“You and Xavier might be the only French aristocrats I know who don’t entirely support the monarchy,” Thomas said.
“Speaking of Xavier, why on earth did you come alone?” As she asked, her demeanor changed markedly. She backed away with a spark of recognition. Catherine looked around, her eyes growing wider, but she was completely silent. “What are you?” she whispered, eyes wide. “What do you want from us?”
“Catherine, I’ll never harm you.” Thomas tried to calm her. How had she known? Did Marcel reveal him? Was it something he had said or done? His mind raced with possibilities. And would she tell Xavier? “I would never hurt you. Whatever it is that you think you see, you probably don’t understand. You can’t. Let me explain.”
“What are you?” She backed farther away. “I think I know.” She clutched the balcony railing and tensed. “I just saw it, after all these nights with you. I never noticed. But you’re not alive. And you’re pale. Your heart—it doesn’t beat?”
Thomas bowed his head. He had no choice but to confess.
“Yes. You’re correct. Most would call me a vampire.”
Catherine gasped and she touched her throat reflexively.
“Please listen to me. I’ll never hurt you. I’ve meant everything you ever heard me say.”
“You won’t hurt me?” Her shoulders sagged a bit, though she still clung to the stone railing.
“Never.” He walked closer and she stayed where she was.
“Oh my God. It’s Xavier,” she said in hushed tones. “You want to take Xavier, don’t you? Why him? Why—”
“No, you don’t understand. Let me explain, please. Like you, I’d never hurt Xavier. My relationship with him has nothing to do with murder or a sinister plot.”
“Then what? Why are you here?”
“I’m sure that there are more delicate ways to describe this, but given your discovery, I’ll be blunt. I don’t mean to offend you.”
The more Catherine composed herself, the more comfortable Thomas became. Her fear endangered him, but if he could get her to see that he was not a demon, then she might accept his inhumanity. “I love him. I desperately love your brother. I came to you this evening because of that.” Catherine coolly looked at him. Thomas had to convince her of this. “Catherine, listen. I love him, with every ounce of my soul, with a passion I can’t hope to describe. I love him. I’d risk a thousand deaths for him. I’d relinquish immortality to lie with him for even one night.”
“I believe you,” Catherine finally said. “I’m not sure what to think of this, but you seem so good. Can that be? I can cope with the fact that you love my brother. I knew from the first time I saw you together. This may be indiscreet for a lady, but since you’ve revealed so much I feel it’s necessary. When I saw you with Xavier, I wished you both all of the happiness in the world. I wanted Xavier to flee the church forever and go with you. He deserves it. I thought this gave him a chance to love himself and be free.
“When Xavier was young, much too young to know better, he used to tell me about his secret dreams. He talked of spending his life with a man. He even described a marriage and a man to protect him. As he grew up, he stopped talking about it, as if the dream had disappeared. Somehow I knew, though, that it haunted him. I think he entered the priesthood to escape it. I never mentioned it to him because I was afraid to embarrass him or, worse, alienate him. So when I saw you together, I thought maybe that he could finally realize his dream.”
Thomas sensed that she relaxed and had begun to trust him again.
“I suppose, thus, that I’m sanctioning your love, not that it’s mine to sanction. But before we continue, I need to know more. What are you? ‘Vampire’ sounds so trite. Tell me what you are.”
5 June 1789 Immediately after
FASCINATED. NOTHING ELSE described Catherine at this moment. She knew that night, the minute she saw Thomas come to the house alone, that he had come to discuss Xavier, but at some point in their conversation she looked deeply into him and recognized something inhuman, something she had sensed before but never fully understood.
It terrified her, perhaps ridiculously so, and she had almost jumped over the ledge to escape. Yet she now somehow trusted his pleas for understanding. He had doted on Xavier for too long to suddenly hurt him, and his plea for her help melted her fear.
Her conflicted mind raced. A student of the Enlightenment, she seldom considered the “supernatural,” but such made sense. Unexplained things existed that the church and society wrongly labeled as evil. Why should she instantly condemn something before she studied it for herself? Still, a feeling of apprehension about the unknown persisted in her mind.
”So,” she said, “is it accurate to call you a vampire? May I ask you some questions?”
“Ask anything,” Thomas said.
“What’s the answer, then?”
“I suppose it’s yes. I’m a vampire. I live beyond death. I can’t explain the reasoning but it’s true. And yes, I subsist on human blood. That’s the brutal truth that I think you want to hear.”
“But you won’t hurt me? You won’t hurt Xavier?” She stared at him. “If you need blood, what stops you from hurting us?”
“You confuse legend with reality. Legend portrays all vampires as sinister beings who lurk in shadows, killing innocent Christians because we’re condemned by God for drinking some vile blood. I don’t fit that category, nor does my maker. I kill to sustain myself. But I’m not a barbarian. It isn’t arbitrary. I kill degenerates, humans who kill others, people who beat their wives and molest children. I hunt those whom the world no longer needs, those who make humanity the wretched lot that it’s become. I don’t see humans as anything other than mere animals. All this talk of reason and better intellect only masks the barbarity, the judgments, the way people outcast one another, kill each other because of money and territory. I was taught from the beginning to feed off those who threaten innocence and take their wrath out on others. Not all vampires hold to such scruples, but I do.”
Catherine could not stifle a giggle, partially because he had humored her and partially to relieve the tension she still felt.
“Something funny?” he asked.
“It’s just so ironic. I never believed that vampires existed. It seemed like nonsense. When you first told me, I acted like those silly religious zealots, assuming that you came from hell to hurt me. I’m laughing at my own stupidity.” Her anxiety diminished. She forgot Xavier and instead wanted to focus on Thomas. She laughed more, too, which made Thomas grin. She forced herself to become a rational intellect, probing for facts and answers before forming her final judgment. Though a lingering fear clung to the back of her mind, she willed herself to move forward.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Can you die?”
“Of course.”
“How?”
“I’m afraid I don’t tell many people such information. It might endanger me, no?”
“What about stakes? And cutting your head off? Can you tell me that?”
Thomas laughed. “No, stakes can’t harm me. We have a remarkable ability to heal. Something may temporarily stun us, but vampires quickly heal to their former strength, so a stake becomes a minor annoyance. And chopping off my head is not something I wish to contemplate. It’d take more energy to heal, and I’m not completely sure how it would work, but our body would heal this, too. The head and body would come together and heal, unless, of course, someone burned half. Then I’d hope that everything dies. I can’t imagine an immortal head sitting on a table with no body, just a trapped mind.”
“What about garlic?”
“It gives me bad breath.”
“Crucifixes? Holy Water? Religious relics?” she asked.
“Catherine, did you forget? Who have I spent the last month with? Where do I go every night?”
That was funnier than anything. She walked to a bench and sat down, holding her side from laughter. She had started to enjoy the moment, further repressing her doubt. Why had she even asked some of those questions? He had walked everywhere with Xavier, and her brother always wore his cross. But she stopped herself before she again mixed logic and rational thought with traditional superstitions. She turned bright red. Thankfully, Thomas laughed, too.
“If it weren’t Xavier, I’d laugh even harder that you picked a priest, of all people.”
“I suppose it’s ironic, but I think religion trifling. It brainwashes the masses and makes them pawns to the existing powers.”
“Oh, I agree. But you don’t think such awful things of Xavier, do you?”
“No, he defies the norms.”
“Are you a bat?” She had become serious again, needing to know if he could change to animal form because that would frighten her anew.
This time Thomas laughed loudly. “No. I can’t change into any animals. Not a bat, not a wolf, nothing so exciting and dark.”
“Your muscles are quite apparent,” Catherine said.
“This body is a blessing of the death as well. Once dead, the body is chiseled into its finest form, whether female or male. Skin blemishes also disappear, though I still have a scar I suffered in battle on my stomach. My hair is this length forever.”
“What if you cut it?”
“It grows back through the day.”
“Are you a savage?” Catherine asked but instantly regretted it. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I’ve heard much worse. Since you mentioned it, I do have Indian blood.”
“I should have known! What about sex?”
Thomas reddened this time. “Is nothing sacred to you?”
“No.”
“Well, then, yes. I’m fully capable of sexual interactions and crave them just as the living do.”
She giggled again. Thomas remained the man she originally met: endearing, protective, charming, and funny. Yet his vampirism still made her nervous.
“I think I’m ready now,” she said.
“Are you sure?” Thomas asked.
“Yes. Tell me. About the blood.”
“I drink it to nourish myself. I do need it, though not every night. I can go many nights without drinking. I was completely honest in telling you about the people I hunt. As the blood passes through my mouth I see the history of that person in my mind. I see everything they ever did.”
“Yet you’re so human.”
“Completely. After all, I was human once. And I still have every emotion that plagued me before death. My personality hasn’t changed. As I said, there are vampires who kill indiscriminately and even revel in frightening innocent people. They were that way in life. I may learn more, I may subtly change over time, but otherwise I’m the same man that I was before the transformation with the same longings, the same dreams, and the same opinions.”
“So you were always jaded?”
“Does an Indian in the Americas have any other choice?”
“I didn’t think about it that way. Is that why you despise Catholicism?”
“No, not at all. There’s a lot about my mother’s native religion that bothers me, too. I don’t have any faith in a higher being or religion. I’m not sure how all of this was put together—I have no doubt that there are unseen forces. But to believe that we have to worship some omnipotent god is ludicrous. I think that people should please themselves, indulge in passions, especially passions of the heart, without guilt.”
“I suppose that brings us to Xavier,” Catherine said. “Is that what you want? A passion of the heart? Is Xavier a passing interest or something more?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t want you to hurt him.”
“I’d do anything to avoid that. I want a mate for all eternity. Since I was a child, since I watched my parents’ love, I’ve sought the same for myself. Of course, the nature of my attraction makes it more difficult, as does my physiology now. But I know that such couples exist. I’ve heard of vampire couples that have been together for hundreds of years. That’s what I want.”
Catherine was unsure how to respond. She liked Thomas, but could she relinquish Xavier to him? Then again, was it her choice?
5 June 1789 Immediately after
AS THOMAS AND Catherine continued to talk, her original, visible fear dissipated and she relaxed, returning to the comfortable demeanor she had worn every other time around Thomas. Whether she had completely recovered or not, she put on an appearance of ease.
“I want to stress that I have never lied about my feelings for Xavier,” Thomas said, enunciating carefully. “I don’t want to harm him, physically or otherwise.”
“I believe you. I hesitate only because it’s Xavier. I raised him. He’s like my son. We weren’t that far apart in age, but far enough that I taught him a lot. He was always innocent, as pure as he is now.” Then Catherine laughed. “I’m sorry, but the irony here is hilarious. You, a vampire, something reviled as a demon—you, who doesn’t believe in religion, fell in love with a priest. And not just any priest, not one of the thousands who entered the church for power. No, you picked one of the very few who honestly believes in what he does. Thankfully for you, he doesn’t always blindly follow the dictates of the church. That’s your only chance.”
“That’s why I came to you. I want to tell him the truth but he can’t even acknowledge his attractions. I can feel his passion. I know that he feels the same but won’t even kiss me. I should tell him about myself, but I’m afraid that he’d run away. If he can’t accept a natural longing, how will he look at me?”
Catherine frowned. “I never imagined having such an open conversation about men loving men. I vowed a long time ago not to judge other people because I suffer from society’s mores, too. I wanted Xavier to run off with you, but I know that very thought scares him to death because he’d worry about defying the church and the people he looks after. I wondered if there were any way for him to overcome his intense desire to serve humanity so that he could allow himself his own passion. It seemed impossible. And that’s without your being a vampire.”
“Most vampires don’t hold religious and moral convictions against sodomy, so they hardly care what other vampires do when mating. There are a few pockets of zealot vampires, a strange lot and a small one, but one that exists and maintains strict Christian beliefs. I’m not sure if they’re Catholic or Protestant, but they’ve been known to condemn vampire sexuality. They claim to defend the church from sin, but I’ve never encountered them. Being a vampire who loves men hasn’t been difficult in that respect.