The Obscurati (11 page)

He looked to see if anyone had questions. “Hamlet, you are not to be a hero tonight. You are the doorman.
Verstehst
?”

“Ja wohl, Meister.”

Pierre tapped Hamlet on the shoulder and pointed. I was next. I guess he kept moving around to fill out the circle, but I was too busy getting to my station to be sure. There was no moon, which was going to make visuals tricky, but there were no clouds. Because we were dressed in black, none of the humans on the ground would know we were there.

I saw Hamlet off in the distance. He was being very vigilant. To tell you the truth, he was sort of cute in his fighting garb… cute in a Hamlet sort of way. Fuckable cute. I might have to put him on the list with Lonny, but Lonny and his wonderful bubble-butt get it first.

After an hour, I saw some movement to my left. It wasn’t in my triangle of responsibility, but I called to alert Pierre just in case. I had seen the group of vampires before the person guarding that sector. Within a couple of seconds, the group was in front of the female vampire who should have spotted them. Pierre was already there to greet them.

Just as he started to escort the group to the building, I spotted two more groups. One was in my area, and the other was either in my area or Hamlet’s.

“Pierre, I have incoming,” I thought.

He was there in a flash to greet the first group. He pointed out the office building and asked them to go on ahead. The second group kept back some distance. Within a moment or two, about a dozen vampires dressed in black were up with Pierre, who told them to go see what the group wanted.

Two things happened all at once. Another group of vampires appeared on the far side of the circle. These guys were coming at us from every direction.

As Pierre flashed to the other side of the circle, another couple of vampires dressed in black came up to join the others in my area. They were about fifteen kilometers away, so they just looked like little specs in the distance. All of a sudden I could see movement and flashes of light. It went from a quiet night to a fireball in a second or two. And it was over in about a second. We apparently had some gate-crashers who didn’t want to be turned away. Our group of vampire warriors stayed out there for several minutes. They wanted to make sure that there weren’t others who were about to mount an attack.

Like Pierre had called to them (and he probably had done just that), the vampire posse turned and headed back to the office building. They were very fast. What little I saw of their faces didn’t give away any emotion. It was like they were ninja accountants or something.

Hamlet was watching, and he was impressed. I got the impression that he would have liked to be out there in the fight. What had I created? Prancing Hamlet, the killer vamp. It is truly a weird world.

We all got back to our duties. Every couple of minutes, a new delegation would come. Pierre was busy for almost an hour, greeting the visitors and showing them where to go.

It was an efficient operation, and Pierre was friendly to all of the arriving royals. They seemed to appreciate that the queen had a high-ranking Marine-looking vampire out as the official greeting party. None of the visitors said anything to those of us in the circle. They didn’t even acknowledge our presence. Later, Pierre reminded us that they knew what we were doing and didn’t want to be a distraction. It wasn’t that the royal visitors were rude. They were just respectful of our job.

Things settled down after awhile. It got completely quiet. I rolled onto my stomach just to change things up a little.

“Mårten,” Pierre said.

“All right already,” I said as I turned up so my feet were pointing to the ground again. “Sorry.”

It was like I had committed some huge blunder, but I didn’t argue. Pierre wouldn’t have said anything in my head unless he had a reason. Maybe he didn’t want any of the guests to think I wasn’t taking my duties seriously.

We stood there until it was almost sunrise. Pierre, who had flashed into the middle of the circle, called to us. I almost jumped into the ionosphere. He can sneak up on me. I’m a good tracker, and it is really hard to move anywhere without me sensing it. Pierre had a talent. He was totally stealthy.

“We have the perimeter secured with humans for the day. You can all go home if you want, or you can stay here. We have plenty of space in the basement, and there are several hundred human blood donors. Either way, but I need you all to be back here tomorrow night. No later than five minutes after dark. It was a good night, everyone. Thanks.”

Hamlet and I decided to stay. I told Oberon using mind-words, and he didn’t ask what was going on.

“I’ll see you when I see you,” he said.

The basement of the queen’s building was like a big dormitory. Those of us who were staying were assigned rooms. They had put Hamlet and me into a single room with one double bed. I’m not sure why, because we aren’t lovers. Plus, we’d be dead for the day within the hour. We stripped and just fell onto the bed. Hamlet crawled into my armpit and put his head on my chest. I liked it. I’ve known Hamlet for a hundred years, and we are both comfortable with each other’s body. Somehow it isn’t a sexual thing. I love Hamlet like a brother, but he isn’t my husband. Tonight he wanted to die to the world with his head on my chest. We cuddled.

Just as I started to get drowsy, Hamlet turned onto his side. One ear was on my chest, and one leg was on top of my shins. He gently cupped a hand and let it rest on my dick and balls. Somehow it wasn’t sexual, but more like a friend would put his arm around your shoulder. I think that’s how we spent the day, because it was the last thing I remembered.

W
HEN
I woke, he was already out of the bed and dressed in his judo gear. Hamlet was talking to someone at the door. No, talking to two someones. Breakfast?

We didn’t have much time, so one of the human blood donors walked over to the bed and gave me his arm. Before I grabbed it, he gave me a nice kiss. Cool, Switzerland had gay blood donors. Good to know.

Hamlet and I both fed, and we made it to the rendezvous point three hundred meters over the queen’s building. We were the last to arrive, but Pierre didn’t give us any scolding.

There were a few clouds out tonight. Pierre explained that our job would be about the same, but with clouds and wind. We were to take care of the area below the clouds. He had some others who would be floating above the clouds. He said that all of the invited guests had arrived, so any activity would probably be bad guys. He told us to call, just like before, but he wouldn’t be alone on the response. He reminded us that we were watching, not fighting.

With that, we were off. Talk about boring.
This Obscurati thing doesn’t get me recognition. There isn’t a badge or uniform. Nobody knows I’m in the Obscurati. And all I do is float and watch. It isn’t as glamorous as I expected.

“Everybody’s job is important,” Pierre said in my brain. He can read my thoughts just like the queen, and he can be in my head without me knowing. That is one scary guy.

I
WAS
hovering in the air over Switzerland, hour after hour. My lover was on the ground in Germany. I started crying because it was so lonely without Oberon. The rule said I couldn’t “talk” to him using mind-words. The watchers were to maintain radio silence. His long hair, his blue eyes, his guy-liner and lipstick, even his Goth sulking… I wanted to be with him. In a hundred years, we had done everything together. In fact, I didn’t know what life might be apart from him because we spent all our time as one.

Wow, I take Oberon for granted. Shame on me. We got into our groove, and it worked so well that I couldn’t think of life without Oberon.

Nothing happened all night.

“Good job,” Pierre said. “That’s it for tonight. See you tomorrow. Same time. Same place.”

“I miss you,” I told Oberon in my mind.

“I miss you too,” he thought. “What brought that on?”

“We are apart, husband, and I miss you.”

W
ITHIN
a minute, Hamlet and I were back in our room and on the bed. This time, he was feeling a little frisky. After a couple of moments of him playing with my dick, it came to attention. I stepped away from his hold because my head was back in Germany. Yeah, Oberon would encourage me to have an active sex life, but I was busy missing my husband. I was busy missing Oberon, scolding myself for taking him for granted. I wasn’t in the mood to mess around, and certainly not with Hamlet.

Hamlet really isn’t my type. I love him like a brother, and I had enjoyed snuggling with him the day before. That’s about as far as I usually like to go. I did have sex with him once, but it was when he was still human, almost a hundred years ago. He and Oberon had had me pinned to the bed, and Hamlet moved in and sat on my dick.

It had been a couple of days since I’d had sex, and that was the longest I’d gone in a century. When you have somebody like Oberon as a lover, you have a lot of sex, every day.

Hamlet was stroking me, which almost gave me the creeps. He was like a brother, and this felt like incest. Should I stop him and continue thinking about how I miss Oberon?

Sex was what Hamlet wanted, and Oberon would have approved. He might even have punched me for being fidgety. I could almost hear him in my head: “There’s a difference between fucking and making love.” Yadda, yadda.

“Hamlet wants me to fuck him,” I told Oberon in my head.

“He what?”

“He wants me to fuck him.”

I waited several seconds.

“Hello?” I said.

“I’m here,” Oberon said using mind-words. “I had to stop laughing. Let me know how you like it.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too. Go fuck our friend.”

So, yeah, okay. I got Hamlet onto his stomach and spread his legs. It had been forever since I topped anyone. Nobody topped Oberon. I didn’t want to hurt Hamlet.

Wait. All the pain he had inflicted on me in those martial arts classes… I
did
want to hurt him.

I wet my dick and shoved it up his ass without any ceremony. I pumped fast and hard, but Hamlet took every bit of it. He liked it hard and rough.
Oh, yeah, he likes to go out with military or biker types. It makes sense. They are probably rough in bed too.

Maybe I should slow down just to annoy him. No, he feels good. Fast and hard it is.

I shot in a couple of minutes. It wasn’t a huge explosion, but it was a relief. Hamlet’s hole felt good in a brotherly sort of way. When he rolled over, I saw that he had shot his own wad into the sheets.

“Thanks,” he said. “I needed that.”

“I guess I did too. You know we’re just friends.”

“Friends with benefits sometimes,” he said with a grin. As soon as I was settled in for my daily death, he crawled back to put his head on my chest.

“Weird,” I told Oberon in my head. “Can I come home?”

“Soon, love. I miss you too.”

I was playing with Hamlet’s nipple with my left hand, and that was the last thing I remembered.

The next night, we fed and were up in our positions quickly. Pierre said that the meeting would probably be breaking up tonight. He told us that each group of royal vampires would come up and stand beside one of us. They wouldn’t move until we gave them the all clear. Pierre wanted to make sure we understood that it would be really bad to let one of these groups move out into an ambush.

There weren’t any clouds, but I saw additional vampires higher up in a larger circle. It gave them a wider view of the skies. The wind was strong, so I was hoping we wouldn’t be up there all night.

After an hour or so, they started coming up to our circle. It went from complete boredom to really busy in just a couple of minutes. I didn’t see anything to worry about. Someone on the other side apparently did. I saw Pierre and a pack of dangerous-looking vampire ninja-accountants flash out to see what was there. I didn’t hear or sense any fighting, so it must have been a false alarm.

The visiting royals were all gone in half an hour or so.

The queen was waiting for us at the front door of the building.

“I know you were probably bored up there,” she said. “I want you to know that we had a productive meeting here, and you are partly the reason. Security just wasn’t an issue to our guests, and that means each of you took your job seriously. We were able to concentrate on our meeting because you were concentrating on our safety.”

She paused to select her words carefully.

“About four thousand years ago, I was doing security for one of these meetings. It was in Africa. Yes, I wasn’t always a queen, you know. Anyway, I made a complete mess out of things. It took me hundreds of years of hard work to have anybody trust me after that. I can safely say that each of you did a much better job than I did on my first detail, and I want you to know that I noticed even if I didn’t say anything at the time.”

A male attendant was walking through our group of security vampires. He gave each of us a gold ingot. It was really heavy. I found out later that each bar was 500 grams. It is about a pound of gold, which makes my payment for hovering in the circle about €12,000 (along the line of $15,000 US). Roughly. This is a pay scale that I never even knew existed. I wasn’t expecting to be paid. It was just me doing my part for the vampire community.

“
H
EY
, rich dude,” Hamlet said on the way back to Bavaria. “You got money, and you’re a good fuck.”

“We’re friends, Hamlet. Just friends.”

“If you say so, man. I will work with whatever you give me.”

He beat me back to the mansion because I flew up as high as I could. The higher you go, the less protection there is from the sun’s rays. They can bend around the earth. Even if it is night, a vamp can be fried by the sun if he goes too high. I did somersaults all the way back to Bavaria.

Half a kilo of gold for a couple of nights in the air, and I even got a free fuck, even if it was with Hamlet. He’s an okay trick, but I was ready to get back to Oberon.