A Puritan In New York

***

It was half past three in the afternoon by the time Penn finally woke. Fortunately Patrick had had the presence of mind not to open the blinds and burn Penn to death, and he’d been quiet enough so as not to wake the sleeping vampire. But as Penn pulled on a pair of jogging pants from the open closet, he noticed a note left on the cabinet at Patrick’s side of the bed. He picked it up and padded into the lounge.

The blinds were drawn there, too. Penn smiled as he realised they’d been open the night before, so Patrick must have thought about him before he’d left for work. He curled up on the end of the sofa with the note, running his fingertips over his name written there on the folded paper in fine black script.

He sat there for half an hour, staring he phe paper, not sure how to feel, not sure what he felt. The note read simply: ‘Thank you. I’ve never met anyone like you before. Patrick’.

Then he returned to the bedroom and tucked the note into his wallet. He didn’t want to lose it.

He spent an hour in the shower, letting the hot water warm his cold body. And he thought. He had a lot to think about, mainly Patrick. He was a puzzle. A puzzle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a mystery. Penn somehow needed to figure him out and given time he would. He’d always been good at figuring people out, even before he was turned, even before he’d met Angelus and he’d been taught to turn that natural ability into something refined and precious. He knew how to take what he saw and turn iainsainst them, to play on all their insecurities until they were driven mad. Angelus was the master and he’d taught his student well.

But for now Penn had no interest in hurting Patrick, at least not in that way. He just wanted to know him, to understand him. He’d never met a man like him, a real live murderer with nothing even remotely supernatural to him. He wanted to see what made ticktick, how he worked, how he thought. After all, his victims, the ones he’d really taken the time to study and watch and love and torment, had all been fairly average and uncomplicated people. Yes, some were beautiful, some were chaste, some were deeply religious, but none were murderous. He’en ten them immediately with that penetrating psychoanalytical eye. Patrick, on the other hand, was a mystery.

He left the shower, towelled dry, pulled on the jogging pants and made his way slowly around the apartment again. He went over everything, through everything, meticulous in his search. He wasn’t quite sure what exactly it was he was looking for, just that he’d know when he found it. Only in the hour and a half he looked, he found nothing. He gave up and stretched out on the couch, flipping on the TV, waiting for Patrick to come home from work, whatever it was he actually did.

At six the door opened and in walked Patrick in a well-tailored suit carrying a briefcase and he smiled as he saw Penn lying there in a pair of jogging pants that had he been standing would have hung extremely loosely from his hips. He left his briefcase by the door, shed his overcoat and took a seat as Penn moved his feet.

“Patty Winters?” Patrick questioned, nodding to the TV.

“The topic’s ‘My man wants to be a woman’”, Penn replied, pushing the off button on the remote and watching Patrick pout slightly as the image of the talk show host Patty Winters faded from the screen.

“Someone just called, by the way”.

“Did you let the answering machine pick up?”

“No. I didn’t know you had one. It was David Van Patten. He’s made reservations at Pastels for five at eight”.

“Five?” Patrick asked, frowning.

“Van Patten, Price, McDermott, you and me”. Penn smiled at the look on Patrick’s face. “Don’t worry – as far as they’re concerned I’m your cousin visiting from Connecticut”. The frown subsided.

“I didn’t think you’d want to meet them”, Patrick said. “They’re not… they’re… we have nothing in common”.

Penn shrugged. “I guess I just want to meet your friends”, he said. “You ought to shower and change. We’re meeting Van Patten and Luis Caruthers for drinks at Fluties at seven”.

Obediently Patrick stood and made his way to the shower wh Pen Penn went to the closet to pick out a couple of suits. Hopefully there would be something that wouldn’t look grotesquely oversized on him, and eventually he found it. He hadn’t the time to retrieve his own clothes from his hotel, and tonight he needed to blend in. Maybe seeing Patrick in his natural habitat, out with his friends, would provide him that little extra insight to figure him out once and for all.

***

Fluties didn’t suit Penn at all; it was basically one large room full of bored yuppies making polite conversation with people they didn’t really know. It all just reeked of artificiality. And in the forty-five minutes they spent there, Patrick’s friends didn’t even manage one single meaningful sentence. All that passed their lips were naïve commends on women and sce scene in New York. Penn managed to tune it out for the most part, but the meaningless chitchat still made him uncomfortable. Especially as they seemed to find it greatly important, as if they were talking about war or famine or nuclear arms and not what colour tie went best with a navy pinstripe suit or how much Van Patten’s new business cards cost to print.

Still, the little venture wasn’t a total loss. Penn sat back, sipping at his vodka and watching the three men with whom he was sitting. Van Patten was absolutely full of himself and his own sense of self-importance, a true stereotypical yuppie from Valentino suit to Brooks Brothers shoes. Patrick seemed quite the same, totally at ease in this environment, although whether that was natural or a side effect of the large doses of Xanax he’d been taking Penn wasn’t sure. But the third man, Luis Caruthers – Penn had to wonder if Patrick knew Luis had a crush on him. The substantially less than stylish, slightly oafish Luis could barely keep his eyes off Patrick and Penn just sat there watching with an amused smile.

Finally a woman arrived – a vaguely pretty young thing obviously drugged up to the eyeballs who was introduced to him as Luis’ girlfriend, Courtenay Rawlinson – and that signalled Van Patten, Patrick and Penn’s time to leave. They streamed out of the crowded room and into a waiting limo that whisked them away to their dinner reservation at Pastels.

The restaurant was simple and elegant, unlike the clientele – there was nothing elegant about the women’s huge hair, the men’s gaudy shoulder-padded suits or the decibel level of the inane chatter. Still, Penn was almost enjoying himself now, in a perverse way. He was amusing himself with counting the drug addicts, intimidating the waiters and ordering ludicrously expensive champagne. He knew he’d feel he’d belittled himself later, but at least he was having fun now.

He could hardly tell McDermott and Price apart. It wasn’t necessarily that they looked a lot alike, but they were wearing virtually the same suit and the same tie and they spoke alike. Price was perhaps a little more interesting – he actually seemed to have some sort of opinion on a lot of the topics of conversation and he had a wicked sense of humour – but even he didn’t get Patrick’s joke about Ed Gein’s philosophy on girls. Patrick had laughed, and Penn couldn’t help but join in, but the other just sat there picking at their pointless nouvelle cuisine with blank looks on their blank faces.

Penn pulled off his role to perfection – Van Patten, Price and McDermott didn’t suspect for a second that he wasn’t Patrick’s cousin Penn Bateman, a millionaire property developer from Connecticut. He managed to drop all of his opinions and join in on the conversation like a good little yuppie. They even seemed to genuinely like him. Yes, he shared Patrick’s odd sense of humour, but otherwise he fit right in. He’d spent enough time stalking yuppies to know how to act, what the norm was, how to conform. Because really conformity was the name of the game in this scene. Everyone had to look alike and act alike and speak alike or they’d be cast out. He knew that as well as anyone. As well as Patrick.

Patrick. It was then that he realised. That was what he was doing. He was conforming. Only he wasn’t doing it out of necessity as Penn was for the evening, but he actually wanted it. Patrick wanted to fit in with these people. Now he’d realised it was so blindingly obvious that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t realised before. He should have known. Everything about Patrick screamed conformity. His apartment, his clothes, his haircut, his body, all of it. He was a murderer but everything else on the surface was completely normal. These people had no idea about Patrick’s murderous streak. They had no idea. They thought he was one of them. Thinking about it, Penn was mystified. And awed. Suddenly he understood Patrick completely.

Except he couldn’t quite grasp why he’d want to fit in with these people. Until it struck him that maybe Patrick didn’t want to murder, that he didn’t want to do what he did. That just made it even better. If he didn’t want it then Penn had a real challenge on his hands, just the way he liked it. Only he knew that on some level Patrick had to want it otherwise he’d be able to stop, he’d turn himself in, he wouldn’t be sitting there with Penn, he’d be afraid. He could play on that. He’d exploit it, make Patrick realise that there was really no other choice.

And the first step? Take away his friends. Show him they were weak. Show him they were inferior. Show him there was no reason on earth he should feel he needed to fit in.

***

By the time the five of them arrive at Tunnel, four of them were already drunk. So Penn let himself slide into the background, apart from the group, watching from a corner of the overcrowded club as the four drunken yuppies wielding Platinum American Express cards attempted to seduce a small group of models. He couldn’t hear what they were saying – he couldn’t hear anything but the dull roar of chatter about the mind-splittingly loud music – but he didn’t need to. He was watching, choosing.

And finally he chose. Price rose from the booth where they’d planted themselves maybe half an hour earlier and when he made for the bathroom Penn followed him.

“Hey, Penn!” he exclaimed as he noticed him appear beside him in the similarly cro bat bathroom. “You wanna do some coke?” Penn smiled and nodded, and as soon as there was a free stall the two pushed their way into it and locked the door behind them.

Price produced his platinum-plated business card holder and started cutting the cocaine on the top with his credit card. Penn just leant back against the door and watched. Until Price did his first line, stepped back and cursed.

“Fuck! It’s a fucking gram of sweetener! How are we supposed to get high off this shit?” Penn just smiled. “What? Do I have something on my teeth?” Penn shook his head. “Okay, look, this is serious. I’ve been totally ripped off and now we have no drugs”.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry”, Penn said.

Price frowned. “Oh? Why not? You got coke?”

Penn shook his head. “No”, he said. “You just have bigger things to worry about. Like how you’re going to get out of here alive”.

The look on Tim Price’s face as Penn vamped out was, no pun intended, priceless. He knocked the sweetener to the floor, backing up until he was forced to sit on the toilet lid and Penn just moved forward, licking his lips, licking the points of his teeth, eyeing Price’s neck.

“Don’t worry, Tim”, Penn said. Price looked hopeful for a second. “It’ll only hurt for a second. Then you’ll be dead”.

Price screamed. Penn bit. In the crowded, heaving, noisy bathroom, no one even heard as Timothy Price died. A suitably anonymous death for a suitably anonymous person.

Penn licked the blood from his lips, unlocked the door and stepped out into the bathroom. He held his hand up and gave a warning glance to the couple who were headed into the stall.

“I wouldn’t go in there”, he yelled. “He’s puking his guts up”. The guy nodded thankfully and entered the next stall. Penn smiled and left the room.

He slid into the empty seat beside Patrick, finishing off Price’s Stoli in one gulp.

“I thought we’d lost you”, Patrick told him, a worrying level of concern in his voice as he leant close to Penn’s ear. He didn’t reply, he just squeezed Patrick’s thigh under the table.

“Where’s Price?” McDermott yelled, leaning over the blonde waif of a model next to him so Penn and Patrick could hear. Patrick shrugged and looked at Penn. Penn licked his incisors and the look on Patrick’s face was amazing, somewhere between awe, shock and lust. Penn liked it.

“I think he left”, he yelled to McDermott, who nodded and went back to the two models surrounding him. Penn turned to Patrick and leaned in close. “Let’s get out of here”, he said.

Patrick nodded mutely. McDermott didn’t even notice them leaving. And Penn smiled the whole way to the car. This was going to work. Patrick was going to be his.

***

Patrick had told the hooker her name was Christie. The escort girl’s name was Sabrina. They were both blonde and slim and almost pretty, and neither one felt much like talking. Fortunately, neither did Patrick or Penn. So the four of them sat silently in Paul Allen’s apartment, sipping expensive wine from expensive crystal glasses, eyeing each other. The girls looked faintly nervous, like they were uncomfortable with the situation somehow. Patrick was smiling and seemed to be somewhere else entirely as he’d just taken another large dose of Xanax and turned on a Phil Collins CD. Only Penn was cacompcompletely still between sips of wine to the point where he was smelling the fear coming off the girls in waves.

Twenty minutes passed like that. The girls sat motionless together at separate ends of one side of the L-shaped sofa. Penn and Patrick sat side-by-side on the other, close enough that their shoulders and thighs were touching, feeling the girls’ eyes on them.

“I don’t want you to get drunk”, Patrick said, obviously calmed enough for speech now, “but that’s a very fine Chardonnay you’re not drinking”. The girls raised their glasses and Penn smiled. Patrick could be very commanding when he wanted to be, when he wasn’t on excessive amounts of various medications. Now he was calm too, clear and lucid. Penn had been waiting for that. Now they were ready.

An hour later both girls were dead. Penn had sat back and watched as Patrick fucked them first, videotaping their every move, Patrick playing to the camera and flexing his muscles for Penn. Then the three of them lay down and Penn smiled as the scent of blood filled the air; Patrick had bitten into Sabrina’s thigh beneath the sheets. Penn subdued Christie as she tried to run, bound her with duct tape, threw her back onto the bed and made her watch as Patrick tore the flesh from Sabrina’s thigh with his teeth. Both girls passed out.

Under Penn’s watchful gaze Patrick tortured them both back to consciousness. And all Penn did was watch. He leaned back against the bedroom wall and watched every single move that Patrick made. He was fascinated. Instinctively Patrick knew exactly what to do. It had been truly amazing to see.

And now they were fucking. Penn was on top, driving down hard into Patrick, his bloody teeth and face nuzzling at Patrick’s throat. And Patrick was wild beneath him, calling his name, begging him to fuck him harder, faster, so Penn obliged. He licked the girls’ blood from Patrick’s skin, tasted his sweat and his tears that Patrick didn’t even know he was crying. Patrick came violently, Penn’s name catching in his throat, brining Penn to his own violent, shuddering climax as the two dead girls looked on with lifeless eyes. Penn had wanted an audience. Patrick had sat them up against the wall and there they’d died as Penn and Patrick made love.

They lay back beneath the bloodstained sheets, Patrick’s face nestled in the crook of Penn’s neck, his lips against his neck as Penn held him. The night had been perfect. Penn smiled, his face smoothing out from demon back to human, and he brushed back Patrick’s sweaty, bloody hair as he drifted into sleep. The night had been beautiful.

“I never realised it could be this way”, Patrick whispered, his lips moving softly against Penn’s skin.

“And it just keeps getting better”, he whispered back. “It can be like you never imagined if you let it. It can be beautiful. It can be perfect”.

Patrick smiled; Penn felt it as he pulled him closer to his chest. “But it’s already perfect as it is”.

Penn smiled back at that. “Then you’re in for a big surprise”, he said.

***

“You’re late”.

“I know”. Patrick put down his briefcase, locking the door.

“Where were you?”

“Picking up your tux”.

Penn frowned. “Why do I need a tux?”

Patrick threw the tuxedo over the back of the sofa and sat down on it next to Penn, kicking off his shoes and smiling his way into his arms.

“Let me take you out”, he said softly. “The theatre. Les Mis. I could introduce you to Evelyn”.

“You want to introduce me to your fiancée?” Penn questioned, pushing Patrick just hard enough in the chest to wind him and knock him clear to the other side of the sofa. “Are you mad?”

“Do you want me to answer that?”

Penn growled and left the sofa, flicking off the TV and its images of Patty Winters interviewing Madonna. “You know fucking well what I mean, Patrick”, he said, glowering at him from across the room, arms crossed over his chest. “Why would you want me to meet your fiancée? Do you want to make me jealous? Because it won’t work. I’ll just kill her”.

“I want you to”. Penn frowned. “I want you to kill her and I want to watch you do it. Like you watched me last night”.

He didn’t sound like he was kidding. He didn’t sound like he was lying. He actually sounded like this was genuinely what he wanted, and the spark of excitement that gave Penn went straight to his cock. Patrick wanted him to kill his fiancée and he wanted to watch him do it. There wometomething so hot about that thought that Penn almost gave in and told him he’d do it, just so he could remove that one last barrier that stood between them, give Patrick what he wanted and have a decent meal in the process. He could kill Evelyn, vamp out and attack her and drink her blood and Patrick could watch him do it. But he wouldn’t do it. That wasn’t part of his plan.

“No, I’m not going to kill her”, he said. “But let’s go anyway. I take it you already have the tickets, judging from the tux. And I think I’d like to meet this Evelyn”. Patrick nodded, making for the bathroom, looking slightly disappointed. Penn followed him, watching as he peeled off his clothes and stepped under the shower. There was still dry blood around the drain from the showers they’d taken after getting in from Paul’s just before dawn, but that would wash away.

“You look great”, Penn said.

Patrick nodded. “I know”.

“You work out?”

“Every day. Sit-ups, crunches, press-ups…”

“Stop, stop – just thinking about it’s bringing me out in a sweat”.

“So you don’t work out?” Patrick asked incredulously. “Never?”

“No, never, Patrick”. Penn sighed. “I’m dead. I don’t need to”. His tone would leave Patrick in little doubt that there was an unspoken ‘but if I weren’t, you wouldn’t catch me wasting my time working out anyway’ in there somewhere. “I bet you moisturise, too”.

“Yes, your point being?”

“God, Patrick, you’re frittering away your life on things that have no real importance whatsoever. It’s like you’re doing some kind of warped, self-imposed penance to the god of 80’s conformity or something. For God’s sake give it up, Patrick. You’re not like them”.

“But I want to be”.

Penn frowned, his head cocked to one side despite the fact he knew Patrick couldn’t see him. “Do you really? Is that what you *really* want? Well, I’ve got news for you. You’ll never fit in. Never. You’ve got different… appetites to the rest of them. We both know that, Patrick. You’ve just got to accept that you’ve got more in common with me than you’ll ever have with the rest of them. The sooner you come to terms with that then the sooner you can stop worrying about workouts and tanning beds and moisturiser and you can concentrate on what makes you happy. Wouldn’t you like that?”

“I, I don’t know. I just… want… to fit in”.

“Hey, y’know, I don’t have to give you a choice here. I could take by fby force and the next thing you’d know you’d be waking up six feet under. But I’m asking you nicely, Patrick. I don’t do this for just anyone. Don’t you want to be like me? It’s not difficult. All it takes is a little drink, and then you’d never have to worry about anything ever again”.

“But… but I’m human!” Patrick sobbed, leaning forward, resting his head and his hands against the wall. “I’m not a killer really. I’m not like you. Oh God, Penn, I’m not like you!”

“Shhh, Patrick”. Penn was by him instantaneously, under the water in his jogging pants, holding Patrick’s head to his chest, stroking his fingers through his hair. “It’s all right. Everything’s fine”.

“But…”

“No buts”. Penn smiled as Patrick’s warm arms closed around his waist. “If I made you like me, you wouldn’t need to fit in”, he whispered into Patrick’s hair. “You wouldn’t be a part of that world anymore. You’d be a part of mine”. He paused for a second, hearing Patrick whimper, holding him closer. “You could be like me, Patrick, because I understand you. I know what it’s like, trying to confirm, to be something you’re not. But after I changed, none of that mattered anymore. There’s no guilt. There’s no remorse. Let me show you”.

Penn had no idea why he was doing this – he usually had the very simple and effective philosophy of ‘want, take, have’ and right now he was completely ditching his mantra of two hundred years in order to, for want of better words, ‘woo’ a twenty-six-year-old yuppie. Not exactly his everyday norm. The way he was behaving just as much as the way he was feeling had him totally infuriated.

But what he had to keep reminding himself of was the fact that this yuppie child was different, not mere mortal snack food. Patrick had learned by himself in his twenty-six years what it had taken Penn maybe a lifetime or more. It was okay to kill for pleasure. It didn’t have to be about food or survival. And for some it was perhaps more than okay – it was right. It was a way of life. Holding him there, seeing that glowing potential and exactly what he’d be capable of if he only let himself, if he only had the right teacher, Penn found himself wishing Patrick would listen to him. He could be great. They could be great together. If only…

But why did Patrick have to choose it? Why was it so important he give himself over of his own free will? What the hell wasn trn trying to accomplish?

“Fuck it”.

He bit into Patrick’s neck. He was tired of waiting. He’d just have to show him who was right.

***