The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

Upraised palms, wet and red; his "complaint" come back in force, worse than the discards in Dumouriez's long-ago corpse pile. Jean-Guy stands immersed in it, head swirling, skin one whole slick of cold sweat and hot blood admixed and far more blood than sweat, all told. So much so, he must swallow it in mouthfuls, just to speak. His voice comes out garbled, sludgy, clotted .

"You" he says, with difficulty. " You did this to me"

"But of course, Citizen Sansterre; sent the girl to the window, tempted you within my reach, and set my mark upon you, as you well know. As I —"

Told you.

Or do you not recall?

Sluiced and veritably streaming with it, inside and out: palate, nipples, groin. That haematoma on his wrist's prickling underside, opening like a flower. The chevalier's remembered kiss, licking his veins full of cold poison.

(If I can't stop this bleeding, it'll be my death.)

Numb-tongued: "As you did with Dumouriez."

"Exactly so."

Raising one clawed hand to touch Jean-Guy's face, just lightly — a glancing parody of comfort — and send Jean-Guy arching away, cursing, as the mere pressure of the chevalier's fingers is enough to draw first a drip, then a gush, of fresh crimson.

"God damn your ci-devant eyes!"

"Yes, yes." Quieter: "But I can make this stop, you know."

Me. And only me.

Seduction, then infection, then cure — for a price. Loyalty, till death

And — after?

How Prendegrace trapped Dumouriez, no doubt, once upon a long, long time past; or had Dumouriez simply offered himself up to worship at this thing's red-shod feet, without having to be enticed or duped into such an unequal devil's bargain? Coming to Prendegrace's service gratefully, even gladly; as glad as he would be, eventually, to cut his own throat to save this creature's no-life, or spray fresh blood across a wet plaster wall to conceal the thing he'd hunted, pimped and died for, safely entombed within?

And for Jean-Guy, an equally limited range of choices: to bleed out all at once in a moment's sanguinary torrent, and die now, or live as a tool, the way Dumouriez did and die later .

Minimally protected, perhaps even cherished; easily used, yet just as easily

discarded.

"There can be benefits to such an arrangement," Prendegrace points out, softly.

"He sacrificed himself for you."

"As was required."

"As you demanded."

The chevalier raises a delicate brow, sketched in discoloured plaster. "Me? I demand nothing, Citizen. Only accept — what's offered me."

"Because you aristos deign to do nothing for yourselves."

"Oh, no doubt. But then, that's why I chose you: for being so much more able than me, in every regard. Why I envied and coveted your strength, your vital idealism. Your"

Life.

Jean-Guy feels the monster's gaze rove up and down, ap-praisingly — reading him, as it were, like —

Hoarse: "A map."

The chevalier sighs, and shakes his head.

"A pretty pastime, once. But your body no longer invites such pleasantries, more's the pity; you have grown somewhat more — opaque — with age, I think."

Taking one further step forward, as Jean-Guy recoils; watching Jean-Guy slip in his own blood, go down on one knee, hand scrabbling helplessly for purchase against that ragged hole where the wall once was.

"What are you?" he asks. Wincing, angrily, as he hears his own voice crack with an undignified mixture of hatred —

fear ( — longing?).

The chevalier pauses, mid-step. And replies, after a long moment:

"Ah. Yet this would be the one question we none of us may answer, Citizen Sansterre, not even myself, who knows only that I was born this way, whatever way that might be"

Leaning closer still. Whispering. Words dimming to blood-thrum, and lower, as the sentence draws to its long-sought, inevitable close.

"Just as you were born, like everyone else I meet in this terrible world of ours, to bear my mark —"

or be my prey .

With Jean-Guy's sight narrowing to embrace nothing but those empty eyes, that mouth, those teeth : his disease made flesh, made terminal. His destiny, buried too deep to touch or think of, till it dug itself free once more.

But

I am not just this, damn you, he thinks, as though in equally silent, desperate reply not just your prey, your pawn, your tool. I was someone, grown and bred entirely apart from your influence: I had history, hopes, dreams. I loved my father, and hated his greed; loved my mother, and hated her enslavement. Loved and hated what I saw of them both in myself: my born freedom, my slave's skin. I allied myself with a cause that talked of freedom, only to drown itself in blood. But I am more than that, more than anything that came out of that more than just this one event, the worst — and most defining — moment of my life. This one encounter with

you.