Join My Cult - Original Falcon Press

approachable, looking at the people on the dance floor, his lips curling
into a slight smile.
The man tilted his head politely. “I’m Aleonis de Gabrael.”
“Alexi,” he said, putting out his hand. The man shook it with a powerful
grip. His hands were slender but masculine. “Have we met before?”
he asked, trying to search his memory. Something familiar about this
man, both like looking in the mirror and seeing a long lost friend…
“Not as we now are. You look like you want to talk, but I have business
to attend to,” he said, a tone of finality in his voice. “I’ll be talking
to you soon.”
“I thought I’d met you before,” Alexi said, thinking he had put two
and two together.
“We talk all the time,” the man said, disappearing into the crowd and
dismissing any thought Alexi had that this was an acquaintance he had
somehow forgotten. “All the time.”
A little shaken, Alexi grabbed another glass of water.
When it neared eleven, both of them charged into Ken’s Maxima,
sweaty and grinning wildly.
During the ride home, it turned out that Ken had seen that man,
Aleonis De Gabrael, himself. “Yeah, I’ve seen him before,” he said. “I
was walking down College Avenue, when I was staying up at Penn State,
and I caught sight of this guy. He was about 6´, reddish hair in a ponytail
that hung to the small of his back, cruelly beautiful, but that’s a minor
observation. He was standing in the middle of a group of sloppy drunks,
his hand planted on the forehead of one of the sloppers. The drunk was
slowly buckling, about halfway to the ground, when he asked, ‘Is this the
sign of the cross?’ To which our auburn-haired friend replied, ‘No, ‘tis
only a marking.’ At that, ponytail swerved off to one side of the street,
and then ran, noiselessly, across the street. Something about this guy
really hit me. The actual feeling was so mixed: dread, joy, empathy, a
kind of animal lust that I’ve never felt before…and more… I thought,
he’s one of us… So I took off across the street…fast as my rubbery legs
could carry me. When I got within tailing range, I hung back and followed.
He was walking quickly up behind other guys… They parted,
without looking back, without a word, and led him into the middle of this
formation. After about thirty seconds of silence, they started talking in an
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