Gloves and Teeth in the Night

"Perhaps he was drugged and misused why he was gone then. He was acting with lethargy just now. Was there anyone eyeing him in the pub before he left?" Brother Adrian asked.

"There be several men who eye him—whenever he moves about the pub. Ones who use him and ones who wished they could. It's good for business." There was going to be no stopping of the uncle using Mark as bait to bring randy men with an appetite for young male whores into the pub, and both Henry and Brother Adrian knew there wouldn't be.

"Anyone in this evening who wasn't a regular?"

Henry thought. "Aye, I thought it a bit strange that the likes of him came into the likes of this pub. He were quiet and I sat him over at the lord's table by the fire, seeing a how he is a lord, not that he does much lording around these parts."

"Who?" Brother Adrian pressed.

"Florean LaCore, from Compton Hall. All dressed out in black and caped, very mysterious and foxy looking that one be. I saw him snuff out the candles on the wall there. He wanted to be in the dark. Dark be a good term to use for him, from what I saw. If there be a man of darkness that would be Lord Florean."

"Florean LaCore," Brother Adrian said, and shuddered. He'd heard stories about the LaCore family and how reclusive they were and how there always was and had been a Florean LaCore lurking around. Surely what he had heard rumored couldn't be true, he reasoned. And yet . . .

"And this man in black—this man named LaCore," Brother Adrian asked. "Did he remain on at the pub after your nephew was sent off on his errand?"

"No, I think not," Henry said after a moment of contemplation. "I do not remember seeing the man here, by the fireplace, after Mark left. Of course he made it so dark and he was all in black. It would have been easy for him to be there yet not noticed. I believe that is how he wanted it to be."

Brother Adrian gave another little shudder, and he clutched the cross on the chain around his neck tightly. "If he comes in here again and shows any interest in Mark, please send word to me immediately," Brother Adrian said. He already had paid Henry for the use of his nephew, but the flash of another silver coin gave him some expectation that the old man would do as he asked.

* * * *

I went to the door of the flower shop to open it for Aunt Agatha, who was carrying an altar arrangement to Mint Methodist Church, a good fifteen-minute walk away, when I noticed a black, closed carriage sitting idle across West Street from the shop. It was somewhat disconcerting because everything about the carriage, horse, and coachman was so brooding of aspect in contrast to the bustle on the busy shop-lined street. The carriage was black, as was the horse. The coachman, tall, gaunt, morose in appearance, almost cadaverous, was all in black as well. He himself was a black man, which was a rare sight in this section of the city, and the expression on his face was blank.

No sooner had I withdrawn into the shop, where I now was alone, than the bell over the door sounded and a man dressed all in black, with cape and black-leather gloves, entered the shop. He was a foxy-looking man, although handsome, well formed, and elegantly attired. He was familiar to me, but I could not readily place where and when I had seen him before. His age was indeterminant, but I could not gauge him to be quickly approaching thirty-five. His smile was somewhat icy and his eyes pierced me, immediately putting me in a strange mood in which I felt a little frightened, but also somewhat excited and aroused while feeling my body slow down into a lethargy in movement and thought.

I continued to be possessed with the thought that the man seemed familiar to me. I fancied I'd seen him before and had sensations of being both repelled and drawn to him. I felt a sense of both danger and inevitable attraction.

He fixed me with his eyes and said, "I am Florean LaCore from Compton Hall. I will be putting on a ball in two weeks' time and I wish to order an abundance of greenery and flowers to decorate the halls of my house for the occasion. I wish someone to come with me to look at the halls that need decorated and to start making a plan."

"You just missed the proprietress," I said. "Mrs. Agatha is delivering an arrangement to a church nearby. She will be back within the half hour, I'm sure, and will be able to attend to your needs. If you would wish to wait—"

"I have no time to dally in waiting on her and it is you I wish to come with me. Come, my carriage is just across the road."

I have no idea why he had an appeal to and control over me, but I did not question the situation or his motives. Under the steely stare of his mesmerizing eyes, I merely took off the apron I was wearing and accompanied him from the shop and across the street to the waiting black carriage, with its black horse and morose black-skinned coachman dressed in black. Casting his eyes about to ascertain if anyone was observing us, the man placed a black-gloved hand on my buttocks to guide me across the street and hand me up into the shadowy interior of the carriage, and I neither objected to nor shied away from his touch.

When a man placed his hand on my buttocks, I took it as a sure sign that he intended to get his cock inside me. When this man did it, I felt a little thrill of both anxiety and anticipation. I was conditioned to go with a man easily. I knew I would go with this one more easily than with most. I turned my gaze to look into his eyes as he handed me into the carriage and saw the inevitability there of his ownership and control over me.

Once the carriage was leaving the city by the Honiton Road and headed east into the countryside, the man—Florean LaCore—whose visage almost disappeared into the darkness of the interior as he sat across from me in the carriage, murmured, "Such a lovely young lad. An angel. Come here. Come across and sit by me." His black-leather gloved hands were moving in the little light that came in from the carriage window. They were beckoning me to come across and sit beside him—and more.

I did go across, feeling compelled and not knowing why I so docilely did as the man bid other than knowing I would yield to him in anything he demanded of me.

From the moment he had handed me into the carriage I had felt a tingling at my throat and a stirring in my loins—and a slight remembrance floating into my awareness—cold marble; elegant, long fingers encased in soft, black leather; a sense of stretch and filling and being fully possessed by another man in my gut. The sensations were both frightening and compelling. And the hazy remembrance of being so possessed flowed over me and I began to pant and moan deep in my throat as I moved across the shadowy space in the carriage and black-leather gloved hands reached out and drew me to the man's side—and more.

There was no preliminary seduction. It was as if the man knew I would succumb to his carnal possession, need, and desire. As I was drawn into the seat beside him, he twisted toward me, moving me under him, and covering us both with his black, silky cape. His lips were on mine, and his gloved hands moved over my body, unbuttoning and pulling material away. And I yielded to his touch and disrobing, until, within a moment's time, I lay naked and lightly panting under him with his clothed body, other than his quickly revealed prodigious erection—all in black—hovering over me and his black cloak covering us both in the shadowy interior of the moving carriage. He placed my hand on his throbbing shaft, instructing me to leave it there and to lightly stroke him, and I did as he demanded.

I did not struggle against him. It was as if he'd fully possessed and controlled me from some earlier coupling—and something in the back of my mind, memories swirling up only to recede again before I could fully grasp them, kept assuring me that I belonged to him to serve his passion. I was his to do as he liked with me. I did not fight him as him positioned my limbs, my legs spread and bent, my hand slowly stroking his engorging member, leaving me open and vulnerable to the gliding and fondling of his gloved hands as he touched and stroked my inner thighs, my cock, my balls, and my anal entrance, which opened to his desire.

"Quickly, quickly," I murmured. "Put it in quickly. Possess me fully." If he heard me, he did not react. He was moving on his own track. I was nothing to him but a morsel to enjoy as he would.

His lips left mine and moved down my cheeks, onto my throat, and I felt the prick of his teeth and experienced the sensation of a rhythmic flow from within me that brought the memory of an earlier sensation to my consciousness. I felt a sense of calm and well-being and relaxed into his embrace, moving my hand from his shaft and palming his shoulder blades to hold him to me as he fed, my fingers pressing and released into his silk-swathed shoulders in the cadence of his suck. I turned my head to the side, offering my throat fully to his need and desire.

"Yes, yes, yes," I murmured, vaguely realizing we had been here before—that he owned me.

The pleasure of his attentions didn't leave me when I felt his gloved fingers at my hole and I moaned as he entered me with his fingers, working up to his knuckles. We had been here before. I was both resigned and eager to be there again. He was going to move his gloved fist inside me. I groaned as he did so, but now it was with more pleasure, a greater sense of relaxation, a greater sense of opening to the needs of his gloved hand as he penetrated me with his fist. I spread my thighs wide and elevated my pelvis to his possession.

He, my master, fed on me at my throat and fucked me with the fist. I melded into his body, becoming one with him. I panted and groaned and rocked on the fist and focused on the flow of my life's blood from me to him at my throat, feeling myself becoming increasingly lightheaded and floating into the swirling mists of the ether.

Extracting the fist, and without loosening his tooth-hold at my throat, he moved into position over me, taking my hand again to do the guiding of his cock to my entrance. I put him into position and jutted my hips forward, impaling myself on his thick, throbbing cock with pain-passion, grasping his buttocks and pulling him into me—grasping his shaft with the muscles of my channel walls as he slid deeper, undulating my passage muscles over the cock, making love to it, fully accepting him as my master and savior, as he set into the steady rhythm of the fuck and I settled into rocking with the cadence.

"Take me master. I am yours," I murmured. He began to hum low in his throat as he fed and fucked, fucked and fed.

After plowing me at the core and feeding of me at the throat for what seemed to be a glorious eternity, he turned me on my belly, mounted and penetrated me from above and behind, dove deep, and fucked me. With a sucking sound, he withdrew from my throat and rose above me, still riding my tail, and the striking of the whip on my back and arms and buttocks began. As he rode me and lashed me, he leaned down to tongue up the rivulets of blood being raised on my back by the whip.

This was not a new sensation for me either. I had experienced this before, but now it was more arousing than before. I was more in tune with it now, murmuring—murmuring because my energy was leaving me and I was rising up into the clouds—"Yes, yes. Use me. Use me up fully. Take me to heaven. Let me melt into you."

He was going to suck me dry, beat me to death, transfer my youth and vitality to himself, kill me in my existence on this earth. And I didn't care. He was my master, to use me, at his will—to use me up for his need and his pleasure. I would die in glorious release.

But he paused in his taking, which ignited a spark of resistance in me still, and, surprising LaCore, I rolled out from underneath him, turned to the carriage door, and had it open and was nearly outside the carriage, when LaCore grabbed me, pulled me back into the darkness, put me under him again, mounted my ass, and resumed the fuck and lashing.

Apparently pleased by my weak, ineffectual attempt at resistance, Florean LaCore laughed as he fucked and whipped me, his laughter broken off, though, as he realized that the carriage had stopped, well short of its destination. The interior was flooded with light, causing LaCore to shrink from the sudden glare, as the carriage door was jerked open and strong, ungloved hands seized me from underneath the black-clad figure, pulling me into the light, and doing the only thing possible to make the vampire shrink into the depths of the carriage.

* * * *

Brother Adrian had arrived at the mouth of West Street and drawn up short when he'd seen a black, closed carriage disappearing down the street. He feared that it looked like one Florean LaCore owned. The monk had been stewing about how disoriented Mark had been the previous day and what little he could say about the possible encounter he had had with Florean LaCore, and he had come to the flower shop Mark's aunt operated and where Mark worked during the day to ensure that the young man was safe and well. Adrian had heard rumors about the lord of the manor at Compton Hall, of his proclivities, which Brother Adrian couldn't fault him on—to a point. But LaCore was said to be sadistic in his appetites. There also were the rumors of young men having gone missing over the centuries in this region. That was usually written off to the lads leaving for the greater opportunities of the larger cities, but what was notable was how few of these young men had ever returned or reestablished any sort of contact with their families in Devon.

He thought he could identify the carriage and its cadaverous coachman, dressed all in black, as belonging to Florean LaCore, so he drew up to the outdoor display of vegetables at a shop a few doors down from the florist shop to ponder what he should do. As he stood there, Mr. Stevens, the vegetable shop owner appeared and asked him why he looked concerned.

"I was coming to visit Mark, who works in the flower shop over there, and—"

"The lad is not there," Stevens said. "I just saw him being coaxed into the black carriage in the distance."

"Coaxed?" Brother Adrian asked.

"Aye," Stevens said. "He went willing enough, but it seemed the gentleman guiding him was being more than a bit familiar with the lad, not that the young man is averse to such attention, as I well know. A very mysterious gentleman he were too. He kept looking around like he didn't like being seen doing whatever he was doing. He was elegantly dressed, black gloves and all, but he was all in black. A bit sinister, if you ask me. But Mark is what he is, going with men willingly, so I was not alarmed."

Stevens, in fact, had been disturbed and more than a bit jealous at what he'd seen of Mark being guided into the carriage. LaCore had a hand on the lad's buttocks in guiding him, and Mark wasn't resisting. Mark was also giving it to someone other than Stevens, so, if the man was going to be misusing the lad, that was of little concern to Stevens.

Brother Adrian could see that the carriage was headed east, most likely taking the Honiton Road. Thanking Mr. Stevens for the information, he mounted his horse and followed the carriage at a distance. It, indeed, took the Honiton Road east out of the city, and, after leaving that road, it headed south on almost-deserted lanes toward the remote Compton Hall.

In a wild patch of wood, almost in sight of Compton Hall off in the distance, Brother Adrian received the horrific confirmation he had hoped not to be the truth. One of the carriage doors opened, and Mark, naked, and appearing to be almost comatose, leaned out of the carriage as if trying to escape. Black-gloved hands reached out, grabbed him, pulled him back in the carriage, and snapped the carriage door shut.

Brother Adrian increased the speed of his horse and narrowed the distance to the carriage. He rode up to beside the black carriage horse and slowed the animal to a halt. Both the horse and the coachman seemed to be in a drugged suspension and just came to a halt and remained where they were, docile, without resistance or animation.

Slipping off his horse, Brother Adrian came around to the carriage door and pulled it open. As he was afraid, what he saw was the pale flesh of the lad, Mark, under an undulating black cape. The black-clad figure on top of the lad was leaning over Mark, riding the lad's hips from behind and on top. One black-leather-gloved hand was clutching the lad's neck, holding his head down on the carriage seat, and the other was welding a hand whip.

The demon—clearly Florean LaCore, his mouth dribbling blood; Mark's blood—turned an angry eye to the carriage door. Seeing the monk, he lashed out in that direction with the whip, only to rear back in surprise and fear as Brother Adrian flung the door wider to let the light enter the carriage, and lifted the cross on the chain around his neck. This gave Brother Adrian the opportunity he needed to pull Mark out from underneath the vampire's clutches; to retreat, carrying Mark, to his horse; and to pound off back in the direction of Exeter.

Stopping at a nearby village church where Brother Adrian knew a clothing closet was maintained for the poor, the monk outfitted a slowly recovering Mark with sufficient clothing to withstand a journey to the other side of Exeter.

"What now?" Mark asked, Brother Adrian having explained to him what and who Florean LaCore was and what the man wanted from Mark. "I can't go back to my life at the pub and florist shop, can I? Won't the man just come back for me again?"

"I don't think there's anything we can do about the likes of Florean LaCore. You, however, can disappear," Brother Adrian said. "You have shown interest in beekeeping and that's what we do at the Buckfast Abbey. You also, unless I am mistaken, are agreeable to be with me. You could come there with me, well away from the eyes and search of Florean LaCore, and be with me at the Buckfast Abbey."

"Then that's surely what I'll do," the miraculously saved pub lad responded, with a grateful smile. But then a serious look set on the young man's face. "But what can we do about Lord Florean?"

"Probably nothing but stay out of his way," Brother Adrian answered in regret. "His kind has always been with us, and it probably will remain so, his kind lurking around in the shadows, dominating and feeding through the ages where weakness permits them to do so."