“Where is he?”
“The Prince has other matters to attend
to.” Daedalus’ voice was as
neutral as Julian’s could be.
“Don’t give me that crap!” Frank became
aware of his own fear and it
surprised him. “Something has happened to him!” He realized
that he was
shouting and tried to calm himself. “Tell me the truth,”
he pleaded.
The Nosferatu’s gaze lingered on the
policeman’s distraught face.
“Why should you care?” Daedalus asked
at last.
“Oh, my God! He’s dead!” Frank concluded.
“Depending on how you look at it,
you could say that I’ve been dead
for a century and a half.”
Frank turned and was faced by Julian
Luna. The Kindred stood by the
fireplace, watching Frank impassively. He nodded to Daedalus
and the
Nosferatu left.
The relief made Frank giddy. He crossed
the room in a few strides
and grabbed Julian’s arm.
“You’re alive!” he exclaimed. He felt
the Kindred’s muscles move
under his fingers. “You’re alive!” he repeated. “I thought…”
“That is subject that might spark
a long philosophical discussion,”
Julian responded smiling. “What made you think that I
was dead?”
Frank felt rather stupid.
“I don’t know.” He didn’t know what
to say. “You weren’t here and it
scared me.”
“There was nothing that demanded my
attention at this meeting. I
don’t want to exaggerate my importance, but had I been
killed, you would
have noticed. The whole city would have noticed.”
“I’m sorry, I made a fool of myself.
I must have sounded like some
melodramatic movie character.”
“Yes, you did. You were lucky
that Lillie had already left. She
would have laughed her head off.” Julian was quiet for
a moment. “I
intended to talk to you after the meeting,” he continued,
turning
towards a small side table. There was tray with an opened
bottle of wine
and two glasses. “Please, sit down. That is if you don’t
have some other
pressing business to attend to.”
Frank sat in a chair by the fire.
There’s nothing in the world that
might tear me away right now, he
thought.
Julian poured the wine and reached
into his pocket.
“I forgot to return your keys,” he
said. “I was thinking of giving
them to Lillie, but thought better of it. She has a dirty
imagination.”
“That she has,” Frank concurred.
“And who knows that better than you
and I?” Julian commented with a
soft laughter.
“How did you two meet?” Frank asked.
“She seduced me when I was in London.
That was more than a century
ago.”
“Did she?” Frank had trouble believing
that.
“She was the celebrated Toreador actress.
I was just a refugee from
America, a nobody. They thought that I was Jack the Ripper.
My arrival
in London coincided with his ravages among human women.
Then we caught
him and killed him. Jack is still a mystery to humans,
but not to us. He
was a Brujah gone mad. Something like that Nightstalker
here in San
Francisco, a few years back. You remember him?”
“Of course I do!” Frank shuddered
at the memory. “He almost
strangled me. If you hadn’t cut his head off…”
It had happened so swiftly. The mad
Gangrel had wrestled the
phosphorus gun from Frank, but it had not protected him
from the
Prince’s wrath. Frank could hardly follow the Kindred’s
movements. It
was the only time that Frank had seen Julian Luna kill
somebody. He
hoped that he would never have to see that again. He
decided to change
the subject.
“You were telling me about Lillie,”
he reminded the Prince.
Julian nodded.
“I was summoned by the Prince of London,
when I was still a suspect.
I managed to prove my innocence, as Jack had killed his
first two
victims before I came to England. Lillie was present
at that meeting.”
London 1888
“A good-looking Ventrue. That’s a
first.”
It was the first thing that Julian
heard Lillie say, the very first
time he saw her. Her contempt-filled whisper was as audible
as if she
had shouted. Then of course Lillie’s stage whisper could
be heard on the
third balcony. Julian was supposed to hear and react.
It was a test and
he knew that. He had turned around, prepared say something
equally
derogatory and found himself staring, tongue-tied like
an idiot. She was
the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen. She was
looking him
over, a cold smile on her face, her eyes flashing white
lightning.
“Thank you,” he said, disregarding
the tone of her voice, pretending
that her remark was a compliment.
They didn’t speak again that evening,
but Julian had trouble keeping
his eyes from her, and the others noticed. They warned
him, saying that
Lillie would eat him for breakfast and use his bones
as toothpicks. He
had laughed at that. Years ago he would have felt apprehension,
but by
now he knew that the contempt of women often meant that
they felt
attraction. Especially when that contempt surfaced unprovoked,
before he
had made a pass at her. Yet there was something scary
about her. Lillie
reminded him of the Snow Queen from a fairy tale; an
evil, beautiful
witch who turned people into snowmen. His picture was
apparently quite
accurate. An older Ventrue friend told him to stay away
from Lillie.
“She’s cold as ice,” he said. “If
you come too close she’ll freeze
your balls.”
But Julian had responded that ice
would melt if heat were applied to
it, and besides, if you hold something cold long enough
it starts to
burn you. He had laughed at that thought, well aware
that his desire for
Lillie was drawing him towards her like a moth is drawn
towards the
fire. He knew that Lillie was dangerous, and that danger
beckoned to him
as much as Lillie’s beauty. He saw her perform and sent
her flowers and
gifts but didn’t try to meet her. To let her know that
he was interested
but keep his distance turned out to be the right approach.
Lillie was
bewildered. In the end she was the one who made the first
step. She
crashed a party that was given by the Ventrue Primogen
for his clan.
Lillie was the only Toreador who came, but nobody would
dare to turn her
away. She confronted Julian openly.
“What is it you want?”
“You,” he had answered as if it were
the most natural thing in the
world. Lillie was stunned. She stared at him for a moment
and then
started to laugh.
“Are you ready for me, Ventrue?”
“I won’t know unless I try to find
that out,” Julian had responded
quietly. “Are you ready for me, Toreador?” he challenged
her.
She had turned away and started walking
towards the door, but as
someone opened it for her, she looked back over her shoulder
and
beckoned. Julian followed her out as if drawn by an invisible
chain,
oblivious of the snickering giggles that chased him.
The women had always been there. During
the last thirty years there
had been an endless parade of women, most of them mortal.
Archon had
raged and Daedalus had scorned, but they could not keep
Julian away from
the ladies, and nothing could keep away the ladies from
Julian. But he
had not loved any of them, and they had all been exchangeable.
Not
Lillie. For the first time in three decades lust prevented
him from
sleeping. He wanted Lillie. No one else would do.
“So… tell me about the women,” Frank
said casually when Julian
stopped talking. He wasn’t particularly interested in
Julian’s love
affairs, but he hoped that he could lure Julian into
telling him
something more about Lillie. But Julian looked at him
frowning.
“What about them?”
Frank shrugged, pretending indifference.
“You have a reputation nowadays. Has
it always been like that?” he
asked.
“Reputation?” A green shimmer lightened
Julian’s eyes for a split
second, then it was gone, and Frank smiled.
“Don’t tell me that you’re not aware
of the talk; ‘Julian Luna, the
resident Don Juan’. There has been a lot of gossip. I
heard it long
before I knew who you were, before I thought you were
a mobster.”
“Oh, really?” The green light was
back in the Prince’s eyes, only
this time it didn’t disappear, and he sounded very British
all of a
sudden.
“Why does it upset you? I’d have thought
that any man would enjoy
being regarded as a ladies’ man.”
It was Julian’s turn to shrug.
“I just can’t see where this opinion
came from.” But he looked away,
apparently not as unknowing as he pretended to be. “It’s
just gossip,”
he continued. “I’m not as irresistible as some believe
me to be.”
“No, of course not.” Frank was snickering.
“Daedalus says that I could never
resist a pretty face.” Julian’s
voice became soft. “I guess it’s true.”
“That’s all, pretty faces?” Frank
was teasing the Kindred. He knew
now that he would get something out of Julian. All he
had to do was to
steer the conversation in the right direction.
“Your wife died and you
were Embraced. Then what?” he prodded.
“I worked for Archon,” Julian said.
“No ladies?”
“No ladies.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m quite sure.”
Frank raised an eyebrow in a doubtful
expression.
“For how long?” he asked.
“A couple of years,” Julian answered
and was startled by Frank’s
outburst of laughter.
“No ladies, huh?” the policeman managed
to sputter at last, laughing
even harder at Julian’s surprised countenance.
“What’s so funny?” Julian inquired,
but Frank only shook his head.
“So, what happened after ‘a couple
of years’?” he was still
laughing.
“I got a slave.”
“WHAT?!!!” Frank was so shocked that
he forgot to shut his mouth.
“There’s no need to shout, my hearing
is excellent. Pick up your
chin from the floor. Frank, this was before the Civil
War and I was a
child of my time. It isn’t easy to unlearn old ways.
My father owned
several slaves when we lived in Louisiana. It was the
same with women. I
have been taught to pamper and protect them as the helpless,
ignorant
creatures they were. It took ages before I could regard
women as equals.
I still have trouble seeing them as dangerous, even when
they are armed.
It has cost me quite a few unpleasant injuries over the
years.”
Frank felt a little ashamed. It was
so easy to jump to conclusions.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “To me it’s
history. You lived it, I know
that. But it’s so difficult to imagine… I see you the
way you are now,
not on a horseback.”
It made Julian laugh.
“I still ride better than I drive.
I learnt to ride when I was a
child. Driving on the other hand,” he shook his head
in mock despair,
“let’s change the subject.”
Frank jumped at the opportunity.
“Alright, tell me about your slave.”
Napa Valley - 1858
Julian had won her in a poker game.
Usually he wasn’t very good with
cards and entered a game only when invited. Lacking inclination
for
hazard he would not lose or win much, he was never carried
away by the
desire to win. But this night he had been more successful
than ever. The
amount of gold on his side of the table rose steadily
and the opponents
dropped out of the game one by one. In the end there
was only one left,
a man of indeterminate age in Indian clothes. It was
almost midnight
when the trapper shrugged saying:
“That was the last of my gold.”
Julian looked up at him and shrugged
too.
“Then that was the last game.”
The man didn’t rise from the table
however, but looked at Julian and
scratched his beard.
“I’ve got something else to stake,”
he said at last, and Julian
raised an eyebrow inquiringly. If the man wanted
to throw in his horse,
Julian wasn’t interested. To make a horse accept Kindred
was difficult
and time consuming. Julian already had a horse that tolerated
him and
didn’t need another one. “Just wait!” the man said and
went out.
Julian decided to wait ten minutes
and then leave if the man didn’t
return by then. The trapper came back before the time
was up. He was
dragging someone with him; a short, slim figure covered
with grime.
“How much will you put against her?”
the man asked. Julian looked
the dirty girl over.
“She’s yours?”
“Yeah. The Indians sold her to me
for some knifes and whiskey,” was
the response.
Why not? Julian shrugged. He could
use a servant.
“How much do you want for her?” He
was prepared to buy her. The
trapper named a prize and after some bickering they agreed
on half. But
the man didn’t want the money; he wanted to use the woman
as a stake.
Apparently he hoped to win and wanted to keep her. Julian
accepted. A
few minutes later he was a proud owner of what he thought
was an Indian
slave.
He took her to Archon’s mansion. She
was apparently tired and weak,
and Julian let his horse walk very slowly so that she
could keep up with
its pace. If she hadn’t been so dirty, he would have
let her ride with
him, but he didn’t want to touch her. It was almost dawn
when they at
last arrived, but Julian decided to get her cleaned before
he would let
her rest. She watched him with expressionless eyes while
he heated some
water and then poured it into a wooden tub. When he told
her to get in
she hesitated for only a second. He turned away and heard
her as she
took off her filthy clothes and climbed into the tub.
She washed her
hair several times but was unable to comb it with the
brush that he had
brought her; it was just too tangled. Julian found a
pair of scissors
and she nodded acceptance when he showed them to her.
He cut her long
hair just above her shoulders; what was left was easy
to comb out. When
the hair had fallen, exposing her back, Julian noticed
several scars and
welts on her back and buttocks. She had apparently been
whipped many
times. He gave her some food and for the first time he
saw anything but
indifference in her eyes. She was very thin and he realized
that she had
been kept on the brink of starvation for a long time.
He gave her one of
his old shirts and told her to get into his bed. She
obeyed without
looking at him.
“I’ll get you some clothes tomorrow
and find a place were you can
sleep,” he said. The last thing he saw as he walked out
of his room was
the look of surprise on her face. It made him smile.
Julian was not
interested in using her, and he would not sleep next
to a human. Archon
had warned him about that. A Kindred’s apparent lifelessness
while he
slept would scare a mortal and might expose the Masquerade.
Ailee was the quietest creature that
Julian had ever encountered.
She spoke only when addressed, her voice barely more
than a whisper. Her
English was adequate, but the heroic battle she was fighting
with the
grammar made Julian laugh sometimes. The intricacies
of French grammar,
so familiar to Julian Luna, made him wonder how anyone
could find the
English language difficult.
She told him that her mother was Chinese.
The Indians had kidnapped
her more than twenty years ago. She didn't know where
that had happened.
The woman had been kept as a slave, and an Indian was
Ailee’s father;
she didn’t know who. Her mother had died a few years
ago, and the
Indians had sold her to the white man from whom Julian
won her in that
poker game. The Indians had never harmed her, but the
white man had been
mean. He didn’t give her enough food and beat her quite
often. When she
became pregnant, he had kicked her in the belly until
she lost her baby.
Julian told her that she would be his
servant. Her duties were to
keep his things clean, and to make sure that there was
always enough hot
water for a bath when he came home, whenever that might
be. He would pay
her; she would have to provide her own food and clothing.
He didn’t tell
Archon how she became his property, knowing that his
Sire didn’t approve
of slavery.
Archon accepted her presence without
comment. There were other human
servants on his property, but none of them lived in the
mansion. The
work she did for Julian didn’t take much of her time,
so she started
cleaning the rest of the house as well. She cooked her
own meals, and
there was always food waiting for Julian. He never ate
it of course, and
after a few days she got mad and threw a piece of meat
at him, shouting
something in a language he didn’t understand. He ducked
reflexively, and
the food splattered on the wall. When he turned to her,
shouting back,
she cowered and put her hands over her head in a protective
gesture.
Julian stopped in a mid-stride. Apparently, she expected
him to hit her,
and it stunned him. He had never hit a woman in his life
and he found
her fear was insulting. He scraped the meat off the wall
and pressed it
into Ailee’s hand.
“I don’t eat here,” he said. “You
must have noticed that nobody but
you eats in this house.” He took hold of her shoulders
and forced her to
face him. “Don’t try to feed me again. I eat in town,
and so does
everyone else here. Just make sure that you do what is
required of you
and there will be no trouble. And don’t prepare more
food than you can
eat yourself.” He shook her a little, just to make his
point and, to his
surprise, she started to laugh. He let go of her and
turned to leave,
but just as he was walking out of the kitchen, something
hit his
shoulder. When he looked, there was a small carrot rolling
on the floor,
and Ailee was aiming another in his direction. It came
flying toward his
face but he ducked out of the kitchen before it hit him.
He heard her
laugh, and couldn’t help laughing too.
Her timidity dissipated after that
incident. Within a couple of
months she gained some weight; she looked healthier,
and Julian noticed
that she was a quite beautiful young woman. Every now
and then she would
throw a small object at him, a fruit or a nut, and was
impressed that he
always caught it in midair. Julian realized quite soon
that she was
trying to catch his attention, but she was a slave, and
therefore off
limits. It was a strange sort of morality on Julian’s
part: a gentleman
does not take advantage of a slave – it’s ill-mannered.
Julian stayed in his brother’s house
longer than he had planned to,
hoping that the winter storms would abate, but as there
seemed to be no
clearing, he decided to ride back anyway. Archon would
be worried;
Julian was supposed to be back the day before yesterday.
It had been
raining heavily for several days, and what passed for
roads had turned
into torrents of mud. His horse stumbled ever so often
and cast its head
back violently in an effort to regain its footing. Eventually,
afraid
that those casts would crush his face, Julian dismounted
and walked the
rest of the way to Archon’s house, letting his horse
trail him as best
it could. He slipped and fell several times, and when
he finally
arrived, both he and the poor animal were covered with
mud, presenting a
picture beyond description. Julian washed the horse and
poured several
buckets of icy water over himself before he dared to
enter the building.
It was dark and quiet, but when he came to the kitchen,
he found Ailee
there, busy heating water. He sighed with relief. As
she started filling
the wooden tub, Julian tore his dirty clothes off and
climbed into the
hot water at once, but it took a long time before his
teeth stopped
chattering.
“I help,” Ailee said, disregarding
the grammar as usual.
He let her wash his hair, then allowed
her to wash the rest of him.
Realizing that he was falling asleep in the tub, he got
out and started
drying himself. As he turned, ready to go to his room,
he was faced by
an unexpected sight. Ailee was standing in front of him,
barely a few
feet away, naked. Julian blinked in surprise.
She came towards him, and before he
understood what she intended to
do, her hands moved up his arms and she pressed her body
against him.
Julian took hold of her shoulders, intending to shove
her away, but his
inbred instinct, which prohibited the use of violence
against a woman,
made him slow and careful. She kissed his neck and he
felt stiff nipples
grease the skin on his chest. His body reacted even before
his brain
registered that sign of her lust. Instead of pushing
her away, his arms
locked around her and he lifted her, pressing her hard
against him. Her
arms and legs enclosed him, and they both gasped loudly
as he thrust
into her. The sudden rush of adrenaline made Julian’s
head swim and
blurred his vision. His body was out of his mind’s control
and he cried
out as he was hit by a violent release within seconds.
A moment later he
became aware of two things: he was still standing, holding
Ailee tightly
to his chest, her weight of no consequence, and he was
still inside her,
as hard and as excited as he had been before the orgasm.
Only now he had
a little better control of the situation. He laid her
down on the
kitchen table and started moving with slow, powerful
thrusts. He felt
her nails dig into his shoulders and her body arched
against him. When
she began to moan he silenced her with a kiss.
Julian was of course unable to keep
it a secret for long. He sensed
that Archon didn’t like what was going on under his roof.
There were no
comments but the disapproving snorts were telling enough.
Julian didn’t
care. For the first time since his wife’s death he felt
alive, almost
happy. He was not in love with Ailee, but he liked her.
She was a
demanding mistress, full of mischief and crazy ideas.
Mysterious and
childishly open at the same time. Willing to experiment,
untroubled by
Christian hypocrisy or inhibitions, she taught Julian
that there were
many ways of making love. In spite of the fact that she
was a slave, she
was a lesson in freedom.
But Ailee was a mortal and Julian
was Kindred. Once he was started,
there was no way of stopping him. It was as if he were
discovering a new
world. Sometimes he would disappear for days on end,
returning to the
mansion at odd hours. The rumors reached Archon finally.
Julian Luna was
working his way through the scant female population of
the valley, just
as his Sire had predicted, and it was not appreciated.
At least not by
the men.
“I knew this would happen sooner or
later,” Archon complained to
Daedalus. “One day he will be caught in the wrong bed,
and we will have
a posse on our heads. He’s endangering the Masquerade.”
“Yes,” the Nosferatu concurred, “but
there’s nothing we can do to
stop him.”
“Are you sure?” Archon inquired.
“Can you refrain from feeding?” Daedalus
retorted.
“It’s not the same thing!”
“To Julian it is.” Daedalus knew what
he was talking about. “Just
look at him. Julian Luna has been put on this Earth for
one reason only.
That instinct has survived the Embrace, although he can’t
father
children anymore. We have to accept him as he is, and
we have to protect
him.”
“And how do you propose we do that?”
There was irony in Archon’s
voice. “Well, at least he’s not like Stephen; he
doesn’t harm anybody.
But he will harm himself.”
Archon didn’t care to admit that,
but even he was aware of Julian’s
sex appeal. The poor women were defenseless. And so was
Julian Luna.
“What happened to her?” Frank’s curiosity
had been peaked. “Did you
Embrace her? Is she still around?”
“No, she died.” Julian sounded sad.
“A stupid accident. She was
bitten by a poisonous snake. She saved me from a painful
but harmless
experience, and she died.”
“What happened?”
“I must have disturbed it somehow and it
attacked me. I heard the
hiss. Ailee grabbed it by the tail and yanked it away.
The snake bit her
and she died within minutes. The poor girl didn’t know
that snake poison
has no effect on Kindred.”
“Does any poison?” Frank asked.
“No.” Julian smiled suddenly. “And
don’t come dragging in garlic. I
can smell garlic on a person’s breath several days after
it had been
consumed. It’s offensive, that’s all.”
“So all that stuff about garlic, crosses,
silver bullets and stakes
through the heart is just rubbish?” Frank inquired.
“Of course.” Julian’s gaze focused
on the policeman’s face. “I knew
the one who invented that story.”
“You knew Bram Stoker?”
“No, but I met the Toreador who made
him write it.”
“Lillie?” There was incredulity in
Frank’s voice, but Julian shook
his head.
“It was her Sire,” he said.
“Oh.” Frank was silent for a moment.
“Is there any truth in that
story at all?”
“The laws of physics apply to us just
as they apply to you, but we
do defy some of your laws of biology. We aren’t invisible
in mirrors. We
don’t sleep in coffins although we do seem rather lifeless
when asleep.
As you know, the sun can be a mortal danger to weakened
Kindred. You saw
what happened to Stevie and Alexandra. It killed Cameron
too. The
crosses… there are those among us who remember crucifixion
as the means
of execution. It’s an unusually cruel way to kill anyone,
human or
Kindred. The garlic, as I told you before, it just smells
bad. A stake
through the heart immobilizes a Kindred, renders him
helpless, but it’s
not lethal by itself. ” Julian’s voice became ironic.
“We can be killed,
but it’s not as easy as killing a human. Is that what
you’re trying to
find out? How to kill me?”
“No!” Frank’s face turned violently
red. “I threatened you after
Alexandra’s death, I remember that. I hated you then,
but not anymore.
You’re not a monster. For God’s sake, man, you saved
my life! Do you
think that I’d forget that? Vampire or not…”
“Don’t say that,” Julian interrupted
him. “It’s an insult.”
“Huh?”
“We call each other vampire when we
mean to offend.”
“But in Stoker’s Dracula…” Frank started
but was interrupted again.
“Yes, I know. That Toreador had a
weird sense of humor.” Julian
leaned closer to the fire, frowning. “It’s the equivalent
of primate, as
if I called humans apes or Neanderthals.”
“I see.” Frank nodded. “I won’t use
bad language again, I promise,
but there’s something I want to ask you. When I shot
you, on Alexandra’s
balcony…” He wasn’t looking at the Kindred. “You were
obviously hurt…”
He didn’t know how to continue.
“Daedalus removed the bullets. It
was just as unpleasant as being
shot. You see, the human poisons don’t affect us, but
neither do
anesthetics.” Julian Luna wasn’t telling the whole truth.
If there were
a poison or a drug in the blood that a Kindred ingested,
it would affect
him.
“I’m sorry,” Frank was really remorseful.
“I’ve been meaning to
apologize for that for quite some time.”
Julian nodded acceptance.
“I’ve been shot before. I’m not saying
that I’ve got used to it, but
it’s no big deal. There are worse things that can happen.
Daedalus has
become an expert surgeon over the years. Usually, his
comments are more
painful than his ministrations. But it has to be done.”
“Why?”
Julian chuckled softly.
“If I carried around all the junk
that I’ve been shot with, I’d be
rather heavy by now. Not to mention the possibility that
I would attract
every magnet in the vicinity and wreck havoc with the
metal detectors at
the airports.”
Frank couldn’t help laughing too.
“Anyway, I apologize,” he said again.
“What happened afterwards?”
“Afterwards?” For once Julian had
lost track of Frank’s line of
thought.
“Your slave died. And?”
“And all hell broke loose.”
“Why?”
Julian made a grimace.
“Archon didn’t approve of my conduct.
I guess I was rather
unmanageable.”
“Women?” Frank didn’t really need
to ask, and Julian laughed.
“Hey, how did you know?” His accent
was suddenly pure Creole, and he
made a helpless shrug as if he wanted to say ‘the devil
made me do it, I
couldn’t help myself’. “It had to end in disaster and
it did. Archon
nearly hit me; I came so close to breaking the Masquerade
wide open.”
Julian held his fingers almost together. “So close,”
he repeated.
“So you were banished from California
and went to London. And you
met Lillie.” Frank was trying to steer Julian towards
the subject that
interested him.
“Are you absolutely sure that you
want me to tell you about Lillie?”
Julian looked at Frank sideways. Seeing his evident embarrassment,
Frank
realized that Julian’s question was aimed at discouraging
him.
“Yes, I do.” He laughed softly. “You
can spare me the most intimate
details.”
“It’s not the ‘intimate details’ that
are… offensive to talk about.”
“Oh.” The policeman tried to hide his
smile. “Is it so difficult to
talk about feelings, to admit that you loved her?”
Julian frowned.
“I never loved Lillie.” His voice
was a barely audible whisper.
“There’s something about Lillie… something almost repulsive.
She’s a
calculating witch and at the same time the most miserable
creature I
know. She’s damned.”
“What do you mean?”
“Unrequited love.”
Frank waited for Julian to continue
but the Kindred was silent.
“For you?” he asked at last although
he already knew the answer.
Julian nodded.
“I can’t remember another woman before
Lillie that I wanted as much.
And hated as much.”
London - 1888
Lillie made him stand in the middle
of the room. She took her time
turning on the lights, not looking at him once while
she walked from
lamp to lamp. At last, when all lights were burning brightly,
she turned
and faced him.
“Take your clothes off!” she ordered,
her voice cold as ice.
For a brief moment Julian regretted
having promised to obey her. But
he didn’t hesitate. He was naked within a minute. Standing
there, in
full illumination, he became painfully aware of his body
under Lillie’s
scrutiny, his desire making him vulnerable.
“But you are beautiful.” Lillie’s
voice had become low and throaty.
She smiled for the first time. Slowly, she began taking
off her gloves,
tugging them off, one finger at a time. She let them
fall to the floor
and came closer. Her fingers touched Julian’s chest,
her nails drawing
blood. Then her hand moved in a slow caress to his shoulder
and slid
along his arm until she took hold of his wrist.
“Come,” she whispered.
She made him lie down on the bed and
started turning on all lamps in
the bedroom. Julian’s eyes followed her every step but
again she didn’t
look at him. Then she came to him and sat at his side.
“Move up s a little,” she demanded
and he slid towards the headboard
of the bed. She took hold of his wrists and stretched
his arms above his
head. Her fingers closed over his and she made him grip
the iron bars.
“Hold on to these bars,” she said.
“No matter what happens you
mustn’t let go.”
“Are you going to bind me?” Julian
asked wondering if there were
anything strong enough to prevent him from breaking free.
“That won’t be necessary,” Lillie
responded. Her cold smile was
back. “If you let go I’ll throw you out.”
Julian tried to strain his neck, turning
his head up and back, in
order to see his hands.
“I won’t let go,” he promised. Lillie
nodded and suddenly bowed over
him and kissed him on the mouth. Julian responded eagerly
and there was
an ominously cracking sound that emerged from the vicinity
of the bed’s
headboard. Lillie broke the kiss.
“If you break the bars,” she said
laughing, “I’ll break something in
you.”
Her grip was so sudden and hard that
it made him gasp in pain. But
he resisted the urge to let go of the bars and pull her
hand away.
Slowly, the squeezing hand relaxed and the pain subsided.
“You’re good,” Lillie breathed in
his ear. “Not many have passed
that…”
“What are you trying to do?” Julian
asked, his voice rather shaky.
“I’m teaching you control,” she answered.
In the next moment she moved down
his body and he felt her mouth
take him in. He gasped again, but this time from pleasure,
his back
arching in ecstasy. He bit on his lower lip until it
started bleeding,
the pain preventing him from peaking immediately.
Julian found out the hard way that
compared to Lillie he was just an
enthusiastic amateur. Lillie kissed the palm of his hand
until his skin
began to tingle, then sunk her teeth into his wrist,
making him hiss in
pain, and gulped so much blood that the loss made him
light-headed. She
allowed him to move with long, slow thrusts, her hand
squeezing him
painfully, the nails pricking the delicate skin threateningly
whenever
he tried to increase the tempo. She threw back
her head, inviting him
to feed. He found the vein in her neck and drank deep,
restoring his
strength. When a thin trickle escaped he followed it
with his mouth
until his lips found Lillie’s breast, and his kiss became
hot and
demanding. As he felt her muscles contort, he started
to move faster,
and neither his own will nor Lillie’s ripping claws could
stop him
anymore. The violent release made him scream, and he
sagged in Lillie’s
embrace, shuddering uncontrollably and unable to support
his own weight.
The unbelievable mixture of pain and pleasure made his
head spin; he had
almost fainted.
Lillie simply threw him out when he
was too exhausted to be of any
use, as she said with contempt. He was also weakened
by the loss of
blood; she had taken more than she gave. Julian walked
around in the
city for hours, bewildered and dizzy although he had
fed several times,
wondering what was happening to him. It was a new experience.
For the
first time in his Kindred existence a woman had demanded
more than he
was able to endure. He felt revulsion and not so little
fear. That he
was physically stronger than Lillie didn’t change the
fact that she had
been totally in charge – almost all the time. No woman
had given him
more pleasure before, or pain, or satisfaction. Fear
didn’t stop him
from wanting more of that exquisite torture.
Lillie was never available when he
tried to contact her, but each
time he was almost convinced that she didn’t want him
anymore, she would
summon him, the way a queen would summon a subject. It
was humiliating,
but Julian never failed to come to her on the appointed
time. They would
make love, always the way Lillie wanted it, and Julian
learned to keep
up with her pace. Her blood always excited him beyond
reason. But after
a few months his male ego revolted. Using his superior
strength, Julian
forced Lillie to make love the way he wanted. She screamed
angrily and
ripped his flesh with her claws and teeth, but the more
abusive she was,
the more tender were Julian’s kisses and caresses. She
had given up in
the end, allowing him to overcome her resistance, submitting
to the
overwhelming waves of pleasure. But when she saw his
triumphant smile,
it was Lillie’s turn to know fear.
Julian’s education had seemed more
than adequate for the
mid-nineteenth century, in California. But when he arrived
in England,
he learned immediately that compared to the sophisticated
Ventrue of
London he was barely literate. He might not have cared
about that if it
weren’t for those long, idle, gray, sleepless days. Julian
had arrived
in London in the fall. He hated the city from the first
moment. It was
damp, cold, and unbelievably filthy, ridden by poverty
and disease. The
robust human population of California seemed to belong
to another
species. But London was full of bookshops and libraries,
and besides,
everybody who could afford it could study almost anything.
In spite of
his anger Archon had made sure that Julian would not
end up in England
empty-handed. Julian didn’t lack intelligence, and now
he was able to
acquire an education that had not been available in America.
He was
fascinated by natural sciences and became an ardent student
of astronomy
and physics.
Julian Luna became a curiosity in
London. He had a strange name,
strange accent and was quite wealthy. He made friends
easily, and the
women found him attractive, especially since he was considered
Lillie’s
property. With time, Julian’s dislike of London turned
into admiration.
He met other women, both human and
Kindred. None of them could
compete with his Toreador lover, but he was no longer
as addicted to
Lillie as he had been in the beginning of their liaison.
He knew that
Lillie was seeing other men as well, but they would end
up in bed
together whenever they met. Neither could stay away from
the other for
long.
Lillie spat in rage at her own reflection
in the mirror.
“You should have known better,” she
hissed at her image. What she
dreaded most in the entire world had happened; she had
fallen in love
with a man who didn’t love her. He desired her of course,
but that
didn’t impress Lillie Langtry. All men desired her.
How could I let it happen? Lillie’s
eyes flashed white lightning.
She had seen the danger the first time she saw him, yet
her desire had
made her foolish. Now she would have to pay the prize.
Sometimes she
imagined that she hated Julian Luna, but each time she
saw him, her
resentment would melt away. She wanted him more than
she cared to admit,
even to herself. But she would never tell him that she
loved him, never!
They became quite close friends over
the years, traveling together
in Europe, hunting together, enjoying life in all possible
ways.
Everybody welcomed them. Considered the most beautiful
couple among the
Kindred, they would be invited to every party and gathering,
and many
would try to imitate them. When they came to America,
Lillie was no
longer a celebrity. She had to disappear from the world
of the living;
her time had run out, and she found herself overshadowed
by Julian Luna.
It was evident that Archon had plans for Julian, but
it would take some
time before Julian would accept those plans.
Julian drank the last of the wine in
his glass and rose from the
chair.
“Frank,” he said, “it’s enough for
tonight. I have to leave.”
Julian didn’t tell the policeman that they were no longer
alone. The
Nosferatu’s presence was only detectable to the Prince.
Frank nodded and
got up.
“Do you plan to disappear again for
the next couple of months?” he
asked. “It’s like reading a book one chapter at a time;
frustrating.”
“There isn’t much left,” Julian responded.
“I’ll come by your place
sometime next week, or maybe the week after. I don’t
intend to
disappear. At least not deliberately.”
Julian waited until the policeman
was gone before calling Daedalus’
name. He heard a soft rustle and turned towards the sound.
The Nosferatu
was standing by the fire, his calm face betraying nothing.
As always,
when faced by the Nosferatu, Julian felt apprehension.
“Are you afraid that I’ll tell him
too much?” he asked. But Daedalus
only shrugged.
“You can’t tell him what you don’t
know. Besides, apart from being
human, he is one of us.”
Julian Luna looked at the Nosferatu
in silence for a long time.
“What is it that I don’t know?” he
inquired at last, and Daedalus
shrugged again.
“Julian, you’re the Prince. You know
what you need to know. We have
our secrets just as you Ventrue have your own. That’s
how we all
survive. Don’t ask questions that can not be answered.”
Julian bowed his head.
“Of course Daedalus.” But there was
disappointment in his voice and
the Nosferatu heard it.
“I have been at your side ever since
you’ve been Embraced,” Daedalus
was hurt. “Have I ever disappointed you?”
“No, no. You have always been loyal
to me.” There was a hint of
desolation in the Prince’s voice that made Daedalus wince.
“Julian, what’s wrong?”
“I have never doubted your loyalty,
Daedalus.” Julian tried to keep
his resentment i check. He faced the Nosferatu squarely.
“Do you realize
that you’re the only being that I have ever feared?”
Daedalus winced as if Julian had hit
him in the face. His shocked
expression told the Prince that he had really hurt the
Nosferatu.
“Not now.” Julian was trying desperately
to repair the damage, not
realizing that Daedalus wasn’t really listening. “Not
anymore. But after
Archon had Embraced me, and you showed up…”
Napa Valley - 1858
While Julian respected Archon, he
was terrified of Daedalus. There
shouldn’t be anything strange about that; the Nosferatu
could scare the
fiercest Brujah out of his wits with one glance. But
to Julian Daedalus
was the living proof that he had left the humanity forever.
That he had
entered the realm of the cold-blooded; crossed the boundary
of eternal
hostility between day and night. Fear of reptiles, imbedded
in human
genes since the beginning of time, made Julian dread
the Nosferatu
instinctively. Julian Luna was one of the few Kindred
who were able to
keep some part of their humanity intact.
Julian was always aware of Daedalus’
watchful eyes. When Archon’s
despotic commands didn’t work, Daedalus’ soft-spoken
allusions would
always suffice. But what Julian perceived as contemptuous
supervision
was actually care. Fortunately, he didn’t know how closely
he was
watched.
Daedalus had abandoned the big canvas
for a spell and painted a
miniature portrait of Julian Luna from memory. It was
perfect. The
Nosferatu smiled in sadness. His paintings were displayed
in museums all
over the world; they were priceless, and his human name
was prominent in
every book about renaissance art. There was even a gallery
in Florence,
which was dedicated solely to his work.
Daedalus cast a glance in the mirror,
and the timeless pain tore at
his heart again.
Why wasn’t I Embraced by a Ventrue
or a Toreador?
Behind the bald head, ugly ears and
angular features he could almost
see the beautiful, young man he had once been; celebrated,
loved and
adored. He looked again at the tiny picture of Julian
in his hand. All
the powers of the Nosferatu Clan that were at his disposal
seemed
suddenly to be of no value.
Beautiful and bright, Daedalus sighed.
There’s no justice in this
world.
Daedalus had been forced to leave
his human life by sudden illness.
He had been only thirty-seven at that time. He remembered
the date very
well. It had also been his birthday; April the sixth.
Death had been
imminent, and there had been little choice. The Nosferatu
wondered
sometimes who had been buried in the tomb that bore his
mortal name in
Rome’s Pantheon. The wonderful life of a celebrated artist
had been
taken from him overnight, and he entered the dark world
of the most
ancient and mysterious of the Kindred Clans. Daedalus
forced himself not
to look back. His mortal life and his mortal loves were
long gone. But
as he watched Julian Luna he couldn’t help comparing
the fate of the
young Ventrue to his own. In contrast to Daedalus, Julian’s
human life
had ended almost before it really started. What had been
taken away from
Daedalus when he became Kindred, would be given now to
Julian.
Nobody understood Julian Luna’s true
nature better than the
Nosferatu. As a mortal Daedalus had been what Julian
was now; a slave of
the demands of the flesh - what would be diagnosed as
sex addiction in
the ‘enlightened’ era of the later part of the twentieth
century.
Daedalus was almost free of his passions. But occasionally
he would
succumb to the old desires, devising means to hide his
horrifying
appearance. His indulgence of Julian’s reckless behavior
was in fact an
understanding that the young Ventrue could no more stay
away from women
than he could abstain from feeding. Nothing would ever
change that, and
Julian had the advantage of being the most beautiful
man that Daedalus
had ever seen. The Nosferatu thought of his own mortal
face, which he
had put often enough in his paintings. He had been considered
a handsome
man in his days.
Even I couldn’t have competed with
Julian Luna, he decided smiling.
But Julian had been born three centuries
after Daedalus had given up
his mortal existence and his human appearance. Julian
was luckier than
most; his face was unchanged by the Embrace. And now,
subject to the
Kindred powers, it wouldn’t age either.
Time passed and Daedalus watched over
Julian Luna as if the Ventrue
were his own creation. He made sure that Archon knew
as little as
possible about the worst of Julian’s escapades. But the
young Kindred
was uncontrollable, and in the end he had gone too far.
When Julian Luna returned from Europe
almost twenty years later, he
would no longer be intimidated by either Daedalus or
Archon. But he had
changed as well. He wasn’t as wild as he had been earlier.
Whatever else
Lillie had done, her influence had made Julian more responsible
and
mature. He didn’t change his ways, but was much more
discrete. However,
it took another decade before Julian came back to Archon
and accepted
his leadership without question. Eventually, Julian became
Archon’s most
trusted associate. He was chosen Primogen of the Ventrue
clan on the
same day that president Kennedy was assassinated. Twenty-five
years
later, with Daedalus active help, Julian Luna succeeded
Archon as the
new Prince of the city of San Francisco. It was the first
time that a
Prince relinquished his title and stayed on after the
transition of
power.
Julian’s leadership was seldom challenged.
He was a successful
Prince, and it was well known that he enjoyed unconditional
support of
the Nosferatu Primogen. Although Daedalus knew that Julian
didn’t really
need him anymore, he stayed at the Prince’s side.
His Prince, whom he regarded as a
reincarnation of his own humanity.
Julian acquired the ability to sense
Daedalus’ presence only
recently, after the Nosferatu had offered the Prince
his own blood, thus
helping him to defeat Goth, the once banished Nosferatu
Primogen. Aided
by Daedalus’ gift Julian was more powerful than ever,
and his bond to
the Nosferatu had become stronger. But Daedalus could
no longer follow
him around as he had done in the past, when Julian could
not detect him.
It was at Archon’s request that Daedalus had kept vigil
over Julian Luna
from the very beginning. He had watched the young man’s
despair before
he was Embraced, and held his protecting hand over the
Kindred
afterwards. He had kept Stephen at bay for more than
a century, and had
always been there whenever Julian needed him. He watched
Julian fight
and love, triumph and get hurt. Daedalus had stopped
Archon’s raised
hand, preventing him from hitting Julian, the one offence
that Julian
would never forgive his Sire.
Then it was Julian who had chased
Goth out of San Francisco twenty
years ago, heeding Daedalus’ plea to save his Sire’s
life in spite of
the final death sentence that Archon had declared.
Julian Luna was everything that Daedalus
was not. Far from being
envious, Daedalus loved his Prince to the point of worship.
Being told
that he was feared by the only being that he admired,
hurt Daedalus more
than he could bear.
“Do you want me to leave your City?”
the Nosferatu asked, his
whisper barely audible.
“Daedalus!” Julian’s shout was filled
with despair. “Didn’t you hear
me? I was afraid of you, but not anymore. Don’t do this
to me! I’ll not
be able to go on without you. You must never leave me.
I need you.” He
hid his face in his hands, stifling a sob. “Why am I
losing everybody?
What have I done?”
The Nosferatu blinked in surprise
at the sudden outburst, and his
expression softened.
“Julian,” he was still whispering,
knowing that the Prince would
hear him anyway, “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have left even
if you told me
to. You’ll have to kill me to get rid of me.”
Julian looked up at his friend.
“I’d rather kill myself,” he responded,
and Daedalus heard the
sincerity in the Prince’s voice.
“That will not be necessary. If you
ever decide that you need to
die, I’ll be honored to assist you,” the Nosferatu Primogen
said
solemnly, and Julian realized that he had been offered
the greatest
sacrifice that Daedalus was capable of.
“Thank you, Daedalus. I’ll never forget
that.” He hesitated for a
moment. “If you ever need me, I’ll also be at your disposal.”
It was the right answer. Daedalus
inclined his head in reverence and
kissed Julian’s hand. In the next instant he was gone.
Frank went on with his life but made
sure that he was always at home
when he wasn’t working nights. He was waiting for Julian
to come, and he
was no longer afraid of what might happen if and when
the Kindred showed
up. He was quite sure that Julian would never harm him
or do anything
improper. Frank was certain by now that apart from Daedalus
he was the
closest friend that Julian had. And Daedalus, although
Kindred, was by
far much more different from Julian Luna than Frank himself
– a human.
The bond between Julian and Daedalus was of different
kind, and the gap
between the Nosferatu and the Ventrue could never be
breached
completely. But Frank was also aware of the fact that
if a conflict were
to arise between the humans and Kindred, he and Julian
Luna would find
themselves on opposite sides of the fence. He hoped sincerely
that it
would never happen. He tried to imagine his own reaction
if the
Masquerade were broken, and the mortals started to hunt
the creatures of
the night. He knew with absolute certainty that he would
do anything
within his power to protect the Kindred. The Prince had
protected him,
and Frank would protect Julian at any cost if the necessity
arose. He
realized with incredulity that he had never cherished
a friendship more
than that of Julian’s. As seldom as they met, the awareness
of the
Kindred’s care had dissipated Frank’s feeling of loneliness.
It was almost nine in the evening,
and Frank’s shift had just ended.
Before leaving for home he stopped by his captain’s desk.
He wanted to
discuss a messy case of homicide, which he hadn’t been
able to solve. He
heard the phone ring but before he reached it Sonny had
answered. Frank
saw his partner’s eyes widen in surprise.
“It’s for you,” Sonny said unnecessarily;
it was Frank’s phone.
“Julian Luna.”
“Are you free this evening?” the Prince
asked as soon as the
policeman said his name.
“Yes, I am.”
“I’ll come by your place in an hour
if it’s alright with you.”
“Please, do.” Frank was painfully
aware of Sonny’s close scrutiny.
“What are you two up to?” Sonny asked
as soon as Frank put down the
receiver.
“Uh…” Frank’s mind had gone blank.
He knew though that he didn’t
want to tell his Kindred partner why Julian Luna had
contacted him.
Somehow it seemed inappropriate.
Is Julian endangering himself by confiding
in me? he wondered. He
put a finger to his lips and made a hushing sound.
“It’s a secret.” He left Sonny staring
after him in a stupefied
silence.
Frank looked at the shelves, trying
to figure out what he should
choose. He knew enough about wines to realize that the
one Julian had
served him was far beyond what he could afford. At last
he bought two
bottles that were almost too expensive.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” was
the first thing that Julian
said, startling the policeman. “I’m sorry, I should have
knocked. But I
knew you were expecting me, and the door was unlocked.”
He had appeared
out of nowhere, like a magician on a stage.
“Oh, you came through the door?”
“Of course. I just moved too fast
for you to see. I didn’t mean to
scare you.”
Frank smiled at that.
“You’ll have to do better than that
if you want to scare me. But it
is impressive.”
“I didn’t do it to impress you. It’s
just the way we are. You move
at your pace. If you don’t need to adjust to someone
who moves much more
slowly, you never give it a thought, do you?”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Frank was still
grinning. “You didn’t want to
impress me at all. You want some wine?” he nodded toward
the bottle, and
it was Julian’s turn to smile.
“Sure, and you’re not trying to impress
me either.”
Frank was amazed by how comfortable
he felt in the Prince’s company.
They were chatting about different things and Julian
gave the policeman
an idea on how to solve the homicide he was assigned
to.
“You might make quite a detective,”
Frank commented. “If you’re half
as good as Sonny, you’d do alright.”
“I’m doing quite alright on my own.”
Julian pretended to be
offended. “I have for quite some time.”
“I thought you had always worked for
Archon. At least until you
became the Prince of the City.”
“I did.” Julian responded. “But not
always.”
“Are you saying that you were actually
able to tear yourself from
your Sire’s supervision and face the harsh world all
by yourself.” Frank
was teasing the Kindred; the wine had made him a little
wicked.
“Oh, but I did make it on my own,”
Julian retorted. “In a way,” he
added smiling, “among humans.”
“What did you do?”
“I’m not so sure that I want to tell
you. Lillie still laughs at
me.”
“She does?” Frank would not be stopped.
“Now, what could you have
done that would make Lillie laugh.”
Julian was apparently hard pressed
not to laugh himself.
“I encroached on her territory,” he
actually giggled, and Frank
stared.
Lillie’s territory? he wondered. Then
it hit him.
“Show business?”
“Uhuh,” Julian used Frank’s favorite
expression. “On one occasion I
almost thought that Caitlin had found out.”
“How?”
Julian recounted a conversation with
Caitlin. It took place only a
couple of months after they had become lovers.
“Julian, do you tango?” Caitlin’s question
came out of the blue one
evening when he had taken her out for a late dinner.
Julian looked at
her uncomprehending. There was no dancing in this restaurant.
“I know the steps.” He was bewildered.
“Why do you ask?”
She rummaged through her bag and came
up with a small book, a
paperback. She opened it before presenting it to him.
“Here, look at the pictures,” she
was laughing, “it could be you. A
little less muscle and a little more make-up. It could
be you, ten years
ago or so.”
Julian stared at the black and white
photos, thanking silently the
now forgotten make-up artist. He hated being reminded.
Nevertheless,
Lillie would remind him every now and then, pricking
his ego whenever he
became too pompous.
“You’ve put that Toreador blood you
got from me to good use there!”
she would say.
As his own veiled gaze stared back
at him from the pages of the
biography, he wished for the Nosferatu ability to disappear
through the
wall, or through the floor, in this particular moment.
“There is some resemblance,” he admitted
at last, trying hard not to
show his embarrassment.
On his return from Europe he had had
trouble adapting to Archon’s
severe leadership. He had left San Francisco only a few
months later,
determined to prove that he could make it on his own.
And he did, only
to find out within a few years that he had chewed off
more than he could
swallow. It had been his first and only plunge into the
cesspool of the
American show business. Fortunately, he had been wise
enough to use a
false name, together with a phony accent and background
story, placing
his origin in Italy. He knew enough Italian by then to
pull it off. The
tangles of the film industry had almost strangled him.
In the end, he
had staged his own demise in 1926, vowing that he would
never become a
public figure again.
No, fame was for humans. He had done
it for the money, and for fun,
he had to admit that, at least to himself. But the enjoyment
had turned
bitter shortly. The human vampires lived in Hollywood.
Still, when it
came to tango, he knew more than just the steps.
He returned the book to Caitlin. Those
photos, more than seventy
years old, altered in order to give the best picture,
retouched; there
was no trace of his scar, were no danger to Julian. But
they made him
feel ashamed.
“Why this sudden interest in a film
star who has been dead for
seventy years?” he asked.
“Somebody at the office thought he
was your look-alike,” Caitlin
answered shrugging, “but now, when I compare,” she looked
at the
pictures and then at him, “no, just superficial resemblance.”
She
smiled. “You look much better.”
Julian repressed a shiver, smiling
back at her flattery. No, those
were the years he didn’t want to remember. He had returned
to San
Francisco and to Archon, chastised and apologetic, glad
that his Sire
welcomed him back. He had kept out of the public eye
for years
afterwards, withstanding the chiding of other Kindred.
Neither Archon
nor Daedalus ever mentioned his failure, and in time
his stunt seemed to
be forgotten. Only Lillie reminded him sometimes, usually
when she
thought that he needed to remember his less fortunate
inventions. After
all, she could hardly whisper ‘Memento mori’ in his ear.
He recalled the suggestive music,
the dancing halls, the atmosphere
of decadence and unbridled sexuality, the hypocrisy.
The suffocating
feeling of being caught in a smothering web of lies and
falsehoods that
seemed much more repulsive than the lie of his own existence.
No, Julian
would never go back to living among humans, the way he
had done in the
early twenties. One trial was enough. Even the Brujahs
were easier to
deal with.
His mind played the music again, and
for a brief moment he missed
the abandonment of the dance. His Kindred strength and
endurance had
enabled him to dance the nights away. Women had fought
each other for a
dance with him. Or more. He had never lacked partners.
Or companions. Or
blood.
“Do you?” he asked Caitlin, but she
had already forgotten her own
question.
“Do I what?” she inquired.
“Tango?” he reminded her.
She shook her head in negation.
“Nowadays people dance to disco music,
in case you haven’t noticed,”
she pointed out. Her remark was justified. Julian avoided
loud music,
and the few times they had danced together, it had always
been to soft,
slow tunes.
“I can teach you,” he said disregarding
her comment. “I’m not as
good as he was, but I think you’d find me adequate.”
Caitlin’s eyes brightened with amusement.
“Julian, I’d love to tango with you,”
she said laughing, and he
nodded quite seriously.
“Then we will.”
Frank stared at the Prince in disbelief.
He jumped up and started
tearing out the books from the shelf. At last he found
the one he was
looking for. It was a history of American cinema. He
leafed through
several chapters. There were some black and white photographs.
He looked
at them and then at Julian Luna. The policeman’s eye,
well trained in
recognizing faces, searched for comparable details.
“I’ll be damned,” he whispered under
his breath. “I’ll be damned.”
But Julian was just embarrassed.
“Frank,” there was a hint of steel
in his voice, “if you tell
anybody about this, I’ll turn Daedalus loose. My face
has caused me
enough trouble as it is.”
“Ouch, touchy, aren’t we?” Frank commented,
but he had heard the
threat and it made him cautious. “I won’t spill the beans,
I promise.
Did you teach her to tango?”
The look Julian gave him told Frank
that he was still treading on
slippery ground.
“No, the opportunity never arose.
We were both quite busy. Then…” He
stopped suddenly.
“Then she died,” Frank continued the
unfinished sentence
relentlessly.
Julian reacted as if he had been hit
in the stomach. He cowered, his
face contorting in pain and despair, and a single tear
escaped from his
eye. Frank watched its red trail on Julian’s face
with awe.
How could I ever think of him as a
beast? He turned his eyes away in
shame.
“Julian,” Frank didn’t realize that
he was whispering, “I’ve always
felt responsible for her death. If she hadn’t come to
me…”
“It wasn’t your fault.” Julian didn’t
let him finish. “None of it
was your fault. The blame is solely mine. If I hadn’t
made her remember…
if I hadn’t fallen asleep… if…” A sob cut him short and
he fell silent.
Frank didn’t want to disturb the Prince’s
grief. He knew that he
should leave it be, but his pity was mingled with anger.
Julian was
absolutely right; he was responsible for Caitlin’s death.
“Look, next time you fall in love,
tell her the truth,” Frank
blurted out at last.
“I won’t!” Julian snapped back.
“Why? Had Caitlin known the truth,
she’d probably be still alive.”
Frank’s brutal honesty was partially caused by his own
guilt. But Julian
shook his head vehemently.
“I meant that I won’t fall in love,”
Julian retorted.
The policeman was silent for a moment.
“Yeah, right,” he commented dryly
at last, “and you won’t drink
blood either.”
Julian Luna’s beautiful face paled
more than usual. The green light
shimmered again in his haunted eyes. Bur after a moment
his mouth began
to quiver, and then he started to laugh.
“Yeah, right,” he repeated after Frank.
He knew that the policeman
was right. He’s getting worse than Daedalus!
“You’re worse than Daedalus,” Julian
said. But there was warmth in
his voice, and Frank understood that the Prince appreciated
his lack of
respect. Frank would never kiss the Prince’s hand, and
that made them
equals although they belonged to different species.
It felt good to have a friend.
Epilogue
The phone rang as soon as I put down the receiver.
I tore it up again.
“Now what?!” I wasn’t even trying
to hide my irritation.
There was a silence and I knew that
the call wasn’t from the lab.
“I’d like to speak to Dr. Craine,
Dr. Anne Craine.” The soft
baritone on the other end had hesitated before saying
my name as if he
had to read it.
“Speaking,” I said.
“My name is Jeffrey Morris, Dr. Morris,”
the voice became very
professional. “I’m sorry, but I have to inform you that
your son, James,
has been involved in an accident.”
“Jeez...” I began, but Dr. Morris
didn’t let me start wailing.
“He’ll be quite all right,” he said.
“However, he’s injured and I
think you should come. He has tried to make us promise
that we wouldn’t
tell you. Apparently, he wasn’t where he was supposed
to be.”
“Of course he wasn’t. He was supposed
to be at the summer school!”
Before I could start asking questions,
the good doctor gave me the
name and address of the hospital and hung up. Three minutes
later I was
in my car, trying to beat the afternoon traffic. Damn
brat! I’ve had
enough of unpleasant surprises during recent months.
This was one thing
I could do without.
Imagine, only six months ago I was
quite happy. Well, maybe happy
was too much to say, but I was content. I had finally
got my Ph.D. in
forensic medicine. I was promised a good job in L.A.
My husband was no
longer slapping me around, and my three kids were healthy.
What else
could a woman want. Okay, so the kids were becoming more
and more
unmanageable, I was about to give up my constant fight
with the
ten-pound overweight, and my sex life had dwindled down
to nothing.
Then, when the dust settled, and the ceremonies and the
parties were
over, my beloved husband of sixteen years came home one
night and
announced that he was leaving me! And off he went! That
very night.
I cursed and cried and broke a few
things. Then I got this crazy
idea in my head that I should kill myself, just to spite
him. Not to
mention the fact that he would be stuck with three spoiled
brats. That
would be quite some revenge. So I called his sister and
asked her to
take care of my poor abandoned children for a week or
so. She knew them
all too well and tried to invent excuses, but I was hard
as a stone.
“Look,” I said, “your brother has
left me. I need time to organize
things. Get a lawyer and stuff. You know.”
She had been through two divorces.
She knew.
After I left the kids in her care,
I returned home and started to
organize my demise. I cleaned the house, and it stayed
clean the day
after because there was no one around to make a mess.
I stayed in the
bath for two hours and nobody yelled about breakfast
or lost socks or
shirts that weren’t ironed. I dyed my hair a terrible
orange and nobody
laughed at me. I didn’t cook one meal during the whole
day, and when the
evening came, I was able to watch whatever I wished on
the TV. I went to
bed before midnight for the first time in years, and
just before I fell
asleep, I realized that I was also happy for the first
time in years.
I was a doctor of forensic medicine,
probably the most competent
person to commit suicide, and I knew that suicide was
the last thing I
was interested in. I was thirty-eight years old, and
I was determined to
start a new life. Left alone with three children, aged
ten, eleven and
fifteen, well, Jerry would pay through the nose.
He did.
We never went to court. The house
was sold, and I got most of the
money. He was to pay for the children for years to come.
I saw his new
woman; she waited for him outside the lawyer’s office.
I wished her
luck. I applied for a new job in San Francisco and moved
there two
months after the divorce papers were signed. By the time
I was settling
down in the new city, my hair was black and to my utter
surprise, the
surplus ten pounds were gone. It doesn’t sound like much,
but if you’re
five feet one, it shows. Life seemed to get better. Even
the kids were
somehow easier to handle, now that Jerry wasn’t around
to make everybody
nervous with his outbursts.
So why did Jimmy have to go and get
himself involved in an accident.
What sort of accident, by the way? Did he fall from a
tree, was he hit
by a truck? If he had tried to make the doctors keep
his misfortune a
secret, apparently, he had been doing something he wasn’t
supposed to.
At last I found the hospital. It wasn’t
one of the big city
hospitals, and as soon as I entered, I realized with
dread that it
wasn’t the sort of hospital that my insurance would cover.
Jimmy was in
a room of his own, his head bandaged, his right leg in
traction, a nurse
at his side. He seemed quite happy otherwise, but he
started to whimper
as soon as he saw me. However, the cunning of an eleven-year-old
was
lost on me.
He had been hit by a car, the doctor
later told me. He had run into
the street right in front of it; there was no way that
the driver could
avoid him. But he had been lucky. A broken leg, some
cracked ribs, a
concussion, no internal damage. I told Doctor Morris
that I couldn’t
possibly afford this hospital.
His round, black face cracked in a
smile that contained more than
thirty-two teeth.
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about
that, Dr. Craine,” he said. “Mr.
Luna has already paid for your son’s care.”
“And who is Mr. Luna? A good fairy?”
“Mr. Luna is the owner of the car.
The car that hit your boy.”
“What do you mean, the owner of the
car?” I was getting upset, now
that I knew that Jimmy would be all right. “Where was
he when his car
ran over my son?!”
“In the back seat,” the doctor said.
“He’s got a driver.”
“Oh,” was all of my comment.
There was a knock on the door and
a man entered.
He looked at me, his brown eyes unwavering.
“You’re the boy’s mother?” he asked
and I nodded.
“Anne Craine.”
He took my hand and bowed over it
formally. His touch was very warm,
although he didn’t look feverish.
“I’m Julian Luna,” he said. “I’m very
sorry about what has happened,
but my driver had no chance. Fortunately, the car has
very good brakes.”
“Uhum,” I said. I was too busy staring
at him.
Had I run into him in L.A., I wouldn’t
have been half as surprised.
L.A. was brimming with movie stars. But here? He was
positively the most
beautiful man that I had ever seen in real life. It was
breathtaking.
The forensic expert woke up in me. Age determination
was my specialty,
and I saw immediately that this man was trying to look
older than he
really was. He wasn’t underage, but everything in his
appearance was
straining towards the maturity he apparently didn’t possess:
the dark
business suit, the somber tie, the way his hair was brushed
back. But
his skin blatantly gave him away. There was not one wrinkle
around his
eyes. I looked at his hand, which still held mine. It
was a young man’s
hand. It didn’t matter how mature he tried to look; there
was no way he
could fool me. He was still on the right side of thirty.
He let go of my hand and I watched
him shrink from my scrutiny. It
made me cringe too and I felt my face turn hot.
Damn! I thought. He must be quite
used to the way women look at him.
Still, I’m an adult mother of three
kids, probably ten years older
than he is, and here I am, staring with lust at the man
whose car has
mauled my son.
Hormones, begone! I shouted mentally.
“I was told that you’ve paid for the
hospital care of my son,” I
said, for want of anything else to say.
He was very pale and seemed sad.
“It was the least I could do,” he
responded.
And then he was gone.
I continued staring at the door that
had closed behind him until Dr.
Morris started to chuckle and my face turned even hotter.
I turned back
to Dr. Morris, and he winked at me and made a comical
shrug.
“He’s gay!” I said. One finds comfort
wherever one can.
“No, he isn’t,” the good doctor retorted.
“He’s the most prized prey
in this city,” he added. “However, he has been out of
circulation during
the last few years. Some tragic love affair, she died
and he has kept to
himself ever since. The nurses almost dropped dead when
he turned up
here, carrying your son.
“They did?” I was trying to make him
talk more. He jumped at the
opportunity.
“Sure, Julian Luna used to be our
resident Don Juan. With his looks,
it’s no wonder, but...” His voice trailed off.
“But?” I prodded. There must be a
flaw, of course.
“He abused women.”
“Oh!” The bubble broke and I was no
longer interested. The doctor
saw my reaction.
“Not in the way you think,” he said.
“He never harmed one as far as
I know. They all just went more or less mad when he left
them.
Apparently, he’s something unbelievable in bed, or so
the tales go. I
thought the ladies made it all up, but their stories
were very
consistent. Even the most spiteful admitted that he was
the best lover
they’d ever had. The funny thing is, that he’s quite
a serious
businessman. Stinking rich too!”
“Oh,” I said. I was interested again.
The jackals descended upon me as soon
as I got out of the hospital,
their point being that I could sue Mr. Luna for my boy’s
accident and
walk away with a bundle of money. I chased them off.
I wasn’t a pauper,
and making money of my son’s misfortune didn’t sound
right. Besides,
getting my hands on a piece of Mr. Luna’s fortune wasn’t
what I had in
mind. I’d rather get my hands on him.
I visited Jimmy in the hospital every
day. The room was filled with
toys and candy that Julian Luna had sent. I hoped that
he would come
too, but he didn’t.
After about a week I got a letter
from his lawyer. I was asked to
contact him to discuss damages. Damages?! I called the
number and asked
what the hell it was all about. The lawyer asked very
politely if I’d be
satisfied with a check for a hundred thousand dollars.
I was insulted.
“Did I ask for any money?” I said.
“Stuff it!” I regretted it the
moment I put down the receiver. But then I decided that
I should be
proud of myself.
Two days later, the mailman delivered
a check for two hundred
thousand dollars.
Get real, my mind told me, take the
money. You’ll never get the man.
The next day I did something I’ve never
done before. I hacked into
the police records. Hacked is an overstatement. Being
a forensic expert,
I had clearance to get into almost anything. I looked
up Mr. Julian
Luna. He was on record, all right. His very position
connected him to
several more or less shady things. However, he had never
been charged
with anything. There was one thing that startled me:
his birth date.
According to the police record he was thirty-six.
Now, I’d have put my reputation on
the line that he wasn’t. Had I
found him on my slab for identification, I’d have said
at least ten
years younger. So, who lied, the police record or Mr.
Luna’s skin?
I forgot about the money, my injured
son, even my own lust. Here was
a mystery worth pursuing, and I wouldn’t be who I was
if I didn’t pursue
it. I did not become an expert in forensic medicine by
accident. My
curiosity had been awakened, and when I’m curious, I’m
dangerous.
I decided that Friday evening would
be the right time to start my
investigation. I dressed carefully: the suit I use when
I give lectures
at conferences, very little makeup. Very businesslike
and very
competent, I went to see Mr. Luna.
It was late enough for all the business
to have shut down for the
weekend, but too early for the evening entertainment
to start. If Julian
Luna were in the city, he’d be at home. If he were out,
I’d make an
appointment, I decided.
At first I thought that his house was
under police surveillance, but
then I quickly realized that the guards were his own.
I told them my
name and asked to see Mr. Luna. They demanded to see
the contents of my
briefcase, and I opened it, laughing. Then I was let
in.
I sat in a library: it was a beautiful
room, but it surprised me
that there was a fire blazing away in the fireplace.
It was August, and
the hottest summer one could imagine.
I didn’t have to wait long.
When Julian Luna entered I was glad
that I had chosen my yuppie
outfit. He wore a dark suit and a tie, very businesslike
too. He greeted
me in the same way he did in the hospital, his hand still
very hot, or
was I imagining things? There was something European
about him: his
manners, the way he spoke. But the record stated that
he was born right
here, in California. Strange. The inconsistencies about
him peaked my
curiosity even more. And he still looked too young for
his recorded age.
I watched him carefully and he was aware of it; it made
him
uncomfortable, so I averted my eyes.
“What can I do for you, Mrs. Craine?”
he asked.
I opened my briefcase and took out
the check.
“I believe that I’ve something here
that belongs to you,” I said
giving him the check.
He hesitated for a moment before taking
it.
“Why are you doing this?” His voice
was no longer businesslike. He
was genuinely surprised and I smiled in triumph.
“I don’t want your money,” I said.
I want you, my mind snickered.
“The accident wasn’t your fault, nor
was it your driver’s. I don’t
believe that you should pay for my son’s stupidity,”
I continued.
He smiled for the first time.
“Still, it’s your boy who has a broken
leg and is hospitalized. I
thought it would be a... Band-Aid.” He waved the
check in front of me.
I squared my shoulders.
“Thank you very much!” I said. “I
can manage quite well. What Jimmy
needs is a good spanking, not a two hundred thousand
dollar check.”
To my surprise there was a look of
horror on his face.
“Oh no!” he exclaimed, “you mustn’t!”
I laughed and he relaxed visibly.
“You were joking, weren’t you?”
I nodded. My children did get an occasional
swat now and then, but
mostly their upbringing was conducted through endless
discussions and
some shouting.
“Do you have other children?” he asked.
“Two more,” I said. “What about you?”
He shook his head, the sadness was
there again.
“No... I have no children.”
Why did he hesitate? Doesn’t he know
for sure? I remembered Dr.
Morris’ comment - the resident Don Juan. Maybe he doesn’t
know for sure.
But he seemed relaxed and I decided,
it’s now or never.
“Have you eaten yet, Mr. Luna,” I
asked.
He blinked and looked away, apparently
embarrassed.
The resident Don Juan, my ass! Say
yes or no and be done with it, I
thought. This question has just cost me two hundred thousand
dollars!
His gaze returned to me. I could almost
hear the gears turn in his
head. He gave me that look. It said here we go again,
and it made me
blush.
Jeez, man! You’ve put my son in a
hospital. The least you can do is
to buy me dinner. Give a lady a chance. I don’t look
that bad.
Then I saw him smile again. God Almighty,
that smile could charm the
gold out of Fort Knox!
“I don’t eat in the evening,” he said,
and I felt my heart sink,
“but I’d love to see you eat, if you don’t mind that?”
I didn’t mind at all.
He took me to a restaurant, an expensive
one. When we sat in his car
I couldn’t help wondering if it were the one that had
hit Jimmy.
“No,” he said apparently reading my
expression, “this is not the
car, and it was another driver too.”
“You haven’t sacked him, have you?”
I asked.
“Oh, no!” he shook his head. “As a
matter of fact, if it weren’t for
Armand’s quick reflexes, your son might have died. I’m
afraid, it
would’ve been much worse had I been driving. I seldom
do. I don’t like
to drive at all.”
I stared at him. This was the first
man I’d ever met who admitted
that he wasn’t the best driver in the universe. Beside
my apparent
desire, I was beginning to like him.
We sat in the restaurant and he ordered
food for me in perfect
French. Hell, his French was better than mine, and I’ve
spent three
years at Sorbonne. But I didn’t ask about it. I realized
quite soon that
in contrast to all the men I knew, he didn’t want to
talk about himself.
So I didn’t ask anything, concentrating on keeping the
conversation
light and answering his questions. I told him that I
was divorced and
quite happy about it, that I have lived in LA until recently,
and that
the divorce had left me rather well off. I was doing
all right.
“What is it you do?” he asked at last.
“Forensic medicine,” I said and I
felt him recoil.
It was so odd. He didn’t bat an eye,
not one muscle moved in his
face, but the fear was there, almost palpable. People
have reacted
before when I revealed my profession, usually with revulsion.
But fear?
What was he afraid of?
The easy atmosphere between us froze.
He was unable to hide his
feelings.
“What’s wrong?” I asked at last. He
looked away.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve had some
unfortunate dealings with the
members of the medical profession.”
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of needles,”
I was trying to joke. “Or
better yet, you’re afraid of the dentist.”
He laughed, but there was no mirth
in his laugh.
“Right and right,” he said.
He relaxed somewhat as the evening
continued, but not entirely. He
ate nothing but drank a bottle of red wine. I noticed
that the alcohol
had no influence on him whatsoever. In the end I thanked
him for the
meal and we left the restaurant. As the car was speeding
towards my home
I was wondering if that would be the end of the most
expensive meal of
my life. He walked with me to my door and I thanked him
again for a
lovely evening.
“The pleasure was mine,” he said dutifully
and I decided that I
wanted my two hundred thousands’ worth.
I put my arms around his neck and
kissed him. His arms moved around
me instinctively and he responded to the kiss, cautiously
at first, but
soon the kiss became more passionate. His mouth was hot
and tasted of
the wine he had drunk.
“Don’t hold my profession against
me,” I whispered when we broke off
the kiss.
“I won’t,” he murmured, “unless you
use it against me.”
I didn’t understand what he meant
and I didn’t care.
We kissed again and our bodies pressed
against each other. I felt
the desire explode inside me so hard that it hurt. I
knew he wanted me
too. I turned in his arms, opened the door and dragged
him inside.
He hesitated for one second only.
“Your children?” he asked.
“Visiting their father.”
I had chosen the weekend carefully.
All the curiosity aside, I had
used it to rationalize my behavior. I had set out from
the start to
seduce him, and now I was succeeding.
He followed me to my bedroom.
I heard my own screams.
The excruciating slowness of his movements
was exchanged by swift,
frantic thrusts of passion. He had not hurt me but was
still afraid that
he might, the disparity of our sizes so apparent. I hate
that. Just
because I’m short doesn’t mean that I’m frail.
“I’ll crush you if I do,” he had whispered
when I tried to pull him
down, begging him to come close, wanting the nearness
of his whole body.
He wasn’t a big man, neither very tall nor heavy, but
compared to me he
must have felt like a giant.
He was holding my hands down, his
grip on my wrists relentless, his
body hunching over mine. I watched him. His face was
no longer serene
but it was still sad.
I screamed out my pleasure, and he
held me, motionless until I
stopped shaking, then resumed his movements again, very
slowly. I tried
to lock my arms and legs around him, enticing him, but
he still refused
to lower himself onto my body. Only his movements became
faster and
faster. His eyes were closed, his head thrown back, his
breathing
uneven, but he didn’t utter a sound. He let go of my
hands and gripped
my hips instead, lifting my body against his. His fingers
made painful
dents in my flesh and I whimpered, more for my own comfort
than to
complain. In that moment I was sure that he wouldn’t
notice if I
shouted. But he heard my protests and the pressure diminished
considerably. He held me close now, a supporting arm
under may back, my
weight apparently insignificant. We kissed and his touch
sent new waves
through me, and I screamed again.
I have never screamed before.
He got up when I was too tired to go
on. I looked at my alarm clock.
It was three a.m.
I wanted him to stay but he said that
he had to go and I remembered
the car outside my door, the driver and a guard sitting
in it, waiting
for almost five hours, and a wave of shame made me blush.
“I can imagine what they’ll say when
you come out!”
He smiled at me.
“They won’t say a thing,” he said.
“Not one word, at least not to
me.”
He sat on the edge of the bed when
he was dressed and hugged me.
“Thank you,” he whispered in my ear.
“Thank you,” I echoed.
The night was absolutely worth two
hundred thousand dollars, no
doubt about it. Then I thought that I probably would
not see him again
and my arms locked around him.
“Will you come back?” I asked and
regretted it immediately as I felt
him stiffen in my embrace.
He let go of me and looked into my
face.
“Do you want me to?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said simply.
“There is nothing I have to give but
this,” he said, his head
nodding towards the bed.
“It’s all that I want,” I answered,
hoping that I wasn’t lying.
“Then I’ll come back.” With that he
was gone.
I was tired and sore and I couldn’t
sleep.
The tales that Dr. Morris had heard,
well, they were absolutely
true. It was the best sex that I have ever had. A
two-hundred-thousand-dollar fuck!
Don’t fall in love with him! I said
to myself, or you’ll get hurt.
I knew that I could keep my heart
locked away, but I also knew that
my body would miss him forever once he was gone.
I made myself a promise: I’d never
ask him about anything, and I’d
never ask him for anything.
I woke up in a foul mood.
In the bright light of day, I realized
that I’d never see him again
and it hurt more than the moment Jerry had told me that
he wanted a
divorce.
Had I gone mad?!
I spend one night with a guy and I
go to pieces like that! I cried
and broke a few things. It made me feel a little better.
Then I dyed my
hair red and went back to bed in the middle of the day.
I’d survive this
too.
When I woke up again, it was mid-afternoon
and I went to the
hospital. Jimmy was scuttling around, his leg in plaster,
stretched in
front of him. It looked hilarious and we both laughed.
He would be
discharged in a few days.
I was back home at six, looking forward
to a dreary evening on my
own. I tried hard to stop thinking about last night,
but the only way to
achieve that would be to knock myself unconscious. So
I gave up,
allowing the images and the feelings to sweep over me.
It made me cry
again.
Shit! I said to myself. Find a new
husband and forget the damn
bastard!
I decided to go out somewhere, meet
people.
The phone rang as I was rummaging through
my wardrobe looking for a
dress I particularly liked.
“What?!” I roared.
There was a short silence and I knew it
wasn’t from the lab, nor one
of the kids in L.A. They are used to my shouting.
“It’s Julian Luna.”
My heart stopped beating for a few
seconds and then made up for it
with frantic fluttering.
He’ll give me a heart attack if nothing
else, I thought wryly.
“Oh, I’m sorry I shouted,” I said.
“I thought it was the lab.”
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he
said. “I was just thinking... You
do need to eat every evening, don’t you?”
What a crazy thing to say! It made
me laugh. Men!
“Look,” I said, “you don’t have to
feed me every time you want to
fuck me. Just get yourself over here or let me come to
you. I can pay
for my own meals.”
He was silent again. I’d shocked him.
“I hope, I haven’t shocked you?” I
said, and he laughed nervously.
“As a matter of fact, you have,” he
answered. “Is it all right if I
come at nine?”
“Sure. Can you leave your guards behind?
My neighbors might start
wondering.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,”
he laughed again, “but I’ll ask
them to be discrete.”
I spent the next two hours trying
very hard to occupy myself, but
everything I touched turned into a mess. I gave up in
the end, put on a
pair of bleached jeans and a T-shirt. I had spilled coffee
on my best
dress.
The car stopped outside at exactly
two minutes to nine. He didn’t
bring flowers or wine or anything that men usually bring
women when they
want sex. He must have figured out that I wasn’t one
who would accept
hypocrisy. Good! At least he wasn’t stupid.
The moment I closed the door, he picked
me up and carried me to the
bedroom.
No hi, no how have you been, no nice
to see you again.
It was just as well. I didn’t want
any niceties that would make me
believe that he was interested in me as a person. I was
a warm female
body that attracted his sexual desire, there was nothing
more to it.
And don’t you forget it! I told myself.
During the following weeks I lived
in a trance, savoring every
moment we were together. I didn’t neglect my kids nor
my work, but I was
with Julian several times every week and I was starting
to look gaunt. I
didn’t sleep enough, either because he was there, preventing
me from
sleeping for hours on end, or, when he wasn’t there,
I’d just lie in my
bed remembering every detail of our lovemaking and longing
for more.
I hoped that after some time my desire
would subside and I’d start
finding faults with him. But the only times we spent
together were in
bed, and I couldn’t find any flaws there.
There were some odd things though.
For one thing, he was never
tired. I’m a physician for God’s sake! I know human physiology
as any
M.D. does. No normal human male can go on making love
for hours on end
like he did. He seemed to be able to start over and over
again as many
times as he wanted. A physiological miracle, but who
was I to complain?
I’d enjoy myself until I’d have enough. I learnt quite
soon that if I
told him that I couldn’t take anymore, he’d finish within
minutes and
would not start again. I’m quite sure that it was an
act of will on his
part. I wanted to ask him if he ever became spent, but
reminded myself
of my own promise - don’t ask about anything!
I also noticed that he didn’t want
me to touch him. Oh, it was all
right when I caressed him or kissed him, he enjoyed that
very much. He’d
allow me to hold him, but was very careful to keep my
hands from his
chest or back, sometimes by holding on to my wrists.
It was very
strange, but I let him, and I kept my mouth shut.
Then one night, we were in the middle
of a violent encounter, me on
top and he wasn’t so cautious anymore. He had closed
his eyes and his
whole body was convulsing on the verge of an orgasm.
I lay down on his
chest, his arms enclosed me, pressing my body hard against
his. My cheek
was against the left side of his chest and I felt his
heart beat. There
was something odd. In the throes of my own passion, it
took me some time
to realize that his heartbeat was too slow. Somewhere
between fifty and
sixty beats per minute, quite normal for a healthy male
at rest, but for
one who was about to peak, totally wrong. It should be
at least doubled,
even more. Then he went off, like an automatic weapon,
the reflexive
spasms of his orgasm shooting his hips against me. He
held his breath -
which was normal - and his heart stopped beating entirely,
and that
wasn’t normal at all.
It scared me. I counted the shudders
of his release. Thirteen, if I
hadn’t missed something in the beginning. Point eight
seconds between
each contraction, that’s a little more than ten seconds:
add point four
or five for each twitch, that’s another five or six seconds.
I heard his
heart start beating again after another ten seconds.
So, it hadn’t
beaten for almost thirty seconds. Strange indeed. Still,
I kept my mouth
shut.
I understood now why he had been so
scared in the restaurant when I
told him that I was a doctor. He wasn’t afraid of needles
or dental
drills; he was afraid of being found out.
I knew with dreadful certainty that
the moment he suspected that I’d
noticed something, he would disappear from my life. So
I pretended that
I didn’t see anything and he became more and more careless.
Although we
never spent a whole night together, he sometimes slept
in my presence.
He’d stop breathing then; his heart would beat about
fifty times an
hour, sometimes less; his body temperature would fall
below that of the
room. It was frightening.
I might become a name in the annals
medicine if I could make a
scientific study of Julian Luna, but I’d rather keep
my lover than have
my name in some book about human freaks. I thought of
the Elephant Man
whose skeleton I’d seen in the library of the London
Hospital and I
wanted to tell Julian that his secret was safe with me,
but I didn’t
dare to let him know that I knew. I got this feeling
that there were two
different men inside him: One was desperately trying
to protect his
secrets, the other didn’t give a damn.
Sometimes I wished I weren’t a physician;
I wished that I couldn’t
know, had no education, weren’t aware at all of heart-rates,
body
temperature, breathing patterns; that I knew nothing
about human
physiology; that I could pretend that everything was
as it should be,
and that there was nothing strange about my lover.
I made a half-hearted search on the
Medline and came up with a few
papers on lethargy. I disregarded the inconsistencies
and repressed the
details that wouldn’t fit. It made it possible for me
to live with the
mystery.
We met two or three times every week.
He always came to my house
late in the evening, sometimes past midnight. He stopped
calling in
advance, knowing that I’d always be there. I gave him
a key, he could
come whenever he wanted, and when he did, I always welcomed
him.
We’d make love for hours and then
he’d leave. I had gotten used to
what he could do in bed, almost believing that it was
natural, but every
now and then, the physician in me would awaken and I
would start
wondering about him.
One night he came very late and stayed
with me almost until dawn.
Then, after he left, I retrieved some of the fluid he
had left inside me
and put it in a test tube.
I took the test-tube to my work.
One look in the microscope, and I
knew why he never bothered with
protection. There were no sperm in his semen, none at
all. Next, I ran
some other tests but there was nothing else interesting.
The computer
found two matches. There was the rape of Caitlin Byrne,
his dead
fiancée. Another was the battered police officer,
Frank Kohanek.
Apparently, Julian Luna’s blood had been found on him
after the assault,
but my lover had never been connected with that crime.
I wondered why.
A few days later I went to see Frank
Kohanek.
He stared at my evidence and his face
turned red in embarrassment.
“I got into a fight with him a couple
of years ago,” he said. “He
beat the hell out of me, but I managed to draw some blood
from him too.
That’s all there was to it.”
“You didn’t say that it was him. Why?”
I asked.
“I started the fight,” he said, “and
I didn’t want to tell anybody
that I have been squashed by... Julian Luna.”
“What did you fight about?”
“A woman, what else!” he answered,
making me laugh.
”What happened afterwards? Did you
make up?” I went on.
“As matter of fact, we did,” he said.
“Julian is okay. It’s not his
fault that women fall like skittles for him,” he added
and then frowned.
“He loved Caitlin, you know, he really did. They were
afraid that he
wouldn’t survive her death. But somehow he did,” he continued.
“He’s
coming back to life, I’ve been told.”
“You know him well?” I prodded on.
“I know him.” Frank answered.
“Do me a favor,” I said. “Don’t tell
him I asked about this, okay? I
didn’t mean to embarrass you or him.”
“Sure.” Frank Kohanek nodded agreement.
Apparently, the policeman kept his
promise because Julian didn’t
disappear from my life, and I renewed my promise to myself
to stop being
nosy.
However, we talked. In contrast to
Julian, I wasn’t inexhaustible. I
needed rest now and then.
“Give me a break,” I’d say. “I need
to get my heart-rate and my
breath in order,” and he would let me rest. We talked
then, or mostly, I
did. About everyday things: my work, films I’ve seen,
books I’ve read;
sometimes I even broke my own taboo and talked about
the kids.
Julian never volunteered any information about himself,
and I never
asked. He didn’t ask me about my life, but he was curious
about my work.
At first it made me wary. I have a suspicious mind and
I thought he
wanted drugs. But soon I realized that he knew next to
nothing about
modern medicine and had no interest in that sort of chemistry.
He wanted
pure science and I was able to provide it. I told him
about the inner
workings of a living cell and it fascinated him. He was
able to grasp
the most intricate secrets of biochemistry and genetics.
I was
impressed.
I watched him as he sat in bed, hunched
over my neurology bible,
trying to understand the maze of neurological pathways,
repeating to
himself the names of different signal substances and
their effects. He
wanted to learn all he could about human physiology,
and I knew why. But
I pretended that he was one of my students and did my
best to answer any
question he posed.
We talked about the brain and then
about emotions. In the end we
talked about love. I tried to joke about it, blaming
the hormones for
the havoc of emotions that love caused. I expected him
to say something
scornful about love.
“It’s a dreadful disease,” he said
quite seriously, making me shut
up. I just stared at him.
“What do you mean?” I asked after
a moment.
There was a painful expression on
his face.
“Last time it happened to me, it proved
fatal.” His voice was
unsteady.
“You... seem rather alive.” I was
bewildered. He looked away.
“It killed Caitlin,” his voice broke,
“and I almost died.”
I touched his face - a gesture of
comfort - but he turned away.
“Yes,” I agreed meekly. “It does sound
like a fatal case.”
The End