Bloody Bones (Vampire Hunter 5)

"Could you place them here, please?" He gestured with that one half-suspended hand.

"Here" was the closed top of the toilet, which was close enough to the tub for grabbing. "I'll, put them on the edge of the sink."

"I'll drip water all over the floor getting them from there," he said. His voice was neutral, no vampiric tricks, almost no tone at all.

He was right, and I was being silly. He wouldn't grab me and ravish me. If that'd been the plan, he could have done that years ago.

I placed the towels on the stool, eyes studiously anywhere but the tub.

"You must have questions about tonight," he said.

I glanced at him. The water on his na**d torso caught the light like quicksilver. Suds clung to his chest, just under one nipple. I had a horrible urge to brush off the bubbles. I stepped back until I was standing by the far wall.

"It's not like you to offer answers," I said.

"I am feeling generous tonight." His voice had that quality that voices get when they are edging towards sleep.

"If you weren't na**d in a tub of bubble bath, would you be offering to answer questions?"

He smiled then, a quick, familiar expression. "Perhaps not, but if I must answer your ravenous curiosity, isn't it more fun this way?"

"Fun for whom?"

"Both of us, if you would only admit it."

That got a smile from me, and I didn't want to smile. I didn't want to be enjoying watching him all soapy and wet. I wanted to be afraid of him, and I was, but I also wanted him. Wanted to run my hands down his wet flesh, wanted to touch what lay under those bubbles. I didn't want intercourse. I couldn't imagine that with him, but I wanted to do a little exploring. I hated that. He was a corpse; surely what I'd seen tonight convinced me of that.

"You're frowning, ma petite; why?"

"I asked you if the two rotting vampires were illusion, you said no. I asked if your form was real, you said yes. Both forms are real, you said."

"That is true," he said.

"Are you a rotting corpse?"

He settled lower in the warm, soapy water, drawing his arms into it, until only his head showed above the surface of the water. "That is not one of my forms."

"That isn't an answer."

He raised a pale hand from the water, a handful of bubbles cupped like a snowball. "There are different vampiric abilities, ma petite; you know that."

"What's that have to do with it?"

He raised his other hand and began to play with the bubbles, trailing them from hand to hand. "Janos and his two female companions are a different type of vampire than I am. Than most of us are. They are much rarer. If you ever see me as a rotted corpse, I will be well and truly dead. They can rot and reform, and it makes them much harder to kill. The only true surety is fire."

"Volunteering an awful lot of information, aren't you?"

He lowered his hands in the water, washing the soap away. He sat up a little straighter; suds clung to his body. "Perhaps I am afraid you will think that what happened with Jason would happen with us."

"We will never test that theory," I said.

"You sound so sure of that," he said. "Your lust perfumes the air, and yet you truly believe that we will never make love. How can you want me almost as much as I want you, yet be sure we will never know each other's bodies?"

I wasn't sure I had an answer for that one. I slid down the wall and sat with my knees drawn up to my chest. The pocket with the gun in it clunked against the wall. I moved the gun to a better position and said, "We just won't, Jean-Claude, not ever. I just can't." A part of me regretted that, but only part.

"Why, ma petite?"

"Sex is about trust. I'd have to trust someone implicitly to have sex with them. I don't trust you."

He stared at me with his blue, blue eyes, looking all scrumptious and wet. "You mean that, don't you?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I do."

"I do not understand you, ma petite. I try, but still I do not."

"You're pretty much a riddle to me, too. If that's any comfort."

"It isn't. If you were a woman who had casual lusts, we would have been in bed long ago." He sighed and sat up even straighter in the water so it hit him just above the waist. "Of course, if you were a woman of casual appetites, I don't think I would love you."

"You enjoy the chase, the challenge," I said.

"True, but it is more than that with you, if only you would believe me." He leaned forward, drawing his knees to his na**d chest, rounding his shoulders to hug himself. White scars dribbled down his back from his shoulders to vanish into the water, not a lot of them, but enough.

"What made the scars on your back? Unless it was a holy item, you should have been able to heal them."

He laid his cheek on his knees so he could look at me. He looked younger, more human, vulnerable suddenly. "Not if the injury occurred before I died."

"Who whipped you?"

"I was the whipping boy for an aristocrat's son."

I stared at him. "You're telling me the truth, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Is that why Janos chose whips tonight, to remind you where you came from?"

"Yes."

"You weren't born into the aristocracy?"

"I was born in a house with a dirt floor, ma petite."

I looked at him. "Yeah, right."

He raised his head. "If I was going to make something up, ma petite, it would be more romantic, more entertaining than being a French peasant."

"So you were a servant in the castle?"

"I was their only son's constant companion. When he had clothes made, so did I. His tutor was my tutor. His riding instructor, mine. I learned swordplay and dancing and the proper way to eat at table. And when he was bad I was punished, because he was their only child, their only heir to an old family name. People speak of child abuse now." He leaned back in the tub, cuddling down into the warm water. "They complain of spanking. They have no idea what true abuse is. When I was a boy, parents thought nothing of taking a horse whip to a misbehaving child, or beating them bloody. Even the aristocrats beat their children. It was normal.

"But he was the only heir, the only child. So they paid money to my parents and took me. The lady of the manor chose me because I was fair of face. When the vampire who made me sought me out, she said my beauty called to her."

"Wait a minute."

He turned his head to give me the full weight of those dark blue eyes. I worked hard at not looking away.

"This gorgeous body and face is all vampire illusion, right? I mean, no one's this beautiful."

"I told you once that it was not my power that made you see me as you do, not most of the time at any rate."

"Serephina said you were a catamite for any vampire that would have you. What did she mean?"

"Vampires kill for food, but they bring others over for many reasons. Some for money, wealth, even title, love, but I was brought over for lust. When I was young and weak, they passed me around among them. One would grow tired of me, but there was always another."

I stared at him, horrified. "You're right. If you were going to make up a story, this wouldn't be it."

"The truth is so often disappointing, or ugly; don't you find that, ma petite?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Serephina was old. I thought vampires weren't supposed to age."

"Whatever age we die at is the age we remain."

"Did you know Serephina when you were young?"

"Yes."

"Did you sleep with her?"

"Yes."

"How could you let her touch you?"

"I was given to her as a gift by a master that makes even her new and improved powers seem weak. I had very little choice." He stared at me. "She knows what you want. Your greatest need, your most treasured wish, and she'll make it come true, or seem to. What did she offer you, ma petite? What could she offer you that nearly won you tonight?"

I looked away then; I didn't want to meet his eyes. "What did she offer you all those years ago?"

"Power."

I looked up at that. "Power?"

He nodded. "Power to escape them all."

"But you had to have the ability to be a master vampire inside you from the beginning. No one can give that to you," I said.