by Lund, S. E.
"Don't make me a vampire!" I say. "I don't want it!"
"Too fucking bad," Julien says. "You're not dying today. I won't let you. Michel, you better help me or I'll kill you."
Julien sweeps his arm over the tabletop, sending cups and papers flying and lays me on it. Then he takes his dagger and slits my throat and wrists, the pain overwhelming me. Next he hikes up my skirt, cutting the femoral artery on both legs so that my blood spurts out of me with every heartbeat. I feel the effects immediately, almost fainting from loss of blood, and he holds his hand against my chest to feel my heart.
He slits his own wrist and when my vision starts to fade, he presses his wrist against my open lips. Michel looms over me, as he too cuts his wrist and they take turns feeding me their blood. I feel the blood drip into my mouth and the last coherent thought I have is that I have to spit it out. I can't become a vampire. Before I can, darkness closes in.
Chapter 82
"Each moment of a happy lover's hour is worth an age of a dull and common life."
Aphra Behn
* * *
I wake up in Soren's home in Boston. It's day, and the light streaming in from the huge windows assaults my eyes. Julien's on the bed beside me, and he pulls the drape on the canopy so that there's more shade.
"The light won't hurt you. The windows are all UV screened, but it may bother your eyes for a while until you feed."
It's then I remember what happened last night in the boardroom. I'm transitioning and have to decide whether to feed or die.
"Where's Michel?"
I try to sit up but my head pounds when I move. He appears in my field of vision from the other side of the bed.
"I'm here, Eve. Just lie down and try to relax."
"You promised me," I say, anger filling me. "You said you wouldn't turn me."
Julien shakes his head but says nothing for a moment as if he's overcome with emotion. Michel takes my hand but I push his away.
"And you – you of all people. You told me you didn't want to be a vampire. That when you destroyed Soren, you'd gladly die yourself."
"Soren isn't dead, Eve. He's merely in stasis, his body in a continual battle with the infection, trying to stop it and it's taking all his energy. As a fallen angel, he's able to fight it off, but not completely. We've got him and the Twelve in tanks at the SCU. Nothing happened to all those vampires that they turned, although every blood slave they created died. Like you, they weren't able to self-heal the way vampires can. Blackstone still has their agenda. We have to recreate the plague nanotech virus so we can find a way to stop it or slow it, but the plague is spreading, and we have no easy way to get to everyone quickly with this technology. Destroying them will take a long time."
"I won't drink any blood."
"We won't let you die, Eve," Julien says, his voice emotional. "We'll make you drink."
"Eve, don't ask for the impossible," Michel says. "I can't bear," he says and looks at Julien, shaking his head. "Neither of us can bear to let you die."
I turn my face away from him and close my eyes. Something's building in me and I know what it is – it's bloodlust and it's completely different from anything I felt when I was just a blood slave, but I remember the feeling for I felt it when I was in both Michel's and Julien's minds.
Before, I felt sick when I went too long without vampire blood. Now, I feel a craving that is beyond anything I felt when human.
"I hate you both for this."
"Don't hate us for loving you too much," Julien says.
"If you truly loved me, you would have let me die!" I cover my face and finally, tears fill my eyes.
"That's not human love. That kind of love is only for the saints, Eve. Neither of us are saints," Michel says and I can hear a touch of humor in his voice, as if he's indulging me. I open my eyes and he's gazing at me, his head tilted to one side.
"You’re both bastards."
"Oh, that we are," Julien says, and he's smiling now, despite his eyes being wet. "You need to drink some blood. I have some here," he says and holds up a bottle. "No humans were killed in its production. All volunteer fans of us fanged types. Drink some and you'll feel much better."
I push his hand and the bottle of blood away. I look between them, sitting on either side of me, Michel with his longer dark hair falling in his blue eyes, Julien with his shorter hair and several-days worth of stubble on his jaw, that telltale scar on his cheek. They're both so beautiful and so different. I realize I love them both and despite everything, I want them both.
But I don't want this.
"Where's my brother? He's not innocent in all this either."
I watch as Michel waves to someone and the door opens. Michel and Julien rise from the bed and Dylan strides over and stands at the bedside.
"Eve," he says, smiling. "How are you?"
"You promised me that you wouldn't let Julien turn me."
He shakes his head. "Do you really think I could let you die? I already lost one sister to this war."
"I barely even know you."
"Don't you want to?" he says, exasperation in his voice. "If you drink some blood, we'll have time to get to know each other. Eve, we're family," he says and sits on the bed beside me. "Real family. I love my parents but they were always my foster parents and they let me know who my real family was. I grew up wanting to meet you. I knew that one day, fate would bring us together and it has. Don't leave me, just when I've found you. Besides, we still have work to do."
"Fate," I say, tears in my eyes as I think of him as a small child hoping to meet me one day, knowing that his real mother and father couldn't raise him to protect his role in some predetermined destiny foretold by prophecy.
I struggle to sit up and he helps me, fluffing up the pillows behind me. I examine his face and he does look like me in a way, even though his hair is dark for he has hazel eyes. He smiles at me and he even has dimples. Our mother's dimples.
He takes my hand and squeezes it and I can see into his mind. He saw me at the same recital where Michel met me in London. He felt so excited to finally see me in real life and after the concert, he and the Rhys family came backstage to meet me. I don't remember the meeting because I met so many people that night, but he remembered it.
'Sister,' he thought to himself. 'One who will live,' for he knew even then that Sarah would die before she reached age thirty.
I look over at the fireplace and see Julien leaning on it, his head in his hand, staring out the window. Across from him, Michel stands, looking out at the cityscape.
How can I fight the three of them, all of them wanting me in their own way?
"Give me the bottle."
I hear a muffled sound from Michel and he turns his back to me, covering his eyes. Julien turns toward me and watches as Dylan takes the bottle and pulls out the cork stopper. He hands it to me, exhaling loudly.
"Thank you."
I drink.
Chapter 83
"To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods."
Goethe
* * *
Dylan takes me to the SCU stasis tanks once before we return to Davis Cove. He shows me where they keep Soren and the Twelve so that I know he's really imprisoned and is unable to hurt me.
The chamber where all the Council prisoners are kept is deep beneath the ground beside the SCU's main offices near the waterfront in Boston. The entire block is one big cement warehouse that used to house vampires found guilty of crimes under the Treaty. All of the tanks failed after the second fall of red rain, the plague eating away all the plastic in the tanks so that the vampires emerged, recovering once the gel leaked out of their bodies. It was impossible for the few techs and guards who monitored the warehouse to fight them and all two hundreds of them escaped. Just one more threat for the Council to manage.
Now, the only residents of the huge chamber are Soren and the Twelve, kept in cement tanks filled with tank gel. They use all their reserves of energy and all their powers just to
keep the infection from my blood at bay. There's nothing left over to actually animate so they're as good as in stasis. Now, the aqueous silver gel infuses their system, and they are effectively in a kind of purgatory. They are probably conscious only of the battle they are waging to keep the infection from taking over completely and killing them.
The Council's only hope is that the infection and the stasis gel will keep them in suspended animation until Council scientists can find a way to destroy them completely.
We walk down the narrow paths between rows and rows of crumbled stasis tanks, the cavernous underground facility like a huge parking lot, dimly lit using lanterns fueled with animal fat that has been processed into oil. Here and there are old computer monitoring stations, with blank screens, and melted casings. There's no energy to run them. The Council is working on setting up solar power systems, but as with everything in this new world, it's slow going.
"Here they are," the guard says and leads us to a special room set off from the others. The tanks in which Soren and the Twelve rest are different from the normal stasis tanks. They're made of cement and look like crypts with glass covers. Soren floats naked in the tank, his pale skin almost glowing, his white hair floating like weeds in water. He's really quite terrifying even in suspended animation, with his perfect musculature and height. His eyes are sewn shut.
"Why are his eyes sutured?"
"He kept opening them. They figure it's an involuntary motion, but it was bothering the guards to have his eyes open. They felt like he was watching them."
I walk down the row of tanks that hold the Twelve and they are similarly entombed in the stasis gel, floating like they're sleeping. Angels, fallen to earth – whatever that means. I still don't buy the Biblical explanation. To me, there's a scientific answer to this.
Council scientists haven't found a way to kill Soren and the others yet and with the plague ravaging the civilized world, it's extremely difficult to work around its effects. So much of our modern technology relies on plastics and fossil fuels. Scientists are busy finding workarounds, but it's very slow and tedious. Everything is a huge effort.
Council scientists didn't believe Soren and the Twelve were fallen angels and what they designed to work on Ancients was not powerful enough to destroy them. Dylan is determined to keep trying and so am I. I'm going to start back at Boston U in January and I'll keep working part-time at the SCU to help on cases. Only a few stalwart professors continue to hold classes – primarily those that will help develop new technology to replace the old, which relied on fossil fuels. While Dylan works with scientists at MIT to perfect the technology used to infect Soren and the Twelve, I'll work with Council scientists trying to find a way to cure vampires of our need for blood. If we can understand it fully, we may be able to do it. What makes us immortal is also an important area of research that will benefit not just existing vampires, but all of humanity.
That's for the future. I'm just not ready to return to real life yet.
We leave the SCU and take a horse and cart along the back roads to Davis Cove. The Council is working on getting an old steam locomotive up and running so there's some kind of transportation along the old Amtrak line that threads its way along the eastern seaboard, but it's not ready yet.
I stay with Dylan at a different cottage in Davis Cove – one that is better designed and fixed up after the ravages of the plague. We're close to the Rhys family and far from Boston where Michel and Julien are. Under his tutelage, I drink blood and learn to deal with the cravings, determining how long I can go without feeling out of control and how much I need to keep cravings at bay.
Nothing diminishes the craving, except blood.
I drink from the glass bottle filled with blood, and feel immediate pleasure and then relief but soon, all too soon, the craving returns and builds over the course of a day or so. By the end of twenty-four hours, I'm almost beside myself with bloodlust and even the older woman with shabby stockings and floppy grey hair who comes to clean the house looks appealing.
Dylan sees me staring at her one morning as we're reading the latest edition of the Davis Cove Register, printed using some old hand-powered printing press. We've had our breakfast and are sitting in the warmth of the kitchen with the morning sun streaming in through UV shaded glass.
I'm trying to push my boundaries to see when I lose control and I can't help but notice her bending over a pail as she mops the entry floor. I can smell her blood from where I sit and it smells so much better than the blood in the bottle. It smells warm. I can hear her heartbeat and it's so inviting. I want to bite her flesh and my teeth elongate the way they do when I drink from the bottle.
I have yet to actually bite a human and drink their blood. Dylan promised to let me decide when I was ready for such an event. There are still volunteers who want to be bitten and there will be several willing, when I'm psychologically ready.
"Don't wait too long," Dylan advises. "You need the human connection of a blood feed to keep your humanity from fading."
I feel ready now but the cleaning lady is not a volunteer. Dylan must see my face change into hunter mode and he takes my hand and shakes his head. He pulls me out of the kitchen, and I keep my face hidden so she doesn't see me and freak out. We go into the bedroom and he hands me a bottle and I drink it down in nearly one pull I'm so in need.
"You really must feed on a human," he says to me, watching me as I finish the blood, sucking down every last drop. "Don't be so stubborn."
I wave him away. "I will, I will."
"When? If I wasn't here, I suspect you'd have had her already and who knows if you'd be able to stop?"
"Okay," I say, annoyed that he's right. "Soon."
There's just a part of me that wants to postpone that first real feed as long as I can. It seems too intimate to do with a complete stranger. Even I know how sexual it will become and that scares me. There have only been two men I've ever really been sexual with – that I've really wanted.
Michel and Julien.
I haven't seen either of them for two weeks. I've spent this time trying to figure out what I'm going to do about them.
I love them both. They love me, each in their own particular way. How can I choose between them? How can I be with one and not with the other? Whose heart do I break besides my own by choosing one over the other?
I lay on my bed and Dylan leaves me alone, closing the door behind him. He knows that after a feed, I must try to deal with the arousal in some way and so he gives me time and space.
With the blood flowing through my system, I'm so aroused and I can't help but think of both Michel and Julien. Where are they even now?
Is Michel sitting at the piano in his cottage in Ipswich with a glass of blood, playing his sad Chopin piece, wondering how I am? Is Julien staring out the window of his warehouse in Boston, thinking of our time in Davis Cove, wishing he were here with me?
As I fight my desire, I write a separate note to each of them with my decision. I'll send them in the post tomorrow. There's a new pony express to take written messages between cities along the coast. Now, everything old is new again. I grew up in an age of iPhones and wireless internet and instantaneous communication. Now, we use HAM radios from the pre-WWI era, and pony express. We haven't even got the telegraph system up and running yet. All the wiring used plastics.
My decision isn’t the kind I want sent over the radio.
* * *
A few days later, I'm alone in Davis Cove, walking the beach. It's a cold evening and I'm dressed in a thick wool sweater and old leather boots, a woolen scarf around my neck against the cold wind that blows in off the ocean. Dylan's going to try to find the formula for Blackstone's day-walking drug because I don't want to drink the waters of life – not yet. I will take Blackstone's drug so I won't be trapped inside during the day, but it may be a while. Things are so disrupted because of the plague.
Dylan's gone to stay in Boston for the next week, staying at his apartment so he can attend a f
ew lectures at MIT where some stalwart professors have decided to keep the institution running despite the lack of power. He leaves me alone with a phalanx of guards to watch over me and an icebox filled with bottles of blood, one for each of the five days he'll be away.
I walk along the shore, aware of the two guards trailing behind a hundred yards away. Ahead, I see a figure walking towards me. The moon is out and shines on the sea foam, making it glow. As he nears, I see him more clearly and once he's close enough, I see his smile. Such a brilliant smile.
He says nothing, just comes to me, wrapping his arms around me, kissing me deeply, squeezing me so tightly I think I'll break, except I'm a vampire now and bloody hard to kill.
"Julien," I say when he pulls away. "I'm so glad you decided to come."
"How could I ever deny you anything?"
He kisses me again, and when we connect, I feel his need and it ignites my own.
"I want you right now," he whispers in my ear, pulling me against his body. "Right here on the sand. Tell your guards to fuck off."
"I'm not getting sand in my," I say and laugh. "My… you know…"
He grins at me. "Your you know?" he says and laughs with me. "Eve…" He nuzzles my neck, his mouth against my ear. "It's your pussy," he whispers. "And I missed your sweet little pussy so much, you just can't imagine."
"Just my… pussy?" I say, smiling back, still awkward with that word.
"You and your pussy. It’s a package deal," he says and wags his eyebrows.
I take his hand and pull him back towards the cottage.
"I want you in a warm bath with me and then in my bed. And later, in front of the fire, and then maybe on the couch."