by S. E. Lund
He leans in and kisses me tenderly, his lips soft against mine and I just melt into him, my hands on his chest.
"Come and wash up." He stands up, only a bit hesitant, one hand over his chest.
"Are you sure you're OK?" I reach out and touch his chest where the only sign of a stab wound is a thin red seam and blood that spilled down his chest to his belly.
"All better." He pokes at the wound. "Just a bit tender. Now come with me and let's get you cleaned up. We're going to Franklin Park to look for vampires."
I hesitate. "What?"
He walks off the mats towards the locker room.
"I'm going to take you out so you can see vampires at night. See where they go, what they do. There's quite a few in town and you can bet some will be at the park, looking for willing blood whores. It's illegal but it's not grounds for prosecution. The blood whores need the money and so it's more of a nuisance. The Council mostly looks the other way."
"Will I be in danger?"
He shakes his head.
"Not as long as you're with me."
We wash off in the locker room and then Michel pulls on his t-shirt. Before we leave for Franklin Park, he reaches into a pocket in his jacket and withdraws and small piece of cloth, which had been folded up into a tiny package. He unwraps it and takes out a piece of flesh colored rubber with two red gashes in it – a fake vampire bite.
"Here," he says and tilts my head to the side. He peels the backing off the fake bite and then kisses my neck softly before placing the fake bite there, just below my ear.
"If, for whatever reason we're separated, this is for your protection. I want you to look like you're claimed. Otherwise someone might try to take you. You could beat them if they didn't ambush you, but if there are more than one, you might not be able to fight them all off. That will take further training."
I touch the fake vampire bite, frowning. Then, his face changes, his fangs extending, eyes red-rimmed, and he bites his wrist, daubs his finger in some blood and smears it first on my chin, then some on my face next to my mouth. Right now, when I'm not in the throes of passion, he actually looks scary when he's in his hunter mode and I frown, touching my face, my fingers coming back bloody.
"What are you doing?"
"Any vampires in the park will smell my blood on you and think I've claimed you. They'll believe that you're my blood slave and they'll know that they'll have to fight me if they want you. I'm one of the older surviving vampires, so they won't challenge me."
I examine my fingers. "You're marking me like a dog marks its territory."
"That's exactly right, Eve," he says and sighs, his face reverting to its more human look. "That's what we do."
I look at my fingers and then to him.
"Why teach me to fight if I'm not going to use it?"
He shakes his head. "Sun Tzu once wrote that supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. Fighting's dangerous. You could be hurt. If you're ambushed, you might be overcome. If you get too close to a vampire without realizing it, you could succumb to their powers and be helpless to fight. Better not to fight at all." Then, he reaches into an inside pocket in his trench and withdraws a small thin stake with a round handle.
"But if you have to, use this and do what I taught you. Use your full body weight and hit at the right angle. Remember, we're bloody hard to kill, even for an Adept."
I take the stake and feel its weight, passing it from one hand to the other, finally taking it in my right hand.
"Here?" I mime staking him with it. He frowns and steps back for a moment, as if he thought for one moment I'd actually do it.
"That's right," he says, his voice a bit shaky. Finally, he smiles. "Just don't get any ideas."
I don't smile back. "I already killed you once, remember?"
"How could I forget?"
I look at the stake in my hand. "I didn't like it."
He nods. "I'm glad you didn't. Don't get a taste for it. At least not for me."
"I do have a taste for you," I say and smile and that elicits a little throat noise from him and he grabs me once more and kisses my cheeks, his tongue touching my skin and I feel something surge inside of me.
"Lets go," Michel says and leads the way out of the Foster Building.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
"The heart has its reasons that reason knows not of."
Pascal
We take Blue Hill Avenue to Circuit Drive and stop under a streetlamp in the middle of the park. Michel comes around to my side and leans over me while I'm still in my seat and undoes my belt for me.
"Stay close," he says softly. "If anyone approaches us, play it as if you're my blood slave. Act a bit drunk or stoned. That way, you won't have to say anything and if there's a threat, they won't be expecting you to be capable of self-defense. We definitely do not want anyone to know you're an Adept."
He helps me out of the car and a tremor of excitement goes through me at the prospect of being among vampires. We enter the park, and in the darkness, I can see as if through a night vision scope, allowing me to navigate despite the dimness. Ahead, I see only a sea of trees and brush with a faint green glow over the landscape from starlight and ambient light from the city.
We walk on, Michel still holding my arm, and finally, about two hundred feet inside the park, I see two people under a fir tree, facing each other. Neither is a vampire – vampires have a strange color in the dark due to their body temperature. I glance at Michel – he looks like a stone angel in a graveyard, his skin different shades of grey in my night vision, his blue eyes grey, his pupils huge in the darkness.
"Just a couple of druggies exchanging a needle," he says, leaning down close to me, whispering in my ear. "We have to go deeper. Take care with what you say to me. Remember vampire hearing is very acute. Anyone in the park will hear what we say."
He slides his hand down my arm, his fingers threading through mine. We pass the pair and go farther into the park, stopping at a bench beside a path leading to a clearing in the trees.
"Sit here for a while," he says softly.
I sit beside him and he places his arm around me, pulling me closer, turning to face me while his eyes move over the landscape behind me, so we look like a vampire-human couple instead of a pair of Council Agents on a training mission. Of course, we're both.
As I scan the park around us, a question rises in my mind.
"If scientists were able to develop a cure for vampirism, would you take it?" I say, whispering. I look up at his face when he doesn't answer right away.
"There'll be no cure, Eve," he says and looks down at me. "It's not just a disease. You might be able to alter it, but it won't go away."
"No," I say and shake my head. "It is just a disease. It's likely just a set of mutations that are passed through shared blood, like HIV. Maybe some kind of retrovirus that alters your DNA, turning you into a vampire."
"It's not just a mutation," he says firmly.
"I don't believe that religious drivel," I say and sigh. "Remember I'm an atheist."
"Remember I'm a priest."
"Ah, but you left the priesthood."
"Not by choice."
I exhale heavily and close my eyes, trying to feel drugged, but my experience with drugs is pretty minimal.
"So if you could, you'd become a priest again?"
"Without hesitation."
That hurts me.
"You don't mind celibacy?"
"I hate it. A priest has to make sacrifices."
"I think celibacy is wrong," I say, wanting to argue with him. "It's unnatural. Humans are meant to be sexual."
"What's natural? Bach is unnatural, if you mean evolutionary development. Humans are unnatural. We don't need to play piano or compose beautiful works of music. We do because we're metaphysical. We create ourselves, we escape our biology, we mold ourselves into what we want to be in order to reach a higher plane. Celibacy is just one way of exerting control over desire so
you can channel it for other purposes."
"Why aren't you celibate now? If you were, you could channel all that desire into accomplishing your mission," I say, trying to be saucy.
"Eve of a thousand questions…" He takes my chin in his hand and leans down and kisses me. "In case you couldn't tell," he says, his lips at my ear. "I have been. Until you, of course."
My body responds to that revelation, a surge of something going through me right to my groin. He's been celibate?
I pull away and look in his eyes. "I didn't know. I couldn't tell."
"I thought you'd be able to tell by how fast I was that first night."
"You said it was because I was so close."
He smiles for a moment.
"So was I." And then his face becomes serious once more. "I try to live my life as a priest, even if I'm not officially one. I pray, Eve. I worship. I ask for forgiveness. I'm hoping for redemption."
"What do you have to ask forgiveness for?" I say softly, thinking how God should be asking forgiveness for making him a vampire. He just shakes his head and looks away from me.
"I was very bad, Eve. I have much to atone for."
"That's why you ripped out pages of the manuscript?"
"Part of the reason, yes."
"If there was a God," I say, "and I don't believe there is one, why would he allow people to be killed by vampires? My mother wasn't a sinner. I don't care what anyone says. She was a good person and didn't deserve to die. I didn't deserve to become motherless. You didn't deserve to become a vampire."
"Eve," he says, his voice almost a whisper. "I don't think vampirism has anything to do with hurting humans. We're like collateral damage."
I frown, unable to let the thought go. "What do you mean? God was punishing someone else?"
He nods but doesn't elaborate.
"Who?" I say finally but he shakes his head and looks away. I say nothing. There's no arguing with people on this and I know it.
"Shh," he says and takes my chin in his hand once more. "Just enjoy the night. Quit thinking so much. Besides, you should just drink." He takes one of my hands in his and holds his other wrist out to me.
Drink? He must mean that I should pretend to drink his blood like a good blood slave would. I frown and take his wrist and I hold it in front of me, reluctant to really go through with the ruse. I think about blood slaves – humans who drink vampire blood and are addicted to its effect on their neurotransmitters.
To me, they're no different from any other addict. To be pitied. But there's something in the whole idea that draws me and I feel just a slight twinge of shame. Like it's illicit, like it's XXX porn, drawing you in, arousing you, but making you feel slightly tarnished afterwards.
Sitting there with his wrist at my lips, his arm around me, other vampires watching us, does something to me that surprises even me. I feel aroused. My body warms at the thought of this intimate act – drinking his blood. I remember how Michel felt when he drank the woman's blood in my shared memory with him. It was so erotic, that connection he felt when he drank, like the joining of two bodies in sex. The sensations build in me as I sit there, the warmth going right to my groin, and I unconsciously squeeze my muscles for it's so sexual… I kiss his wrist, and then open my mouth, my tongue on his skin and he gasps.
I turn my face up to him.
"What are you doing to me?" I whisper.
"Nothing," he says, his voice breathless. "That's all you."
Then, a strange warmth floods through me and I know I'm channeling him, his emotions. He feels lust for me, tenderness, ownership – as if I am so valuable, he'll do anything to protect me.
It's then I realize something not in the papers and books I read about vampires. They're humans whose lives were taken from them, usually against their will, and were forced to become killers to survive, their humanity slowly slipping away because of their hunter nature and need for human blood, slowly losing all emotions unless they maintain contact with us through feeding. It is a curse and in that moment, my heart feels as if it's expanding, growing bigger, admitting vampires back into my category of 'human'.
They really are damned – not by a god as Michel thinks, but by a strange quirk of evolution. Now, instead of wanting to find a drug to poison them, kill them all as I once dreamed of in my fantasies of vengeance, I turn my thoughts to a cure. I wonder if a cure is even possible, but I'm certain that vampirism is some genetic mutation in a virus or other infectious agent that evolved thousands of years ago.
"If vampirism is a genetic mutation or set of mutations, there's always gene therapy. How wonderful would that be – to cure vampirism?" I say, looking in his eyes. "To give you back your life? You could be a priest."
"You're wrong," he whispers. "But I love your mind."
I smile, my eyes closed, unwilling to be drawn back to the real world. The drowsy warmth I feel builds, the desire in me building along with it, but I'm helpless to stop it. I don't want to stop it. It's so pleasant here, I let myself just drift on this strange cloud of warmth that seems to go on and on.
Then, it breaks and I startle back to the present. Michel turns his body to me and our eyes meet.
"We're not alone," he whispers as he bends down to me, his lips touching my ear. "Remember what I said."
I instantly become alert.
Michel turns away from me slightly, but I keep facing him. Someone has joined us and is standing close. I can sense him.
A vampire.
"I like her blood type," the vampire says, his voice deep and smooth. "B positive. Mostly Irish but some Welsh. I could smell her across the park. Is she temporary or permanent?"
Michel stands and brings me around in front of him, his arms around me, one across my shoulders, the other still holding my hand. He's tall enough so that his chin rests on the top of my head.
"Permanent."
I keep my eyes closed and lean back against Michel, the back of my head against his chest. I try to act drugged as if I'm his blood slave, and it isn't hard to do. I know he's doing something to my mind to ensure I don't panic and I'm glad.
I peer at the vampire through my eyelashes. He's older, with grey hair and that strange grey skin in the darkness. His lips look almost blue, and his mouth's slightly open, revealing sharp canines. He's in hunter mode.
"You couldn't beat me," Michel says flatly, as if answering an unspoken challenge. "Don't even think of trying."
A surge of adrenaline goes through me and Michel squeezes me as if to calm me. Soon enough, I relax and my heart rate slows once more.
"Don't worry," the vampire says. "I'm not interested in fighting."
Michel doesn't say anything but he does relax his arms around me just a bit.
"She's new," the vampire says. "I heard your conversation and she sounds as if she isn't really your property just yet. That's why I came over. You'll have lots of fun with this one. A real challenge."
"That she most definitely is," Michel says in reply but his voice is brusque and not inviting of any further conversation.
Then the vampire turns and is gone, moving so fast he would have blended into the shadows to a normal mortal, but with my night vision, I can follow him. He's off looking for someone to feed on – some poor blood whore in need of money or a fix of vampire blood.
"You did well, Eve. Congratulations," he says and squeezes me. It feels so good, so comforting. I truly feel safe with him. "You survived your first encounter with a vampire in the field."
He takes my hand and pulls me deeper into the trees. Ahead in the moonlight, I see the same vampire with a woman in his arms.
"That was fast," I say.
"Shh," Michel says. "He can hear you."
We watch as the couple embraces for a few moments and then part, the blood whore going off in the other direction from the vampire. It's a straight exchange – blood for money.
Nothing different from prostitution and it makes me very sad with a sense of moral outrage that women are so vulnera
ble. Emotion fills me – grief that so many women are compromised, being so poor or addicted, or even just with tragic pasts, that compel them to sell themselves as prostitutes, either for sex or blood.
Michel squeezes my hand. "The oldest profession."
When I think of them, my stomach clenches. Suddenly, I'm fearful because I'm afraid of how easy it would be for me to just lose myself in Michel, become his blood slave as well as his slave in everything. How easily I could become one of these women, desperate, selling myself for it, willing to do anything to get it.
"It's disgusting."
"Why so hostile?"
"I don't like exploitation," I say, suddenly angry.
"You won't become one, Eve. I'd never let you."
"I'm really going to have to figure out how to create mental blocks."
He sighs. "I thought you liked our connection," he says softly. "It's what we vampires do. It's as natural to us as breathing. Just remember that I can't compel you. I can't force you to do anything against your will. You have to choose submission."
"I want to leave," I say, sadness filling me. I wrap my arms around myself.
"We're not done here."
But he follows me, not speaking. This isn't obedience and I'm surprised he's letting me disobey after his stern warning last night. When we arrive at the car, he opens the door for me and I get in, buckling my own seatbelt. Once we're driving and I know no one can hear me, I speak.
"Tell me how I can block you out," I say.
"No," he says after a hesitation, his voice soft. "Until this thing between us is settled, I need complete access to you so I can be certain. But one day, after it is, you can find your own blocks. I can't tell you what they'll be."
We drive for a moment in silence.
"Eve," he says and his voice is firm. "I need to know how you are without you screening things, keeping things from me. I need to know what you're feeling so I can judge if you can do the job. If you can do 'us'."
I stare out the window at the darkened streets. As much as I want him, I don't know if I can do 'us' – at least, not in the way I think it's going to be. In terms of sex it's fine, hot, deliriously so, but in life?
