by Sarah Hoyt
How to explain to Aramis, the desire, the need, the inability to refuse, the fear that if he denied the beast the beast would take over. He didn’t try. Instead he said, solemnly. “We’d both have died, otherwise. You’d never have found us in time.”
Aramis drummed his fingers on the window sill of the shuttered window. Pierre had killed his father in fair duel, cleansed most of the town—the stragglers were being hounded out of the bastide, even now.
The standing stones had been righted, though they now guarded nothing more dangerous than a tomb and some paintings. The hard part had been explaining to Pierre that Athos might be a vampire, but he fought vampires. D’Artagnan’s testimony had been near useless.
“He’s a Judas goat now!” Pierre had shouted at Athos, looking revolted. “Your Judas goat! That’s how Judas goats are made. D’Artagnan won’t be able to resist you.”
It had taken the salt and the crucifix to convince Pierre, and he was still jumpy around Athos, still acting as though he expected the musketeer to attack him. And why should he not? Athos would not trust his beast, so why should anyone else?
“From what I can understand,” Aramis said. “You killed the vampire king at the only time he could be killed. After he woke and before he finished feeding on the ritual sacrifice.”
“I was the intended sacrifice,” Athos said, slowly, frowning. “I think Charlotte meant for me to follow the boy. Kidnapping the boy, bringing him here was a trap for me, all along, even if they needed to know where the king was.”
A knock on the door and Grimaud’s voice, “Monsieur le Comte, the . . . Madame Bonacieux . . .”
“I’ll tell him myself,” the priestess of nature said. She burst into the room, none the slower for the bandaged wound all knew to be on her leg, although hidden under the very proper petticoats she’d returned to. She, like Pierre, treated Athos somewhere between a hero and a monster. But she’d been nursing the boy for these two days and a night and a half. Athos turned, suddenly scared. He didn’t feel that the boy had taken a turn for the worse, but—
“It is not about him,” she said, her voice curt. “It is about a scrying. While we were here,” she said, her voice catching. “Her Majesty the Queen was left with insufficient guards and . . .” Madame Bonacieux shook her head. “She has disappeared from the palace. No one knows where she is. We must go!”
“Yes,” Aramis said. “As soon as possible, we must go, to Paris, with all speed. We must find the Queen and rescue her.”
Athos looked bewildered. “But it shouldn’t matter,” he said, feeling as though his victory were snatched away from him. “We killed the vampire king. We . . .”
Aramis shrugged. “And yet the vampire queen still lives, and there are still vampires in the world. If they capture the throne of France we’ll still be lost. And there’s no reason to allow it. We have killed a vampire king, the most ancient of all vampires. We should be able to rescue Her Majesty with not much trouble. You must see it falls to us, Athos.”
Athos felt the words pass through his lips before he knew, “To me, musketeers,” he said, his voice soft, and sad, accepting of his destiny. Vampire or not, he served a cause greater than himself. “To me, of the king.”
Author’s Bio: Under several pen names, and in several genres, Sarah A. Hoyt has written and published over 32 novels. Her science fiction novel Darkship Thieves (Baen Books) won the Prometheus Award in 2011. Her first novel Ill Met by Moonlight (first published by Ace books) was a finalist for the mythopoeic award. She has published short stories in Analog, Asimov’s, Weird Tales, and several anthologies by DAW books and Baen Books. When not writing, she enjoys Natural History museums, art museums, zoos and cheap diners. She lives in Colorado with her husband, two sons, and a variable (but usually increasing) number of cats.
This novel was initially published by Prime Books, under the pen name Sarah Marques.
Table of Contents
Paris, Wednesday, April 9, 1625
Ruins and Fallen Angels
The Destiny of Fools
Clean Cutting
The Blood and The Flesh
Revenge and Fear
Angels and Demons
The Bells
Nocturnal Pollution
Ringing In
The Rose In The Thorn
Hearts And Shields
Honeyed Death
Living Water
Casting Lots
Into Temptation
A Dark and Dreary Journey
Trading In Spirits
La Belle Dame
From the Terror of Night
Angel With the Sword
By Water and Blood
Casting Lots
Remnants
Duties and Delusions
Let Us Not Fall
Into the Dark
Together Again
Perils of The Roads
Home Exile
De la Fère
Betraying Memory
Down, Down, Down
Sanctuary
From On High
The Power of the World
That Fool Man
Mutiny and Turmoil
Captive
By Sword and Blood
Fighting Inward
Vile, Abject
Blind
In The Peril of Death
The King
Only Human
Waking
A Life for a Life
The Beast and the Angel
This Son of Mine
To Paris
