Reluctant Partnerships (4 page)

Next to her, Angelique kept a close eye on Isabelle. The woman was one of her longest-term employees. She would know when she reached a critical level and Pascale needed to stop. The vampire herself would learn to identify that moment in time, but not tonight, with the need of her turning burning through her. Angelique suspected it would take two or three feedings to satisfy her completely.

When Isabelle nodded, Angelique tapped Pascale’s shoulder. “That’s enough,” she said.

Pascale gripped Isabelle’s hand tighter.

Angelique tapped a little harder. “Pascale, you need to let her go now.”

Pascale ignored her.

Grabbing Pascale’s hands, Angelique forced them away from Isabelle’s wrist. The moment her hand was free, Isabelle snatched it back.

Pascale spun to face Angelique, her eyes wild. “I wasn’t done.”

“No, but Isabelle is,” Angelique said mildly. Her superior age guaranteed she could restrain Pascale if she needed to, but usually her calm demeanor did the trick.

“I’m still hungry!” Pascale shouted.

“And Isabelle’s sending someone else in,” Angelique said, “but you have to get control of yourself. You said you didn’t want to do what he did to you, but if you don’t control the beast driving you to feed, you will do exactly that, intentionally or not.”

“How?”

“You probably can’t control yourself now,” Angelique said honestly. “You’re newly turned and the blood hunger is driving you hard. After you’ve sated yourself and rested, we will talk again and I’ll teach you some techniques.”

They repeated the process twice more before Pascale let go of a donor’s wrist voluntarily. “There is a bedroom down the hall where you can rest today,” Angelique said. “You’ll be hungry again tonight, but we will talk some more before then.”

“I don’t think I can rest,” Pascale said. “I’m on edge.”

“That’s a side effect of feeding,” Angelique agreed. “With a willing partner, the fastest way to ease that restlessness is a round of hot, sweaty sex. Unfortunately, that isn’t on offer here. I don’t run a sex shop.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“There’s a vibrator in the drawer, still in its package,” Angelique said. “It’s yours if you want it.”

“Why are you being so helpful?” Pascale demanded.

“Because Sebastien asked me to, because every vampire should have guidance when they’re turned, because you remind me of a girl in the harem, because this is what I do,” Angelique replied. “Take your pick.”

“Are you sure you won’t join me?” Pascale asked, the blood rushing through her system emboldening her.

“You are temptation itself, but I have a lover,” Angelique said, “one whom I am not willing to give up. Before I can do anything, I would have to talk with him, and he will have already left for the day.”

“A vampire?”

“No, a wizard.”

“Another wizard? I’d never met one in my life until tonight and now they’re everywhere!”

“You’re a vampire now, a magical creature,” Angelique reminded her. “Wizards are about to be a large part of your life, at least until you’re ready to be on your own again, and perhaps even after that. I predict you have about twelve hours before Raymond and Jean descend on you, and that’s only because they’ll wait for sundown before they disturb you.”

“Who are they?” Pascale asked.

Angelique laughed. “The two most charismatic men you’ll ever meet. Either one of them is enough to turn a woman’s head. Together….” She shook her head and laughed again. “More relevantly, they’re the chef de la Cour of Paris and his Consort, as well as the directors of l’Institut Marcel Chavinier.”

“None of which tells me anything,” Pascale reminded her.

“Rest,” Angelique insisted. “The sun is up and you’re about to be very twitchy unless you’re somewhere dark and enclosed. You’ll be safe in the bedroom as long as you stay away from the volets, but you’ll rest better if you close the bed curtains too.”

Pascale wanted to argue, but Angelique was implacable, showing her into the small, well-appointed bedroom, offering her a nightgown if she wanted, and closing the door firmly behind her. Pascale checked the handle the moment she was gone. The door was unlocked. She could leave if she wanted, the room, anyway. The sun outside would keep her from leaving the building.

The thought surprised her. Sometime in the past hour, she had recovered her equilibrium and her desire to live, even in this altered state. She had no idea what it really meant to be a “magical creature” as Angelique had said, but she had fed without hurting the people who helped her. She could exist this way without becoming a monster. It would be different, but perhaps it would not be horrible. Suddenly exhausted, she climbed into bed, drawing the bed curtains as Angelique had suggested. Cocooned in darkness, she closed her eyes and let dreams take her.

Chapter 2

“
A
BOUT
time you got back,” Thierry said when Jean and Raymond returned to l’Institut the following evening. “What’s the point of having cell phones if I can’t reach you when I need you?”

“You’ve done enough seminars to be able to welcome everyone without us,” Raymond reminded him.

“That wasn’t the reason I was calling,” Thierry said. “A woman was attacked last night by a vampire.”

“Where?” Jean demanded, all levity gone from his voice.

“I don’t know all the details. Adèle said to call her when you got in. She’s the one who found the woman.”

“Where is she now?” Jean asked.

“In Paris, at Sang Froid.”

“She was turned,” Jean said, his voice cold.

Thierry nodded.

“Putain de merde,” Jean cursed. “Angelique will take good care of her—thank you for arranging that—but we have a problem if there’s a vampire turning people against their will.”

“We only know of the one case,” Raymond reminded him. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t find the culprit, but it could be an isolated incident.”

“Unless it is a newly turned vampire realizing too late that he was killing his victim, it was intentional,” Jean explained, “and if he did it once, he’ll almost certainly do it again.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because there’s something addicting about the feeling of bestowing life and death, the tightrope you have to walk to drain someone enough to turn them without killing them first.”

“You sound like you know from experience.”

Jean flushed. “I’ve never turned anyone against their will, but early in my new existence, I turned several vampires. All of them were willing, but there were enough of them that people in the neighborhood started whispering about a fiend in the darkness. That earned me a visit from monsieur Lombard, who ordered me to stop for at least fifty years. If I did, I could stay where I was. If I didn’t, he’d be forced to send me to some other Cour because I would be a threat to his. Paris is the only home I’ve ever known. Leaving it was not an option I wanted to consider.”

“And after fifty years?”

“I’d mastered my need again,” Jean said. “I’ve turned only one person since then. Even at the height of my madness, I only turned people willingly, but I searched them out, offering it to every person I fed from, hoping they would say yes, that they would
all
say yes. If the vampire is far enough gone to turn someone against their will, he or she won’t stop now.”

“So what do we do?” Raymond asked. “We can’t sit by and let it happen.”

“No, but we also can’t go rushing in without thought,” Jean said. “You are no longer president of l’ANS, and I am out of my territory here. Furthermore, what he did, while clearly wrong, is not actually illegal because this is the first time it has happened since French law took us and vampire situations into account. I almost wish you hadn’t resigned, because this is going to require some complicated legislation, and your successor doesn’t have your way with words.”

“We’ll have to give her those words, then,” Raymond said, “because I’m far too happy as director of l’Institut and your Consort to consider going back. Even for this. We’ll have to talk to Adèle, but perhaps the vampire can be charged with assault. I don’t know the details, of course, but even if the woman gave her consent for him to feed, turning her without her permission would be an assault on her person.”

“It’s pointless to speculate,” Thierry said. “Call Adèle. She said she was going to sleep a bit before she started investigating. She may have caught the vampire by now.”

“She’d have called if she did,” Jean said.

“Your phone’s been off all day long,” Thierry snapped.

“She would have called you if she couldn’t reach us,” Raymond said, “because she knows we’ll come back here for the welcome dinner tonight. We can call her now, but we can’t miss dinner, or I can’t, anyway. I don’t have the excuse of being president of l’ANS to drag me away from my job anymore.”

The comment surprised a snort from both Thierry and Jean. They shared an amused glance, both remembering Raymond’s struggle to balance the two sets of responsibilities before he decided he had to choose.

“We can still call her before dinner,” Jean said. “She might be willing to update us on the phone and save us all a trip.”

“We’ll use the speaker phone in the office,” Raymond said. “That way we can all join in the discussion.”

“It’s about time you called,” Adèle snapped when she answered the phone.

“We didn’t know you needed us to call until about five minutes ago,” Raymond said soothingly. “Thierry filled us in on what he could. Tell us what you’ve learned today.”

“Pascale Auboussu, twenty-six years old, female, lives alone in Château-Chinon,” Adèle recited. Jean stroked Raymond’s back when his lover flinched at the name. His fingers lingered on the mark of their Aveu de Sang that covered the older, more sinister mark Pascal Serrier had left there at the start of the war. “She said she was attacked outside her home between ten and eleven o’clock last night, dragged behind the garage, bitten, and drained before the vampire forced his blood down her throat and turned her without her consent. I’ve been by her house, and the signs of struggle are there, but nothing I can use as evidence. No fibers, no clean shoe prints, no blood. He’s either really efficient, really paranoid, or both.”

“Any idea where she might have been to attract a vampire?” Raymond asked. “Maybe she ran into him at a club, flirted with him, and then he decided she was interested in more, regardless of her feelings on the matter.”

“I haven’t had a chance to interview her that closely,” Adèle replied. “Sebastien took her to Paris, to Sang Froid, so she could feed. I thought I’d wait until sunset and then go speak with her again.”

“Wait until after tonight’s dinner if you can,” Jean requested. “We’d like to go with you, but we have to be here for this.”

“Call me when it’s done,” Adèle suggested. “I’ll pop over to l’Institut and we can all go together.”

A long pause followed. “She was scared, convinced she’d been turned into a monster. Sebastien got her calmed down a little, but if we don’t handle this well, we could end up with a pile of ashes instead of a witness.”

“Sebastien left her with Angelique, right?” Jean verified.

“As far as I know,” Adèle said.

“Angelique will make sure she makes it through the day,” Jean said, “and that’s the hardest part. The longer she goes on as a vampire, the harder it will be to end her existence simply because it’s different than what came before.”

“We need to go,” Raymond interrupted. “Dinner’s about to start, and we have a special guest tonight. It wouldn’t be right to miss it.”

“Call me when it’s over,” Adèle repeated. “I’ll have my cell on.”

Hanging up the phone, Raymond looked at Jean. “This is bad, isn’t it?”

“Oui,” Jean replied. “As bad as anything the
extorris
did, almost as bad as Serrier.”

“If it isn’t your territory, whose is it?” Raymond asked. “We chose Dommartin in part because it’s outside the jurisdiction of any Cour.”

“Autun is the closest Cour,” Jean said. “At least Denis Langlois is more reasonable than Renaud was.”

“Do we need to call him as well?” Raymond asked. “I could go to Autun to get him. My magic will work on him.”

“Let’s get through dinner first,” Jean said after a moment’s reflection. “Adèle will wait for our call. Pascale isn’t going anywhere without Angelique, and Denis isn’t expecting us to call, so he won’t care if we finish with dinner first. Martin Delacroix’s arrival is a huge coup for l’Institut. We don’t want to jeopardize his entire sabbatical over this. If this goes well, he could be key to expanding the partnership network out of Europe and into North America. As much as my ingrained sense of responsibility says we need to check on the new vampire, this is more important.”

Raymond reminded himself the vampire was in good hands where she was. She could wait another few hours and indeed would probably be more amenable to conversation after she had time to feed again. He had learned the futility of trying to discuss anything with his partner when Jean was hungry, not that Jean had been hungry very often since they had made their Aveu de Sang six months earlier. The magical bond that prohibited Jean from feeding from any other mortal also allowed him to feed from Raymond without any danger to Raymond’s system. The fang marks over Raymond’s left pectoral had not healed in months. If Raymond had his way, they never would.

“Shall we go down, then?” he asked instead of continuing the discussion. “Alain and Orlando shouldn’t have to welcome everyone alone.”

“Are they even here tonight?” Jean asked as they left the office and started across the courtyard to the réfectoire. “I thought I heard Orlando say something about contractors starting work on their house this week.”

“That starts on Wednesday,” Raymond replied. “They’ll be around tonight and tomorrow for the history lesson with the wizards. Sebastien and Thierry offered to do that with the vampires so they don’t have to deal with their Aveu de Sang skewing perceptions, and then Alain and Orlando will be off until Sunday and the end of seminar dinner.”

“What are they having done?”

“You’ll have to ask them that,” Raymond said. “Alain started waxing poetic about different kinds of wood and flooring and faux finishes and lost me completely. I know they aren’t that far along, but I don’t know what they’re actually doing right now.”