Naked Came the Vampire (Hypernaturals 1)

Tagalong

The place Helen knew about is a bar owned by a Vampire friend of hers. It featured a small private dining area in the back. I guess if you are Vampire, you build private areas into everything you own.

Vampires and bars. I am starting to see a theme develop. Given the blowout Jessica and I enjoyed on our first night together, I find that I fit right into my new world in some ways. I could certainly keep up in the drinking beer department. Even better is that now it does not show.

We ordered some pub grub and were left alone to talk. Jessica and Helen were catching up, talking about people they both know but that I, of course, do not. I sipped my beer and took the opportunity to study Helen. She is the second Vampire I have knowingly met. God knows how many I may have come across over the course of my life and never known it. Not like they carried a sign or have brands like a sex cult. Come to think on it, a brand would not stay on a Vampire for very long.

It is interesting to see how Helen looks at Jessica. Maria. Whatever. I know that look. I look at her the same way. Helen loves her, and with the same romantic yearning that I do. Understandable.

Jessica had laid out the history of her lover, friend, and Vampire creator as we drove from New Mexico to Boulder, when we were not fighting about suits. The seductress Helen was born in England not too long after Columbus sailed to the Caribbean Islands. It is very jarring to think that Helen's age is over half a millennia. It does not show in her looks or her manner. Not usually. It is hard to imagine the sexually enthusiastic Jessica with a woman because she seems to enjoy sex with men so much. Maybe she is just enthusiastic? I watched Helen and Jessica neck, and Jessica copped a feel. So did Helen.

Helen has years of experience hiding her age. Blending in with how a 25-year-old would act in the current time. When Helen offered to pay Jessica so she could kill me, the veneer of youth disappeared and there was a much older person talking.

I listened to the conversation and watched how Helen looked and acted. I felt like her offer to kill me is less about me personally than it is Helen wanting to save her friend and love the trouble raising her own pet male Vampire. I have no doubt if I hurt her Maria / my Jessica that the deceptively small framed and young looking Helen would be very cross with me.

Ok. Being honest: She would kill me dead. I think she would do it quickly. Helen did not seem like a sadist. She did not look big and scary, but I am sure she can erase me in no time flat. In five hundred plus years you learn a few things, not even counting the disparity in male and female Vampire physical strength.

I looked over at Jessica, far more relaxed after the counsel verdict. Happy and confident, like when I first met her. Laughing easily. Sparkling eyes. I am happy to hear that she cared about me more than she knew. That I am her lover. That she did not want to lose me. That she is willing to stake her life and literal fortune on me being good. That is all wonderful. Less positive is that in some weird Vampire way, it seems I now belong to her. There are worse people to belong to but the idea of belonging to anyone is not sitting well. There is also that statement that if I needed killing, it is her responsibility, not Helen's. 'Sorry dear. You left the toilet seat up again. Going to have to drown you now.' I have always lived my life according to my own lights. I have never belonged to anyone, and I do not think I will be good at that.

Jessica is not an arbitrary person. That does not matter: She can be if she wants to be, and no one on the Council will say anything about it. Killing me has no blowback. The laws of man do not apply. Vampires even have the Cleanup Crew for all of life's little messes, like dead bodies.

I get the impression I am chattel to Helen. Maybe not consciously, but it is there nonetheless. Like a person owning a favorite horse rather than slavery kind of ownership but it is still ownership. I might have gotten that idea from when Helen told Jessica and I that I am hers. The way she said it. It smacked of the way someone says "I found your dog peeing on the carpet: Take care of it!"