Act 1

(For Kieran)

Whispers abounded everywhere. The House absolutely buzzed with the news. And not just the great gothic house that stood alone in it's huge grounds, guarded by men and dogs and technology. From the high seats in underworld powers to the lowliest of skulking creatures the whispers spread and ran amok. Little sparks and sprigs of flame flowering up in minds and hearts and imaginations. But none of that for now.

Welcome to the city of lost histories and forgotten treasures. This is Venice. Cold as snowfall in February, the icy wind skitters and swirls up under fur coats and finds its way under doors and through sealed windows. The dark in Venice is special, despite its streetlamps. A dark that glows with black light where the stars glimmer oh so purely. It is something to do with the air and the water, that makes the sunsets fade and smoulder with glorious radiance and cause the stars to outshine the moon. Follow me up the fast emptying streets, along the length of the Cannaregio to an offshoot that leads directly to the sea at the north of this ancient place. There, not two hundred yards from the edge of the city, see a figure swathed all in black, out of time, in a top hat, three-piece suit, cloak, cane and riding boots, leave a little apartment and step out onto the street. He walks to what is arguably the most beautiful bridge in the city.

But for the RoyaleBridge, the famous one, and this, every bridge in this glorious city is the same. They vary in size, but each is a simple curve. Not this. This is the TreArchiBridge. The figure stands for a moment and looks at the honey coloured stone structure before hurrying onwards, his boots falling hard and somehow silent on the cobbles before he mounts the bridge slowly. In the centre he rests sleeve draped hands on the cold stone and lets out a breath. No cloud of white smoke appears as it does with everyone else who breathes this air. A soft, slow note issues from the raised hood of his cloak, a note from a flute or some instrument, though it is obvious no such thing is concealed within our stranger's outfit.

As the note grows to a glorious crescendo the figure throws off his top hat and his cloak. The rest of his outer garments, boots included, seem to simply fall away from him, all lands in the water of the canal and sinks below the surface as though weighted with lead. The figure is dancing. Dressed in the most beautiful and strange of oriental robes, all of black silk, with bare white feet and naked pale limbs, he is dancing, music coming out of his open white mouth and colourless lips, music of millions of instruments, all from one inhuman tongue. His hair sweeps the floor, loose and silver as the moon, shining even brighter than the stars can dare to dream. But for his clothes and his shut eyes, all about him is pale as snow and fair as a rose in bloom. His eyes open to reveal orbs of amethyst-touched onyx, blacker than pitch. With this small movement another begins and from slits in the folds of his strange garment, black feathers unfurl. Wings, huge, rising high above his head and curving down to his ankles. He continues to dance, pointed toes hovering an inch above the frozen stone of the bridge, music flowing everywhere about him.

He too has heard the whispers in the dark, and for these whispers he is both frightened and glad.

The whispers have been circulating among many, many peoples. They started with the great Lords and Ladies, and travelled from mouth to mouth, from great house to great house, like champagne kisses. Always it was on the move, never waiting for the listeners to come to terms with it. Going on and on, inexhaustible in the excitement, fear, resentment and lust it held in its news. It fled from the great vampire coven house on the moors in the south of England, across the sea to France and the Den of the werewolves deep under the Paris metro. And from that moment on it was uncontrollable. Every creature knew of the whispers, even if they hadn't heard them yet. The whispers abounded.

Toulouse Dorian Heron. Named after the infamous Dorian Grey. His parents, Lord and Lady Heron, were both fans of anything ancient, his father favoured objects, his mother books. And so from old artworks and the story in an ancient and very famous book by Oscar Wilde, their baby boy and heir was named. Of course, dear Toulouse is no longer a baby. Nor is he the beautiful child he once was. Toulouse is a man, or rather, he thinks he is a man. This most beautiful of innocents has just turned nineteen. And even in this modern world he is truly innocent. Life has dealt him a fair hand. Private boarding school education almost from birth. Housekeepers and nannies. Family holidays in far off reaches. Toulouse is all set to go to Oxford next year, after his gap year. He will never attend the old beautiful buildings, full of earnest students and elderly, informed teachers. Not as a student, in any case.

Join me in paradise. Here is a village, a newly discovered hotspot, in Turkey. Kalkan. The sea breeze rolls in every alternate breath of the planet, welcome to those who stupidly walk the streets in the almost lethal heat of the midday sun. Shopkeepers keep to their gloom and the soft click and whirr of ceiling fans. Walk with me down the harshly sloping crazy-paved and concrete streets, past the bazaar of stoneware and hand knotted rugs, past Namik's glass shop, the two opposing china shops and further down on the flat land by the harbour, the myriad of restaurants, all empty at this time of day. Stand here by the iron railings. Down the stone steps is the little crescent of pebbles that is the beach, lapped by the sun warmed blue sea. The sort of blue you get in holiday brochures. Look to your right. There is a little sprawling café, steel tables and chairs set out under the grape vines that grow high on a trellis above your head. Where the paving drops away to the beach there are a line of unevenly spaced trees and moulded around these are the sultan seating areas, all carpets, cushions and little low tables. In the nearest of these lusciously cool shady rests, a young man reclines against the cushions, lying in the dappled shade.

The breeze causes the leaves of his tree to move and the shifting sunlight moves over him with the same rhythm as his soft breathing. Leopard-like markings shifting over his all white cheesecloth outfit. The material, almost transparent in its natural nature, shows us the soft lines of tanned muscles underneath, the slimness of his figure, the slender length of his legs. Delicate slim fingers, fine boned features of his sleeping face. High cheekbones and a razor edged jaw, yet there is still something boyish and young about his face. His long lashes fall like soot against his cheek under dark brows and wavy raven black hair that glistens blue with the penetrating sunlight. In the tempting shadows of his parted rose flavoured lips glimmer even white teeth. An easy people, the locals care not that he sleeps; he has finished his long drink of freshly squeezed orange juice and will no doubt order another when he wakes. After all, they aren't busy at this time of day.

The slim moon of the beach is deserted as is all that can be seen. Cicadas make the only noise, a soft sleepy rustling, for even they are too hot to play their mating violin rasp. All is still and quiet and empty but for the boy, you and me. And you are only my imagination, and I am not here anyway. So I suppose it is only him, the sleeping figure of Toulouse Dorian Heron.

Toulouse doesn't wake for another half hour, whereupon he orders a large glass of orange juice, costing him the shocking equivalent of fifty pence. He dispenses of this in good time and, empty handed, with a pocket of jingling change and a comb, he walks back to his villa. There is something about the way he moves; even in the intense heat, he has a calm cool about him, possibly the same thing that stops sweat from pouring down his face. He is tall, straight backed, with the air of a man who knows just where he going, but is in no hurry to get there. His light clothing lets what little breeze there is permeate and waft his gold tanned skin. He moves with a certain laid-back charisma, like a big cat, but without the danger element. Seductive as silk and as richly deep as velvet. And his eyes... I have not yet told you about his eyes. They are blue, complimenting his dark hair and dark lashes beautifully. Not just blue, but a blue that ranges from dark and inky to summer sky, all the while rimmed with an emerald ring and flecked throughout with shining topaz gold. He has beautiful, enchanting eyes.

He reaches his villa, four storeys of white stone fronted brick work. Solid and cool. The pool out the front is artificially blue, and tempting to the young one who swings the heavy black painted wrought iron gate behind him and starts up the steps to the raised pool patio. He looks at the still water, sighs, and then alights the second set of stairs, past the entrance to the mini-apartment on the ground floor, to reach the main patio. His swimming trunks are hanging over the railing. With a quick glance around, to make sure he is, as he seems, alone, he strips quickly off, pulls on his trunks, then slips his sandals back on to allow the short journey to the pool side. He sinks in with a resounding sigh and disappears under the water.

From the big third floor balcony, the boy who cleans each villa in this set of four each day looks over the ledge, watching with guilty bated breath as the tanned foreigner undresses, showing a smooth back and clean shaved legs, before he sinks in the pool. The Turkish lad, older by maybe two years at the very most, tries to quell his lustful thoughts and resist touching the burning heat between his thighs. He steps back into the cool of the room, the only one of the five that has actually been slept in, and glances at the big white double bed, his imagination flaring. Dark curls flop against brown skin as he shakes his head, chocolate eyes closed as he tries to no avail to dispel the image of the beautiful tanned man who is at that moment swimming to and fro in the water outside.

Toulouse ran into the Turkish cleaner as he was coming in, dripping wet, wrapped in nothing but his towel. The thin fabric wound around his hips did nothing to hide his slim perfect figure. Each sidestepped and paused to let the other through, and both hesitated to go first.

"Thanks," Toulouse murmured as the other left in slightly more of a hurry than he thought was strictly polite. He could have called him back, but he didn't, instead ascending all the stairs until he came to the room where he had chosen to sleep. He could have chosen another, nearer the ground floor, but there was something about the view that had caught his attention. On his immaculate white bed he found a white towel, artistically curled into the shape of a heart, with petals arranged round the edge from the flowers that grew in tubs on the balcony. His mind skipped to the cleaner and he smiled somewhat nervously.

Later that day Toulouse was to be found, stretched out on the bed his all his naked glory. The air conditioning was on low and it was nicely cool in the high-ceilinged room under the sloping roof. Asleep again, or at least in a heavy eyed dose, the gorgeous boy made unconsciously seductive outlines against his bedspread. On his side, twisted to let to let his shoulders lie flat, he showed off his suppleness, the flex and play of his muscles as he rolled over. Kissable lips were open and velvet shadows lay between his parted thighs. The curve and flat of his chest and stomach rose and fell with his breathing and his wavy hair flopped over his shut eyes, casting his cheekbones into even sharper definition.

Come with me now, back down into the old town, to a large café-restaurant on the corner of the busiest street where Toulouse is ordering a Spangley, a strange chocolate desert and vanilla ice cream for the second course of his dinner. It is late in the evening, midges are everywhere, but Toulouse is not stung. In his second day here he knows to use the same thing as the locals do; lemon water that is sold just about everywhere. Dressed in a light dark cotton shirt and white linen trousers, he has already visited all three tailors for different outfits in a range of colours and materials. The waiter looks twice at him, to remember this particular pretty face. He is into girls, but it doesn't stop him appreciating the man's beauty. He wonders idly if this is the one his younger brother told him about. It must be, those eyes.

Half an hour later, Toulouse finishes his desert, having magically managed not to spill any down himself, all good manners and eloquent graces, pays his bill and drops a fistful of change into the tips bucket. He waves goodnight to all the waiters and goes home. Naked in the gloom of his room, lights from the harbour, far off below, pooling through his window he thinks of the Turk who left the heart on his bed. The curling black hair, dark eyes, wide shouldered figure shown off by a white tank top and hidden by long red swimming shorts. His touch firms on the hardness between his thighs, images speed through his mind, the Turk, others he has seen, the deep teenage lust for anything more than kisses and a hurried ecstatic fumble up against a wall at a party. White splatters over his chest and he tastes his own essence with sticky, slim fingers and falls deeply into a soft, dreamless sleep.

From the shadows of his balcony, Toulouse is being watched as he falls asleep, still bearing the trace of his self-pleasure. Something with dark skin, darker than is natural, watches him with thin set white eyes. A black tongue draws along pointed fangs and whatever it is outside the window quakes and shivers, its eyes taking in every detail of the beauty that lies upon the bed. Then off away it goes into the night. The whispers are spreading fast.

Another city, just waking, on the dawn of what looks to be an over clouded day in autumn. Every leaf is gilded bronze and gold, touched up with dark shades of green and red. This is Lille, France, a city full of back alleys and tiny streets where Japanese tearooms jostle politely with an artisan's den and a tiny shop where ancient tomes sleep on bending shelves. Cool for autumn and crisp as dry ice, but dawn is breaking slow and late, thick fog gathering up the rays of the blood-red sun like a sponge, refusing to let the day be lit. This suits the figure traversing the streets just fine. Many are up early, walking their little dogs to the patisserie, but this figure moves along the streets as though he is alone in the world. In the square he stops and raises hidden eyes to the Office de Tourisme, and the dark bird that sits in the vine-covered arch outside it. He whistles to the black feathered thing, and it circles above him as he walks onwards. Past tea shop and bakery, not pausing until he reaches a little marble floored café. He slips in and orders a chocolat chaude which arrives in two little jugs, one of melted chocolate, the other of hot milk. He mixes the drink carefully in his white china cup, one part to two, dipping the little biscuit into the hot drink and raising it to his mouth.

The figure has thin hands, his fingernails are trimmed neatly and he handles everything he touches with care. Fingers are wrapped around the glass, but no colour comes into them once they are warmed. The lone stranger takes down his hood to reveal a slim face, almost a child's face, with long straight reddish brown hair, and shifting autumnal eyes. The waiter comes over to him and smiles. After a short exchange, he gets up and leaves without paying.

He follows a small twisted lane, past many places, most of which are closed this early, or just opening, the shopkeepers bleary eyed and weather-dulled do not look at him as he passes them, walking quickly on his way. The thin small figure enters a wooden door by way of a tiny key that hangs around his neck, and descends the winding staircase that is presented to him. Down below are a series of rooms draped in velvets, purples and reds and blacks. A lavish paradise. The man-child, with a young fresh face and eyes that speak of centuries of knowledge, slips between the drapes and finally rests on a dark wooden sofa. He is even more ageless now than he was at first glance, everything about him seeming to shift and change but yet stay so solid and real. He yawns; it has been a long night. As his mouth opens you shudder beside me. No trick of the light, those fangs, white, elongated and sharp as daggers where his canine teeth should be. He stretches out and closes his lovely eyes. Sitting in a deep chair near his head is another man, dressed in the same materials as the room he is in. But this man is older, although he too, at the same moment, appears to be young. More well-built than slim, and pale as death and colder to the touch that he places on the cheek of the other.

"Did you eat well?"

"Yes."

"Did you meet anyone?"

"Yes."

The boy leans up on one elbow and the whispers spread into the older man's ears, he licks his long fangs. The whispers spread like wildfire through the city from this contact and more and more know of the news it brings, this secret whisper that everyone knows. But not you my dear, oh no, you know nothing. You need me to see these sights for you and to tell them in my own tongue. The whisper is spreading, just as I said it was. It's unstoppable now.

Early November and the snow in Banff lies thick enough for all manner of winter sports. Not quite at the level where snow ploughs comb the roads constantly, but the flakes fall soft and thick during the nights. This is a strange town, crowded with tourist shops and tourists. Not a local in sight. In the clear skies of the early evening all the shops are still open and bustling, as they will be until the hours nearing midnight. A veritable haven for teenagers and lovers of the dark.

Toulouse had been snowboarding outside the town all day, looking charismatically casual in slim fit snow gear, all khaki and black and big mirrored goggles. Up on the snow with his board under his feet, takes the curves at speed he looks as relaxed as he did in Turkey in the summer. He lacks no skill in the sport and weaves his way around other boarders and cumbersome skiers with ease and no care for the sheets of powered snow that mark his wake down the mountainside. He doesn't hit anyone with these flurries however, for that would be markedly bad form.

Now his is dressed in cowboy fit jeans, sturdy black boots and a well fitting shirt under a very huggable jumper. The narrow black scarf loose around his neck adds to the image. An image that is constantly changing. Yesterday he was dressed like the teenagers that haunt the skate shop, wide trainers, baggy jeans, band named hoodie. He could have passed for sixteen easily with a board under his arm up at the skate park with its swooping concrete forms and artistic graffiti. Now he looks like the almost man he is, unconsciously dressed to kill and strolling along the main street with an air so casual and free it would hardly surprise any onlooker to see that his feet hovered above the ground.

Follow me down the main street in this town where the traffic takes second place to pedestrians who wander across the road without a thought in the world. Past the skate shop and so many little gatherings of trinkets, into a bar-restaurant where Toulouse has just sat down at the wooden bar, next to a bucket of unshelled peanuts, the shells crunching under his and everyone else's feet. He is served a beer in a mason jar. He is not old enough to drink here, but no one bats an eyelid to his order. No one cares whether he's underage or not. The waitress in her scoop necked top flashes him a ready smile. The real fire blazing away in the corner, and the heat from the kitchens, warms the room and Toulouse, sitting upright on his stool takes the hem of his jumper and pulls it up over his head and off in a fluid cat like movement. Everyone stares. Everything from hope to open lust written on their features. Smoothing his ruffled hair the gorgeous boy truly doesn't notice the sensation he has caused.

A young man of twenty five with fair hair and good dress sense comes to sit in the seat next to him.

"Can I offer to buy you a drink?"

For Toulouse the evening is very pleasant. The man, whose name he learns is Michael, buys him drinks all evening, then offers to walk him back to his hotel room. Toulouse is staying in a little apartment in a block owned by one of the major hotels. He invites Michael in for coffee. This most innocent of innocents suspects nothing as the man agrees immediately. The boy begins going through the motions of making coffee, readying the little machine, adding the filter, cups and spoons, sugar. But he only gets this far before he feels Michael's chest pressed up against his back, arms coming around his narrow hips, fingers feeling for the crotch of his jeans.

"Um..." is the only word that escapes his lips as he steadies his hands on the worktop. Fingers dive below his belt, finding no other barrier, and stroke him into ecstasy. Shaking and shivering, though not from cold, he feels the heat of this other man pressed up against his rear. Lustful as he is he doesn't want that. Michael withdraws his hands, laced with liquid white and smiles as Toulouse turns around. The coffee is ready but the man is out the door in moments, having seen the look in Toulouse's innocent and sparking eyes. In a few hours the innocence returns, just as it always was, after Toulouse has washed and showered vigorously.

But for that moment, the moment he turned around to face Michael there was nothing of those eyes but pure burning flames. Flames of hatred. Little innocent Toulouse has had a taste of the big bad world that is, with one voice, lusting after him and the beauty of his body. He has never even considered it before. He knows he is attractive, but his beauty is so lovely because it is wholly unconscious. This deliciously uncorrupted boy.

Toulouse makes his way to bed, the coffee gone cold and still undrunk, and falls into a restless sleep, full of images and faces, ghosts and haunting spirits that weave about him as he dreams. In the morning he wakes looking just the same as he did when woke the previous morning, his fair light skin unblemished and perfect, his rose lips stretched in a lion's yawn.