Rene sat on the bed again, this time at the foot, propping herself up with one arm. Dark circles surrounded too bright eyes; she looked a little confused.
“Are you okay?” Carol asked.
“Nothing a drink wouldn’t cure.”
The others said nothing.
“Why don’t you give her something?”
“Un unh, kiddo. She’s at the outer limits already.”
“Look, I think she has a drinking problem—”
“No kidding! The alcohol’s seeping through her pores like poison vapor.”
“She’s used to drinking, it keeps her stable. Maybe if we...”
“I? Have a drinking problem?” Rene laughed. “Tell me, Carol, where did you get your degree to practice therapy?” Her hand slipped from the bed and she fell over onto her side.
Carol had never seen Rene like this. And in truth, she felt as in control as Rene looked out of control.
“I came to meet your vampires, and have,” Rene said, righting herself. “And they are a disappointment.”
Carol looked around. It was clear from the shared expressions that Rene was a major complication.
“Julien woke early,” Gerlinde said. “When the sun dropped, he found her plastered.” She unscrewed the cap and turned the silver flask over. “Empty.”
“He’s wonderful,” Rene gushed. “Just as you described him, Carol. Vibrant. Ancient. He knows me, deeply, I can feel it. His hypnotic powers are nothing short of miraculous.” Her hands trembled and even her head shook a little.
“Rene, you shouldn’t be here. Why don’t you—”
“We don’t have time for this now,” Jeanette said. “Julien has determined that she hadn’t told anyone else about us. Yet. The rest is true, about the tapes.” She nodded to a chair and Carol sat. “We’ll have to deal with Rene after Sunday.”
Morianna said, “Tonight the ritual lasts from sunset until sunrise. Many hours. You must take the blood from André three times. Chloe has offered to prepare a mixture you may wish to drink throughout the night, to aid your cause.”
“Cause and effect,” Rene said to no one.
“What’s that mean?” Carol asked Morianna.
It was Chloe who answered. “Tonight will be hard for André. I have a herbal potion that causes the body to produce a scent which may disguise the blood scent.”
“So he’ll be distracted from my blood and won’t attack me?”
“Hopefully.”
“Is there a money-back guarantee?” Carol joked.
No one laughed but Rene, who giggled, “Blood-sense.”
“Okay,” Carol sighed. “I’ll drink it.”
There was silence for a moment until Jeanette said, “I think you should tell her everything.”
Carol stared at each of the females in the room, all but Rene, whom she avoided looking at—Rene was added stress she didn’t need right now. The others were tense, except for Susan, who was probably too young to understand what they were worried about. “Well, will somebody tell me?”
“Kiddo, it’s an aphrodisiac,” Gerlinde said.
“Sex and blood and death!” Rene clapped her hands together like a child. “A party!”
“Aphrodisiac? You mean it will make me feel sexual?” Carol asked.
“Yeah,” Gerlinde said. “Your body will emit... odors. Know what I mean?”
“You mean I’ll have a sexual smell?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“Well, won’t that arouse André? I mean I’m not supposed to let him touch me, right? Isn’t this dangerous?”
Morianna said, “The scent of blood is more of a danger.”
“If André was like Karl you could just read him The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” Gerlinde said. “But André’s brain’s in a different place and we all know where.”
“Look.” Carol glanced around the room from left to right.
“If you think it will help, I’ll do it.”
Finally Chloe said, “We can’t guarantee anything, but it will probably work. However, there are consequences.”
“Death is the consequence of sex,” Rene intoned solemnly.
Carol wished Rene would just shut up. “Consequences? What?”
“It could become painful,” Jeanette told her. “It’s a blend of Saw Palm Etto, Damiana, Celandine leaves and a few other ingredients. It will cause you to sweat a lot and you’ll probably feel highly aroused for a while. It stimulates hormonal secretions that produce vaginal fluids; that’s the effect you want. The problem is, it’s uncontrollable.”
“In what way?”
“It will be like being on the verge of an orgasm. After an hour or so you might orgasm spontaneously. Eventually the contractions could become unpleasant.”
“Sounds like giving birth,” Carol said.
“The birth of death,” Rene mumbled.
The hairs on the back of Carol’s neck rose. She glanced at Rene. Something had happened to her. She was more than drunk, she’d lost her mind. Carol just couldn’t deal with it now.
“Similar,” Chloe said, bringing Carol back to the moment. “Of course, you don’t have to take it. It’s up to you. What I suggest is this: I’ll mix the herbs and leave them with you. If you feel everything is going all right, don’t use it. If you sense things are getting out of hand—with André—then you might consider it.”
“That sounds okay,” Carol said. But she was worried. “Do you think things will get out of hand?”
No one answered her and for once Rene said nothing.
Gerlinde and Jeanette pulled Rene from the bed and moved her to a chair. She screamed and struggled as they tied her arms to the chair’s arms.
“No! Don’t do that,” Carol said. “She’s harmless.”
“That, kiddo, I don’t buy.”
“She just has a few problems.”
“The problem is time,” Rene said.
“She is a problem and she’ll screw things up,” Gerlinde said.
Carol shook her head. “She was there for me. I owe her.”
“The soul must go where it needs to. Obligations should not mar the preordained path,” Morianna said.
Carol was not ready to hand over her humanity so easily. Her relationship with Rene went beyond therapy, even beyond friendship; they were the same species. Carol knew Rene was not being helpful but she needed her present. It was like holding onto this world while reaching out to the next world. She feared a moment might come when she would lose her grasp on both and free fall through space alone.
Morianna must have seen that need in her. “As she wishes,” the old one said, and Gerlinde and Jeanette immediately let Rene go.
As they left the room, Rene babbling incoherently, terror clutched at Carol’s spine. She had to put Rene out of her thoughts. There was too much going on and she couldn’t afford to lose it for even a second.
When the women entered the third floor, Morianna built another fire. Everyone but Carol and Chloe sat as they had on the previous night. Tonight Carol faced André directly. Now she could see him clearly and her earlier observations in the basement were confirmed. He looked painfully thin, skin taut over bone, pallid face a little wild. His lips too were tightly compressed and his eyes feverish. He stared directly at her and she had the mental image of a hungry dog, gaze riveted to a slab of meat. Rene’s shifting distracted him from time to time. Eyes closed, her inebriated body, so close to his, weaved. Carol knew André found Rene’s blood tempting. As tempting as he found her own.
Behind André the longest glass wall exposed swaying pines and cedars covering the mountainside. Through the large skylight Carol could see over the tree tops. The moon swelled tonight and she wondered about the old myths connecting madness with the full moon.
In the right corner of the room Chloe sat crushing herbs with a white stone pestle into a marble mortar. When she finished she deposited them into a heavy cast-iron teapot, poured in boiling water from the electric kettle and let the herbs
steep. Minutes later she filtered the tea into a large black wooden bowl. She placed the bowl on the carpet in front of Carol, in front of the red rose between her and André, now in full bloom.
After Chloe took her place behind André, Morianna said, “You must take from André.”
Not so soon! Carol thought. But she was determined not to hesitate tonight. She stood right away and went to him, kneeling in front. She had to look away from his frozen steel eyes. He raised a trembling hand; his nails had grown overnight into yellow, dagger-sharp claws. The blue veins in his arms strained against the skin. The smell coming from him reminded her of wet earth.
She watched him slice open the vein in his neck. Immediately she pressed her lips to the flowing wound and drank the blood, only stopping when she heard Morianna say, “Enough.”
Shaking, she returned to her carpet and faced him again, wiping the moisture from her lips with the back of a hand, aware that it did not taste as repugnant tonight and she did not feel nauseous. The blood seemed almost refreshing, filling, like a sweet wine. She might be filled, but André was still hungry.
The early part of the night went fairly smoothly, although clearly he was suffering. Rene drifted off and lay on the floor. Now she was even closer to André. Just after the church bells rang twelve times and Carol followed the descent of the perfect pearl of a moon behind the mountain top, then watched it reappear, Morianna again told her, “Receive.”
This time as Carol approached André, she felt more hesitant. Over the hours she’d watched the changes in him and they weren’t pretty. Agitated, he shifted every few seconds.
Intense pain blended with the hostility on his face. He was kinetically as aware of Rene as he was of Carol, the only beings in this room with their own blood pumping through their veins.
She knelt before him. His cold predatory energy startled her. She tried to drink the blood as quickly as she could, all the while aware of his quick breathing and the thin sheen of sweat covering his flesh. The barrier between them was rapidly dissolving. She found this both exciting and terrifying.
When the clock struck three, Rene awoke. Immediately she began babbling nonsense, edging closer to André, catching his attention. Carol knew she would have to do something. He watched both women with hawk eyes, alternating his attention. Rene moved very close. André focused all of his attention on her and as he did so she became frenetic. André looked tense enough to snap. Carol felt afraid to make a sudden move.
She glanced to her left. Michael dozed, his head on Susan’s lap, his feet on Claude’s. The others sat still as statues; apparently they would not interfere. It was all up to her. She picked up the black bowl, swirled the greenish-yellow contents then took a sip. The foul, bitter peppery taste made her gag. André’s head snapped in her direction. She forced down another sip, hoping it would work twice as fast. Every few minutes she drank a little more.
The room was becoming extremely warm. Sweat dripped from under her arms and breasts, down her back and the backs of her knees. Her nipples hardened. Carol realized she felt sensual, erotic. Her body swayed a little, the same pace as the treetops. She looked across the room. André’s attention had shifted away from Rene. His features were ghastly—flesh white and thin as rice paper, eyes hard, cold steel points, laced with obsession. Sweat glistened on his body and matted his hair to his head. His beard had grown and his chest hair lengthened. His stomach expanded and contracted rapidly as he panted. She watched him fidget, his hands twitching and brushing his body as if insects crawled all over him.
Within an hour Carol was writhing. Sweat poured off her.
Her hair was so wet that large drops of moisture dripped from the ends onto her shoulders. She worried she would dehydrate. Within, her hot vagina rippled at an alarming rate, slicking the insides of her thighs with fluids. Her nipples had become achingly hard and she found it almost impossible not to touch herself. She, like André, panted. She ended up on her hands and knees, crying, moaning, trying to dig herself into the floor like a dog digging earth. At the height of this orgasmic state she heard the clock chime six times and Morianna say, “Receive.”
Carol glanced around the room quickly. Everyone looked so vital, so alive, so sexual. All the men seemed especially handsome and virile. She even found herself attracted to the women. Rene reached out a hand and mumbled something that sounded like, “My baby.” Carol tilted her head up and stared at André, who stared back. A powerful invisible vibration like ultra violet waves of light connected them, seducing her forward.
She couldn’t stand and had to slither across the carpet to him on her belly, like a snake. Her vision blurred, her hearing distorted; was that her breathing or his or Rene’s or the collective breath of this group of carnal beings. Only when she knelt in front of him, her body weaving, was she certain of the direction she faced.
A scent came off her that even she could smell. Animal, sexual, female, magnetic. She felt in heat, wet and open, throbbing, her genitals pulsating fire, a fire he could extinguish. She thought about thrusting her desire under his nose so he’d get the point.
But André’s body more than responded to that scent. He looked purely male to her, an energy that could satisfy her excruciating need, that could dampen the flames of painful longing. The space between them crackled with an electrical charge that could have lit the city. In a lucid moment she thought, at least it’s working. And then, I’ll never be able to keep him from touching me. Or me from touching him.
He cut the vein. She could barely keep her hands at her sides while she drank what tasted like good wine. When it was over and light began to enter the sky, they all departed for their rooms.
Gerlinde stopped on the second floor to get Rene settled for the day. As Carol passed that room Rene called out to her,
“They’re real, Carol, very real,” her voice close to hysteria.
“She’ll be okay,” Gerlinde assured her. “Things are going great. Just don’t let him jump your bones.”
André had gone ahead. Carol made her way alone into the basement, half walking, half crawling. She wondered if the contractions would go on all day and if she could relieve some of the tension herself. André’s body.
Carol knew that the scent was still having the desired effect on him but her need was so great that it no longer mattered. In fact, she had reached such a state that she really could not have cared less about his passions. She directed all her efforts towards quenching her own.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Carol awoke to blackness. A growl rolled through the darkness, from her left.
After a deliciously torturous day, she had finally collapsed into an exhausted sleep. Now she snapped awake. Something was really wrong. Instinctively she lay still, barely breathing.
The growling intensified. She heard heavy panting. A pungent scent reminded her of wild animals caged in a zoo.
In the darkness her heart banged against her chest wall and she broke out in a cold sweat. She was trapped; at any moment he would attack her. She stayed immobile listening to his guttural sounds until the tone deepened and she realized staying here was more dangerous; she had to get out.
With slow but deliberate movements, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood. Carefully she walked towards the door, feeling her way along the wall. She slid the deadbolt slowly. She had just turned the knob when he sprang.
He slammed into the wood beside her. Hot breath seared her cheek. He snarled in her ear. Carol had an instantaneous flash, the snap of a psychic shutter locking onto the future, a realization that if she didn’t get out now she would not leave this room alive or in any shape to come back from the dead.
“André? Carol?” Susan’s voice came from the other side of the door. “Morianna wants you to come upstairs now.” Carol couldn’t speak. Her hand clutched the turned knob. She pulled the door inward. His weight kept it closed. Suddenly he moved back a little. She got the door open wide enough to slip through.
Susan was
already at the top of the stairs and Carol wanted to call out to her to wait, but making unnecessary sounds felt risky.
She walked through the basement as calmly as she could, willing herself not to run away in fear, aware that he would be at her throat in a second if she did.
Patiently she climbed each step to the kitchen, turned, walked to the hallway, then ascended the stairs to the second floor. All the while André hovered close behind, stalking her, a cold wind chilling her body and soul.
She entered the bedroom; the women were waiting. Rene sat on the bed tied and gagged. Her skin without makeup was lined and sallow, her eyes prominent with a demented glint. Chloe. “Why the hell did you make this three days? He’d have a hard enough time with one. I think you’re trying to sabotage this!”
“Sit down Carol,” Chloe said. “You’re upset. What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong!” Carol continued standing, her limbs trembling. “André’s turned into something else. He almost attacked me downstairs. He’ll rip my throat out before the night’s over and the two of you are to blame!”
“An explanation is probably needed,” Morianna said in a gentle but firm tone. Carol glared at her. “André is unlike the rest of us in this regard: his faith in his own power is weak. If we were to have permitted the transformation during the first night and, in the event he had been able to carry it through, he would have regarded it as a fluke. It would not have altered him. Two nights may have had the desired effect but they may not have. But three is a magical number; the seers of old explained it as the number of change itself. More than one transformation can occur.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Carol screamed, holding her head. “I can’t understand all this mumbo jumbo. This could have been over by now. I could have been like all of you, and with my son.”
Jeanette said. “Morianna’s trying to tell you that she, Chloe and Julien came up with this ritual as much for you as for him.”
“Well, thanks a lot!” Carol said bitterly. “Don’t do me any more favors because I don’t think I can survive them.”
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