By Blood We Live (27 page)

This exchange would be fair. She would not simply take from him. He would have pleasure as well.

She rubbed her hands down his chest, down his belly. He moaned, shivered under her touch but did not interfere. She traced every curve of his body: down his ribs, his hips. Stretched out on the bed beside him, she took his penis in her hand. Again, their mouths met. His kissing was urgent, fevered, and she kept pace with him. He was growing slick with sweat and smelled of musk.

She laughed. The sound just bubbled out of her. Lips apart, eyes gleaming, she found joy in this. She would live, she would not open the curtains on the dawn. She had power in this existence and she would learn to use it.

"Oh my God," Chris murmured. He froze, his eyes wide, his blood suddenly cooled. In only a second, she felt the sweat on his body start to chill as fear struck him. He wouldn't even notice it yet.

He was staring at her, her open, laughing mouth, the pointed canine teeth she'd been so careful to disguise until this moment, when euphoria overcame her.

In a moment of panic like this, it might all fall apart. An impulse to run struck her, but she'd come too far, she was too close to success. If she fled now she might never regain the nerve to try again.

"Shh, shh, it's all right," she whispered, stroking his hair, nuzzling his cheek, breathing comfort against him. "It's fine, it'll be fine."

She brought all her nascent power to bear: seduction, persuasion. The creature's allure. The ability to fog his mind, to erase all else from his thoughts but his desire for her, to fill his sight only with her.

"It's all right, Chris. I'll take care of you. I'll take good care of you."

The fear in his eyes ebbed, replaced by puzzlement—some part of his mind asking what was happening, who was she, what was she, and why was she doing this to him. She willed him to forget those questions. All that mattered were her, him, their joint passion that would feed them both: his desire, and her life.

He was still hard against her hand, and she used that. Gently, carefully, she urged him back to his heat, brought him again to that point of need. She stroked him, first with fingertips, then with her whole hand, and his groan of pleasure gratified her. When he tipped back his head, his eyes rolling back a little, she knew he had returned to her.

The next time she kissed him, his whole body surged against her.

She twined her leg around his; he moved against her, insistent. But she held him, pinned him, and closed her mouth over his neck. There she kissed, sucked—felt the hot river of his blood so close to his skin, just under her tongue. She almost lost control, in her need to take that river into herself.

Oh so carefully, slowly, to make sure she did this right and made no mistakes, she bit. Let her needle teeth tear just a little of his skin.

The flow of blood hit her tongue with a shock and instantly translated to a delicious rush that shuddered through her body. Blood slipped down her throat like honey, burning with richness. Clenching all her muscles, groaning at the flood of it, she drank. Her hand closed tight around his erection, moved with him, and his body responded, his own wave of pleasure bringing him to climax a moment later.

She held him while he rocked against her, and she drank a dozen swallows of his blood. No more than that. Do not kill, Alette's first lesson. But a dozen mouthfuls would barely weaken him. He wouldn't even notice.

She licked the wound she'd made to hasten its healing. He might notice the marks and believe them to be insect bites. He would never know she'd been here.

His body radiated the heat of spent desire. She lay close to him, gathering as much of it as she could into herself. She now felt hot—vivid and alive. She could feel his blood traveling through her, keeping her alive.

Stroking his hair, admiring the lazy smile he wore, she whispered to him. "You won't remember me. You won't remember what happened tonight. You had a nice dream, that's all. A vivid dream."

"Emma," he murmured, flexing toward her for more. Almost, her resolve broke. Almost, she saw that pulsing artery in his neck and went to drink again.

But she continued, "If you see me again, you won't know me. Your life will go on as if you never knew me. Go to sleep. You'll sleep very well tonight."

She brushed his hair with her fingers, and a moment later he was snoring gently. She pulled a blanket over him. Kissed his forehead.

Straightening her bra, buttoning her blouse, she left the room. Made sure all the lights were off. Locked the door on her way out.

She walked home. It was the deepest, stillest hour of night, or early morning. Streetlights turned colors but no cars waited at intersections. No voices drifted from bars and all the storefronts were dark. A cold mist hung in the air, ghost-like. Emma felt that she swam through it.

The stillest part of night, and she had never felt more awake, more alive. Every pore felt the touch of air around her. Warm blood flowed in her veins, firing her heart. She walked without fear along dark streets, secure in the feeling that the world had paused to notice her passage through it.

She entered Alette's town home through the kitchen door in back rather than through the front door, because she'd always come in through the back in her student days when she studied in Alette's library and paid for school by being Alette's part-time housekeeper. That had all changed. Those days—nights—were finished. But she'd never stop using the back door.

"Emma?" Alette called from the parlor.

Self-conscious, Emma followed the voice and found Alette in her favorite chair in the corner, reading a book. Emma tried not to feel like a kid sneaking home after a night of mischief.

Alette replaced a bookmark and set the book aside. "Well?"

Her unnecessary coat wrapped around her, hands folded before her, Emma stood before the mistress of the house. Almost, she reverted to the teenager's response: "Fine, okay, whatever." Monosyllables and a fast exit.

But she felt herself smile broadly, happily. "It was good."

"And the gentleman?"

"He won't remember me."

"Good," Alette said, and smiled. "Welcome to the Family, my dear."

She went back to the bar once more, a week later. Sitting at the bar, she traced condensation on the outside of a glass of gin and tonic on the rocks. She hadn't sipped, only tasted, drawing a lone breath so she could take in the scent of it.

The door opened, bringing with it a cold draft and a crowd of college students. Chris was among them, laughing at someone's joke, blond hair tousled. He walked right by her on his way to the pool tables. Flashed her a hurried smile when he caught her watching him. Didn't spare her another glance, in the way of two strangers passing in a crowded bar.

Smiling wryly to herself, Emma left her drink at the bar and went out to walk in the night.

Nancy Kilpatrick is the author of the Power of the Blood vampire series, which includes the novels
Child of the Night
,
Near Death
,
Reborn
,
Bloodlover
, and a fifth volume which is currently in progress. She is also the editor of several anthologies, including an all-new vampire anthology called
Evolve
, due out in 2010. She's a prolific author of short fiction as well, and her work is frequently nominated for awards. Nancy was a guest of honor at the 2007 World Horror Convention. She lives in Montréal, Québec.
This story is about the old world clashing with the modern world. "There are places in this world today, despite computers, cellphones, TV and other modern technologies, that still have a lot of cultural mythology and ancient lore embedded in the lives of the ordinary person who live, by our standards, very primitive lives," Kilpatrick said. "How much of a shock would it be for someone who comes from such a place and is thrust into the 'first' world, hauling with them every one of their beliefs learned at the knee of their mother into this more or less godless and myth-free zone of 2009?"

Nita sat hunched at the scarred table studying the black gouges in the wood made by knives, pens, fingernails hard as talons, thinking about the words and symbols. J.C. had been scratched in about the center, and a rough drawing of an eye with long lashes that looked mystical or psychotic, depending on how Nita let her mind wander. A cruder sketch of what might have been a penis but slightly deformed with two long eye teeth and "Bite Me" deeply carved into the birch had been positioned to the right. The letters
c-a-s-ă
, Romanian for "home," stretched above the rest.

"We are nearly ready," Dr. Sauers said, a bit gruffly to Nita's ear. Then, "
Sit linişte!"
telling her to sit quietly in her native tongue, as if that would have more impact. The doctor didn't really approve of having anyone else in the room and likely was worried that Nita would "misbehave" as she had warned her against so often. Not that she could. Even if there were no chains circling her wrists and ankles, the drugs they pumped into her kept her weighed down emotionally as if there were also heavy chains clamped to her heart. Sauers was a control freak, she preferred running the show by herself, Nita had quickly realized to her dismay.

Suddenly, Nita felt her heart grow even heavier. What had happened, it had escalated. She felt so alone. She didn't know if she could go over the events again. No one had believed her the first time. No one believed her now. Or cared. How she missed her home!

She glanced up at Dr. Sauers but the sharp-featured woman fiddling with the video camera did not return her look. Eventually, though, the older woman turned to the silver-haired man standing by the door; he couldn't have been more than forty; he had not yet been introduced to Nita. As if sensing her insecurities, he glanced at Nita and presented her with a quick benign smile, then faced Sauers to say in English, "Perhaps you should test the audio."

Sauers, scowling, twisted knobs on the tripod, aimed the small video camera's eye and adjusted the panel at the back of the camera, making sure the focus was on Nita. Was the camera lens the eye of God watching her, judging her? The doctor's long hard nail stabbed at a button on the camera twice. Maybe she was nudging God to pay attention too!

"Alright!" Dr. Sauers said abruptly, impatiently, jerking herself away from the equipment. She glanced at her watch with the large face. "We must begin." She sounded as if there had been a delay that Nita or maybe the grey-haired man was responsible for.

The doctor took a seat to the right of Nita, the man in the well-fitting grey suit took the chair directly in front of her, both of them out of the camera's view. Almost enough for a card game, Nita thought wryly. Her mind flew to the old beat-up decks of cards the men in her village played with as they drank the strong local brandy, and quickly jettisoned those images in favor of larger cards with faded pastel pictures that her grandmother—her
bunică
—kept hidden, wrapped in a soiled scrap of green satin, buried in the rich brown earth with a rock over top as if it were a grave hiding a body that refused to stay interred. In her memory Nita envisioned only one card, a black and white and grey picture with a few smudges the color of blood.
Bunică
patiently explained that this was artwork from five hundred or more years ago. "Danse Macabre," she had called it. A grisly skeleton with tufts of hair adhering to its skull and fragments of meat on its bones, holding the hand of a richly adorned King on one side of his boney body, and clutching about the waist what looked to be a peasant woman in rags on the other, the three drawn so that they appeared to be in motion. Nita thought the King and the woman were trying to get away from the skeleton, but
Bunică
interpreted it differently: "He leads the dance. We all must dance with him one day."

Nita smiled at the memory, so caught up in her mental picture of the stark yet mesmerizing image and of her
Bunică's
rough but soothing tone of voice that she missed the first part of what the man at the table was saying, which apparently had included his name.

". . .and I understand you speak English. I'm a behavioral psychologist with the ICSCS, that's the International Centre for Studies of the Criminally—"

"But I'm not a criminal," Nita said flatly.

"You're a patient, convicted of a crime, in an institution for the criminally insane," Dr. Sauers reminded her, as if Nita might have forgotten about the trial, about being in jail, now the hospital, the humiliation, the alienation, about all of it.

She turned away from Sauers and stared at the man's cool ash-colored eyes which reminded her so much of the winter sky above the unforgiving mountains of her village. Mountains strong and permanent formed of orange and red molten rock that had burst forth from below the surface and forced its way upward towards the snowy clouds, piercing the steel-blue sky like stalagmites, until the heavens were dominated by soil and rock and trees that could withstand the fierce climate—survivor of every cataclysm. What had existed before she was born, before her grandmother, and her great great great grandmother—

A buzzer down the hall sounded and Nita jolted. Furtively she glanced around her at the sterile environment, its only richness in the dead gleam of stainless steel, its only life the color corpse-white. No, this was not the mountains. She had little power here; she looked down at her wrists chained together and her pale small hands clasped tightly in her lap as if all they could clutch, all they could hold onto to keep body and soul together was each other.

"We're not here about the legalities," the grey man whose name she had not learned said in a comforting tone accented by a slight smile. But Nita knew that both people in the room with her thought she was not just guilty but also insane. Hopelessly insane. Not much to do about that.
Bunică
believed you can't change people's minds with words, just with actions. "Trust only what you taste and touch and smell," she'd said. "What others believe, this cannot matter."