Page 36 of Hupotasso
I wonder if he’s suddenly angry because he’s realised I’ve drawn him into conversation, or if it’s something else I don’t know about.
“Everything,” he snarls, “that you wear, breathe, eat, drink, read, watch and think, is managed and owned by a handful of corporations.Everything.We, the ruling class,arethose corporations.”
“Are you trying to tell me,” I scoff, “that youmanagehumans?”
“If we didn’t you’d outbreed the capacity of the planet to support you,” he mutters.
“What?” I almost choke on an olive from my martini. “Are you trying to tell me that you vampires see yourselves as some kind of benevolent planetary overlords? Because I’ve got news for you, buddy, and it’s all bad.”
He quirks an eyebrow at me.
“When the population gets too high we manufacture a war or a plague. When it gets too low, which it has from time to time, we let you be. But, yes, we manage humans.”
“Whoareyou?” I wonder out loud.
“Just another species, one of several who inhabit this world, in fact. And no, before you ask, we’re not aliens. We evolved alongside you. We are fewer in number, obviously, but the compensation is that we can live virtually forever.”
“Virtually,” I echo, putting my drink aside, my appetite for anything now disintegrated. I note with rancour that he’s falling back on the royal ‘we’ once more — completely divorcing himself from his individual role in anything. Yet again defining himself as something ‘other,’ something completely detached from humans.
‘From me.’
“Of course, we need humans for food and for us to be able to procreate,” he goes on. “It’s nature’s cruel joke. And the reason we can never absolutely annihilate you.”
I swallow hard and stare at him.
“Speaking of which,” he adds, pushing his chair back and rising, “it’s time you earnedyourliving.”
I shake my head, but before I can get a word out he zips around behind me, pulls out my chair, and lifts me into his arms. They’re strong and muscled, and he holds me to his broad chest like he owns me. Once upon a time, under different circumstances, I’d be tempted to bury my face into his neck, kiss the small triangle of skin revealed when he’d torn off his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. But that can never be, not any longer, not now.
“Where are you taking me?” I mutter, although I already know, because it’s all part of the game. A game we were supposed to have played and left, but never have. To earn my living, to keepliving, I need to produce him an heir — then, and only then, will it be ‘game over’ for me.
“I think you know,” he murmurs into my hair as his arms tighten and he turns to stride from the dining room.
I don’t bother struggling. Intellectually, I’m raging about what is about to occur, but physically, he needn’t bother carrying me. I want to be close to him so badly I could almost race him to the bedroom.
30
I frown as I dress, watching the play of light across her curls and curves.
As much as I’ve enjoyed bedding her these months since her return from the tour, try as I might to deny it, Sophie is due to give birth soon, and time is running out. Something has to give. I’m locked in a recurring pattern of enthusiastically screwing the woman I married, soothing the fears of the woman I promised to marry, and plotting the destruction of an enemy crumbling my Keep from within and without. And the longer it goes on the less inclined I am to carry out any of my resolutions — and the more confused, trapped, and emasculated I feel.
I recognise I look forward to dinner each evening with Angie. I look forward to what happens afterwards. And I acknowledgewe’ve fallen into an unhealthy pattern that needs to be broken. A pattern that I’ve enforced.
“What is it?” She frowns.
“This needs to be over,” I snap, ignoring the instant hurt in her eyes. “I want you pregnant. Why aren’t you getting pregnant?”
“I don’t know,” she snorts, pulling the sheet around to hide her soft, voluminous breasts. “Maybe you’re shooting blanks.”
“Don’t push me, woman,” I growl.
“Or what? You’ll spank me again?”
She rolls over to show her bruised ass, and I grit my teeth. I hadn’t spared disciplining her over the weeks, but I didn’t realise I’d left marks on her. Somehow, seeing my black and blue handprints on her pale body doesn’t sit well with me. I recall seeing similar prints on my mother’s body as a small boy.
‘Jag’s right. I’m becoming my father. This has to stop.’
“You’ve been tested,” I raise my chin and look down at her, pretending indifference to her bruises. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t conceive.”
