Excerpt I - Heat Level -- VERY HOT/ADULT
From Chapter 2
The horrible
buzzing resembled no natural sound. Alphonsine reached out, hitting the alarm
clock with enough force to send plastic flying like shrapnel.
“Merde,” she said, lifting the
lilac-scented sleep mask to survey the damage.
The thick black
curtains were closed and the room was dark, but she could feel the sun had not
quite set. Next time stick to champagne,
she reminded herself. The copious amount of whiskey had left her head pounding.
The fruit of the vine was mother’s milk to her, but she’d never had much of a
tolerance for grain alcohol, and while the effects were not seen on her face,
they might be felt, especially when she awoke before it was time.
But she’d promised
Pierre she wouldn’t be late. It wasn’t that she wished to please him. She
simply couldn’t stand how smug he’d become about her habits. She hated being
predictable.
Her headache would
be gone if she waited a few more minutes till sunset, but she didn’t have the
patience. She reached into her night table, grabbing a small glassine envelope,
placed a bit of powder on her finger, and snorted just enough to numb the pain.
She stood up and
went to the curtained wall. Despite the stories, her kind did not implode if
out before sundown. It was one of many myths designed to keep them safe, not
much more truthful than stories about not being able to cross water, needing an
invitation to enter a residence, or having an especially strong aversion to
garlic.
Daylight, however,
was still to be avoided. They were by nature nocturnal, and the longing for
sleep might weigh obsessively on the mind. One could use potions to stay awake
– drugs in sufficient quantity to kill most mortals, but nothing could overcome
the weakness and vulnerability. Worst of all, sunlight caused aging, and at an
even more rapid rate than for the day-walkers. The occasional morning stroll,
the rare afternoon ride, could over a century add a decade or more, and when
one survived on one’s looks and charms, any diminishment was perilous. In
direct daylight there would be a tingling, a warning mechanism from the body
that would become more intense and unpleasant, but when it was essential to be
seen, her kind could pass.
She opened the
curtain revealing the island across the river, the lights of the city coming on
as the orange globe went down. There was something riveting about watching its
power wane. Despite her nakedness, she slid open the terrace door and stepped
out to take it all in. There it was before her, the shimmering waters of the
East River, and beyond it Manhattan,
lit up in its glory. She felt the wind on her face and stretched out her arms.
She made a sound halfway between a scream and a howl, a welcome to the moon.
She could feel her energy returning. It was night, and the night was hers.
Lacking was the
music of insects, birds, wildcats with their grumbling mating calls, the howls
of wolves – what her people called night-song. But then, from the time she
first came to Paris at fourteen, she’d always been a city girl, and cities had
their own pleasures.
Her bathroom was
en-suite, but could be accessed through a second door from the living room.
Rosa, who came in the mornings to clean, routinely filled the bath. There was a
timed heater that kept the water warm. Alphonsine slipped into the oversized
tub.
She dove under the
bubbles. While her kind needed to breathe, they could control respiration and
stay under for hours. She enjoyed soaking this way in very hot water, allowing
herself to think and dream. Her morning kill had been so unusual, so exciting,
she wanted to relive every detail.
She hadn’t been
planning to feed that night, though it had been almost four weeks. She could go
five, even six in a pinch, but after that long she felt so fatigued it was hard
to distinguish day from night. Pierre and she were planning to get out of town
to feast together. He often chided her for her recklessness, pointing out it
was not like the old days. Trains, planes, and automobiles made it easy to place
distance between oneself and one’s prey. No reason to kill where one lived, but
sometimes, one couldn’t help oneself.
She had left the
party feeling a particular restlessness. At first believing sex alone might be
enough to stave off the hunger, her plan had been to head downtown or back to
Brooklyn to find some pretty thing to hook up with. Then she caught a scent,
felt something unique was waiting. Violent images flooded her mind as she
entered the bar. It was coming into focus – a mortal who killed, not in war,
but for fun. While her telepathic
powers were weak – she was after all still quite young, she could sense
emotions, especially strong ones, and he had been a seething caldron of barely
suppressed rage.
Under the warm water, she could still taste it
on her tongue, his blood, his essence – all of that delicious hate, and yet in
the intimacy of the death-grip, she felt more, his humanity, as though they
both were spiraling backwards in time to a moment when even he was innocent.
She’d given him
peace. It had been a good death for him. True, she had frightened him when she
jumped out. They said in the best hunts the prey never suspected, never felt a
moment of unease, but allowances had to be made. After all, he believed he had
killed her. She couldn’t let him go to his grave thinking that.
Blood was more
than nourishment. It was a sacrament. Some said the blood itself contained the
very soul. She doubted such a thing existed. She only knew it had something – a
power, a magic like nothing else. Strange how easily satisfied beings like her
were, hardly the monsters depicted in myth. As pleasurable as it might be to
hunt and feast every night, like the noble lion, they only did so when hungry.
No two people
tasted the same – not father and son, nor brother and sister, not even twins.
This she knew from her own experience. Children’s blood had a sweetness like
the candied grapes young men once brought her as tokens between acts at the
opera. There was a freshness to young blood, like apples picked in the summer
at a perfect moment of ripeness. Teenaged girls tasted of secrets, and boys of
lust. Women, pretty ones, whose hearts had been broken had a certain tenderness
and resignation, especially if you came to them when their looks were fading,
and there wasn’t much hope. There were men who had an edge like a wine with a
bitter after taste, while others were warm and smooth. The old, whom she wasn’t
fond of, tasted of sadness, disappointment, and defeat, though they would
certainly do when convenient. Human blood, like the human voice, had different
timbres. Some had the richness and depth of a bass-baritone while others were
light but agile like a coloratura soprano.
A killer, however,
especially one who dispatched his own so remorselessly, this was a rare treat
indeed. The essence would hold within it all whom he had taken. For her to act
so boldly, to take so many chances to have him, was a risk, but what would be
the point of immortality without gambles? And she had always loved games of
chance.
When she walked in and saw him, saw those
thick arms, the sandy hair, could already feel what it would be like to fuck
him, to take him perhaps when he was inside her, she knew she had to go through
with it. The combination of lust and hunger made her almost giddy, barely able
to contain herself.
Still immersed,
Alphonsine began to touch her thighs, working up to her pussy, replaying the
night.
As soon as she sat down at the bar it became
clear he had picked her, imagined her as his next victim. It was too delicious!
A chance for play-acting. Something different and rough.
Alphonsine lifted
her head above the water, feeling the urge to breathe. Her breaths became quick
as she felt her release, the first taste of his blood a vivid memory. Her kind
not only felt everything more strongly than mortals, but could recall in full sensory
detail.
It had been everything she hoped. Feeling
him draining, feeling his life force leaving his body, merging into hers. That
final beat of his cruel heart. A rush of something – all his anger, perhaps? It
overwhelmed her for a second and then was gone. And he had looked so tranquil –
transformed by death – beyond the desire to hurt and kill, beyond it all,
finally at rest – a gift she had bestowed on him.
She had closed his eyes, and kissed him once
softly on the lips before beginning the task of clean up.
The act of
remembering left her not hungry for more blood, but still unsatisfied.
She went back to
bed, and reaching over to the night table brought out a vibrator, thrusting it
in and out until she finally felt normal. It was not unusual after a feeding to
be as randy as a teenaged boy. It was always better to hunt with a partner, to
wake together in each other’s arms, able to satisfy any remaining urges. It
didn’t matter whether the bedmate was male or female, or what one usually
preferred. Often, she and Pierre comforted each other after feeding, though he
was naturally drawn to men, and more like an older sibling. That was another
thing mortals missed, how gentle and loving they could be with each other. They
were, as Pierre had once put it, the bonobos of the supernatural.
When she was
ready, she rose from the bed. While her smashed clock was no help, she was sure
she was running late as always. There was an important opening at the gallery –
a group show of new artists, and she herself had made arrangements for the
gala. There would be a poetry slam and a band, and press of course. She
pictured the stern look Pierre would give her when she arrived. He kept an
apartment above the gallery, and had probably been up since late afternoon, but
then a man could afford to look a bit weathered, to pass for forty rather than
twenty-five. She could not.
She decided to
wear the red dress that night – the one that looked like the one worn by
Violetta in that modern dress version of La
Traviata she’d seen with Pierre. He’d get the reference.
She pulled her
long hair back and expertly twisted it into a single high braid. After working
on her make-up, she stepped out into the main room. It was about five hundred
square feet, large only by New York standards. There was an open space
separated from the small kitchen area by a black granite counter. Rosa had left
the usual items out – the vase with camellias, only three, cut fresh and sent
to her every day, courtesy of an old acquaintance. She grabbed a single one and
pinned it in her hair. There were newspapers – The New York Times so she could learn what was happening in the
world, Le Monde because wherever she
wandered for however long, Paris would always be her home, and the New York Post because she loved reading
about the exploits of the fashionable on Page
Six, where she sometimes got a “shout-out” – or rather her current identity
did. To the world she was now Camille St. Valois.
She pressed the
button on her espresso machine and waited for the dark liquid to fill the cup,
as she checked e-mail on her phone. How wonderful to be living in the
twenty-first century, where servants were hardly even necessary, and anyone
could have anything in an instant. She had once lived her life at light speed.
What else could one do when diagnosed with an inevitably fatal illness while
still a teenager? Time had not been an enemy for many years, and yet she still
wanted to fill every night with pleasure.
She savored the
odor of the Sidamo beans, recalling an Ethiopian prince she’d once known. It
had made her sad to kill him, but his suspicions were dangerous and she
couldn’t resist his sweet royal blood.
Her kind didn’t need food or drink to survive, but a
strong cup of coffee in the dawn of the evening was almost as essential to her
as the life giving elixir that flowed from the veins of still-living mortals.
Skimming through
the New York papers she saw nothing about her activities the previous evening –
neither the gathering she’d attended earlier, nor her feast. Despite having risen
early to avoid being late, she decided to enjoy a few more quiet moments before
rushing out to work.
