Unbitten (20 page)

The walk to the kitchen was uncomfortable. David wanted to
hold Jo close to him, to continue squeezing her in all
those very squeezeable places of her lovely body, and to
smell her intoxicating smell–but when he did this,
his fangs began to throb. It irritated him that he had to
work so hard to control himself.

So he pushed her away. Pushed her away and then pulled her
back close. And again.

Jo did not feel any of this in words. The words in her head
were all about the omelets she planned to make. But this
thing of being pushed away and pulled back–it
produced a feeling that for her was old and familiar, so
old and familiar that she didn’t even notice she was
having it. Or notice that it made her feel deeply unwanted,
and unworthy, and desperate. Like she would do anything to
keep him close, to keep him from continually leaving.

Not that she ever thought anything like that consciously.
Consciously, she was light-hearted, an omelet-maker, just a
girl turned on by her hot lover.

“Just point me in the direction of the fridge,”
she said, once they were in Marcel’s inner sanctum.
“And is it too late in the season for herbs? I saw
Marcel has a little herb garden just outside, I’ll go
see,” she said, leaning in to give David a kiss, a
proper kiss, with a bit of tongue, and a soft moan.

I could have another go, she thought. Right here on the
stainless kitchen table. His lips were so, so soft, and
tasted so good. She was drawn to keep touching, keep
kissing, keep exciting him. She dropped one hand down to
his crotch and felt him stiffening up. She thought, there
is not really anything better than that, feeling how he
wants me, how he responds to me.

“Herbs,” she said, using great willpower to
break away. “I’m not going to let myself get
distracted by your…magnificence,” she said,
pointedly looking at the large bump in his pants and
grinning. She found some switches for outdoor lights and
let herself out the side door to the kitchen, on her way to
herb garden just outside.

At which point David squinted his eyes for a moment at the
doorway through which she had just disappeared, as though
withstanding a physical pain. And then he turned, and
quickly and quietly with vampire speed left the kitchen and
went through many rooms to a door on the other side of the
Château, and out into the moonless night.

Pierre got the final armful of papers up the ladder into
the former hayloft that was his living quarters.

“What an epic pain in the ass this job has turned out
to be,” he thought. He looked with satisfaction at
the large stack he had piled against the wall, hoping that
among them would be what Dominic and Maloney, and more
importantly, their mysterious boss, was looking for.

Pierre had not read any of the files, because he did not
know how to read.

When he was very young, Pierre had been the sort of cute
little child who attracted a lot of attention. He had a
headful of tawny curls. Dimples. A well-formed body. And
his personality had been mischievous in the best sort of
way, playful, a joy to be around. He caught the attention
of the man running the Château–not
le
Seigneur
, but his right-hand man, his aide, who made
himself responsible for
le Seigneur’s
happiness.

At the age of four, little Pierre was taken from his loving
parents and the farm where he was born, and brought to the
Château to live. He was instructed in boot-polishing.
He lived in a sort of dormitory on the top floor, with the
legion of scullery maids, groomsmen-in-training, and others
of low social rank that kept the Château running
smoothly. He was a pet of the girls, and of the young men
as well, the kind of unusual child that newcomers to the
Château would notice, and ask about, because he was
so beautiful and his liveliness and good humor so
infectious.

It did not take long before
le Seigneur
himself
took notice of Pierre, and that was when the road forked,
and Pierre was forced down the road there was no turning
back from, the road to almost infinite life, but for him, a
life absent all its former joy.

At first,
le Seigneur
made it a point to have only
Pierre polish his boots, acting as though this was quite an
honor for him, that this lowly youngster had been chosen
above all the others for this important once, or twice, or
thrice-daily task. Pierre began to dread rain, since rain
meant mud, and mud meant more polishings than ever, and
difficult ones that required several rags and then cleaning
up all the mud clods afterwards.

Not at any point did anyone consider educating Pierre. It
was before the Revolution, when anyone of his class was
happy just to have enough to eat. Education for a peasant
was out of the question.

Although he worked quite hard, and missed his parents, as
he grew Pierre still managed to hold on to his jolly
personality, and everyone at the Château was grateful
to hear his peals of laughter throughout the day as he
joked and chattered with everyone, no matter what rank.
Le Seigneur
got in the habit of taking the young
boy into his chambers at night, to give himself a bit of
entertainment before going to sleep. Just looking at the
boy’s glowing young skin gave
le Seigneur
pleasure, and of course, like everyone else, he loved to
hear Pierre laugh.

When Pierre was eight,
le Seigneur
had invited him
into his chambers one night, nothing unusual about that. He
dismissed the servants who usually waited on him there, and
he snuffed a quantity of the candles, so that the room was
dimmer than it usually was, and their faces shimmered in
the low light.

Le Seigneur
, at that time, around 1769, still had
a powerful physical presence. He had not developed the
intense reaction to light and sound that by 2000 had
reduced the parameters of his life so dramatically that he
could not leave the dungeon. He sat down on the foot of his
bed and asked that Pierre remove his boots.

With a good-natured laugh, Pierre pretended to tug and tug
as though the boot would never come off. When
le
Seigneur
lifted his foot for the second one, Pierre
pulled it off at once and catapulted across the room,
ending in a somersault.

“Come here, you silly child,” said
le
Seigneur
, affectionately. “I want you to undo my
breeches,” he said, gesturing at the buttons that
went across the top of his pants and then down the sides,
in a line towards his groin.

Pierre did as he was told, as he always did. He was humming
a little tune he had made up as his childish fingers worked
at the buttons.

Le Seigneur
made a growling noise, a sound that
seemed to come from the deepest part of himself. It was not
an entirely human sound, and Pierre looked up in surprise.

Le Seigneur
unbuttoned his own shirt and shrugged
it off, revealing a strong chest with a mat of dark hair.
Then with the back of his hand he stroked the boy’s
cheek. His rosy, glowing cheek. Then he put his hand in the
boy’s tawny curls, stroking at first, and then pulled
a little bit, not to hurt him, but to bring his face
closer.

Although Pierre no longer lived at his parents’ farm,
he spent plenty of time down at the stables and the barns
of the Château, and he had seen stallions and bulls
with their mates. And he was privy, on the upper floor
where he slept, to all the talk of the young men, which
tended to be focused on a few subjects only.

In short, he knew an erection when he saw one.

“
Seigneur
!” he gasped, and then
regretted speaking.

Le Seigneur
smiled a smile of satisfaction. He put
his other hand on the back of Pierre’s head and
began, slowly but steadily, to press it towards his crotch,
the breeches nearly undone.

But Pierre wrenched his head away. “Not me!” he
yelled, crouching down and then springing away, his body
seeming to jerk in the flickering candlelight. “Not
me!” he yelled again, uncertain of what to do next,
now that he was out of the man’s grasp. He was old
enough to realize that if he fled the chambers completely,
the punishment would be horribly severe. Unimaginably
severe. So he kept dancing from one foot to the other,
trying to manage a bit of a smile as though they were
playing a game, and to keep the feeling of desperation from
choking him.

Le Seigneur’s
eyes were lit up with fury. He
was not used to being denied. This was not to be borne. He
got up, buttoning enough buttons to keep his pants from
falling down, and went with great speed to his large and
ornate desk. He jerked open a drawer and took out a knife,
the blade glinting.

“Come,” he said to Pierre, his quavering voice
full of emotion–of rage, of affection, of lust, of
the desire to hurt.

Pierre could see no other choice but to do what he was
told, just as he had been taught. He walked slowly towards
le Seigneur
, his head slunk down, all his usual
effervescence gone. He was only eight years old, and unable
to imagine any way to save himself, or any person he could
run to who could help him.

Le Seigneur
brandished the knife. He held it out
so Pierre could see it and admire it, the jewels in its
handle, the razor-sharpness of its thin blade. Then
le
Seigneur
took the tip of the blade and drew it across
his own chest, and a stripe of red sprang up through the
dark hair and began to drip down.

“
Seigneur!
” said Pierre, utterly
confused.

“Yes, child,” said
le Seigneur
.
“Do not worry, this is not a deep wound, it is not
dangerous. See?” He took the boy’s hand and
singled out a finger, then pulled the finger through the
blood, making it draw a bloody stripe over his abdomen.
“It is beautiful, is it not?” asked
le
Seigneur
.

Pierre could not think of a thing to say to that.

Le Seigneur
then reached for Pierre and drew him
close, and again pressed his head towards him, but this
time not in the direction of his crotch but instead toward
the bleeding wound.

“Drink, little boy,” he said softly.

All Pierre could think was, this is not as bad as the other
thing he wanted me to do. So he gingerly touched his tongue
to
le Seigneur’s
blood, and finding that it
tasted sort of interesting–a bit salty, and a bit
like the Port he sometimes managed to steal from the
sideboard when no one was looking–he licked some
more, and then more, until he was sucking and lapping at
the wound, while
le Seigneur
crooned to him,
caressing his curls, and pumping his hips ever so slowly,
as the candles guttered and the night slid away, nearing
dawn.

Jo came back into the kitchen, holding a fistful of
tarragon and parsley. “Haven’t we had a frost
already?” she said to David, who…was not
there.

She felt a stab in her belly, in that place where bad
events register, but she did her best to brush it off. He
probably went to the bathroom or something, she thought,
ignoring what she knew in her heart to be true, that he had
disappeared without a word.

Jo went to the refrigerator and brought out a bowl
containing a knob of butter the size of a grapefruit. She
searched among the pans for a small omelet pan, and put it
on the stove. Found a bowl to beat up the eggs in. Moved
one by one through all the other steps until she was
sitting on a stool at the stainless steel counter, with a
lovely omelet on a beautiful Limoges plate, glistening with
butter and flecked with bits of the herbs she had just
picked.

Ugh, she thought. Not hungry.

Jo took a deep breath. Marianne. I need to hear her voice,
she thought. It’s late afternoon at home, perfect
timing.

She pulled her cell phone out and tapped out her number.
The reception in the kitchen was much better than in her
tower, and the ring was crisp and clear.