Sword And Blood (Vampire Musketeer Book 1)

by Sarah Hoyt

  He attempted to embrace her, but she took her hands from his head and pulled his arms down, forcibly. And then she kissed him. It was she who kissed and he who was kissed, not daring to move, not daring to take charge, not even daring to move closer to her. He longed for her body in his arms, for the feel of her soft, rounded curves against his burning erection. But he half expected that should he hold her so close she would vanish like a bubble and leave him nothing at all.

  She kissed him carefully and thoroughly, their lips sealed to each other’s, their tongues touching. Then her tongue pushed into his mouth to draw his tongue out. A sharp lance of pain and he cried out. She’d let her fangs extend and nipped at his tongue. As her curious, cat-like tongue lapped at his wound, he could feel her smile against his lips.

  He tasted his own blood upon her tongue, and then she let go of his lips and kissed his chin. She trailed a pathway of kisses down his neck where she rested on the hollow of his throat so long that he thought she meant to bite him there and inflict a wound, the twin of the one at the back of his neck.

  But she moved around again, kissing the hollow line between the two halves of his muscular chest, and the faint line of hair that grew down to his navel. She sank slowly to her knees as she did so and took her time, licking and nipping, as though she needed the flavor of his skin as much as he needed hers.

  Athos tried to forget they were not alone. He could hear the breathing of the others, but it didn’t matter. His world had contracted to Charlotte, on her knees, kissing now around his erect penis, refusing to touch it.

  And then she paused, looking up at him, a smile on her lips, her blue eyes seeming to promise him delights only imaginable to those who are transported to paradise.

  “Charlotte,” he said, his voice hoarse. He reached out to touch her silken hair with his sword-calloused hand.

  She smiled wider, her mouth open, the fangs showing beneath her top lip. And then she struck. Quick as an adder, her head pushed forward, and her fangs bit deep into the soft flesh of his inner thigh.

  He screamed. His legs buckled and would have given out entirely, except suddenly there were hands supporting him in his position. No. Holding him in his position. Imprisoning him as perfectly as the ropes that had tied him to the altar on the night of his turning.

  And then the excruciating pain of her bite turned to sweet joy. And he didn’t care what she did so long as he could go on feeling it.

  He had no strength left, no determination with which to hold closed the door to his mind against which her mind pushed, insistently. What good was a soul if he couldn’t have Charlotte?

  As though a crack had opened in his mind, he felt Charlotte’s presence. Not her physical presence—her petite body kneeling at his feet, but something else—a force, a strength.

  It was like a thundercloud gathering all around him, if a thundercloud could be female and beautiful enough to take one’s breath away. “Charlotte!” he said. Knowing her overarching, over-strong presence would devour him, he cried again, his voice clouded with fear, “Charlotte!”

  Miraculously, as if in response, he heard the twin cries: “To us of the king,” and “To us musketeers!”

  He recoiled away from Charlotte, without thinking, but she was holding his thighs and there were other people holding him from behind.

  Booted feet ran into the room. Musketeers. Disjointedly, like events in a dream, Athos heard the clink of swords, the shouts and exclamations of men. He smelled the miasma of a dying vampire. More boots stepped into the room. The hands holding him let go.

  “To me musketeers! To me of the king!” echoed close by and behind it, beside it, obscured by it, Aramis’ voice saying in a tone of disbelief, “Athos!”

  Charlotte pulled back, withdrawing her fangs and smiled at him with blood-stained lips. She curtseyed. No one seemed to even see her. Unperceived by anyone but him, she slid among the musketeers and vampires engaged in combat all around. No one but Athos saw her slip out through a door at the back. The firm closing of the door was lost in the noise in the room, the deafening clang of swords meeting, and of the screams of dying vampires.

  Athos stood alone in a room filled with musketeers. Some of the vampires lay dead on the floor, pouring out their smell that still registered in Athos’ senses as enticing and appetizing and made him salivate despite himself. In one corner, a musketeer whom Athos could not identify fought with a vampire in a corner of the room.

  Athos was naked. He didn’t know where his sword had fallen.

  He felt someone thrusting fabric at him, finally seeing it was Porthos and the fabric was a sumptuous velvet cloak, not his own. He took it from Porthos’ hands and wrapped it around himself, awkwardly.

  People spoke, but not to him though everyone cast him wide-eyed looks. Did they know what he was? How much had they seen?

  He knew that what they’d seen wouldn’t give him away as a vampire. But it would make them pity him. He clenched his jaw so hard his teeth hurt.

  Snatches of conversation reached him. Someone reporting killing three vampires elsewhere in the house, “one a woman.” Another reported rounding up the Judas goats. Athos despised himself before he could even form the coherent thought that he hoped the vampire killed wasn’t Charlotte. And then he hoped it was. He would then be free.

  And Aramis was extending him his breeches and other clothes in a bundle, at arm’s length. As Athos looked at him with uncomprehending eyes, Aramis said, “For the Lord’s sake, my friend, take your clothes and dress yourself. There’s a private parlor there, and I’ll stand at the door.” He narrowed his eyes. “If that matters.”

  Athos blinked. From what felt like a turgid, freezing river of thoughts, he picked a statement he uttered through frozen lips, “It matters.”

  Aramis’ look at him remained puzzled, as though he were trying to understand something, but he pushed the bundle at Athos once more, and said. “Go,” with his hand he pushed Athos in the general direction of an open door to Athos’ left. “Go, I’ll stand guard.”

  From the weight of the bundled clothing, his boots and sword were somewhere in it. Athos allowed himself to be pushed into the small parlor—in fact a very small room, decorated all in pink and containing a chair and a desk. A bookcase full of bound books took up a wall, floor to ceiling. The window was open here, too, and the curtain furled in on the night wind.

  Athos removed the cloak and shivered, in the breeze coming from the window. He unrolled his clothes, finding his boots and his sword in the midst of them.

  Putting them on was harder than he thought. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t remember what breeches were or how one put them on, it was more that he picked them up, then tried to put them on his body, but his hands and legs did not exactly obey his thought and the fabric reversed itself in his hands.

  Aramis knocked on the door, a curt, impatient knock, “Athos?” Then opened the door almost immediately. Aramis’ brows knit down over his eyes, and he shook his head. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it.

  Stepping into the room, he locked the door behind himself and said, “You will pardon me, my friend. There is no time for this. We must get out of here and fast. That . . . Your charming hostess left before we could catch up with her, and enough died that . . . This place will be swarming with vampire avengers and with . . . her soon enough. Even now the armies of the night hurry toward us. We cannot engage in meditation or mourning.”

  Athos wanted to explain himself but his words caught, frozen within his sluggish thoughts. “Not . . . meditation or mourning.”

  Aramis let out his breath as though he’d been holding it too long and now his exasperation compelled it to exit with force. Wordless, he picked up Athos’ clothes and dressed him. Athos was powerless to resist, though he didn’t remember having anyone dress him since he was three years old. Even as Aramis finished buckling on Athos’ scabbard, shouts and the sound of swords were heard.

  The door was thrown open with a sudden
push that caused it to rattle hard against the bookcases. Porthos took up the entire opening. “Aramis, Athos, they’ve arrived. What is—”

  “He’s not himself, Porthos,” Aramis said, and to a querying look from Porthos, “I don’t know why, but we can’t leave through the front door. He’s in no fit state.”

  “Then—” Porthos said.

  “I know the way through the back,” Aramis said. “From . . . the old days.”

  Porthos entered the small room, looming. Behind him pressed the ragtag band that Athos had last seen in his own house, the young boy, Planchet, their servants, and—he blinked in surprise—Madame Bonacieux dressed in the attire of a musketeer and carrying a musketeer’s sword. He forbore to ask whether the lady could use it. In his experience, she was a woman of surprising talents and he’d always thought their escorting her was more a matter of ensuring she was safe, than her only protection.

  They all pressed into the small room, and Aramis pushed a lever by the fireplace. A panel beside it opened into a dark tunnel, into which they all pressed, with Aramis pushing Athos ahead of himself and Athos obeying, puzzled, wondering why he could not take his own initiative or even think through the puzzles facing him.

  They came out into fresh air and relative light in the older part of the city by the river, and Aramis narrowed his eyes. “My lodging is this way.”

  He’d been in Aramis’ lodgings many times. As they arrived, he noted with surprise that the large cross presiding over the small entrance room which Aramis pompously called his scriptorium still did not cause Athos any pang and it still did not show to him as a foci of blinding light. But he’d let Charlotte . . . and he’d been in her mind. Or she in his. He had allowed her in.

  How was it possible then, that he was still whole? Could it be that his soul belonged to him still?

  By Water and Blood

  D’ARTAGNAN lay down on the streambed, behind an outcropping of rocks. The freezing water leeched all heat from his body and he felt himself becoming, by stages, numb and cold. He could go no farther without being seen, and in his state he was not up to fighting, certainly not up to fighting a multitude of pursuers. He lay down, underwater as much as possible, allowing his face to surface for shallow breaths.

  If they were to send the Judas goats over the stream to do an exhaustive search, he would surely be discovered, for he was but a little ways past where he’d first dropped, and where—he saw—the remnants of his ropes were.

  He heard them approaching, two of them talking and the rest making the peculiar clicking sounds of the aged vampires. When he put his face above water to breathe, he took in the smell of old vampires with the air. Down under the water again, he could hear them talking on the riverbank, but the sound was too distorted to understand what they were saying. The water warped the sound of their footsteps as well, so he couldn’t be sure in which direction they were going.

  He put his head above the water, just in time to hear the vampire say, “Well, he’s not on this side.”

  “No, M’sieur Rochefort, and as I was sayin’, if I was him, I would have crossed to the other side.”

  A silence in which he was sure Rochefort was looking across the bank, trying to discern signs of him on the other side. “You go, Jean,” he said at last. “Cross over the water to find him on the other side.”

  “The water is shallow, sir, could you not—”

  There was a silence and when Rochefort replied it was in the tone of a man who didn’t like admitting anything that might be to his disadvantage, “You know it’s not the depth,” he spoke, dryly. “It is living water. Go over to the other side and see if there are signs of the infernal Gascon.”

  “Monsieur, I’d be glad to, but . . . ”

  Rochefort clicked his tongue. “Yes, yes, your leg. What possessed you to jump out of the carriage in full careen?”

  “But Monsieur—”

  “Not that the other idiot was any better or came to a better end.” In a voice full of disgust, “Humans. I’d trade them all for a passel of monkeys, if one could feed as well from monkeys as from humans.” A pause. “That branch there, yes, bring it over.”

  There were sounds of rustling and clicking and then a branch landed, so close to d’Artagnan’s head that it barely avoided hitting him. And in the next moment he had to move as the branch shook, moved, then creaked alarmingly and, with a loud crack, gave way.

  D’Artagnan whipped sideways to avoid the end near his head, but didn’t avoid a grazing blow to his nose. He was gently feeling this offended body part with his fingers when he heard, “Let go, let go. No, you can’t save him. This scheme won’t do.”

  A keening, somewhat like when a vampire was pierced through the heart echoed, loud and brief. D’Artagnan, daring to peek ever so slightly above the water and the rocks, saw one of the ancient ones in the current.

  He was . . . dissolving, like spun sugar upon water, his legs disappearing from under him, as he fell forward, and then his face and arms dissolved, causing the scream to stop. Scraps of ancient fabric and a yellowish foam drifted past d’Artagnan.

  On the bank, two men or rather a man and a vampire—the well-dressed, dark-haired, powerfully built one was likely Rochefort; the other a simply dressed, slight man leaning on a crutch—looked on with wide eyes and a shocked expression.

  Rochefort’s face changed to a look of distaste. He brushed what must be imaginary drops of water from his clothes, and made a face. “That will not do,” he said. “That was the sturdiest branch. We will go farther down the river to where there is a bridge.”

  D’Artagnan waited, not sure the words were true or had merely been pronounced for his benefit. But man and vampire walked on and, little by little, the band of ragged, bony wraiths of ancient vampires, moved down the river.

  When their voices had vanished from his hearing, he considered. It could be they’d made sure he heard their conversation and that it was just a ruse.

  On the other hand . . .

  On the other hand, he could not stay in the water much longer. Even now, his body felt so numb from the cold, he felt as though he might be dead.

  He moved a little. At first he crawled, on hands and knees, away from the voices, feeling the stilt and sand on the streambed and little darting touches he believed were fish. He crawled past a bend in the rivulet, shaded by tall trees. And then he stood and ran. He ran headlong down the stream.

  His legs hurt, his lacerated feet stung and he was quite sure he was on the verge of collapsing from hunger and tiredness and cold, but he ignored all the many pains and complaints of his flesh to run. To run till he could run no more, and then he left the river bed and crept on aching feet down a rocky scarp back the same side where he’d left, because the one thing of which he was sure was that the vampires and their minion meant to search for him on the opposite side. He crept up and up and up slowly, expecting to find the road the carriage had traveled, but road and river must diverge, because he found himself, instead, on a narrow beaten dirt path. To take it might make for a convenient route for those coming after him to follow. But not to take it would leave behind a trail of broken leaves and trampled grass that his pursuers would easily follow.

  Listening for talk or footsteps, he walked as fast as he could along the path.

  Casting Lots

  ARAMIS’ lodgings were not as large as Athos’. Just three rooms, all of them well furnished in a way belying Aramis’ vocation.

  The grandiosely named scriptorium to which they were admitted had a vast desk, several elaborately carved wooden chairs and, behind the desk, hanging from the wall, a dubious reminder of the occupant’s call to the priesthood—a Madonna smiling down in blessing upon those assembled. But since that Madonna was a comely and ripe young woman with golden hair, large blue eyes, luscious lips and a bared breast which she offered to the fat and happy baby on her knee, it took more than the halos painted around both heads to convince the onlooker of the worshipful intent of the image. The two c
rucifixes, one on each side wall were elaborately wrought, their golden embellishments shining by the light of the single candle burning at the foot of the Madonna.

  Athos had seen the other rooms. They would have surprised any casual visitor with their spare monk-like sobriety—perhaps not surprising in Bazin’s case, but almost shocking in Aramis’. He wondered how many of the visitors would believe the exquisitely groomed, exceedingly well-bred musketeer—for all his claims of a vocation to the priesthood, interrupted only by the arrival of vampires—slept on a bed that was little more than a blanket over a hard board. Or that his room contained only that, and a vast and oppressively plain wooden cross upon the wall. Or that the space on the wooden floor in front of the cross had been polished by the long wear of two knees, those two knees belonging to Aramis? He would almost swear none would believe that beneath the musketeer’s exquisite tunics, carefully ornamented doublets—belied by the smile that played, fugitive, on the musketeer’s face—hid a hair shirt, turned inward and tightened to produce near-unbearable discomfort.

  Athos himself had not believed it when he’d first seen it while assisting Aramis, wounded after a fight with vampires. And only his enhanced senses, which now allowed him to smell the blood raised by the punishing garment, convinced him Aramis was still wearing it. It was not the smell that suggested he was wounded, just a hint of living blood at the surface of the skin.

  You wouldn’t know it from the way Aramis pushed Athos into a chair, invited Madame Bonacieux and Porthos to sit. Nor from the smile on his face as he whispered something to Bazin, who vanished into the tiny kitchen behind the bedrooms. The other servants and Planchet went with him, leaving the three men and the priestess of nature alone in the scriptorium.

  Athos held his hands on his knees, feeling their solidity with something akin to surprise.

  “Athos,” Porthos said. “What can you mean by—”