I swallowed and tried to chase my nervousness away. “So, you own this place, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Cool.”
Whether or not he also thought it was cool, he made no indication.
I forced a smile. “Look, I have tons of questions for you about this vampire thing.”
“So, at last you believe that you’re no longer dreaming?”
I looked away and concentrated on smoothing out a wrinkle on the red tablecloth. “To tell you the truth, I did think it was all a dream. I was positive of it. At least until something weird happened today.”
“What happened?”
I was embarrassed, but anxious to move onto my real questions, so I launched into a quick retelling of the finger-sucking incident. If he found it amusing, he didn’t give any sign.
“It is to be expected,” he said when I was finished. “Your body craves blood now. You
were simply acting on instinct.”
“It’s an instinct I don’t want. How do I stop it?” That comment almost earned me a smile. Almost.
“You cannot stop it.”
Barry stopped at our table with two drinks on a tray. He placed a martini glass full of dark red liquid in front of Thierry. “Your usual, master. And one newbie special.”
He plunked another glass of Gatorade-for-vamps in front of me. Slightly pink water. I gritted my teeth and glanced at Thierry.
“Do I have to?”
“No.”
I looked back down at the diluted blood. “But if I don’t, I’ll get the headache from hell again, right?”
He paused before answering. “That is correct.”
“Well, then, down the hatch.” I gulped a bit of the drink. Damn if it didn’t taste fantastic. I was so grossing myself out, but hey, at least it beat sucking on fingers.
After a moment I placed the empty glass back down on the table and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
“Good?” Thierry asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t want to drink blood.”
“Didn’t look like you had much of a problem just now.”
I glared at him. “You do what you have to do.”
“Agreed.” His lips twitched, almost smiling.
Nice to know he was finding me amusing.
“So, I’m really a vampire?” I said. “For real?”
“Yes.”
“But I still have a reflection.” I ran my tongue along my teeth. “And I don’t have any fangs.”
He shook his head. “Of course not. You are still young—barely a fledgling. These things will take time to develop.”
I frowned. “So, if this is all actually happening to me, that means everything last night was real, too. Gordon really got killed.”
“I’m afraid so. I’m sorry for your loss.”
My bottom lip trembled a bit at the memory. “He was a jerk. But he didn’t deserve to die.” I touched my neck; the bite had faded to nearly nothing. “Why did he bite me?”
“He shouldn’t have. Not if he didn’t discuss it with you first.”
“If he’d discussed it with me, I would have said no. For that matter, I would have said no to anything else he had in mind last night, too. Definitely not a love match.” I felt a shiver go down my spine at the memory of what happened. “But that still shouldn’t have happened to him. Poor Gordon.”
“The hunters are very dangerous.”
I tensed. “Who are these hunter guys, anyhow? Do they think they’re a bunch of Buffy the Vampire Slayers? What gives them the right to go around killing people?”
He brought his drink to his lips and took a sip before answering me. “The hunters think they are doing a service to the world by ridding it of a perceived evil.” He smiled then, a genuine smile, but not a pleasant one. “They will never be convinced we are unworthy of their attentions. That we are not the monsters they think we are.”
“How do we stop them?”
He met my gaze again, and I was suddenly floored by how intense it was, especially now, talking about the hunters.
“We don’t. We simply avoid them as best we can during the hunting season.”
“Hunting season?”
“Yes, the main group of hunters migrate to different parts of the world where vampires have formed communities. Like here in Toronto. There will always be stragglers that stay behind, but the main group moves every few months to another location. Right now it is our turn, and we must be even more careful than normal.”
“But there has to be a way of talking to them, telling them that what they’re doing is wrong—”
“No,” he interrupted me. “There isn’t. All we can do is stay away from them and not be careless.”
“Or they’ll stab us in the heart with their wooden stakes. And we’ll turn into a big puddle of goo, just like Gordon?”
Thierry blinked at me. “Puddle of goo?”
“When the hunters killed Gordon, he disintegrated into a big puddle of goo. I always thought vampires turned into dust, but I guess that’s just on TV. Pretty gross, though.”