Unbitten (11 page)

“That’s why the number of
labrim
is so
low–because not many males will allow a
labri
to drink from them. They are afraid
to.”

“Fascinating,” said Tristan. "It’s true
that the suspects in my village are all male. The incident
that got my attention, before I had any idea that vampires
weren’t just a silly myth, was an attack on a young
woman by a man who works on one of the nearby farms. At
first I put his strength down to being a farm laborer, and
believed those extraordinary muscles had been built up from
all that physical work. But the bite marks on her neck
disturbed me. I tried to dismiss them as only a kind of
play, the man wanting to make himself feel grander by
copying something he’d seen on television.

“But we got to the victim in time, and she still had
some memories of the attack, which I understand is unusual?
Anyway, she told me that the man had sucked for a long time
at her neck. That she could feel him draining her.

“She was telling me this in the hospital, and she
passed out in the middle of the interview. When she came
to, she wasn’t talking anymore. Can’t say I
blame her.” Tristan stretched his legs and glanced
over at Jessica, who had been quiet during the long
post-lunch discussion.

“Shall I tell about my first brush with a
vampire?” said Jessica. She had brought her arms up
to hug herself as though it were cold, even though
Alain’s office was toasty and the radiators kept
banging out heat.

Tristan looked at her expectantly. He noticed he was having
a jumble of nonsensical emotions–feeling like he
wanted to protect Jessica from something that had already
happened.

“I’m a New Yorker, born and bred,” she
said. "Which actually, considering the same is true for my
parents and grandparents, is not that common. So many New
Yorkers have come to New York to live from other places
around the country and the world.

“Anyway, my parents gave me a lot of freedom, a lot
of independence. I rode the subway by myself when I was
eight. I knew my neighborhood, the Upper East Side,
backwards and forwards, every alley, every side street,
every park. And while I applaud my parents for this, and
understand that there was no way for them to comprehend
what happened as a result, the truth is that all that
independence at such a young age made me a little too
cocky.

“I knew about staying aware when I was on the street.
I knew about keeping an eye on everyone around me; keeping
my senses sharp; keeping to brightly lit, populated areas
if I got even the slightest tingle of weirdness. But the
thing is, I never did get that tingle. Sure, I saw homeless
people camped out on air vents, and beggars, and even some
lunatics running down the street yelling nonsense. But none
of these people ever seemed even remotely interested in me.

“As for vampires–no one spoke about them. If
the subject was brought up, it was to mock anyone who
believed they existed, the way a third-grader will mock a
kindergartener for believing in Santa. Fear and denial make
truth difficult to speak, no matter where you live, no
matter how sophisticated the culture believes itself to be.

“I started getting the idea–not consciously you
understand–that I was invisible. That I had the run
of the city, unfettered by the security concerns of regular
people.

“Oh, the stories we tell ourselves,” Jessica
said softly, almost to herself.

“I did have trouble, once I was a teenager, with men
whistling at me and sometimes grabbing me. That should have
made me less arrogant and more careful. But–I was a
teenager. An idiot.”

“I hope for Christ’s sake you do not blame
yourself,” said Alain, almost harshly. “It is
always the vampire who does wrong, not his victim.”

“I know, I know,” said Jessica, waving a hand
as though to sweep his objections away. "Of course he is to
blame. But that does not mean I couldn’t have acted
with more sense.

“So, Tristan, one night when I was sixteen, I was
going to a party on the Upper West Side. Friends had
parents who were going away for a week, you know what that
means for teenagers. I was especially looking forward to it
because I had a big crush on a boy who was going to be
there. I dressed for him, a tiny black cocktail dress with
a plunging neckline. Serious heels. Lots of makeup and
perfume, deep red manicure. I was trying to look grown up,
doing the teenage New Yorker version of all-out for that
decade.

“But then I made a bad decision. I decided to stroll
through the park, at night, alone, so I could clear my head
and calm myself down. I had this idea of arriving at the
party emanating cool serenity.” Jessica laughed at
her teenage absurdity. Her laugh, to Tristan, sounded like
the bells of a wind-chime. And he liked wind-chimes very
much. As well as tiny black cocktail dresses.

“I was on the path, heading west around 72nd Street,
at about 8:00. It was hardly solitary, there were plenty of
people out–rollerbladers, couples holding hands, men
in suits walking home from work. I was thinking about that
boy and completely lost any sense of my actual
surroundings. I came around a bend in the path and got
jumped.

“He had me in the bushes with his hand over my mouth
before I could even take in what had happened. It’s
strange what your mind does at a time like that–I was
having to argue with myself, for God’s sake, just to
believe in reality. A loud voice in my head kept saying,
this isn’t happening
and I was having to
tell that voice
Shut UP!

“Of course I figured rape or murder. There was
absolutely no question of getting free. The strength in his
hands–you would have to feel it yourself to know what
I am talking about. It was like having steel handcuffs on.
He could have broken my humerus just by squeezing, I have
no doubt.

“One thing I’m remembering, and I’m not
sure, Alain, have I spoken about this before? He had a very
particular smell. Utterly unusual, not like anything
I’ve even smelled before. It was, I have to admit,
kind of intoxicating. It smelled
good
.

Alain raised his eyebrows. In fact, in their long
collaboration, Jessica had never mentioned this smell
before, not once.

“And then, of course…” Jessica paused.

Tristan was on the edge of his seat. So was Alain, though
he knew what was going to happen.

“He began to lick me,” Jessica said. “All
over my neck. My mouth. He reached down and pulled my dress
up over my hips–not exactly difficult with a dress
that short,” she said, shaking her head. "Then he
kissed me very deeply on the mouth. It wasn’t a
violent kiss, it didn’t have anger in it, or
hatred…it felt, actually, OK this sounds
crazy…it felt respectful. Like somehow in that kiss
he was making an apology for what he was about to do, and
thanking me.

“I don’t know, maybe I am just making things up
after the fact. It was, after all, many years ago.

“Then he sank his teeth into me and sucked. It hurt,
but it was a pain that felt exquisite, in its strange way.
I will admit, though I wish I did not have to, that his
sucking put me in a sort of euphoric state, a dream-state,
where I felt like I was drifting around in the most–I
can’t explain it. It was something like being inside
pleasure, instead of just feeling it.

“I got lucky then. Who knows whether he’d have
drained me to all the way to death. But before he had been
sucking long, a frisbee came sailing into the bush we were
lying behind, and three teenage boys came running over. The
vampire leapt up and ran into the woods–and I’m
telling you, their speed is so phenomenal, you think maybe
you didn’t see what you just saw.”

The three of them sat quietly for a few minutes. Tristan
wanted to pull Jessica onto his lap and hold her. Alain was
restless. And Jessica…every time she told that
story, she felt more confused. The memory of the bad parts
faded more, and the memory of the good parts–that
smell, that feeling of bliss–were more vivid.

She wondered whether she would ever be able to arrange
being bitten again, in a controlled circumstance, of
course. She told herself she wanted to do it for science.

Of course, she kept that wish from Alain and from Tristan.
She laughed a little to herself, just imagining what they
would say to
that
.

“The guy’s a seriously late sleeper,”
thought Jo, on her way to the barn having given up on
finding David.

Thierry had Drogo saddled up and ready to go. She thanked
him and led the horse out to the block, gathered the reins
in one hand, put her boot in the stirrup, and mounted up.
Drogo tossed his head and stepped backwards in a little
dance, wanting her to know that having her on his back was
not necessarily what he was in the mood for. She would have
to earn the privilege.

“Come on, boy,” she murmured to him.
“Settle your big self down.” She turned him
towards the gate, and with one gloved hand she reached down
and caressed his neck.

“Pretty boy,” she said, “handsome
boy.” Drogo stopped his skittering and calmed. Like a
lamb.

Jo had trouble with boyfriends, and let’s not even
mention that fiancé who didn’t last a month.
But horses? Horses she knew how to handle.

Soon they were into the long pasture before the woods, and
Jo had to hold him back so he could warm up before
galloping. Can’t have our show horse getting hurt,
she thought, trying to be careful with his mouth, gentle
yet assertive, as they got to know each other. Drogo
relaxed into a trot and they passed into the forest, autumn
leaves falling around them and on them as they went.

It was a true bridle path they were on, wide enough for a
quite a few horses to pass, or a couple of carriages. Jo
thought about how only a hundred years earlier, this would
have been like a highway, the main route the families in
the surrounding area took to visit with each other. Oh, she
loved her cell phone and her internet, and a long list of
modern technologies, but she would dearly love for horses
to be the way everyone still got around. She wanted to
drive a trap, a brougham, a barouche, a landau–every
horse-drawn conveyance there was, she wanted them all,
could imagine herself reins in hand, flying along the road,
the sound of hoofbeats clashing.

It’s infinitely better to have a mode of
transportation you can talk to and have a relationship
with, she thought.

Drogo was feeling energetic. They rode for hours. Jo
quickly got into a zone of not thinking, of
simply being. She was very aware of the horse between her
legs, his smell, and the oaks and beeches, the falling
leaves, and the brisk air. No thoughts, only sensations.

A few times she noticed horse droppings on the path, and
wondered which of the Château’s neighbors had
horses. She liked riding alone, and riding in a group as
well–and she was curious about the local breeds.

She was in tune with Drogo, so that when he suddenly pulled
up, she did not lose her seat. His ears were swiveled
forward, his head still. He began to sidestep although Jo
could see nothing on the path to bother him.

“What is it, big boy?” she said soothingly.

He tossed his head. Bucked just the tiniest bit. Refused to
go forward.

Jo sat back and looked around. She was going to listen to
him, not force him to go ahead if he did not want to, but
she wanted to know what it was that troubled him.

At that point the path was cutting across a small hill, so
on one side it dropped down, presumably until it got to a
stream, and on the other, it climbed. She noticed a very
faint trail going off the bridle path–very faint,
barely there, just leaves tramped down a bit. Jo hopped off
of Drogo, telling him she would be right back, looped the
reins around a branch and then headed up the path.

Drogo made a sound that was clearly not a sound of
agreement.

At first Jo saw nothing at all but several massive oaks,
their branches still holding on to their brown leaves. But
as she got to the top of the small hill, where the horse
had appeared to be looking, just on the other side, out of
view of the bridle path, she could just make out an old
hut, visible only because the leaves had fallen from the
trees surrounding it. It was made of stone and looked to be
only one small circular room. It had a sharply peaked roof,
like a witch’s hat, tiled in overlapping slate.

It looked…well, Jo couldn’t quite put her
finger on it at first. It looked like it had been built for
a very specific purpose. And she couldn’t help
feeling that whatever that purpose was, it was meant to be
secret. There were no dwellings anywhere around, that she
could see. She and Drogo and that hut were very deep into
the forest. Very deep indeed.

The hill was steep enough that Jo had to grab on to
saplings to get herself down to it without sliding. It was
windowless, its walls made of stacked stone. The stone was
thin and flat and grayish, but Jo’s knowledge of
geology was zero and she had no clue what type of stone it
was. The building looked very old. There was no mortar
between the stones. The roof appeared to have wooden beams,
but she did not see any nails.