Bitten & Smitten

by Michelle Rowen

  “If it’s any consolation to you, Thierry rarely—if ever—does his own dirty work.”

  “That’s not much of a consolation, Vee. But thanks.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What did you just call me?”

  Oh. Oops.

  “Vee. Sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “No.” She smiled. “I like it. Vee. I don’t remember the last time I had a nickname. What shall I call you?”

  “Um, just Sarah will do nicely. Plain old Sarah.”

  She shook her head. “There’s nothing plain about you, my dear. But I can see you’re upset about what you’ve just seen. May I buy you a drink to help ease your mind?”

  “It would have to be a very large drink. But I don’t want to be here anymore, anyhow, so no thanks.”

  “No, not here.” She took a moment to gaze at the crowd of gathered vampires. “I thought we could go to another club. A human one, perhaps.”

  “Living on the edge, are you?”

  “Just living, my dear.”

  Let’s see, did I want to go out on the town with Thierry’s gorgeous wife? Not so much.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Then again, I was never one to turn down a free drink.

  We left the club through the tanning salon. Veronique nodded across the street at the Clancy’s neon sign. “How about that one?”

  I eyed it warily. “That, Vee, is the local hangout for vampire hunters. Probably not such a good choice.”

  She started to cross the street, and I had to jog to catch up with her. She had really long legs.

  I grabbed her arm. “What part of vampire hunter hangout didn’t you understand?”

  “It’s just a drink.” She gave me a big smile. “Has it been so long since I last visited that Canada is no longer a free country?”

  I hadn’t planned on setting foot in Clancy’s after what had happened the last time, for, oh, the next thousand years or so. But Veronique marched right across the street on her four-inch heels as if she owned the street and every business on it.

  I felt suddenly delegated to the role of shorter and slightly less gorgeous sidekick as I quickened my pace to keep up with her. Maybe I just should have said, “No, there’s not a chance in hell that I’m going in there.” But I didn’t. So much for speaking up for myself.

  Veronique pushed the front door open and entered the busy bar without pausing for even a moment.

  “Ah, yes.” A wide smile touched her full lips as she surveyed the smoke-filled, wall-to-wall vampire hunter pub. “This reminds me of a tavern in Germany I once frequented. I haven’t been there for over fifty years.”

  “Okay, Vee,” I said as a huge man brushed past me. He wore a leather jacket with KILL written in metal studs on the back of it. “If you insist on being here, you might want to ixnay on the ampirevay alktay.”

  She turned to me. “Is that pig Latin?”

  “Yup.”

  “You are the most charming girl.”

  It’s true, I was. But compliments weren’t going to get us anywhere if she kept talking the way she was. I didn’t want any unwanted attention. I’d had my fill of drama for the evening. One drink and I was out of there. I tried subtly to scan the rough-looking crowd. I didn’t recognize anyone who’d tried to kill me lately. That was a good start.

  I took a seat on the very same stool where I’d been sitting when I met Quinn. Seemed like ages ago.

  The bartender glanced over at me.

  “Tequila,” I said meekly. “Pretty please.”

  Veronique sat next to me. “I’ll have a mimosa.”

  “What’s that?” the bartender asked.

  “A mimosa? Well, it’s champagne and orange juice, of course.”

  “Don’t have any champagne, Your Majesty.” He stifled a laugh. “Does this look like the Ritz to you?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “The closest Ritz-Carlton is in Montreal.”

  “Just give her another tequila,” I told him. The longer she took to order, the longer we’d be there.

  Veronique didn’t argue, and instead smiled at me sweetly.

  I hated that even in this light, much harsher than the soft lighting at Midnight Eclipse, she still looked gorgeous. I was hoping that the more I stared at her, the more I’d notice some flaws coming to the forefront. Maybe a stray facial hair or a freshly sprouted zit. I’d even be happy to see an oily T-zone, but I couldn’t find a damn thing. She was like a magazine-cover model after they’d been retouched. Flawless.

  Actually, the only flaw I could find about her was that she was married to Thierry. But, I guess, that was a pretty big one.

  “So, Sarah, dear,” she said after a ladylike sip of the tequila. “Why don’t you tell me all about yourself?”

  I downed my shot in a decidedly unladylike manner, and ordered another one. I couldn’t get drunk from just alcohol anymore? Let’s put that to the test, shall we?

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Let’s see.” She thought for a moment. “How did you come to be friends with my Thierry?”

  I grimaced at “my Thierry.”

  “He’s become sort of my adopted sire. He helped me when I’d first been made into a vamp”—I glanced around. Better rephrase that—“An executive assistant of the night. He saved me from the, uh… mean people in human resources.”

  “He saved you?” Thankfully, she seemed to be following my line of thought with an amused nod of her head. “Interesting. What about your natural sire?”

  “He was transferred to the big company branch in the sky, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh, dear.” She shook her head and made a tsk-tsk sound. “How horrible for you. And how long ago was that?”

  “A week tomorrow night.”

  She looked surprised. “Truly? I would have taken you for much older than that. You glow with an inner energy one normally only sees in much older… executive assistants.”

  “Yeah, that’s sort of what Zelda told me, too. She said it’s because I’ve had Thierry’s blood… er… coffee. Yeah, Thierry sure does make a strong cup of coffee. More like espresso, if you ask me.”

  She nodded. “Of course that would be it. Yes, his coffee would be strong by now.”

  I sighed. “I can’t deal with the office analogy anymore. Can we talk about something else?”

  She studied me for a moment. “I’m beginning to think that your friendship with my husband is more than I originally thought.”

  I shook my head. “No, don’t think that way, because it’s not true. We’re just friends, and after tonight I’m not sure I even want to be that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sorry if this comes off as extremely naive to somebody like you, but I didn’t like what I saw tonight. That he would do something like that, it’s just so horrible. Even if he feels that he’s doing it for the right reasons, I’ll never understand it.”

  “It is true.” She took another tiny sip of her drink. At the rate she was going, we were going to be there all night. “It is more his style to hide when danger appears and not come out until it’s gone.” She laughed then, and her voice sounded like delicate wind chimes.

  “Excuse me?”

  She smiled. “I’ll tell you one thing, my dear, you are very brave to go through all you have in the past week and come out on the other end looking no worse for wear. Truly admirable. But then there are those who would rather hide their heads like ostriches in the sand and hope no harm befalls them.”

  I blinked at her. “Are you trying to say that Thierry’s an ostrich?”

  She had to be mistaken. Were we talking about two different Thierrys? Maybe I’d blanked out at that part of the conversation earlier. Could happen.

  “He once was. Oh, I could tell you stories.”

  I ordered another drink. “For example?”

  “No, no. I should say no more. I wouldn’t want to ruin his façade as a brave and powerful leader of the… execu
tive assistant community.”

  I spotted an empty booth in the corner, which would afford us some privacy. My heart thudded in my chest at the thought of learning something about Thierry he’d prefer I didn’t know.

  Veronique followed me as I moved through the wall of muscled beer-drinking men—and a few muscled, beer-drinking women—to the new table.

  “I told you the other night that we met during the Black Death in Europe centuries ago, yes?” she said as she flicked her dark, gorgeous hair so it draped perfectly over one pale shoulder.

  I glanced over to see a large, hairy man crack his pool cue into the next game so hard that several of the balls went flying off the table.

  I leaned forward so I wouldn’t have to raise my voice to be heard. “Yes, you mentioned that.”

  “Before the plague, it was a glorious time in France. I was the daughter of nobility, living on a vast estate.” She sighed. “Good times, let me tell you.”

  “No indoor plumbing,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “No indoor plumbing,” I repeated. “I couldn’t have handled that. I can’t even deal with going camping. Okay, uh, never mind. Please continue.”

  “One day my family entertained a very rich, very handsome gentleman. I fell immediately in love with him.”

  I nodded. “Thierry.”

  She laughed at that. “No, silly girl. Decidedly not Thierry. His name was Marcellus, and he was a powerful vampire. He took a liking to me and made me what you see before you today.”

  Annoyingly perfect? I hoped I hadn’t said that aloud.

  “We were together for twenty glorious years. I was so happy. And, might I add, he was a magnificent and insatiable lover.”

  I signaled to the bartender to bring me another shot. Immediately.

  “Alas, my happiness was not to last, for one day he did not return to our homestead. I didn’t know if he’d been murdered, or if he simply felt that it was the right time to move on. I would have liked to believe that he was murdered.”

  “Of course.” I nodded.

  “By this time, the plague had befallen Europe. Without Marcellus’s money to support the way in which I was accustomed to living, I had to take to the streets. There were no servants to bring me my blood in a silver goblet anymore. I had to fend for myself. But during such a time of illness, there was plenty to drink just lying around.”

  The bartender brought us three shots of tequila each. That would do for a couple of minutes.

  Veronique continued when he walked away. “This was a terrible time for me. The sick would drop at your feet and die in a stinking mess right in front of you. It was rather unsavory. And unclean. No wonder they were all so ill. They can blame it on the rats all they like, but a proper floor scrubbing does no one any harm. Except perhaps the scullery maid.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was nearly eleven o’clock. I hoped this wasn’t going to be a long story. I’d been the only one I knew who’d fallen asleep during Titanic.

  “So, how did you meet Thierry?” I asked wearily.

  “I’m getting to that, dear girl. But first I must set up the background of the story. So there I was, a beautiful, helpless—yet immortal—woman in the middle of plague-ravaged Europe. Wandering aimlessly, searching for more of my kind who might take me in.

  “Finally I came upon a small town called Le Vieux Cochon. Most of the peasants had left, but their homes were still fairly intact, so I decided that I would stay there for a while. Wait out the plague, for I knew I had the time to be patient. I set myself up in a small but quaint cottage, and hoped not to be disturbed.”

  She frowned. “But disturbed I was. One day there came a knock at the door and when I opened it, there was a wild-eyed man outside. Dirty, long-haired, and desperate. He begged me to take him in, that there was a mob after him. You see, then, those who were still healthy ran off those who were ill. If they couldn’t run them out of town, they simply killed them, burned their bodies in large piles in an attempt to prevent the spread of the disease.”

  “So the man,” I said. “That was Thierry.”

  “Yes. Not quite the same man you see before you today, but time can be an interesting thing when it comes to change and evolution, n‘est-ce pas?”

  “So you helped him.”

  There was a big, boisterous cheer from behind us and I glanced over my shoulder. A man the size of a small elephant had just sunk his eight ball in the corner pocket to win the game. The loser broke his pool cue over his knee in anger.

  Nice place.

  I turned back to Veronique, who didn’t seem to notice anything unusual about our surroundings.

  “No, of course I didn’t help him,” she said as if that was a stupid thing to suggest. “I shut the door in his face. I wanted no part of his or anyone else’s problems. Ah, I see the look of surprise on your face. Trust me, you would have done the same thing. There is no comparison to what was going on then, the sheer paranoia running rampant. There is nothing to compare it with today.”

  She waited to see if I had anything further to say, and when I didn’t, she continued.

  “The mob caught up to him finally. He tried to hide on his own, but it was to no avail. The amusing part of it all was that he wasn’t ill. Not yet, anyhow. I’m sure it would have been only a matter of time before he became so. The crowd captured him, and they ran him through.”

  “Ran him through? What does that mean?”

  “Killed him,” she said as though she were discussing no more than the weather outside. “At least they believed him to be dead. His bloodied body was thrown upon a pile of corpses nearby, and lit on fire.”

  “Then what?” I yelped.

  “Sarah, dear, you must learn patience. Being what you now are, you have the luxury of time. Use it well, for sometimes it is all we have.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Sorry. Please go on.”

  “By this time the crowd had dissipated. They’d seen enough death to hold them, and they found no reason to stay behind and watch the fire burn away the illness they so despised. I, at this time, was feeling rather peckish. I left my house and walked amongst the dead, stopping here and there to have a small taste, most of which was quite unsavory.”

  I felt a cool breeze as the door, a short distance away from our booth, opened up and a group of about ten men entered the already-crowded pub. I tried to ignore them and focus on Veronique’s story.

  “I came upon the man… although he seemed more of a boy to me. At this time I was nearly fifty years of age, though I appeared much as you see me today. I believe my hair was a little longer.”

  I was trying for the patience thing. I really was. My knuckles were white, gripping my knees under the table to keep from punching her in her perfect face.

  “He was still alive,” she said. “But barely. His injuries great, his blood loss high. He wasn’t to be much of a meal for me. But then he opened his eyes and stared at me from the top of the burning pile of bodies. His eyes are the most extraordinary shade of gray. Especially as they flickered in the firelight.

  “Suddenly I felt quite taken with him, despite the grime and sweat. I dragged him from the top of the pile and carried him to my cottage. I cleaned him up as best I could and then I sired him. It was silly for me to do such a thing after only finding his eyes attractive, but I suppose I was lonely. I desired companionship. By the next day I regretted my actions, as I was not interested in looking after a fledgling. I required someone to look after me, but it was done and I have never been one to turn my back on any responsibility that befalls me.

  “He awoke the next day terribly confused. He had never heard of what I am, what he was now, and it took much explaining for him to understand. He was very scared. Hid from me much of the time.” She laughed softly. “Called me a devil. Ah, the memories.”

  She took another sip of her first tequila as I downed my fourth.

  “But in time he came to accept what had happened, even cherish the second gift of
life. We hid in the town for several years before moving on to Paris. There we came into contact with our first hunters—even I was ignorant to their existence until that time. Marcellus had not mentioned that we were so reviled there would be those who would wish to do us harm. We wore our immortality on our sleeve, proud of what we were, and spoke of it to many, looking for others of our kind. We were married in Paris, and I thought for a while that I could be as happy as I had been with Marcellus.”

  I saw her grip the edge of the table and her knuckles whiten.

  “Until that one day when I saw him again. Across the River Seine. He was with another woman, a young girl of no more than sixteen, with fresh marks upon her neck. I then realized that Marcellus had left me because”—she stopped talking and took a shaky sip of her drink—“because I was too old.”

  I shook my head. “But you looked exactly the same. You’d stopped aging.”

  “Men,” she said simply, as if that explained everything. Actually, it did.

  “Thierry and I went to an opera that night. I was trying to take my mind off seeing Marcellus again after so many years. But he was also there. He spoke with me privately, giving me compliment after compliment, attempting to ease my hurt feelings. His charm was so compelling, and perhaps I was a fool to believe him, but I forgave him everything in no more than a blink of his beautiful eyes.”

  She stopped talking again as the men who had entered the club a few moments ago walked past our booth toward the pool table with drinks in hand.

  “He took us with him to a secret club, and it opened up a whole new world to us. That night Marcellus was the man I remembered. Charismatic, engaging, electric. I felt more alive than I had for the ten years since I’d last seen him.”

  “What about Thierry?”

  “He watched me from the other side of the club. I could sense his jealousy, but what was I to do? My true love had at last returned to me. But it was not to last, for that night the club was raided by hunters. It was chaos. They came in like the plague itself, attempting to wipe out everything in their path. Marcellus fought bravely, but…” She stopped talking.

  I waited.

  Veronique sniffed and drew a nearby white paper napkin to the corner of her eye. “He was killed. They surrounded him and killed him with swords carved from wood. Our eyes met as he disintegrated before me. Gone forever. My true love, Marcellus.”