Chapter 12

Ken watched, fascinated, horrified, scared, exhilarated as the man in the turtleneck sweater walked across the room to where Jo was waiting. She's going to bite his neck, he thought desperately. She's going to bite his neck and drink blood from his artery! He wondered if he should try to put a stop to it. If he tried, would Jo let him put a stop to it?

"Look at that, Ken," Meghan said, mouth agape, eyes wide. "He's just walking straight up to her."

The man didn't even glance in Meghan's direction. His eyes were focused single-mindedly on Jo. When he got within three feet, Jo reached out and put her hands on his shoulders, stopping him. He continued to stare at her.

"My pheromones are being masked to some degree by this sweater," Jo said, smiling at Turtleneck but speaking to Ken and Meghan. "Even so, I'm very hungry because of the re-generation of my hand. They're potent enough right now to even overwhelm Lisa's pheromones, which are what lured him here in the first place."

"This spaghetti-strap top does it for me every time," said Lisa with a smile. "Even if I did already feed at sundown."

"You're a credit to your profession, Lisa," Jo said. "Where'd you get him?"

Lisa chuckled a little. "The law library over at Breckenridge, Wilson, and Jones," she said. "He was researching case law for a brief he's filing for the City of Roseville in response to a woman who is suing the police department for illegal detention during a traffic stop."

Jo laughed, amused. "A lawyer?" she said. "Outstanding. You brought me a true vampire!"

All the cognate in the room had a laugh about this. Even Ken and Meghan, as anxious and conflicted as they were at this moment, couldn't help but snicker as well.

"I thought it would ease the consciences of your potential propagates if the first feeding they witness was a bloodsucker too," Lisa said.

Even Turtleneck laughed this time, although it was quite clear he had no idea what anyone was even talking about.

"I can tell just by looking at him," Jo said, directing her comments at Ken and Meghan again, "that he will have absolutely no memory of anything that happens here. Even if I didn't feed right now, if Lisa just took him back where she found him, he still wouldn't remember ever leaving the law library when his head cleared. But even so ... I think, given the nature of the discussion, I'll make doubly sure he's nice and loaded on my pheromones before I proceed."

With that, Jo reached down and grasped the hem of her sweater. She pulled it up and over her head, revealing a black sports bra underneath.

"Ohhh, wow," Turtleneck said, his eyes nearly bugging from his head as he looked her over.

"You like it?" Jo asked softly, alluringly.

"Oh yessss," he said dreamily. "You're ... you're very..."

"Sexy?" Jo asked.

He nodded slowly, seemingly beyond speech now.

"Yeah, he's a goner," Lisa said.

Jo took a step closer to him and put her right hand—her new right hand—to Turtleneck's face. She ran the tip of her index finger lightly over his jaw line, tracing back and forth. Turtleneck cooed at her touch.

"He's mine for the taking," Jo said. She lifted up on his chin a little, making him look upward and expose his neck. She stepped a little closer and then slid her finger down onto his neck. She touched a spot just to the left of the top part of his Adam's apple. "Right here," she said. "This is what we call the sweet spot. This is where his carotid artery rests against the thyroid cartilage. It also happens to be an almost universal erogenous zone, both on men and women." She looked at Ken and Meghan. "Come a little closer," she told them.

"I'd ... uh ... really rather not," Meghan said, though she couldn't take her eyes off Jo's finger.

"Come on," Jo said. "There's nothing to be afraid of. Mr. Turtleneck here wants me to put my mouth there, don't you, Turtleneck?"

"Would you?" he asked breathlessly. Ken could see that the crotch of his slacks was bulging with an obvious erection.

"In a minute," Jo whispered to him, sliding her finger around on his neck a few times. She looked back over at Ken and Meghan. "Are you two at least considering my offer? Do you think there's any chance at all that you might agree to become cognate?"

Ken looked at Meghan. She looked back at him. Meghan was chewing her bottom lip. "Well..." she said slowly. "I ... uh ... guess I am considering it."

"As am I," Ken said, although he had already decided that, barring extreme objection from Meghan (he was sincere when he proclaimed he would not do it without her) or some piece of negative information about the process or the lifestyle that had not been revealed yet, he was going to do it.

"Then you need to see this," Jo said. "You need to see exactly what you'll be doing once you've been re-born."

They were still looking at each other. "She has a point," Ken said.

Meghan was still quite squeamish, but she nodded. "Yeah," she said. "I guess she does."

"What's a cognate?" Turtleneck asked dreamily.

"A vampire," Jo said. "I'm a vampire and I'm going to bite your neck and suck some of your blood in order to nourish myself. Is that okay?"

"Yeah ... sure," Turtleneck said with a goofy grin. "That's kind of kinky."

"Do you like kinky?" Jo asked him.

"Sometimes," he said, giving her an I've-been-around-the-sexual-block kind of look. "Take last week for instance. The wife was in the mood for love and ... I probably shouldn't tell you this ... but I had her get on top."

"Wow," Jo said with a smile. "That is pretty kinky."

"And we left the bedside light on," he added.

"You're an animal, Turtleneck," Jo told him. "An absolute animal."

Meanwhile, Ken and Jo had gotten up from their chairs and walked closer, so they were standing just off to Turtleneck's side. Jo's finger was still caressing his neck and his chin was still up.

"Watch," Jo said. She leaned in and put her lips on Turtleneck's neck, sliding them up and over the flesh, just enough to impart a sensual friction to him.

"That feels ... nice," Turtleneck sighed.

"Mmm hmm," Jo mumbled. She broke contact and turned her head, so Ken and Meghan could see her face. "Let me show you my fangs," she said softly. "Usually we put our mouth in position and then extend them, which causes them to drive into the artery, but I'll bring them out now for you."

"Oh ... okay," Meghan said her mouth agape again.

Jo opened her mouth. Her tongue was wet with glistening saliva. "My body is in feeding mode right now," she said. "My glands are pumping the healing hormone and the amnesiac into my saliva."

"Makes sense," Ken said, finding himself starting to spring a pretty good erection of his own. Despite the thought of what was going on here, he wanted to touch Jo, to make love to her. He wondered if Meghan felt the same.

"And here," Jo said, "are my fangs." She opened her mouth a little more, tilting her head upward, so they could see her front incisors. At the moment, they looked like perfectly normal human teeth. And then, suddenly, they seemed to morph right before their eyes. They bulged a little, almost as if they weren't solid teeth at all. Two small extensions shot out with lightning speed, so fast that it almost looked like they'd just appeared from nowhere. They were very thin, almost thin enough to see through, their color somewhere between white and clear. The ends were pointed wickedly. They looked very sharp.

"My God," Meghan said, crossing herself again.

"Unbelievable," Ken said, staring at them. Their appearance gave Jo an almost evil look.

"It's hard to talk when they're out," Jo said, her words slow, thick, slightly slurred. She took a little bit of a breath and they slid back in, retracting almost, but not quite, as fast as they'd come out. "And now," she said, "I'll feed."

She slid her left hand up over the back of Turtleneck's head and then into his hair. Her mouth went back to his neck, where she began to lightly rub her lips up and down, just to the left of his Adam's apple again—the sweet spot. Turtleneck cooed excitedly, his own arms going around her, his fingers touching the bare flesh of her back, stroking her in a manner that was quite sexual. Jo's left hand then moved upward and forward, sliding through his hair until her fingertips were just touching his forehead. She gripped him here with her fingers and pulled gently backward, forcing his head to look up, exposing his neck completely, tightening the skin where the sweet spot was located.

She put her mouth directly on the sweet spot and Turtleneck suddenly shuddered, his face wincing for the briefest of seconds. "Hey," he said softly, thickly. "You just ... just..." He trailed off, his eyes taking on a heavier glaze, his lips going from a slight grimace to a smile of pleasure. "Mmmm," he moaned. "Ohhh."

Jo's mouth was working, her throat moving up and down as she drank. Her left hand kept its grip on Turtleneck's forehead, her right kept a grip on his shoulder. Turtleneck started to breathe quickly. His face was flushed with excitement. His hand slid around Jo's body and squeezed her breast, at first over her sports bra and then underneath it. Jo made no attempt to stop him from groping her.

It went on for thirty or forty seconds. Turtleneck's groping became less frantic, less controlled. Eventually, his hand just kind of fell away and ended up dangling at his side. His face kept that look of pleasure but his respiratory rate slowed, losing the pant of lust it had been displaying initially. Jo's swallowing motions slowed as well, finally coming to a stop. She pulled her mouth away from his neck. Her fangs were no longer out. She slid her tongue out of her mouth and licked up and down the sweet spot a few times, as if cleaning it. There was no wound of any kind there, nor was there so much as a drop of spilled blood.

"Ahhh," Jo said with a sigh. "Much better. Although I can already tell I'm going to have to feed a few more times tonight in order to start making up for what I lost in the re-generation."

"Unbelievable," Ken whispered, staring at Turtleneck's neck.

Jo let go of Turtleneck and stepped back away from him. He continued to stand there, staring straight ahead. Jo's left breast was exposed where he'd been fondling her. Her nipple was erect. None of the other cognate seemed to even notice. She reached up absently and pulled her bra back down.

"He ... he was ... groping you," Meghan said, her face sour. "Does that always happen?"

"Sometimes," Jo said. "It depends on how potent of a pheromone blast they get. Generally speaking, the hungrier you are, the more frantic your prey's sexual reaction will be. The more frantic the reaction, the more likely he'll think he or she has the ... oh ... permission to start groping."

"That's why we try to pick prey we don't mind being groped by," Lisa said with a chuckle.

"Or that we don't mind groping back," said Gertie.

This caused the cognate in the room to let loose a torrent of knowing chuckles. Ken and Meghan, however, were more than a little scandalized. Both had just witnessed Jo putting her mouth on Turtleneck's neck in a very sexual manner. Both had also noticed the bulging erection he had sprung as a result. Ken had a sudden vision of Meghan doing what Jo had just done—having some young, strapping athlete put his hands on her body while she sucked on his neck. By the look on Meghan's face, she was thinking about Ken doing pretty much the same thing, although she was probably picturing a young female jogger in spandex running shorts.

"If you ... uh ... wanted to," Meghan said slowly, "could you have ... sex with him?"

Jo gave a small smile. "After I've fed on him, probably not," she said. "Or at least it wouldn't be much fun. Once the salivary amnesiac gets into his bloodstream he'll be beyond participating actively in something as complex as sexual activity for the better part of thirty minutes. He might be able to keep his erection—and if it was a female, she would still be wet—but there would be no taking you in his arms or kissing or thrusting involved. The prey would just lay there."

"But ... but ... what about before you feed?" Meghan asked.

Jo looked at her pointedly. "Yes," she said. "It is quite possible to engage in sex with your prey prior to making the bite."

Ken swallowed nervously, his mind already taking him to the next logical step in this particular chain. If it were possible, then naturally...

"And ... and ... do you?" Meghan asked.

"Jo," Lisa whispered before Jo or anyone else could answer. She cast her eyes at Turtleneck and then jerked her head in the direction of the living room.

"Oh ... right," Jo said. She looked at Meghan. "Let me send my young friend on his way and then we'll go back and sit down."

"But..." Meghan started.

"We'll continue our discussion in a moment," Jo insisted.

Meghan nodded, her expression troubled.

Jo stepped close to Turtleneck again, so her face was near his. She snapped her fingers a few times. "Hey," she said. "You there?"

"Huh?" Turtleneck said groggily, thickly, his eyes slowly coming into focus.

"How are you feeling?" Jo asked him.

"Great," Turtleneck said with a pleasant sigh. "Just great."

Ken's eyes widened as he saw this, as a memory suddenly came to him. He had seen that expression, that dopiness before.

"Why don't you go with Lisa now?" Jo said. "You remember Lisa?"

"Lisa?" he said, as if he'd never heard the name before—not just this Lisa, but any Lisa anywhere.

"That's me," Lisa said, stepping forward and taking him by the upper arm. "It's time to go back to the library now."

"Oh ... okay," he said.

Lisa led him away. He went without a struggle or protestation.

"Thanks for bringing him, Lisa," Jo called after her. "It was nice seeing you again."

"My pleasure," Lisa returned. "Good luck with the rest of the Disquisition."

She disappeared through the doorway and into the living room. A moment later, Ken heard the front door open and then close. Jo picked up her sweater and pulled it back over her torso.

"He won't remember any of this?" Ken asked.

"Nothing about being here in this house or meeting any of us, including Lisa," Jo said. "He was under the influence of cognate pheromones for quite a bit though—close to an hour I'd say. That might cause him to have a noticeable blank spot in his memory. He'll come to his senses in the library and look at the clock and see that it's ninety minutes to two hours later than he thought it was. He might wonder about it. He might even be disquieted about it for a few days. But he will put it out of his mind soon enough as long as some other cognate doesn't do the same thing to him in the next month or so. And since humans outnumber us about twenty thousand to one in this particular metropolitan area, the odds are pretty good no other cognate will pick him anytime soon."

"This is insane," Meghan said, shaking her head in disbelief. "I can't believe I just saw that."

"Hopefully it won't be the last time, Meg," Jo said with a smile. "Why don't we go back and sit down."

"Yes," Meghan said. "Why don't we?"

It was clear that Meghan wanted to dive immediately into the whole sex with prey discussion, but Ken headed her off before she could even speak of it. "I've seen that before," he said.

"Seen what before?" Jo said.

"Someone acting the way that lawyer was acting," he said.

Jo nodded. "Loretta," she said. "The Starbucks girl. I thought you might make the connection."

"The Starbucks girl?" Meghan asked. "Are you talking about the one with the drug addict daughter?"

Ken nodded. He had discussed the woman he bought his Starbucks coffee from at Eppley Field with Meghan on many occasions. He had never talked to her about the strange behavior he'd seen Loretta exhibit on that one occasion, however. He had not really even remembered it himself, at least not until just now. "The first night Jo and I flew together," he said, "I went into the terminal to get a piece of coffee cake after Jo had been there. Jo didn't know about my coffee cake fix, so she had only gotten me coffee. Anyway, I found Loretta behind her counter looking just like that lawyer looked just now. She was smiling and spacey and had no memory whatsoever that Jo had just been there buying coffee from her five minutes before. I just thought she was stoned or something, but..." Another memory from that night suddenly surfaced. "And the ticket agent for Southwest! He was acting the same way—just staring at his computer screen! You fed from them, didn't you?"

"Just that one time," Jo said. "I had to. That was the first time I'd ever met you and ... well ... I had come to work hungrier than I really should have and ... and I was attracted to you. Sexual attraction causes a pheromone surge just like hunger does. Before you became immune to me, Ken, you were unusually susceptible to my pheromones. When we were sitting together in the cockpit during our pre-flight at Mather, I started to have an effect on you."

"You did?" Ken asked.

"You did?" Meghan repeated.

"I did," Jo said. "For a few minutes there I thought I was going to have to pretend I was sick and go home."

"I don't remember that," Ken said, shaking his head.

"You wouldn't," Jo said. "The amnesiac effect, remember?"

"What happened?" Meghan asked.

"I was able to dampen my pheromone release in the bathroom of the plane," Jo said.

Ken was appalled. "You mean we were in the air?" he asked angrily.

"No!" Jo said quickly, appeasingly. "I never would have let you fly like that! You have to know that, Ken. I did it before engine start, while we were still running off the APU. I led you to believe I was having an attack of ... you know ... diarrhea and you turned on the toilet and the potable water for me."

Ken raised his eyebrows. "I did that on the ground?" he asked. He had absolutely no recollection of doing that. And it was such an unusual departure from standard operating procedure that he should have remembered it.

"You did," Jo said. "And I went into the bathroom and took off my shirt and washed my armpits really well. When I was clean and fresh, I put on an extra-thick layer of deodorant and sprinkled some baking soda on top of that."

"Baking soda?" Meghan said.

"It's sodium bicarbonate," Jo said. "It absorbs odors; helps keep the pheromones from getting out into the air when you don't want them to."

"And ... you just happened to have some baking soda with you?" Meghan asked.

Jo nodded quite seriously. "Any cognate who works with or has to interact in close proximity with sexually mature humans will usually keep a few supplies handy just in case we start to cause an effect at the wrong time: Deodorant, long-sleeved cotton T-shirt, wash cloth, body wash, baking soda. I went and spruced myself up, changed my undershirt, put my leather jacket on over everything and it worked. Ken's head cleared up and we had a rather nice flight to Omaha."

"I remember you wearing the jacket," Ken said, searching his memory banks for any reference to the actions Jo had just described. The leather jacket was the only thing that surfaced. "It was hot in the cockpit but you wouldn't take it off."

"I didn't dare," Jo said. "The jacket got us safely to Omaha, but then, when we were huddled together in the map room putting together our return flight, it started to have the opposite effect. I'd sweated so much that my pheromones were starting to leak out. You started to get spacey on me again. I knew the only way I was going to reduce my pheromone release for the flight home was to feed. Ordinarily we never feed where we work or recreate but this was an emergency. I went out on the hunt."

"The hunt?" Meghan asked.

"That's what we call it—one of the things we call it, anyway. I was hoping to catch one of the fuel techs or the loaders out on the flight line but none of them were in a situation where I could've gotten them alone for a few minutes. I found my way into the passenger terminal. It was almost deserted, but not quite as secluded as we really like—as you can imagine, getting caught feeding on a human by another human is not a good way to maintain the Subterfuge. And then I found the Southwest ticket agent sitting all by himself. He was easy. I just walked up to him and opened my jacket and let him get a good whiff of me. I only had to say two words to him: 'come here'. But I didn't drink myself full with him. It was just a little too open of an area and I could hear janitors and technicians walking around so I only took a quick drink."

"Did he grope you?" Meghan asked, a bit rancidly.

"No," Jo replied, matter-of-factly. "I believe in this case I overpowered him so quickly and completely that he didn't have a chance to. However, if he would have reached up and squeezed my breast a few times or reached down and squeezed my ass, what of it? He's giving me his lifeblood after all. And I did take it by overstimulating the part of his brain that controls his sexual arousal, didn't I?"

"Well..." Meghan said doubtfully.

"It's how we live, Meghan," Gertie said gently.

Meghan nodded, although it was obvious she wasn't ready to drop this particular subject yet.

"Anyway," Jo continued, "I got enough blood out of the ticket agent that I thought it was safe to fly with Ken, but I wasn't full yet, so my plan was to go get the coffee like I'd told the fuel guy out on the line and then take advantage of any target of opportunity I happened to pass on the way back. If I didn't find another opportunity, then I was still probably safe enough. If I did, so much the better. It's always best to have a safety margin, right?"

"Right," Ken had to agree. That was a very pilot-like way to think.

"As it turned out, Loretta was my target of opportunity," Jo said. "It was a nice surprise since most women are not affected enough by my pheromones for me to feed from them."

"They're not?" Meghan asked.

"They're not," Jo said. "About half of any given population of women would not be affected by me in the least, not even if I was starving to death and they stuck their nose right in my armpit. Another thirty percent would be mildly affected by my scent if it were powerful enough, but not enough to cause submission to me—it would probably do nothing but make them feel a little horny and think about how pretty I am. Only about two out of any ten women would be affected enough by me that I could feed from them without resistance and memory. Fortunately, Loretta happened to be among that twenty percent."

"What makes those women different?" Meghan asked.

"What do you think?" Jo asked her.

Meghan gave her lower lip a little nibble. "You mean they're ... they're ... lesbians?"

Jo nodded. "Lesbians or bisexuals," she said. "My pheromones only work on sexually mature humans who are attracted to females. Homosexual males are unaffected by me, but they are affected by Dad, if he chooses to feed from them."

"Not really my thing," Harold said with a shrug. "I've always preferred mid-thirties women myself."

Ken and Meghan both looked at him to see if he was joking. Both concluded he was not.

"Let's go back to this whole ... overwhelming the prey thing," Meghan said, putting aside the question of who and how the pheromones worked for now.

"Okay," Jo said with a nod. "What do you want to know?"

"You said ... said it was possible to have sex with your ... your prey before you ... uh..."

"Feed," Jo said. "That's how we refer to the act among ourselves anyway, although we do make an effort to use euphemisms in any situation where it is possible that humans may be listening to us ... on the phone, text messaging, in public, etc. Then we call it 'grabbing a bite' or 'having a snack' or sometimes just 'dinner' or 'breakfast'."

Meghan took a moment to process that. "Uh ... okay," she finally said. "That makes sense, I suppose. Anyway ... uh ... since you can have sex with humans before you ... uh... feed, does that mean that sometimes ... uh ... sometimes you do?"

It was clear that Meghan wanted Jo to say something like: "Heavens no, girl! That is absolutely forbidden! How could you even think such a thing?" That is not, however, what Jo said. Instead, she nodded solemnly and said, without shame or apology, "Yes, Meghan. Sometimes we do. Many times we do."

Ken swallowed a little, his emotions heading off in two directions. Most of him was appalled at what Jo had said. Another part, however, the essential male part, could not help but be intruiged.

"So ... so you're saying," Meghan said, "that you rape humans before you drink their blood?"

Jo looked at her mother for guidance. Her mother simply shrugged at her, offering no real help. She turned back to Ken and Meghan. "Rape is a really ugly word, Meghan," she finally said.

"Yes," Meghan agreed. "As is the act of raping someone."

"We're not throwing anyone down and forcing ourselves upon them," Jo said. "It is true that much of the time we are using our pheromones to influence our prey into consenting for sexual activity, and it is also true that your human laws may look upon this, in a black and white sense, as an act of rape, but we do not see it that way. We are not hurting anybody or doing anything against a person's will."

"But you're causing their will to become distorted," Meghan protested. "You're using your pheromones to intoxicate them and make them give consent where they ordinarily might not have. How is that any different than slipping some GHB into a girl's drink at a bar? How is it any different than giving someone so much alcohol that they're not even coherent and then taking advantage of them? How can you sit there in front of me and tell me that what you do is not rape?"

Jo looked up at the ceiling for a moment, her face showing that she was upset and stressed for the first time. Finally, she looked back at Meghan and sighed. "I can't tell you it's not rape," she said. "I can't tell you that because you're looking at it through human eyes and with human emotions and with nothing but your own human experience and morality to base your impressions on."

"So you're saying that if I become cognate I'll suddenly lose my human morality?" Meghan asked. "Because if that's the case, you can just shove this whole deal up your ass!"

"Meghan," Jo started.

"I'm not going to become some unholy bloodsucker who goes around taking advantage of every person I come across! I won't do that!"

"Meg..." Ken started.

Meghan turned on him like a snake. "Are you saying you want to do this shit?" she demanded of him. "Are you saying you want to be turned into a bloodsucker so you can drop all of your humanity and start fucking every hot bitch you see walking down the street? Because if that's what you're saying, Ken, then fuck you too!"

Ken blinked and stared at his wife in disbelief. Never, in the entire time he had known her, had she talked to him like that. He wasn't exactly sure how to respond.

"Meghan," Jo said gently, "I think you're letting this get to you a little too much."

"Letting it get to me?" she asked. "Letting it get to me? You're talking about rape, Jo! How many people have you raped? How many times did you leave our bed and then go pick up some dude or some chick and get it on while you still smelled like us? How many times, Jo?"

Jo remained calm. "Well," she said, "in the particular example you just gave, the answer is none. I have never left your bed and gone immediately to have sex with someone else. Nor have I ever had sex with someone else and then come to your bed. I won't say I never fed after leaving your bed, or right before coming to your house to make love to you, and I won't say that I've never been groped by my prey under those circumstances, but that is about all I've done. I hold the sexual relations I had with you and Ken on a significantly higher plane than any other relations I've shared in my entire lifetime."

"Uh huh," Meghan said, giving no indication whether she believed Jo or not. "Does that mean Ken and I are the only ones you've had sex with since we started?"

"No," Jo said. "It does not mean that. That is not what you asked."

Meghan was shaking her head in anger. "And that's what holding us on a higher plane means to you?" she asked.

Jo looked at her mother again, pleading for help with her eyes. This time, Gertie game a weak smile and a little nod. "Meghan," she said. "Maybe I can help put this into perspective for you."

"Sure, give it a shot," Meghan said huffily. "Let's hear how the cognate mother justifies this behavior."

"Meg," Ken said. "There is no need to be rude to Gertie."

She shot him an angry look and seemed about to tear into him, but Gertie reached out and touched her shoulder first, getting her attention back.