“I’m adopted,” Grace answered faintly. “But there’s no such thing as vampires. Only in folklore. Maybe long ago. Not today. Those people just playact. It’s all a game.”
Julian took Grace’s face in his hand, two fingers on her chin forcing her to meet his eyes. “Listen to me, Grace. I see the mark of the true kin on you. I smell the scent. I can also see that you haven’t yet had the knowledge shared. Though you have tasted the blood, haven’t you? I saw the bloodlust shining in your eyes tonight. You have tasted the sweet nectar and you know what it is to hunger.”
Grace shook her head, pulling away from Julian’s touch. “No! How could it be! If I were a vampire, if there were such a thing, wouldn’t I have needed the blood to survive? I’m twenty-four, for God’s sake! How could I have gone this long without human blood?”
“How indeed?” Julian mused, his mind scanning back twenty-four years to any mention of a birth. Nothing sparked in his mind. “It is unusual, but not unheard of. Untrained and untutored, a vampire’s blood-thirst can remain dormant well into puberty. Did you have no desire? No pain in your belly, a gnawing need in your gut? Are you sensitive to light, preferring the dusk to the blazing noonday sun? Oh, the myths that vampires can’t tolerate sunlight are highly exaggerated, but there is a germ of truth. We prefer the softer light of the moon.” He touched her pale cheek, his expression knowing as he continued, “Have you a fascination with blood, with its sweet red possibilities? An interest in the history and legends of our kind?”
As Grace stared at him, her eyes wide, he continued, “And when you tasted the blood, did it overwhelm you? Its taste was surely sweeter than the finest wine, and far more powerful. How often have you had the blood, Grace? Do you long for it now?”
Grace began to cry, jerky little sobs generated by fear and confusion. “Please! I don’t know what’s happening. How do you know all this about me! How are you getting inside my head! What’s going on?” She hid her face again in her hands, the tears slipping between her fingers as she cried.
Julian smoothed her head and wrapped his strong arm around her heaving shoulders. He didn’t try to speak or address her many questions. He sent gentle soothing thoughts into her mind and waited patiently. The time for explanations could wait a little longer.
At length, her tears subsided and she accepted the large white handkerchief Julian had produced from his pocket. “I’m sorry,” she said, smiling weakly. “I don’t usually sob on a first date.”
Julian smiled broadly and said, “You have a lot to take in. I know it must be very confusing and difficult for you. But I assure you, this is no game we are playing and I am no actor. Let’s go get a coffee and some beignets, and I’ll try to answer the many questions you must have. I have some as well.”
“We could go to my apartment. It’s just a few blocks from here.” The sudden image in her mind of Julian naked and beautiful in her bed made Grace shiver with a barely controlled desire. She turned her face away, afraid her feelings were revealed.
“No. I’m sorry, but no.” Julian touched her arm, and Grace started a little as if he had jolted her with electricity. “You feel it, too, I know. There is a connection between us that goes beyond mere vampire kindredness. We are meant to be lovers.” Grace blushed as he continued, “I haven’t lain with another vampire for many years. You aren’t ready. Not yet. Trust me, Grace. Not yet.”
“Well, I wasn’t inviting you to bed!” Grace’s blush darkened, her normally pale cheeks pink with embarrassment. This man was dangerous! He could read her thoughts as if she were shouting them! She tossed her hair, standing up from the bench. Yet, her pussy had responded warmly to his remarks about them becoming lovers and lying together. She felt her nipples tingling and had to resist an impulse to rub and pull on them through the thin silk of her blouse.
Glancing sidelong at the mysterious man standing next to her, she suddenly worried that he really could read her mind, but he was grinning at her, seeming to respond only to her words, not her body’s desires. “No, of course not,” he nodded. “It is I who would lack the self-control. I have been waiting for three hundred years for the possibility of you. I can wait a little longer.”
“Three hundred years! You really expect me to believe that!”
“I expect nothing. I don’t demand your understanding or even acceptance. Though I am willing to explain. You are owed at least that. But there is time, all the time in the world. For now, let’s have our coffee.”
They found a little café and were soon sipping café au lait and pulling apart fresh beignets. For once, Grace found her appetite as she bit into the hot fried dough sprinkled liberally with powdered sugar, a bit of which found its way to the tip of her nose. The dark-roasted coffee and chicory served with sugar and hot milk was the perfect drink for this particular dessert. Julian, who hadn’t touched the donuts, sipped his coffee thoughtfully as he watched the young woman eat.
She looked up at him and grinned self-consciously as she wiped her face with the large cloth napkin. “I didn’t realize I was hungry,” she said. “I don’t usually have an appetite.”
“No, of course you don’t,” Julian nodded. “Why do you think that is, Grace?” As she looked away, he let the matter drop. Keeping his voice deliberately casual he asked, “So, you were adopted? Do you know who your birth parents were?”
“No. They found me. I was abandoned in a basket on the stairs of the Cathedral of St. Louis in Jackson Square! Like something out of a fairytale, don’t you think? As a child, I always found it terribly romantic, though as I got older, I often wondered what kind of parents would do such a thing? What kind of mother.”
“A desperate one, perhaps. One who didn’t want to or couldn’t afford to be identified?” Julian pursed his lips, leaning his chin against the steeple of his fingers. “Vampire babies are rare. Usually their arrival is well marked in our scattered but connected society. I don’t recall a baby twenty-four years ago.” He stared into space, his eyes narrowed in concentration.
“I didn’t think vampires could procreate! I mean, I guess they had to start somewhere, but it’s not really discussed in the literature.”
“The literature, huh? You are well-read, then, on these vampires whose existence you claim to deny?”
Grace flushed and ducked her head, “Well, I…uh…that is, it’s just a passing curiosity, naturally.”
“Naturally.” His smile was sardonic. “At any rate, yes, we do procreate, but rarely. Vampires are even more tied to the cycles of the moon than humans. The situation must be very precise for a female vampire to conceive. A blue moon is necessary, which as you may know only occurs about forty times a century. Then, of course, vampires rarely couple. The experience is quite intense and most vampires seek out humans for sexual interaction. I myself have only laid with a female vampire a handful of times.”
Grace was staring at him. “This is real, isn’t it? I want to disbelieve you. I keep telling myself you’re just a better actor than the others, but I know that’s not true. Something in my bones tells me you are what you say you are. And yet, how can it be? Life isn’t like that! There are no vampires! It’s just fantasy and an overactive imagination.”
“Oh, is it? And my ability to enter your mind is not real? And the gnawing in your gut? The bloodlust in your eyes, which marks you as clearly as if you were wearing a sign?” As Grace gasped, Julian continued relentlessly, “And my scent, which you no doubt smelled when you first encountered me, as I could discern yours, though humans cannot smell it. They haven’t the capacity. You needn’t admit it—I already know it.
“But I am curious, more than curious,” he went on, “as to who it was who abandoned you, and why. Perhaps you and I were meant to meet. I don’t believe in coincidence. Perhaps I am destined not only to be your lover, but your guide. Perhaps an adventure awaits us!”
Grace didn’t know what to focus on. He was offering too much, too fast. Seizing on one facet, still trying to maintain her skepticism
, she demanded, “How come I’ve been able to stay alive until now with only a few tastes of the blood? From all my research—” she flushed slightly, now admitting tacitly that hers was more than a passing interest, “—vampires need human blood to survive. It isn’t merely a pleasure or a compulsion, it’s a necessity.”
“Well, that’s true, actually. But as I mentioned, some vampires remain dormant. It’s almost like you’re in a suspended state until you first taste the blood. And even then, if you don’t drink sufficiently, it can remain in a mostly dormant state. Though you pay the price in pain and in longing.”
He looked at her keenly. “Tell me honestly, when did you first taste human blood? And how did you feel afterwards? It must have been a terrible and confusing burden for you. To feel the need but not understand the reason.” His voice was compassionate and Grace felt hot tears again prick her eyelids.
She answered, haltingly at first, telling him honestly about her early experiences with her own blood, with the cutting and the therapy and her own hot denial. Hesitantly, and then with more courage she continued, almost stumbling over her words as she described the recent experience with Rhonda and how she couldn’t stop her feeding.
“My God,” she said now, her eyes huge with fear and wonder. “I do believe I would have sucked the very life out of her if they hadn’t stopped me, Julian.”
“I believe you would have, Grace. I’m impressed that you were able to stop, and to behave with such grace.” He smiled, and she smiled back at the play on her name.
“But how could I have gone all these years? Assuming we accept your explanation of dormancy until puberty, I did in fact taste blood and yet managed to go another ten years without it! Only in my dreams.” She stopped abruptly and turned away. The dark-haired man in her dreams! Julian! The sweet, cruel lover of her fevered dreams sharing the blood. The blood!
“I feel your confusion, Grace. Your excitement. Your passions. Please, let yourself go. The time is finally past for censuring and controlling your thoughts and your dreams. Your needs. That constant pain in your belly, it’s there, isn’t it? Even now, a dull ache you’ve come to accept as part of who you are.”
“Yes, yes!” Grace whispered, unaware that tears were rolling down her cheeks. Slowly she leaned forward, her lips parting for his. Their fingers locked together as their lips met in a delicate kiss. Like a slow fuse, their passion burned down, igniting as their tongues met again.
They left the little café, walking slowly in no particular direction. Eventually they arrived at Grace’s apartment house. The familiar magnolia still heavy with summer blossoms dropped its branches protectively over them. She was half-relieved, half-disappointed when he again refused her invitation to come into her apartment.
“It’s late and you’ve been through some pretty amazing stuff tonight, Grace. If I come in there, I’m afraid there’ll be no turning back. Let’s go just a little slowly. Give you a chance to absorb the shock of all this revelation.”
Gently he kissed her again, this time without a lover’s passion. Smoothing back her hair, he said, “I’m staying at the Worthington, the penthouse suite. I’ll be there waiting when you’re ready to see me. I promise I’m not going anywhere. For now, get some rest. When you’re ready, call me and I’ll come to you.” He stroked her thin cheek, adding, “I think our first order of business is to get some flesh on these bones. You need to feed properly. I will take you and teach you the ways of our people. I will teach you to hunt, Grace.”
Instinctively, Grace’s mouth filled with saliva and she swallowed, the promise of blood hot in her brain. Yet he was right, she felt almost overcome with fatigue. There was so much to process and absorb. Now that she stood on the brink of some kind of salvation, she found herself almost hesitating. It was as if she might reach out for an illusion that would shatter her as it slipped from her grasp. Looking up into Julian’s dark eyes, she searched for another offering of proof.
She felt his thoughts, heard his words whispering sweet and warm against her mind. It will come with time, dear girl. Your trust will spring from experience. I will prove myself worthy of you, as you will learn with me. For now, just sleep. Take your new knowledge to your heart and rejoice in our discovery. Your life is finally beginning.
Chapter Nine
“He’s a good choice, I think. That one there, with the crack pipe.” Julian and Grace were standing on a dark corner in a seedy part of town—both dressed in black T-shirts and black jeans, barely discernable against the night. No tourists came this way. There were no jazz bars, no little bistros, no bright lights or river walks strung with softly glowing lanterns swaying in the moist tropical breeze. No, this was the part of New Orleans the tourists never saw, but Julian knew it well.
As always, as he ventured into these crime-ridden, drug-infested neighborhoods that sprawled just outside the garish lights of the French Quarter, Julian was struck by the glaring disparity of rich and poor in this wonderful, terrible town. And it had been always thus, he mused, since its early days as a backwater swamp, where riches were piled on the backs of slaves.
Grace jolted him back to the present. “Julian, I don’t think I’m ready. Please.”
“No one is ready their first time. I will help you. I’ll be here. It is time you had the blood. Properly, not just a sip.”
Grace shivered. Though the night was warm, she felt the goose bumps rise on her arms, and she clutched herself protectively. She wanted what he offered. God, did she want it. Yet, she was terrified. Terrified of the act itself, and perhaps even more so of her own reaction.
It was one thing to have an academic discussion about her “true nature”. It was quite another to be crouching in an alleyway, watching a gaunt man in filthy clothes sucking on a little clay pipe, his head nodding into his chest between puffs. Though the man himself repelled her, the thought of his sweet red blood bursting against her teeth made her almost faint with desire. She recognized that her desire was not only physical but sexual. Her pussy throbbed gently at the prospect of piercing that man’s flesh with her perfect canines. At the same time, she felt shame that she seemed to care so little about the man himself. Her need was too great.
Julian had explained that he sought his victims carefully. He tried to choose people who were already close to the edge of life, one foot dangling over the abyss. Usually addicts like this one, or drunks, without homes who lived on the fringe of society, courting death as if it were a lover. And even so, he tried not to kill them. He had learned to curb himself, even in the throes of his feeding ecstasy, before he went too far. Though sometimes, his greed overcame his reason and someone died as a result.
“Have you killed someone, then? Been unable to stop before it was too late?” Grace held her breath, already certain of his answer.
“Yes, yes I have. Many times, though never with intent. But many more times I have not. It is the way of the true kin, Grace. Most vampires don’t give it a second thought. But I value life, even human life, and try to spare it when I can. Tonight we will not kill. I will keep you safe. Now come, let us ease the pain in your body, let us feed your soul.”
So they crept closer, her thirst now overpowering her fear. The man was already barely conscious—an easy mark for Julian to get behind and lock into a chokehold that soon rendered him inert, lost in cocaine-laden dreams. Though he rarely bothered for himself, Julian had thoughtfully brought along a wet handkerchief, which he now rubbed across the man’s bared throat, paying special attention to the jugular poking up like a serpent under the sallow, dirty skin.
Grace was trembling now, her body shaking as she knelt down next to the pair in the dark. “I don’t know how,” she whispered.
“You do. It’s your instinct. It’s as natural as a babe suckling its mother’s breast. Here.” He positioned the man easily across his lap, baring the neck for her bite. “Sit next to me. That’s it. Now lean over and just sink your teeth in. You’ll see. The skin will yield to you like a ripe peach. You
were born to this, Grace. This is your destiny, your right. Take what is yours for the first time. Take it. Do it.”
She did. Leaning over, her golden-red hair spilling around her face, she bit down. Her teeth sank easily, as he had promised. There was no tearing of jagged flesh, no ripping of tendon or muscle. She connected easily with the vein, feeling a little rubbery resistance for a moment, which yielded suddenly and sweetly in a steady flow of pure heaven. Without being aware she was doing it, Grace wrapped her arms around the man, pulling him up in a lover’s hold.
Grace forgot Julian in that moment. She forgot the years of confusion and denial. She forgot the painful longing for something she didn’t understand. It was as if her whole life had tilted toward this moment. For the very first time, she felt comfortable in her own skin. She felt whole and alive! The blood pulsed in the man’s throat, throbbing sweetly against her mouth. Oh, it was heaven. It was everything. There was nothing but this. She gulped, trying to take it all, never wanting it to stop.
Something like rage assailed her when Julian pulled her from her lover’s kiss. “Enough. I said enough!” Dimly she became aware that he was talking. That he had in fact been talking for some minutes, entreating her to stop before it was too late. Now he had forcibly separated her from the only thing she wanted in this world—sweet, perfect, rich red blood.
She fought him, flailing her arms and seeking that sweetmeat again with her mouth opened like a little bird’s. “I must! You don’t understand! I must.”
“I understand all too well. And if you persist, you will kill him. Already I let you go too far. He may not survive this night as it is. Another of your kisses will be fatal, Grace. Do you want to kill your first time out? Do you want the death of a human on your hands so soon?” The horror of his words finally penetrated her bloodlust, and Grace went limp in his grip.
“What have I done?” she whispered faintly, slumping now against him. Carefully, Julian lowered her to the ground and then focused on the unconscious man, touching briefly the two tiny holes at the side of his neck. A vampire’s mark was hard to discern and usually the bite completely healed within a few days. Grace had drunk deeply and Julian secretly doubted if this man, already weak to begin with, would recover.
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