Unbitten (5 page)

Hemo-Yum, on the other hand, was designed by Henri to feed
a vampire, body and soul. It contained all the minerals,
the vitamins, the
x
factors, the
y
factors, and the
jillup
that real human blood
contained. And–no small thing, not in France, where
gourmet cooking was the national pastime–it tasted
heavenly. Not exactly the same as human blood, but just as
good. For a vampire, it was like getting a bottle full of
his very favorite flavor, whether that was Scandinavian
blondes or dark-haired Italians, stunning Thais or
Californian bikini-clad teenagers, all with a slight
Hemo-Yum twist. Hemo-Yum came in twenty-two flavors and
Henri planned to keep expanding that number until he had
covered every single physical type of woman a vampire could
possibly desire.

Vampires, by and large, liked variety. They were not, when
it came to satisfying themselves, what you would consider
loyal.

The reason Henri liked chemistry so much was that it was
close to the magic he believed his ancestors used to know,
but that had been forgotten over the ages. Hemo-Yum was a
kind of magic. It would allow vampires to live among humans
without having to risk being discovered, and then killed,
because their need to bite became so strong they lost
control. That had been happening since the beginning of the
vampire times, and Henri was going to put an end to it.

And sales of Hemo-Yum were without question the best chance
he and David had to fill the coffers of the Château
and no longer have to submit to this endless parade of
paying guests.

At least, that was how Henri looked at it. He feared that
David had begun to like having new people to bite every
couple of days. He feared it was way more than a matter of
like
and had gotten to the point of
need
.
He and David had been fighting since they were children,
and it would not surprise Henri if this business of the
paying guests turned into a battle that was harsher than
any so far in the last two hundred years.

When he got to the stone building surrounded by ancient
trees, he pushed a button on the doorframe which activated
an iris recognition camera. Henri opened his eyes wide and
stared into the lens, and the door slid open.

Every time he came to his lab it gave him a thrill of
satisfaction to unlock the door. Creating that iris
recognition software and the device that used it had been
one of the most intellectually satisfying projects he had
undertaken. Of course, the humans had something similar,
but their irises did not work the same way; in fact, their
entire eye structure was different, and Henri realized that
if he wanted such a system to protect his lab, he would
have to design and build it himself, so that is just what
he did.

The minute he got inside, he could smell something was
wrong. He lifted his face and drew in a few long breaths
through his nose. Yes, someone had been here, been inside
his lab, where no one was allowed.
How?

He strode over to a long table strewn with papers. He had
planned to get right to work on Hemo-Yum, but there was
something else he wanted to check. The file on the new
bandage–he had left it right on the left-hand corner,
he was sure of it. Quickly he rummaged about, thinking it
must have gotten hidden under something else. Not there.
Henri couldn’t believe it. No one could enter the lab
except himself.

But the file was gone.

And that smell…

Finally, Angélique reached Pierre Aucoin.

“You idiot,” she hissed into her cell.
“What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t doing anything,” said Pierre
defensively. “I had just gotten up and was heading
down to the bar to meet some buddies.”

“You don’t have any buddies,”
Angélique said harshly.

“Aw, now you’re going to make me cry,”
said Pierre.

“I’m telling you, Pierre, you don’t have
any more chances. David has helped you out for the last
time. If Durant catches you again, you are on your own. So
I suggest you do whatever you have to do to get yourself
under control.”

“What would really help,” he said, “is if
you came over. Right now would be good. You have an ass
without equal, Angélique. So what I’m
thinking–”

Angélique tapped
END
CONVERSATION
and threw her phone
on the bed. That scum, she thought. Honestly, sometimes
I’d like to stake him myself.

David meanwhile stepped through the main doorway of the
Château, out onto the terraced stone steps, and
looked up at the night sky. The moon was not much more than
a fingernail, so the stars were visible, billions of them,
with the whitish drift of the Milky Way winding through
them. The air was crisp.

He was hungry.

He had just finished a lovely dinner made by their
exceptional cook, duck in some kind of sauce, he
hadn’t paid much attention. It’s not that he
didn’t enjoy filling his stomach–he was French,
being indifferent to food was an impossibility– but
other hungers, to David, meant so much more. Way in the
back of his mind, he was becoming a little bit concerned.
Not that long ago, his need to drink blood was occasional.
He loved it, he looked forward to it, but it was not ruling
his life the way it was now.

It had felt to him lately as though he was terrifically
bored, tired of listening to Angélique drone on
about accounts and profit margins, sick of Henri talking
about his synthetic blood and stupid bandages and saving
all of vampire-kind, had it with the inescapable pattern of
getting up every night and going through the motions of
eating meals and being charming and taking care to look
good.

The truth was, David was a little depressed. And the only
thing that gave him anything to look forward to was his
nightly snack. It was the one time when his body was alive,
throbbing, humming, looking for release. When nothing else
mattered.

And the only way to get that release was to sink his fangs
into a woman’s flesh, and drink, and drink, and
drink.

If David had been a different sort of person, or even a
different sort of vampire, he might have tried to figure
out what was going on. But he was not, and he did not.

He knew that he could stroll down to Henri’s lab and
Henri would be more than happy to give him some of that
synthetic dreck he was making down there. But David had
three problems with Hemo-Yum. First, the taste was sort of
off. It was like a wine that was not quite ready to drink.
Sure, you could get it down, it didn’t make you gag
or anything, but was it delicious? No.

Second, David did not want to give Henri the satisfaction.
It made him feel…dependent. Which made him shudder.

Third, and most important, the delivery system for the
blood was almost as crucial to his pleasure as the blood
itself. Just as a heroin addict comes to love needles, to
worship the tubing he ties his arm off with and the spoon
he cooks his gunk in, so David adored female flesh. He
loved the flash of power he felt when his fangs shot out.
He loved brushing back a woman’s hair from her neck,
and the sight and smell and touch of her pulsing artery.

And the feeling of plunging his fangs into that neck and
drinking from that artery? It launched him into space, into
the infinite, his entire body pulsing along with the
woman’s heart, pulsing with a kind of bliss that he
could find no other way.

Yes, sometimes he fucked her beforehand. And during. And
after. And oh yes, the fucking was not to be dismissed, not
at all. But to consider fucking without the biting? Meh.

One thing that separated David from a lot of other
vampires–he didn’t just want to possess the
woman, sexually and arterially. He wanted her to
want
him to do it.
He wanted her to cry out with pleasure
when he bit her, to moan, to beg. He wanted, as he
satisfied himself, to be the object of surpassing desire.

Not like that village idiot Pierre, who just wanted to get
his wick wet and snack on whomever he could scare into a
lonely alleyway.

So, here he was, on a calm October night, his desire
growing by the minute as he stood on his front steps
looking at the stars.

That American woman, he thought. It’s her fault
I’m so hungry tonight. Just having a woman–any
woman–living nearby, whom he would be seeing every
day, triggered his need for attention. He wanted her
desperately, but not because Jo was Jo, but because
she…existed. He wanted her to look for him, to wait
for him, to get hot whenever he was in the same room with
her. He wanted to smell her excitement, to see her
breathless expression when finally, he came to pay her a
visit.

This was how David felt whenever a human woman was near.
The women believed that his attention meant he really cared
for them, and they reveled in being the object of his
intense desire–they had no idea just how long the
line was that they had just joined. A line that stretched
back for centuries, and was almost always at least two or
three deep at any given moment.

He allowed himself to fantasize for just an instant about
biting Jo and sucking on her neck. There was something
about her energy, her excitement, that had gotten to him.
He wondered whether she liked sex and was any good at it.
Henri would kill me, thought David with a sigh. And I need
her to ride my horses.

What about that single woman staying in the cottage? he
wondered. She’s a little old for my taste, but God, I
have
to drink. Now.

And with that thought, he trotted off towards the row of
stone cottages some distance from the Château, each
filled with paying guests, or, depending on your point of
view, filled with appetizers, main course, and dessert.

When Jo woke up, it took several moments for her to piece
together where she was and what that meant. She saw the
bright sunshine streaming in the long windows and falling
across the bed and the puffy down comforter. She stretched
and smiled at the feeling on her legs of crisp, expensive
sheets. Jo had not grown up with luxury, to put it mildly,
and even though she had worked for a lot of rich people,
she had not lived with them, and this was the first time
she had ever woken up in a bed dressed as this one was: a
fringed brocade canopy overhead; pillows in several shapes
and sizes, some embroidered, some with lace around the
edges; a comforter that billowed and felt like air on her
body; and God in heaven above, the sheets.

These sheets, she thought–a person could
understandably commit crimes to have these sheets. She
grinned and flopped over and tried to drift back to sleep,
but it was too sunny and she was too curious about what the
day would hold.

She quickly dressed in riding clothes, slid on her boots,
and made her way downstairs, looking for Angélique
or someone who could give her a cup of coffee.

As she descended the final set of stairs, she saw a man
dressed in livery–was that Albert?