Miguel’s eyes changed as he drank. The black of his pupils expanded to cover the iris and then continued to bleed over into the whites until he had the eyes of an obsidian statue.
Pleasure, or something else, convulsed him a second time. She forced her arms to move, to hold him. To offer comfort, but also to remind him that she was there, alive and suffering and that he must remain aware enough to rein his monster in before it truly killed her.
It was a near thing, the struggle between Miguel and his beast, and if she had been unaltered she would have died of blood loss while the battle raged. Miguel finally mastered the killer, though. He released her abruptly and rolled onto his side. Ninon could feel a trickle of blood on her throat and smelled copper in the air. But that was all she could feel and smell. He hadn’t offered her blood. He hadn’t given her any power.
“You didn’t finish,” she said, her words barely audible above the moaning wind and still a bit slurred. As she had hoped, the electrical interference of the storm made it easier to hide her thoughts from both the god and Saint Germain.
“He didn’t want me to—and I wanted to spare you. You have no idea of the pain involved, the eternal craving.” He opened his eyes. They looked almost normal again. Only his pupils remained dilated, and that was probably from the jimsonweed.
“I don’t want to be spared. I need to be changed, Miguel, if I’m to live. But we’ll have to exchange blood later. There is something else I must do right now.”
“It isn’t blood,” he said, frowning. “I told you—forget all that Dracula crap. You don’t drink my blood. That isn’t how it’s done.”
“Then what…?” She suddenly understood the scars on his back. “You inject something into me.”
“Yes. Into your spine. I crack open your bones and shoot poison into you—and it will eat at you like acid, like decay. You can’t want that.”
She looked at Miguel, so concerned for her—and, emotional slavery or not, she cared back. The thought was mildly dismaying.
Smoking Mirror, you had better not try doing anything else to your son, because he is mine now and I will protect him.
“But I do want it, Miguel. However, we have to get out of this storm before you get fried,” she said, finding that she could talk clearly again. Bless her body’s superior metabolism! Fear and anger left her by degrees, allowing her lungs to expand as they needed so that she could draw deep breaths and prepare her muscles to move. The returning calm was welcome.
You are still very annoyed, though. I’ve never felt you so angry.
The lightning did not affect her own inner voice. Why had she thought it would?
That’s because I am you, cherie. As long as you can think, so can I.
I am annoyed—enraged even. The god tried to kill me with his damn drug, and he stopped Miguel from finishing the ceremony and giving me his power. That’s hostile and breaking our bargain. I didn’t die, true, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s the nasty thought that counts, not whether or not Smoking Mirror succeeded. And I don’t trust him to kill Saint Germain when he should. He’ll try and suck out his power, or maybe make him a protégé. I can see him thinking that Saint Germain would be a swell son. After all, Saint German would kill without qualm.
And you think Saint Germain might win that encounter and steal the god’s power?
I think it’s possible. The god is stupidly arrogant. And it would be too much to hope they’d get into a pissing contest and kill each other.
I suppose…well, we’d best make haste. The storm draws near. The voice paused a moment. Cherie, are you actually thinking of trying to kill him. A god?
He isn’t a god in anything except name. He’s just a monster. And I admit that the thought has crossed my mind a few times in the last few hours. I don’t know how yet, but I have learned one thing from Saint Germain and the Dark Man—the only thing to do with an enemy is bury them as soon as you get the chance. You don’t leave pissed-off people behind, and looking for revenge.
The voice sighed but didn’t argue. You’ve grown hard.
I’ve had to.
“I thought you wanted lightning!” Miguel shouted over the storm as she sat up. He couldn’t talk in her head anymore either.
“I do, but not just now. We need tools. Help me up,” she commanded. Smoking Mirror was trying to pull the storm away, but it was too late. She had hold of it now.
Miguel reached for her and hauled her to her feet. He didn’t seem surprised by her recovery. She wondered what he knew about their encounter, about how much blood he had taken, and that it was supposed to be fatal. He hadn’t guessed that the storm was just window dressing to keep her pliant until she was paralyzed. He didn’t know that his father was going to have him kill her and then let him live with the shock and guilt. The son of a bitch, Smoking Mirror, deserved to die.
They dressed quickly. There was no basking in postcoital glow, or napping as they cuddled and talked.
“Wouldn’t it kill you to be hit by lightning?” he asked as they began to run toward town. As she suspected, he had no trouble keeping up. Perhaps because she was still somewhat under the influence of Smoking Mirror’s paralytic drug.
“I don’t know. In my current state…maybe. If it were the wrong kind. What about you?”
“I don’t know.” Lightning crashed behind them, followed by almost immediate thunder. So, the god was feeling pissy. Too bad. He was going to follow through with their bargain now whether he wanted to or not.
“Why did you lie before about the storm and your reasons for coming here? And why tell the truth now?” he asked, sounding curious rather than judgmental.
“Because neither the god nor Saint Germain can hear me right now with all this electricity in the air. They could before—and they can’t know what we’re doing until it’s too late to stop us. This storm isn’t window dressing. It’s a tool—a weapon.”
He digested this, perhaps recalling that he had been able to read her mind.
“What are we doing?”
“For one thing, you’re going to finish that ritual and give me your blood or whatever.”
“But—”
“It won’t affect me the way he thinks,” she yelled above the wind, trying to sound completely confident. “Also, if you want, I can make you like me.”
“And I would want that why? So I can be what I am forever?” he asked. She saw his point—he already had one rather large handicap.
“Well, if it goes according to plan, you’d be able to slow or even halt your vampirism and still go out in the daylight—something that might be impossible for you now that you have completed the cycle and taken blood. Look, I’m not sure how it all works with vampires or even with humans. I should need to eat constantly with the way my metabolism changed, but I actually need very little food to survive. I don’t age or get sick. I think it will be the same with you and blood. Also, I had a fatal, degenerative lung disorder and it was halted by the…” She didn’t want to say electrocution. “By the treatment.”
For the first time he looked genuinely startled. She knew he was thinking that there had to be a downside to what she offered, but almost any consequence seemed better than the one he was facing now.
Cherie, what if it has the opposite effect? What if it turns the vampire in him loose and makes him strong and ravenous?
Then we have a problem, she admitted.
Are you prepared to kill him? If something goes wrong.
Yes. But I won’t have to. He’ll kill himself.
Perhaps, but it will be immeasurably harder once you have transformed him. You know how hard it is to die.
I know. And it would be harder for her to commit suicide as well when she had changed into a vampire, but she already knew that she would end it all if the vampirism couldn’t be controlled. Sin or no sin, that was the only option for her. She would not become a parasite preying on the innocent. That was a line she would not cross, not if she had to send her soul to everlasting he
llfire to avoid it.
“Sounds good to me. I’ll chance it,” Miguel decided, interrupting her grim internal moral lecture. “What do we need to do?”
“We’re going to the church roof. I left some things there.”
“What things?”
“Things we need to safely electrocute ourselves with St. Elmo’s fire. Don’t worry, the roof is the perfect spot for it. Those bronze angel statues and the bell are like a massive conductor.”
“Splendid. How do you know there’ll be St. Elmo’s fire there?” he asked. To his credit, he hadn’t flinched at the word “electrocution.”
“It’ll be there. I attract it whenever there’s a storm. I’d have done this sooner, but Saint Germain has managed to keep the clouds away.”
“That’s why you asked Smoking Mirror for a storm?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but she didn’t think he was ready to hear the rest.
He digested it.
“Not to be a wet blanket, but what happens if something goes wrong?”
“Then we die.” Either in the transformation, or by their own hands after.
He thought about that. But not for long.
“I can think of worse things,” he finally said. “You know that S.M. will probably kill us for disobeying him?”
“He’ll probably try.” Again. The high from the electricity in the air made her manic enough to sound cheerful. “If we’re lucky, he won’t succeed. Now tell me, do you have any strong feelings about patricide?”
“Very strong. I’m completely for it—at least in this case. I really think he actually meant for me to kill you tonight. He thought I’d lose control and drain you dry. It could have happened.”
“So, you knew his plan. I wasn’t sure.” She wanted to say that she was sorry he’d had to face this, to offer comfort. But there was none to put forward. His father was a murderous bastard who would torture and even kill his own son if it seemed expedient. Sorry didn’t begin to cover that.
“I suspected.” Miguel thought some more.
“What? There’s something else bothering you.” She picked up speed. Again, he kept pace. “Ask now, or forever hold your peace. Once we do this, there’s no taking it back.”
“Is your life always like this?” he demanded.
“Pretty much. It’s go, go, go, when you have a homicidal magician on your trail.” Fully recovered, she put on a final burst of speed. As she had hoped, Miguel did too. He was physically strong. He should be able to withstand electrocution.
Please, bon Dieu, I am not worthy. But make him able to survive the fire and for it to chain the beast. Don’t let me be the one to kill him. Saint Germain, yes—and Smoking Mirror. But not Miguel.
She found the stone in a small catalogue from the National Museum in Mexico City, published in 1929. It was believed to depict the standard female sacrifice ritual to the god of death, Mictlantecutli, in a ceremony of fire. What interested Ninon was that it was shown with lightning in the sky, bolts of which were hitting the altar. Some of the victims had lightning bolts hitting medallions on their chests as well. The presiding god had his tongue extended—as all gods do, because they are immortal and like sticking their tongues out at the world—but he seemed to have some kind of dagger or needle attached to the end of it. He also had something that resembled a serpent attached to his body in the general region of his penis. In no other stone was the god shown this way and some scholars, the pamphlet said, questioned whether this was even Mictlantecutli. Might he be some representation of the vampire cult that had flourished before the Conquistadors wiped it out?
Strangest of all was the calendar on the back of the cylinder. The Aztecs had a two-hundred-sixty standard day calendar broken down into eighteen equal months. At the end of that, they had a time called Nemontemi—five “lost days” that were to appease the gods. These were frightening days when the gods had to be propitiated or evil would come into the world. That was when the fire sacrifice took place.
Scholars were puzzled. Ninon was intrigued.
She visited the museum as soon as she could but was told upon arrival that the stone had disappeared more than seventy years ago, right after the catalogue was published. Would she like to see the stone of the sun instead?
Unhappy, she had nonetheless seen the stone of the sun—and every other stone in the museum—but nothing offered her any clue as to what the first engraving had meant. Her only hint was where the stone was found. It was discovered at the bottom of one of the pozas in an area called Cuatro Cienegas.
For too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
—“Garden of Proserpine” by Algernon Charles Swinburne
I was on the road to Tournai and was informed of the presence of M. le Comte de St. Germain at an inn and de sired to be presented to him. An interview was granted with the restriction that he would appear incognito and that I not press him to partake of food or drink.
—Casanova, Memoires
CHAPTER NINE
“Undress and lay down,” Ninon urged Miguel, unzipping the backpack she had left on the roof. She quickly began unrolling chains that she wrapped around the church’s bell and secured with an S-hook. They were heavy, made of iron instead of aluminum. As soon as he was naked, she began draping them around his wrists and ankles and waist where she hooked them in place. She ordered her hands not to tremble. It was difficult because the increasing electrical charge in the air made her muscles jumpy. Also, she was a little bit afraid—which was only right when preparing to steal fire from the gods.
“This is a bit kinky,” he said, lifting his wrists. She gave him a quick smile. The wind was whipping about them, lifting her hair into the sky. Now that she had stopped moving from place to place the storm was closing in quickly.
She knelt beside him, plucked the medallion off her own chest, opened it, and laid it over his heart. She pressed down hard so that small spikes pierced his skin.
“Ow. I guess you owed me one.”
“Sorry—we need iron over the heart,” she said, but the wind tore most of her words away. She didn’t really want to explain what was happening anyway. Most people would balk at the idea of constructing a lightning rod over their heart.
“Didn’t you want me to—well, change you first?” he asked.
She looked toward the storm front, then shook her head regretfully.
“No time. We’ll have to do it after.” Assuming there was an after.
She got out a second medallion—this one not decorative—and drove the prongs into her own body with a hard slap. The gesture was practiced and was probably reassuring to the watchful Miguel, though he had to notice the small trickle of blood running down her belly.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t have time to find topical anesthetic,” she yelled. She didn’t add that there was also no time to apply a barrier between the metal and their skin. The whole thing was makeshift and they would probably be burned. The wounds would heal quickly, but would hurt until they did.
Miguel nodded. The lightning was close now. He counted aloud the seconds between the flash and the thunder. “One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand.”
“It’s not too late to change your mind.” She had to say this. There had been no time to explain what this transformation would mean—having to put oneself through the fire every few decades, the slight but ever mounting brain damage that occurred with each electrocution that would some day lead to insanity. And that whatever ailments you had when you transformed might come back—always stronger—each time the effects began to wear off. In his case, vampiric bloodlust.
If there had been time, she would have waited until she contacted Byron and asked him for help. The poet didn’t seem
to have to renew himself as often as she did. Perhaps Dippel had improved his process by the time he had “cured” the poet’s epilepsy.
“Yes, it is. Years too late.” He looked into her eyes. “If there is any chance that this will help control the vampirism, I must take it. I have been on the borderline for a long time and I know I’m getting worse. It’s only a matter of time before I kill someone.”
She understood. Sometimes the Devil really was worse than the deep blue sea.
“Anyway, you can be my training wheels while I learn to ride this bike.”
“Okay.” Ninon loaded a dose of adrenaline and amphetamine into a second syringe. The first was retrieved from her bag. The last thing she did was remove her contact lenses—it would be bad to have them melt in her eyes. She looked up and he saw her unveiled gaze for the first time and sucked in his breath. She knew that her irises were black—completely black. Her skin was also beginning to glow. She hoped no one was looking at the top of the church or there would be wild rumors about angel visitations at the iglesia.
“I wish I could spare you this next part,” she said, between wind gusts.
“I don’t ask to be spared.”
“Nevertheless…”
“I know. I’m not crazy about hurting you either.”
Ninon stripped off her own remaining clothes. Carefully, she laid herself down over his body, belly pressed to belly as she grasped in tight fists the chains that bound him. His heart thudded beneath her. The pose might have been erotic under other circumstances, but neither of them could feel much but anticipation and dread.
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