Blood Courtesan Hooked, page 4
“I wouldn’t expect you to.” I glanced around the kitchen in wonder. What in the world would a vampire need any of this for? Then I remembered him telling me this place had been made to seal vampires out. Except… he was a vampire.
We did not all ask for this life…
“Thank you.” I took the plate from him, full of bacon and pancakes, and reached for the syrup.
“You’re welcome.” He sat across from me, impassive, as I chomped on bacon and cut up my pancakes. They were fluffy and delicious with just a hint of vanilla.
“Okay, this is weird.” I spoke through a mouthful of pancakes, reaching for the bottle of water he’d placed by my plate to wash it down. “You, watching me eat, I mean…”
“I can go.” He moved to rise but I shook my head.
“No, no, it’s okay.” I waved him back in the chair. “Since we’re in this thing together, we might as well get to know each other a little, yeah?”
He inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement to my rhetorical question.
“So.” I chewed thoughtfully. “You’re a vampire who doesn’t drink blood?”
Another slight nod. He seemed to be the opposite of his brother, Alaric. I’d never met a more blood-thirsty vampire in my life. It was strange to me, the idea that a vampire would abstain.
“You didn’t want to become a vampire, then?”
Again, just the slight incline of his head in acknowledgement.
“But…” I took another swallow of water. “Don’t… most vampires… I mean, even if you get turned against your will, eventually you end up … feeding… right? Sort of, you know, embracing your vampireness? Isn’t it kind of inevitable?”
“Indeed.” A muscle moved in his jaw, but nothing else.
“So…” I took a bite of bacon, cooked perfectly, halfway between crispy and limp. “Somewhere along the way, you decided… what? You just didn’t want to be a vampire anymore?”
“Unfortunately, that’s not an option.” One side of his mouth twisted slightly as he said this. “But yes… I made the decision to abstain.”
“Huh.” I mopped up the rest of the syrup on my plate with another slice of bacon. I’d made quick work of the pancakes. “So, you’re like… a vegan vampire?”
He chuckled. “Something like that.”
“So weird.” I shook my head, contemplating this. I’d never heard of vampires who didn’t drink blood. Sure, there was a market for bottled blood among vampires—human and animal—but abstaining altogether? It was beyond me.
The vampire stood, taking my empty plate over to the sink to wash it. I stretched, my eyes drooping all on their own. Too many carbs.
I yawned, covering my mouth with the back of my hand as he came back over to the table. I met his dark gaze, suddenly thinking about the great big bed sitting in the middle of his bedroom, wondering if the mattress was soft or firm. The thought of sleeping in an actual bed, instead of in my sleeping bag, was incredibly enticing.
My thoughts flitted briefly to the vision of him undressing and slipping his big frame between those black silk sheets, but I shut that down as fast as I could.
“I have a room for you.”
It was like he’d read my mind. Then, I blushed, remembering that he could, in fact, do just that.
“I am tired,” I confessed, standing and covering another yawn, avoiding his gaze.
He led me back into the living area, this time through another door, the light going on immediately, as it did in all the rooms. This room was similar to his own, with another big, canopy bed, this one decorated in a soft, rose-colored silk.
“The bathroom connects.” He pointed to a closed door. “To my room.”
“Ah.” I nodded, looking longingly at the bed. The fight with the wolf and the long journey across the tundra—even if I hadn’t been the one doing all the work—was catching up with me. My head hurt and so did my leg where I’d been bitten.
“I only have aspirin.” The vampire went over to the bathroom door, opening it, the light magically going on. “But if you take four of them, it should help with the pain…”
Damn. He really could read my mind. It was disconcerting, to say the least. Some vampires were better at it than others, of course. Some of them could hardly do it at all. I hadn’t been around vampires in years and I hadn’t practiced blocking them in a long time. Since the last time I saw Lily, I realized.
Thinking about her made me remember the reason I was there in the first place. I felt a sudden pang of longing at her memory, and another, sharper stab of fear, thinking about her crying out to me for help. Lily was in trouble and, even if I hadn’t seen her since we were young, she was still my sister.
I had to help her, if I could.
“Thank you.” I took the glass of water and four tablets. He watched me swallow them all in one gulp as I sat down on the bed. My head was pounding now, as if the pain was finally catching up to me, too.
“Get some rest.” He went over to the door that connected our rooms through the bathroom. It made me wonder who this second room had been intended for. Glancing over his shoulder, he said, “We’ll find her, Poppy—your sister. Lily. We’ll find her.”
“Thank you,” I said again, feeling a slight lump in my throat as I swallowed. He gave a brief nod, turning to go. “Wait!”
He glanced back, eyebrows raised in question.
“Um…” I swallowed again, that lump a little bigger now as I stuttered. “I don’t… know… what’s… what’s the plan?”
“The plan?” His dark gaze pinned me in place. I squirmed a little, wondering if he could read my mind right now, praying he couldn’t. I was going to have to work at getting myself under control. I’d been very good at it once. “The plan is to find your sister.”
“But… how?”
“Trust me.” The corners of his mouth quirked just slightly in a smile. “We’ll be on a plane to Paris within the day. Just get some rest and let me handle the details. It’s something I’m good at.”
I felt relieved. The clock was ticking.
I nodded, biting my lip, although I was doubtful. I had an uneasy truce with this vampire, since we now had similar goals. But could I trust him? I wasn’t quite sure. For the first time in years, I was glad I kept a little vial of holy water in my pack, no matter what, even out on the Alaska tundra. I’d never needed it—and had never expected to need it. Until now.
“Thank you, Ulrich,” I said softly. He had, after all, done nothing but help me. So far.
“You’re welcome, Poppy.”
He shut the door quietly between us and I climbed under the covers, my head a whirl of confusion. Lily was on my mind, but so was my strange, shifting vampire rescuer and his even stranger underground Arctic lair.
Ulrich von Helgrim.
It had been the last name that tipped me off. But who was this vampire, really? He was Alaric’s brother. Was evil genetic? Ulrich didn’t seem to have the same qualities as his brother. But then again, I’d never known a vampire who didn’t have ulterior motives and just because this one was “abstaining” didn’t mean he was any different.
When I closed my eyes, I saw Ulrich’s—dark with gold rims. I saw him as a wolf, towering over me, and then as a vampire, fangs bared and eyes hungry. I saw him watching me, everywhere I went, his gaze following me around the room. And I felt the tender way he’d touched me as he’d bandaged my wound. I didn’t like the way I responded to him—on the inside. My body was betraying me, and I didn’t like it at all. I was going to have to make my mind a fortress, impenetrable.
Stay out of my head.
That was the last thought I had before I drifted off to sleep.
* * * *
I’d never been one for tourist destinations. I had no desire to go to Disney World or even Disneyland, for that matter—too much sun in either place for me and far too many people.
My decision to move to Alaska had been based both on climate and population. Especially vampire population. Six months out of the year, I could go out without worrying about exposure to the sun, which was almost as deadly to me as it was to vampires. And Utqiaġvik was so sparsely populated, even with the advantage of no sunlight for six months, it wasn’t prime vampire territory. Not enough food.
I hadn’t considered that a vampire might want to take advantage of the darkness to escape from blood-drinking altogether.
But I’d never met a vampire like Ulrich before.
“So, that’s Paris,” I mused aloud out the oval airplane window. The Eiffel Tower, which seemed so large in photos, looked like a little model made of fiery toothpicks in the fading light of the setting sun.
“You don’t sound impressed.” The vampire beside me stirred at the sound of my voice.
Like all vampires, he had fallen asleep, like a clock winding down, the moment the sun appeared over the horizon. Luckily, we’d already been buckled in on the private flight Ulrich had chartered. We were the only ones on the plane, aside from the crew. He’d slept for the whole flight, which had given me time to study him and think about my current predicament. Now that the sun was setting, he was awake.
“I’m not here to sight-see,” I reminded him, sliding the window shade closed and locking my tray table in its upright position in preparation for landing as the flight attendants had asked—in both French and English—just moments before. “I’m here to find my sister.”
Closing the window shade, making the Eiffel Tower disappear, gave me a pang of regret.
That was Paris down there—the city of love—a place I’d probably put at number one on my list of places I wanted to see before I died. Sebastian had promised to take me one day. That had never happened. But he’d promised me a lot of things that had never materialized. I’d given two years of my life to a man who promised me the moon but did nothing but take. I thought my dreams of Paris had died when we’d broken up and I’d moved to Alaska for good.
Now, I was here, and I was far too upset to even think about enjoying the experience. The closer we got, the more my stomach roiled and heaved, thinking about Lily, somewhere out there, in serious trouble.
If she’s not dead already…
I pushed the thought away. I had to hold onto hope. Even if I hadn’t seen her in years, she was still my sister—my twin—and I loved her. Maybe I’d been trying too long and too hard to shove that feeling away, to bury it, but the moment she’d called out to me, my love for her had returned and had begun to overflow. I felt like a tree that had been tapped for sap, a spigot suddenly turned on that I couldn’t control.
Just thinking about her made me want to cry—another thing I hadn’t done in years.
“We’ll find her.” His voice was low, reassuring, and I gave him a sharp look.
“Get out of my head.” I folded my arms and turned my face away from his, looking at the closed shade as if I could see through it. It was one of the many things I’d always hated about vampires—the way they could delve into your thoughts, any time they wanted.
“Nine times seven is actually seventy-two.” Ulrich sounded amused.
I flushed. I’d been reciting times tables in my head—an old trick left over from childhood, a way to keep my mind busy on the surface, a sort of distraction from everything going on underneath. And there was plenty going on in my head that I didn’t want him to know. Not the least of which was how affected I was every time he turned those dark, gold-rimmed eyes on me.
“And F is fluorine, not fluoride. The latter isn’t actually an element.” Ulrich looked so amused, it made me simmer with anger. “Did you really memorize the whole periodic table?”
“I memorized a lot of things. If you really want boring, I can run down the list of f-stops on a camera…”
“Please.” He held up his hand, rolling those dark eyes. “Spare me. I’ll refrain from delving further into that fascinating mind of yours.”
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked, buckling my seat belt.
I’d been on airplanes plenty of times—the only way in or out of Utqiaġvik was by plane—but they were mostly little puddle-jumpers. And I’d never flown first-class before, let alone on a private flight in a plane we had all to ourselves. It was a luxury I hadn’t even considered, one that involved champagne and hot, moist towels after a meal and chairs so large, my hips didn’t even touch the armrests on either side.
“Paris at night is vampire heaven.” He spoke softly as one of the flight attendants walked by, her gaze checking our tray tables and seat belts. “We’ll start at Salle de Sang. If she’s not there, we’ll work our way down.”
“The Blood Room?” My eyebrows went up and instantly, I thought of Alaric. Lily had said his name in my thoughts, bringing back more memories I wanted to stay buried. “Let me guess—blood courtesans?”
“Tu parle Francais?”
“Un peu.” My hand see-sawed. “Just a few years in high school—I’m not fluent or anything. So, what’s at the Blood Room?”
“Madame Darrieux.”
“Oh right, I should have known. The all-knowing, all-seeing Madame.”
“La Salle de Sang is very high-end.”
“A brothel is a brothel.” I wrinkled my nose. “Everything sounds so much better in French, doesn’t it? Blood courtesans instead of blood prostitutes. Madames instead of pimps. It can even make something as horrific as ‘the blood room’ sound sexy.”
I looked up to see Ulrich’s gaze on me. That damnable, hypnotic vampire gaze. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. There was something in his eyes akin to real emotion. Pain, maybe? Whatever it was, it kept my eyes fixed on his, even though he didn’t say anything at all.
“So, you think we’ll find my sister there?” I couldn’t stand the silence any longer.
“I hope so.” He frowned. “I saw your sister the last time I was in Paris.”
“Saw her?” I scoffed. “Drank her, you mean?”
“No. I didn’t partake.”
“I thought you hadn’t gotten clean yet?”
“True.” His gaze never left me. It infuriated me, how unruffled he seemed, even after the sarcastic verbal barb I’d thrown his way. “But I never tasted your sister. She was bound to someone else.”
“Who? Alaric?” My spine straightened as I turned toward him. The thought of Lily being with him—still with him—was beyond painful. My throat felt tight and it was hard to swallow.
“I’m afraid I don’t know.” Ulrich shrugged, and his casual dismissal infuriated me. “I only caught a glimpse. To be honest, I scented more than I saw. She… intrigued me…”
His gaze fixed on mine and his nostrils flared as he scented me. I knew what he was thinking, for once, instead of the other way around. We weren’t identical twins—she was fire and I was ice—but fraternal twins shared very similar blood. I’d heard it more than once. We tasted very much alike.
“But you didn’t drink from her?”
“I inquired with Madame Darrieux,” he admitted, clearing his throat. “But I was informed she was unavailable.”
“And you don’t have any idea who she was with?”
“I did ask.” This confession brought a rather sheepish look to his face, which pleased me a little bit. “But her master remained a mystery.”
“Master?” I choked in disgust. Had she been with Alaric then? I wondered. The thought made me sick to my stomach. “Kidnapper, you mean.”
Ulrich looked bewildered. “You really hate vampires, don’t you?”
“You have no idea.” My jaw was so tight, it ached. I gripped the edge of the armrests and looked straight ahead again, avoiding those smoldering eyes of his.
“Blood courtesans enter their contracts quite freely you know,” he reminded me softly. “And they’re very well-compensated.”
I wanted to scream at him. I knew there was a difference between being a blood slave and a blood courtesan. But, as far as I was concerned, they were practically the same thing. And Lily was still a captive, whether she was being “well-compensated” or not. Blood slave or blood courtesan—I didn’t have to imagine what sort of torture she was being subjected to. I knew.
“It’s all perfectly justified,” I snapped at his argument as the plane began its descent into the Charles de Galle airport. “Strippers are well-compensated, too. So are porn stars—and a lot of escorts and prostitutes. It doesn’t take away from the fact that most of them are women who have been forced by circumstance into a system that thrives on using and, often, abusing them.”
Ulrich was quiet for a moment. Then he chuckled. “I don’t have to read your mind—you just lay it all out there, don’t you?”
“Vampires are parasites.” I kept my voice down so the flight crew didn’t overhear, but I couldn’t keep the tremble of anger from it. “They’re human-sized mosquitos. And if we had something equivalent to DDT to get rid of vampires? I’d spray the whole damned planet myself.”
“That would be quite an undertaking.” Ulrich suppressed a smile when I looked his way—his mouth pressed briefly into a thin line. “It’s a simple transaction, you know. More symbiotic than you might want to believe.”
“From the perspective of the parasite, maybe.” I glared at him. “But the host doesn’t think it’s so great, trust me.”
I stiffened when I felt his hand on my shoulder. It was cold but the way he squeezed me was gentle.
“Who was the vampire who hurt you, Poppy?”
A face appeared instantly in my mind, fangs and blood-stained lips twisted into a snarl, before I shoved it away.
Alaric.
It was a face I saw only in my nightmares now but, if it was true that Lily was still trapped with him, it would be one I’d have to see again. The thought filled me with both fear and anger.
And Ulrich, this man—this vampire, this blood-sucking parasite—was related to him!
Okay, so it was true, he didn’t drink blood anymore. And, so far, he had done nothing but try to help me. I had no logical reason to hate him—aside from the fact that he was a vampire, and I hated all their kind—but it was hard to keep my animosity contained, hard not to let my enmity for Alaric bleed into my feelings about Ulrich.
