“France was particularly bad off. Vampires invaded the aristocracy so extensively that some say they were a direct cause of the Revolution–that much of the noble class was either murdered by them, or became vampires themselves. Consequently they concerned themselves with drinking blood rather than managing their estates and the welfare of those who worked for them, and we all know the bloodbath that led to.
“Whenever secrecy and selfishness take over,” said Alain very seriously, “that person’s morals are ruined. And if there are very many of these in one place? The society is ruined as well.”
“That is why, obviously, we do the work we do. And we are very pleased to teach you all we know, Tristan, and to have you as part of our team,” said Jessica.
Tristan was dumbfounded already, even though none of what Alain had said was that much of a surprise. Certainly the connection of vampires to aristocrats wasn’t news, since he was dealing with that in his own village. But despite his already being convinced, it was nevertheless very strange to be having a conversation with other people–obviously educated, sensible people–who also believed vampires were not simply the stuff of rumor.
He looked at the menu, feeling a sorrow to be so distracted. He couldn’t help resenting Jessica whom he blamed for this sacrilege of a working lunch.
And yet, he was equally greedy for information. He decided to start with snails à la bourginonne, then on to lamb. Or maybe sweetbreads? Oh, it will be good no matter what I order, he thought irritably. He prodded Alain to continue.
“Well, I can tell you the basics, but our research is far from complete,” said Alain. "It’s true they cannot endure sunlight, and they get more sensitive to sun as they get older. The really old ones–and we’ll talk about life-span in a minute–must stay inside at all times. Moonlight is too much for them. Younger ones may be able to go out during the day if they are completely covered up, at least for a short time.
“As with humans, there seems to be some genetic variation in how much sun exposure they can handle, and at what age that endurance, if any to start with, fades.” Alain waved to a waiter, dressed in black with a white apron tied at his waist.
“What about killing them?” asked Tristan.
“Jumping right to the point, eh?” said Alain. "Well, there’s not been much evolution with this. In the old days, a stake through the heart would do it, as well as a silver bullet. You could weaken them with garlic, or a silver cross, or holy water. These days, the stake still works. The silver cross, as far as we can tell, is only effective when used by a person of authentic religious faith, and there are not many of those around anymore.
“Garlic,” he said with a rueful smile, “seems to be a favorite seasoning for vampires rather than any sort of repellant.” He shrugged. “One thing about vampires, at least French ones –they love to eat and they appreciate good food. So it’s not a surprise that along the way some of them figured out how to neutralize the weakening effect of garlic. No escargot à la bourginonne otherwise.”
The waiter approached and took their orders. Tristan looked around at the other tables, quickly imagining a back story for each one. A couple on the verge of a breakup. A pair of students celebrating passing an exam. A young man dutifully having lunch with his aunt. Everyone, even the couple breaking up, looked like they were enjoying their food immensely. Tristan put his hand on his stomach to calm it down.
“Now, about aging,” continued Alain. “Generally speaking, worldwide, vampires stop getting older when they become vampires. It’s as simple as that, and true to the mythology. But here in France, we see a different strain. These vampires, who appear to have been turned at young ages, prepubescent in any case, do get older, albeit extremely slowly. So they might live to be two or three hundred years old, and just like humans, their faculties and strength will fade over time. Why, we don’t know.”
Jessica continued the explanations. “They do like the high life, these vampires,” she said. “Here in Paris, and back in New York as well, they party all the time. Love wearing couture. Eating the most extravagant food.” She paused and sipped her drink.
“I haven’t thought of it like this before,” she said, “but it’s like they are extra-concentrated humans. They are faster, stronger, and they want everything to be the best, beyond the best–they want to eat, and make love, and do everything to the absolute maximum. All the time.”
Jessica was practically breathless. She did not exactly sound like a woman talking about something she wholeheartedly disapproved of.
“Some weaknesses that we know of.” said Alain. "They do not like noise. It might be that their ears are more highly sensitive, we’re not sure. But loud noise, especially grating, scraping, blaring noise really puts them off. It makes them run.
“They appear to have some kind of–now, I’m absolutely serious here. I make this claim only on the basis of a mountain of evidence, and I’m well aware it sounds ridiculous–some kind of mind control, or something like that. We don’t understand how it works. But in case after case, we arrive at the location of an attack, and we have the victim right there, clearly bitten, clearly assaulted by one of these monsters, and not only the victim herself but people who were right there and saw the whole thing–they remember nothing.
“It’s like their short-term memories were gone over with a wet sponge. Nothing there.” Alain drained his drink and glanced hopefully at the door to the kitchen.
“You said ‘victim herself’,” said Tristan. “That’s one thing I’ve been wanting to understand. Do vampires only bite women? And are there female vampires?”
“Ah,” said Alain. “This is a very interesting topic, and one that again, we don’t fully understand. But please,” he said, turning his large brown eyes on Jessica and giving her the warmest smile he could muster, “let’s talk of other things while we eat. I see our waiter hurrying towards us this very minute. I am undone at the prospect of my oysters.”
Alain clapped his hands and turned to the waiter, and Tristan nearly snatched the plates out of the waiter’s hands he was so impatient to taste those snails.
Jo had eaten a fine lunch, served in the breakfast room to staff only. Then she had taken the rather long walk to her room up in the tower, and fallen dead asleep for hours in that wonderfully comfortable bed.
When she woke, she lay on her side, stretching and thinking of Drogo, and what a deep pleasure it had been to ride him that morning. Then she noticed what looked like a note slipped under her door.
It was handwritten, old-fashioned, as though a quill had been dipped in black ink.
I would very much like it if you would have dinner with me this evening. 8:00 in the foyer – David
Huh. Well. Jo wasn’t sure she wanted to have dinner with him. It was stupid in a way, because of course she hadn’t known him at all, but what she kept thinking was that everything she had known about him had turned out to be a lie.
Which was silly, since she hadn’t really known anything about him anyway. She had simply believed he loved horses, that was all. And now she knew he didn’t. So what’s the big deal, what did she care? He was a complete stranger and always had been.
A stranger who was smokin’ hot, OK, but a stranger nonetheless.
Yikes, it was 7:30 already. Jet-lag was really screwing with her sense of time. She hurried to take a bath and find something not too wrinkled to wear, and in half an hour, plus ten minutes so as not to seem all eager–which she wasn’t, really she wasn’t, no danger of that–she was coming down the wide staircase to the main foyer.
Jo had her hair pulled back tight into a chignon, and had darkened up her eyebrows with pencil. Her cheeks were rosy from the long ride. Her dress was blue silk, a slip-dress, practically like wearing a nightgown. But she knew she looked good in it, and perversely, she almost cared more about looking good now that she was mad at David than if she were still interested in him.
She wanted him to feel sorry for pretending to be something he wasn’t.
Of course, Jo did not know the half of it.
David was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He was wearing a dark blue shirt that made his skin look very pale. Tight blue jeans. Dress shoes. He looked tremendously athletic, something like a panther, like he could leap right out of those shoes and those jeans and–wait a minute. How about…athletic like he would be a terror on the tennis court, how’s that? Much better, she thought.
She could see his appreciation on his face. His eyes took her in, drank her in, as he reached out a hand. When she gave him hers, he brought it to his lips, like he had the day before when they met.
This time, she felt a jolt when his lips touched her fingers. Like her fingers were only now coming alive for the very first time.
“I thought we’d eat in here,” he said, taking her hand and leading her in a different direction than she had been before. They walked through room after room, until they came to a small room lined with books, with a fire blazing in an enormous fireplace.
“This is my grandfather’s library,” said David. “He was quite a collector and many of these books are worth a fortune. Of course, books are becoming obsolete, like so many of the old things,” he said, looking charmingly sentimental.
Jo felt a wall of defenses drop. There were other walls, still intact, but that first line had crumbled and they weren’t even sitting down yet.
“Has your grandfather been…gone for very long?” Jo asked.
“You could say that,” answered David, but he did not elaborate. “Tell me about Drogo,” he said, his face lighting up.
“Oh,” said Jo. “I thought…I didn’t know he mattered to you.”
David cocked his head to the side.
Jo was kicking herself. She had sworn that she was not going to bring it up. She had a habit of blurting things out that she regretted later.
“Drogo matters to me a great deal,” he said, looking into her eyes, focusing so deeply on her eyes that she could not look away.
There was no way not to believe him.
Jo suddenly heard Marianne’s voice in her ear. “When it comes to men,” Marianne said, “Pay attention to what they do, not what they say.”
“Oh shut up,” said Jo.
“Excuse me?” said David.
“Nothing,” said Jo, giggling like a schoolgirl. Jo felt the obnoxious creep of a blush starting to inch up her neck. She sternly told it to cut it the hell out–silently this time.
“It’s…warm in here, isn’t it?” she said.
“Yes,” said David, looking at her with undisguised desire. He reached for her hand and held it.
Again, the jolt.
“Albert will be bringing something to nibble on soon,” he said. “Would you like to sit down? The sofa or at the table?”
“The table,” Jo said hurriedly. She needed to put some furniture between herself and this man.
She tried to remember how disgusted with him she had felt after talking to Thierry, but the feeling was like something written on a piece of paper and then tossed into the fire–up in smoke, lost for good.
“Talk to me about riding, Jo,” said David. "I want to hear about Drogo, yes, but right now I want you to tell me what it feels like to be on top of him, guiding him, squeezing him with your legs. I want you to describe the connection you feel to your horse.
“Can you do that for me?” he said softly.
She could. And she did. All through the delicious dinner, which was the best meal Jo had ever had. And she kept telling him as they drank tiny glasses of Chartreuse and the fire died down to embers, as he continued to hold her hand, and eventually, with one finger, touch the thin silk strap of her dress, and eventually, for just a moment, her neck, but no more, and as the cautionary words of Marianne floated high up and out to sea.
8
Pierre Aucoin sat with his elbows on the bar in front of a glass of beer. The beer was for show, really, since alcohol has no effect on vampires–or not for show exactly, he ordered the beer because it made him feel like he was part of the group at the bar, doing what they did.
A comrade. A buddy. One of the gang.
Which–there was no kidding himself–Pierre was not.
Most of the men he knew were married now, and they came to the bar for a quick nip before going home to their wives. Some of them had children. None of them knew about his…status. The only other vampires he knew of were the la Mottes, and they wanted nothing to do with him, beyond occasionally keeping him out of trouble when they thought he might be giving up their secret to the local gendarmes.
He was terribly, terribly lonely.
And right now, as usual, he wanted a woman. He wanted to drink blood, not beer.
The bartender was talking sports to a couple of guys standing near the bar. The bartender’s wife was in the back room, mopping the floor. The whole place was brown, tired, and had the air of a place where nothing was ever going to happen worth telling about.
Pierre tossed back the rest of his beer–he was a legend in the bar, no one could believe the amount of alcohol he could put away without showing any effects–and said good night to the few remaining patrons. They nodded and said their goodnights as well, ever polite. Pierre was sick to death of polite. He wanted something a whole hell of a lot better than polite.
It was agreeably dark out. He strolled down the back street by the river, amusing himself by popping out the streetlamps with thoughtbursts, wondering how much money the poor old village of Mourency had had to spend over the years to replace bulbs he had ruined.
He stood on the corner, trying to decide which way to go next. He lifted his face to the sky, inhaling deeply, hoping to catch the scent of a woman.
Pierre had long ago given up on finding a female of his own kind, a labri, so that particular pain did not bother him anymore, at least not consciously. There were still female humans who ventured out at night, alone, too trusting. He inhaled again. Nothing. He smelled only the mossy smell of the river and wet stones, and dust from the street. He walked slowly, aimlessly kicking a stone.
It came out of nowhere. An enormous hand clamped over his mouth while something lashed at his legs. In an instant his legs were bound by an incredibly tight rope and he used all of the impressive strength in his arms to reach around behind him to try to grab whoever was attacking him.
Pierre had been in many fights over the years, and he had never come close to losing.
He felt the rope beating at his arms and starting to bind them too, almost as though it were something alive, like a tentacle. With a huge surge of power, Pierre ripped his legs apart and turned to face the man behind him, crouched and ready to spring. His fangs tingled as they began to slide down.
The man was very tall, and wide, and had the biggest muscles Pierre had ever seen except in a bodybuilder magazine. But big muscles didn’t scare him. Lifting a barbell at the gym was nothing like a street-fight. And human muscles? Pfft.
Pierre sent a thoughtburst to the man’s head, but it seemed to do nothing. He sent a burst of three, quick and hard, and the man simply shook his head a bit as though bothered by a mosquito.
What the hell?
And there were two of them?
He hadn’t seen the other guy at first, who stepped out of the shadows now, his eyes narrowed, observing. Pierre circled, keeping his center of gravity low, getting ready for whatever the brute tried next, keeping his eye on the second man, who was looking bored and a little impatient.
“Maloney!” he yelled. “The whipster, you idiot!”
Pierre threw a punch and knocked the man’s jaw, hard. The man didn’t seem to particularly mind. They kept circling, and circling.
It was two against one. Pierre considered making a run for it. If the second guy joined in, it could get ugly.
The thought of escape broke his concentration just a little, but Maloney felt it and took advantage. He sprang at Pierre and threw him to the ground and pressed his body on top of him.
“G
ot him!” Maloney yelled. “Now what?”
Pierre struggled but Maloney had his knee between his legs and was pressing into his balls. His balls were one of the only two things Pierre had in the world that meant something to him. So he kept still.
“What do you want?” he said, trying to find the right tone of not too weak and also not pissing anybody off.
The second guy walked over holding a greenish loop over his shoulder and handed it to Maloney who was sitting on top of Pierre. Maloney shook the loop, and the end whipped against Pierre’s legs, lashed them, then gripped them tight.
“Whipster is the best,” the man said, talking to Pierre as though expecting him to agree.
“Whipster rules,” said Maloney.
“Shut up, Maloney,” said the man.
Pierre was immobilized now, completely wrapped up in the greenish cords. Duct tape went across his mouth. Then, slowly, he was lifted up by those giant hands to face his attacker.
“Good evening, Pierre,” said the second man, circling around him. Pierre was all wrapped up like a fly who’s had attention from a spider. “No need to greet me, I understand, sorry about the tape,” he said, laughing.
The man’s eyes were…wait a minute! Those pupils–
Pierre would bet his last euro this smaller dude was a vampire.
Maloney stood behind him, or loomed rather, because he was immense, an actual giant. He was grinning his head off, chattering excitedly and hopping from one foot to the other like a five year old about to get an ice cream cone, his lank hair falling into his face.
Unbitten Page 5