“It’s so beautiful,” she murmured.
“Yes, it was,” he said wistfully. “Centuries before it came into my possession, it was the home of Catherine de Medici.” Lucien drew a deep, melancholy breath. “As with most things, all was not as it appeared.”
There was a nervous shifting in his posture - a prickle of tension crackling the air.
“My life was one of extreme indulgence and numerous excesses, a typical life of French nobles in those days. We considered it very chic, in fact, to show indifference to the less fortunate. We felt above the common rabble. I was spoiled and entitled. No one would have cried ‘foul’ if I had died at the hands of the peasant revolutionaries.”
Summer envisioned the Lucien of long ago; fortunate and untroubled, exquisite in face and form with sun-streaked locks curled round his face and the flash of a devilish smile. It was with a heavy heart she realized that the devil-may-care young man was only a phantom now; his vibrant life-light extinguished by something or someone.
“One evening, while I was pursuing my favorite pastimes of whoring and drinking…” Lucien paused for a moment, and then continued, his voice snarled, “…the revolution came. I arrived home to see my manor ablaze with the fires of rebellion. Like an odious shroud, the stench of burning fleshes - animal and human - blanketed the air.”
As the scene sprang to life in her mind’s eye, an icy numbness spread through her chest, inching its way into her throat, bringing a feeling of total, utter helplessness. She sensed these were his emotions - the ones he’d experienced that dreadful night. So intense, so real were these feelings, she felt certain that he must carry them with him still.
“By the hair of their heads, my friends and family were dragged from their beds. I remember drawing my sword from its scabbard and charging up the stairs.” Lucien stroked his fingers through her hair. “Alas,” he said, his words a blend of old and new, which Summer found curious, as if he slipped between centuries like some time traveller, “being the drunken bastard that I was, I stumbled and fell, only to find a dozen dirty hands lifting me from the floor. They dragged me to where, in helpless horror, I was forced to watch the mob defile and shred my wife to a mass of unrecognizable blood and bone.”
It seemed a sound caught in the vampire’s throat - a small strangling thing - and then it was gone, but it left his voice as cracked and dry as the rustle of late autumn leaves. “They used my very own sword to hack her to bits.”
The scene’s horror was terrible. Summer tried forcing the images from her mind, the sorrow of the memory crushing her chest with the weight of a thousand cannonballs, and she struggled to fill her lungs with air.
“I failed to protect the ones that I loved most, and the guilt of this abomination consumed me. To live one minute more with these ghastly images was more than I could bear. I had walked through the valley of death and come out the other side, my sanity teetering on the edge of the abyss. I begged them to slay me, too.”
Summer gazed at the vampire. He stared straight ahead, his eyes viewing something in the distance that only he could see.
“But in their hatred, they did not slay me. The revolutionaries dragged me through the rat infested sewers of Paris, and, in a fire-lit alcove, they brought me before a priest.”
He looked at her, cocking one eyebrow. “I thought they brought me to him so I might make my final confession. They announced to the priest that I was an aristocratic swine and that I had requested death.”
Lucien paused. Summer wanted to say something, anything that might be of comfort, but his face held a faraway look, so she kept her silence. “I can still recall the sickly pale eyes of the cleric as they pierced my flesh and examined my soul. ‘Oh, you are such a beautiful and exquisite young boy,’ he said to me. ‘Why is it that you wish to die?’
I explained that I would rather be put to death than to live with the horror I had witnessed, and implored him to kill me any way he liked, but to please release me from this living death.”
Summer silently observed the vampire. His ancient and wondrous eyes stared into the distance, his head tilted to one side, as if trying to remember a fragment of a dream that lay just out grasp.
“Lies and half-truths like falling ash have covered much of my past, so that even I can no longer discern what is truth from what is myth, but my Conversion I recall with crystal clarity.
‘Drink,’ the priest urged, slicing his flesh after feasting on mine. ‘Drink and you shall forget,’ he promised.”
A low, ironic laugh rumbled in the vampire’s throat. “Thou shall not lie,” he said. “That was only one of many commandments the unholy priest would break religiously. I drank his foul blood, even as my own oozed from the wounds on my neck. But I did not forget. Instead, his malicious punishment ensured that I might never look forward to blotting out the memory of those hours of darkness in the merciful arms of death.” Tears burned her eyes as she considered the weight of all of the pain, the sorrow, the horror and the guilt that he had borne for hundreds of years. She pitied him with her whole heart, although she was certain that he did not want; did not need her pity.
He drained his drink from the glass, swallowing lustily, as if his throat were very parched.
“He must have genuinely thought I was beautiful because it was twenty-odd years before he tired of me.” “Please, no more,” Summer pleaded. The awful details were too much to hear. Summer took his hand in hers, pressing it to her cheek. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t hear anymore right now. To think that you actually lived it…” she broke off, her throat so tight it burned.
The vampire tipped her chin with his hand, peering into her eyes.
“It’s alright, mon chére. Such a dreadful story I know, but it is my story and I wanted you to hear it. If I had tears, I would have shed enough to fill two oceans, and still it would change nothing.” He gave her the briefest smile - like a swift caress. “It is what it is - and it was a very, very long time ago. I have tried to learn to live with it, and learn from it.”
He pinched her chin between his fingers, turning her face from side to side. “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he clucked. “Your makeup is running all down your pretty face.”
He swiped at her cheeks with a napkin. “I’m not very good at this,” he frowned, dropping the napkin to his lap. “Why don’t you take a minute to powder your nose? The ladies’ room is right around the corner.” He began to rise from the table. “I’ll walk you there.”
Summer stood up, waving for him to be seated. She wanted to be alone for a moment with her thoughts.
“No, I’m a big girl. I can manage,” she deferred, brushing the tears with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually one for crying.”
Gathering her purse, she excused herself. While snaking her way through the crowd, she blinked her eyes, battling back more tears. The vampire’s story had plucked a string in her heart, and the note rang desolate and forlorn, like the call of a whippoorwill at twilight.
She didn’t weep as a rule. It made her feel weak and vulnerable. When she cried, she also had to pee, and she disliked public rest rooms even more than she did crybabies. Her emotions had run away with her, it seemed.
Fucking green fairy!
Lucien kept a watchful eye on her as she departed. A sting of remorse pricked at his mind. It hadn’t been his intention to upset her so deeply, but he felt the keen blade of truth was necessary to excise any romantic illusions she might have about his life.
Now that he had shared it, the burden he carried felt lighter somehow.
He hadn’t told anyone his story before … human or vampire… It had become too heavy a load to carry alone, and he sensed his mind breaking under the weight of it.
“Hello, Lucien,” purred a feminine voice. “I haven’t seen you around in a while.”
Lucien knew it was Isabelle even before he looked. The scent of her wood-rose dusting powder was unmistakable. He looked her over—a red-haired devil in a green dress.
She sat down as if she’d been invited, and slithered uncomfortably near him.
Lucien recoiled. Summer’s seat wasn’t even cold before Isabelle slid into it. She reminded him of a troll lurking under a bridge, waiting for her moment to strike.
“Isabelle,” he said, leaning as far from her as he could without falling from his seat. “You’re in my personal bubble; could you back up a bit?”
She acted as if she hadn’t heard, closing the space between them even more. He slid down the banquette until half his ass cheek was hanging off the side, but it put a small distance between him and the vampiress.
“Lucien, aren’t you pleased to see me? I am pleased to see you, even though you are a rat bastard.”
Pleased was not exactly the word he would have chosen. Some mistakes you never stop paying for.
“So, tell me Lucien, who’s your new little pet? Are you planning to turn her or shall I?” The hair on the back of his neck bristled. He narrowed his eyes, focusing his perception and tried to read if there was seriousness to her threat.
Isabelle was grinning at him, displaying a row of perfect teeth and two pointed canines. She looked older than he remembered...harder. There was a cruelty to her thin, crimson smile. She’d lined her pale, golden eyes heavily with black kohl and had drawn her eyebrows with no arches, just two thin, upward slanted lines that looked like a pair of open trap doors. What had he ever seen in her, he wondered, as she blinked at him. She was sewer trash -cunning and ruthless. But then, as they say, we are what we eat.
It was actually insulting that this gutter-snipe was trying to intimidate him. In vampire years, she was considered “newly minted.” He could crush her into a thousand pieces if he wanted to, and come out without a scratch.
“Sorry, you catty whore, no one is turning anyone into anything. Do you understand what I am saying to you, or am I going to have to express myself more clearly on the matter?” Lucian twisted her arm until she winced.
Isabelle banged the flat of her free hand on the table, the cutlery bouncing with a tinny clang. “She’s a Perceiver, Lucien,” she hissed. “You know how naturally her kind turns to hunting our kind! You bring her here and you endanger us all!”
Lucien fixed her with a chilly stare, increasing the crushing pressure on her arm. Her thin bones shuddered beneath his fingertips.
“This is perilous, my friend,” she spat, struggling to break free of his grasp. “You had better watch your step, because some of the community doesn’t see it quite the same as you. Not all of us are going to have our heads turned by your impish mortal lover.”
He let Isabelle thrash a bit before releasing her arm.
“Pffft,” she whistled through her teeth before mounting a haughty retreat.
Cunt. Fuck her and her “community”. He had fared just fine without the protection of their numbers. He wasn’t fearful of Summer or of them. In fact, he’d had his fill of them for one night.
He leapt from his seat, elbowing his way through the crowd. He spotted Summer ambling down the hall from the rest room, wobbling under the influence of the absinthe. Pinpricks of guilt needled his conscience. He’d been foolish to allow her to wander around on her own. He rushed to meet her, taking her by the arm.
“Let’s get out of here,” he shouted above the pounding music.
Curious Cravings
Back at the loft, Summer did indeed invite Lucien inside to view her collection of Verve jazz recordings. As Ella Fitzgerald crooned That Old Black Magic, she coaxed Lucien into a dance.
That old black magic has me in its spell…that old black magic that you weave so well.
Summer laughed at the irony. It did feel like a spell, this sense of being suspended in time when she was with him. There was no yesterday to regret and no tomorrow to fear. There was only the moment…a lovely eternal Now.
His flesh felt cool beneath her fingertips as she stroked them along the sharp line of his jaw. She could almost forget what he was, as her head reclined against his chest, the soft cadence of his heartbeat drumming into her ear. The scent of sandalwood rose from his skin, and she inhaled deeply, filling her head with the primeval, peppery aroma.
Lucien danced her towards the window as the music slowly faded to an end. He opened the drapes, revealing the glittering lights below. Locked in a silent embrace, they looked out onto the city, while the repetitive scratch of the old phonograph needle jumped across the record. Summer wondered if that was what Lucien’s past was like for him…a needle stuck in a groove, replaying the horrible refrain repeatedly without end.
Thinking about his past, of the things she knew and the things she didn’t, gave her the uneasy, woozy feeling of looking out over a ledge from a great height.
Lucien was so much more than she had first perceived him to be. More than the sum of his parts, an immortal and a mortal, who had once had a real life - who had known real love. A whisper of alarm rippled up her spine as she wondered if he was looking to love again…with her. Surely, love between a mortal and an immortal could only end badly.
But making love - that was a subject she could wrap her legs around! She wasn’t fool enough to think that she’d be his first human tryst, but she was a vampire virgin. Her head swam thinking about it.
“Be careful, mon petite,” Lucien whispered. “When you are this close to me, I can read your thoughts.”
Summer drew a sharp breath, wilting with embarrassment.
“It’s not that I was trying,” he explained running his hands over her arms, his touch as intoxicating as champagne bubbles. “I figured I should let you know, considering the direction your thoughts were taking.”
He’d heard her thoughts, known she was thinking about making him her lover. Her cheeks burned with mortification.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he soothed, petting her hair. “If you could read my thoughts right now, they would raise more than your eyebrows.”
He grabbed her buttocks, and the squeeze gave her that runaway, teenage horny feeling. He pulled her body close to his, the shaft of his penis so rigid it felt as if he had a Billie club shoved in his pants.
“Can you tell what I am thinking right now?” she asked teasingly, her fingers playing over the buttons of his shirt.
He leaned over, his breath danced through the strands of her hair as he whispered in her ear. “Let me see…,” a moment’s pause, and then, “I have it now. What a dirty little girl. You are thinking about my cock,” he scolded, his voice aghast with feigned shock.
It was true, he really could see into her mind. The knowledge that he possessed this power gave her the same feeling as a roller coaster ride, frightening and thrilling at the same time. Now she understood why Lois Lane went so ga-ga over Superman.
“Can all vampires read thoughts?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “We all have different talents, or combinations of them.”
Her curiosity piqued and with thoughts of his cock momentarily put on the backburner, she probed to know more. “Such as?”
“Well,” he said, rocking her in his arms. “There’s vaporization - one of my favorites.” The corners of his mouth turned up in a smile. “Somnambulism - I’ve never been much use at that. Shape shifting - that one I really don’t see the need for when vaporization works just as well in most cases.” He shrugged his shoulders, “Some seem to enjoy it, but to me it’s just showing off.”
Summer felt weak in the knees. “Anything else?’
“Many things,” he nodded. “Time-bending; dominion over creatures; flight. Oddly, sometimes abilities just pop up that you didn’t even know you had…or perhaps they grow with time…no one really knows.”
“Hmmm,” she hummed, half to herself and half out-loud, as she contemplated how these things were possible with the laws of physics, but she’d never had a good understanding of physics. Its concepts seemed a slippery thing, always wiggling from her mental grasp.
She supposed that unless she wanted to give herself a nasty heada
che, she’d simply have to learn to accept the validity of certain things without question.
“Now, where were we before we got sidetracked?” He nuzzled her ear, and it was as if the feet of a dozen centipedes skittered across her neck. “I remember now. I was just about to do this…”
His mouth descended on hers, the lusty fullness of his lips as plump and juicy as slices of warm apple. He tasted faintly of cinnamon and salt as his tongue played over hers. She slipped her hands up under the tail of his shirt to feel the cool firmness of his muscles, and his arms closed round her. Again, she felt the rigidness of his cock pressing low on her abdomen, and she longed to examine it with her fingers as one might some rare and extravagant treasure.
She sucked his tongue into her mouth, imagining his cock there instead, its head hard and round as a cue ball. Her hand went naturally to it, stroking him through the fabric of his trousers, her touch making him moan.
What did it look like, she wondered, her head spinning from curiosity and desire, the thin strip of her panties wet and warm between her legs. Was it as pale and as enchanting as his face?
Lucien’s mind reeled - his desire to bed her overriding his judgment.
He’d seen them before…vampire groupies. Slavering little minions that trailed the undead, hoping to add another preternatural prick to their collection, not worrying if they’d survive to tell the tale. He had enjoyed his fair share…giving what they wanted, and taking what he deserved.
But Summer was different. He wanted her, but he wanted all of her. He didn’t care to be an idle curiosity, discarded after a slap and a tickle.
“Summer,” Lucien gasped. “Please stop, please.”
He jerked his hips away from her touch, his hand stilling hers.
For a moment she thought maybe was going to come in his pants or something, but the look on his face when he pulled away, the knitted brow, the tenseness in his jaw, told her he was refusing her advances.
He averted his eyes from her glare and mouthed, “I’m sorry.” “You gotta be kidding me, right?” Summer stared at him, her upturned palms begging for an explanation, her body itching with irritation while her mind swirled with confusion.
Only the Lonely Page 6
