by Sarah Hoyt
“Aramis,” Porthos said, looking sideways, a panicked expression in his dark brown eyes. “We must grant him final mercy.”
But Aramis shook his head again and, looking up, spoke with the sting of his usually sarcastic pronouncements. “Why tell me that, Porthos? You have a sword. You want to give him mercy, do so.”
Porthos’ eyes changed, softening into a sad mix of horror and fear. “I can’t,” he said. “I . . . I did it when I had to, Aramis. To those I loved. Until I came to Paris, I thought my heart dead to all friendship and love. Without your friendship—the friendship both of you offered me—I’d have become worse than the vamp— the things we kill. You two have kept me alive and human. I could not . . . . I cannot kill him. No more than I could kill you. Unless . . . unless I had to. To defend myself.”
“Well, then,” Aramis said, tartly. “Why do you think I could?”
Athos calculated the distance to his friends. He could charge them. He could grip one of them, maybe both. He could feed. Then they would kill him, and then–
His heart, straining in his chest, scarcely sustained by insufficient blood, made a noise that sounded like a drum in his ears. His body, his mind, his need, all told him to attack. But once he let himself go, he would no longer be able to control himself. Once he allowed himself strike; he would be a beast, intent only on getting what he needed. He knew how to fight, and he had his sword by his side.
Closing his eyes, to blot out the two of them—standing there, like fools, side by side—he could picture it all like a series of paintings behind his closed eyelids. He saw himself jumping out at them, stabbing Aramis through the heart and seizing Porthos . . . Once he closed his fangs on Porthos’ neck, he doubted his friend would fight. Or kill him. Beneath the brazen and admittedly larger than life exterior, Porthos was a shy, gentle creature. Not deficient in courage, but not able to withstand his friend’s will. It would end with Porthos dead, or turned.
Once Athos let go of himself, this outcome would follow, as easily and surely as a river flowed downhill. There would be no recall. Oh, they could fight other vampires and win against great odds. But he’d fought by their side for years. He knew their weaknesses. He could get in under their defenses.
“Traitors,” A loud voice called out, to Athos’ right side. “Traitors all! You’d allow a vampire to live and call himself a musketeer?”
Athos pivoted to face the voice, and saw a very young man running toward them. Small and slight, he had the olive skin of Gascony, an expression of rage on his face, and his sword drawn. By instinct, Athos drew his own sword, so that as the man came close enough to strike, he found Athos’ sword already raised in defense.
The vampire’s reflexes were faster, of course, but the boy seemed to have been made of the skin of the devil himself. He countered every one of Athos’ attacks, and attacked again, like fury incarnate. Something in the back of Athos’ mind whispered, you should let him give you quietus. It would end this and not stain your friends with your death.
But his mind raced ahead of the wishful voice. If this boy killed him, he would denounce his friends as Judas goats. They would be branded as such and banned from all lawful contact with humans. Marriage contracts would no longer apply to them. Even simple commerce with humans would be interdict. Their only choice would be to deal with vampires and to serve them. And, if they lied to hide their disgrace from their fellow men, and were found out, they would be killed. Aramis and Porthos would be at the very least dishonored and barred from free society. At the worst, dead.
“Athos,” Aramis said, his voice full of anguish. “He’s just a boy. What are you doing?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Athos asked. “I’m fighting for all our lives. I would allow him to kill me, but I cannot allow him to condemn you as Judas goats. Do you see what you’ve done?”
As he spoke, he saw the expression of alarm and realization in the boy’s eyes. He also saw the boy’s chin jut out in determination. He was, what, a mere youth? From the incipient moustache on his upper lip and the still-childish roundness of his cheeks, he could not be more than nineteen, and Athos would guess closer to sixteen. Full of righteousness and fury. Doubtless, he came to the capital full of innocent eagerness, to fight the evil of vampires. Now he must futilely end his life here, at the hands of Athos, who would truly be much better off dead.
“Halt, in the name of the cardinal,” a voice called out behind Athos.
Athos, his sword raised, in the act of parrying the boy’s sword, glanced quickly over his shoulder. He could feel and smell and sense Porthos and Aramis, already, moving into position behind him, between him and the boy and the guards of the cardinal. He could smell the guards too—the heavy musk that spoke of vampire. The smell he could now detect on his own clothes, though he knew the living could not.
The man who had spoken was Jussac, one of the most feared guards of the cardinal. He had his sword drawn and his fangs bared, his speech almost slurping, as if he were trying not to drool. “What have we here? A rogue vampire and a nice juicy pack of conniving abettors. Best surrender, gentlemen. You’ve more chance at living with our side.” Jussac was accompanied by other vampires who Athos had met in combat and had been good enough fighters to escape with their heads still attached to their shoulders: Bisarac and Cahusac, and two other nameless adversaries.
“Surrender?” Aramis said. “Never.”
“Not while we live,” Porthos said.
“And you?” Jussac said, looking directly at Athos. “You at least must see it’s in your interest to come with us.”
Athos spun around. The boy wasn’t trying to fight him—he had gone utterly still, probably dazed by the presence of so many vampires, which had that effect on the living who hadn’t become immunized by long habit—nor was he the kind to strike by stealth. Glaring, Athos shook his head at Jussac. “I am not one of yours,” he said. “I was not willingly turned.” Something very much like a giggle escaped him. “I don’t hate vampires less for being one.”
Jussac leered at him, displaying his fangs. “Is that so? And you’d fight us? When you’re a fledgling of less than a night, and you have not fed yet?”
Athos, thinking the greatest mercy possible would be for him to die here and not at his friends’ hands, though he felt as though he were teetering on his legs and staying upright by sheer resolve, sneered back, “I would fight you with my last ounce of strength.”
“Oh very well then,” Jussac said, “if that is so. But the stranger, the boy, there . . . The cardinal needs to at least appear to observe the pact, and I don’t think that boy is of legal age to consent. I don’t think he’s of a legal age to be away from his mother’s apron. You, boy—scamper. You’re free to go back where you belong. And stay away from dark alleys in Paris, even during the day. That’s our territory.”
Athos heard the boy draw breath, sharply, as if wounded, and wondered what had brought it about—was it the mention of his mother? Or the idea that he could not walk where he pleased?
And then, breath was drawn again; Athos heard the boy’s heart speed up, and the faint rustle as he lowered his sword arm. Was he going to run? Athos thought at the boy’s age, he would have. As good as the boy was, how could he face these odds? He had survived one vampire, but only a single vampire who was very weak and who, in truth, did not want to kill him. The guards of the cardinal would have no such compunctions.
A hand dropped on his shoulder, hot even through doublet and shirt. “Sir?” the boy’s voice said, hesitantly.
Athos turned around, shaking his shoulder, to flip the hand away. “Yes,” he said. He wished the boy would not touch him, but preferred to endure the temptation of living contact than to show his weakness in front of the monsters.
The boy looked curiously shy, and all the younger because of it. He was gazing down, his slick black hair half-hiding his face. He looked up at Athos, at his word. “Sir, I heard what you said, and if you hate vampires . . . that is . . . It would do me g
reat honor if you would allow me to fight by your side.”
“No,” Athos said. “Save yourself. Do you see how many of them there are? They have been vampires for years, faster and more cunning than any human being I know of. Even were I a true vampire, I wouldn’t be a match for them, I don’t have my strength. My friends and I will likely meet our death here. It’s only two musketeers and a newly made vampire against five.”
The boy shook his head, his face grave. “No. Two musketeers, a newly made vampire, and a boy against five,” he said, and allowed a little smile to appear.
“You don’t have to. You’re not a musketeer. Go, go and fight another day.”
The boy threw his head back, and looked up. His face seemed to age years in a moment. “When my parents were turned and chose to stand in the sun and die, rather than feed,” he said gravely, his voice cracking. “I decided I would be a musketeer and fight vampires. I might not be a real musketeer yet, but in my heart, I am one. I must fight by your side.”
Athos read the pride and the pain in the boy’s face. He thought of the moment when he himself, had made the same decision. He had been twenty. The boy looked much younger. But grief was the same at any age. As was courage. “Very well, he said.” He turned to his other friends and, though it cost him in self-control, clasped their hands, drawing them together in his strong hand. “Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and . . . what is your name, my friend?”
“D’Artagnan.”
“Very well, Athos, Porthos, Aramis, d’Artagnan, All for one—”
His friends answered, “—and one for all.” D’Artagnan smiled, clapping his hand atop theirs.
“How touching,” Jussac said mockingly. “Have you made a decision then? Any chance of a surrender?”
“Oh, we’ve made a decision,” Athos said and grinned, knowing it displayed his fangs. “We’re going to have the pleasure of charging you.”
Clean Cutting
D’ARTAGNAN felt as if his heart would burst out of his chest. The beat deafened him. His muscles clenched with the urgency to move, the need to strike.
Some part of him—some ignored part of him—murmured that he’d come to Paris to fight vampires. Now he was fighting beside a vampire and the men helping him. That he was a traitor. That he should kill the musketeer, Athos, and his friends. But the other part—the other part knew, with absolute, unflinching certainty that he was doing what he should do. He was fighting against Richelieu and his minions, the bloodsuckers that held Paris and all France hostage.
His sword rose like a living thing, pulling his arm up with it, propelling his feet forward. He charged at the dark vampire who had called him a child. The one who had told him he should go back to his mother’s apron. His mother, mon Dieu! The indefatigable, busy wife of a Gascon lord, always bustling about her household and her garden. His mother who would have protected d’Artagnan with her last breath. Dead because of creatures like this one.
The vampire looked startled, but reacted fast. Indeed, d’Artagnan had heard they were faster than any human—striking like the coiled serpent that unwinds when least expected. As d’Artagnan charged—an inchoate scream tearing through his throat—the vampire unsheathed his sword, parried, and grinned at d’Artagnan, flashing his shining fangs.
D’Artagnan was vaguely aware the musketeers had engaged in the fight as well. Porthos, the tall man who looked like a farmer—except that no farmer had ever worn such gold-spangled clothes, such brilliant, if false, jewels—took on the tall vampire, whom he called Bisarac. They fought while exchanging insults, their voices booming over the group.
Aramis fought like a dancer: striking and parrying, flashing and charging everywhere at once. He fought two vampires at one time and made it look easy. His hair—shining dark gold in the dark alley, like the wheat crops France no longer had—flowed behind him as if it had been taught the choreography of this particular dance and knew how to obey it.
Athos—Athos called “Cahusac!” to a dark vampire and charged forward like a wounded tiger. He fought, teeth clamped on his lower lip, as if every step hurt, as if every thrust and parry were pulled, hard won, out of a great, unending desert of exhaustion. Each of his spare and forceful movements bore the feeling of a suppressed groan and a spasm of pain.
And d’Artagnan . . . d’Artagnan was managing to parry—just barely. The Gascon had almost no practice in dueling. His father, a staid gentleman, lord of a small manor, had neither the time for nor the habit of picking private quarrels. He had served in the war, and he had taught his son what he knew and guessed about fighting. Specifically about fighting vampires; his father’s war was the first great war against vampires as they came like a tide from Germany.
D’Artagnan knew—and bore in mind at all times with startling clarity—that he fought at great disadvantage here. The vampires could hit him anywhere at all, and there was a good chance he would die, if not right then and if not from the bleeding, then from the infection that would follow. But he had to either strike them through the heart or cut their heads off. Any other injury would heal.
He trembled at the thought, but even as he trembled, he parried and charged, aiming for the heart of the vampire, who laughed at him and danced lightly back. “Ah, the boy fights by the book,” he said, in a tone of great amusement. “What is it boy? Salvator Fabris’Art of Dueling?” The vampire the others called Jussac stepped away from one of d’Artagnan’s thrusts, and swept his sword back with such force that had d’Artagnan not ducked in time, he would have been beheaded himself.
“My father had a copy of that,” the vampire said. “With hand-colored illustrations.”
“And did you suck your father’s blood?” d’Artagnan answered in fury, refusing to see the vampire as someone who could have had a father. Someone who had once been a human infant and a human child.
The vampire’s eyes sparkled, “No, nursling. He sucked mine and made me a vampire. For which I thank him.”
The vampire expected, d’Artagnan thought, for him to be stunned by this intelligence that a father might turn his own son. And for a moment, ridiculously, he was. The moment almost cost him a thrust through his shoulder before he brought his own sword up, lightning-fast, and parried.
“Ah, the reflexes of youth,” the vampire said, grinning, showing feral teeth and sharp fangs. “Think how much faster you’d be as a vampire.”
“Think how much better you’d be as a human,” d’Artagnan said, pressing forward. Jussac had made a mistake in mentioning Salvator Fabris. D’Artagnan had in fact been following Signor Fabris’ positions, set by set, place by place. The first guard and the second guard, and the extended fourth guard. He had been playing it by rote, as he had learned it from childhood.
But now he was alert. He was incensed. And he had remembered Fabris’ one immutable rule: if you were in a defensive position, you were already at a disadvantage. The better chance belonged to he who attacked.
His ears ringing with fury at his own stupidity and with rage at the vampire who spoke to him as if he were a child freshly weaned, d’Artagnan attacked fast, madly.
What mattered if he died? He pressed forward, his sword diving under the guarding sword of the vampire, and incidentally, almost disdainfully, pushing it aside so that he missed d’Artagnan altogether.
Vampires might be fast, but their brains were still human. Or somewhat human. The vampire was surprised by d’Artagnan’s sudden shift in tactics. His sword went wide, pushed out of its path, and seemed to pull his arm with it. It drew him out of balance. He stepped rearward, arm swinging back to regain equilibrium
D’Artagnan’s sword found its target in his heart, piercing it through. The vampire screamed an ear splitting death-shriek.
D’Artagnan jumped back, letting go of his sword. He had never before stabbed anyone through. The weight of the body and the death-scream undid him, but it lasted only a moment. In the next moment, he forced himself forward and tugged his sword from the vampire’s chest, even as dark blood
flowed like a tide, soaking the creature’s clothing, pouring onto the cobblestones of the street.
The dark blood smelled of corruption—like a corpse, long putrefied. The stench filled d’Artagnan’s mouth and nose, stung the back of his throat, and made his bile rise, but d’Artagnan would not show it. Instead, he reached for the vampire’s dark cloak and wiped away his fouled sword, as he looked around at his comrades and their opponents. According to the laws of duel, taught to him from a very early age, he knew he could lend assistance to whichever of the others needed it.
He looked first at Aramis, last seen fighting two opponents. But one of Aramis’ opponents lay beheaded, pouring out the same miasma of corruption into the air as Jussac. Porthos and Bisarac seemed to be evenly matched, with Porthos perhaps slightly the superior, despite the vampire-reflexes of his opponent.
Then there was Athos. D’Artagnan was not sure how he felt about Athos. His father had told him, over and over, until the belief was as real to him as the creed recited every night before sleep: trust no vampire. They might seem rational or even kind, but their minds are a collective mind tainted by the evil that fathered them. They think like insects, like locusts. Their hunger dominates all.
Yet Athos had said that he didn’t hate vampires any the less for being one. And, Athos was fighting vampires—madly fighting to keep the bloodsuckers at bay —fighting even though he looked distinctly unwell. .
D’Artagnan looked over at the older musketeer. Athos parried Cahusac’s thrust, and faltered, his step failing. Cahusac took advantage of it, thrusting at Athos. Athos recovered in time and leapt away, just enough that Cahusac’s blade went through his arm, not his heart.
Athos pulled his arm back—free of the blade—and gritted his teeth. There was no blood on the blade, and if any followed out of the wound, it didn’t go past sleeve and doublet. It dawned on d’Artagnan—thinking of that strangely smeared wound—that Athos would be nearly dry. He couldn’t have fed since being turned. Whatever he was, whatever had been done to him, he was no more guilty than d’Artagnan’s parents were. He too had refused to drink living blood.
