Stephen Leather - Once bitten

"What about her personality?" Sugar asked. "How did she seem to you?"

"She was fine on the Beaverbrook Program, and that would show up if she was lying or being evasive. But she seemed to know a lot more than you'd expect for someone of her age."

"Her apparent age," corrected Hooper.

"Her apparent age," I agreed. "She could speak several languages, yet didn't really explain how she'd learnt them. She was amazingly confident, too. As if she knew exactly what she was doing.

As if she was in control."

"What about physically?" asked Sugar.

"I guess the first time I met her I reckoned she looked younger than her age." I caught Hooper looking at me. "Than her apparent age. I'd have put her in her teens. And the way she spoke was often like a teenager. Yet she seemed to know so much. It was as if…"

"As if she was acting young. Pretending," Sugar interrupted.

I nodded in agreement.

"What about her body?" asked Hooper.

"Like a teenager's," I said.

"Did you see much of it? Her body I mean," asked Sugar.

"A fair bit," I said, unsure what he was getting at.

"Let me be a little more blunt, Dr Beaverbrook," he added. "Were you lovers?"

I was about to protest but I saw Sugar's eyes harden so I thought better of it. "Yes," I said. "At least, we went to bed once. Just once."

"Did you use any form of contraception?"

The surprise must have shown on my face because Sugar grinned at my discomfort. "I'll explain later," he said. "Just answer the question."

"No, we didn't. She said she wouldn't get pregnant. I assumed she meant she was on the Pill or something."

Sugar and Hooper looked at each other and something unspoken passed between them. Sugar looked back at me. "Did she bite you?" he asked.

"No," I answered, emphatically. I felt a sort of tremor of anticipation run along my spine because if she had asked me, I'd have let her. No doubt about it.

"Did she take blood from you in any way?"

"No," I said, equally emphatically. Then I suddenly remembered the night she'd taken me to The Place, how the mugger had cut me and how she'd licked the wound clean. Sugar must have seen something in my face because he asked me if I was sure. I told him what had happened.

"Did she tell you why she was doing it?"

"She just said she was cleaning it."

"Did she ask you to take blood from her?" Sugar asked.

I laughed out loud but could see that he was serious. "Why on earth would she do that?" I asked.

"Is that a yes or a no?" he pressed.

"No. Never," I said. He nodded as if he believed me.

"Did she ever ask you to do anything for her?" asked Hooper.

"Lots of stuff. Everyday things, you know. What do you mean? What do you think she might have asked me to do?"

Sugar got up out of his chair and walked over to the window. He stood and looked out, his hands clasped behind his back. "You have to understand, Dr Beaverbrook, that these people usually want something from the people they get close to. They tend to keep to themselves, because the more people who know them, the more chance there is of them being discovered. They don't age, and after five years, perhaps as much as ten, it becomes noticeable. If they do get close to someone, it's because they want something."

"We met by accident," I said. "I was called in to examine her, that was all. We got on well together."

"You hit on her?" asked Hooper.

"No," I said angrily. "I'm a professional. It would have been totally unethical for me to have done that."

"So," said Sugar, still with his back to me. "She hit on you?"

I had to think about that one. She'd turned up at my house late at night, dragged me out, and yes, at the end of the night she'd seduced me. It had been all her doing. I hadn't realised at the time, it had felt so good, but I hadn't had to do anything. "Yeah. You could say that."

Sugar turned round and smiled. "And why do you think she did that?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, feeling defensive.

"Why do you think a pretty girl of her age – her apparent age – want to get involved with someone so much older?"

"I'm only thirty six," I said, and realised how weak that sounded.

"You look older," said Hooper, unsympathetically.

"Thanks. But we're only talking about an age gap of ten years or so. That's not unusual."

"The girl is beautiful," said Sugar. "And very rich, as you say. She could have any man she wanted. So why did she choose you?"

"Maybe she wanted me," I said.

Hooper made a sort of snorting noise and put his hand over his mouth. I glared at him, but they were making me think.

"Did she ask you about your work?" asked Sugar, sitting down again.

"Of course."

"Did she ask about vampires, things like that?" he pressed.

"Never."

"She never asked if you knew where they were held?" he said.

"I don't follow."

"Is it possible that she was hoping that you would tell her where the rest of her kind are? The ones we know about."

"But I don't know where they are being held. Until I met you two I had no idea that they even existed."

"Yes, but she wouldn't have known that," said Hooper.

"Wow," I said.

"Wow," agreed Sugar. "Wow is right. It could be that you've had a very lucky escape."

"You think I was being set up?" I asked.

"Sounds like it," said Hooper.

Sugar drummed his fingers lightly on the desk top. There was no tune, no rhythm, just random tapping. "Dr Beaverbrook, it's important that you understand something, that you don't allow yourself to get too attached to her." He spoke quietly, his head thrust forward to close the distance between us, as if he was drawing me into his confidence. "These people, these mutations, are different from us, they don't form emotional attachments. They are loners, complete and absolute loners. They only get close to other people when they need something – when they need blood, for instance. Or information. This might sound trite, but they don't fall in love. You must not imagine that it possible for her to, how can I say this, have feelings for you. Do you hear what I am saying to you?"

"Yes," I said, but I felt that he was lying. I knew the strength of her feelings. And I knew that I loved her with all my heart. With my soul.

Sugar looked at me intently as if trying to peer into my mind and for a brief moment it almost felt as if he was probing through my synapses like a burglar rooting through a bedroom closet. And the valuables he was looking for were my true feelings.

"They don't even form attachments with their own kind," Sugar continued. "They meet occasionally, they help each other, but generally they keep away from each other."

"For safety?" I said. "So they can't give each other away?"

"No. Because they prefer it that way. They can't help themselves. How good is your biochemistry, Dr Beaverbrook?"

I shook my head.

"Ever heard of a hormone called oxytocin?"

"No," I answered.

"They call it the happiness hormone," Sugar continued. "It's a peptide secreted by the pituitary gland at the base of the brain."

Something surfaced at the back of my mind, a paper I'd read a year or so earlier. "It stimulates uterine contractions during childbirth, doesn't it?" I said.

Sugar looked impressed. "And starts milk production," he added. "It's long been known as a muscle contractor. But recent research has shown that it's much more than that. Researchers at Rockefellar University in New York gave doses of oxytocin to female mice and found that they were almost twice as keen to mate as control animals. Another experiment showed that female rats given the hormone make more of an effort to nuzzle their young, and male rats take more trouble to build a nest. If you block the effect of the hormone, you get the opposite effects. Sometimes the parents even go so far as to kill their offspring. The hormone is also thought to increase the sensations of sexual arousal."