Unbitten (16 page)

“I don’t exactly know,” said Henri.

“You don’t get out much, do you,
chéri
?” said Claudine.

“See you soon, I need to go,” said Henri, and
slipped the phone back in his pocket.

Tristan and Henri had seen other at the same moment.
Tristan tightened his grip around Jessica’s waist.
They had left her hotel to take a walk, having been in bed
for a very long time. Tristan did not know what to make of
Henri. On the one hand, he seemed like a circumspect enough
fellow, always polite, never any trouble. On the
other…he was David de la Motte’s brother. And
there was no doubt at all in Tristan’s mind what
David de la Motte was.

“Question,” Tristan whispered into
Jessica’s ear, as they and Henri got closer and
closer, “does being a vampire ever get passed down
from father to son, automatically, like a genetic
thing?”

“Oh no,” said Jessica. “I mean, there are
many vampire families, especially among the aristocracy.
But in each case the son is…inducted, for lack of a
better word, by the father. The father –”

“Sshshh!” said Tristan, bringing his hand up as
though to deflect the sound of her words in the opposite
direction from Henri.

Jessica looked at him quizzically. Since they had just
spent a languorous and exceedingly pleasurable time
together in bed, she did not snap at him, but you could
still see by the expression on her face that being shushed
was not something she had much tolerance for.

“I’ll explain in a minute,” he said,
kissing her in the spot just in front of her ear that he
was inordinately fond of.

Henri nodded to Tristan as they passed. He wondered how the
local
gendarme
had managed to get himself a
Parisian girlfriend. Although, he thought, turning around
to take a look, she didn’t look quite Parisian. Dutch
maybe?

Tristan turned to get a last glimpse of Henri as well, as
though hoping to see some evidence, one way or another,
even though he knew that was ridiculous.

They caught each other’s eye and quickly turned back
around, embarrassed.

If we could only develop a way to know by sight, thought
Tristan.

Maybe Swedish, thought Henri.

Yes, he had wanted more excitement, but so far this new
enterprise has been nothing but a pain in the ass, Pierre
said to himself, crouching under a shrub. For a few days he
had been living in the woods right by the Château,
watching, trying to get a feel for the routine of the
place, and waiting for an opportunity.

In the meantime, he snacked on rabbits, which were
plentiful and fat. He could suck six rabbits dry and feel
reasonably well-fed. I could use some variety, he thought,
and usually by about the fourth rabbit he was having hunger
pangs for women. Human women.

Those idiots Dominic and Maloney had told him they had
removed a section of the wall to Henri’s lab, and all
he had to do was slide it out and enter.

What, are they high? thought Pierre. First of all, those
stones weigh a fucking ton. He couldn’t believe
Maloney managed to lift that chunk out of there. And second
of all, did they really think Henri would never figure out
what had happened? Why hadn’t they taken everything
they wanted, if they’d already been inside? Anyway,
the section was all patched up now with super-tight mortar.

He would have to get in another way.

And this was the moment. Henri had taken off earlier in the
day in some kind of crazy get-up, who knew what that dude
was into, and he had had an overnight bag with him. Pierre
felt pretty sure he had the night to himself, alone with
the lab, and he was going to make the most of it.

He crept out of the underbrush at the edge of the pasture.
No lights at the stables. No lights at the lab.
Château Gagnon, in its magnificence, was still bathed
in an evening glow, the turrets spiking up into the dark
sky. Occasionally he saw guests wandering around the paths
in the garden. He would have to be careful.

With vampire speed he covered the open ground between the
woods and the lab in an instant. Keeping to the far side,
out of sight of the Château, he went up to the
building and began to study it, running his hands over the
stone, checking out the roof, the foundation, the windows.
He had seen Henri fiddling with some kind of fancy
contraption at the front door so he ignored that
completely.

However, there was a side door, fortuitously on a side of
the building out of view; in fact, this second entrance was
hidden by bushes, now leafless, but still providing some
cover. Pierre started by trying the latch, not that he
thought that would get him anywhere. It was frozen shut. He
threw his weight against it. It didn’t budge. He
stepped back and hurled himself at it. Not so much as a
squeak. He checked the hinges–they were on the
inside. He inspected the doorway all around–nothing
he could see that would allow a forced entry. The door was
very old and very thick, the wood practically petrified.

He figured an axe or a chainsaw would invite attention he
did not want.

There were only three windows; the rest had been sealed up.
Henri’s not a fan of the sunshine, Pierre thought
with a smile. All three of the windows had wrought iron
cages covering them. The cages were beautifully ornate,
works of art really, and impenetrable.

Pierre felt an old, bad feeling come over him. The feeling
that whatever he did, no matter how hard he tried, nothing
was going to change. The feeling that he might as well give
up.

It would be bad enough for a human to have those feelings,
he thought, but a vampire can get stuck in a funk that
lasts for decades, even hundreds of years. Long life is not
all upside.

He slid down with his back against the door and his knees
in the bushes, moping.

I want a woman, he thought. I need a woman. Slender. He
liked them almost bony, because he had the idea that this
made their blood extra-concentrated, extra-flavorful. He
liked to bite their breasts sometimes before biting the
neck–on the side of the breast, then the other,
making identical bite-marks, appreciating the symmetry.
Tasting, before he settled in to suck.

Dominic had promised to introduce him to a
labri
if he got this job done. He didn’t allow himself to
believe it would really happen. But he liked, he very much
liked thinking about it. He was curious about how it would
feel, being bitten. But more than that, although he did not
admit this to himself, not in words anyway, he hoped this
labri
–whom he honestly and truly believed
Dominic was making up–would be someone to befriend,
someone to talk to, someone who would understand how
completely weird it is to be over two hundred years old.

I’ve got to focus, he told himself, standing up and
brushing dead leaves off his pants. I wonder if those
ADHD
meds all the kids are taking
would work on me? he thought.

Looking through one of the windows of the lab, he had seen
a small room that had shelves filled with vials and what
looked like pill bottles. Maybe Henri has got a drug
business cooking in there, he thought.

Focus
, he said out loud. He stepped out of the
bushes, going for a second trip around the building. He
looked up to catch a glimpse of the moon, and that was when
he noticed them. A set of three windows, not caged, high up
near the roofline. These windows must have been made long
after the building had been built; they had a modern design
feel to them–no mullions, just large single panes of
glass, with a rectangular shape that was much longer than
wide. They were on the north side, and Pierre figured they
were there to provide indirect daylight, after so many of
the original windows had been blocked up. No doubt Henri
didn’t bother putting cages on them because they
were, after all, about twenty feet up.

Why Henri did not consider the leaping abilities of a
vampire, Pierre could not say.

He crouched and sprang, easily grabbing on to the small
ledge and holding there, like a tree frog, and then
laughing out loud when he realized that the window worked
on a tilt, and all he had to do was push the top and slide
in through the bottom.

What a sucker, Pierre thought, dizzy with visions of
labrim
curled up next to him, asking for a bite.

When Jo awoke, sunlight was streaming across her bed and
David was gone. She sat up and looked around. It looked
like a tornado had touched down in her bedroom. She fell
back on the pillows with a gigantic grin on her face.

Last night had been unbelievable. She and David had made
love for hours, prolonging until they couldn’t bear
to wait another second to come, resting, and then starting
all over again. They could not get enough of touching each
other and looking into each other’s eyes. The night
had seemed to fall into a bottomless hole that existed
outside of the normal rules of the world, outside of time,
of gravity, of any kind of physics at all.

In the past, romance and relationships had not been her
best subject.

She had had an unerring ability to pick the loser, the cad,
the broken. Hugo, her fiancé, had seemed so
wonderful on the outside–he was a banker, so
responsible, so upright, everything her father was not. And
it was true, Hugo did hold down a good job. He got to work
on time, he got promotions, he took her out to good
restaurants and sometimes brought her flowers. As far as
she knew, he did not cheat on her or secretly want to be
with men or have dead bodies buried in his basement.

But the month of their engagement felt like being
drugged–not with psychedelics or anything euphoric,
but with something that numbed her, inside and out. Her
libido shrank until it disappeared entirely. She began
turning the ringer off on her phone because she
didn’t want to hear his voice. Finally, thanks to
Marianne–where would she be without
Marianne?–Jo did the difficult thing of facing that
the relationship was not working, and the additional
difficult thing of telling Hugo that, and not allowing
herself to be convinced to give it another chance.

When she had began to feel numb, she kept saying to herself
that Hugo is a good man, a responsible man, as though
nothing else was required for marrying someone. As though
she didn’t deserve to be loved, to love back, and to
share desire for each other.

Last night with David was the best sex she had ever had,
only by about ten million miles.

Jo had never felt a man want her that badly. Had never had
a man so intent on pleasing her, on exploring her, on
surprising her and delighting her. She rolled over onto her
belly and slid her hand down to her thighs and began
caressing herself, feeling a burst of wetness just from
thinking of David, his coiled power, his strangely hypnotic
eyes, his penetrating attention.

A very quiet, almost muffled voice way in the back of her
mind was wondering where David had gone and wishing she had
been able to wake up with him and see him lying in her bed
with the sunlight playing over his body. But Jo, who was so
good at horses, good at friendship, good at physical danger
and making omelets and tying knots and a long list of other
things, was not good at listening to that inner voice. Not
unless it was yelling, which is generally not how inner
voices work.

She rolled onto her back, still touching herself but idly,
not trying to get herself more excited. For the first time
ever, it felt lonely to have sexual stirrings when she was
in bed alone. She wanted David back in her bed. Her body
craved his touch.

She got up and took a long hot shower, soaping herself in
every nook and cranny, washing and conditioning her hair,
and shaving her underarms and legs, making an effort to
look good for the second time in months. She desperately
wanted to call Marianne but it was the middle of the night
back home.