The Vampire Narcise rd-3

by Колин Глисон

  The words dangled there enticingly and Chas glanced at Narcise. Her face had gone blank and her eyes empty, and for the first time, he realized what Corvindale had meant by describing her as having dead eyes. One of her guards lifted the feather necklace and slid it over her head.

  She shuddered visibly this time, and he could see her breathing change.

  “Or you can slay him,” Moldavi told her. “Which is what I fully expect you to do. After all, you have had so many years of instruction. You should be able to best a wounded mortal.”

  He settled back in his seat, a complacent smile hovering over his lips. “Arm them,” he said, nodding to one of the guards.

  As they faced each other moments later, each brandishing a long, gleaming blade, Chas gathered his strength and steadied himself. The sword, which would normally be comfortable in his hands, felt heavier than usual. Awkward and wearing. He looked at Narcise.

  She was moving slowly, as if she had difficulty breathing, and he knew it was because of the feather necklace. That would make things all the more simple for him. Not that he truly believed Moldavi would set him free if he killed Narcise, but he intended to win and then, hopefully, set the smoke packet afire.

  “Begin!” commanded their host with a clap of his hands.

  She staggered, and he could see real pain in her face. He had a momentary pang of sympathy for her…for, despite the fact that he was hardly as powerful and agile as he normally was, he was certainly mobile. She hardly seemed able to move.

  She lunged toward him suddenly, her aim off and the sword jamming into the ground next to him. Their bodies clashed and he automatically reached out to steady her. As they bumped together, almost like two lovers embracing, she whispered, “Help me. Escape.”

  He stumbled back and whipped his blade around, wondering if he’d heard her correctly…wondering if it were another of her tricks. Her face tightened, her teeth bared in great effort as she lifted her sword and raised it over her head in a stroke that left her body wide-open for his blade.

  Chas knew it was his chance, and he realized, as their eyes met when he swung his weapon around, that she knew it. At the last minute, he lowered his blow—which would have easily cleaved hand from wrist, head from neck, and hand from wrist again—and turned the blade to its flat side.

  It struck the side of her torso, sending her staggering in the direction of the fire…which was precisely his intent. He came after her, and said, “Just as you saved me?” as he slammed the blade against her rising one.

  “Was the only…way…” she muttered, and he saw a wave of effort crease her face.

  Chas’s knee buckled and he stumbled into the wall, his sword scraping along the floor as he used it to regain his balance. Hell, it was like fighting when he was in his cups. He wondered if the spectators found the sight amusing or entertaining.

  They were near the fire now, and he had a decision to make. Trust her, or slay her, which would be easily done. Either way, he had one chance to use the smoke cloud. She seemed to have regained a bit of ferocity, somehow, and was coming at him again. “Please,” she said over the clash of their swords.

  Her eyes met his in that instant between the silver blades, and he saw pleading there. And desperation. Chas spun away, thinking suddenly of Sonia, and the argument they’d had when he visited her.

  Who made you God? she’d said. Who gave you the right to judge who lives and dies? I should think you of all people would understand why they did it.

  The pang of conscience, combined with the fear that he’d never see her again, and never be able to set things right—for he’d had his own harsh words: We all have our God-given abilities, and some of us actually use them, Sonia—unlocked something deep inside him.

  Narcise was more familiar with the makeup of the house. Having her with him might slow him a bit, but at least he wouldn’t get lost.

  He could always slay her later if he had to.

  “Be ready,” he said, parrying sharply at her, lunging at her. The more he fought and moved, the easier it seemed to get. His body was returning…even as hers slowed. Although their conversation was soft, lost in the noise of battle and their distance from the spectators, he took care to keep his face away from Moldavi when he spoke.

  She met his eyes, hers wide and hopeful, if glazed, and he reached into the pocket of his breeches with his free hand. “Thank you.”

  He had the packet, he was lining them up alongside the roaring flames. “Way out?” he asked, slamming his blade against hers to muffle their conversation.

  “There,” she gasped, her eyes going to the corner as she raised her blade weakly.

  She was so slow and clumsy that he sliced along her arm without meaning to, and heard a shout from the dais: “First blood!”

  Chas saw a small door in the corner and noted that it was far from the dais. Perfect. He might have a chance after all…as long as Jezebel wasn’t leading him into a den of lions or something worse. Like a locked door.

  “Locked?” he asked, circling around and creating a vicious thrust that clashed with her sword.

  “Don’t…think…” she gasped. “No.”

  He flipped the packet into the fireplace as he eased her toward the corner, waiting for the telltale explosion. Hoping to hell Miro’s chemistry worked as well now as it had during their trials.

  He was just about to give up when there was a soft muffled boom! and something shot from the fireplace.

  Sparks and coals blasted into the room, and in the moment of surprise, he grabbed Narcise, half lifting her against his hip, and ran unsteadily toward the door, sword still in hand.

  People were shouting and Moldavi was giving orders, but Chas ignored everything but the door. They had to get around the table and off the dais, and across the room…and he had the element of surprise. The puff of smoke rolled into the chamber, more slowly than he would have liked, but it was effective enough. His legs wobbled, his arms trembled and Narcise was little help in an ambulatory fashion. They fell into the door, the momentum of his running clumsy and imprecise.

  She shifted, gave a groan of exertion…then all at once, she was moving. The door opened and they burst out of the room.

  Narcise turned, suddenly strong and quick. “Help me,” she said, leaning against the door as something slammed against it from the other side. Chas found the wooden bar and fit it across, barring the door, and then she said, “This way,” and started down a dim corridor.

  She must have lost the feathers along their way through the chamber, or maybe even yanked them off her neck, because now she was faster and more agile than he.

  Chas wasn’t about to complain; he still had his sword and a partner who seemed able.

  They were going to make it.

  She ran and he followed, his legs protesting, the aches in his torso screaming, but this was for life—the pain could go to the Devil. He was going to make it.

  They came to the end of the corridor—a large, locked door—and just as they approached, a vampir guard turned to see them.

  Chas didn’t hesitate; it was second nature for him to duck under the attacking man, spin—albeit wobbly—and come back around from behind with the blade of his sword at neck level.

  The man’s head rolled to the floor in a gush and splash of blood, but Chas didn’t hesitate. He went for the door, looking for the lock, and realized that Narcise wasn’t with him.

  Turning, he saw her, pale-faced, half-collapsed against the wall. The blood. It had to be the blood. He grabbed her arm and towed her toward him, but her eyes were rolling back into her head and she was having trouble breathing.

  She collapsed into his arms and he realized it wasn’t the blood—vampirs craved it, but it didn’t make them faint.

  “Where’s the key?” he demanded, hearing shouts in the near distance. Damn the vampire sense of smell…they could track them as well as a dog could.

  She murmured something he couldn’t understand, and saw that she was severely inca
pacitated. Then he realized, through the intensity of the moment… “Feathers.”

  Narcise nodded, barely, and he realized why she’d never escaped on her own. Moldavi had the entrances and exits lined with feathers, or somehow used them to block it for her. He glanced around but didn’t see any sign of them…but for all he knew, they could be embedded in the door frame. She shuddered and tried to grasp him, but her fingers were weakening.

  Now he didn’t know if it would kill her to go over the threshold—assuming the feathers were there, and in great numbers, obviously—or whether once past, they would no longer affect her, even if she was so greatly weakened. But either way, he had to decide to take the chance, or leave her behind.

  “Where’s the key?” he demanded again, then realized the guard was there for a reason.

  Gingerly, still holding Narcise up with one hand, trying not to step in the pool of blood—he didn’t need that scent clinging to him as well—he fumbled around the vampire’s body.

  Just as the voices turned down the hallway, and he could feel the pounding of feet on the floor, he found the key hanging on a ring at the man’s waist.

  Chas yanked it, praying it would come free, and the man’s body jolted in protest. He used his sword to slice down blindly and cut the bloody thing from his waist, taking a chunk of clothing and skin with it.

  Key in hand, a weak and useless Narcise over his sword arm, he lunged for the door. They were coming, and he nearly dropped the key from his weak and clumsy fingers…but he fit it in as their pursuers appeared in the hall behind them.

  Fifteen feet away and the door opened. Chas lunged through and dumped Narcise on the floor as he spun to close it behind him, struggling with the lock again in the light of a dim sconce.

  By the time he had it in place the force of the others on the opposite side had the door surging in its hinges. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said, turning to gather up Narcise again.

  But, praise God, she was on her feet—if pale—visaged and wide-eyed…and she was bloody damn smiling. He yanked the torch from the wall, even though she wouldn’t need light in the dark, and they started running together.

  “We made it,” she gasped. “We made it. We’re in the catacombs.”

  Chas looked around and realized they were in a stone-hewn tunnel lined with…skulls. Giordan Cale had described it to him, and had even drawn a rough map of the tunnels that Chas had committed to memory.

  She was right. They’d made it.

  And despite the fact that he hadn’t accomplished the task for which he’d come, he felt more than a little satisfied.

  13

  Narcise drew in the fresh, cool air and felt the tears gather in her eyes. Free. I’m free.

  It was well into the night, and Paris lay beyond her, around her…waiting for her. Paris, and the world…all of it, waiting for her.

  Yes, she’d been out of the apartments many times in the years of living here…but this was different.

  This time, she didn’t have to go back. This time she wasn’t accompanied by the insidious darkness of her brother, whose presence clung so heavily even when he was absent.

  This time she was walking, on her own two feet, instead of being transported in a dark vehicle with guards.

  “Are you coming with me?” said Woodmore in an impatient voice. “Or are you going to stand here and wait for them to catch up to us?”

  “With you,” she managed to say, terrified at the thought, as he grabbed her arm and began to walk off briskly.

  He had her clutched to his side, a bare-chested, battered man towing along a slender effeminate partner. At least, that was what she thought they might look like. And, apparently, even such an appearance wasn’t remarkable enough to glean notice from anyone else.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, still drinking in the air, the activity of people walking and talking and laughing. There were women smiling slyly, with red lips and very low bodices…there were lanky youths watching from the shadows…there were couples, strolling arm in arm as if they had nowhere to be…and no one to escape from.

  A group of the emperor’s soldiers wandered past, leaving Narcise to wonder if they knew their master was several feet below them, eating and drinking with a vampir.

  “I don’t bloody damn know, but wherever it is, we don’t have time to dawdle,” Woodmore replied. “Nothing went as I planned.”

  There were smells, too…lovely smells of spring flowers on the breeze, and fragrances from some of the well-dressed (and not so well-dressed) women strolling by. She scented sausages and cheese and wine and ale, cakes and bread and crepes all offered for the late-night patrons. A rolling lust for a cake, iced with cream, surprised her. She hadn’t had a sweet—or at least, hadn’t enjoyed one like that—since she was a girl in Romania. And beyond the food, there was the underlying stench of sewer and refuse, the damp and algae of the Seine, coal and wood smoke, and blood.

  The bloodscent was coming most strongly from the man next to her, mingling with sweat and burned flesh, and it teased her…for it had been some while since she’d fed.

  A blonde woman wearing a long, simple dress was standing near one of the columns along the Tuilieries. She seemed oblivious to the passersby who jostled through the narrow walkway beneath the covered promenade, bumping into or next to her.

  She was watching them closely, but her calm gaze wasn’t unsettling in its intensity. Instead, Narcise felt a wave of peace slip over her as their eyes met. The woman smiled as Woodmore fairly dragged her past and the Mark on Narcise’s back twinged painfully. It surprised her, for Luce hardly ever expressed his annoyance with her. Perhaps because she never had much chance to make a choice that would annoy him.

  The first step. Those words rang in her head and Narcise smiled to herself as she happened to meet the blonde woman’s eyes. She nodded at her, although of course there was no possible way the woman could know why she was nodding. But, yes, this was only the beginning.

  It occurred to her, then, as Woodmore snapped his hand at a hackney cab—then decided not to climb aboard when a well-dressed gentleman pushed his way ahead of them—that she didn’t have anywhere to go herself. She had no money. She knew no one—an uncomfortable memory pinched her belly and she thrust away the thought of someone she did know—and didn’t know whom to trust.

  But then a name did appear in her mind. Dimitri, the earl, in London. Cezar hated the man ever since he ended a business association with him when Dimitri learned that Cezar was a child-bleeder. And…there’d been that night in Vienna, when Cezar had offered Narcise to Dimitri.

  Although she’d been dull with pain from a feather bracelet, Narcise still remembered that night…the cold, dark man who looked at her with a modicum of sympathy, but not even a flicker of lust.

  She would go to him. Any enemy of Cezar was a friend of hers.

  But in her fantasies, when she’d planned to make her escape, it was much less chaotic. Narcise had imagined a scenario in which she’d slipped from the house with a bag on her shoulder when the place was quiet and everyone was sleeping or otherwise distracted. Or that she’d be standing over Cezar’s headless body saying a fond farewell as his blood coursed onto the floor.

  Just as Woodmore said: Not as planned.

  But, nevertheless, it had worked.

  “Here,” he said suddenly, towing her into a shadowy alcove.

  The next thing she knew, they were at the backside door of a small public house that smelled of old ale and stewing meat, and Woodmore was negotiating in rapid French with its proprietor. He flashed that white smile, made a lewd gesture and then produced a small pouch that clinked—which she swore he hadn’t had moments earlier.

  The pouch’s contents seemed to be the deciding factor for the proprietor, and the door opened wider. She felt the man’s amused grin on her as Woodmore led her inside and then directly up a set of dark, dingy stairs where the smell of coitus and ale clung to the walls. She wasn’t certain whether the pr
oprietor recognized that she was a woman and not a man, but in either case, it didn’t matter.

  After all, this was Paris.

  And the recently liberated Narcise had no qualms about following the vampir hunter into a small bedchamber lit only by the glow of a lamp.

  “Shut the door,” Woodmore ordered, and when she turned back, she saw that he’d sat on the bed.

  For the first time, she noticed how much difficulty he seemed to have breathing. His torso and arms were a mass of cuts, bruises and large burns. “You’re hurt, what—”

  “You just noticed this?” His voice was harsh. He seemed to struggle for a moment, then added in marginally softer tones, “I need to get cleaned up. They’re going to bring a bath.”

  Even his sharp words didn’t offend Narcise. She was free. Nothing would upset or annoy her now. Yet, she felt that she owed him some explanation. “It was the only way to get him to allow us to fight.”

  “And how precisely would fighting have helped us if one of us was dead? Or did you simply plan to kill me—but then how would that benefit you?” His voice was rough and unsteady.

  “I didn’t expect him to make us fight till the death. I thought I would allow you to win, and then you would take me to…well, it doesn’t matter now, does it? We are here, and I’m free. Thank you. Do you need food? And where did you get the money? Surely you didn’t have it in your breeches all this time.”

  “I venture to guess that such a bulge would have been noticeable,” he said, flashing a surprise smile. “At least, in certain places. I lifted the coins from the sot who stole our hack. He’ll never miss them, and I can’t draw on my resources until tomorrow.”

  She’d walked over to turn the light up and by then, a knock sounded on the door. She opened it to reveal a maidservant with a jug of ale and a platter of cheese and bread. The girl brought it in, put it on a table, then turned to the cold fireplace.

  “I don’t believe they have your particular vintage,” Wood-more said, gesturing to the food.