by Clare Willis
“Oh, you won’t have to worry about that,” Richard said.
“Why, you’re going to cure me of MS?”
Isabel was joking, of course, but what she didn’t know was that it was entirely within his power to cure her of MS, and any other human infirmity that might be inconveniencing her. But her simple little mind wouldn’t have comprehended that answer, however, so he simply told her to trust him. When they arrived at the museum the guards were just locking the front door, but the curator of the exhibit brought them in the freight elevator to the basement exhibition space. After a bit of fawning over Richard, he left them alone to wander the rooms at their leisure. Isabel had been hopping from case to case like a jackrabbit, oohing and ahhing over the gilded and bejeweled eggs made for Russian royalty and the Art Deco jewelry designed for the nouveau riche of the Industrial Revolution.
Richard, who had seen it all before and owned quite a bit of it himself, plastered a smile on his face and followed a step behind Isabel, quietly telling her little anecdotes about certain pieces: which queen had owned what egg, which tycoon made a gift to a penniless actress of a fourteen carat emerald welded into the mouth of a turquoise and aquamarine dragon. He wished it were Sunni whose hot breath was steaming up the glass case holding a particularly delicate Lalique hair comb in the shape of a butterfly, but then again, Sunni probably wouldn’t be breathing with that much enthusiasm. Sunni was difficult to impress, which made her all the more intriguing. He was not going to be able to reach her through the usual channels. She was impossible to glamour, and Jacob was probably even now hardening her heart against him with his lies and insinuations.
No matter. He had found an even better, more insidious method for luring Sunni to his side. And the added benefit was the fortune that the father of this gentle, bovine woman had placed at her disposal. He would leave San Francisco with Sunni as his partner and the LaForge millions in his bank account. After that the Council could kick and scream all it wanted because it would have no power over Richard Lazarus anymore. In fact, perhaps he’d form his own Council, padded with the offspring that he and Sunni would produce. He smiled at this idea.
Isabel, thinking that the smile was for her, beamed back at him. “Thank you, Richard, this was a wonderful idea.”
Richard put his hand on her waist and led her to a bench in the center of the room. Gold, silver, and jewels glittered all around them. It was like being in the room with Rumpelstiltskin after he’d woven all the straw into gold.
“I have something for you,” Richard said. He pulled a velvet case about the size of a pack of playing cards out of his pocket and presented it to Isabel with a flourish.
“Ooh, you shouldn’t have.” Her cheeks flushed bright rose. A rich, salty scent filled the air as her blood pressure began to rise, and Richard felt a slight twinge as his fangs dropped. He tested them with the tip of his tongue.
She snapped the case open and gasped with genuine awe. Richard was pleased. As innocent as Isabel was, he imagined she had a safe deposit box somewhere filled with baubles that would strike the average girl dumb. But this was no average jewel. It was a Lalique brooch, a platinum leopard studded with yellow diamonds, manufactured in Paris in 1911. Owned by the wife of John Jacob Astor, the brooch had survived the sinking of the Titanic. (The same, unfortunately, could not be said for John Jacob.) It was scheduled to be in the exhibit until an unnamed collector bought it for an undisclosed sum and it disappeared from public view.
“I couldn’t accept this. It’s too much,” Isabel pushed the case back into his hand.
“Nonsense. I want you to have it. It is a unique jewel, for a unique woman.”
Isabel blushed harder.
“May I?” Richard removed the brooch from the case. His hand hovered near Isabel’s bosom. She nodded. He delicately pinched and lifted a swatch of her low-cut sweater. Her lips parted, her breath became labored as he drew close. He pinned the brooch onto her sweater, brushing her skin lightly, accidentally, with his fingers. Her eyes were soft and gleaming, wide as a doe’s as she gazed at him. He didn’t even need to glamour this one.
He bent to kiss her neck, allowing his fangs to graze the soft skin just under her chin. She shivered and sighed. Her body surged forward. It required no effort on his part. She practically impaled herself in her eagerness to be close to him. Her blood pumped, gently at first, then more strongly as her heart rate increased. She swooned, and he caught her body with his arm, pressing her tight against his chest.
Ah, he loved the thrill of doing it in public places! At any moment a guard, the curator, any human idiot might stumble upon them. Oh, at first they might think it was a mere tryst, nothing to worry about, until they saw the blood trickling down Isabel’s neck, circling her breast and cascading into her cleavage. He allowed himself to imagine a scene of carnage, of himself set free, killing dozens of guards, police, museum patrons, anyone who got in the way, crushing their bones as he sucked them dry as corn husks. It would be mayhem. It would be beautiful.
He lifted his head and his fangs retracted. Isabel lay in his arms, her eyes half closed, lost in a blizzard of sensation. There was no blood on her neck or chest. He had been as neat as a Victorian schoolmistress. The time for mayhem had not yet come, and if Richard had learned anything over these long years, it was patience.
Sunni stood on a tiny platform high up on one of the towers, accessible by a ladder made of struts welded into the metal. The struts were placed impossibly far apart to discourage anyone who wasn’t a safely tethered bridge worker, but Jacob had scampered up as nonchalantly as a monkey swinging through the forest canopy. Sunni, once she was able to suspend her disbelief, followed almost as nimbly.
The wind at this elevation was a howling monster, desiccating her eyeballs and flapping her cheeks like laundry on a clothesline. Three hours ago it would have been unbearable, but Jacob had taught her to focus her senses, to tune out distracting sensations, such as pain, in favor of hearing and vision. The silvery backs of a school of dolphins looked like half moons cutting the water as they leaped into the air.
“Jacob, what would happen if I jumped off thebridge?” She spoke in a normal voice, knowing that despite the screaming wind he would hear her.
Looking down into the gleaming black water, one arm firmly clenched around her waist, he shrugged. “Nothing, probably.”
“Let’s do it!”
He shook his head vigorously. “Oh, no, not me.”
She stared at him, surprised at his refusal. So far, Jacob had stayed at her side, performing every task that he had asked of her. At first he’d been much faster, but she had been pleased to find herself catching up to him. A couple of times he had been forced to save her, once when she misjudged a car’s speed and once when she lost her footing on the wave-dampened underside of the bridge, but now she felt like nothing could stop her.
“What do you mean, not you?”
“I can’t swim.”
She laughed, one brief hard yelp. Then she looked at him to see if he was laughing, too. He wasn’t.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll meet you on the beach.”
He leaned over, and for a moment the screaming wind was halted as he pressed his lips against her cheek: ice against ice. Then he was gone. When she looked down he was already on the walkway. She stared straight ahead and stepped into space as if she was walking out her front door.
Instantly she was hurtling downward. The sensation was like being shot from a gun through concrete. Her skin felt as if it was being flayed off her body, leaving every nerve ending screaming.
Whoever said that jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge was a quick and easy way to die never tried it.
The obsidian ocean rushed up to greet her. She felt no power, no strength, only a desperate, helpless panic. Her body curled into itself as she twisted and tumbled through the air like a ball in a bingo cage.
The change came not a moment too soon. The power began as a tiny flame in her core, but when she co
ncentrated it caught fire and raged throughout her body. She straightened her arms and legs, the wind harmless as a breeze, and turned so that she was in a diving position. She cut the surface of the bay as neatly as an Olympic diver dropping into a swimming pool.
The power stayed with her as she swam, rendering the cold and five-foot swells hardly noticeable. Instead she noted the crystalline shine of moonlight on the water, and the way the lights of the city winked like flickering fireflies. She noticed a rhythmic pattern to what looked like flashes of light on the water’s surface, but after watching for several seconds she realized that it was the pod of dolphins, swimming about a hundred yards away. She swam closer to them, close enough to feel the surge in the water as their powerful bodies raced forward in unison. She was swimming next to a mother and a calf. As she looked into their round, shiny black eyes, the upward curve on the dolphin snout had never seemed more like a smile.
The little one leaped out of the water. His tail flipped up as he met the air, an exuberant gesture that seemed to say, “You try it, too!”
So Sunni did. She lifted her chest and arms as if she was going to do the butterfly stroke, and her body was airborne, the curve of her back matching the position of her little dolphin friend. She kicked her feet just before she sliced back into the water. The mother dolphin chirped her approval. For a moment Sunni contemplated giving up the human world and just staying with these peaceful, intelligent beings, but she knew her strength wouldn’t last forever. She could already feel a burning pain in her arms and legs that said her swimming time was almost over. Reluctantly, she turned toward land.
She could see Jacob standing on the beach. With her telescoping eyesight she could even see the anxious look on his face as he scanned the bay. She was standing in neck-high water before he noticed her. Her heart leapt to see his anxiety change to happiness, but then she realized that this change of expression meant that he hadn’t been entirely sure that she would survive. Come to think of it, she hadn’t been so sure herself when she was hurtling toward the water at a hundred miles an hour.
He stayed well back on the beach, watching her as she came toward him. He had a blanket in his hands, which he threw over her shoulders.
“Where’d you get the blanket?” she asked.
“I broke into someone’s car,” he said.
“Are we allowed to do that?” She rubbed her hair with the blanket.
He laughed. “You mean is it against our laws? ”
“I don’t know what I meant. I don’t know what I meant by ‘we,’ for that matter.”
He scooped her up, blanket and all, tucked her into his arms and ran. He glided as if on invisible skis across the beach and the road that led to the bridge. When he reached the forested hill on the other side he took it in leaps like a deer or a mountain goat, bounding in a zigzagging pattern around the trees and boulders. She had been feeling quite smug about her accomplishments, but this display of dexterity made her humble again, especially given that he was carrying her as nonchalantly as she carried her briefcase.
At the top of the hill was Fort Point, built during the Civil War to deter a Confederate attack that never came. Jacob paused briefly in front of its red brick façade, contemplating the arched windows marching in regulation across its surface. Sunni started to put her feet down, but he just tucked her under one arm and used the other hand to scale the building. When they reached the roof he placed her down gently on a pile of dry leaves. He wasn’t even breathing hard.
She fell on her back, laughing harder than she had since she was a child. She laughed until tears poured out of her eyes and she could scarcely catch her breath. Jacob leaned over her, watching with a bemused expression.
“What’s so funny?” he said.
She shook her head, desperately trying to form words around her helpless chortles. “It’s … not … funny …” she choked.
“Oh, I see,” he said, although he clearly didn’t.
Finally she managed to control herself, although the laughter still bubbled up like hiccups. “It’s fantastic, don’t you see, Jacob?”
He tapped his chin with one finger. “Fantastic. As in wonderful, or unbelievable?”
“Yes,” she breathed. Her heart was still pounding, and her breathing was shallow and quick, but it was no longer a consequence of laughing. Now it was an acute awareness of Jacob leaning over her, his dark wavy hair falling across his forehead, his blue eyes reflecting the moonlight. He licked his lips and his pearly teeth glinted with moisture. Her heart lurched. Were those fangs she had glimpsed before he closed his mouth? He moved closer. She felt her face soften, her lips parted, her chest lifted. She moved inexorably toward him, unable to resist even if she wanted to.
“Sunni, I can’t do this,” he said, his voice strangled in his throat. He grabbed her shoulder, but whether it was to pull her forward or push her away she couldn’t tell.
“Yes, you can,” she whispered. “I’m not human. You just saw that. You can’t hurt me.”
“Oh, I can,” he said, still resisting.
“But you won’t.”
He closed the distance between them. Slipping his hand behind her head, he lifted Sunni to him, his mouth meeting hers with force. His other arm encircled her back. She heard and felt a thrumming sound that filled her head and body. Her skin vibrated with its rhythm. It was their hearts beating in unison, as if they had become one being, incapable of existing without the other.
He pulled away, drawing back so that he could look at her.
“Do you want to bite me?” she asked.
He nodded, his face contorted with suppressed desire. “But I don’t want to frighten you, or have you think ill of me.”
“Who do you bite, men or women?”
“Mostly women.”
“How do they respond when you bite them?”
His cheeks flushed and he glanced away. “It is an enjoyable experience, if we desire to make it so. It is part of our predatory adaptation that we can make humans desire to be taken by us.”
“Do me a favor. Don’t ever say predatory adaptation again.”
He smiled. “All right.”
“So go ahead. Do it. I want you to do it.” She pulled him down to her. His lips grazed her neck. She felt her blood rise up to meet him. When his fangs entered her a tremor of pleasure rolled through her body. She shook like a small animal caught by a predator, but he held her tight.
He was correct about the pleasure she would feel, but he hadn’t warned her of its intensity. She was poised on a precipice, exquisitely balanced between life and death, experiencing every sensation magnified a thousand times. Every nerve ending in her body had come to life and she felt excitement from the top of her head to the tips of her fingers and toes. No body part had primacy; she was one organ of pure sensation. Yet deep at the center of all of this sensation was a core of emotion. She felt herself connecting to Jacob in a deep and indescribable way, felt their hearts entwining as firmly and as surely as their bodies. As Jacob drank, Sunni felt her life turning on its axis. Whatever happened after this, she would never be the same.
Chapter 14
Jacob ran, dodging eucalyptus trees with bases wider than a car, leaping over fallen branches and shrubbery, his feet barely touching the ground. Sunni was asleep on the roof of the fort, and he couldn’t just sit there and watch her. Every muscle in his body was taut as a bowstring, and he hoped to release the tension with a bit of hunting. But even as he ran he obsessed: about what was going to happen next with Richard and the Council, and about his overwhelming desire to take Sunni fully and entirely, body and soul.
He was in pursuit of a six point stag. Every sound registered in his heightened senses, from the tapping of a woodpecker to the grinding of a termite. The stag crashed through the undergrowth, zigzagging wildly in its effort to lose the predator on its tail, but there was no contest between them. Jacob was simply enjoying the hunt, appreciating an opportunity to exert himself. The stag was getting tired,
though. It was time to take him down, drinka little bit, and let him go back to the herd. Jacob leaped into the air, feeling buoyant as a bird.
Then, as suddenly as if he’d hit a trip wire, Jacob pulled up short and dropped to the ground, on his feet, but barely. The deer continued to run, unaware in its panic that it was no longer being pursued. Jacob’s fangs dropped, his legs and arms tensed, every nerve stood at attention. He turned toward the sound of footsteps.
Enzo Rizzoli stepped from between two trees, adjusting a wine red tie against a cherry-colored shirt with a hand that sported three rings and a heavy gold bracelet. He and Jacob bowed to each other, performing the greeting that had been standard when each had been alive.
“That was quite a show, Jacob,” Enzo said. “I haven’t seen hunting like that since Napoleon’s time.”
“You mock me,” Jacob said, but mildly.
Enzo clapped him on the back. “You were rather slow. ”
“I was taking my time, enjoying the chase,” Jacob grumbled. “What do you want, anyway?”
“Scipio wants to see you,” Enzo said.
“Where is he? ”
“He is very close.”
They walked to the edge of the woods, where a black Escalade idled in an empty parking lot. Jacob could see two other vampires inside: a tall female with chestnut hair was driving, and in the passenger seat sat a blond male whose highly developed musculature made his suit jacket look like it was stuffed full of potatoes. He was wearing dark glasses, even though the sun was only a glowing half sphere rising behind the eastern hills. Around the vampire’s neck was a ring of angry red scar tissue.
“What happened to the young yeoman?” Jacob asked.
“Lazarus used a chain on him.” Enzo sighed. “Poor boy. He didn’t even know about such things. He thought by becoming a vampire he’d be invincible.”
“Where’s Scipio?” Jacob asked, feeling adrenaline pump through his limbs and torso. He had no intention of fighting Enzo and the other vampires, but his body didn’t seem to know that.
