Chapter 3
They sprinted down the boulevard that had brought them to the Sleeping Giant in the first place, leaving a trail of disgruntled passersby. There hadn’t been time to fasten the waist strap of Tav’s pack and in consequence, all his belongings, including the golden dildo, swayed dangerously from side to side as he ran, breathless, on the heels of his light-footed friend.
Astarion made a sharp left turn into a narrow alley. Tav stumbled after him, struggling to regain his breath, but he was nowhere to be seen. Tav would’ve panicked then if he hadn’t been panicking already. The guards were upon them. He could hear the clinking of their armor and the heavy thudding of their feet no more than fifty steps behind. A few were from the inn. The rest wore the red and gold livery of the Flaming Fist.
What had Astarion said, back in that room? That they’d be caught, tried and hanged come dawn? Tav was starting to believe it. Only it wouldn’t be “them”. It would be just him.
He cast left and right for doors, windows, ladders, any place to run or hide, but he could see nothing, nothing! As the running steps got closer, his hands closed into fists. He still had his magic. He could—
“What are you doing?” a familiar voice hissed. “Move. Now!”
Tav almost broke into tears with joy and relief. The pale elf hadn’t abandoned him! But Tav still couldn’t see him. “Astarion?”
“Over here, you fool!”
Finally, he saw a hand wave from behind a corner he had utterly failed to register, what with all the houses being built from the same stone, in the same pattern, marching one after another as far as the eye could reach. Tav lunged forward and Astarion yanked him into a dark passageway that reeked of piss. They began to run again just as their pursuers reached the alley.
Out of the passage, down a steep flight of stairs, over a rusty iron fence into someone’s overgrown garden and then out between the stone posts where there once had been a gate onto another, even narrower alley. They climbed a ladder and tiptoed over a makeshift plank bridge crossing the gap between the buildings to finally slip behind a stack of crates on a wide balcony. Under them, the clatter of pursuit slowed to a halt.
“Where the hells did they go?” a man said in a heavily accented, breathless voice.
“Spread out! Search the backyards!” barked a woman. “Eris! See what’s up there!”
Tav gasped as the sound of footsteps marching up stone stairs echoed from the dark colonnade not ten feet away from them. His friend put an icy finger on his lips. Tav held his breath.
In the sudden stillness, he became aware of a strange, rhythmic buzzing. Astarion’s eyes widened, staring at the air between them. He heard it too. The damn dildo, still vibrating in Tav’s pack.
“Shut it up!” Astarion hissed.
Tav shook his head. He’d need to lay hands on it, and there wasn’t time.
Astarion stepped forward, pushing Tav back. His face hardened with wordless insisting, his finger still pressed to Tav’s mouth. Tav staggered backward, but Astarion pushed further still, until there was no more room, and his entire weight leaned against Tav’s chest.
Their pursuer’s steps rang in the silence.
Silence! At last, Tav understood. With his pack crushed between him and the crates, just as he was crushed between it and his pale friend, the cursed buzzing could no longer be heard, though he still felt it.
He felt a lot of things out of the sudden. Fear had woken his senses into twitching alertness. Astarion’s eyes were all pupils, shining with the same wild energy that coursed through Tav, ready to burst at the first provocation. His breath was a cold breeze against Tav’s sweat-glazed face. He still wore the shawl he’d stolen, but Tav could no longer smell the lavender on it, only Astarion’s strange scent. Like damp earth and fallen leaves, no trace of the warm musk of skin Tav would expect this close to him. Their noses almost touched. Astarion licked his lips, and the sudden pang of desire made Tav realize he was already stone-hard.
The footsteps reached the top of the unseen stairs. Slowly, quietly, Tav draped his cloak around Astarion’s back, fitting one hand behind his neck and holding the other over his silver curls. They squeezed even closer. Tav swallowed a groan, feeling Astarion’s erection slot next to his own.
And then Astarion kissed him.
His lips were cold. His tongue too. Yet he set Tav on fire. Neither of them closed their eyes, staring at one another in pitch dark while their lips brushed, open, while their tongues touched and the sweet pressure between Tav’s legs turned to an ache. All along he held his breath. His heart drummed so fast he thought he might faint. It was the strangest and the most erotic moment of his life.
“Anything?” yelled the woman down on the street.
Astarion used the agonizing moment of apprehension to roll his hips into Tav and it was all Tav could do to keep himself from moaning.
“Nothing,” came the reply, so close to them Tav jumped, but Astarion’s hold on him was firm. He flicked the tip of his tongue over the tip of Tav’s, demanding his full attention. Had he pawed at Tav’s crotch at that moment, it would’ve ended him.
Two other voices uttered echoing answers from below as their man Eris jingled back the way he came.
“So, which one of you fat asses wants the honor of reporting this shining success to the manip?” said the woman, her voice receding.
“Fenwick,” said one voice. “Gorm,” exclaimed the other. There was a third and a fourth, and then Tav could hear them no longer.
He let the cloak fall. His arms trembled, clinging to his strange friend’s shoulders. Astarion grinned, then chuckled, then threw his head back in unhinged laughter. Moonlight glinted from the tips of his long canines. Dazed, Tav stared, as that feeling that he was missing something very obvious, something very important, rattled in his skull again.
“Delicious,” Astarion exclaimed. He leaned in, about to kiss Tav once more, and Tav nearly keened in anticipation, when a racket made them both start.
One of the heavy shutters shielding the windows above the colonnade swung open, producing a square chin, a pair of tusks as long as a finger, and a furious green visage framed by a mane of wild black hair.
“Who’s there?” yelled the half-orc, loud enough to wake the dead. “I see you skulking! On your way before I come down!”
But they were already gone. Under the colonnade and down the stairs, retracing the steps of the Fist who’d so very nearly caught them, then into the first alley off the main street, holding hands and laughing like lunatics the entire way.
At last Tav could run no further and staggered into some dark, foul-smelling corner, doubled over his aching belly. His friend spun, arms flung wide and face turned up at the moon, which had climbed directly over them. “Gods above,” he cried. “I’ve not had so much fun in ages!”
The stolen shawl hung from his shoulders, silver thread sparkling. Tav caught it and pulled him to, eager to be ravished by those cool lips. Astarion did not resist. He fell into Tav’s arms as if boneless. This time, his kiss was not teasing, but deep, passionate and greedy, and Tav moaned wantonly into his mouth.
They kissed a long time, quick to find a rhythm, like their bodies weren’t strangers to one another. Tav’s hands slid over Astarion’s arms and waist to take hold of his backside. He groaned when Tav pulled him closer, and they rubbed against each other.
Drawing back sooner than Tav would’ve liked, Astarion looked at him with a predatory intensity that sent shivers down his spine. A thin thread of spittle hung wavering between their lips. The dildo buzzed suggestively.
Tav licked his lips. “Do you have… some place… we could go?”
Astarion licked his lips too. The thread would not break, so he kissed Tav again, not on the lips but on the chin, to wipe it. “I do,” he whispered. “In the Upper City.” Suddenly Tav could feel him tremble. He dived into Tav’s neck, his touch shockingly cold despite the exertion, the laughter, the kissing. Tav sucked in a surprised breath when Astarion licked him, tongue wide and flat against the thrum of Tav’s pulse. The heel of his palm bore down on Tav’s straining erection.
Tav held his breath, fighting to pull back from the edge.
Sensing it, Astarion let up, and held his face in both hands instead.
“Take me,” Tav whispered.
Astarion’s lower lip quivered, limp and wet, as his focus flicked from one of Tav’s eyes to the other under his furrowing brow, and it dawned on Tav with sudden and unshakable certainty that the pale elf was… terrified.
As if to confirm it, he shook his head, ever so slightly.
“I don’t understand,” Tav said. “You have the gold—”
“The gold means nothing.” Again, Astarion put an icy finger on Tav’s lips to shut him up as he took air to object. “I can’t.” He shook his head with more purpose, and his expression contorted into a vicious, spiteful grimace so remote from the carefree, moonlit bliss Tav had witnessed mere minutes ago that he wondered if it was the same man. His ears tilted backwards as he said, “I won’t.”
Addled with lust, Tav’s mind crawled instead of racing over everything he’d learned about the pale elf during their few bewildering hours together. His targets in the tavern, the deal with the barkeep, the unlikely magistrate story. What was Tav missing? Something had happened in that room, hadn’t it? Something he’d been too preoccupied to appreciate at the spot, and was too confused to figure out now.
One thing was clear, however.
Tav tossed his head back, freeing himself from Astarion’s grasp. “You’re in trouble,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “Someone’s forcing you to do this, aren’t they? By blackmail, or by keeping you indebted, or holding a loved one hostage.” A flicker or surprise, recognition, or hope had sparked in Astarion’s eyes when Tav started, but died just as quickly, and Tav knew his guesses were wide of the mark. The ground was slipping under his feet and panic set in. He could tell what was coming. Astarion tried to push away, but Tav locked hands around the small of his back. “Please. Maybe I can help you.”
“You can help me,” Astarion hissed between clenched teeth, “by making this count. Run as far as your legs can carry you, and never return. Stay away from the Sleeping Giant. Do not revisit the tavern where we met, and for the love of gods, do not ask after me.”
“But—”
“Your life is at stake, darling.” His voice broke on the last word and he pressed another kiss to Tav’s lips, hard and bruising. Fragments of his thoughts carried through, like the mutterings of a madman. Not worth it, not again, and, more firmly, still a few hours.
Before Tav could make sense of it, Astarion took off the shawl and wrapped it around Tav, then pried his hands apart. Tav let him, though he didn’t want to. Astarion stepped away, walking backward, and pointed at Tav’s face. “Do not try to follow me.”
He fled into the shadows. And ever the fool, Tav followed.
He’d scarcely been able to keep up with Astarion while he dragged him by the hand during the chase, let alone now. The pale elf’s footing was sure, quick and silent, his figure slight and wispy, blending with the shadows. These streets were his territory. Tav was a blundering interloper, with his stomping feet, his billowing cloak and his ridiculous pack. But his senses had been honed in the Underdark. He could hear Astarion from afar and see him in the dark and he would not let go. Reaching for his dwindling reserves, Tav whispered the spell to lenghten his strides and lighten his burden. Soon, he was gaining on him.
Astarion cut a sharp corner, flying up a narrow, low-domed staircase, vaulted over an ornate stone balustrade into the yard below, landing on all fours, like a cat, then scaled a gate twice his height with supernatural speed and grace.
What is he, Tav wondered, momentarily stunned. And then he realized he’d already had that thought before: in the Sleeping Giant, while the pale elf stood in front of the mirror. For the third time this night, Tav felt something dark and dangerous flit just outside his field of view, narrowed to a tunnel by loneliness and longing.
But there was no time to untangle it now, not if he was to have any hope of speaking to Astarion again. He was getting away. Despair gripped Tav even as he managed to jump over the balustrade without breaking any bones. The only way he was getting over that gate in reasonable time was by flight, and the best he’d ever managed in his sorcerer’s career was to levitate a few inches off the ground. Had it been locked, that would’ve been the last he’d seen of the pale elf.
But to his shocked relief, the gate swung open when he slammed into it. He nearly fell. Stumbling into the wide street, he caught sight of Astarion some thirty feet away, crouching over a… manhole?
He was prying the grate open. It looked heavy and made ungodly scraping noises as he turned it, inch by inch, over the cobblestones. Tav hurried forward, rehearsing his speech: he was familiar with Astarion’s situation, he’d been in it himself, he’d helped others out of it; never mind that more than half of that was less than half true. He just needed Astarion to slow down and talk to him.
The moon was in his face, nearly blinding him, but when Astarion lifted his head to look at him, he could’ve sworn the pale elf’s eyes were aglow. “You damn idiot!” he hissed. There was something decidedly bestial in his stance, his stare, his scowl, and it sobered Tav enough to stop well out of reach. “Do you want to die?”
“Wait,” Tav stammered, “hear me out, I—”
He was about to step into a wide, irregular puddle. Rainwater gathered in a shallow depression sloping away from the drain, an oft-seen example of how easily a few faulty stones could undo the genius of urban engineering. The surface was perfectly still. Like a mirror.
And just like the mirror in the Sleeping Giant, it didn’t show the pale elf’s reflection.
Tav stared at it, petrified, as fragments of the realization that had been tugging on his awareness all this time slotted into place like pieces of a tile-puzzle. The wine Astarion never tasted. The bite marks. The teeth. The unnatural chill of his flesh and his strangely sweet, earthy scent—oh, that Tav, who had once dug a loved one out of the grave, did not recognize it!
Astarion was a vampire. A vampire thrall? The vocabulary eluded him. As a youth, Tav had been enamored with vampire lore, and made Talice read everything about vampires to him, no matter how distantly related, how suspect or downright fictional, that the palace library had held. But those memories were mixed with too many others he’d purposely avoided for decades. Only vague notions remained. A vampire thrall would be beholden to the will of a vampire lord.
And Tav… Tav would’ve been their designated supper. But then his beautiful friend decided to spare him. Still a few hours, had been his thought just before he fled. To find another victim, of course. The nights are short this time of year. Everything made sense now.
All of this rushed through Tav’s head in an instant. His foot still hung over the water. The grate had made no progress, and the pale elf still glared at him with desperate fury.
“I know—” Tav uttered. The rest was cut off by a boom the likes of which he’d only heard once before, when a giant stalactite that had hung over the village of Arrkketh for ten thousand years crashed down in an earthquake. Only the noise that deafened him now wasn’t miles, but mere feet away. A swoosh of wind followed, so violent he stumbled forward, carried by his cloak like a fish caught in fine netting. Astarion tumbled on his back, but regained his footing in a moment. His eyes grew large and round. His mouth shaped a soundless O of horror as he stared at something behind Tav.
Tav turned.
What he saw was so incomprehensible he wasn’t even frightened, at first. A tangle of eyeless serpents—no, tentacles—each as thick as the trunk of an ancient tree coiled and twisted in mid-air, towering above the roofs. They pulled a shell-shaped carriage—no. Gods! It was a creature. It was all a single creature! One Tav knew well from childhood nightmares.
A kraken. A godsdamned kraken, rushing right at him.
Now he was frightened. Very much so. He heard a scream, probably his own. Then everything went black.
The next thing he remembers is waking up to be tadpoled.
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