“As long as you’re back before dark, sure. After that, no, don’t leave me.” His voice dropped. “Please?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll stay here till you change back.”
He stepped in and shut the door. I locked it with the key, slid the deadbolt, and put on the safety chain. Despite his permission, I wondered if I should leave. After double-checking everything that could possibly start a fire, I decided that I could. He had everything he needed.
I ended up leaving the drawing session early. Since I had to stay in the flat for a couple of days, I needed to stockpile more élan. I went to the mall, which at the dinner hour was half-empty. I only managed to steal a few drips and drabs from a gaggle of teen-age girls who suddenly stopped right in front of me to squeal at some teen boys they knew. I might have gone elsewhere to hunt, but I had to keep track of time.
I returned to the house just at sunset, when there was plenty of twilight left in the sky. I drove into the garage, but before I shut the door I walked back outside and looked to the east. The full moon hung over the eastern hills like a crown of silver light. When I turned to the west, I could see a few bright stars above the sun’s last glow. Beautiful, calm, peaceful—the last time I’d ever use those words to describe the full moon night.
As soon as I got upstairs, I heard the bjarki moaning, a desperate little sound, moaning and snuffling at the door of the master suite. I walked a few steps into the hallway. The bjarki heard my footsteps and moaned even louder, begging, heart-broken. He wanted to run, he longed for the forest, he ached to run free—I felt that I could hear his thoughts through those animal sounds. He threw himself against the door so hard that the safety chain rattled.
“No,” I said. “You can’t come out. You don’t dare come out. That’s why I’m here, to keep you in. Remember?”
Silence—for a minute or two. He threw himself against the door again, then growled. He chuffed, a weird breathy sound, then roared and grumbled.
“No! You have to stay in there, Tor! Eat some of the fish. You’ll feel better with something to gnaw.”
The silence lasted for maybe twenty minutes that time. I’d just heated myself some leftovers in the microwave when I heard him first growl, then roar, a throaty, breathy sound, different from a lion’s roar though just as loud. No wonder he needed to own the entire building. Downstairs neighbors would have meant big trouble. I picked up a sketchbook and started a page for questions to ask Tor once he was himself again. First question: does it make you feel better or worse if I stand outside the door and talk to you?
The growling and roaring continued at intervals all night long. Even though my room was on the other side of the flat, I could hear him banging on the door. I could only hope that he wasn’t strong enough to knock it down, locks or no locks. He’d stay quiet for maybe half an hour, long enough for me to fall asleep. He’d start in again, and I’d wake up. Around dawn I gave up. I staggered out of bed and went into the kitchen to brew some strong coffee.
As I watched it drip into the carafe, I realized the truth of my situation. The exact same ordeal would recur every month. I was going to earn every penny of my salary—if I could even keep the job. For those of us afflicted with vampirism, exhaustion is dangerous. We can’t regenerate our vital forces just by catching up on a few hours’ sleep. My legs ached from hip to ankle. My hands hurt every time I picked up an object. Cold sweat trickled down my back.
I nearly cried. For the first time in my life I had comfort, support, everything I needed, and I might have to throw it all away because the job could kill me. I’d promised him I’d stay for the full three nights of his change. The agony I heard in his raw animal sounds made me determined to keep that promise, too, which meant I couldn’t even go out and try to steal energy from the healthy. That morning I found myself hating healthy people, the kind of deep toxic hatred that springs from envy. It would poison me, I knew, if I let it, even though it would make what I needed to do easier.
Once the moon started to wane and I could leave the flat, I’d have to turn into a dedicated hunter, go around looking for crowds and innocent victims, taking a slurp here, a smidgen there, stealing mouthfuls of other people’s lives in a desperate attempt to replace what I’d lost. If I hated them, I could steal without the ache in my conscience—if I even had enough energy left to go hunting. Since I’d never been so close to meltdown before, I had no way of knowing if I would or not.
Maybe it would be better, I figured, to let the disease take its course, to let myself run down and die like a watch that never will keep the right time. Just as I had that thought, Tor began to growl and moan. I could hear him throwing himself against the door of his lair.
The day got even worse when I happened to look at the headboard of my bed and see that the carved moon had become full. I wandered over and checked the writing desk. More changes: the green lion had finished eating the sun and turned into a red lion. He looked sick, too, and all the butterflies hovered closer as if they were waiting to attack his corpse. The psychic atmosphere, as Tor had called it, in the building was as sick as I was. I raised the lid and saw that the zodiacal sun had disappeared. In its place was a bear’s head in profile. Its nose pointed to the sign of Leo.
The next day was different though no better. I did get enough sleep, because the bjarki fell completely silent. When I woke, I was no longer sweating, though my legs ached so badly that I risked taking a couple of ibuprofen. I had no idea if painkillers would make my élan shortage worse or better. They did ease the ache. Once I realized, however, that Tor had been quiet for hours, I began to worry that he was dead or seriously ill. I spent a lot of time sitting outside the door of his lair and listening for the sound of him moving around, or snoring, or even just plain breathing.
I heard nothing until the moon rose again, an hour or so after sunset. The bjarki began to roar and growl, maybe in greeting, maybe in pain—I could only hope it was the former. To get away from the sound, I limped outside and looked at the rising moon. Lop-sided, for sure, no longer perfectly full. One more night, I told myself. Just one more night. When I opened the door to go back in, pain stabbed through my fingers.
I returned to the upstairs flat and walked down the hall to listen at the door. The howling had stopped. I heard claws clicking as the bjarki paced back and forth. Now and then he whimpered or chuffed. I went back to the living room and flopped down on the leather couch. Tired, so tired—I held out my hands and saw that my knuckles were beginning to redden and swell. My vital forces had started their fall toward the danger point. My father had warned me what to expect, what to watch out for.
Did I really want to die? No. Death terrified me, that long night with no sunrise. I loved being alive, loved making art, seeing art, going for long walks, being with my friends, hearing music. But did I want to stay a predator, roaming around hungry, always on the look-out for someone I could tap for a little bit of that precious élan vital? What if I succumbed one day and took so much life force that I left someone crippled, half-alive, even dead? The thought made me tremble and sweat in terror. No, never, not that!
I could think of no solution, none. I staggered into the bedroom and lay down for a nap. The bjarki began to roar and growl. I got up and turned on the floor lamp, just because I no longer wanted to lie in the dark. I was afraid to look at the writing desk. Eventually the bjarki quieted. I took off my shoes and bra and lay down, still dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, just in case something awful happened and I had to spring into action. After a lot of tossing and turning, I fell asleep.
I woke late the next morning to a silent flat. I got up and hurried out to the living room. I could hear a strange whispery sound, a slight humming overhead. Hell! I thought. What’s happening now? When I realized I was hearing water in the pipes, I started to laugh. Tor had to be taking a shower, and that meant the bjarki had changed back. I fished the keys to the lair out of my backpack.
I ran down the hall to his door and took off the safety ch
ain, then hesitated. Possibly the bjarki could use a paw to turn on the water in order to fool me. The sound of the plumbing stopped. I heard a different sound, a human voice singing bits and pieces of songs, opera arias maybe, some kind of classical music, in a strong tenor.
“Tor?” I called out.
“I’m back. You can open up.”
His voice sounded vibrant, more forceful than I’d ever heard it. I figured he felt relieved at having the change over for another month. My red and swollen hands struggled with the key, but I finally unlocked the door, opened it, and looked in—he was wearing only a pair of jeans and holding a T-shirt in one hand. The room smelled like wet fur and fish scraps.
“God, the fug!” I said. “You could open a window.”
“Good idea.” He grinned at me and tossed the T-shirt onto one of the chairs.
I watched him stride to the window. His muscled back glistened with damp from the shower. I realized that I was trembling, not from the sight, nice though it was, but from the feel of life force in the air. Energy poured out of him and swirled around the room. I took a few steps in before I even realized that I’d moved. Tor flung up the window and stood for a moment breathing in the fresh air. As it flowed inside, it carried a waft of his excess élan right to me. I breathed deep, soaked it up, walked in a little farther, felt it pour over me. I gasped and pulled it into my aching body and soul.
Tor turned around. I loved the way he looked at me, desire as pure as the life force swirling around us both.
“Maya,” he said, “you’d better leave the room. I uh—”
I grabbed the hem of my shirt, pulled it over my head and off. My fingers no longer hurt. He stared wide-eyed at my breasts. I felt my nipples respond.
“You what?” I dropped the shirt onto the floor and began to unzip my shorts.
He strode over, caught me by the shoulders, and kissed me open-mouthed. The feel of his élan, life flowing, life restoring—I soaked it in. I’d never taken so much and so freely from anyone, but he was stripping off all the extra energy he’d gathered to make the shape-change. He was throwing away what I needed to live. I sopped it up, reveled in it, and wanted more.
“Let’s go to your room.” His voice shook. “There’s animal hair all over the bed in this one.”
“I don’t care.” I let the shorts drop to the floor. “I don’t want to waste any—oh wait, I mean.”
Judging by the way he kissed me, I doubt if he even noticed my slip-up. I stepped free of my shorts, then reached down to unzip his jeans. They slid down as he walked me backward to the bed. With one hand he pulled off the blanket to expose clean sheets. We fell on the bed together, rolled over each other, clasped in each other’s arms. With every kiss he gave me, every caress, he shed the excess life force.
I sobbed in his arms with excitement. Ecstasy overwhelmed me from the feast, the abundance of his cast-off élan, more than I’d ever dared to take, more than I could even absorb. Like waves the raw pleasures of feeding flowed over me.
The orgasm was just a bonus.
He never cried out, but I felt his climax. He rested for a moment, then rolled off to lie on his side next to me. With his free arm he pulled me close. I cuddled up to him and listened to his heart pounding until at last it slowed into a normal rhythm. He kissed me on the forehead and smiled at me.
“I hope you realize what this means,” he said.
“Umm? What?”
“You’ve just become my mate. I hope you don’t have another boyfriend somewhere.”
“No,” I said. “Even if I did, I’d call him right now and tell him goodbye.”
“Good. That way I wouldn’t have to kill him.”
I had the distinct feeling that he meant it. I raised up on one elbow and looked at his face. His expression: perfectly calm, perfectly pleasant, perfectly sincere.
“You’re kidding, aren’t you?” I said. “About killing someone, I mean.”
“No.” He kept the straight face. “Assuming, of course, that he was another bear like me. We’d have to fight over you, then, in the autumn before we hibernate.”
“Oh good grief! You had me going for a minute there.”
Finally he grinned at me. I lay down again.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I am so not poly. Whether it’s with apes or bears.”
“Good. Neither am I. I just thought we should get that clear right at the beginning.”
“But look, you must have had other girlfriends. You sure know what you’re doing in bed.”
He laughed at that. “Yes, but that was before I was bitten. That’s changed everything. Just never leave me. Okay?”
He kissed me before I could answer. He stroked my stomach, then slid his hand between my legs, and I forgot about being rational.
Later that day, after we’d gotten up, I did put some hard thought into the situation. I doubted that I’d ever want to leave him. The élan vital I’d received from him more than made up for what I’d lost in the three days of the bjarki’s dominance. Besides, he’d given me his promise, taken on the runes, that he’d never again force anything upon me.
Or was that exactly what he’d said? He might only have meant that he’d take me back to my apartment when I asked him to. I couldn’t quite remember his words. I knew from all those fairy tales that when a sorcerer promised you something, you needed to be sure you understood precisely what he meant.
When he started dinner in the kitchen, I sat down at the breakfast bar to watch. He uncorked a bottle of red wine and poured us each a glassful.
“Cabernet,” he said. “Trite, I guess, but I like it.”
I took a sip of mine. “It’s good, but I can’t really tell one red wine from another.”
“Half the time I can’t either.” He saluted me with his glass. “Something I wanted to ask you. Can we sleep in the same bed from now on?”
“Sure. I’d like that.”
“Okay, then I’d better change the bedding. I’ve got some old sheets and blankets I use for the bjarki nights.”
Which jogged my memory about something I’d noticed when I was too distracted to follow it up. “You know, you said that there was hair on the blankets. I never saw any.”
He put down his glass and stared at me.
“Are you sure it’s there?” I went on.
“Well, I—hold on. Let me go look.”
I set my wine down and followed him into the bedroom. He turned on the bright overhead light, then picked up the blankets from the floor. No hair scattered, and on the pale yellow blanket, we would have seen it. He knelt on one knee and swept the side of his hand across the carpet—no hair clung.
“I don’t understand,” Tor said. “This morning I saw it. Lots of it. Usually I vacuum it up right away.” He gave me a sultry grin. “Something made me forget this time.”
I grinned in return. “It can’t be real hair,” I said. “It must just melt away.”
“That could be. I’ve got one book that takes shape-changing seriously. It talks about emanations of force-lines.” He stood up, frowning in concentration. “That’s a terrible translation of the German. Sorry. Maybe those lines are what I see as hair. The author thinks that shape-changing’s just a matter of illusions, anyway. Which I doubt.”
“I really don’t understand that.”
“Neither do I.” He shrugged and smiled. “But when I look in the mirror on bjarki nights, I see a bear. With a pelt. A bearskin. I don’t see me.”
Reflexively I glanced at the battered door, striped with gouges. “You couldn’t do that with your fingers,” I said.
“No. Not and have any nails left. He chewed up the closet door a couple of months ago, too. That’s why I got this tattoo.” He pulled up his T-shirt and turned around to let me see his back.
Just below the waistband of his jeans I saw a cluster of runes, six arrows, three pointing up, three down, bundled into a shape like a snowflake. The design was small, maybe the size of a quarter, which explained why I hadn
’t noticed it that afternoon. He let the shirt fall and turned to face me.
“Tyr’s mark,” he said. “The god who bound the mouth of Fenrir, Odin’s wolf, when it went on a rampage. That’s his rune, Tiwaz. It helps me control the bjarki.”
“That must have been dangerous, binding a wolf’s mouth.”
“Oh yes. He lost a hand doing it. The gods aren’t invincible, you know.” He paused for a sigh. “Not even the gods always win.”
He turned out the overhead light. As we left the bedroom, he bumped into my shoulder. I could feel traces of the excess élan wisping around him like the scent of perfume.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m just kind of dazed, thinking about the hair and all of that.”
“It’s okay.” I stopped walking and turned to him. “Give me a kiss?”
He put his arms around me, drew me close and kissed me open-mouthed. I felt both kinds of energy, the sexual and the vital, sweep over me. I sucked them both up and kissed him again. I’d absorbed so much of his cast-off vitality that I had energy to return to him, the raw animal kind. I’d never felt so sexually aroused. I rubbed against him and whimpered. He slid his hands down to my buttocks and pressed me against him.
“Let’s lie down,” he said.
“Please.” I meant it, too. I was begging. “Take me to bed, Tor. Please?”
This time, because I’d fed enough, I could focus on the sex, the intensity of the pleasure he gave me, and on returning that pleasure to him. He gasped when he climaxed, gasped aloud and shuddered rather than endured a macho silence. Afterwards he turned onto his side and pulled me tight against him. He kissed my face, stroked my hair, and told me that I was beautiful.
“So incredibly beautiful,” he whispered. “I’ve never had sex this good before.”
“Me, either. You make me feel so wonderful.”
He smiled and lay down on his back. I rested my head on his chest and fell asleep, suddenly and without a single thought or yawn. Eventually he woke me up and told me that dinner was ready.
Later I realized that I’d never asked him about the promise he’d made, that night when he’d offered me a job. I’d fully intended to, but it seemed so ungrateful of me, after everything he’d given me. Besides, did I really care about the answer? I didn’t want to leave him. I had never felt so good in my life, so energetic, so whole, so fed. For a change I could laugh at Death instead of the other way around.