Reluctant Partnerships

by Ariel Tachna

  “Feeding is often sexual for a vampire,” Jean interjected. “Did he touch you at all?”

  “Only to hold me in place,” Pascale replied, a blush staining her pale cheeks at the memory of feeding the night before. “Once he bit me, he put one arm around my waist, but he didn’t grope me or anything.”

  Jean nodded and fell silent again, waiting for Adèle to continue.

  “You said he didn’t give any indication then of what he wanted from you, but he said something later?” Adèle verified.

  “Yes,” Pascale said. “After I woke up, after he… turned me, he said I was a vampire now and that I’d need to find a human to feed from. Then he said he’d be back for me when he was ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “He didn’t say,” Pascale replied, “and he disappeared before I could ask. Honestly, I don’t know if I would have. I was a little upset at the time.”

  “Understandably upset,” Angelique soothed. “If you had asked to be turned, that would be one thing, but turning someone against their will is tantamount to rape, Adèle, perhaps even worse. He took something infinitely precious, and nothing can give that back.”

  “You don’t have to convince me of that,” Adèle said placatingly, “but I don’t make the laws. For that you’ll need to talk to those two.”

  “I don’t make the laws either,” Raymond reminded her, “and now that I’m no longer president of l’ANS, I’m not even in a position to propose any.”

  “Mon œil,” Adèle shot back. “If you went to any but the most conservative legislators and explained the situation and the need, they’d sponsor a bill you gave them in a heartbeat. You may not wear the mantle anymore, but no one has forgotten you in the few months since you resigned. You have far more pull than your successor.”

  “That may be,” Raymond allowed, “but that doesn’t mean I should use it. It’s not fair to Anne-Marie if I do.”

  “It’s not fair to Pascale and anyone this bastard has turned if you don’t,” Adèle disagreed. “Did you get a glimpse of him at all?” she asked Pascale. “Anything to give us an idea who he is?”

  “No,” Pascale said. “He stayed behind me the whole time, and it was dark, just a little bit of moonlight. I think he had dark hair, but so does every man in this room, not to mention half the men in France or more.”

  “Was there anything about him that struck you? Did he wear any jewelry? Anything like that?” Adèle asked.

  “His voice,” Pascale said slowly. “He had a very distinctive voice. Very deep for one thing, but… I don’t even know the right word. Slurred, maybe, not like an accent, but like he wasn’t quite saying all the sounds in the words. I’d know it if I heard it again for sure.”

  It did not give Adèle anything to go on for a search, but if they brought in a suspect later, it might be enough for Pascale to add her weight to the evidence. “Can you think of anywhere you might have been that would have drawn the attention of a vampire? A night club? A bar? Anywhere you’ve gone in the evenings recently where you might have had an odd encounter with a man?”

  “I don’t generally pay much attention to men,” Pascale said, “and I don’t go out much either. I’m a computer geek, or I was. I’m not really into the social scene.”

  “Do you play a lot of online games?” Adèle asked. “Maybe he found you that way.”

  “One or two,” Pascale said, “but I’m a computer programmer. I know how to cover my tracks to make sure nobody follows me home.”

  Someone had followed her home anyway.

  “Thank you,” Adèle said. “If you think of anything else, no matter how small or insignificant it might be, please let me know. Jean and Raymond know how to get in touch with me.”

  “I can’t think of anything else now,” Pascale said, “but if I do, I’ll let you know. I want him caught and punished. Is that all? Can I go now?”

  “Are you getting hungry again?” Angelique asked immediately.

  Flushing again, Pascale nodded.

  “I imagine Jean and Raymond want to talk to you as well, but I’m sure Jean remembers what it’s like to be newly turned,” Angelique said smoothly.

  “If you would rejoin us when you’re done?” Jean asked, not happy with the delay but not willing to argue with Angelique over it, not with another chef de la Cour, even a new one, in the room. “You can’t impose on Angelique’s generosity forever. We’ll need to discuss your options.”

  “François is in the parlor,” Angelique said to Pascale by way of dismissal. “He’ll take care of you while I finish up with everyone here.”

  Pascale panicked a little at the thought of feeding without Angelique’s supervision, but she straightened her spine and promised herself she would be worthy of Angelique’s trust. “I’ll see everyone in a few minutes, then.”

  When she was gone, Angelique gave the others a hard stare. “You will not upset her when she comes back. She has coped remarkably well last night and today. She does not need to be hassled.”

  “No one wants to hassle her,” Jean promised. “We want to catch the vampire who did this to her, which is why Adèle asked all the questions she did, and we want to help her adjust to her new existence so we don’t lose her. Did you get anything you can use, Adèle?”

  “A window of time so we can check alibis if we get a suspect,” Adèle said. “And the possibility that she might be able to identify him if we can get enough evidence to put him in a lineup and let her hear his voice. What troubles me is his comment about coming back for her when he was ready. I’m not a vampire, so I know I don’t think like one, but that sounds ominous to me.”

  “I had the same reaction,” Denis said, speaking for the first time since Adèle had begun the interview. “I haven’t turned many vampires because I never felt the need to feed from anyone other than Noël until he died, and by then I knew better than to turn people randomly, but it seems odd that he would turn her deliberately and then leave with a promise to return later. Not in a few minutes to help her, but ‘when he was ready’.”

  “So what do you think it means?”

  “I think it means our vampire, whoever he is, has an agenda,” Denis said. “He changed her for a reason. It may have nothing to do with her personally, or it may be very personal—I can’t judge that from one comment—but he has a goal in mind with what he’s doing.”

  “Which is all the more reason to think he’ll act again,” Jean concurred. “And we’re still working under the assumption that this is the first person he’s turned.”

  “You don’t think we would have heard if there were other cases?”

  “You wouldn’t have heard about this one if I hadn’t been driving by,” Adèle reminded them. “She was trying to jump off a bridge. If the fall didn’t kill her, dawn would have in a matter of an hour or two. Enough of the leaves have fallen that the cover of the trees wouldn’t have protected her.”

  “I didn’t see her last night,” Jean said, “but she seemed fairly in control tonight, like she’s beginning to adjust. It might not be a bad idea to have Orlando talk to her eventually. He was turned against his will as well. It could be some comfort to her to know she can recover from that.”

  “We talked some last night,” Angelique said. “It will take time for her to adjust. I can still remember how hard it was for me to adjust, and I was changed voluntarily by a maker who stayed by my side for years.”

  “Yes, turning is always difficult,” Jean agreed. The memory of the man he had killed by accident the night he was turned still haunted him. “We’ll have to help her make the best of her new existence.”

  Chapter 4

  A tentative knock interrupted their conversation. Angelique rose from her divan with the elegance of centuries of practice, opening the door to allow Pascale to enter. “You weren’t gone long,” Angelique observed, putting a protective arm around Pascale’s shoulders. “Did you take enough?”

  “Enough for now,” Pascale replied, leaning into
the embrace and the safety it represented. She wanted to believe the others were no threat, particularly since Angelique had welcomed them as friends, but she did not know them yet, and she had always been slow to trust. The experiences of the past two days had only added to that. “I didn’t want to keep everyone waiting on me.”

  “Everyone here understands the needs of vampires,” Angelique assured her. “Raymond is Jean’s Consort as well as his partner. Adèle has no partner now, but she has been around vampires enough to know our needs. And Jean and Denis are vampires like us. No one was disturbed by your departure.”

  “Join us again,” Jean invited, rising as well and offering his hand to Pascale. “I know this has been a terrible shock for you, but have you given any thought to what you will do now?”

  “What can I do?” Pascale asked, hopelessness swamping her again. She fought the urge to cry only to discover that no matter how strong the urge, her eyes stayed dry. “I’m a prisoner of the sun, dependent on Angelique’s generosity for food. I don’t see a lot of options.”

  Silently, Jean cursed the vampire who had created this situation. He should have been here to guide her, should have prepared her for the reality of her new existence and helped her find solutions. “There are always options. You must now decide which ones to take. Angelique introduced us all, but I imagine half of it went over your head with no one to explain all our titles to you.”

  “It is all a little overwhelming,” Pascale admitted. She let Angelique lead her back to the divan where she had perched before. “I think I caught everyone’s names, but the titles mean little to me, other than Detective Rougier, but that’s a human title.”

  “Vampires tend to be loners,” Jean said, “so we don’t form tight societies comparable to werewolf packs, for instance, but we do have some societal structure. Any city with a vampire population of any size has a chef de la Cour, la Cour being the rest of the vampires. I am that vampire for Paris. Denis is the chef de la Cour for Autun. The closest equivalent in human terms would be to compare me to the mayor, but even that is deceptive. Beyond the most basic of inviolate laws, I lead more by example and influence than by command, and unlike a mayor, I hold my position through that influence. If another vampire chose to challenge me, I would have to fight to retain my position.”

  Raymond chuckled softly at that image. Not that he wanted to see Jean have to fight another vampire, but the one time he had witnessed it, his lover’s superior age and strength had made him untouchable.

  “Paris is a large city and a large Cour,” Denis said, “but in the smaller towns, we tend to be a closer group, if only because there are fewer of us. I took power from a dictatorial chef de la Cour six months ago, somewhat to everyone’s surprise, given how much younger I was than the vampire I challenged, but he had grown complacent.”

  “Age confers strength among vampires,” Raymond said, taking pity on the confused look on Pascale’s face. “Regardless of the age a vampire was when he or she was turned, the number of years spent as a vampire is what determines their status and power within the Cour.” That, too, was a simplification, but Raymond would leave explanations of le Jeu des Cours to the vampires. “Jean was turned in the year 911, which makes him an old vampire indeed.”

  “Whereas I was turned in 1918, which makes me little more than a child in the eyes of most vampires,” Denis revealed. “Fortunately for me, looks can be deceiving.”

  Jean’s eyes widened at the revelation. He had not realized how recently Denis had been turned. It made his rise to power in Autun even more impressive. That was a discussion best saved for later, though. Pascale needed explanations, not politics.

  “All of that is very interesting,” Pascale said, “but I don’t see how any of it helps me.”

  “It doesn’t help you directly,” Jean agreed, “but hopefully it lets you see that you have people of influence on your side. You mentioned working with computers. Do you have to go into an office, or could you work from home?”

  “I work remotely most days,” Pascale said. “Occasionally I’ll go into the office for a meeting or something.”

  “That won’t be possible now unless the meeting is during the dark hours, but your abilities as a programmer haven’t changed,” Jean told her. “There’s no reason you couldn’t continue to work from home, even during the daytime, as long as you work in a room with no direct sunlight. You may find you prefer to work at night, if your employer doesn’t care which hours you work, but one way or another, you don’t have to give up your job as long as you can telecommute to the occasional meeting.”

  “I’m sure I could,” Pascale said, her voice lighter as one of her concerns lifted. “Other people do. That takes care of my income, but what about feeding? If I’m at home in Château-Chinon, I can’t come here to feed.”

  “Most vampires don’t come here,” Angelique said, “certainly not most vampires outside of Paris. Most vampires have to hunt for their food. It’s a question of knowing the right places to look and the right way to entice willing prey.”

  Pascale was equal parts aroused and horrified by the images Angelique’s words conjured in her mind. Thoughts of bodies entwined in a lover’s embrace warred with memories of the terror she had felt at being bitten.

  “I know it must seem like the worst thing in the world to be bitten by a vampire,” Raymond said softly, “but I promise there are plenty of people who think otherwise.” He pulled down the rolled collar of his sweater to reveal the fang marks on his neck, thankful Jean had fed recently enough that they were still visible. The Aveu de Sang sped his healing so much that most bite marks were gone in a matter of hours after Jean finished feeding. Only the ones on his chest, the ones Raymond had not allowed to close since the night he and Jean finally admitted their feelings, remained for more than a few hours.

  “The woman I fed from last night said she was willing, but this is her job,” Pascale said slowly. “It isn’t your job. You don’t work here.”

  “No,” Raymond agreed. “I run l’Institut Marcel Chavinier in Dommartin.”

  “But you want vampires to feed from you.”

  Jean could not stop the instinctive growl of protest at the thought of any other vampire coming anywhere near Raymond. Before he could say anything, Raymond’s love surged through their bond, soothing him. “Not vampires,” Raymond said. “One vampire. But yes, I want Jean to feed from me. Angelique mentioned when she introduced us that I’m his Consort and his partner. Those aren’t meaningless honorifics. We are as committed to each other as it is possible for two people to be, and his feeding is part of that.”

  “The same is true for my partner, David,” Angelique said, “and for Sebastien’s partner, Thierry. I don’t know if you met Thierry last night, but Sebastien brought you here. Not every vampire has a lover, and not every vampire who has a lover has a partner in the magical sense of the word, but you are not the only one aware of the intimacy when you feed. The person you’re drawing blood from feels it as well. It can be a very alluring experience, one people are often willing to repeat if the first vampire to feed from them does it right.”

  “That’s not something I can even begin to comprehend,” Pascale admitted. “I know it must be true for there to be so many examples, but I wouldn’t know where to start in finding someone like that for myself.”

  “If what you want is a partnership like Raymond and I have, or like Angelique and David or Sebastien and Thierry, you’ll need to come back to l’Institut with us,” Jean said. “Where Adèle brought you last night. One of the many things we do at l’Institut is educational seminars for vampires and wizards who are interested in forming a partnership.”

  “Jean Bellaiche,” Angelique snapped, “you are not going to whisk Pascale off to the country and send her off into a partnership without preparing her properly for being a vampire. Give me a couple of weeks to finish educating her properly. Take your Consort back to Dommartin and leave Pascale with me. I’ll call you in a few weeks to le
t you know how she’s doing and whether she’s even interested in coming to l’Institut.”

  “You’re hardly the only vampire who could teach her to hunt,” Jean replied sharply. “Even if she found a partner immediately, which still only happens rarely, she’d have to hunt until the end of the seminar. I wasn’t planning on abandoning her the way you make it sound.”

  “I think I’d rather stay in Paris for a few weeks,” Pascale said, scooting closer to Angelique on the divan as if the others would try to forcibly remove her. “No offense, monsieur, but I don’t really know you, and Angelique has been very helpful since I got here. I’d be far more comfortable staying here.”

  “Then it’s all settled,” Angelique said. “Adèle, take Jean home so he isn’t stuck here without his partner. Denis, it was lovely to meet you. I assume Raymond will see you home. Pascale, find your coat. We’re going out.”