Sips of Blood (26 page)

Cecelia nodded her head at her mother.

"I'm very sorry Ms. Plissay. This is the
first time I ever heard her use your uncle's first name."

Cecelia felt Liliana's eyes peering at her,
memorizing something. She turned her face away and hurried her
mother into the living room.

She hadn't remembered how ornate the room
appeared. The stone fireplace mantel was covered with
seventeenth-century bisque figurines interspersed with
silver-framed daguerreotypes of beautiful women dressed in period
clothing.

"First of all, you'll have to help me move
the furniture. Cecelia, Cecelia, are you paying attention?"

"Who do you suppose these women are, Mom?"
Cecelia fingered a filigreed frame.

"Unless you're going to dust them, don't
touch them. Come over here and help me move this chair."

The arms of the chair were made of
unupholstered wood. Cecelia walked over to the chair to run the
palm of her hand across the polished wood. The rest of the chair
was upholstered in gold cloth, small purple fleurs-de-lis spotting
the material.

"Do you suppose the chair's an antique?"

"What's wrong with you, Cecelia? You're
acting like this is the first time you've seen any of these
objects."

"First time up close," Cecelia answered.

"I've had you help me clean this room many
times, dear. Just that your mind was always elsewhere. Here, lift,
for heaven's sake."

Each took an arm of the chair and moved it
off the Aubusson rug. The underside of the arm Cecelia touched had
several nicks. She could feel how they had been smoothed over and
waxed.

Cecelia brushed her shoe across a frayed
portion of the tapestry-like rug. She was about to squat and study
the colors of the rug, but her mother interrupted, asking for help
with the love seat. Although upholstered in the same fabric as the
chair, the love seat had a dingy, faded look, and as she drew
closer, she noticed the heavy scent of soil.
Sade must spend
many hours here,
she thought, while running the back of her
hand across the seat. She smiled. The skin on her hand stung and
almost sparked as the crackle caught her mother's attention.

"Are you all right?"

Cecelia nodded dreamily, preparing to seat
herself on the love seat.

"What are you doing? We just got here, and
you want to take a rest. I'm going to take you to the doctor and
find out why you're behaving so lethargically."

The house suddenly came alive. The air
vibrated, the furnishings seemed to shiver and the nick-knacks
trembled; but nothing moved.

He is in the house,
Cecelia reasoned,
instantly looking toward the entrance of the room.

"Uncle, try to talk Matilda out of doing such
heavy work."

Cecelia strained to hear his voice. Whispers,
garbled whispers that hinted at annoyance. He knew. He had scented
her without being told. The girl willed her mentor to come to her.
Instead he seemed to draw away from her, separating himself into
another dimension, one she had not yet entered.

"Ah!
Madame!
My niece told me of your
plans. How silly. We do not expect you to do the heavy housework.
We will call in several husky men to wash and hang the rugs."

He appeared as a vision haloed by the musk of
the outdoors.

"But you don't like having strangers in the
house," said Cecelia.

Had she truly spoken? She could not be sure,
since Sade did not deign to reply nor even look at her. Her
breathing stopped momentarily as she leaned the top half of her
body toward him. Should she wave her arms? Should she rip off her
clothes? Should she lay prostrate before him awaiting his
wishes?

"But, Mr. Sade, I'm paid to clean the house
and run errands. Lord knows I really don't have much in the way to
clean here. You and your niece are quite tidy. Wish I could say
that about my own family." Cecelia felt her mother's eyes fix on
her.

Sade took her mother's hands in his and
kissed the back of each.

"Madame,
you are too delicate to ruin
your dainty
doigts."
Sade brushed his lips across her
mother's fingers. Her mother's face flushed a deeper red than
Cecelia had ever seen before. "Take the afternoon off,
madame,
and enjoy the
après-midi."

"Yes, my uncle is right. You've been working
too hard, Matilda. You and your daughter should do something
together."

Cecelia wanted to speak but found her mouth
to be parched; her throat felt closed, knotted. An attempt to clear
her throat brought on a raging bout of coughing. Her mother hurried
the girl into the kitchen for a glass of water that the girl,
racked by the hacking cough, spilled on herself.

"I think we should go home. Perhaps a nap
would help."

"Cecelia," called Liliana. "Cecelia, are you
all right?" Liliana entered the kitchen. Immediately she pulled out
a stool and forced Cecelia to sit. "Go home," Liliana whispered in
the girl's ear. "Go home and don't come back. Don't allow my uncle
to win."

Matilda could not hear the words, because
they were said privately in a voice only sensitive hears could
hear.

I will win,
Cecelia kept repeating
inside her head.
I will win over you, Liliana. I will have your
uncle.

The coughing stopped, but Cecelia's voice did
not return immediately. He had silenced her, she knew, and probably
would not allow her to speak again until she left his home, a home
she intended to make her own.

Chapter 49

"Release her, Uncle."

"Who,
ma chère?"

"Cecelia. You are stealing her life like you
did mine."

"Mais non;
I made a terrible mistake
with you by taking you all at once instead of having you slowly get
used to the changes."

"You offer nothing to her except
isolation."

"Mais,
she would be with us. Never
alone. Always desired."

"Until you tire of her."

"I have never tired of you,
ma chère,
even though you can be quite a tiresome bore."

"Uncle, I've been to the local cemetery."

"Visiting some neighbors?"

"They do exist."

"Neighbors?"

"The malformed. The mindless vampires who are
more ghoulish than we are."

"Des goules? Nous? Enfant,
you haven't
looked in the mirror; there is nothing
de goule
about
us."

"The way we live is ghoulish. Drinking blood
to survive is ghoulish."

"And what about eating meat? What about the
merveilleux
steak tartare served in the best of restaurants?
Thin ribbons of succulent beef lying raw on some sophisticate's
plate. Or the blood puddings you used to delight in as a child? Ah!
Mais
a better analogy may be small babies suckling at their
mothers' breasts. Gaining life by taking from the mother. Just as a
fetus does. We are born predators,
mon enfant,
born to
diminish the already living so that we may grow."

"Stop it!" Liliana screamed. "How could you
compare us to the innocents?"

"Innocents? Those mewling, wet, whining,
writhing, spitting savages that grow into repulsive teens and
abusive adults?" Sade dusted a fleck from his black linen shirt.
"Besides, we give far more forethought to our food than either the
enfants
or the poor wretches in the cemetery."

"What if Cecelia should end up like those
things in the cemetery?"

"She will if I abandon her now." Sade sat on
the love seat and pulled off his biker boots to rest his feet on
the rug.

"You mean those creatures were never taken
completely through the changes?"

"A guess on my part. However, she is already
highly sensitive to the world around her. I feed her need for blood
from my very own veins." He unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and
rolled up his sleeves to show her his arms. No marks. There would
be none. He would heal quickly. All she saw were the bulging veins
running up the inside of both his arms. No doubt he had recently
fed. "I share like a nursing mother, suffering the twinges of pain
for the tiny young one."

"Dammit, Uncle. You're no martyr. How much
pain must she suffer until you are satisfied? What wounds does she
carry with her from day to day? What scars from your hand embellish
her child-like skin?"

"Mon enfant,
I hate scars.
Non,
non,
that kind of play must wait until she is immortal like
us." He smiled. "Then she will heal quickly and be able to endure
far more... playtime."

"Stop what you're doing to this girl."

"I've already told you. It has gone too far
too turn back. Her
mort
is assured." He reached out to grab
Liliana's left wrist, but she pulled away. "Ah! Don't be jealous,
mon enfant,
you will always be the special one."

"Jealous of a girl who is dying? You don't
know me, Uncle. I don't envy anyone who must live as I do."

Sade bit down on his right wrist. Blood
spurted from the full veins. He stood and walked toward
Liliana.

She felt herself cowering, moving back from
the advancing steps he took, but she couldn't prevent her retreat.
He reached out his right arm, and the smell of his blood fogged her
mind until she realized he held her fast in the vice of his hand.
She could feel the warm blood stain her scalp.

"Remember the taste,
ma chère.
Have
you forgotten the sweetness of my blood? The strength my blood once
gave to you?
Mais non,
I see the memory in your eyes.
Replenish that memory now." Sade loosened his grip on her hair and
brought his wrist to her mouth, spreading the crimson across her
lips.

He had practically drained her while he had
held her in his arms. His soft voice spoke of eternal life, of the
exhilaration of intensified senses. The colors sounded beautiful.
The sounds seemed so intense. His touch had soothed her fear, and
the taste of his blood had been a salvation.

Liliana again found herself enveloped in her
uncle's arms, sucking at the blood that dribbled from his wrist.
She lapped at the rivulets running up his arm; the color, deeper in
hue than the animal blood she survived on, caused myriad dreams to
rush through her alert mind.

Stuart's arm again stretched out above the
water. The veins pulsed wildly, excited by her presence. Her hand
smoothed over his flesh, testing the depth of the purple network
feeding his arm. She moved closer to him. The water cooled her feet
and drenched the bottom of her dress so that the material hugged
her legs. Her lips kissed his flesh before her fangs bit down.

A slap across her cheek laid her on the
floor, Sade standing over her, rebuking her for her hunger.

"It's what you want. You've always wanted to
share our blood like the first time." Liliana ripped away the
collar from her blouse. "Take my blood and allow me to feed from
you."

Sade stood over his niece. His face remained
placid, unmoved by her pain.

"I want more than that, Liliana. I want you
as a woman."

He squeezed his wrist, and she watched as the
blood dripped down upon her face. A drop touched her upper lip,
another smeared her cheek, another she caught with her tongue.

Frenzied, she tore at her clothes, shredded
the silk and lace that had lain close against her body. Instead she
would invite her uncle to lie upon her skin.

The outer world had disappeared, or perhaps
it never had existed, only the image of her uncle stripping slowly,
leisurely, aware of the famine that drove her.

He knelt next to her, and she grabbed at his
bloodied wrist, but he held her face just above the wound. She
smelled his blood and tasted the remnants on her tongue.

"Tell me I'm the one you want. Only me and no
one else," he demanded.

Liliana started to say the name 'Stuart,' but
Sade stopped her.

"There is no other man, only
moi,
ma...
Liliana. And I will see to it that the child in you is at
last gone." He moved his wrist, watching her gaze shift with each
of his moves. Sade reached behind him and drew his thick studded
belt from the loops on his jeans. "I have never truly shown you the
extent of my love for you as a woman. I have not bled you in the
fashion that most pleases me. Liliana, I have spoiled you."

His hand carrying the belt flashed upward,
and Liliana's breath halted just before the pain echoed through her
body.

Chapter 50

"Uncle is turning Cecelia."

Marie turned from the rose bush and stared at
her granddaughter.

"I can't stop him."

Her granddaughter looked tired but healthy. A
bloom swelled her cheeks with a dusty pink. Faint, but she could
see that Liliana had finally fed from a mobile human, not one who
lay on a metal table awaiting her granddaughter's
ministrations.

"He's stealing her youth."

"As he did to you." Marie kept her voice soft
and filled with empathy.

"He did it to both of us."

"My youth had passed many years before he
turned me." A sad fact that always irked her days, she thought. "Is
there any suspicion on the part of the parents?"

"They think their daughter is going through a
stage. Matilda has spoken of taking Cecelia to a doctor, but the
child refuses to go. And since Cecelia does not really look ill,
her parents haven't forced her to seek medical attention."

Marie turned back to her rose bush and
snipped a pinkish flower in full bloom. She carried the rose to her
granddaughter and offered it to her.

"A doctor will never be able to diagnose what
is wrong with the child." Marie still held the flower, waiting for
Liliana to come out of her lethargic fog.

Gradually Liliana spied the proffered rose
and took it.