ways to feed from a distance, ma petite.”
I shook my head. “Feeding on fear, or anger, or whatever emotion usually requires touching skin to skin.”
“Not if they are ancient enough.”
I filed that away for later, because I hadn’t known that. “So, some ancient vamp is doing this?”
“Non, ma petite, I would sense such power, and even the very ancient among us would need some connection to the woman. It would not be random.”
“So, what is it?”
“I have seen this happen to humans for only one cause from my kind. The ardeur can drain someone to death.”
“Only if you’re feeding on them continuously, and no one is coming in here and fucking Justine to death.”
“Once a human is addicted to the ardeur, if they do not get regular feedings, they can stop eating and waste away from want of its touch.”
“She’s not starving herself to death by not eating, Jean-Claude, she’s starving while the doctors are pumping her full of food. She should not still be losing ground.”
“Belle Morte, who was first gifted with the ardeur so she could feed from lust, could drain a human from a distance like this.”
“Are you saying it’s Belle doing this?”
“No, no.”
“Then what are you saying?” I was getting angry or impatient or both, and I wanted to stop holding hands. I must have thought it too loudly, because he let go of me.
“Sorry, I’m just . . . I want to help Justine and her family.”
“You feel responsible,” he said.
“Yeah, I guess I do.”
“Does the baby truly belong to the zombie you raised?”
“They really did trace down a descendant from Thomas Warrington’s brother. He didn’t have any children personally. The descendant shares genetics with the baby Justine gave birth to, enough to be family, so yeah, it looks like Warrington really is the father.”
“It is difficult enough for an older vampire to have children. I have never heard of a zombie being able to do so.”
“Me either. I guess I’ll be doing another write-up in the professional journals.” Though honestly I didn’t want anyone to know I could raise a zombie this alive. The government had looked to me to raise a recently dead world leader just temporarily, or so the rumor had said, but luckily the zombie they spied on had been the shambling dead and wouldn’t pass for human. That had been a few years and a few power levels ago. If the same government agencies realized I could raise something this “alive,” I’d be back on their hit parade. No thanks. I could just see Bert Vaughn, the business manager at Animators Inc., trying to schedule me to raise dead husbands from the grave to get that one last baby. Yeah, Bert was an unscrupulous bastard and would think it was a great idea. No. Just no.
The one thing helping me stay out of the news and off the radar of the unscrupulous was that the Hendersons didn’t want anyone to know that their little girl had had sex with a zombie. They didn’t want their grandson to be all over the Internet as the zombie baby. If we all worked hard, maybe we could stay out of the news on this one.
“Unless Belle Morte snuck into this country and targeted Justine for some reason, it can’t be the ardeur being fed from a distance,” I said.
“Not Belle, no, but the woman was seduced by our bloodline.”
I looked up at him. “What do you mean by that?”
“Your zombie may have looked alive, ma petite, but this girl saw him rise from his grave, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“Yet despite seeing that fearful sight, she still had sex with him within an hour or two of his rising.”
I nodded. “It was freaky quick.”
“She professed her love for him and he for her within hours, is that not also correct?”
“Yes,” I said. I really didn’t like where this was going.
“Belle’s power was lust, mine was more than that, but it was only after you