Obscurati Read online

  Praise for WYNN WAGNER’s

  Vamp Camp

  “Sick of the same old tired, über-powerful vamps but can’t quite let go of those sexy suckers? Definitely give Vamp Camp a try then. This hilarious, witty, sly, entertaining, sexy, and flat-out laugh-out-loud funny romp hits so many high points…”

  —Three Dollar Bill Reviews

  “Goodbye, vampires in New Orleans, Colonial era. Hello, vampires in Germany, World War One era. Author Wynn Wagner tackles a subject that many authors have tackled, notably Anne Rice, and he has found new and colorful and erotic ways to write about it. Best of all, he does it with the deliciously dry wit that infuses everything he writes.”

  —Patricia Nell Warren, author of The Front Runner

  Copyright

  Published by

  Dreamspinner Press

  4760 Preston Road

  Suite 244-149

  Frisco, TX 75034

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Obscurati

  Copyright © 2011 by Wynn Wagner

  Cover Art by Reese Dante http://www.reesedante.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 4760 Preston Road, Suite 244-149, Frisco, TX 75034

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  ISBN: 978-1-61581-614-9

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  January, 2011

  eBook edition available

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61581-615-6

  Dedications

  To Patricia,

  for a lifetime of writing that I will never even pretend to equal,

  and for leaving a well-marked trail for the rest of us to follow.

  To John,

  for letting me meet Patricia

  and for working The System without thought of personal reward.

  To Rick,

  for proofreading

  (read: typos are Rick’s fault and he should be ashamed)

  and for being bullheaded about details.

  (Note to self: rip out this page before Rick sees it.)

  Chapter 1

  “BLESS me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  “Lord, bless Mårten, for he hath sinned egregiously against Thee,” the priest said.

  “Why do you bother with a privacy screen if you can tell it’s me?”

  “It’s a confessional, so everyone expects a screen.”

  “Shouldn’t you pretend you don’t know me?”

  “You want me to lie? You’ve been coming to my confessional for ninety years. Even if I couldn’t see you, your Texas dialect stands out in Germany.”

  “I had sex four times yesterday.”

  “God has rules about pride and bragging.”

  “Isn’t there some rule about gay sex?”

  “Jesus said nothing about gays,” he said.

  “Any kind of sex rules?” I asked.

  “Oh, most assuredly,” he said with a scholarly flair. “The rule says ‘Thou Shalt Not Boink’, but it only applies to castratos and coloraturas.”

  All I could do was study the floor, hoping that the stones would morph into something I could understand.

  “Are you sure you’re a priest?” I asked through my teeth as I shook my head. Please let me find wisdom rising from the grout between the stones of the floor.

  “Ja, Mårten. Castratos don’t have much sex, so I never understood why they were mentioned in the rule, but we should keep our eyes on the coloraturas. They can’t be trusted without adequate supervision. There’s nothing more disturbing than a coloratura boink-a-thon.”

  “What? Did you even hear me say that I had sex with Oberon four times yesterday? I don’t care about coloraturas.”

  “Yes, Mårten. You’ve lived with Oberon for almost a hundred years. I would worry if you weren’t having sex.”

  “Four times,” I said.

  “That’s nice, darling, but don’t brag. Are you trying to make me jealous?”

  “Not at all, Father Johannes. There’s no need to be jealous. You can have sex with Oberon any time you want.”

  “Shhhh, I’m not gay,” the priest whispered.

  “Your boyfriend thinks you are, Father Johannes.”

  “Humph. He only wishes it. Did you kill anyone since your last confession?” the priest asked blandly.

  “Nobody,” I said. “Just two vampires.”

  “Ah-ah,” the priest said, tapping his knuckles against the privacy screen. “Vampires are fictional characters.”

  “So your boyfriend sleeps with a fictional character? He’s going to be shocked.”

  “Focus, Mårten. This confession is about you, not me. Are you sorry for killing the vampires?”

  “No, Father. It was business, and they were vampires, so technically they were already dead.”

  “That’s nice, Mårten. Don’t forget to pray. Ludwig and I went to a Chinese restaurant last night. When he opened his fortune cookie, the piece of paper was completely blank. Do you think that means anything? He was in tears, of course. I need to go… you know. It’s Ludwig.”

  And with that, the priest was gone. I was alone in the chapel’s confessional. The layperson always leaves a confessional first. The priest leaves later, but Father Johannes doesn’t understand such mundane rules. He has to be the strangest priest I’ve ever known. He didn’t tell me to be sorry or to promise to do better or to say Hail Mary’s. He just mentioned his boyfriend’s fortune cookie and went poof.

  I was left to ponder or shake my head. It sure feels like he is messing with my head, but he is always like that. He gets into my thoughts, slaps me around, scares the daylights out of me, and then he disappears.

  I am a vampire, but not by choice. A German prison guard during World War I raped me and turned me. I’m gay and would have agreed to the sex if he had asked, but he didn’t ask. Rape is always wrong. He’s dead now. I killed him. Twice. But that’s a whole other story.

  A hundred people witnessed the second time I killed my rapist and Maker. He was a bad vampire who needed to die. Nobody complained (except my rapist, of course).

  The vampire queen of Europe didn’t even object that I refused her help with the second killing. She helped the first time, but it didn’t get him completely dead. If you want to get things done right… you know.

  When I killed him the second time, I ripped his head right off his body and threw it onto a bonfire and watched as his head burst into flames. I will never forget the look of total shock on his face when the head hit the flames of the bonfire. He was stunned. He was so surprised by the way I killed him that he hasn’t spoken to me since.

  There are two ways to kill a vampire: rip off his head or burn him. I did both. It was the vampire version of the fat lady singing: rip off the head and burn it, and it’s all over.

  That’s what it did: I flew up and pulled the asshole’s head right off, and then I flew to a bonfire and threw the head onto the fire. Most vampires can’t fly, but I can. It is a talent or skill that is the envy of many vampires.

  “PRIDE is definitely a sin, Mårten.”

  “Yes, Father, but I’m telling this story. Don’t you have some altar boys to chase?”

  “That isn’t funny, Mårten.” />
  “Oh, yes it is, Father.”

  THE queen’s own chief goon watched me take down the bad vampire. Pierre called my fighting the most insanely terrifying thing he had ever seen, and he is several hundred years old. He made me promise to get some training. The queen had told everyone that I was a Master Vampire after this caper, so I think I could have ignored the promise to get training.

  But I didn’t. I tried training.

  THWUNK came a blow to my chest that sent me somersaulting backwards. My fighting teacher and I were about thirty meters in the air, just above the top of the tallest tree. Just as soon as I rolled half a turn, I felt a swift kick to the butt: thwunk.

  “Hamlet!” I screamed. “Are you trying to kill me? No sex for you when this is over.”

  Hamlet is the most effeminate vampire anybody has ever known. I’ve known him since he was about eighteen years old. His Maker refused to turn him until he was in his mid-twenties. I know because I was his Maker. Hamlet looks like a frilly queen on the outside but fights like the toughest kung fu ninja karate blackest-belt-possible you can imagine.

  Hamlet is a magnet for street thugs who want to roll young gay guys, and he loves it when they try. Thinking you can get the drop on Hamlet says more about your thinking than it does about Hamlet. He fights with human bullies, and he loves sending them flying against walls or Dumpsters.

  He likes fighting with me, although I am technically his student. We try not to hurt each other too much.

  I almost never get mad at Hamlet because anger changes all the rules. I go absolutely berserk when I am in a real fight. What you see is an insane burst of venom and movement. Hamlet could probably take me down in a real fight, but I know that I could cause some damage.

  Causing damage wasn’t part of that day’s agenda. Humiliating me in front of a dozen others was what Hamlet intended. He smacked me, kicked me, and threw me.

  Nelly friggin’ vampires.

  When I turned, Hamlet was grinning and prancing on the ground with one hand on his hip. A vampire sashaying is a sight like no other, especially after the girly fighter has wiped the floor with the scrappy one.

  “Ouch,” I complained loudly. I got no sympathy from the gallery on the ground. They just jeered that a wimpy little guy like Hamlet could wipe the whole sky with my butt.

  I grabbed one of his legs, but he curled his knee quickly and sent me crashing down to the ground. There was no justice. No dignity.

  “Had enough for the night?” Hamlet asked as he pranced to the house. I saw one member of the human staff, apparently a recent addition, pulling some folded money out of his pocket and handing it to a groundskeeper who had been at the estate for years. The bitch bet against me.

  “FATHER JOHANNES, is it wrong to wish for the death of another vampire?”

  “Hamlet again?” he asked.

  “Ja, Vater. Maybe I could just cause some pain.”

  “Don’t forget to pray, Mårten.”

  I AM over a hundred years old, but I lived only twenty years as a human. I was made vampire in 1920.

  My constant companion for most of those years has been Oberon. He is everything I’m not. In person, he is the reserved one, and drop-dead gorgeous with long, black hair.

  I’m a short, scrappy blond who was born poor and would just as soon fight you as kiss you. No offense. It is just the way I was put together.

  Oberon is friendly and quiet. He is so reserved that it makes him seem more mysterious.

  People are drawn to him, especially the ladies. They think it is such a waste that he is gay. When he smiles, it stops me dead in my tracks. I’m already dead, being a vampire and all, but Oberon’s smile makes my knees wobble. If I were jealous, I’d be in trouble. Most people who meet Oberon want to rip his clothes off and have his babies, both women and gay men. I try to explain that if there are any babies made, the babies will be mine. I just get ignored.

  It’s just a good thing I don’t get jealous. In fact, I like it that we are so open. Oberon needs more sex than I do. He can feed his needs with other men, and it leaves me more time to train as a wicked vampire fighter.

  I didn’t grow up to be so permissive, and it sometimes makes me worry. Somehow our arrangement works. Oberon needs so much sex that my ass would always feel like ground hamburger.

  Vampires can be territorial, but Oberon and I make an open relationship defy the odds. He knows where home is, and his love has never wandered as much as a millimeter.

  “Don’t worry about Hamlet,” Oberon said. “You could take almost any vamp or human on the planet. You just have some kind of blockage when it comes to Hamlet.”

  “You’re saying I’m mental, then?” I asked him, brushing grass and dirt off my pants.

  “I’m saying you’ve learned a lot about fighting.”

  “Oooo rah,” I whispered.

  “I love you, even if you can’t beat the sissy queen.”

  “Whatever.”

  We live in Bavaria, the southern part of Germany. We are on a huge estate owned by a vampire who is over a thousand years old but looks like he is in his twenties.

  Menz was my mentor a hundred years ago. He rescued me after my Maker abandoned me in a cave, and he taught me how to survive as a vampire without harming humans or getting noticed by the authorities.

  We take care of our own. If you are a vampire anywhere around Menz’s estate and you start killing people or scaring children, we will make sure you stop your offensive behavior. Vampire justice is quick and permanent, and it usually involves fire. Burn a vampire or cut off its head—heads won’t grow back, and a fire doesn’t just leave marks, it leaves ashes. Snap and crackle and poof.

  If we don’t take care of our part of Germany, the European vampire council or the vampire queen will take care of us. One way or another, rogue vampires don’t last. We police our part of the world.

  MENZ keeps between forty and fifty humans around. They are mostly gay men in their twenties. He pays their tuition at college, and all he expects in return is blood. Sometimes he gets sex too, but it is completely optional. The main reason for the humans is blood. We even have a few straight donors, and their blood is just as tasty.

  Human blood donors are always volunteers. If one doesn’t want to be a donor on a particular day, no more questions. We respect their wishes. All five vampires at the estate keep blood donor diaries to make sure we rotate through the staff.

  No single human is a donor more than once or twice a week. That means it takes seven humans per vampire. Round up to eight to account for illness and vacation. I know all this because I was a math major in college. We need forty humans to keep five vampires fed, and we always have that many at a minimum. There are usually more.

  It isn’t as easy as it looks to be a vampire.

  Our blood diary used to be on paper, and it took almost forever to wade through the lists and diaries. Five vampires go through a lot of blood. Nowadays, thanks to one of the donors, we have everyone on a spreadsheet. I get from “I’m hungry” to the name of a donor in just a matter of seconds, thanks to the computer. And to think we used to write everything with fountain pens. Menz is so old that he used a quill in his first diary.

  If any of us messes up on the donor rotation, we have to answer to Menz. Answering to Menz is not in my top ten favorite things. He usually screams and throws things.

  Menz and his lover, Paco, are both vampires. Oberon and I are lovers, and we’re vampires. Then there’s Hamlet.

  The humans stay as long as they are in college, and then they move on to live regular human lives. As part of the deal, they agree to have their memory “adjusted” by Menz before they leave. It keeps the presence of vampires a closely guarded secret. We don’t like publicity or notoriety.

  So far as I know, all the human donors have been okay with this vampire mind trick. If they tell Menz they want to remember… well, let’s just say I don’t want to know what happens. Whatever it is, Menz takes care of things quietly and quickly. />
  I’ve seen some of our former human donors out on the streets, and they didn’t recognize me. Oberon and I had sex with two of those former donors when they were living in the mansion, but they acted like they didn’t know me. Of all the nerve. You’d think a studly Scandinavian vampire like me would be a memorable fuck. Menz’s mind adjustment is complete, or that’s what I keep telling myself.

  OBERON is friendly and quiet with long, black hair and blue eyes. His hair often has blue, chartreuse, or maroon locks, and he started wearing guy-liner even before the term was used. He looks like the kind of man who would be compliant in bed. He gives off vibes that he is versatile, but you’d be making a mistake to think so. Oberon is a top. He knows what he likes, and he knows how to get it. When we have sex, there is no question as to who is doing what and to whom.

  He taught me some German, and I taught him some English. He brought in an official teacher to teach English to everyone at the estate. Oberon picks up languages better than I do. That’s okay. I don’t have to be the best at everything, and I am better with math and fighting.

  Wait. Oberon brought in a teacher. In effect, he was saying it would be easier to teach English to fifty humans and vampires than it would be to teach me German. I think I ought to be insulted.

  Oberon would have sex four or more times every night if he got a vote. It is one reason I never complain that he picks blood donors who also want to have sex. There is something special about Oberon’s bite when he does it at the same time his dick explodes with cum in your ass.

  I get weak-kneed just thinking about it. It is really hard to write a book when I keep thinking about Oberon and what he might be doing to me. No offense, but I think I usually want to be with him.