by Sarah Hoyt
Much as he longed to go up the stairs and look for a still-whole blanket he could stretch on the dusty floor, he dared not. If he lay down horizontally, he’d almost surely sleep too long.
But here, on this awkward kitchen stool, leaning on a rickety kitchen table, he’d rest his eyes only a few minutes. And then he’d make a bundle of some of the cheese and apples and walk in search of anyone who could tell him where he was and where the nearest safe village was.
He was asleep before his head touched his folded arms.
Duties and Delusions
“WHAT do you mean she didn’t tell you but you know?” Porthos asked.
Athos knew Porthos would have used more forceful words were it not for the presence of the lady. He struggled for the right words to explain. “You see, when she came to me in my bedroom before—”
A gasp from Aramis and Athos amended, “Though that was just an illusion, you understand, but I thought it was . . . ” He paused and took a deep breath. “No. What you said, before, Aramis, about the ways one can . . . one can lose one’s soul. You alluded to it without . . . without elaborating.” Without, in fact, naming it. “One of those ways is the pleasure of . . . of carnal congress.”
Athos looked up. His cheeks would be flaming if they could. As it was, he felt a little heat on them; he must have got enough liquid into his body—even if not blood—for it to react. But Aramis was not blushing, just surprised, his eyes open very wide. Athos met his gaze and nodded once. “I don’t think you understood the nature of this temptation. You see, it is not carnal congress as such but that vampires use . . . the moment of . . . of surrender, being immersed in pleasure and . . . and all the emotions that surround it, to touch your mind, to . . . to commune in mind as well as in body.”
Aramis nodded in turn. “I’ve suspected something like that. Did she—?”
“I believe so, though not . . . not fully. She had just . . . ” He made an inarticulate sound of frustration at the inadequacy of words to cover events so primal and so devoid of words. “Imagine your mind as a walled garden, with a gate through which one must step to enter the garden. I’d allowed her to slip her hand in and lift the latch on the gate, but the gate was only opened a bit.” He frowned. “It was enough. Maybe too much. I could feel . . . I could feel her—her presence, her . . . essence. I think it happens gradually, over time. You surrender to another vampire over and over and, in the throes of repeated pleasure, each time they enter further into your mind, they conquer it, they merge their minds with it, till eventually you are one with them and with all other vampires, and everything they see you see, everything they do, you know. Even when you’re physically apart.” He paused, trying to force feelings into words. “I don’t know if it would take that long with her. I know only that as her mind touched mine my . . . she was . . . ” A deep breath and he again tried to bring order to thoughts that insisted on running in all directions at once like unbroken horses. “I believe she’s very old. Very, very old. I had the feeling of the passage of time, unmeasured, endless. Time . . . Time before Rome and Greece. Time before we have names for the civilizations or the languages.”
“She’s not one of the ancient ones!” Aramis said. “She cannot be. We have determined all those old ones, beneath their grave dirt and filth are two thousand or so years old, no more. Nor does she look like that.”
“Unless she’s using her powers of illusion,” the lady said.
Athos shuddered and felt his throat constrict at the thought of having taken one of the ancient vamps to his bed, of having wedded one under appearance—
“Impossible,” Aramis said. “The old ones simply can’t. They don’t have . . . their minds are devoured by the collective mind till they are no more than walking corpses controlled by the collective mind, so that one of them, or even the collective mind in them could no more produce an illusion than–”
“It was not,” Athos said. “The collective mind. It was her own. By which I mean, it was a . . . an individual mind I touched and one that . . . she had the . . . it felt like her mind, from what I know of her.” He closed his eyes, avoiding looking at Aramis, afraid of what his friend’s expression might show. He knew the feel of her well enough, the beauty and the allure overlaying something else. Something as cold and cruel as the edge of a blade. “But that’s not the important part,” he said with an effort.
“I’d say the existence of a creature who is one of the old ones, but who looks like she does and who can walk in the light and the sun is important!” Porthos said impatiently.
Athos opened his eyes and directed what he hoped was a quelling glare at Porthos. “Yes, my friend, but that is not the point. The point of this conversation, and what I meant to convey to you, is that they’re taking the boy, the Gascon, back to Gascony as fast as they can possibly travel. There was . . . ” he rushed to speak further as he saw them staring uncomprehendingly at him. “There was the suggestion of haste, the feeling that they were using relays of vampires and Judas goats driving the carriage day and night and that it was of the utmost, frantic urgency to get d’Artagnan back to his ancestral domain.”
Porthos ran his hand over his forehead and eyes and said, “But in the Lord’s name, why?”
Aramis asked, “Well, that absolves us responsibility, does it not? What business is it of ours what happens in Gascony? At a guess, it is the result of some feud or event in his land, surrounding his domain. Nothing to do with us.”
Protest rose in Athos, but he didn’t know why nor how to express it. He had no time for it, anyway. The lady rose, looking if possible more curvaceous in her borrowed musketeer’s attire than in her feminine clothes—which Athos would guess were somewhere in the depths of the river. She took three paces to the heavily curtained window, then back again, her brow furrowed, her eyes narrow. “Father d’Herblay,” she said, turning to Aramis, and in the safe secrecy of this room, using his proper title.
Aramis and a dozen others, judged strong enough by the leadership of the church that swore allegiance to the pope and not the cardinal, had been given the opportunity to take orders in secret. Then they’d been sent into the world, in the expectation none of them would survive very long but that, while they lived, they might be able to stem the tide of evil. They could bless salt and water, they could baptize, they could give sacraments.
With their brief light, they could not stop the vampires, but they could delay them and pray for a greater power to stop them. Aramis had once told Athos that of the initial dozen only two remained. They must keep their ordination secret, lest vampires target them particularly. To that end, they had been granted dispensation from the vows of chastity, so that they might not be conspicuous in a society determined to enjoy itself as much as possible while the world burned around it. Aramis had been careful to earn quite the worldly reputation at court. But he was a priest, nonetheless, and the serious look he gave Madame Bonacieux acknowledged the full gravity and danger of his calling.
She, in turn, clenched her fists, and let words pour from her lips like stones tumbling in a landslide “What a vile, base denial,” she said. “Is that not how your holy founder denied his divine master I don’t know Him?”
Aramis frowned in annoyance, his lips thinning, “Madame!” he said. “There is no call to mention Saint Peter, no need to refer to the Savior. I do not know this Gascon boy. None of us do. He has been a cipher, an interloper, from the moment he followed us from Monsieur the Tréville’s office until now. I’ve seen no signs that he’s not a spy for the vampires, a more advanced form of Judas goat.” He stood, clearly bothered by having to look up at her while she glared down at him. Standing, he overtopped her by a head and could scowl down at her and look superior and disdainful. “Look at what happened while the boy and I were escorting you to the palace. Have we ever before met with such a reverse? How did the vampires know to wait for us under that bridge?”
Madame made a sound in her throat, that was part laughter and part disdain. “O
h that is rich, d’Herblay! Rich indeed. Are you suggesting he chose the route?”
“Not chose it but—”
“He did not even know it, d’Herblay, don’t play the fool.” She shook her head. “You don’t know the boy, you say, but I do. He is a brave and gallant man—not a boy except in age. He was foolish enough to follow your instructions in getting me off the bridge, but equally brave and gallant in convincing me to run away while sacrificing himself.” She looked up at him in appeal. “How can you he’s not our responsibility and we have nothing to do in the case.”
“Very easily, Madame,” he said, looking down at her and seeming—Athos thought—his coldest and most aristocratic. He often used the same demeanor to prevent Porthos questioning him about something. His attempts to do the same to Athos had always failed. It was, Athos knew, not what Aramis did when he was sure of himself and certain of his position. It was what he did when he did not wish his decisions probed or thoughts plumbed. “Clearly if they’re taking him back to Gascony, the reason for his capture concerns whatever happened in Gascony before he came to Paris. If it involved us, then they would have killed him or turned him on the spot. If they are taking him south, it is a matter having to do only with him.”
She set her hands on her hips, looking younger and also more down to earth, her court-manner stripped away by anger. “Rubbish. Whether he was sought for himself or his association with us matters not. He was captured because he wouldn’t let them capture me. He’s gallant and pure of heart and—”
“And you hope he would materially help you with those rituals to which, you told me earlier, your husband was unable to lend assistance?”
Her hand flashed through the air, white and purposeful. The impact of her hand against his cheek was so stunning it seemed like a clap of thunder, only the mark of her fingers, red against Aramis’ skin, gave witness to her fury.
She stared at him, openmouthed, as though surprised at her own action. She curtseyed incongruously, in her borrowed breeches. “I beg your pardon, Monsieur, that was intemperate of me.”
He raised his hand to his offended cheek, “I thought intemperate was a characteristic of your religion, it being all about nature and doing what you wish while dressed in the cloak of faith.”
She clenched her fists. Her small white teeth bit at her lower lip. “Well, at the very least,” she said, “we are not pious fops who go about doing what we wish and claiming we do it only to disguise our vocation from the vampires.”
He opened his mouth but before he could speak Porthos was between them, a hand raised in front of each combatant. “Let us not re-enact in Aramis’ scriptorium the wars of religion,” he said. “It is not which of our faiths is better, nor what we believe. We long ago established, did we not, that whatever works against the vampires is of God and needs no other justification and no other excuse?” He looked from one to the other. “I thought we were allies in the war against the greater evil.”
Both parties muttered something that might be assent—the lady blushing pink, Aramis paling white, but Porthos shook his head. “The matter is not which of you is right about any of this, but only if we should go after the boy and rescue him. And, if we choose to intervene, then what course we should take. This has nothing,” the usually inarticulate giant added, “to do with whether we are responsible for his predicament or not. Good God above, sir and Madame, we do not go into battle against the vampires because we are responsible for their being here, or for their depredations against our fellow men. How could we be? And if we rescue the boy it will not be because we owe it to him, having gotten him in trouble, but because he’s a fellow human whose life is at risk. Did we owe it to the boy, Planchet, to save him? No. And yet we rushed in imperiling our lives. His eyes slid over Aramis and to where Athos still sat in his chair. “What say you, Athos?”
“I—” He took a deep breath. “I think we should rescue him. I felt the urgency of his position. Enough to want to find him and prevent his . . . suffering my fate. But it is now almost morning.” Seeing Porthos glance toward the curtained window, he added, “I can feel the approaching daylight the . . . pressure of it. I can do nothing till night. Even if I manage to stay awake, not all the will in the world will save me from burning in the sunshine. Whatever my . . . whatever Milady does to avoid it, it is a secret not known to me. Not do I have the fortitude of vampires, or even—right now—of men. I must rest.”
“Well, then . . . ” Porthos said. He shook his head and looked at Aramis, appealingly. “Aramis, it is clear that Athos wishes us to rescue the boy that he thinks we . . . ”
Aramis glared at Porthos, “And I think it is foolishness and a deal of stupidity which I would not expect even from you, my friend. Would you have us traipse all over the countryside leaving the performance of our true duties unattended? The chances of our being able to survive the journey are slim enough, even if it’s just the two of us. But by our departure, we leave our duty at the palace unfulfilled. Already Athos, being wounded and out of the rotation, has left one opening in the musketeers. Add to that my rotation in the special guardianship of the queen being left untenanted. And pray, consider, Madame Bonacieux will have to make her way to and from the palace by herself.”
“No. Madame Bonacieux will not,” she said firmly. “Because Madame Bonacieux does not need the escort of all of you gallant chevaliers,” she favored them with a withering glare, “nor your moral guidance to do what must be done. Madame Bonacieux knows her own ethics require her to rescue those in need and help the helpless. She will be making her way to Gascony as soon as she can inform her colleagues amid the guardians that her place by the queen must be filled, and she can procure transportation.” She curtseyed again and turned her back on them.
“Madame!” Aramis said, and Porthos, “You cannot mean it.”
She turned before opening the door. “Oh, I assure you I very well can. I shall see you when I return, messieurs. Or not at all.”
Opening the door only a crack, she slid out. Her exit admitted the faintest of rosy sunlight into the room—enough to make Athos feel uncomfortable, but not enough to hurt him.
And then she slammed the door behind her. Aramis said, heatedly, “Of all the exasperating, annoying females.”
Athos could only think that in this case, as in most others, his new condition made him less than human. Unable to follow Madame Bonacieux to the street and get a horse immediately, and trace the young Gascon to his homeland, to rescue him from whatever foul ensnaring plot awaited him there.
Let Us Not Fall
D’ARTAGNAN woke up. The kitchen was suffused with pale light and for a breath he thought he must have slept no more than minutes. But standing, his legs cramped, dispelling this notion. He could see out the kitchen window the sun setting in a glory of gold and red in the west. The sun.
He reeled, partly from his cramping muscles and partly from surprise, and held onto the table. He must be on his way. He must. Or would it be safer to hide here, to sleep, to wait the morning’s return and with it the safety of daylight that would keep his pursuers at bay.
It was a difficult decision. His pursuers might track him here—though he’d been careful to obscure his path and leave no traces—or they might not. It was less likely he would stumble on local vampires if he stayed hidden in the farmhouse. Clearly the house had been empty for months, possibly for years. It would not be searched by vampires now.
He stood straight again and stretched. He would get another bucket of water, and clean himself, then find a blanket and lay down on the floor, after eating another apple or two and a bit of cheese. This would allow him to be well and truly rested by morning.
But he’d taken no more than two steps into the darkened area before the doorway, before a hand shot out and closed on his arm.
D’Artagnan screamed, his free hand lashing out, his whole body attempting to twist away from the grasp of his captor. But another hand closed on his arm with crushing force, holding him immobil
e.
Peering into the gloom, he saw Rochefort, wearing a full cloak, his dark face glaring from the folds of its hood. He saw now what he hadn’t distinguished in the gloom of night: the gentleman had only one eye, the other was covered by an eye patch. And with that, together with the name, he remembered vague references heard among the musketeers in the antechamber to Monsieur de Tréville’s chambers. Was it only two days ago? This must be Rochefort, the right-hand vampire to the cardinal, who was said to be the power behind the power behind the throne— .
D’Artagnan had heard he was a dangerous creature, and those given a choice would rather tangle with the cardinal himself than with Rochefort.
D’Artagnan tried to twist out of Rochefort’s grasp. To bite the hands holding him. In vain. He fixed his bare feet on the dusty floor and tried to pull his arms away, but it was to no avail. Whatever Rochefort was, he had a grip of iron. Besides, a pack of ancient vampires was emerging from the dark, clicking and rustling, their odor enough to gag d’Artagnan and to stop all thought. His captors held him firm, pulled his arms behind him and tied him with what seemed an excess of rope.
He noted, as though in a dazed dream, that the ancient vampires were also cloaked and coweled. They grabbed him with many hands, carrying him with little effort and throwing him into the carriage. This time they threw him on one of the seats. Rochefort sat beside him. D’Artagnan’s brief glimpse of the carriage revealed no more than a pitch-black lacquered frame and door, with the coat of arms of the cardinal emblazoned on the door. A mangled-looking Judas goat sat on the driver’s seat.
An opposite door opened and the ancient ones gathered inside the carriage, one sitting on the other side of d’Artagnan, the others filling the seat opposite, with the rest piling onto the floor, in what appeared to d’Artagnan to be unnatural positions.
“I see I underestimated you,” Rochefort said. “And I shouldn’t have. You are a dangerous man, my little Gascon. I should have suspected it. After all, I knew your father.”
