Descent into Dust

by Jacqueline Lepore

  He was right—had I not said this very thing so many times? I was not ready. But that no longer mattered.

  “I have only twelve days,” I said, and that, really, was the end of it.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  We found a ship leaving from Boulogne-sur-Mer. Fox let a room at an inn, where we could wait out the hour until it would be ready. I sank into a dusty chair, exhausted from our swift flight from Amiens. Fox, however, was restless. He placed his bag on the table and began to unpack it, inspecting the equipment assembled within.

  I watched silently as he lifted a bundle of stakes, each honed to a deadly point. He weighed each in his hand as he evaluated its worth. Eight in all. A short-handled ax followed, then a cloth-wrapped item I could see, from the way the folds covered it, was a large cross. A silver vial. Holy water, I assumed.

  The muscles of his shoulders flexed as he heaved a large, heavy, flat-headed mallet out onto the table. A dance of nerves tickled my back as I imagined him swinging it high, then bringing it down to bear on one of the stakes he’d made to drive it through the corpse. I closed my eyes for a moment against the reminder of our grisly purpose.

  When I opened them, I found him looking at me. “I am near madness with worry for Henrietta,” I said, shaking my head to throw off my dark imaginings. “We must find a way to make certain she is kept safe through all of this. We must find a way to get to her, though I do not know how. Neither Mary nor Roger will allow it.”

  He was tense, and although he nodded, I felt the stab of doubt. Would he protect the child at all costs, or was it only killing Marius that meant anything to him? Just as Dom Beauclaire warned us not to underestimate Father Luke, I must not make a similar mistake with Fox.

  “We should take her away, kidnap her if we must,” I pressed.

  Mr. Fox shook his head, firmly but with sympathy. “He will find her, Emma. He has bound her to him, though I know he has not defiled her, for he needs her pure. But he will use her when the time comes. She is not safe, not anywhere.”

  The ship Mr. Fox found for us was old, the mates dodgy, and the captain would have—I had no doubt—tossed us overboard if he thought there was any profit in it. But we had nothing much for either captain or crew to covet, and that was our protection. That and the steely glint in Mr. Fox’s eye which brooked no nonsense, and the undercurrent of danger that seemed to emanate from his very pores.

  We disembarked swiftly, and hired a hansom to take us to the railway station for the train to Basingstoke, where we might book a car north to Marlborough. I was tired, and slept on the way, curled against the shabby squabs. Hunger wakened me, for I’d had nothing since the sparse breakfast of bread and cheese at the Boulogne-sur-Mer inn.

  Valerian was watching me. “It is only a little while longer.”

  “I must eat something.” I sat up and stretched. “I am faint with hunger. I regret I am not one of those whom anxiety deprives of appetite. Rather, I grow ravenous.”

  “Do not apologize,” he said, signaling to the driver to take us into the next village. We found an inn and ate a splendid repast of lamb stew finished with a shiny apple and rich cheese for dessert.

  “Do you wish to continue traveling, or should I let rooms?” Fox asked at the conclusion of the meal. “If we ride on through, we will make the train in the morning.”

  “Let us go on,” I said. “I am anxious to be back in Avebury.”

  We departed with dusk gathering on the western horizon. I was wary of the nighttime these days. But Valerian was beside me, and, lulled by the rocking motion of the conveyance, we grew sanguine and content in each other’s presence until his voice rumbled across the sandpaper shadows. “I have not been a good friend to you.”

  I was a little sleepy. “Not a perfect friend, mind, but saving my life over and over again certainly counts for something, I should think.”

  “I would have you return the favor.”

  I rolled my head against the backrest to try to make him out in the dim light. “Pardon me?”

  “I wish for you to save my life, Emma.”

  “Of course I shall, should it ever be in danger. You need not ask.”

  He waited a moment, then his gaze locked on mine. “You have not asked me why I took the hawthorn stick with the blood of the vampire on it.”

  “I suppose this is to do with whatever terrible secret you’ve been keeping.”

  His shock melted to thoughtfulness. “There was no hiding it from you, was there? But I wonder if you have guessed.”

  I sighed. “Valerian, do not ask any more patience from me. Whatever it is you are hiding, I pray you speak of it now.”

  “I will do better than that. I shall show you.” He spoke so low I could barely hear him. “But I must extract a promise in exchange. It is a great thing I will ask of you, but if you have any caring in your heart for me, you will do this, Emma.” His eyes closed, and his voice went dry. “I have no one else.”

  Five words. I have no one else. Indeed, spoken as they were by this quiet, dignified man, with heat sizzling in every syllable, I could not refuse him, though I suddenly wished I could. “I will do whatever it is. You can depend on me, Valerian.”

  Still he did not move, except to open his eyes and lock them on my face. “Vow it.”

  “Yes, then. I vow.”

  He seemed to relax. The shadows in the carriage were deep, and his eyes were like hollows, the lean cheeks gashed with shadow under the high bones. “My God,” he said with a small, humorless laugh. “Look at me. I am afraid.”

  I was growing afraid as well. He produced a lamp from his bag and gave it to me to hold while he lit a match and set the oiled wick to a low, soft glow. His hands came up to his cravat and pulled at the simple knot. In the silence, the slippery sound of the finely spun linen being unwound snapped crisply. I had no understanding of what he was about until he had completely removed the neck cloth and opened his collar to expose the skin at the base of his throat.

  I confess my first reaction was a rush of something very powerful, very carnal. Certainly, I did not comprehend at first what he was doing. The sight of his dusky skin, the smell of him, male and fragrant from soap, caused lust to strike hot and quick as a glowing poker in my stomach. I felt my lips go dry as my gaze took in the cords of muscle and strong bones outlined within the warm flesh. Then he turned his head, and in the fading daylight I saw two wounds, round and red, at the artery where the blood flowed under the ear.

  Puncture wounds.

  My recoil was instinctive, violent. I threw myself against the squabs with a sharp cry of alarm.

  I recovered fairly quickly. I was not afraid for my safety. “How many times?” I asked. He knew what I meant.

  “Only once. If I should die now, I will be dead, truly dead. Even if I should get bitten again.” He said this last with such tragic pleading, as if begging me to see him no differently than I had before. As if I, whose very blood ran with the taint of my mother’s undead master, should rebuke him.

  “But should I sustain a second, then a third bite,” he said, dropping the words like stones, “I will become a monster.”

  I cried an involuntary “No!” It was a silly, womanish thing, the cry of horror, but, as when he had first revealed his wounds, I could not control my instinctive reaction.

  He would not look at me. “After that night in Montmartre, Marius came for me. I knew nothing about vampires then, and I made a fatal mistake. I looked at him, you see, and that was my end. His eyes swallowed me, and I could do nothing to fight him.”

  Yes. I remembered how that was. The vampire lord took something from you in that one glance, warping the self inside you so that you were as a fly caught in a web, helpless as the spider scrabbles over filaments toward you.

  “You cannot imagine how my very soul seethed with repulsion as he tipped my head back and drank on me. I know I told you I had bought a cross to protect me, but I had no time to use it, entranced as I was. I felt the pain…but it was
not unpleasant. And I felt the strength bleed out of me, more than blood flowing from my body into his. He absorbed a part of my life, absorbed me.”

  His courage amazed me, his calm, although his voice shook on that last word. He took only a moment to collect himself and continued. “I remember thinking I would die. I sometimes wish I had. But I only fell ill, and when he touched something to my lips, I did not know what he offered. I felt and tasted blood, but I thought it was my own. I was so thirsty, and the blood quenched as a bladder of water would after walking miles through wastelands. It is no excuse, however. Then, afterward, I was so sick. I was ready for death. I wanted it.”

  I remembered that. Remembered wanting the unholy eternity when Marius had wrapped himself into my mind.

  “We were not Catholic, but the best care to be had was under a group of Carmelite nuns.” His smile was ironic. “Because Father was wealthy and influential, they saw to me around the clock. I was never left alone. In my hazy state, they looked like ghosts—or angels, in some of my fevered dreams—in their white habits and winged wimples. And large crosses around their necks, and rosary beads looped at their side.”

  “That is what protected you. The crosses.”

  He nodded. “The place was nearly a cathedral, for all of the religious accoutrements kept about. From the hospital, my father took me directly home to England and there I grew well. But I soon came to understand I had not survived my meeting with the vampire unscathed. I was changed, Emma. But you must believe me, trust me, that I am still a man. I do not crave the blood. I am still human.”

  His dark eyes searched mine, seeking to reassure me. And himself, I thought. He fears it is not completely true. He fears his own nature.

  “Your remarkable strength,” I said. “Is that part of it?”

  “Yes. I can also see great distances, and I hear more sharply than ordinary men. You noticed it, when I spied you and Henrietta that day down by The Sanctuary. These things are loathsome to me, Emma; they are constant reminders of what Marius did to me.”

  “Valerian,” I whispered. I wanted to touch him, but I knew he would not have it. “Why has Marius never finished what he began?”

  “I wear this,” he said, showing me the crucifix that hung under his shirt. “I am constantly on guard. Although he has had plenty of time and several prime opportunities to find me over the years, I have been prepared.”

  His impassioned words seemed to dart about the small dark space. “Naimah must have shown you how,” I said.

  “She did, and others who have taught me through my many travels.” He paused, and I saw his throat convulse. “It is my greatest dread, worse than death, to imagine myself undead. I will never give Marius the chance to take me. Yet I cannot always be certain I am secure. There are times when even I am caught unawares. Do you recall the night we went to Hess’s house?”

  I said I did. His fingers kneaded his temple. “I did a foolish thing that night, Emma. I was afraid if he should wake, and I wore this holy amulet, it would add to his horror and confusion. He was our friend, and you loved him. So I left it off.”

  I gasped lightly. “My God, I remember! Marius went for you.”

  “Father Luke saved me from much worse than death that night.”

  I regarded him with curiosity. “I remember what you told me, about a vampire wanting something from its victim. What did Marius desire from you?”

  He lifted one steel-sprung shoulder. Everything about him was tensed. He was waiting for me to show some sign that I reviled him, I knew. I was not certain that I did not. I did not know how I felt.

  “I never knew,” he answered. “There might have been something in me, some quality he wished to claim, some quirk of my youthful spirit. Recall how heroic and idealistic I had been. Or perhaps I reminded him of someone, perhaps even himself.”

  He fell into a short silence. I wished to give him words of comfort, but where would I find them? This was a breathtaking horror, something so vile it could scarce be imagined. Except for someone like me, someone who had also had to reconcile with the presence of the vampire living inside herself.

  I noticed how he stared at me and knew he was waiting for my response. I opened my mouth to tell him how sorry I was, but it seemed such an inadequate thing to say I closed it again without speaking.

  “I am not undead, Emma,” he said softly, a little anxiously. “But I will not deny that in some small part, I am as he. Marked, at the very least. See, he did not charm my wounds closed; I am branded, to remind me, to show all that I am his.” His voice lowered. “All of my natural life until death finds me, he will be my lord. I will only be released when he is dead, or I am.”

  This was a horrible thought, that Marius could claim any kinship with his victim. With Valerian. Still, it was true. But I was not disgusted by it even though my Dhampir nature abhorred the vampire in all its forms. The fact remained, I held nothing but compassion for Valerian. I had no impulse in me to hate him.

  He was awaiting my reaction, I knew. Waiting to see if I were going to revile him now that he had revealed his secret.

  I pressed my fingers to the wounds at his neck. They were dry and neat, though they looked angry as if the pointed teeth had pierced his flesh only hours ago. “That is why you are so driven to destroy him. You wish to set yourself free.”

  Valerian caught my hand in his, his eyes shining. He was so desperately sad, my heart wrenched. “Do you now see why, when I saw the blood on the hawthorn twig, I thought I might take it, learn how to use it? So that when I met him again I could save myself.”

  I wanted to assure him that I forgave him, but the words dammed up in my throat. I did not hate him for what he was, nor did I loathe what he had done; no harm had come from it, after all. But he had deceived me and I realized I could not fully forgive—at least not yet. “You have been waiting many years for this,” I said evenly, “and I suppose when temptation presented itself, your judgment was not as clear as you would have had it be.”

  “And they have been long years, Emma. Longer than you know, so much longer than you can guess.”

  The tension tightened around us. The little flame threw ghastly shadows across his face. I felt myself bracing, although I thought at the time this was silly. What more could he tell me? What could be worse?

  He, too, girded himself. Then he spoke. “That far-away night in Montmartre, where I slipped away from my father’s rooms to sample the temptations of Paris, that was in the year sixteen fifty-five. It was over two hundred and twenty years ago. I was sixteen years old.”

  He waited for me, for my mind to comprehend this impossible passage of time. I stared dumbly. I wanted to deny him, to scream at him to stop saying these mad things. But I said nothing, did nothing, I merely sat, buffeted by his terrible revelations, helpless and angry.

  “I am not immortal. I have aged, but with unnatural slowness. You see how I am changed. Tainted by the bite.” He said the word with a wrenching force. “But I am still a man.”

  I was only grateful that I did not faint. He was not a man—the disgraceful thought sprung to my mind. No, not completely a man, but not evil, either.

  “Emma.” He spoke my name suddenly, throwing it into the near darkness between us like a spear. My silence was unnerving him. Then he gathered his dignity around himself. His shadowed face shifted with the fleeting passage of each struggle as he mastered his emotions. “Can you guess what it is I will ask of you?”

  The dread I felt was like a swaddling blanket, constricting and stifling. Oh, God. Indeed, I could guess.

  “I will stand with you against Marius.” His tone was flat, inanimate. “But in putting myself before him, I undertake great risk. Unimaginable risk. My protections might not serve if Marius’s potency is increased by the feast of evil, and by the power of the lay line. Should I receive the second bite, Emma, I will have no time. That will be my last chance at death.”

  “Valerian,” I said, a warning, a plea for him to stop.


  “Should I be bitten again, you must promise—”

  “No!” I shouted loudly. In the small confines of the carriage, the sound hurt my ears.

  “You know what I ask is not evil. You would be doing good. If I die now, I would still be entitled to death, and even after the second bite, I will be mortal. But I cannot live on with two, with the possibility that Marius could complete my transformation.”

  “You think I could do it?” I shrieked. “You think I could kill you?”

  “I think you could save me,” he said gently. “If you have any care in your heart for me, you would.”

  I raised my hands, wanting to strike him. I intended to, but he caught both of my wrists, his lightning-quick reflexes like the strike of a snake.

  “You dare!” I sobbed. “You dare!”

  “I will do it myself if I am able!” he shouted. I twisted in his grasp, but he mastered me like a strapping lad would subdue the struggles of a lamb. “But I do not know what further changes may come. I may lose my will. If I can do it myself, I vow to you that I will. But should I not have the means within me, you must tell me you will not fail me.”

  His hands were like manacles. “You used me,” I wailed. I fell against him, my face pressed against his throat, my lips close to where Marius had sunk his razor-sharp teeth into his flesh. “All the time, you lulled me into friendship—for this reason! How could you? How could you?”

  “No,” he murmured. His mouth was at my ear; the sound of his voice, the feel of his breath along the curve of my neck. “No. No.” Then his hands released me and caught in my hair, one broad palm cupping the back of my head. Blindly I turned, sought, and found his mouth, and took it against my own. My hands were suddenly free. I grasped him, fingers curling to grip the hard-muscled shoulders pinning me back into the carriage squab.

  It was dark now, the two of us only shadows cramped inside the carriage. We could not see each other clearly when we broke apart. “I am so sorry, Emma,” he said hoarsely. “If you cannot do this, I will find another way.”