Unbitten (13 page)

He took his cognac and wandered over to the window,
thinking of Jo. Jo in that blue silk dress. Jo in her
riding clothes. Jo looking disappointed in him for not
caring about Drogo or the other horses. For not going out
riding with her.

Which, more than anything, he would have loved to do. But
there’s nothing to be done about it, he thought. Near
the top of the list of things he hated was a woman looking
at him like that, with that disappointed expression. He
wanted appreciation, adoration, unending attention….

What?! What is that tearing across the lawn?

David saw his brother, at least he thought it was his
brother–every single bit of skin was covered in a
rather strange outfit–as he ran in a straight line,
crossing the gravel path and the lawn, straight to the
garage.

What in the world is he up to now? thought David. He
polished off his cognac and slid back into bed. Whatever it
was, surely it could keep until nightfall.

Tristan Durant was a happy man. A superbly, surpassingly
happy man. He had not so much as been on a date in at least
a year. His last girlfriend had been the depressed Sylvie,
at least three years back. He had, he realized now, been
too caught up in work and vampires, and let the other parts
of his life slide. But now, in the delicious present
moment, he was with Jessica Winston in her hotel room, and
unless he was very much mistaken, he was not there only to
talk business.

Jessica was talking business, so far. She was talking about
some bit of vampire history that Tristan was sure he could
find online or in a book somewhere, so he was not paying
very close attention. He was not even trying to look like
he was paying attention. Instead he was paying attention to
this lovely, sexy woman, this American, this Jessica, who
teased him and looked seriously at him, and by this point,
anything she did felt erotic to him.

She walked over to the hotel desk and picked up a pad of
paper. Tristan felt blood rushing through his body. She
adjusted the curtains, to keep the afternoon sun out of
their eyes. He had to stop himself from moaning.

He took a few steps towards her, wanting to get close
enough to catch her scent.

Jessica opened the window and leaned back against the sill,
her hips pushed towards him, relaxed, a hint of a smile on
her face.

“That lunch,” she said, “was without
question the best lunch I ever ate in my whole entire
life,” she said. “And I grew up going to some
pretty excellent restaurants. Including the kebab place
down a block from my parents’ building,” she
said.

Tristan just looked at her with his warm brown eyes.

“I don’t know why I am talking about
kebabs,” she said. She moved away from the window,
restless.

Tristan got a pang of uncertainty. Did she want him in her
hotel room after all? Did she want to do more than talk or
had he totally misinterpreted? He had thought, when she
invited him up, so warmly, so–
effervescent
was the word Tristan thought of–that she was inviting
him to get to know him better, sure, but also to kiss. And
let his hand go up her short skirt. And furthermore.

Now Tristan went to the window, pushed the curtain back,
and looked out. He could see the Eiffel Tower if he leaned
rather farther out than felt comfortable. He could see the
tops of people’s heads as they went down the sidewalk
in front of the hotel; some hurrying, perhaps to their own
assignations in hotel rooms, and some ambling along,
looking in shop windows. Tourists, he guessed.

When he turned back around, prepared to adjust his
expectations downward, Jessica was smiling warmly at him.

“How is it that you are not married?” she
asked.

“Never met the right woman,” he answered, his
eyes moving all over her body, to her face, her hair, her
lovely eyes.

“Perhaps Mourency is too small for a man like
you,” she said, walking over to the small sofa, a
loveseat really, and sitting down, stretching her legs out
and slipping off her heels.

“What’s a ‘man like me’?” he
asked, coming closer.

“Oh…unbelievably hot. Unbearably sexy. You
know,” said Jessica.

Tristan wasted no time getting to the loveseat and taking
her hand. “No, I’m not sure I do know,”
he said. “I hope you will elaborate.”

She was really grinning now, as he leaned forward and
inhaled next to her collarbone, and then kissed it, barely
touching his lips to her skin.

“I don’t want you to think Americans are
slutty,” she said, leaning her head back and letting
an almost-silent moan escape her lips.

“I very much hope they are,” said Tristan.
“At least, the American I had lunch with today. Just
that one.”

He leaned close to her now, his body already encircled by
her legs while she was still sitting up on the loveseat. He
put his face right up next to hers, looking into her eyes,
touching her hair, feeling more aroused, and happier, than
he could remember.

And Jessica, who was indeed feeling delightfully slutty now
that she was about to make love to a man she had just met
that day, was feeling very pleased with the world herself.
With Paris, with herself, and with this brown-eyed man who
felt so good in her arms, so alive.

It’s wrong, she thought, to wish he could bite me. I
really have to let that go.

She lifted his face to hers and kissed him with every bit
of skill and affection she could find in herself. And that,
to her surprise, led to something else.

He was blazing hot, he took his time, and she thought, as
they moved to the bed, her body humming with desire, that
she would definitely stay in Paris an extra few days.

The forest. Another world. Or, a look at what the world was
like before people showed up and started building things
and making a mess. As Jo walked, she was turning her head
and looking all around to get the most complete view she
could, the widest possible picture of this place, of the
immense trees, ochre leaves, and ferns dying back in
advance of winter. She was paying close attention to what
she could see and smell and hear, because it was lovely and
even majestic, and because she did not want to think about
how long this walk might take. A person who likes to ride
horses, she thought, is sort of by definition someone who
would rather let someone else do the hard work of getting
from one place to another.

It was not that Jo minded the work, actually. It was that
she minded the speed. Or lack thereof.

At first, after she discovered Drogo had run away, she
tried to do a calculation about how far they had come,
using the number of hours she had ridden. She was a little
pleased to have remembered the formula
rate x time =
distance
. Lot of good that did her. All those
naysayers in her algebra class who used to whine about how
math wasn’t useful in the real world–here you
go, people, a big fat chunk of evidence for you.

In the forest, too many variables remained unknown.

If only she hadn’t been so stubborn about bringing
her cell. But she hated the feel of it in her pocket when
she rode, and hadn’t wanted to wear a pack either.
Well, being sorry about it now wasn’t going to change
anything.

By a couple of hours into the walk she had exhausted the
top layer of things in her brain, and started in on the
next layer down. She was doing her best to stay out of
unpleasant territory and trying to stay focused on how her
boots pressed into the ground, and how the bridle path was
a perfect surface for riding, not too hard and not too
soft. Just right for hooves.

Then, unbidden, a memory of coming home from school, her
backpack hurting her shoulders, the darkness of an early
winter afternoon. She lets herself into the boxy little
house, instantly smelling bourbon. Tries to get upstairs
before anyone notices she’s home. But her father
shouts out, “Hey little mouse, come in here!”

And because she is his daughter, she does what he says.

She comes and stands in the doorway to the living room and
surveys the world of her father: the overflowing ashtray,
the tumbler with almost melted ice cubes, his greasy face.
The rumbling murmur of the television news.

He is drunk, of course, his senses dulled down so far that
connecting with another person is not a possibility. But
even so, he feels her disgust.

“Something wrong with you,” he says, glaring. A
statement, not a question.

Jo steps back. She tightens her grip on the backpack
straps.

“Get out of here,” he says. “I
can’t stand the sight of you,” he says,
triumphantly, even though all he has done is confuse her
thoughts with his own.

In the forest, Jo stopped. Oh no you don’t, she
thought to herself. Get the hell out of my head,
Dad
.

She had long practice in training her mind, and when she
banished Dad, he stayed gone. At least until the next time.

More horse droppings on the path, very fresh. She wondered
if they were Drogo’s. She hoped he had gone back to
the barn and not taken off somewhere and gotten himself
lost or hurt. Also, she wondered whether she would make it
back by dark–but that thought she kept in a sort of
ante-room to her brain, holding it there, not allowing
herself to think it even though she knew perfectly well it
was there.

It seemed oddly quiet in the forest. Jo did not know much
about the birds of this particular region but thought she
should be able to hear them singing. It’s an October
afternoon in the woods, she thought, where is the
bird-song?

And then, just at that moment, it was not so quiet anymore.

The path had curved around a low hill, so when Jo turned
around to look, the way she had just traveled was mostly
out of sight. She saw nothing. But she could
hear–what
was
that? It sounded like
sing-song chanting but it wasn’t words, it
wasn’t a melody, and it wasn’t anything she
would have called a song.
It’s…it’s…wow, whoever that is,
they have
terrible
voices, she thought.

She walked faster. She felt a chill of fear fall over her.

Behind her, three women were gaining on her. They were
walking together, abreast. They were smiling. One of them
was noisily chewing on something. That one called out,
speaking either nonsense or a possibly a French word Jo had
never heard before.

What the hell? thought Jo, glancing over her shoulder and
catching a quick glimpse. She didn’t see the point of
running–where would she run to? The five or ten or
fifteen miles back to the Château? And it was just
three women, what could they possibly want with her? They
looked sort of like Goth teenagers, they were probably just
messing with her, playing a prank. She kept walking, kept
her back to whatever was behind her, and prayed to find
Drogo munching on something around the next bend.

She thought she heard–was that a coyote? A wolf?
Howling, in the distance.

One of the women was carrying a stick. She lifted it to her
mouth and bit down on it several times. The one who was
chewing on something kept chewing. The third one got a
little ahead of the others, perhaps since she was less
busy. She called out to Jo in a language that sounded
vaguely familiar but Jo could not place it. It didn’t
sound like words, actually.

The four of them kept this up for about half a mile, with
Jo walking increasingly quickly–she couldn’t
help herself–and the three women behind her, making a
variety of weird sounds, and slowly gaining on her.

Jo had that feeling you can get when out on a terrace,
somewhere high up. The feeling is that that you’re
going to fall anyway, so maybe it’s better to go
ahead and jump and get it over with. She stopped. And
turned to face the three women, to get whatever was going
to happen over with.

The three women appeared surprised, and they stopped too,
for a moment. Then they crept closer, all three making
strange sounds down in their throats and peering at Jo
intensely. All three were smiling.