by Karin Cox
“He does not want you, my love,” Beltran taunted Joslyn. “I have come all this way for you, and look at him—he would prefer a beast. A freak.”
Joslyn just stared at him passively, still clutching the book.
Beltran reddened her cheek with a slap, then took her face in his hands. “Yet still you love him?” The word was a vile thing in his mouth. “How many centuries have you loved him? Oh, it stings, Joslyn. It stings so: to love and not be loved.” His lips twisted into a smile, which he pressed down hard on her mouth.
Joslyn silently turned her head away.
It was all I could do not to fly down to her again, outnumbered as I was, and destroy Beltran forever.
Weeping then, she pulled away, and Beltran let her go. “He does not want you,” he taunted. Then, with a shove, “And nor do I. I have had you. I had you first, remember.” He turned to the pack of grinning Vampires and commanded, “Take the cat instead!”
“She’s mine.” Gandler flew at Beltran and pushed him backward. “She has a blood debt to pay.”
Beltran looked Gandler up and down, taking in his bulging muscles, the neck thick as an ox’s, the arms like steel. “You made this, Joslyn?” Beltran sounded surprised as he gestured to the newborn Vampire. “Impressive.” Turning back to his henchman, he said, “Bring him too. I can use a man of his power.”
“Noooo!” I screamed, hurtling down, rushing at the Vampires who were manhandling Sabine’s body into what was left of the silk tent. But there were too many. One caught my right wing and I felt the tendons tear and cried out in pain.
“Sabine!” My voice was hoarse with failure as I rose above them again, more weakly this time. Resigned to my fate, I let both wings drop and felt my body begin to descend, but a single small bat shot up from below. It clung to my chest, close to my heart. “No,” it said in Joslyn’s voice. “Fly. Fly now! It is nearly dawn.”
She was right. The sun stirred above the horizon. All around, the bats began to scatter. Taking up the silk in their claws and mouths, they wheeled as one to carry Sabine’s shrouded body south.
Exhausted, I collapsed to the ground, where the bodies of Kettle, Karl, and Theron still burned. It was only when the sun’s disk was nearly fully risen above the horizon that I noticed Joslyn, a Vampire again now, still crushed against my chest.
“Joslyn, the sun,” I said, shielding her. Blood gathered at her throat like lace, and my longing almost overwhelmed me.
“It is true,” she said, still weeping. “What he said is true. You do not want me. You love Sabine. Let me die here, Ame.” She struggled to free herself from my embrace. “Just let me burn.”
I pushed her hair back from her tear-stained cheeks.
“Or else take me. Take what is left of me so that you might have the strength to go after her.” She bowed her head.
“No.” I crushed her cold body back to my chest and, thrusting the trinket box and incunabulum back into her arms, rose up with her, my damaged wings and wrists aching like my heart, headed for the Grange aux Dîmes.
CHAPTER TWELVE
All day, I paced while Joslyn slept. The tunnels concealed us from the prying eyes of man, and we crept deep into them, both of us burrowing into our own private pain. When she slept, Joslyn looked so vulnerable that even sharing a room with her was an effort, so sometime mid-afternoon I left our passage beneath the tithe barn and made my way to the remains of the tent.
Cinders still stirred in the grass, but Lee had moved the bodies of Karl, Theron, and his father back inside the wagons.
I approached Lee cautiously.
“He was a good man,” I said, placing one hand on Lee’s shoulder.
He immediately shrugged me off. “He was a man, at least. What are you?” He rushed at me, shoved me. “You caused this. I saw what she did to him. He was bound, as if a legless man was at risk to escape. And Gandler, where is he? Now Giselle and my brother must rot somewhere while my father and this monster”—he gestured to Karl’s body on the wagon—“are in their graves? You caused this. Until you came, we were men at least, freaks or no, but now?
“What are you, Feathers? I used to think angels would do God’s bidding, but this”—he wiped his ash-smeared face with the back of his hand—“this is Satan’s duty. Everything is burned to ashes.” He gestured to the remains of the tent. “And Giselle and Kellane will surely starve to death.”
“It is not what you think,” I told him. “I know where your sister and Kellane are. I have the key.”
He nodded mutely, and I saw what I identified as hope cross his face. “You will free them?”
“I have freed you all.” But my heart added, At what dear price?
It was late afternoon before I made it to the Ruelle aux Vignes. The pungent odor of decaying flesh, urine, and lime assaulted my nostrils before I had even drawn close to the tannery. Slowly, Danette’s blood, Joslyn’s, and the blood of the Vampires I had dispatched was reinvigorating me. My Cruxim senses were returning. I could feel the blood in my veins, could almost hear it swelling my heart.
Had they died here, no one would have suspected a thing. I thought of Kettle, his determination to seek freedom for his children, and felt I had failed him as surely as I failed Sabine. At least she had been able to run or to fly. I had barely considered Kettle. In truth, I had let him burn.
The tannery seemed deserted. I pushed open the door and entered the vile-smelling place. The walls and floor were lined with filth, and the abrasive lime stung my skin. The air on the stairs that led to the basement reeked of death, but I did not find death below in the dungeon.
“Who goes there?” called a voice watery with age. “Karl?”
“None you know, old woman, but I am not your jailer, nor your son.”
“Executioner then?” a boy’s voice said. “Has he finally decided to end our torment?”
“No, but I have. I have come to release you.” I moved out of the darkness and into the bars of thin light thrown by the basement’s only window.
A gasp came from the cage, and a child, who was obviously Giselle, rushed to the bars. “Look at his skin, at his eyes. It is one of them,” she wailed. “Stay away from us!” She clutched Kellane’s leg. “It was not me. I did not do it to her. He made me help him. He forced me!”
Kellane stepped in front of them both, his scarred face cynical.
“Come, child.” The old woman lifted Giselle onto her lap.
“How do we know you mean us no harm?” Kellane asked.
“Your father told me everything. May your mother, Kira’s, ghost pursue me if lie. I mean to free you only.”
Still the girl sobbed. “I … I did nothing,” she said again, shaking her head.
I realized Giselle must have meant Danette. Kettle had mentioned that Gandler used the child as an assistant to his vile acts.
I strode to the door, slid the key into the lock, and turned it, which set the girl wailing again, sure, her reckoning was coming. Pushing open the squeaky door, I said simply, “There. Use your freedom well. Life is short.”
“Mine more than theirs,” the old woman’s croak followed me. “Tell me, creature, what have you done with my son, Karl?”
“He is dead,” I told her, feeling for her but nothing for him. “Gandler killed him.” I supposed it was true, in a way.
“And my father?” Kellane stepped after me as I made my exit.
“Dead also. I am sorry.”
Giselle sobbed out, “I am sorry. I never meant to hurt her.”
Crouching, I wiped her face with one hand. “She knew. Go with your brothers. Lee also still lives.”
“And where should I go?” The old woman hobbled past me. “My life is spent, and my son is dead. How should I go on?”
“In peace, mother.” I put my hand on her arm. “Go in peace.”
When I returned to the caverns beneath the Grange aux Dîmes, it was already evening, and they were vacant. I searched them all to no avail until I remembered to trust the l
ure of her blood, the senses I had neglected for so long. The piquant scent of Vampire blood on the breeze soon led me to the Tower Cesar, where I found Joslyn watching the moonrise, its curved horns rising like a warning.
“You should have left me there,” she said, pulling the ruined white dress around her shoulders. “I wanted you to leave me.”
I sighed and sank onto the sandstone of the window nearest her. “You used to be so full of joy.”
“Yes, I was alive then. Now I am full of death. So many little deaths.”
“And yet you walk and talk and eat … and love.” I inspected an ant, winding over the sandstone.
“Yes, I love,” she said sharply. “Someone who cannot love me. Someone whose heart is a stone sitting in a vault somewhere. Someone who has forsaken me.”
I could not see her face, but I could smell the bloody tears that pricked her eyes.
“God has forsaken you, Joslyn. I never have.” I stood again, weary of this talk. After two centuries. Could love endure so much death, so many betrayals, so much blood and pain? And yet I loved her still.
A breeze lifted a curl from her shoulder and tugged it away from her neck. I watched it for a moment, focused on the bite marks Gandler had left on her. Bloodlust burned in me like passion. I turned away to watch the moonlight silver the poplars, which pointed to the deviled moon. “I have always loved you,” I said.
She spun, the sooty white silk wrapping her, and rushed to me, but I put up my hands and moved away until my back hugged the stone.
“Then come with me,” she urged, pressing herself to me anyway. “Ame, come with me. There are places we can be together, places deep in the Hindu Kush where you think your blood might freeze. Places where the moon sits on a mountaintop and is reflected threefold in a lake that stretches out of sight. Places where Beltran will never find us. Please.” Her words had the poignancy of tears, but it was her blood that quickened me. My need for her rose up like a terrible inferno until my lips were just a whisper away from her neck. Then an unassailable anger replaced my desire. What monster had I become?
Inching backward, I let myself fall from the window ledge and then hovered there, outside. The pain that gripped my wings felt right, like penance.
Joslyn took a step back, her lips quivering.
“Please.” My wings began to fail, so I stood on the window ledge. “I cannot bear for you to touch me. You must keep your distance.”
Her face crumpled.
“Joslyn, you do not know what hell this is to long to embrace you and yet long to kill you. Just being here with you is a torture. Your blood…”
She put her face in her hands and wept. “I know longing. I cannot bear this longing anymore, Ame, and you cannot bear to even look at me.” Throwing her head up, she commanded, “Do it. Do what you so desire to do. I can long for you no more. Let me die in your arms with your mouth at my throat. I beg you.”
Joslyn’s color was high, her eyes like sapphires. Her loveliness and wildness and brash courage were undeniable, and burning inside me was a flame that could consume her.
“I cannot!” I thundered. “Do not ask this of me, Joslyn. I cannot do this.”
But she was a woman, after all, and she knew how to use desire to her advantage. Stepping closer again, she begged, “You will have your Sabine, your purpose, your freedom. Would you leave me with nothing? All hope dashed, love conquered, nothing but this living death. The deaths of innocents to wither me for eternity. You would fill your life with love and hope and faith, and leave mine empty as a bone.” She pressed forward again, embraced me closely so her face was pressed to my chest.
It was all I could do to grind the words out. “I gave you faith, Joslyn; you did not want it. I gave you love, but my love was not enough for you. Now what hope can I give you? You were innocent when he made you this, this …” I pointed at her. “This creature.” I looked away. “My only hope is that your innocence then might save you from hellfire, just as it might have saved her.”
“Her?”
“The girl, Danette, whom Beltran made. I… I…”
“You killed her.” Her eyes flashed. “You fed on her, and yet you would deny me my death. Why?” Her face was flushed and her blood showed as warm and thick as burgundy in her veins.
I held up my hands and then moved one to my temple. My head ached. “Joslyn, do not ask me to do this. I cannot do this.”
“You promised me. You promised Beltran you would kill us both,” she screamed. “I cannot do this. I cannot live on knowing that you would choose her over me, that you will never be mine. So make me yours in death.” Sobs broke her words, and I could stand her tears no longer.
I remembered the euphoria I had felt on the stretcher with a syringe full of her blood inside me, and I flew to her and seized her with more strength than I thought left in me.
“Amede—” she began, but I pressed my lips to hers until she swallowed my name deep into herself and found my tongue.
When her kiss turned sweet with blood and relief, I stroked her temple, feeling the pulse there weakening. I nuzzled the hollow behind her ear, ran my lips down the smooth plane of her neck to her unblemished shoulder, and drew her blood up to the skin’s surface with my kiss.
“Yes,” she whimpered as my fangs found her vein. “Please, Ame.”
Her blood met me in rich streams and her heartbeat was a wild pounding in my head, like a drum in the night. But each beat came with a chorus of guilt. Danette’s face flashed into my mind—that serene, devout young face—and I wrenched my lips away.
“I cannot.” I leaped away from her.
“Fly then!” she screamed. “Fly away, just like before. Leave me in this darkness. Let me seek out the sunshine alone.”
And, her blood having restored some strength to my wings, I did.
I could not bear to watch that sunrise. Sabine was gone, I knew not where, and now I had lost Joslyn too. An unquenchable sorrow and a hatred for Beltran and Gandler and all their kind gripped me, and although the day was bright, I felt darkened by it. Joslyn’s exquisite blood still nourished me, and I considered where Beltran might have taken Sabine and what they might do to her. I longed to wreak immediate vengeance upon them, but the thought came to me that perhaps I should seek out Sabine’s anchorstone. At least then I could guard it and move it somewhere safe to ensure her immortal soul would endure. But where to start? Had she told me the truth about the Hotel du Sully? I had to know for sure.
I crept deeper into the passageways beneath the Grange aux Dîmes, threading my way through them and heading north until I found a chamber I considered must be close to the ramparts. Stone steps rose up and I followed them out into the blinking-bright sunshine. The ramparts towered up before me. I hurried through the gates and immediately as I was out of sight of the ramparts, circled upward, high into the sky until the air was so thin it burned my lungs. From below, I might have resembled a large eagle, soaring through the heavens. Each flap of my damaged wings sent a spike of pain through me, but I ignored them all and pushed on toward Paris.
When I arrived, I made my way to Rue Saint-Antoine, in Marais. The hotel was fashionably Baroque with two stone Sphinxes guarding the entrance to the courtyard. I approached them cautiously, as if I were nothing but a passerby. They faced each other, their dead eyes blank. I saw little of Sabine in the mien of either of them but for the slight look of torment in their rigid faces. After approaching the one on the left, I ran my hand over its flanks and up to its face and hair. No one seemed to be around and the cobbled streets were quiet. I leaned in and placed my lips upon the cold mouth of the first Sphinx. Nothing. Turning to its twin, I did the same, and this time my lips met her mouth, her cheek and her brow, but there was nothing but the feel of granite and the sniggering laugh of a small boy. Looking up, I caught a glimpse of the child in the upstairs window and I leaped back, one hand to my lips. For a moment, I stared once more into the faces of the two lifeless Sphinxes, wondering who they were, or what th
ey were. Were women like Sabine locked within their stony frames, awaiting release? Or were they nothing but adornments, not immortal but merely immobile, reminders of the guardians who bore their likeness? Deciding on the latter, I stepped back again and strode off in the direction I had approached. Disappointment churned in me, but what had I expected? Sabine had told me her anchorstone was not at the Hotel du Sully—was not even in Paris—and, indeed, there had been nothing there for me but humiliation. Yet still I wondered. Cryptic as I knew Sabine was, I questioned whether she had secretively meant to alert me to some other statue nearby, perhaps drawing a comparison. For hours, I wandered the streets of Paris, revisiting the many Sphinxes that embellished the city and at which I had searched for her on my liberation from the tower. On pained wings, I flew to the Place du Châtelet, but although the Sphinxes of the Fontaine du Palmier felt warmer to my touch, none were awakened to me. At the Hotel de Ville, a watchful female Sphinx who bore Sabine’s beauty and regal bearing was unmoved by my kiss. I searched for Sabine’s image at the Chateaux du Marais, but found her there neither. Nor did the sculptures of Château de Bagatelle, the Jardin des Tuileries, or the Musée du Louvre pay any mind to my Pygmalion hopes. When night fell, numb with grief and effort, I settled myself on the roof of the Louvre and wept.
Her velvety paw on my face was warm, warmer than her breath, which tickled my ear as she whispered to me, “Ame. Ame, you must listen. Do not wake, but hear this.”
I stirred and must have tried to sit, but even in my dream, the gentle strength of her paw held me down and felt as real as if she were there herself. I felt her lips brush my ear and then my neck, and the feeling soothed my semi-lucid mind.
Sabine, I have tried to find you, I heard the dreaming voice in my head tell her, panicked. Where are you? Where is your stone?
Something told me my fear was that death had found her and that his black wings had carried her here, through the night, to my dreaming form.
“Hush,” she said, a word as tender as any I had ever heard from her, and I felt her body fold down next to me, warm and animate, and as real as if we were curled up together. I tried to reach out to stroke her hair, but it was nothing but air.
