What Manner of Man: Chapter 32 🦇

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere; / This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

I owe everything to my charming, juicy, and delicious patrons, whose blood I am not drinking in secret, and who, in fact, I’ve never bitten even once. The perpetuation of this novel is due entirely to their support.

Today on Patreon I’m sharing a glimpse into an alternate universe where What Manner of Man took a deviating path: a whole unused chapter, placed quite early in the story, from a time when the novel was set against a slightly different historical moment.

EDITOR’S NOTE: For the final time I must make the cautious reader aware that this entry of Victor Ardelian’s journal contains sexually explicit events.

JOURNAL ENTRY (CONTINUED)

Undated.

I am only just beginning to understand what it means to ritually eat a god’s flesh; drink his blood.

I wondered about those others, like the one whose diary I had found; the holy men who had come here in past centuries, who loved their martyrdom. ‘It’s their ritual that does it,’ Lord Vane had said — how right he had been. Never was any rite more intrinsic, more vital to my identity as one of Christ’s priests than the celebration of the mystery of his body and blood.

“For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it — / The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit — a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” Lines taken from one of the penitential psalms, often upon my lips of late, rise easily to my pen.

Wishing to learn how best to check certain unlawful desires that dwell within my heart, to be master of myself, I had turned to the Church. It promised me forgiveness, a purpose, a soul. In return, it turned me into something monstrous; taught me to believe that which lay in my heart was an abomination. Now I saw with perfect clarity that it had been my very faith that had doomed me, mind and body. I feel it within me still: the echo of that dim, remote time before men knew the Light of God.

For all that I may no longer believe, according to the law of the Church, I shall remain a priest. No longer, though, shall I be Christ’s worthy servant. Neither obedient lamb nor kindly shepherd. I have exorcised the demon of fear from my heart. No longer haunted by the memory of passions of which I was too much afraid and temptations I had not the courage to yield to. My heart is that of a wolf, not a lamb — a serpent, not a dove. 

Light, now, as if I had become so impossibly fine and delicate that I could be borne up upon the air, I shed the last burden of holiness in his embrace. I don’t know how long we stayed wrapped in each other like that, as if he plucked up kisses by the roots that grew upon my lips. His passion was ravenous, devouring; as if I might be so consumed by it that nothing of me would remain. I could feel that hunger in me as well, in the grip of my fingers on the nape of his neck and the way my tongue met his, seeking every last taste of Alistair.

I fell to the task of yielding to everything I had ever denied myself, with all the zeal of one with almost two decades of lost time to make up for and perhaps only this one night of passion in which to make amends. I let myself feel him — hands roaming over his strong flanks, feeling the way his muscles moved as he touched me, how soft the flesh was along his sides. I wanted everything it was within his power to give; for him to drive me into the bed, to rut and spend and how against me. No matter how I pressed myself to him, twined myself about him as ivy around an oak, it wasn’t enough. I needed to feel his skin against mine — knowing too sharply that this may be all we ever have together. I refused to miss the least part of it. 

At last I disentangled myself to the extent necessary for undressing. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but fell silent, as, sitting back on my heels, I began to unbutton and strip away the barrier of clothing. I was impatient to disrobe as far as was possible. 

Since entering this room I had been blind to all but his injuries. In these past few minutes it had become increasingly difficult to ignore the other feelings which the sight of his unclothed body inspired. All the appearance of weakness about him was fading — the haunted expression passing from his features — his transfigured appearance pallid and strange, but strong and wonderfully alive. He was a noble creature, utterly unlike anything I had ever seen, beautiful beyond the furthest dreams of mortal men.

It was singular that, though he did not betray by the least outward sign that being thus undressed held any significance for him, the merest sight of my skin left him powerfully affected, all but panting with each successive garment I discarded.

“Beautiful,” he whispered, “Victor, I —”

Yet even as I unclothed myself before him, I could see the elusive, mutable, flickering quality about his appearance was increasing, growing steadily more perceptible. Alistair was undergoing a metamorphosis, though by such indiscernible means that no physical change seemed to take place. Part of me sensed I should turn from him then, that I was in grave and increasing danger, but instead I let the fabric fall from my shoulders, head tipped back and drew him to me in invitation. I felt hardly more in control of myself than he was. 

I could feel him tremble as he hovered above my exposed throat. “You have the ring?” he asked with an appearance of great evident restraint.

“Yes,” I replied, lacing my fingers with his.

He fell upon me in wild, bestial passion, claws and teeth and tongue, but never so much as to cause serious injury. He seemed to be everywhere at once, pale wings filling the field of my vision. I returned his kiss with violent, worshipful ferocity. I could taste blood between us, and he whined as he licked into my mouth for the taste of it. 

I hardly know what we did after that savage embrace. One moment he was ferocious, then unbearably, heartbreakingly vulnerable. At one point, my heart beating like a martial drum, I knelt before him as if in prayer, and worshiped him with my mouth, devotedly. Strange to think I could ever have condemned such an act as unholy. 

This seemed to drive him wild, and what before had been a flickering, candle-lit quality was fanned into a flame. Seizing me about the shoulders he dragged me into his lap and kissed me with mad, animal passion. I clung to him fiercely, to life, to this. It felt like an act of defiance.

I held to him until there was no way I could become physically closer, as if I could press through that barrier of flesh and unite our souls. Even as he was assailed by the effects of the curse he seemed to draw strength from our embrace. In succession we disobeyed the prohibitions of Genesis, Matthew, and Leviticus, joining again and again, entwined, enrapt; becoming perfect in bodily union.

I would have committed any moral sin; broken any law of man or God to be with him for a moment longer, would incur the eternal sentence of fire to buy a minute more in his arms. Innumerable, uncounted kisses, one for every guilty, sleepless night of agonized prayer, every act of denial, every self-punishment. Each time I remembered another happiness I had denied myself I renewed my caresses with redoubled passion, determined to lose myself in sensation until I forgot the very meaning of the word sin. 

I am not sure how long we lay like that, with me gripping the blades of his shoulders as if it might anchor him to me forever. He cradled me in his arms, brushing his lips over my hair, my closed eyelids. Nothing existed beyond this one exquisite moment. If we lay sprawled together in some cool grove on a bed of moss and grew wine-drunk with slow kisses under a canopy of stars, it could not have been more perfect, nor I more perfectly content than when I lay with him amid the ruins of furniture, while riot reigned far above us.

As I write, the ring is still upon my finger — Alistair would not consent to rest unless I agreed either to continue wearing it or return him to his chains. How strange to think that I have worn it so long as a token of my Christian duty. Instinctive recognition, perhaps, of those forms by which men have sought to express destiny, nature, and God. For more than half my life, now, it served me as an ever-present reminder of what had happened. The wages of sin, the wrath of God; it all seemed so clear, so certain. Monty and I had sinned together, if only in our hearts; his punishment was to die, and mine was to live. I suspect that nothing is ever as clear or as certain as that.

I asked Alistair to explain a little of what the twin spirals of the ring betokened. He told me a secret — some fragmentary, curiously labyrinthine poetry that I can describe but which I have sworn never to write. It concerned rising and falling celestial wheels; death and rebirth; the rising and setting sun.

In case I do not survive the coming hours, then let this record state that however great the cost of these stolen moments may prove, they were worth as much.

P.S. FROM 2024:

Hello! 👋 What you’re reading is a draft version of What Manner of Man. In the final edition of this novel, the entire romantic climax has been so completely revamped and improved that it’s a bit difficult for me to revisit this original version. What you’re reading is only a pale shadow of the properly edited moment — it is simply much more intense and emotional.

(You can get the complete, edited and expanded novel DRM-free on Itch.io or at the retailer of your choice.)

(Sorry about the afternoon delivery! Some idiot [me] accidentally scheduled this one for 8:30 tomorrow.)

Been looking back and did you know this journal entry began in chapter 27? 😰 Victor baby I’m so sorry, your hand must be so tired.

-St John

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