Blood to Blood (24 page)

By the time they started back to the cottage, she'd become frantic. She needed blood, and nothing but blood would do. Not exactly something to confess to a lover she hardly knew, but something she would do if there were no better choice.

He noticed her preoccupation, apparently noticed too how her attention focused on him every time he touched her. So he touched her often, helping her off with her shawl and resting a hand on her bare shoulder, holding hands with her over dinner, taking her arm when they decided to walk home. And every time their bodies touched, a shiver ran through her and she marveled at the heat of him.

Misinterpreting her reaction as passion, he did not ask permission to come inside. And as soon as they were alone, he was kissing her, his hands quickly undoing the hooks on the back of her dress.

Managing to untangle herself from his embrace, she offered him brandy, which he declined with a sly grin. "I think I was a bit drunk last time. I'd like to be aware of your needs tonight, my marvelous Colleen."

"Stay the night," she murmured, praying that he was a sound sleeper.

"I should love to see you beside me in the morning," he replied, then kissed her again, the passion of it leaving her breathless.

Once in bed, his kisses covered her breasts and belly and thighs, his hands demanding. And yes, she wanted him more even than before, but her mind was fixed on the thing that was lacking, the blood she could not ask him for.

Then at the moment his passion reached its climax, she demanded hers, pulling him down on her and wrapping her legs around his waist, and she found the spot on his neck and bit.

A taste. She'd only wanted a taste, but her body demanded more, so she bit down hard. He cried out, tried to pull away, but her legs were wrapped around him, holding him tight, her own climax coming hard, her contractions demanding his response.

Moments later, when she lay spent, exhausted, half drunk with what he had given, he pulled away and in the dim light saw his blood on her lips.

"Colleen, what did you do?" he cried, backing away from her.

Later, she knew she should have cried, should have tearfully tried to explain her needs. Instead, sated and joyful, she'd smiled. "I took what I needed," she said, inexplicably astonished when he grabbed his clothes from the floor and darted into the parlor.

She followed soon after, still naked, with drops of his blood on her chin. He was already half dressed, his fingers examining the wound she'd made. "At least get me a clean cloth, damn you!" he ordered.

She did, standing before him, waiting for his anger to dissipate. It didn't. He turned to leave. She grabbed his arm, but he pushed it away. "At least let me try to explain," she said.

"Explain? What's there to explain?" He pulled the cloth away from the wound and tossed it at her.

It landed at her feet. She looked down at the stain on it.

then stepped over it and toward him. "I have to tell you… I can't just let you think that—"

"No!" he shouted and with shirt half buttoned, he grabbed his coat and left, slamming her door behind him.

She fell back into a chair. An explanation would hardly have helped, she decided. Most likely she would have had to kill him. That sudden, odd thought made her giggle with delight. Drunk on life, she would worry about the next tryst tomorrow. For now, it was better to enjoy.

She hoped that Joanna, wherever she was, was having as pleasant a time.

Though it had been lifetimes ago, Joanna could still remember the day she first noticed a rainbow. She'd been scarcely four, the youngest child playing in the gardens outside her grandfather's palace. A quick squall had sent them all scurrying for the shelter of a covered porch. Joanna, smaller than the rest, had lagged behind, then fallen and bruised her knee on the stones.

She'd sat up and took a deep breath, intending to call for help, when the sun found a hole in the clouds and transformed the thin shower into an arch of colors above her.

She'd stared up at it, all thoughts of her pain—slight at its worst—vanishing as the arch grew more intense. The others saw it too, running into the open, pointing at the sky.

Years later, she learned how rainbows were created from sunlight on water. The knowledge didn't ruin the mystery of the sight—why it had appeared to her and stolen her pain.

When she saw rainbows, she always thought of her mother.

"I put the prisms above your box because I wanted you to see a sight born from sunlight," Arthur explained when she finally asked him about the pieces of glass.

How had he thought of a gift such as that? Of all the things he bought for her, the rainbows were the most precious.

Every night, she would wake in an empty room and rise to the sight of lamps burning on the tables, prisms floating above them, rainbows dancing across the ceiling.

Often there would be another gift—a new gown, a coat of forest-green velvet, evening gloves, a gold ring. She would try the clothes on, and with no way to see the result in a mirror, go to him for advice.

He would tell her she looked beautiful. If she began to pace, or fell into silence, he would plead a need to work or sleep and leave her alone so she could hunt. On nights when she was appeased, they would walk in the garden or go to the music room. He would play while she listened, so avidly that he had to ask, "Do you sing?"

A pause. An answer. "I did. I had a beautiful voice. I can hear it still in your music."

"Sing for me."

Her throat so dry, her voice so little used that even now it seemed most human when she kept it at a whisper. "Music is for the living," she said. "It makes me remember those times."

"Then music it is—the symphony or opera?"

"Opera, please."

He had tickets the following night. Box seats, he assured her. Perfectly private.

Nonetheless, she wore a deep green satin and velvet cape over her green lace ballgown, both intended to help her fade into the shadows at the first sign that anyone looked at her with suspicion. Unused to being out, she sat in the covered carriage, gripping Arthur's hand so tightly that, later in the evening when she looked at it, she saw a bruise in the soft spot near his thumb. She continued to hold it until the lights went down, and in the comfort of darkness she could listen unafraid.

Between acts, she raised the hood of her cape, hiding her face. When friends stopped by the box, she turned her head away so quickly that Arthur led them into the hallway, saying that his friend from the Continent was unwell.

"What are you so afraid of?" Arthur asked when he returned.

"My face. My eyes. My skin. They'll know," she whispered in quick, small bursts of breath. It took all her control to keep from laughing at the absurdity of her in this place.

"Your eyes are magnificent. As for your face and skin, yes, they are too pale, but no worse than my friend Beardsley's.

As to the other, less obvious differences, this is London, not Varna. It's a rare bird who would guess your secret."

"Someone did."

"Ah, but Jack Seward had to import the codger from the Continent. Besides, it's your hiding that makes them wonder all the more what it is you don't want them to see."

He was right, but it didn't help. She sat in silence until the lights dimmed and the singers began. When it was over and the applause began, he felt her pull her hand away. When he turned to her, she was gone.

He found her near the carriage, hood pulled close over her head, body trembling. "I'll join you later. I need…" The last word was left unsaid.

"Let me come with you." When she shook her head, he added, "Or let me show you another way."

She thought she understood, and waited for him to repeat the question she vowed would send her away from him forever. He didn't. Instead he asked, "Joanna, will you trust me for a little while?"

Breath in. Out. But no words came to her.

"A little while," he repeated and took her arm so she could enter the carriage like any lady out on an evening with her escort.

He gave the driver an address and climbed in beside her. They moved through the London streets in awkward silence. As their carriage slowed, Arthur put on his hat, brim low over his forehead.

He helped her out, and she followed him on foot down a narrow street in a part of town far better than her usual hunting grounds. Though the rest of the area was well lit, this block was not. Yes, there were gaslights, but they had not been turned on, or else had been extinguished as soon as the lamplighter had gone on his way. In the comfort of darkness, she managed to relax.

Arthur stopped in front of a green-painted door. No sign advertised either the name or the address, but after two quick knocks, a viewing door opened. Arthur handed in a card, and they were let inside.

Joanna shrank back from the collective sounds of passion—whispering to her from the dark corners, through the shut doors on the upper floors, even, it seemed, from the ghosts of those who had visited here before. She noticed others in the room and the larger one beyond it. But like Arthur, the men wore their hats low on their foreheads. The women were even more discreet, keeping their hoods up, their heads bowed, shading their faces from the few dim lamps that shed a weak light through the intimate, dark-colored room.

"Would you prefer a man or a woman?" he asked.

For sex? For feed? She hardly understood. "Woman," she replied. Women always seemed easier.

As if summoned, a portly woman came down the stairs, her tight black dress cut low, revealing the tops of ample breasts behind her fluttering peacock fans.

"Not that one," Joanna whispered, wondering why Arthur smiled at the comment.

"Is Antoinette free?" he asked.

"Usual room," the woman replied, motioning them past her.

Joanna moved quickly, holding her cape close to her body so she would not have to touch even the woman's clothes. Arthur followed close behind, as if he were afraid she would bolt without his constant presence.

He guided her to the end of a long, narrow hall, another closed door. Opening it, he motioned her to step inside, then shut it behind them both.

Her senses drank it in. A melange of perfumes new and ancient. Scents of sex of countless partners. Dim golden light thrown by a single glass-cased candle mounted to a mirror on the far wall. The girl—Antoinette, was it?—was already on the bed. Her black gown barely covered her pubis. Of more lace than satin, it seemed less for modesty than for erotic effect.

Joanna's gaze moved from body to face—fair she was, skin and hair, blue eyes. Joanna felt a stab of longing, not for this well-fleshed creature but for the one she had abandoned.

And she had promised never to leave Colleen.

"She knows your needs," Arthur whispered, and for a moment Joanna wondered which woman he spoke of.

"All of them?" she asked, wondering what sort of a fool he was to think he knew, and to trust her so innocently. His name was known here; hers was not. If she killed and left, it would be up to him to explain the woman's corpse.

If it would need explanation. She wondered how much he had spent already. How much would he have to spend for a life?

Inviting death, the girl held out her arms.

"May I stay?" Arthur asked.

He'd given a gift. He deserved that much. She nodded without looking at him, took off her cape and covered the girl with it. Perhaps the lush satin and velvet would provide a sufficient barrier between dead flesh and living.

The girl turned to face her. Joanna gripped her shoulder, holding her on her side. "Look away," she ordered.

"No need for shame,
mademoiselle
," the girl, a child, really—better to think of her as a child—whispered.

"Do it!" she ordered and laughed at the sound of her voice. Her—so stern.

Silent, obedient, the girl rolled back on her side. Joanna pressed close behind, her face buried in the velvet, her hands moving beneath satin and lace over the mounds of her breasts, the hollow of her waist, then lower.

She heard the girl gasp as her fingers parted the hidden folds of flesh, rub the tiny nub that gave the most pleasure, slip inside and out and in again. Deeper. Faster.

As she had done with Colleen, she distracted with pleasure. In the moment when the girl could no longer lie quietly, but began to struggle to get away, she pulled back the top of the cape and bit hard into her back.

The girl's struggle went on and on, moans of pleasure heightened, it seemed, by the pain. Finally, both sated, Joanna loosened her grip and turned to look at Arthur.

He stood pressed against the wall, the candle burning just above him. But even in the shadows tossed on his face, she could see the hard set of his lips, the hands balled into fists, could hear his quick, shallow breaths.

"Come. Take what I cannot," she told him and moved away from the bed.

He held back—modest, perhaps—though she had revealed such intimate things to him.

She stood, walked past him to the door. "Stay awhile. I have a place I must visit."

"Will I see you soon?"

"Outside. Wait for me." She pulled open the door, scanned the hall and was gone. Arthur had to close the door behind her, his body blocking Antoinette's view of her sudden departure.

He turned back to the bed where the whore lay with Joanna's cape beside her. Her eyes were glazed, but her body more than ready to receive him.

She laughed softly as he lay beside her. He could smell violet candy on her breath that barely masked the scent of gin. "First your friend, now you. I am twice blessed tonight," she told him as she undid the tiny hooks on the front of her gown. He watched her slip it off, one hand idly fingering the velvet cape beneath him.

"So much has been done to me, it is your turn, I think," she went on as she kissed him on the side of his neck, his chest, his stomach. "And here?" she asked as her hand curled around his erection.

"The tip only. Hold me back," he asked.

As her tongue circled it, he reached down and fingered her hair, her neck, the wound Joanna had made, still wet with blood.

As the whore straddled him, he raised his wet fingers to his lips and tasted.

Some time later, Joanna reached the cottage in Chelsea. It was late, and the rooms were dark. She entered in misty silence and found the rooms exactly as she recalled them, obviously used but now empty.

Had Colleen found a sweetheart to occupy her time? For all the jealousy she had to fight at that thought, Joanna hoped she had. She allowed herself the luxury of human form and took a seat in the chair she had always used. She wondered if she should leave some sign of her visit, and decided she must, if only to prove that Colleen was not abandoned.

She couldn't write. She had no coin. She looked down at her hands, but the ring Arthur had given her seemed too precious to him for her to give it away. There was nothing else but…

Perfect. So perfect. She went into the room she still thought of as hers and found a simple dress. Pulling off the green lace gown, she draped it over a chair. It would look so magnificent with Colleen's coloring. It never occurred to her where an Irish working girl already living well beyond her class would be able to wear it.

She let out a quick, delighted giggle, releasing all the emotions she had felt tonight, and left.

Returning to the club, she found Arthur already outside. He draped the cape over her shoulders and led her down the narrow street to a boulevard where his carriage was waiting, driver in place, to take them both home.

"Did you miss the kill?" he asked as they drove.

"It was not necessary," she replied.

"I thought it was. Everything I've heard—"

"Has been a lie." She knew he wanted an explanation, but she did not want to think of Illona tonight. "Why do humans kill? Why did you?" she asked instead.

"Fear," he replied after some thought. In the dark, his expression was somber.