Unbitten (17 page)

Jo put her riding boots in the bottom of the armoire, first
brushing the mud off in the trashcan. She put on a swishy
skirt, a lacy bra, and a tight sweater. What she wanted to
do more than anything was run madly around the
Château searching until she found David, and drag him
straight to her bed. But she had enough self-control to
know that was not a good idea. Yes, romantic relationships
had not been her best thing, but she was not a complete
idiot.

Let him find me, she thought, twisting her hair into a
chignon, dabbing on some perfume, and preparing to walk
into the village and explore.

David should have been asleep. For all their strength,
vampires need their eight solid hours in the sack or they
get very cranky. But David was ignoring his beautiful bed,
possibly the most comfortable, luxurious bed on the planet,
and instead was pacing in his bedroom, Henri’s shades
in place to keep out the nasty blazing sun.

Maybe Henri has been right all along, he was thinking. I
should get rid of the horses. That’s what’s
gotten me into this mess. No horses, no Jo. No Jo, no wild
desire to bite her.

Just thinking the words “bite” and
“Jo” in the same sentence made something
unmanageable boil up inside him. He had the sickening
feeling that he might not be able to master the urge, that
he might lose control. Not that he had had the least qualms
about biting women, usually. His two hundred and four years
as a vampire would attest to
that
.

If he got rid of the horses, he thought, it wouldn’t
matter if he bit her. He would not have to worry about
draining her and taking her strength so she could no longer
ride well, or even got herself killed. But if there were no
horses, that wouldn’t be a problem. He started to
smile, already anticipating her exposed neck, until he
realized that if there were no horses, she would have no
reason to be at the Château.

Oh, the torture of conflicting desires!

David’s love of horses dated from 1817, when he was
eight, and given his first pony by his doting mother. He
had learned to ride much younger that that, and his
happiest childhood times were on horseback, flying over
jumps and galloping through the fields and forests. He had
been an excellent rider and won ribbons all over the
département.
He spent all his free time at
the barn, talking with the men there who knew everything
there was to know about caring for horses, understanding
them, and getting the most out of riding them.
Thierry’s great-great-great-grandfather in particular
had been a close friend and a mentor.

But then, David’s father had, without any warning,
without much explanation at all, turned him. And after he
became a vampire, any time David got anywhere near a horse,
the horse reared up, showing the whites of its eyes, and
made horrible noises of the deepest sort of fear.

The thing about horses, and something he had loved about
them, is that they are sensitive. They understand emotions.
And what they understood now about David was that he was
not human, that they were now prey to him, and there was
not a single thing he could do to change their minds.

Henri needs to get busy in that lab and make a decent
sleeping potion, thought David crossly. Not being able to
sleep is horrible. I just want to ride again, he thought
longingly, and hopelessly. I need to bite, he thought, over
and over.
I want to bite her.

Eventually, after he had gone around the same circle of
thoughts hundreds of times, he was too worn out not to
sleep. Sitting in the moiré-covered English
armchair, his head tipped back, his body relaxed, and the
room echoed with impressive vampire snoring.

“This is not my favorite part of this job,”
Angélique said, as she and the butler, Albert, were
on their way to one of the small rooms behind the kitchen
that housed several large refrigerators.

“Nor mine,” said Albert, sighing.

They waved at Marcel, the cook, as they came into the main
kitchen. He was sitting on a stool at an enormous table,
books open everywhere, his head in his hands.

“I’ve completely run out of ideas,”
Marcel moaned. He jumped up and grabbed Albert by the
lapels. “What should I make?” he said urgently.
“If you could have anything, anything at all, what
would you want for dinner?” he said, his voice
getting perilously close to a sob.

“Sweetbreads,” said Albert without a pause.
“Madeira sauce. Potatoes Anna. Green salad.
Flan.”

“I love you,” said Marcel, putting his hands on
either side of Albert’s face and kissing each of his
cheeks.

“Yes,” said Albert with a smile.

He and Angélique continued through, passing through
a big pantry that was beautifully organized and kept neat
as a pin, and then through another storage room that held
pots and equipment not used every day such as an
industrial-sized juicer, the copper pots for making jam,
and molds for special desserts. They stopped in the room
after that. Three refrigerators in a row, all stainless
steel, restaurant-sized, hooked up to generators in case
the Château lost power.

Two of the refrigerators were Henri’s. One contained
an enormous number of substances in various stages of
completion or investigation or fermentation. The other
refrigerator was dedicated to Hemo-Yum, and that is the one
they opened.

“One of the things I hate,” said
Angélique, surveying the boxes with different
labels, “is picking out the flavor. I really, really
hate picking out the flavor. It feels so…”

“Intimate? I feel the same way,
Angélique,” said Albert.
“Actually,” he said, “it feels
sordid.”

“I know,” she said. “It does to me
too.”

They stood together, reading. “Indonesian
Beauty.” “Italian Tigress.”
“Statuesque Ivory Coast Maiden.”
“Mississippi Prom Queen.”

“Looks like Henri has gotten some marketing
help,” said Angélique, laughing but making a
face. “Mississippi Prom Queen? I don’t even
know what that
is.
”

Albert smiled, but it was only his mouth that was smiling.
The rest of his face stayed grim. “Let’s get
this over with,” he said, reaching in and gathering
up two bags without paying attention to the labels.

They left the kitchen by the back way and walked down a
gravel path to the other side of the Château.
Underneath a stairway that curved up to a terrace was a
small door, a door crisscrossed with iron straps. Albert
produced an old key and let them in.

Immediately the dark enveloped them, along with a musty,
dank smell of wet things that are never allowed to dry.
Angélique took a deep breath anyway and tried to
steel herself for what was coming.

Albert stopped for a moment and put on a headlamp so they
could see where they were going.

Their footsteps echoed off the stone walls and low stone
ceiling. They came to a narrow spiral staircase that only
went down.

“I’ll go first,” said Albert, as he
always did. He took Angélique’s hand and gave
it a quick squeeze. “We’ll be out of here in a
jiffy,” he said, in that encouraging, jolly
butler’s voice of his.

Angélique appreciated the effort, but could not
summon even a molecule of jolly herself. They only had to
do this twice a month, and she managed to push it out of
her mind most of the time, but oh, the dread she felt when
it was a Feeding Day. The horrible, unstoppable dread.

The darkness, once they got to the bottom of the spiral
staircase, was complete. Albert’s headlamp made a
small tunnel of light, enough for them to see well enough
not to run into walls, but no more. It was a darkness
unlike anything else, though Angélique. Like being
blind. Like losing touch with the actual world.

At the end of a long, damp corridor, they came to another,
even narrower staircase, this one appearing to be carved
out of stone that had never been taken from the earth. It
was barely wide enough to get down. Angélique put
her hands on Albert’s shoulders, as she always did,
the two of them stumbling a little, sometimes leaning into
the wall for balance.

When they reached the bottom, they could hear the noises.
It was something like the sound mice might make if they
were caught in a trap. No, not quite that, larger than
that, way worse than that. It was a sound of panic, yes,
but also of need, of thirst, of depraved desire.

Albert shone the beam of his headlamp on a door on their
right. Instead of a thick old wooden door, this one was
sleek and modern and made of metal. Instead of a rusty key,
this door was fitted with an iris recognition device like
the one on Henri’s lab. Albert stared into the
camera, there was a series of beeps and clicks, and the
door slid open.

The main thought in Angélique’s mind was
turning right around and getting the hell out of there, no
matter how much trouble that would get her into. She pushed
the thought away and stepped into the room. The darkness
felt like something alive, like something that was actively
trying to suffocate her.

Just breathe, she said to herself, over and over. All you
have to do is breathe.

“
Bonjour, Seigneur
,” said Albert, with
a small bow that no one would be able to see.

“Turn that off,” said a gravelly voice,
peremptory, with a note of impatience.

Albert reached up and turned off the headlamp. Now the
darkness was so total that Angélique was not sure if
she was right side up or upside down.

Breathe, she said to herself.

“Hurry up,” said the gravelly voice.

Another voice, a female voice, began to mew like a cat. The
voice came closer until it was right in front of
Angélique. Gathering all her courage, she reached
out her hand until she felt someone take it, and grip it,
astonishingly tight and strong.

“Bless you for coming,” said the female voice.
“The last days, as you know, are difficult.
Le
Seigneur
becomes weak–in his head as well as his
body. Sometimes he does not know me. He calls out, making
my ears ache.” She let out a long cry, something like
a cat crossed with a bat, a starving animal with food in
sight.

By feel, Albert took the plastic straw and pierced the bag
with it, just like he was readying a kid’s juice box.
Then he reached out, groping for
le
Seigneur’s
hand.

Le Seigneur
was clawing at the air, impatient,
ready to suck. Their hands found each other and he snatched
the bag from Albert. Everyone could hear the loud, greedy
sucking as he drank from the bag.

“Too loud,
chéri
,” said Madame.

Le Seigneur
paid no attention. They could hear the
bag when it hit the floor and
le Seigneur
, with
more strength in his voice now, asked for the second.

“I do not think that flavor was at all good,”
he said, waiting for Albert to put in the straw. “It
tasted…underdone. Too young. Undeveloped. Why have
you not told Henri to come visit? I need to talk to him
about numerous things, including this travesty he is
forcing us to exist on. Where is he?”

“I am sorry,” said Albert, “but I’m
afraid Henri is out of the country at present.”

Angélique admired his easy lie, and the way the tone
of his voice contained just the right amount of compassion.

“Is there anything you need?” Angélique
asked, praying they would say no.

“Actually,
chérie,
” Madame
said, tightening her grip on Angélique’s hand,
“The housekeeper must come more often. I am having
trouble with my lungs down here, and it would help if our
quarters were cleaner.”

Angélique made a face since she knew no one could
see it. First of all, the quarters
were
clean,
Henri would never have allowed otherwise. And second,
having the quarters cleaned was something of an
ordeal–they had to move the old couple into temporary
rooms in the dungeon, so those had to be cleaned first as
well as afterwards. They had to bribe several housekeepers
with extra money because no one liked coming down here.
They had to set up temporary lights so the housekeepers
could see what they were doing. And finally, Henri had to
brainwipe them all the minute they got back upstairs. It
was a lot of work with not any piece of it the tiniest bit
of fun or even giving a sense of accomplishment.