by Opal Carew
He came out of his absorption at Debra’s touch on his knee. Her faint smile didn’t dissolve the sadness in her eyes, her drawn look. “What problem were you solving this time?” she asked.
Did she realize there was a slight break in her voice? “The vampire-servant chemical issue. I think I’ve come up with a new variable. But we’ll talk about it later.”
He wanted to focus on his particular exception to the rule, on a more personal level. The more time he spent in her mind, the more he realized how much he’d been missing. He surprised her on every level of it when he bent forward, put his other arm under her knees and lifted her onto his lap. “As you said, we have a few minutes before we get in the hangar. Take a nap.”
“But…”
Tilting her head back, he kissed her protesting mouth. “No buts. Sleep.” He kissed each eyelid closed, then her cheek bones when she tried to open them again, until she was stifling a very un-Debra giggle that made him want to smile, except his heart was too tight, considering the thoughts rolling through his head. “Sleep, servant.”
She gave a resigned sigh. “All right, but don’t blame me if all this sleeping you want me to do makes us arrive in Texas unprepared.”
“Of course I’ll blame you. That’s why I have you.”
“Troll,” she said, delighting him. When he pinched her, she nestled her head under his chin, gave a little sigh and subsided.
Maybe it wasn’t chemical at all. Maybe humans like her were just a miracle, a once-in-a-lifetime chance he’d fucked up immeasurably because of his misplaced sense of entitlement. He winced at the acid thought, layered with sentiment and guilt, but just because it was driven by his emotions didn’t make it a false assumption.
He rubbed her arm, held her. She sank into a fitful doze quickly. She was learning to sleep more often, but he’d had to punish her twice for not watching the time and coming to him at dusk without having obeyed his requirement that she sleep three hours. Though punishment might be the wrong term, since Debra reached a higher level of subspace with a higher level of pain.
He’d been forced—such a chore—his lips twisted wryly—to explore other methods of punishment. Ones that made her more mindful of his orders. Multiple forced climaxes while he had her strapped to a St. Andrews’ Cross in Lyssa’s well-equipped dungeon had depleted her to the point she slept six hours and lost half a day. Then there was depriving her of a climax entirely. That one had made it difficult for her to sleep at all, but he’d made her stay in the bed with him until dusk that day, not allowing her to entertain herself except to document her sexual fantasies on paper until he roused. Then he made her masturbate herself to climax while he watched. She came within seconds, while he read what she’d written with exaggerated detachment. He’d tossed it aside, remarking on how erratic the handwriting had looked, and then taken her thoroughly, a pleasurable way to start the day.
The more he did, the more he wanted to do with her. He wondered if by stifling it in their earlier years, he’d only delayed the overload of passion a vampire felt when he first took a servant. This past week, the thought had set off several new wrestling matches between his previous thinking and the current hypothesis he was pursuing with her, but so far the latter kept coming out on top. He was actually thinking of expanding their “off time”. They both deserved at least one night a week where they did nothing. Enjoyed other pastimes. Since the research facility had been established by Council, he’d been so intent on proving himself worthy of their confidence, he’d driven himself and Debra seven days a week, grabbing leisure time as a guilty snack, not as a full course, leisurely meal.
Maybe on the way back, they’d take a side trip. Not far off course; he wasn’t going to presume too much on Lady Lyssa’s generosity. However, he could take Debra to some place where they could just spend a night. Maybe Memphis. He expected she’d enjoy watching the evening duck walk at the Peabody. He imagined her standing on the roof outside the duck’s grand enclosure, her hair rippling in the strong night breezes while she spoke gently to the birds. She loved animals.
She also loved him. That was something most high-born vampires didn’t think much about either, more concerned with obedience and service. Some vampires even deemed it a detriment for the servant to feel too much. His father was certainly that way. He’d approved of Debra, said she seemed logical and controlled.
She could be. But she could also be something else entirely, a wealth of female emotion and yearnings as compelling to him as her sexual and scientific sides. He wanted to push her even further in that direction, see what they could experience if they both went down the road he was beginning to feel they should have explored years ago.
But to get as far down that road as he suspected they both wanted to go, he had to win back her trust. The one thing that couldn’t be commanded from a servant.
They pulled up to the house at eleven o’clock. Debra had called her grandmother on the way. She’d told Brian the older woman tended to be a night owl, so it was no surprise when she answered on the second ring. Debra explained that they were on an unexpected layover, and asked if she could come by. Though her grandmother seemed surprised and a little stiff, Brian’s impression through Debra’s mind, she told them to come.
Her stiffness made sense. Her granddaughter, who’d been so close to her grandfather, hadn’t seen him in over four years. Brian recalled her last visit with him had been no more than a quick drive to the small Tennessee town when they were in Nashville. She’d done it during the day, after getting his permission. He’d told her as long as she had so-n-so stats ready by Friday, that was fine. Remembering it now, he winced at his callousness. Having those particular stats ready by Friday meant that she’d had to make it a pretty short visit.
And he wondered why she was always exhausted.
He knew the stereotype, that research scientists were oblivious to the world and people around them. The accomplished ones were often self-centered egomaniacs. He’d just never realized how very much he fit the mold. It was an uncomfortable mirror that even his vampire blood couldn’t prevent him from seeing.
Jed Sheldon, Debra’s grandfather, lived with his wife in a modest brick house on a twenty-acre property populated with woods, unused cow pastures, ponds and several large outbuildings. The buildings had been dedicated to various inventions, if the littering of rusty metal contraptions and other discarded building materials around them were any indication.
As their limo drove up to the house, Vivian opened the front door. The porch light bounced off some of those inventions, transforming them into bizarre lawn art. Debra stared through the tinted window of the car, and Brian gave her cold hand a squeeze. “Why don’t you go on up and I’ll follow in a couple minutes? Give you two a chance to say hello without a stranger at your back. Though if you prefer, I’ll walk up with you.”
Her hand tightened on his. Her immediate reaction was: Yes. Don’t make me do this alone. Then her shoulders squared. She ran through the scenarios, knew his suggestion was the best idea, given her grandmother’s potential state of mind.
His surge of protectiveness surprised him. He wanted to correct himself, override her. But he figured out the middle ground. “I’ll be right behind you,” he promised. And you know I’m as close as the nearest thought.
She nodded, her hand still tight on his. Then the driver of the rental car opened the door and she let him go.
Brian waved him away, letting him return to the front seat as he watched out the open door. He didn’t know what he’d do if Vivian treated Debra cruelly. He and Debra both understood why she might react with hostility, but still…
Yet when Debra hit the top stair, he saw it wasn’t an issue. Vivian already had tears on her face, and Debra didn’t hesitate, putting her arms around her grandmother so they could cry together.
“I’m so sorry I haven’t been here,” he heard Debra whisper. “I think of you every day.”
His father had dispensed plenty of advice when B
rian told him he was going to make Debra his first personally chosen full servant. Stay out of their transition from their old life, son. It doesn’t concern us, and it’s part of how they grow strong enough to serve us three hundred years.
Brian remembered Debra weeping in the garden. Her desire to sleep and never wake, even as she curled her naked body up next to his like a trusting kitten.
Fuck that.
He left the car, but since Debra and her grandmother were still holding onto one another, exchanging murmurs, he paused in the shadows. Reaching out to one of the discarded inventions, he made the propellers rotate. It looked like some type of all-terrain vehicle that might run on windmill power. Another contraption seemed to be a modified vending machine. Jed’s joy in taking mundane things apart only to put them together into something better was a trait his granddaughter had as well.
Maybe he was one of those things.
By the time he approached the door, he’d given both women time to pull themselves together. Debra turned, still holding onto her grandmother. “Grandma, this is Lo—Dr. Brian Morris. I’ve told you about him.”
The fast flash of background in her mind was that she worked with him, that he was a close colleague. Like most human females, Vivian did a double take when she got a look at him in the beam of the porch light. Being excessively attractive was something vampires took in stride. It meant nothing, just a simple genetic fact and a useful tool for spontaneous feeding needs.
As he took her hand with great courtesy, he noted it felt frail and tired. She looked like a woman pushing herself to the edge to care for a dying husband. But she nodded. “Come in. I told Jed you were coming.”
She turned her gaze back to Debra. “I haven’t seen him so excited in a long time. But remember, his energy comes in bursts. He’s likely to nod off on you, but he’ll wake again within a few minutes sometimes. I don’t want him to sleep through your whole visit, but…”
“I won’t tire him out,” Debra promised.
They stepped into a neat, comfortable house, the interior décor reflecting accents and colors reminiscent of homes decades ago. Brian often found the offices and homes of older scientists more comfortable to him for that reason. It was probably why he hadn’t changed his mode of dress much since the 1950s, despite Debra’s teasing.
She’d seemed quite taken with his choice of jeans for the stargazing, though. He’d remember that in the future.
“I made both tea and coffee,” Vivian was saying. “There’s some coffee cake that Deloris Willoughby brought by yesterday. He changes what he’ll eat day to day. He had a few bites of it, but…” Vivian lifted a shoulder. Her chin trembled as she met Debra’s gaze, then she closed her hand over hers. “Go in and see him, child.”
Debra glanced at Brian.
I’ll be right here. If you need me, you just reach out. But take as long as you need. Don’t worry about the time. He’s your grandfather.
She nodded. Squaring her shoulders, she turned and moved down the hallway
Vivian watched her go, then turned to Brian. Before she could speak, Brian gestured. “I have some work I can do, Mrs. Sheldon. It’s late and I have no intentions of making you play hostess when you already have your hands full with so much else. If you wish to join her, please feel free to do so.”
It made her smile, an obvious effort despite being genuine. “You’re very kind. If you don’t mind, I’ll do just that. It’s been so long since they’ve seen one another…”
“Please.” He sat down, drew his handheld out of his coat, as if he were preparing to work. “Let me know if either of you need anything.”
“Thank you.” He could feel her eyes on him, then she disappeared down the hall.
As soon as she did, he put the handheld back in his coat and himself in Debra’s mind fully. There was no way he’d be more than a breath away while she dealt with this. Truth, since the night under the live oaks, there were times he’d had difficulty pulling out at all, as if Debra were a book he’d had in his possession for some time, one he hadn’t read in far too long. Remembering how much he’d enjoyed the first few chapters, he wondered that he’d deprived himself of the rest of the story.
Debra sank down next to her grandfather. He was in a hospital bed, the full-sized bed gone to make room for it in their bedroom. A sofa in the corner bore a neatly folded pile of linens. She was sure that was where her grandmother was sleeping. Jed was so thin, half the size she remembered him. He was a tall man with handsome silver hair, a long face that could smile and crease like a wise, good-natured basset hound. Knowing his resemblance to that particular breed of canine, he’d sometimes bay like one, just to aggravate her grandmother.
Debra curled her hand over his, nearly losing herself to tears again when his long fingers twined with hers. She was crying far more than she ever had these past few days, but there was certainly good cause here. He smelled like sickness, like death. She supposed everyone around a dying family member detected those scents, but to a third mark with enhanced senses, it was almost overwhelming, the emotional and physical impact of it.
She focused on his brown eyes, the same color as hers. “Hi, Grandpa.”
“Little thinker. Still thinking too much.” Letting go of her hand, he brushed a fingertip over the creases in her brow. “Anything come from that thinking? Make anything better?”
“Yes,” she said honestly. “I’m helping…people. And learning so much every day. Learning how much I have to learn.”
“That’s the way of it. It never ends. Just this morning, I thought of the best mousetrap yet. Think Otto would go for it?”
For all the years she’d known him, her grandfather had always had mice. Usually one sleeping in his pocket, or riding his shoulder, taking tidbits from him. There were always a few in the barn, helping with his inventions. Otto was one of the first she remembered.
“As long as it has cheese. And doesn’t pinch any of his legs. Or catches his tail.”
“Yeah. He never forgave me for that one.” Her grandfather chuckled.
“I have my own Ottos. Emilie, Nicolai and Albert.” She told him about the maze of tubes, how the children had helped her. She explained John and Kane as offspring of people who worked in the building next to the lab. Like all servants who had to deal with the human world, she was practiced at generalities that gave partial truths. Her grandfather listened, asked her questions about her work. He was far less lucid than he would have been in a stronger state. But she held his hand, told him about the high level research that went into the Delilah virus, framing it in a human context.
“Things like that should be on the TV as big news.” He scowled. “Instead of which idiot actor is getting out of rehab or showing her unmentionables to the whole world.”
She squeezed his hand, and he chuckled tiredly. “Doesn’t matter to me anymore, though. Don’t care a thing about watching the news. My time is coming, little thinker.”
Her throat closed up. “I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you to die.”
“None of us want to die. But it happens.” He studied her. “This ‘colleague’, Brian Morris. Tell me about him. Is he good to my girl?”
“He’s…” Was he good to her? Yes and no. He wasn’t required to be. But lately…her thinking was changing on that. She’d always hoped and dreamed he’d want to be good to her, cherish her the way she cherished him.
As her grandfather’s brow drew down ominously, she had the alarming impression he might just pull himself right off the mattress even in his weakened state and go after Brian.
“I’ve learned so much from him, Grandpa,” she said hastily. “I thought you were the smartest man in the universe, that I’d never find anyone half as smart. His mind shines like a diamond.”
“Too much to hope I’d never have any competition.” He settled back, gave her a wink. “How did you meet?”
She’d told him how they’d met right after it happened, via phone call. But she didn’t mind telling hi
m again. She’d read him his favorite book over and over, just to sit here with him.
"He was a friend of the director at the Brown Cancer Center. The director let him come in one night to use the lab. You remember I was in charge of the instruments, and since I was working late anyway—”
“As always,” he teased her.
“—I was keeping an eye on him.” Her lips curved as she remembered. “He didn't look like a scientist. He looked like a movie star playing a scientist. Like Paul Walker or Heath Ledger… Someone who puts on a pair of wire framed glasses to look bookish, but he wasn’t wearing glasses.”
Her grandfather’s brow furrowed, his eyes sharpening on her face through the fog she knew was caused by whatever medications he was taking to keep him comfortable. “Your glasses,” he said. “I just noticed. You’re not wearing any.”
She’d been so self-conscious of them in her youth. Thick, coke bottle lenses because her vision had been so poor. After she’d become Brian’s third mark, her vision had become progressively better, such that eventually she’d been able to discard them, though she still kept a pair of readers around when the eyestrain became too much.
“Contacts,” she said. “They finally came up with a way to make some strong enough.”
He smiled at that, patted her hand. “Now you can’t hide how beautiful you are any more. And this Dr. Morris noticed, didn’t he? So what happened in the lab that made him realize how wonderful my girl is?”
She shook her head at that, but told him. “I happened to notice some of what he was working on, and we started discussing it. We spent that whole first night in the lab, didn’t even realize it until it got close to dawn…"
At his invitation, she worked with Brian three nights straight, helping him extrapolate his data, getting his input on her own research, both of them advancing further as a result. The sexual tension grew as well, incidental brushes growing more significant and lingering as they swapped places at a monitor or in front of a microscope. But along with that tension came a relaxed intimacy she hadn’t experienced with any male before. When she ordered her usual Chinese takeout, they talked about a random wealth of topics. He’d declined her offer to order him food, but had taken a bite of dumpling from her hand, his own circling her wrist briefly, caressing her pulse before pulling away.