Sips of Blood Part 29

"Uncle, try to talk Matilda out of doing such heavy work."

Cecelia strained to hear his voice. Whispers, garbled whispers that hinted at annoyance. He knew. He had scented her without being told. The girl willed her mentor to come to her. Instead he seemed to draw away from her, separating himself into another dimension, one she had not yet entered.

"Ah! Madame! My niece told me of your plans. How silly. We do not expect you to do the heavy housework. We will call in several husky men to wash and hang the rugs."

He appeared as a vision haloed by the musk of the outdoors.

"But you don't like having strangers in the house," said Cecelia.

Had she truly spoken? She could not be sure, since Sade did not deign to reply nor even look at her. Her breathing stopped momentarily as she leaned the top half of her body toward him. Should she wave her arms? Should she rip off her clothes? Should she lay prostrate before him awaiting his wishes?

"But, Mr. Sade, I'm paid to clean the house and run errands. Lord knows I really don't have much in the way to clean here. You and your niece are quite tidy. Wish I could say that about my own family." Cecelia felt her mother's eyes fix on her.

Sade took her mother's hands in his and kissed the back of each.

"Madame, you are too delicate to ruin your dainty doigts." Sade brushed his lips across her mother's fingers. Her mother's face flushed a deeper red than Cecelia had ever seen before. "Take the afternoon off, madame, and enjoy the apres-midi."

"Yes, my uncle is right. You've been working too hard, Matilda. You and your daughter should do something together."

Cecelia wanted to speak but found her mouth to be parched; her throat felt closed, knotted. An attempt to clear her throat brought on a raging bout of coughing. Her mother hurried the girl into the kitchen for a gla.s.s of water that the girl, racked by the hacking cough, spilled on herself.

"I think we should go home. Perhaps a nap would help."

"Cecelia," called Liliana. "Cecelia, are you all right?" Liliana entered the kitchen. Immediately she pulled out a stool and forced Cecelia to sit. "Go home," Liliana whispered in the girl's ear. "Go home and don't come back. Don't allow my uncle to win."

Matilda could not hear the words, because they were said privately in a voice only sensitive hears could hear.

I will win, Cecelia kept repeating inside her head. I will win over you, Liliana. I will have your uncle.

The coughing stopped, but Cecelia's voice did not return immediately. He had silenced her, she knew, and probably would not allow her to speak again until she left his home, a home she intended to make her own.

Chapter 49.

"Release her, Uncle."

"Who, ma chere?"

"Cecelia. You are stealing her life like you did mine."

"Mais non; I made a terrible mistake with you by taking you all at once instead of having you slowly get used to the changes."

"You offer nothing to her except isolation."

"Mais, she would be with us. Never alone. Always desired."

"Until you tire of her."

"I have never tired of you, ma chere, even though you can be quite a tiresome bore."

"Uncle, I've been to the local cemetery."

"Visiting some neighbors?"

"They do exist."

"Neighbors?"

"The malformed. The mindless vampires who are more ghoulish than we are."

"Des goules? Nous? Enfant, you haven't looked in the mirror; there is nothing de goule about us."

"The way we live is ghoulish. Drinking blood to survive is ghoulish."

"And what about eating meat? What about the merveilleux steak tartare served in the best of restaurants? Thin ribbons of succulent beef lying raw on some sophisticate's plate. Or the blood puddings you used to delight in as a child? Ah! Mais a better a.n.a.logy may be small babies suckling at their mothers' b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Gaining life by taking from the mother. Just as a fetus does. We are born predators, mon enfant, born to diminish the already living so that we may grow."

"Stop it!" Liliana screamed. "How could you compare us to the innocents?"

"Innocents? Those mewling, wet, whining, writhing, spitting savages that grow into repulsive teens and abusive adults?" Sade dusted a fleck from his black linen s.h.i.+rt. "Besides, we give far more forethought to our food than either the enfants or the poor wretches in the cemetery."

"What if Cecelia should end up like those things in the cemetery?"

"She will if I abandon her now." Sade sat on the love seat and pulled off his biker boots to rest his feet on the rug.

"You mean those creatures were never taken completely through the changes?"

"A guess on my part. However, she is already highly sensitive to the world around her. I feed her need for blood from my very own veins." He unb.u.t.toned the cuffs of his s.h.i.+rt and rolled up his sleeves to show her his arms. No marks. There would be none. He would heal quickly. All she saw were the bulging veins running up the inside of both his arms. No doubt he had recently fed. "I share like a nursing mother, suffering the twinges of pain for the tiny young one."

"Dammit, Uncle. You're no martyr. How much pain must she suffer until you are satisfied? What wounds does she carry with her from day to day? What scars from your hand embellish her child-like skin?"

"Mon enfant, I hate scars. Non, non, that kind of play must wait until she is immortal like us." He smiled. "Then she will heal quickly and be able to endure far more... playtime."

"Stop what you're doing to this girl."

"I've already told you. It has gone too far too turn back. Her mort is a.s.sured." He reached out to grab Liliana's left wrist, but she pulled away. "Ah! Don't be jealous, mon enfant, you will always be the special one."

"Jealous of a girl who is dying? You don't know me, Uncle. I don't envy anyone who must live as I do."

Sade bit down on his right wrist. Blood spurted from the full veins. He stood and walked toward Liliana.

She felt herself cowering, moving back from the advancing steps he took, but she couldn't prevent her retreat. He reached out his right arm, and the smell of his blood fogged her mind until she realized he held her fast in the vice of his hand. She could feel the warm blood stain her scalp.

"Remember the taste, ma chere. Have you forgotten the sweetness of my blood? The strength my blood once gave to you? Mais non, I see the memory in your eyes. Replenish that memory now." Sade loosened his grip on her hair and brought his wrist to her mouth, spreading the crimson across her lips.

He had practically drained her while he had held her in his arms. His soft voice spoke of eternal life, of the exhilaration of intensified senses. The colors sounded beautiful. The sounds seemed so intense. His touch had soothed her fear, and the taste of his blood had been a salvation.

Liliana again found herself enveloped in her uncle's arms, sucking at the blood that dribbled from his wrist. She lapped at the rivulets running up his arm; the color, deeper in hue than the animal blood she survived on, caused myriad dreams to rush through her alert mind.

Stuart's arm again stretched out above the water. The veins pulsed wildly, excited by her presence. Her hand smoothed over his flesh, testing the depth of the purple network feeding his arm. She moved closer to him. The water cooled her feet and drenched the bottom of her dress so that the material hugged her legs. Her lips kissed his flesh before her fangs bit down.

A slap across her cheek laid her on the floor, Sade standing over her, rebuking her for her hunger.

"It's what you want. You've always wanted to share our blood like the first time." Liliana ripped away the collar from her blouse. "Take my blood and allow me to feed from you."

Sade stood over his niece. His face remained placid, unmoved by her pain.

"I want more than that, Liliana. I want you as a woman."

He squeezed his wrist, and she watched as the blood dripped down upon her face. A drop touched her upper lip, another smeared her cheek, another she caught with her tongue.

Frenzied, she tore at her clothes, shredded the silk and lace that had lain close against her body. Instead she would invite her uncle to lie upon her skin.

The outer world had disappeared, or perhaps it never had existed, only the image of her uncle stripping slowly, leisurely, aware of the famine that drove her.

He knelt next to her, and she grabbed at his bloodied wrist, but he held her face just above the wound. She smelled his blood and tasted the remnants on her tongue.

"Tell me I'm the one you want. Only me and no one else," he demanded.

Liliana started to say the name 'Stuart,' but Sade stopped her.

"There is no other man, only moi, ma... Liliana. And I will see to it that the child in you is at last gone." He moved his wrist, watching her gaze s.h.i.+ft with each of his moves. Sade reached behind him and drew his thick studded belt from the loops on his jeans. "I have never truly shown you the extent of my love for you as a woman. I have not bled you in the fas.h.i.+on that most pleases me. Liliana, I have spoiled you."

His hand carrying the belt flashed upward, and Liliana's breath halted just before the pain echoed through her body.

Chapter 50.

"Uncle is turning Cecelia."

Marie turned from the rose bush and stared at her granddaughter.

"I can't stop him."

Her granddaughter looked tired but healthy. A bloom swelled her cheeks with a dusty pink. Faint, but she could see that Liliana had finally fed from a mobile human, not one who lay on a metal table awaiting her granddaughter's ministrations.

"He's stealing her youth."

"As he did to you." Marie kept her voice soft and filled with empathy.

"He did it to both of us."

"My youth had pa.s.sed many years before he turned me." A sad fact that always irked her days, she thought. "Is there any suspicion on the part of the parents?"

"They think their daughter is going through a stage. Matilda has spoken of taking Cecelia to a doctor, but the child refuses to go. And since Cecelia does not really look ill, her parents haven't forced her to seek medical attention."

Marie turned back to her rose bush and snipped a pinkish flower in full bloom. She carried the rose to her granddaughter and offered it to her.

"A doctor will never be able to diagnose what is wrong with the child." Marie still held the flower, waiting for Liliana to come out of her lethargic fog.

Gradually Liliana spied the proffered rose and took it.

"Grandmother, I feel so helpless. I know what her life will be like, but I can't explain it to her."

"He must be stopped from ever turning anyone again."

"He'll never stop."

Maria rubbed Liliana's knee with her ungloved hand.

"You remember all those children who went missing in Paris around the time we thought you had died?"

Liliana's hands began to tremble, and Marie placed her own hands around her granddaughter's.

"This is something we must talk about. We cannot continue to ignore his savage behavior." Receiving no response from Liliana, Marie persisted. "The general consensus of the people at the time and in history books, as far as I can tell, was that the children were kidnapped by the government in order to populate the new world.

"None of those children made it to the colonies. They were all killed, and Sade paid to have it covered up. I know because several people came to me and asked what to do. Of course, I was terrified of Sade and advised the people to accept the money. I've been so ashamed. Obviously Sade bled those children and buried, burned, or in some way disposed of the bodies. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that many of the children are living wild as vampires."

"No," Liliana softly said.

"Why else would he pay to have the rumor spread about the government? He tortured those children and then drained their blood."

Liliana kept shaking her head.

"You can't continue to ignore the truth about your uncle. He's a fiend, and we are the only ones who can stop him."

"Grandmother, you don't understand."

"Evil." She squeezed her granddaughter's hands tightly. "Insane evil. Children as young as four and five being raped and murdered by that fiend."

"He didn't do it."

"Liliana, give up the denial. I've enlisted Wil's help in destroying Sade. He'll pound the stake in and cut off Sade's head, but we need to know when he is vulnerable. You live with Sade. He trusts you.

"d.a.m.n, stop shaking your head and pay attention to what I'm saying."