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Sleeping in the back seat of a car the size of a can of tuna wasn’t comfortable, I discovered when I woke. Luc was still asleep, squashed beneath me with his knees bent almost to his chest and his neck bent at an awkward angle. I was half on him, half on the floor. Touching Luc’s pale and clammy face, I revised my idea that we slept when the sun was up. He was absolutely and without question dead. For that matter, so was I. I just looked less dead because I was moving.
Squirming forward to the front passenger seat, I looked curiously out through the windscreen. We appeared to be in an underground parking lot. Genius. At least one of us was capable of thinking. At least one of us had still been awake enough to get us to safety. Luc might have built up some resistance to the need to become unanimated but I was probably still centuries away from that.
He had backed into a parking spot at the far end of the lot from the entrance. There was no chance the sun’s rays could find us this far back. No other cars were near us at the moment but he’d taken a huge risk by parking here.
Luc’s eyes opened and he was instantly alert. He sat up and checked his watch. “How long have you been awake?”
“A minute or two,” I replied with a shrug.
Too big to climb through into the driver’s seat, Luc got out, straightened his clothes then climbed back in the conventional way.
I voiced the disturbing question I’d been thinking of just before he woke. “What would happen if someone found us while we were down for the day?”
“The police would be called, we would be examined and taken to the closest morgue,” Luc explained calmly. “If we were extremely unlucky, they would perform an autopsy immediately.”
Shuddering at the idea, I brought my knees up to my chest. “Has that ever happened to you?”
He shook his head. “No. I usually find safer places to while away the daylight hours than this.”
“Would the pain wake us, do you think?” At Luc’s enquiring stare, I elaborated. “When they started the Y incision.” I mimed cutting my chest open with a pretend scalpel.
“No. We do not feel pain when we are...asleep.” We both pondered how helpless we were when the sun came up. Humans definitely had the upper hand there. Pain usually woke them up, unless they were dead drunk. I guessed we didn’t feel pain when we were out of it because we were just plain dead.
With our disturbing discussion over, Luc started the car. Buckling myself in, I finger combed my hair as we exited the underground parking lot. It was automatic to tidy myself. Dead or alive, we women were all alike.
We drove in silence and I took little notice of the scenery. It was very different from Queensland, that much I took in. Even in the dark, it was too green. Where was the dry, brown grass? Where were the gum trees? It was the lack of flies that told me I was in a foreign country. Maybe it was too cold for them here. I was desperately trying to distract myself from my growing hunger and wasn’t having much luck.
When I began to fidget, Luc increased his speed. “Which is it?” he asked cryptically but I knew what he meant.
“It’s a toss-up,” I replied honestly. Both blood and flesh hungers were assailing me. I alternated between dreaming about the salty sweetness of blood and the sleek hardness of Luc’s body. Given the choice, I’d take his body anytime. It was a pity he was off limits.
We were driving down a deserted, ill kept road with nothing resembling human habitation anywhere in sight by now. I was becoming desperate enough that I was going to jump my pretend maker in another minute, promise or no promise. Red and blue lights suddenly flashed us from behind as a cop car took chase after us. We must have run through a speed trap. Unfortunately for the cop who had set the trap, he’d chosen a very remote spot to stop unwary travellers in.
“Thank G-G-G. Shit, will I ever get used to that?” I asked in exasperation as Luc slammed on the brakes.
“It took me a year before I trained myself to no longer try.” He grinned in amusement at my inability to remember I could no longer say ‘God’.
The car skidded to a halt and I unbuckled myself with unseemly haste. Blood hunger was roaring through me, demanding immediate fulfilment. The cop exited his car warily and panicked when I started running towards him. Using his door as a shield, he yelled at me in Romanian to put my hands over my head and to lie down on the road. Ignoring the order, I ran over and yanked his door out of the way. I pulled a bit too hard and it popped off its hinges with a metallic screech. A loud bang that sounded like a firecracker going off nearby seemed unimportant so I ignored it. Grabbing hold of the panicked cop, I forced him to stare into my eyes. The fight instantly left him and he became pliant in my hands. My fangs descended then warm blood was flooding into my mouth.
After drinking my fill, I eased the cop into the car and sat him down. Wearing a foolish grin, he attempted to holster his weapon and dropped it to the floor instead. “Sleep,” I told him. His eyes closed and he began to breathe evenly, still smiling faintly. I wished him happy dreams.
Luc stood a few feet away, shaking his head in disgust. Wind rustled through the trees that grew alongside the road and ruffled my hair. “You must not let your hunger grow out of control.” Lifting the door easily, he rested it against the car. “Humans become suspicious when they can’t explain this kind of destruction.” It would be difficult to understand how the door came to be detached from the car.
“I’m still new at this,” I reminded him and frowned at a strange whistling noise. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“A kind of...whistling sound.” It was coming from somewhere nearby. At another gust of wind, I realized it was coming from me. Bending down, I saw a small hole in my jumper. Lifting my clothes, I verified that I had a hole in my stomach. Numbly feeling behind me, I encountered a much larger hole in my back. Darker red than normal, my blood sluggishly oozed from the wounds. It hadn’t turned black and noisome yet but it was on its way. I’ve been shot in the guts, I thought dazedly. Feeling light headed, I took a step away from the car on wobbly legs. So that’s what the loud bang was.
Luc was suddenly on his knees before me with his hands on my hips to steady me. In any other circumstances, it would have been erotic. Right now, I was trying not to dry heave onto his head. He peered through the hole, assessing the damage. “I’ve had much worse,” he decided. “You’ll be fine. The wound is already closing.”
In disbelief, I bent to take another look. Sure enough, the hole was smaller and blood had already stopped oozing down to stain the top of my jeans. It was strange, I hadn’t felt a thing when the bullet had passed through me. Maybe my hunger had masked the pain. Climbing back into the car, I sat hunched forward on the seat.
“What are you doing?” Luc asked, taking his eyes off the road every now and then to watch me.
“I don’t want to get ooze on the seats.” My stomach tried to lurch at the explanation but couldn’t quite manage it. Whatever I had in my veins, it wasn’t just blood anymore. I was pretty sure it was the thing that made us into what we were. ‘Evil’ is the word you’re looking for. Yeah, that felt about right.
Feeling my back a few minutes later, I determined that the wound had closed. My shirt and jumper were bloodstained and ruined so I threw them out the window. I didn’t want to wear them again, not even if I could get the ooze stain out of them.
Luc drove using his peripheral vision only and stared at me openly. Wearing my bra, I wasn’t quite half naked but felt embarrassed anyway. We might have had a quick bout of sex but I still barely knew him. “Has your flesh hunger risen yet?” he asked in feigned innocence as I sorted through my backpack.
“Keep your eyes on the road, Luc,” I ordered and pulled a t-shirt and jumper on. Still not warm enough, I turned on the heater. Compelled to ask, I turned to my companion. “What do you care about my flesh hunger anyway? You weren’t exactly thrilled when you had to do the naked mambo with me.”
Keeping his eyes strictly on the road, he was reluctant to answer. “I swore I would never lower myself to break in new vampires ever again,” he replied softly.
It was stupid really, but I was hurt that he thought so little of me. “Well,” I promised, “you’ll never have to lower yourself to sleep with me again.”
“It was not so bad.” Luc slid a sly glance at me and dropped his eyes to my chest briefly.
“Never. Again,” I said with cold finality. Screw him, I thought bitterly, I’ll find someone else to take out my flesh hunger on. I’d have sex with a disease ridden hobo before I’d get naked with ‘Lord Lucentio’ again.
“You are angry.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Am I?” I asked in faux amazement. “I can’t imagine why.” After a few seconds of strained silence, I couldn’t take it and exploded. “Do you know what it felt like to hear you say you had to lower yourself to have sex with me? It felt really, really shitty.” I subsided into dry sobs, covering my tearless face with my hands.
Waiting until I had sobbed myself out, Luc started speaking. “I was made over seven hundred years ago. My master chose me because of my physical beauty.” It was said as fact rather than with pride. “My only purpose was to serve as her sexual slave.” I was finally getting the explanation I’d been pestering him for and it was more disturbing than I’d ever imagined.
“She would...loan me out when other vampires required their servants to be broken in.” His expression was stony as he recounted his history. “For four hundred years, I was a whore for my maker. When she wasn’t using me, she watched as I was ravaged by the newly risen.” Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did. “Sometimes, she didn’t watch alone.”
I grasped the implication immediately. “You mean the whole Court would stand around watching while these women screwed you?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you put up with it?” I demanded.
“Because it was my master’s wish,” he replied simply.
I remembered something Silvius had said after I’d risen. He’d said we would be bound for all eternity. “Do servants have to do everything their masters tell them to?” The thought horrified me. He nodded in response. “How did you manage to stop her?”
“I didn’t. Only when my master was killed was I freed from her whims.”
“Who killed her?” I admit, the story was as fascinating as it was horrifying. It was even more gripping than the French bodice-ripper had been.
Luc hesitated then shrugged. “I do not know.” Something told me he was lying but I wasn’t going to push it. There was one thing I did want to know.
“So, after centuries of abstinence, I’m the one you broke your fast with.” He nodded again and now I was appalled. “I’m, uh, really sorry,” I said in a small voice.
“Why are you sorry, Natalie?”
“Because it was crap! I was a bad lay and a guy deserves better after three hundred years or so of a dry spell.”
“You weren’t a bad lay,” he said with a small smile.
“I broke your spine,” I reminded him.
“Out of sheer pleasure,” he reminded me in turn.
“Well, it isn’t going to happen again,” I reassured him unhappily. “You can go back to being abstinent again.”
“What makes you think I want to?” he asked pleasantly then turned the car onto a lumpy dirt road.
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