by Nancy Gideon
Noticing the direction of her gaze, Gerard smiled silkily. “Would you like a sip? I think you’ll find it a tolerable bouquet. Not as well aged as I would prefer, but full bodied and quite—satisfying.” He dipped his forefinger in, then drew it out, stained in red. Nicole stood motionless, her eyes dilating, shimmering like hot gold as he touched that fingertip to her lips, rubbing it gently along the damp swell. She let her tongue reach out for just a tentative taste.
And then her teeth were snapping together. He jerked his hand back with an indulgent laugh.
“Not hungry. Bèlla, you are starving. Here. Enjoy.”
And he brought the cup toward her lips.
“What is it? Wine?”
“The nectar of life, my sweet. A good year. Drink.”
“Gerardo—”
Bianca’s cautioning came a moment too late, for Nicole’s hand wrapped around his and guided the horn to her mouth. And she drank.
It was warm, she realized with some surprise, warm and thick and salty. Familiar . . . forbidden . . .
And then she was gulping it down, nearly choking in her haste until he took control of the cup with his other hand and eased it back.
“Slowly. Slowly.” Over the rim of the horn, his eyes burned with a clear crystal light.
Then the heat was inside her, streaking down her limbs, flooding her senses, soothing away the ravaging ache of emptiness until she was lightheaded and gasping. She let go of the cup as everything around flared to sudden, brilliant proportions. Her heart was beating so fast, so fast, she couldn’t keep up.
“What—?” That pathetic syllable was all she could manage.
“Imbecile!”
She heard Bianca’s voice shrill over the thunder in her ears. And then his rumbling reply, “How was I to know?” And then she felt the support of his arms about her and the texture of his coat, so well defined she could differentiate between the threads woven tightly together. And she could feel her heart pounding in her head and his, beneath her cheek. The enormity of everything around her came pressing in, forcing her down as if drowning in sensation. She struggled.
“Help—help me!”
“Shhhh. Cara, amore di bambíno, don’t fight against it. Let go. Enjoy. Don’t be afraid.”
Her fingers were grappling desperately in his shirtfront as dizziness overcame her. He lifted her easily when consciousness gave way under great, almost drunken swells. And the last thing she heard was his soothing vow. “Don’t be frightened. We will care for you.”
And very gently, he carried her slack figure over to one of the sofas and stretched her out upon it. He went down on one knee beside her, cradling a limp hand between his.
“Does she still live?” Bianca had come to stand behind him, her mood impatient and angry.
“Oh, yes. Just overcome, I think. I thought she was one of us.”
“I wonder what she is.” A scheming light came into her eyes, one he didn’t like. His posture grew defensive.
“What she is, is mine. As you promised.”
“I never did.”
“Yes, you promised me the first taste and I will not let you harm her until I’ve had it.” He rubbed her inner wrist with his mouth. “So warm. So vital.” And a glaze of desire covered his stare. Bianca gave him a hard shove.
“Remind yourself to keep her from harm.”
He laid the fragile hand upon a slow-rising bosom and knelt there, studying her features with an almost loverlike rapture. “She is so like them.”
“But is she more of Gino or of that pallid mortal mother? I wonder.”
“I didn’t bring her to you so you could vent your revenge upon her.”
Bianca glared down at him. “Sentimental fool. Think if you cannot have the mother, the daughter will do?”
His glare frosted for a moment, then he relaxed and laughed with typical negligence. “It would be like coveting my own child.”
“You have no children, idiot. You have no heart. Yet you moon away the decades for some silly creature as if you were capable of passions other than those of thirst for the kill.”
“And you still hate her because that soft mortal woman was able to capture and hold that which you could not.”
She snarled in fury, seizing him by the lapels of his coat, jerking him up and flinging him away so hard he went spinning. He was laughing as he slowed himself in midair, pausing, then spiraling downward with a balletic grace. He might laugh, but he was too wise to rejoin the challenge.
“Come, mía amora, our meal grows cold as we argue over meaningless things. Leave her. She will not awake before we do.” And he walked away without another glance at the young woman sprawled upon the couch, only to pause in the entrance to the drawing room and give a menacing chuckle. “Where are you going, my love? I thought we were to have dinner together.”
And then there came a wretched cry from another woman, a young street woman dragging herself across the tiled floor on shaky hands and knees. She was already too weak to escape, already too close to dying from the slash he’d made in her wrist to drain her blood into the drinking horn. Yet she made a valiant attempt to reach up for the door. Only to have him catch her wrist in a cruel grasp to haul her to her feet. She no longer saw the charming gentleman who’d brought her to his palatial rooms with husky innuendos. But she didn’t see what he really was, either. Not yet.
“You cannot leave so soon. We haven’t shared the main course.”
She was making pitiful noises in her throat, trying to plea for a life he cared nothing about. She might well have been an insect. Though he was smiling, the facade of gentility, of humanity itself, was falling from him. His eyes welled up with a lurid light, gleaming red and silver. She tried to cry out as he drew her up in a mockingly tender embrace.
“Oh, lovely, why do you protest? Did I not promise you a delightful surprise?”
His smile widened to reveal hideous fangs. She was shrieking as he softly hissed, “Surprise.”
Chapter Nine
“MARCHAND?” Nicole moaned his name softly as a gentle sweeping movement rumpled over her hair.
“Who is this Marchand? Is he your lover?”
The soothing accented voice forced her to open reluctant eyes. She felt so heavy, so satiated. So full. The urgent gnaw of hunger was absent for the first time in months. She wanted to do nothing more than sleep. But a vague awareness that she was not among her friends made her struggle against the lethargy. She looked up groggily to see Gerard perched upon the edge of the couch. His smile was small and serene. Her hand was enfolded between his.
“How do you feel, mío amáte?”
“I am not his lover. I am not yours either.”
He chuckled. “Much better I see. Please forgive me for last night. I didn’t know it was your first time.”
She considered his statement and all it might mean, then pushed herself upright in an indignant confusion, shoving his hands away. “What first time?”
His features took on an impenetrable cast for some seconds, and she was reminded of Bianca and the inanimate furnishings of the house. Not a flicker of movement was betrayed upon his handsome face. Then he grinned wide and gave a lusty laugh.
“Oh! Cara, you flatter me.” His fingertips stroked down her bare arm in a gesture that was anything but soothing as he crooned, “Have no fear. I have no designs upon your—virtue. You must think of me like family. I loved your father so, and you are very like him.”
Then more of what he’d said earlier became clear in her blurred mind. “Last night?” What had happened to the hours of the night? She had no memory of them.
“You slept the entire day through. The drink quite overwhelmed you.”
That she remembered; the wildly satisfying taste, the flame racing through her veins. “W-what was in it?”<
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His smile grew bland, his eyes amused. “An old recipe. One I was certain you must have tried. As I said, forgive me. Did you—did you like it?”
“I—I don’t know.” The sensations had been so powerful, so draining and filling all at once. But like it?
Yes. Yes, she had. But she was suddenly afraid to admit that.
“You will get used to it in time and savor the rush of it through you, the quickening of life. But then, you are warm and soft and very—”
“Gerard.”
He glanced up and smirked in the face of Bianca’s annoyance.
“Shut up, fool.”
“Ah, but my love, I was only seeing to our guest’s entertainment.”
“I do not find you amusing.”
He put his hands to his shirtfront in a dramatic pose. “I am crushed to hear you say that. What will Gino’s daughter think of us, always fighting? If you are not careful, she will not want to stay with us.”
“Stay?” Nicole blurted out in alarm. They both looked at her through flat, inanimate eyes.
“But of course you will stay,” Bianca soothed. “We offer you—everything.”
“But my friends will be worried. I really must—”
“No.” Bianca’s smooth white hand rested on her shoulder, pressing there with amazing strength. “You are not like them, Nicole. They do not understand you the way that we do. They cannot help you. Only we can help you.”
“Help me what?” She tried not to betray her fright, but they were frightening her. Because she knew they spoke the truth. Somehow, this strange pair who claimed to know her family was the key to discovering her identity. She sensed a kinship with them just as she felt a separation from those in the flat on Montparnasse. But abruptly she didn’t want to recognize that difference. She wanted to leave this bizarre setting and return to the familiar. She stood, easing away from a lounging Gerard, cautiously eyeing the coolly beautiful Bianca. “You said I could go.”
“But of course you can go,” the woman said with a generous gesture. “You can go back to the confusion, to a world where nothing seems right to you. Where no one can hear and sense the things that you do. Where you have to hide your strength. Where you have to pretend to eat and sleep by night. Where you have to be ever on your guard not to hurt those close to you.”
Nicole had gone pale. The breath came trembling from her. “How do you know these things?”
“Because we are like you.”
“No.”
“Like your father.”
“No!”
“Do not be afraid, mía bèlla. We want to help you.”
She looked from the questionable sincerity of his silky smile to Bianca’s unblinking regard. “I don’t want your help.”
Gerard stood, and she felt the intimidation of both of them pressing in upon her. She had to get away now. Before . . . before they made her believe what they were saying was true. She didn’t want it to be true.
“If you go,” Gerard began in a softly seductive tone, “what will you do when the hunger returns?”
She shook her head, pretending not to understand. Not wanting to understand.
He pushed up his sleeve, baring a smooth white forearm. Slowly, deliberately, he used his thumbnail to cut a gash across the veins that stood out clearly beneath the pale surface of his skin. A thin line of blood welled up, a bright streak of crimson against that parchment pallor. Nicole stared in a horrified fascination. She felt her pulse quicken. The scent . . . the taste suddenly filled her mouth. Her confusion grew.
“This is what was in the cup you drank from.”
Even as she denied it, she knew it was true.
“This is the fuel of our existence. Nicole, you are one of us.”
“No!”
“You feel it, don’t you? The hunger. The need to grab on to me and feed. Of course you do. It controls you now, but you can learn to control it. We can teach you. We can show you how glorious it can be.” And he wiped up the blood with his fingertips and leisurely licked them clean. Her own lips parted, watching him, her own tongue moistened them with a nervous, anticipating flicker. As his eyes grew heavy with a languorous delight, she experienced a need for the same rapture.
It was true.
“I have to go . . . I have to think.” And she was stumbling backward, away from the two impassive ghouls, finally turning, running from that which she could not escape.
Bianca started forward and Gerard placed a staying hand upon her arm.
“Let me. I am better at this sort of thing than you.”
She gave him a suspicious look, then relented with a nod.
NICOLE RAN, SOBBING, panting against the swell of terror constricting about her chest. She raced up the Rue de Castiglione toward the wide Rue de Rivoli and the Tuilleries Gardens and though she heard no sound of pursuit, she felt a sudden whisper of movement at her side and felt a firm grip upon her elbow, pulling her to a stop.
“Nicole, don’t be afraid.”
She raised her damp face to the unnatural beauty of his and cried, “Don’t be afraid? How easy you make that sound.”
“It can be easy,” he crooned as he brushed the tears from her cheeks. “It can be wonderful. But Nicole, it can also be terrible.”
There was a catch to his voice, a tug of anguish so unexpected, her own fears quieted and she listened.
“Before I learned what I was, I committed acts against those I love that will damn me in my own heart forever. Nicole, it is stronger than you know, stronger than your will, stronger than your love. If you don’t know how to control it, it will control you. Then you will have an eternity to regret it.”
“An eternity,” she echoed. She had no real grasp of what he was saying, only of the pain behind the words themselves. A warning that burnt clear to her soul.
“We have all the answers you need. Come to us when you’re ready to hear them. We are family, Nicole.”
He framed her face with his long, cool fingers and bent to place the tenderest of kisses upon her brow. She’d closed her eyes and when she opened them, he was no longer there with her.
SHE WASN’T SURE what she’d expected. So much had changed in the last day. She felt so different, somehow she’d thought all around her would be altered as well.
But the moment she stepped into the crowded little flat and Marchand, Frederic and Musette turned toward her, all felt so familiar and ordinary it was like coming home. The three of them stared at her so long and hard, Nicole wondered if it was readily apparent that she was no longer one of them. That surging sense of separation rose up inside her, bringing a bitter anguish and the sting of tears.
Then Marchand came up from his chair so fast it tumbled to the floor behind him. In four long strides, he’d swept her up in his arms and was crushing her to his chest, tight against the banging thunder of his heart. He kissed her brow, her temple, the top of her head in an earnest, anxious scattering of emotion she didn’t understand then, simply held her so close, there was no definable separation between them.
“You’re safe,” he cried hoarsely. “Thank God. Thank God.”
Then she grew aware of how shivery his breathing had become and of how tremors raced along the length of his strong arms. The depth of his passion alarmed her. She touched the back of his head lightly, then stroked soothingly.
“Marchand?”
She glanced at his brother for a clue to his upset. Frederic’s features were unpromisingly grim. Musette was crying.
“What is it? What’s happened?”
Since Marchand seemed incapable of speech, Frederic told her.
“One of our friends stopped by this afternoon. We were told that one of the women who lived with us had been buried in a pauper’s grave without identification.”
“
I thought it was you,” came Marchand’s raw whisper.
“No, I’m fine.” She increased the strength of her hold upon him. “I’m sorry if you were worried. I never thought—” Then the significance struck. “Bebe. Oh, no! Was it Bebe, then?”
“We only heard that she was struck by a carriage, that she’d darted out in front of it,” Frederic continued somberly. “She had on a locket like the one you always wore, though someone else had already been there to claim it.”
“They say it was suicide,” Musette moaned, distracting Nicole from an instant of alarm. “Oh, poor Bebe. She must have been more distraught than we realized.”
Then, seeing how his brother yet clung to the woman in the doorway, Frederic reached out for Musette’s hand. “Come, my love. Let’s walk a while. I should like to find a very good bottle of Bordeaux and get very drunk.”
The moment the two of them slipped by and into the night, Marchand cupped Nicole’s face in his hands. His kisses fell everywhere; upon her cheeks, upon the flutter of her eyelids, on her nose and chin. Hot, desperately urgent kisses, tasting of assuaged terror and tears, she wasn’t sure whose. Then his mouth sank down on hers and settled there for a lengthy union of hurried breaths and searching tongues. The degree of her reaction matched his, for she was just as glad to be in his arms again, enjoying this particular reunion. He was so solid, so wonderfully male. For a moment, she believed he had the power to save her from the suspicions quickened in her mind. If she was some unnatural thing, how could this very natural greeting feel so right? And all the right things were tingling through her. He broke off at last, panting hard, resting his forehead against hers as their gazes met and mingled. His eyes were dark, passionate intensity.
“I was so sure I’d driven you away with my uncertainty,” came his unplanned confession. “I’m not uncertain any longer. I need you, Nicole. I’ve been half mad without you. I love you.”
He kissed her again, slowly, deeply, but Nicole was too stunned to respond.
