Unbitten (19 page)

“Correct,” said Jessica.

He wondered what she was wearing, and whether she was
sitting or standing.

“Because of this–is it your judgment that
vampires are to be…terminated, whenever you have the
chance? No evidence of a crime necessary, you just assume
such crimes have taken place and the vampire should be
killed?”

“That is what slayers do, yes, Tristan. We do not
wait for more people to be hurt.”

“I understand. Also, male vampires frequently attack
human females, and we think that the attack rate is
actually quite a lot higher than the reported rate, for
various reasons. Have I got that right?”

“You do.”

“One question is, why do we not simply bring them to
justice? Arrest them, have a trial, put them in prison like
any other criminal?” A chilly breeze had kicked up
and Tristan left the footbridge and began walking back to
his office.

“Well, several problems with that,” said
Jessica. "First of all, how are you going to feed them? Is
your office, or your government, going to be happy to
provide warm-blooded animals for the vampires to drink
from–for hundreds of years? That would be quite an
undertaking. And frankly, what do you think would happen in
the prison system if one small group of prisoners is
getting live rabbits and everyone else is getting stale
bread and gristly mystery meat? How are you going to stop
the riots over that? Plus of course you would have to build
separate quarters for them because if they are allowed to
mingle with the other prisoners, they’ll be going on
biting sprees.

“Yes, it’s true that most biting is male on
female. But given no other choice, I have no doubt a male
vampire would bite male humans. Their drive to bite and
drink would override the cultural considerations. Sort of
the way prison sex works.

“Maybe it is different in France, I admit I do not
know a lot about your prison system here. But in the U.S.,
it would just be logistically impossible. We have enough
problems integrating all the various factions of our
population already, we don’t need a rich and
dangerous vampire minority to add to the mix.”

“Say that again,” said Tristan, his voice
deepening.

“What?” said Jessica, laughing.

“‘Add to the mix,’” said Tristan.

She laughed again. “Why,
chéri
?”

“I just liked the way it sounded when you said
it.”

“Add to the mix,” she said.

“Mmm,” said Tristan, adjusting his pants again.
“How soon are you going back to the States?”

“My plane reservation is for Friday morning. Alain
and I have a few more days to work, and then we’re
done. I will miss Paris terribly.” Somehow Jessica
made it clear that by “Paris”, she meant
Tristan.

“I wish you had time to come to Mourency,” he
said, and then grimaced. He had not meant to speak so
plainly.

“I wish I did too,” said Jessica.
"Unfortunately, your problem in Mourency, troubling as it
is, is a tiny thorn compared to what is going on back home.
We have places now where vampires are on the verge of
actually outing themselves, making themselves into
something like local celebrities.

Tristan made a noise of sympathy.

“In the U.S.,” Jessica continued, “we
have a long history of romance with lawbreakers and
violence. Anyway,” she said, her voice turning brisk,
"I’m afraid Alain is waving at me to come along to a
meeting, and I must go.

“But I go reluctantly,” she said softly.

“Say that again,” said Tristan, “just the
last word.”

“Reluctantly,” said Jessica, laughing.

“Goodbye, my love. I’ll speak to you
soon.” Tristan tapped
END
and slid the phone back into his pocket with a sigh. Why is
it that the pain of love almost always equals the pleasure,
he wondered.

He entered the station and found Roland sitting at his desk
working his way through a stack of files.

“Roland,” said Tristan. “I’ve got
something to discuss with you, something rather important.
What do you say we have dinner, something nice, perhaps at
the
Lion D’Or?
And then afterwards, we will
talk.”

Henri quite enjoyed his meetings with Claudine and her crew
at PolyLabs, at least as long as they were talking about
science and product development. The marketing part he had
little interest in; in fact, it embarrassed him. In
Henri’s mind, his products were so much better than
anything else available that vampires should just buy them
and that should be the end of it.

Henri did not like anything that hinted of begging for
attention.

Claudine was patient.

“Henri,” she said soothingly. "One thing you
must understand. We are not at all saying that there is
anything the matter with Hemo-Yum, not a bit. What we are
saying is that without a campaign, without advertising and
marketing, no one will know about it. If no one knows about
it, how will they buy it?

“The issue of education is somewhat separate,”
she continued. “First, we need to get the word out
that another option exists. Then we need to educate, to
explain, to allow our target demographic to sample–I
am sorry it is so, Henri, but the fact of the matter is
that most of us believe that synthetics suck.”

“Not funny, Claudine.”

“I did not mean to make a joke.”

Henri stood up and walked around the conference table,
stretching his legs. His face looked clouded, his
expression opaque. Claudine watched him, trying to read his
mood.

“Let’s switch topics for a moment,” she
said, a bit too cheerily. “I have a proposal to make,
Henri, an idea that in my opinion is quite
brilliant.”

“I’m all ears,” Henri said glumly.

“Hemo-Yum, without a doubt, is going to be the
sensation of our time, I have absolutely no doubt of
that,” she said. “You keep adding more and more
flavors, and the depth and complexity of the flavors is
only getting better,” she said.

Claudine had a bit of a talent for flattery–she knew
exactly which buttons to push, and she knew how to be
subtle enough that her targets never suspected what she was
up to. Henri’s features began to soften.

“So what I propose to you is that we reach out for
the untapped market. Instead of having a product that is
only for men, we–that is, you–develop one for
labrim
as well.” She sat back in her chair,
letting her words sink in.

Henri stood very still. He put his fingers on the long
oblong table, pressed them down, looked out of the window,
and then back at his fingers. He let out a long breath.

“Well,” Henri said.

Claudine was all business. And happily married. But she
couldn’t help noticing, not for the first time, that
Henri de la Motte was a beautiful and deeply attractive
man, never more so than when he was deep in thought, his
brow furrowed, his intelligence at work. She cocked her
head. “What do you think? You see the possibilities?
Both from a profit perspective and also a moral one? A
cultural one?”

Henri was thinking of his mother. His mother who was forced
to live underground in total darkness because she could not
tolerate even the faintest light, even from the dimmest
bulb. Forced to live underground because the sound of the
world on the surface of the earth was also more than she
could stand.

And the worst by far, at least in Henri’s mind, was
that his mother was also forced, twice a month, to bite his
father and drink from him, in order to stay alive. The
thought of his father’s blood made Henri gag. He
could imagine the feel of his father’s aged skin and
his decrepit smell, could imagine his sad, hopeless mother
bending to him one more time, endlessly, for one more
drink, one more suck.

His next thought, after seeing that image in minute and
disturbing detail, was why had he not thought of this
before? How could he have failed like this? Certainly he
respected and liked Claudine, but really–Claudine had
thought of this product that would save his mother so much
agony and give her pleasure instead? Claudine had thought
of it and not him?

Claudine could read his feelings as clearly as if they were
on the front page of a newspaper. “I am sure,”
she said gently, “that you of all people will be able
to come up with not only the correct nutrient profile, but
also a flavor spectrum that
labrim
will go mad
for.” She winked at him.

“Did you just wink at me?” asked Henri.

“I did,” said Claudine, winking again.

“Stop that,” said Henri. “I do not like
winking!” but he was laughing, and so was Claudine.
“All right,” he said. “Let me talk to
your lab guy, I am always forgetting his name. I will need
to order a long list of components–off the top of my
head, I think the recipe for Hemo-Yum for
labrim
is going to be strikingly different than the one for males.
Yes, strikingly different….”

Claudine could see that Henri had more or less disappeared
from the conference room, not physically of course, but
mentally. He was already skipping down the path to his new
concoction, planning and mapping out a schedule, scribbling
away in the spreadsheets of his mind.

That couldn’t have gone better, she thought, on her
way out to a bar for a brief drink with a friend, leaving
him alone, vacantly staring at a wall but working
feverishly inside his head.

When Jo and David woke up, it was dark outside, with the
moon nowhere in sight.

“I think we missed dinner,” said David, putting
his face by Jo’s ear and breathing in deeply, trying
to take in every last molecule of her scent that he could.
Unfortunately, being so close to her neck made his fangs
shoot down, tingling, and the languid pleasure of waking up
after good sex was spoiled by the sudden intense desire to
bite. He rolled away.

Jo sat up. “So what happens when we miss
dinner?” she asked. “Will Marcel get angry if
we go into the kitchen and rummage around?”

“Yes, of course, he’s a chef,” said
David. “The kitchen is his duchy, his kingdom, and no
one else is allowed.” He sat up and reached for his
trousers. “Except, I am the brother of the Marquis
and this is my castle, literally, so Marcel does not make
the rules whether he likes it or not,” he said.

Jo looked quickly at David. She couldn’t tell whether
he was joking or not. He sounded both annoyed at her
question and pleased at being able to do what he liked, no
matter what anyone else felt or thought.

It is always a tricky moment, and a crucial one–the
moment when a lover first does or says something that gives
one pause. It is inevitable. But will the sultry,
distracting haze of hot sex make the consideration of what
was done or said get tossed aside? Or will true attention
be paid?

Way, way back in Jo’s mind, very quietly, barely
audible, her inner voice reminded her that Marianne had
once talked about the importance of noticing how a man
treats children, the help, and animals. Jo jumped out of
bed, moving quickly to get out of the range of that voice
even though the voice was in her own head.

In other words, no, true attention would not be paid, at
least not now.

“I could cook something for you,” said Jo,
pulling on a pair of jeans and a tight T-shirt that she
knew showed off her breasts.

“Cook for me?” said David. He looked confused.
He had never had anyone offer such a thing, not since he
was a little boy and his mother would occasionally shoo the
cooks out of the kitchen and make him something special,
like a custard, which the two of them would eat together,
still warm, sitting at the long wooden table in the kitchen
many years ago, when the stoves were all wood-fired, there
were no refrigerators, and the sounds outside the open door
were all hoofbeats and roosters crowing.

“That would be lovely,” David said, regaining
his manners, but still feeling a little unsettled by her
suggestion. He quickly slid into his clothes and looked at
himself in the long gilt-edged mirror. He was a stunning
looking man, no question about it. His dark hair flopped
over one eye like a forelock, and his shoulder muscles
strained against the fabric of his shirt. He was powerful.
Magnetic. He knew this about himself, and he liked it very
much. “Shall we go then,” he asked, holding out
his arm.