne sucked a snarling breath through clenched teeth, still dripping blood as he tried to get to the man who was jerking, bleeding and moaning on the ground beyond them.

"No!" Kevan moved between the Vampire and his quarry as he saw Rayne try to go for the man again. "This wasn't the plan, Rayne!"

Dave had moved around to the rear of the bunker and had a gun trained on the rapist but his eyes flickered repeatedly to his partner and to the little savage he was trying to hold back. Dave had seen Rayne fight one of his own and that had been bloody enough. Now he was struggling to decide who was the greater threat here, their mark or the bait.

Rayne drew a quivering breath and then another. All he could taste was blood and he wanted more but he could see the look on Dave Ramsey's face. The moment Dave moved his hand; the moment the gun moved away they would lose the slimeball. Rayne knew it, perhaps better than Dave did.

"Don't! Don't shoot me, David," he exhaled, shaking his head, struggling to sound sane. "In my place you'd have done the same thing."

Kevan half turned and looked a question at his partner and Rayne slumped back against the wall of the bunker and closed his eyes. It was over and he wished he felt satisfied.

***

He spent the next three days asleep. Kevan let him feed when they got back to the Station and once had been (formally) debriefed they called a taxi to take him home. Kev would be involved in the interview process for some hours to come and decided that it was for the best to get his lover as far from their suspect as possible. Rayne still felt twitchy and restless though. He paced back and forth in the apartment for several hours, trying to get the sense of outrage out of his system. Even blood would not quiet the torrent of passion in his breast, although it made the difference between sanity and madness. He knew that he would not hunt. He could rest if he chose to. For a long time he did not choose to rest.

Now he was forced to ask himself the hard truth, there was no escaping it once he was alone. Would he have stopped if Kevan had not found him? Would he have carried on bleeding the cunt until there was not enough strength in his body to survive? And would he have done so out of pity for the man's victims or hatred for his own abusers?

Rayne paced again, still covered in his attacker's blood. He could smell it on him; could smell the man's sweat and semen on his skin and clothes. Irritably he stripped and discarded the clothing he had been wearing in the kitchen bin. For almost thirty minutes he stood under the shower, scrubbing his skin until he was raw and sore. When he closed his eyes he saw Kevan's frightened face, and Dave's uncertainty. He knew that neither man would ever look at him in the same way again. The thought was unsettling.

Feeling clean but not completely scourged he retired to his bed and curled up, naked and forlorn, unable to rid himself of the burning anger inside. He wept then; sobbing furiously until his chest ached and his eyes and throat were sore. This was his existence. This was what he had become. He was a killer and it was in his blood, there was no escaping from it. For a little while he might let Kevan's unquestioning love redeem him but sooner or later, on such a night as tonight, Kev would see him for the animal he was. This was why he kept potential mates at arm's length. This was why they were never allowed too close. He had forgotten the first rule of his own survival.

Never forget that you are no longer human.

END OF "UNDERWEAR" CHAPTER FIVE

© JOSH AND SADIE ROSE 2007