The Thirst Within (16 page)

“How does it feel then?” I almost whisper.

“Like I don’t do it against my will. More like,
my will changes to suit
his
.”

“So if he doesn’t want you to date me….” This
is painful to say. “How come we’re together, then? At least for the last two
weeks?”

“He’s not unfeeling. I mean, he
does
care about me. He noticed how I was feeling after….” He stops, and laughs.

“What?”

“After John Schmidt.”

“Oh!” I frown and pucker my lips, slightly repulsed
and embarrassed at the memory.

“Yeah well, in the end it worked out for me,
because after all that time, he started changing his attitude. We talked after
that incident.”

Incident
. I blush, but don’t interrupt
him.

He continues. “It had been three weeks since I
had stopped talking to you. I wasn’t over you, but when he came down here, I
acted like I was fine out of respect for him. But somehow he knew. He always
knows.”

Thierry pauses. He finally looks at me, and I
see the faintest trace of a smile. “So Corben said… that if you loved me, and I
loved you, and if that was what I wanted, that he’d stay away. When I picked
you up on Mardi Gras from the bar fight and that asshole, it had been almost a
month since we had talked, but you were responsive to me. Like you cared for
me. Do you remember?”

I smile feebly. “Of course I remember.”

“So he’s tried to stay away and leave me be.
For the most part,” he finishes. His version of the story is cute, but leaves
me a little dejected. I can’t even begin to understand how he feels.

“And now?” I ask.

“He’s so unhappy. And I… I don’t want him to be
unhappy.”

“Because of what you said before, how you don’t
want to challenge his will?”

“Yes. He’s my maker,” he says, as though that
explained everything.

“So what, he made you, and now you have to do
everything he asks?” I try very hard to not sound upset.

“No, not like that,” he says. “That’s what I
was trying to explain. When he turned me, his blood, his vampire blood mixed
with my human blood. My resulting vampire blood coursing through my veins is
mixed with his; his blood didn’t just fade out of my system. So I am part him
in a way, even though it doesn’t work the other way around; and I
always
want to obey him. I don’t have to, but I want to. My blood is attuned to his; I
don’t want to make him unhappy. If he’s unhappy I feel it. If he’s happy, I’m
happy. That’s the way it’s been for almost two hundred years.”

I close my eyes, because something here seems
so unfair. Corben doesn’t know me. I’m nothing close to that person that he loved,
other than… what? What did Thierry say? My attitude was like hers. Jesus. I’m
starting to think that it’s just a power thing of Corben’s, where his vampire
child can’t be happy unless he’s happily established with some vampire hottie.
“Has he ever dated, after the woman that died?”

Thierry actually guffaws. “Corben? No. I’ve
never seen him even
drink
from a woman.”

“Oh,” I say, taken by surprise. “Why?”

“Because feeding….” He begins, and pushes his
chair slightly away from me. “Feeding can be a very sensual experience.”

“For who? You or the chick?” I meant
for the
vampire or the victim
, but my mind went to the gutter. I imagined him
biting me, and my chest burned with desire. Then immediately I became jealous
that he would do that with another girl. He said he doesn’t normally feed from
women or children, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t on occasion. And what about
the men he drinks from; what do
they
feel?

“For both,” he says. “For us it’s intense.
Imagine the blissful feeling you get when you eat a delicious meal, and
multiply by a hundred. Your whole body feels delighted, it’s gratifying. It
is
a form of pleasure. Me, I feel the warmth spreading head to toe….”

“And the donor?”

“For the donor it’s also highly pleasurable.
It’s like your blood caresses you from the inside as it’s drawn out…. Your
entire body feels it.”

I feel a tug somewhere in my belly when he
describes it. I look down. He doesn’t say anything anymore, so I ask him what’s
on my mind. “So how come you… haven’t… done it with me?”

“Tori,” he hisses sharply, and slides his chair
backwards, as if I was highly dangerous. “Don’t say that. Please. I
can’t
.”

“You
can’t
?” I’m not made out of lead. “What
do you mean, you can’t? Or won’t?”

“I won’t!” he says heatedly. I grimace, hurt,
and he slides his chair closer to mine again in a flash. He grabs my hands.
“No…. Don’t. You’re too precious, Tori.”

I don’t reply because of the lump in my throat.

“You’re seventeen years old; this immaculate
thing. I couldn’t…
defile
you like that.”

I look away. I don’t get it. Seventeen is old
enough. I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. I sigh, a
little irritated.

“Is that a vampire thing?” I finally ask.

“You could say that,” he says softly. “I’m
old
,
Tori. Ten years ago you were still a child. Hell,
two
years ago you were
still a child.”

“I was
not
,” I say, acting exactly like a
child. I look up at him. “But you… you’ve kissed me, and stuff,” I argue. I was
going to say
felt me up
, but it’s a bad time.

He takes one of my hands he still holds, and
brings it to his face. “I can’t help it.”

I’m so close to him, and this talk is making me
so flushed, that I just want to scramble on to his lap and
make
him do
things to me. Make him see me as a woman.

I brush one of my fingers over his lips. “How
old do I have to be?”

“Huh?” he asks, dazed.

I slip my thumb past his lips, and graze one of
his sharp canines softly. “How long until I’m no longer immaculate?”

He makes a sound, a deep groan, and I feel his
tongue wet against my thumb in his mouth. “Tori,” he pleads. He grabs my
forearms and pushes me away delicately.

“What?” I murmur.

“Please don’t make this harder for me. It’s not
just how young I see you. It’s also how I feel in regards to my maker.”

Corben
. I sigh in defeat. “You can’t be
happy unless he’s happy?”

“More or less.”

“What if he was evil, and wanted to kill me?
Would you do it to make him happy?”

“No, of course not! God, no. It’s hard to
explain. If he was evil it’d be easier, because I wouldn’t care about pleasing
him. Or if I was the evil one, I wouldn’t care about him either. But he’s actually
a good companion, and I love him; I want him to be happy.”

Great
. He can’t say he loves me, but he
loves my nemesis. Okay, not my nemesis, but a vampire that is really starting
to piss me off.

“What if he found a girlfriend,” I wonder, “and
he was cheery again? Do you think he’d let you be?”

He thinks about it for a second. “Maybe…? I
don’t know. I’ve never imagined him with a woman. Or man. With anyone. But….
No. You’d still be you, and he’d have a problem with me seeing
you
.”

“See, that’s what I have a problem with. I’m so
far removed from this woman—you said I don’t even look like her
that
much—yet he can’t see you with me. Are you sure it’s my supposed resemblance
with the girl he knew, or is it a… a vampire master thing?”

“I don’t think so,” he says, understanding my
question exactly. I’m asking if Corben is just pissed off that Thierry is happy
and he is not. But that would make Corben a dick, and Thierry is basically
denying that he is. I see a glimpse of the extent to which Thierry is reverent
to his maker.

“What if it was someone else? If you were with
some other girl?” I ask, not giving up easily.

“He didn’t have a problem with Mary. Mary was
my… my girlfriend. When I was human. She’s the one I told you about, that went mad
when she found out what I had become.”

I take a deep breath. He’s given me a lot to process.
“So what do you want to do now?”

“Now… for the first time I don’t want to do as my
heart tells me. I want to please him, but I don’t
want
to. I’m so
conflicted. It’s more than you could imagine.”

***

That night as I lie on my bed staring at the ceiling,
for the first time I question my relationship with the vampire. It seems way
overdue; I now see how I’ve been brushing off the potential problems with
dating Thierry.
He’s a monster that could potentially kill me.
No way; I
trust him.
He has killed other people.
So what? Even I think some evil
people deserve to die.
He’s so old that it should be downright disgusting to
kiss him.
Nah… he looks young, and he’s soo hot.

But now,
he can’t be happy as long as his
creep maker is conflicted about
me
, because I remind said maker of his
dead love?
Well… fuck that shit.

Angry tears pool in my eyes as I reflect on
having to give up Thierry. But I may have to. If I can’t be happy with him,
what’s the point? I should forget about him. My brain tells me I can do this;
I’ve done this before. But my heart is set against forgetting Thierry and
reminds me this time is different. Last time it was Thierry who said we should
be just friends; this time he hasn’t said anything. My brain tells my idiot
heart that it’s the same damn problem as last time: Corben doesn’t want me in
Thierry’s life.

I close my eyes, trying to shut the truths from
hurting me further. As the tears spill down my temples I try to deny it, but
it’s no use: I can’t let go now. I can’t go back to my life and pretend he
doesn’t exist, that we never kissed, that everything I learned this last week
isn’t true.

I’m in too deep.

***

The solution is a shitty patch-up work that we
both know is a temporary fix and can’t last forever, but we both seem to be in
denial about the future. Neither Thierry nor I bring up anything that remotely
touches the subject. We simply hang out like we used to, except that we try not
to make out as intensely as that time in the hot tub (by
we
I mean he.
He tries to exercise caution; I go along with it). Removing articles of
clothing is out of the question. My bikini lives in his apartment, though. I
left it there and refuse to bring it home for June or Fiona to see.

The whole week Thierry and I have been walking on
eggshells around each other; being polite but not cold, kissing but not sucking
face, talking about vampirism without mentioning the other vampire that I know
of. What’s left of our old relationship works, and I don’t complain; I need
him, and I’ll take whatever I can. The weekend after what I call
the hot tub
incident
I don’t even visit him; I see him briefly after work on Saturday
and then I stay home all Sunday when I don’t have to work.

I can do this
, I tell myself. As long as
he lets me in a little bit, I can do this. Thierry hasn’t mentioned… the
other
vampire, so I begin to have hopes that someday we may go back to what we were.

March sneaks quietly upon us. The weather
doesn’t warm up significantly, but I’m from the North, so I can’t even tell what’s
normal in New Orleans. Kerin says that she’s cold but I show her what the
weather is like in Eldridge and tell her to shut up.

Kerin hasn’t called me her best friend, but I
wonder if that’s out of respect for Lynn. But I can safely say that Kerin is
my
best friend—
human
friend—since I have no one else. Fiona is actually not
bad, but there’s an impenetrable wall between us. I don’t really count Lynn,
and all the other girls I know from school I can’t really consider friends,
since I barely talk to them.

Another negative side effect of hanging out
with vampires.

On the first Tuesday of March I’m in school,
scanning the lunchroom for someone to sit with. I groan internally.

In the almost two months I’ve been attending
this school, I’ve made little progress with making friends. My classmates are
nice, and they’ll talk to me when they have to, but Kerin is my only friend. I
don’t mind. I brought this upon myself by not caring enough.

Kerin is friends with a lot of people in our
class, because for the most part they’ve all been going to the same schools
since they were kids. She has a group of around twenty friends that she calls
her “side friends”: not necessarily best friends, but still close friends. So
when someone has a party, or an outing to go somewhere, they invite Kerin, and
me by default since I’m always hanging out with her. However, after declining a
few such outings, either on account of wanting to hang out with my vampire
boyfriend—or rather, my vampire in an
it’s-complicated
relationship—or
simply because I’ve had to work, Kerin’s side friends have been showing less
enthusiasm when they ask me out. Fine. I don’t care. The only problem is, when
Kerin’s not around in school, I hardly talk to anyone else. The
one
class I don’t take with her or John is one such instance. But that’s a class
and I’m not supposed to be talking in class anyways.

However, my friendlessness was tried yesterday
when Kerin called in sick with the flu. When I texted her back
oh no, hope
you get better soon
, I had no idea how true my words would be by the end of
the day. I took my classes alone, without my friend to pass notes to. I ran
alone in the field during PE. Then at lunch I sat with Lynn like Kerin and I
always do.

Lynn is very interested in a guy named Jake,
one of her guy friends from her AP classes. He sits with us every now and then.
And yesterday I don’t know how they did it, but they managed to make that the
most awkward lunch I’ve ever had, and I’ve had lunch before with a vampire who
doesn’t eat. They talked about AP stuff and college and an upcoming spelling
bee they made sound like it was the most important event of the year.