Bitten: Dark Erotic Stories (6 page)

* * *

Rain streamed down the palace windows. In the afternoon gloom the pink satin sheets looked tawdry, and Lucille’s skin was wan. She lay trembling on the bed. Beside her lay the inert body of Etienne Dordogne. In death he was even more beautiful, his bloodless flesh as cold and creamy as the marble statues in the rose garden. His muscle-roped arms were splayed open to the sky; his cock lay along his belly, still hard and magnificent. Dark, damp hair curled like swathes of ink across his forehead, and his silver blue eyes were open wide to the ceiling, as if the ornate, gilded scrolls above his head held the messages of archangels.

Had the dying man seen angels as his two lovers slashed his throat? The gash they made yawned across his neck like a wailing red mouth, the only imperfection in a form that was flawlessly still.

“Wasn’t he glorious, Lucille?” sighed Marie de Mortoise, sitting next to Lucille in the sheets. “Didn’t our revolutionary taste delicious as he experienced his final death?”

Marie chuckled at her own pun. Etienne had experienced death in more ways than one that afternoon.

“I’m so happy that you were here with me,
ma petite
,” Madame murmured, stroking Lucille’s sweat-soaked curls. “It was a work of art, what we did here today. Don’t you agree?”

Lucille turned her head sharply, choking back the vomit that rose in her throat.

The games had gotten darker, more dangerous, as the months passed. Marie de Mortoise grew bored with pimping Lucille; her tastes had turned wild and warped as she pushed their private orgies to heights that went way past the usual courtly decadence. Today, for the first time in Lucille’s recent memory, Marie’s icy mask had melted into ecstasy as she watched Etienne Dordogne die between Lucille’s bare thighs.

Holding a silver chalice, Marie curled closer into Lucille’s warm curves. If not for Marie, purring beside her like a well-fed cat, Lucille might have wondered if she were dead herself. Marie dipped a finger into the dark red fluid inside the cup, then painted Lucille’s belly with strange symbols, her own secret alphabet of desire.

“You must drink, too, cherie. Don’t be afraid.”

Marie lifted the chalice to her own mouth. Her thin lips opened to receive the life wine. Then she held out the chalice to Lucille. Lucille pressed her lips together into a tight line as she tasted the bitter bile in her throat again.

“Come, come. Are you going to reject your lover’s blood? You didn’t reject him when he was here in your bed. This is the blood of the revolution—this was one of the men who would slaughter us like sheep if they had the chance. One sip, and your little rabbit heart will pound straight out of your chest.”

Hot tears slicked Lucille’s cheeks. She closed her eyes. The cold lip of the chalice was cutting into her soft mouth; still, she refused to drink. Marie spilled the blood down her chin and throat; she was screaming. She opened her eyes to see that her breasts were smeared with the life fluids of the man who had made love to her only minutes before.

“Look at me, Lucille,” Marie ordered. “Look at the woman who loves you. I do love you, you know. When I saw you ride Dordogne, with your wild eyes and greedy mouth, I knew you were more than a protegee to me. And when you took the knife by the hilt and held it over his throat, I realized that you mean more to me than any of my lovers. I don’t know what we are to each other, but I do know one thing.”

“What?” The smell of Marie’s desire, lingering on her skin, made Lucille’s stomach turn. When her hand brushed across Lucille’s cheek, the younger woman heaved.

“When we first began playing together, you were a vain, empty-headed little girl. Today you’ve become a woman, Lucille, and so much more. When you shared the knife with me, you became something close to immortal. You became mine.”

“No! You disgust me.”

Marie clutched Lucille’s cheeks and turned her face so that she couldn’t avoid meeting the countess’s eyes. Marie’s pupils were so dilated that the black edged out the surrounding color.

“You are culpable, too, Lucille. Never forget that.”

Marie smiled down at her lovely protegee. The crimson scythe had never looked so sharp.

“We are two of a kind now,
ma petite.
Two of a kind. You held the knife that cut his throat, cherie. I made the slice, but you held the knife.”

* * *

It’s 3:00
A.M.
, the rising time of restless spirits. In her greenhouse, Lucy stretches out on her pallet and rolls over on one elbow to pour another cup of coffee. She holds one of Madame’s blossoms against her face, inhaling its peculiar scent. Its perfume has never been anything like the fragrance of an ordinary rose. ‘Madame de Mortoise’ smells of earthy loam with a note of cloying decay, of clotted blood and ancient revelation. To some noses, her fragrance might seem foul, but thanks to Lucy, it is pure. The acrid stench of murder had been released from Madame’s vines long ago.

A cool draft wafts through the greenhouse. The clammy breeze clings to Lucy’s shoulders like ectoplasm. She shivers. A sudden creak in the glass door, the scratch of wood on packed earth, make the tendrils of hair on the back of her neck bristle.

“Little fool,” hisses a voice behind her. “You were always the little fool. Did you really think you could keep my rose forever?”

Lucy whirls around on the pallet. The beeswax candles sputter. Marie stands outside the ring of candlelight, her face half-hidden in the penumbra. Even in the darkness, Lucy can see those eyes glittering like wet pebbles behind a smooth clay mask.

Lucy sits on her hands to hide their shaking. “Madame is mine. She’s been with me for more than two hundred years. Who do you think feeds her? Not you, Marie.”

“Poor Lucille,” Marie sighs. “You always wanted a rose of your own. But in the end you weren’t enough of an inspiration to our court rosarian, were you? Face it. You were never worthy of a rose, Lucille. You longed for the glory of having a flower named for you. The rosarian would never have named a rose for such a vain, silly creature. Your soul isn’t big enough for eternal life.”

“I’ve survived so far,” Lucy says.

“Only because the rose is so strong. One day without her, and you’d shrivel and blacken like a scrap of tissue in a bonfire. You’re too stupid to live forever.”

“If I’m so stupid, how have I avoided
you
for so long?”

“Fear,” Marie says lightly. “You’re as fearful as a rabbit. That’s your only defense.”

That’s not true, Lucy thinks to herself. The rosarian must have known that Lucille, as silly as she was, with her bubbly giggle and bouncing ringlets, had a seed of strength inside.
La jeune Lucille
wasn’t strong enough to resist the sensual temptations that Marie offered, but Lucy has been able to survive the past two centuries without dying.

Marie reaches out to pluck one of the rose’s blossoms. Lucy can see her frowning in the brownish shadows. Marie would have expected a flower of spectacular symmetry and sensuous hue to be named after her, not this misshapen ball of blood red petals.

A blossom to match your face,
ma chere
Marie de Mortoise, Lucy thinks.

“You don’t even know how to care for a rose, Lucy. Look how she’s degenerated.”

“The blossoms have always looked like that. You wouldn’t know— you were being beheaded on the day she first bloomed. Don’t you remember?”

“Of course I remember.” Marie’s blade of a mouth twists with scorn. “No one forgets the guillotine,
cherie
.”

“I never thought you’d come back. You claimed that drinking the blood of rebels made you immortal, but I never believed you. I certainly never thought you’d come back from … that.”

Marie preens. “It was a miracle of manipulation, I have to admit. Arranged and paid for in advance. I made sure that my body and soul would find each other again. Not easy, when the head is separated from the body, but it can be done.”

“The rosarian was the only one who could offer the gift of immortality. You
paid
for that rose, didn’t you?”

“What if I did? The old man was only human. He couldn’t live on the horseshit that he fed his roses. I gave him a generous sum for that bloodthirsty flower of his. More than generous.”

“The rosarian wouldn’t have given up the name of a rose for any amount of money.”

Marie’s laugh is bitter. “Maybe not in peaceful times, when he could putter around in the gardens without worrying about losing his head. The rosarian was no fool. He knew that once the revolutionaries took the palace, they wouldn’t spare his neck, not after he’d been loyal to the kings for so many years. Believe me, the old man was happy to sell the fruits of his avocation when the heads began to roll in Paris. I paid his way back to whatever nook in hell he came from.”

“But the rosarian gave her to me. He hid the rose from you, Marie. He told
me
to take care of her.”

Lucy could still see the rosarian’s cracked, filthy fingers looming toward her in the shadows of his shed, offering the hungry rose that had fed from Lucille’s breast. Its roots had been balled in burlap, so that Lucy could transport the plant anywhere she wished. A single flower, like a lump of dried blood, burgeoned from a branch.

“Save her,” said the old man. “Be her salvation. I was forced to name her for a murderess to save my old hide, but if you care for her, if you turn inward to find whatever you have left that is pure, the rose will become pure, too.”

“Well, then. You’ve taken care of her, Lucille. Now I’ll take her back.”

“Impossible. You’ll never separate us.”

Marie lunges forward into the circle of candlelight, thrusting her face into Lucy’s, the way her lovers used to press their tender mouths forward for a kiss. Lucy cringes. Marie’s skin, without its layers of paint, is yellow and foul. Her eyelids have shrunk from the dry orbs; her lips have retracted from her teeth. She purses her liver-dark mouth, reeking of rot, and leans toward Lucy’s cheek. Lucy recoils.

“What’s the matter, Lucille? You no longer want to be kissed by your dear Marie? I need the rose. Without her, I won’t live. I’ve already passed my time.”

“How have you gone on for so long?”

“Through the generous self-sacrifice of young men like Charlot.”

“You still murder them …”

“Of course I do. I don’t have a choice. Until I get the rose back, I have to feed on the lives of others, just as the rose does.”

Marie grips Lucy’s arm with her skeletal hand. Her voice softens, takes on a note of its old seductive sweetness. “Listen. Do you remember Etienne Dordogne? Do you remember how we stole him from the streets, from his den of revolutionaries, and brought him to the palace? Magnificent, he was! Every inch of him flushed with honest blood. I can still hear the songs you sang when he kissed your breasts and touched you between your legs. He roared like a lion when he spent himself inside you, but he slept like a child. So innocent!”

Lucy buries her face in her hands. “Don’t.”

“But we couldn’t leave him sleeping, could we? Not the dangerous Etienne Dordogne! He was a criminal, a revolutionary leader. A threat to all our pleasures. And besides, I was thirsty. We were both thirsty. You wanted to taste his wine, too, Lucille.”

“I didn’t. I never did.”

“You held the knife, didn’t you?”

“Because you forced me! You said you would kill me!”

“No, no. A long time has passed, but I still remember. You very much wanted to assist. You held the shaft of the knife, and I placed my hand over yours. Then I kissed your cheek, counted to three, and together we cut his throat.”

Lucy sobs.

“Don’t cry. Etienne is long dead, and I was punished for the crime when the revolutionaries came into power. You, on the other hand, were spared. As my accomplice, you should have felt the blade, too, yet you were never brought to trial. No one knew you were in the bedroom with us. Why?”

“You never told,” Lucy whispers.

“That’s right!” Marie’s voice is thick with triumph. “I didn’t tell.”

“Why?”

“Because I knew I had eternal life and you didn’t. And because I loved you, little fool. I made a sacrifice for you.”

The word
love
, coming from Marie’s lips, freezes Lucy to the floor. She stares at the woman who was once a countess, at the wreck of her formerly lovely mask. Love. Is that the light that glistens in Marie’s joyless, hungry eyes? A flicker of some slumbering emotion that moved her heart long ago?

“How could you have loved me?” Lucy whispers. “You turned me into a murderess.”

“I turned you into what you truly were, Lucy. I freed you from the stupidity of your morality. I showed you ecstasy, and you rewarded me by taking the rose that was named for me.”

Marie tightens her grip on Lucy’s arm. Her dark eyes burn in her skull, like twin Stygian fires in a hollow lantern. She leans closer, close enough to kiss Lucy on the mouth.

“Look how long you’ve lived, thanks to me,” Marie says. “Consider what a charming life you have and compare that life to
this
.” With one bony finger Marie pulls down the collar of her turtleneck, revealing a choker of thick, silvery scars studded with knots of blue.

The jeers of the crowd. The march to the gallows. The whoosh of the blade.

On the day Marie de Mortoise was beheaded, Lucille had been on her knees, praying from dawn to dusk that her own neck would be spared. For three weeks she had slept on a heap of sacks in the rosarian’s hut, hiding from the revolutionaries who would surely come for her next. Etienne Dordogne had been a heroic leader, close to Danton. Marie had sacrificed him for an hour’s worth of pleasure. Lucille had held the knife.

Even in the heat of her childish prayers, Lucille had known in her heart that she was guilty. If the rosarian had seen something pure in Lucille, with his sightless eyes, the girl herself was still blind to it. Lucille didn’t know why her life should be spared. She had prayed like a rabbit dangling from a wolf’s jaws. She had promised to be pure, promised to be good, promised all the things that she had sworn to God when she was a five-year-old terrified of the dark.