Unbitten (43 page)

It was Jo. Walking with her head down, as though trying to
put as much distance between her and the Château as
she could.

“Jo,” called Henri, trying to find the tone and
volume that would startle her the least, and feeling so
happy to see her.

“Oh!” Jo stopped, yards away from Henri.

“You headed to the barn?”

“Um, yes. Yes, I was!” She stepped sideways,
like a skittish horse.

Henri had the sinking, sick understanding that she was
afraid of him.

Someone must have told her about Callie.

Jo was backing up. “It wasn’t anything,”
she said. “I can get it later!” And she turned
so quickly and ran so fast that before Henri could say a
word, she was around the shrubbery and gone.

David had been pacing in his room for several hours,
interrupted only by Henri’s call, which made him feel
even worse that he already did, something he would not have
thought possible. He was wrecked from lack of sleep. And
also, he had to admit, the alcohol was making him feel like
crap, at least aside from the few hours when it had the
miraculous effect of allowing him to forget his troubles.
He wondered whether possibly biting a second drunk man
right after the first would make the effect last longer?
And how long would it be before Angélique forbade
him to go to the wine cellar for more bottles to give to
the guests?

David no longer cared about the
chambre
d’hôte
business. It was not that he had
changed his mind about it, it was just that it did not
enter his thoughts anymore. He was no longer a host or a
businessman or a brother or a lover, he was only a vampire
who needed the alcohol-laden blood of drunkards, night
after night, and every bit of his energy went to making
sure he got it.

But oh, this was not good, he thought, looking at himself
in the mirror and seeing a roundness to his belly. I look
like I am with child, he thought, horrified. But not
horrified enough to change what he was doing.

He picked up his boar-bristle brush, one he had been given
by his mother for his birthday in 1902, and brushed his
long dark hair, then bent over and brushed it again with
his head upside down, letting the brush linger on the
strokes, and then digging the bristles into his scalp
before the next stroke.

He liked brushing his hair. It was relaxing, it was
calming, it allowed him to sweep his agitated thoughts
away, at least for a moment. And he liked how glossy and
straight his hair looked afterwards.

Now, finally, darkness had fallen. The guests would be
eating soon, and drinking, and it was almost time for David
to hunt his newest victim. He had made sure that ample wine
had been provided for dinner, and he had a couple of
bandages in his back pocket. His fangs were tingling in
anticipation.

He noted, however, that his cock was…dead. Not even
the barest stirring. It seemed that his pining for blood
suffused with alcohol had made his formerly prodigious
sexual appetite dwindle to nothing. But the interesting
thing about a loss of desire, he realized, is that once
it’s lost, you just don’t care anymore.

David looked at himself in the mirror again, checking from
all sides and the back, and feeling satisfied–or at
least as satisfied as he could be with that incipient
pot-belly ruining the drape of his jacket–he left his
room and shot down the stairs and into the night. He
intended to have a brisk walk around the grounds and end up
near the dining room, where he would await the
night’s prospects.

Dominic and Maloney had not spent long at the hayloft; it
was quickly obvious that Pierre and Roxanne were no longer
there. Dominic smelled blood, and knew that Roxanne, having
recently fed, was going to be a more formidable quarry than
he had been hoping she would be.

“She’ll have all her speed back,” Dominic
grumbled to Maloney.

“I’ll grab her,” said Maloney.

“You do that,” said Dominic. “Thing is
though, you’re strong, no doubt about that. But for
speed, you can’t match a vampire who’s just had
a good meal. No fault of yours, bro, it’s just how
we’re made.”

Maloney pouted for close to a mile before he forgot what he
was mad about and started talking about almond pastries
again.

“All the bakeries are closed,” said Dominic.
“And yes, before you ask–even the one around
the corner from the inn, your favorite one. You’re
just going to have to wait until morning.”

“Hmphf,” said Maloney. “Well, where are
we eating dinner, then? I am hungry. Dominic, you
don’t ever take it seriously when I tell you that I
am hungry!”

“I promise you, as soon as we have Roxanne, or the
documents from Henri, either one, we will have a big,
celebratory meal. In a restaurant. After dark, of
course.”

“It’s dark now! So can we go eat?”

“Roxanne first,” Dominic said wearily.

“Where is she?” asked Maloney.

“We’re looking for her. That’s what
we’ve been doing for the last few hours, and what we
will continue to do until we find her.”

“Do you think she’s going to be on the side of
the road?”

“No, Maloney, I do not. But we have searched
everywhere in the village, and also at Pierre’s
hayloft, and the only place left is the Château, so
that is where we are headed. Now please, no more questions.
Just keep your eyes peeled–spiked-up hair, dressed in
black, remember–and grab her if you see her.”

The imposing gates were just ahead, but Dominic and Maloney
walked around the side of the property along the fence line
until they came to the short tunnel Maloney had dug the
first time they had broken into the Château’s
grounds. Apparently no one had found it, because aside from
a bit of erosion thanks to rain, it looked the same as when
they had last used it.

Jo was not crying, or anywhere close to crying, which was
interesting, she thought, considering how violently things
had changed from a few hours ago. She had been floating on
a cloud of romantic happiness after her time with Henri,
feeling certain, this time, that she had found her man, and
that whatever problems might come their way, they could
surmount them together.

She had thought that finally,
finally
, she had
gotten out from under the hazy inability to judge a
trustworthy man from a jerk, the legacy of her father, who
played both roles so well, as he bounced from drunk to
sober and around and around, dragging his family after him.

Henri was stalwart, she thought. Consistent. Incredibly
strong. And, she had been thinking all day, as she did her
work with Drogo, he was also flaming hot. That thing he did
with his tongue–

But then, on the staircase, pure chance as she was running
up to her room to change after a long ride, she had run
into the
gendarme
, Durant. Who spoke with her
about Callie Armstrong.

David had killed a girl. Sucked her dry.

Jo had eaten dinner once with Callie at her table. She
remembered a vibrant girl– funny, pretty, young.

Durant had also hinted that Henri was a vampire as well. Jo
realized that she had known all along, deep down, but had
kept hoping that maybe that little detail didn’t have
to matter so much. Maybe it would turn out to be nothing,
in the long run. He loved her, right? He and his brother
were vampires, OK, but they were…
nice
vampires.

As Marianne said, she
minimized
.

Well, she wasn’t minimizing now. She was afraid for
her life. She figured that the last night she spent with
David, when he had bitten her, she had been
this
close
to ending up like Callie Armstrong–and how
long would it take, how many nights would she spend with
Henri, before he lost control, just as David had?

And maybe David had not just lost control. Maybe he had
intended to kill that girl, to suck every last drop of her
blood. Or just not cared, one way or the other. She was
like a container to him, really, just an empty bottle to
toss away after he was done.

They weren’t the same man, and Jo didn’t forget
that.

But they are
vampires. It’s what they do
,
she remembered David saying.

Right now she wanted to find Marianne, wherever she had
disappeared to, and get the hell away from the
Château and the la Mottes as fast as they possibly
could.

She was running now, down the gravel path towards the
stables. She kept glancing over her shoulder to see if
Henri was following. She felt a lingering pang at the
expression on his face a few minutes ago; he had looked so
hurt when she had backed away from him, but she
wouldn’t allow herself to keep thinking about that.
Or about how she had introduced Marianne, her dearest
friend in the world, to this nest of murdering vampires.

Thierry too? No, it couldn’t be.

She slowed to a jog when she was near the stables, then a
walk. She stopped. What was that? Such a lot of birds
calling for a cold November night! Jo looked towards the
forest, about a football field away, and there on the
right, just emerging from the total darkness of the trees,
walked some dark figures. It looked like they were carrying
something on their shoulders. And they were the ones making
the clamoring bird calls.

Jo looked intently at them–she couldn’t quite
tell, but they appeared to be the same women she had seen
in the forest that day, a day that felt years distant. She
had practically forgotten all about them, except that they
had been responsible for the day when Henri had come after
her, when she had ridden the moped with her arms around
him….

She shook her head to keep thoughts of him from rushing in
from any direction. What
was
that they were
carrying? One more glance behind her to see if she was
being followed, and then she walked towards the women for a
better look.

Just then, Dominic and Maloney appeared to the left of the
stables, walking along the edge of the forest from the
direction of the lake, having shimmied through the tunnel
under the fence. Their attention was drawn to the women and
what they were carrying as well–although all of that
would be difficult for anyone to ignore, given the
deafening shrieking and calling and hooting.

The shrieking and calling and hooting brought Tristan
Durant and Roland out of the kitchen where they had been
chatting with Marcel. Before running in the direction of
the noise, Roland went to their car and grabbed the
launcher recommended by Jessica Winston, and made sure he
had plenty of stakes in his jacket pocket.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,”
Tristan said to him, but his face was tense and rather
pale. “Be careful,” he said, and he gave Roland
a pat on the shoulder as he took off.

Jo was mesmerized. The women were carrying what looked like
a homemade, rustic litter with long poles attached, and on
the litter was…a body? A woman’s body, on a
bed of greenery? She started to run straight for them,
unconcerned about anything except the woman lying there, in
the clutches of those…witches.