Unbitten (31 page)

He had his list of questions but could see it was hopeless
today. Antoinette had good days, or at least, much better
days than this. This…was a bad one.

Henri leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He did
not think that he had to fill up the visits to his parents
with a lot of chatter; he was content to let his presence
be enough of a balm. And Antoinette, at least, seemed to
think it was. She had taken his hand again when he sat down
next to her, occasionally pressing it to her cheek, kissing
it, or crooning to it.

Le Seigneur
was crabby. He had always been crabby,
even as a child, and so nothing much had changed really,
except that he had fewer people to take his crabbiness out
on. He had put the bag of Catherine the Great under his arm
for a few minutes, but did not have the patience to wait,
and although he was sucking greedily at the bag, the
coolness of the drink irritated him.

“I never made any wine that had notes of
tundra,” he sneered.

“That’s not wine, Father,” said Henri.
His tone was matter-of-fact, not patronizing nor snappish.

“Well, what is it then?”

“It’s a drink I made. Synthetic blood. So you
don’t have to hunt,” Henri explained, as he had
explained so many times over the last five years.

“I like to hunt,” said
le Seigneur
,
his eyes glowing. “I am extremely good at it.”

Henri allowed
le Seigneur
to reminisce to himself,
thinking of the many conquests he had made over the
centuries, the long, long list of necks he had bitten, how
he had lifted his head with blood dripping from his fangs,
licking his lips, laughing, eyes fiery around the edge of
the irises, reveling in the surge of power that drinking
gave him.

It was not hard for Henri to imagine what his father was
thinking about, as they sat in silence, in the dark, but
his own mind was headed in another direction, not past, but
future. Warmer, braver, and altogether more blonde.

“Just stay for a minute,” David said to
Angélique. She was touching the doorknob, ready to
go. “You know how much I love having you here.”

“It’s late, David.”

He came to her and put his hand on hers. “Just for a
minute,” he said, looking deeply into
Angélique’s green eyes.

She had to force herself to turn away. When David got that
close, he was very hard to resist when he wanted something.
And he always, always, wanted something. He squeezed her
hand, and then reached up to her face, brushing a lock of
hair back from her face.

“Don’t touch me, David,” she said.
“Please.”

“Please what?” he said, smiling as though she
had asked him to touch her, not the opposite. The drunken
feeling was passing quickly now. He no longer felt silly.
But oh how he wanted sex. He wanted it
now
.

Angélique was utterly torn. The last thing she
wanted was anything to do with David, beyond having her job
managing the Château, a job she loved. But at the
same time, undeniably, being the object of this much
desire–it was sort of intoxicating, no matter whether
she wanted it or not. She could feel his craving, feel how
he trembled when he touched her; she could smell his
amazingly appealing smell that was somehow better than all
the other smells she loved–better than vanilla, than
jasmine, than lemon blossoms, lavender, better than
anything. Part of her wanted to keep standing there, almost
hypnotized, inhaling his scent, basking in his attention.

She had made that mistake once before, and
Angélique, ever the good student, was not going to
make it again.

“Good night, David. Let me know, of course, if there
is anything that needs my attention in the morning.”
She stepped away from him and opened the door.

“
I
need your attention, Angélique.
Right now,” he said, reaching for her, a note of
pleading in his voice.

But she was gone, and he stood in the doorway listening to
the clatter of her heels on the stone stairs, getting
fainter and fainter.

She was gliding along the endless escalators at Orly,
having just arrived from New York City.

“And they give me fuck-all for coming all this way on
that shit-box of a plane, oh my
GOD
it was the most uncomfortable fucking
endless day of my
life.
..” she said, not to
anyone in particular, and without her usual pep.
“Jesus, I am so. tired. I am
not
getting on
any damn train, I’m going into Paris for a few days,
and that scumbag Dominic can just wait for me,” she
said, to herself this time.

Roxanne was not a good traveler.

Using her vampire facility with languages, she boarded the
correct bus to take her into Paris, but the bus was crowded
with tourists, and her mood did not improve. She was left
without a seat and stood in the aisle, holding on to a thin
strap, swaying as the bus lurched its way onto the
autoroute and towards the city.

“Can you move your bloody leg?” she said to a
very tall man, another American, who had stuck a leg into
the aisle.

“Sorry!” he said cheerfully, and smiled at her.

She gave him a look of disgust. Human men, she thought, are
absolutely with. out. clue. She glanced around the bus,
trying to adjust her senses, and checking to see whether
any other vampires were riding. There was something in the
back, some sort of…disturbance…she could
detect. It didn’t feel like vampire though, and she
couldn’t even guess what it might be. Roxanne had
never been to Paris, but she had heard the stories. Crazy
shit. Shapeshifters. Weird drugs. Week-long suck-fests at
country houses with servants.

A different world from the scrubby New York existence she
led, living in a tiny maid’s room in the apartment of
a cheap vampire family whose children she took care of.
Paid like crap, and plus she had to drink from the husband
every month which was only about the most disgusting thing
in the whole fucking world. She had to do it, and she had
to feel grateful for it too, which–could anything be
worse than that?

The reality was, being a
labri
totally sucked. No
doubt about it.

She craned her neck but saw nothing except tired-looking,
badly dressed people, bedraggled, clutching their bags and
fiddling with their phones. She had expected France to be
more exciting right from the minute she arrived. But, she
realized, the glamorous people are not taking the bus. They
are in limousines or taxis or cars. She felt so
sleep-deprived and irritated at the world that she gave the
American man’s leg a sharp kick.

“Hey!” he said, “Sorry! There’s not
enough legroom, I can’t help it.”

“Well, if you don’t fit, maybe you could let
someone else sit there,” said Roxanne, glaring at
him.

“Good idea,” said the man, getting up, and
standing in front of her while motioning to another woman
standing father down the aisle to take his seat. The man
glared back at Roxanne and moved to the back of the bus.

“Shithead,” muttered Roxanne. She ran a hand
through her hair, which was shaved on one side and spiked
up on the other, although the spikes were sagging after the
long plane ride. A streak of bright green flopped down into
her face, which was heavily made up in anticipation of
Parisian clubs. Smoky eye, greenish-black lips.

One side of the bus let out a collective whoop–the
Eiffel Tower had briefly popped into view before sliding
behind some buildings.

Roxanne was in Paris. The night was young. And she was
going to make the most of it.

It was five in the morning. Henri had said good night to
his parents and left the dungeon a few hours earlier, and
headed back to the lab to work. But the work wasn’t
happening. He was having difficulty focusing on the
problems at hand. His mind kept drifting back to the sound
of his mother’s voice, so ghostly, really, so alone
and desperate. And when he would shake that thought out of
his head, what would swoop in was…Jo.

She is so excitable, he thought, trying to think up
criticism but smiling about the image it brought to mind
instead. I have no room in my life for a relationship
anyway, it’s never been that important to me, he told
himself.

But no matter what he told himself, the truth was that Jo
had awakened him to the fact that he was terribly lonely,
and no amount of work or success at work was ever going to
able to fix that.

He was supposed to be working on the most important project
of his life, but he was checking the clock every few
minutes, waiting for dawn, and the chance to meet up with
Jo in the breakfast room.

He felt like he was eighteen, instead of 208.

She had wrapped her arms around him that day he had come
for her in the forest. It hadn’t been an electric
touch, or anything like that. Sparks had not flown out in a
trail behind them. So why did he keep thinking about the
way her arms had felt? Why did he keep going over it, and
over it, imagining that as she was riding behind him on the
moped, she had leaned her head against his back, and
then…Stop it! Why couldn’t he let it go?

It occurred to him that he would probably still be
tinkering with the design of the anti-sun suit, if she
hadn’t needed him to go outside in broad daylight
immediately, and he had had no other choice. She had needed
his protection, and she had forced him out of his logical
complacency. In his scientific way, Henri could see himself
and Jo as a perfect equation, which was deeply appealing to
him. Not to mention the fact that her physicality, her
bounding energy, her strawberry-blonde hair–all of
that about Jo had been kindling something in Henri that
equations had nothing to do with. His body had woken up,
and there was no lulling it back to sleep with work, no
matter how important it was to him.

Except, she was human. And for a vampire who had devoted
his life to supporting the vampire world, no matter how
ambivalent he might be about belonging to it, Jo’s
being a human meant the subject of any relationship was
closed. Period.