A Drop of Night

by Stefan Bachmann

  “Even if we are related,” I say, my toes digging into the carpet. “You guys fly us here, let us eat at your table, send us entire folders full of lies. You could have just stolen us off the street. Stuffed us in a van, knocked us out with some chloroform. We never had to meet.”

  “But I wanted to meet you!” says Havriel. “As times become less desperate, there becomes space for formality; as in society, so also in families. And so for this harvest, we devised a little . . . a little party. You must understand that despite how you may view the situation, you are not simply victims. You are our offspring, our precious progeny. So we found a way to connect you to your rightful place in this world, letting you know a little, not too much and not nothing at all, letting you meet others of your kind within your ancestral home.”

  “So, basically, you murder us after dinner. And I thought my family was dysfunctional.”

  Havriel crosses his legs in a quick, sharp motion. He doesn’t seem to appreciate his thinking being questioned.

  “Anouk, we are entirely functional. We are like a great machine, our family. My brother and I are the engine. You are the fuel. We extended to you the honor due you as scions of a noble bloodline. We gave you every comfort. Brandy in the bathroom. Dinner. A private jet. We treated you with respect. We needed you as close to the Palais du Papillon as possible, as the harvesting of the genes is a complex process and must be handled quickly and delicately after death of the donors—”

  I snort. “It’s not a donation if you rob the freaking bank.”

  Havriel ignores me. “And Frédéric does not like to leave the palais. He can no longer abide the surface with its many contagions. So what better way than to bring you here in style, give you a proper send-off, make you all feel special and important, as if you were picked for something great. Because you were. Don’t you see? You are a very valuable person, Anouk.”

  The words ignite something in me, a pathetic, involuntary response. I look at him in surprise and stupid hope.

  “Your death paves the way for our family’s continued success and dominance. It is not in vain.”

  The hope vanishes. What about my life? What about who I want to be?

  “And the Sapanis? They’re just a front? An alias?”

  “The Sapanis are what we called ourselves as we reemerged from the palace during the Reign of Terror. We could not gain a footing in France under the Bessancourt name. We did not wish to emigrate. And so before we went into hiding, we devised a plan. We signed the château and its grounds and all our monies over to the brothers Wilhelm and Ehrfurcht Sapani. Ourselves. Twenty years later, we started anew under Napoleon. We opened a gunsmithy, then an armament factory, and slowly, crawlingly, over the decades and centuries, we rebuilt our dynasty. And now here we are! The most powerful supplier of weapons and technology in the world. They say it’s those with the money who make the rules, but really it’s those who can steal the money from anyone, any country and government. It is those who are feared who make the rules. The truth is, there are no Sapanis. There is no Monsieur Gourbillon finding a crater in the wine cellar, no Project Papillon. My brother is a shy man. We prefer to run our business ventures in private. . . .”

  He trails off. His eyes fix on mine, and my blood runs cold. “Now, Anouk. I think we’ve chatted long enough.” He bows his head respectfully, and the silver spike rises, his fingers wrapped around the nozzle like it’s the head of a snake. “I will ask you one more time: where are your friends?”

  52

  Sinking. That’s how I feel. Sinking down-down-down, into an endless, crushing blackness. This is too big for me. Too big for all of us. Lilly, Jules, Will, Hayden, and I—we’re just tiny, rusty wheels in their huge plan, squeaking desperately. There’s no way on earth I’m getting out of here alive.

  “I don’t think you know where they are,” Havriel says. “I think you’re lying.”

  “I do. I know where they are.”

  “Ah! So tell me. I upheld my end of the bargain.”

  He gazes at me expectantly across the tip of the nozzle, his eyes glittering.

  I hesitate. Just one second, one flicker of confusion while I sort through possible lies I can tell. Havriel sees it. He smiles.

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to find them on our own, then. It was lovely speaking to you, my dear.”

  Behind him, the man in the red coat strikes something—a sharp, crystalline note against one of the figurines on the mantelpiece. My eyes flick toward the sound—

  Havriel lunges. Grips my shoulder and tries to spin me, jamming the nozzle toward my spine. I wriggle out of his grasp, knee him in the stomach. Whirl, looking for somewhere to run. The two men are between me and the door. Havriel’s moving, the nozzle raised. I dive through the bed curtains. Crawl over the sheets and slip out the other side.

  You still think you can escape . . . live happily ever after. No. Not really. But being realistic doesn’t get you anywhere. I guess that’s just what humans do, keep holding out for something, even if it never comes, even when there’s only the tiniest, tiniest hope.

  I hear Havriel coming after me. I’m pleased to note he’s breathless from my kick, a rasp at the back of his throat. He emerges around the bedpost. I try to dash across the bed again. He catches my ankle and yanks me toward him.

  “Do not make this more difficult than it has to be, Anouk,” he spits, and I roll over and kick him in the face with my free foot, over and over again, pummeling his cheeks, his nose. He catches that foot, too. But he has to drop the nozzle to do it. I wrench myself upright, grab the nozzle, and stab the sharp silver tip straight at Havriel.

  The spike embeds itself in his shoulder.

  He lets go of me with a howl. I launch myself back out the other side of the bed, scramble to my feet, and run for the door.

  The marquis is right in my path. I slam into him. I expect him to topple over. At least move backward a few inches. Nope. It’s like hitting a sack of bricks. I reel back. He shoves me. I stumble into the center of the room.

  Havriel is hulking toward me, one hand clutching the small red puncture in his velvet coat.

  I try to stand tall, dig my fingers into my palms. The pain in my rib cage is excruciating. It makes me mad. It makes me proud. The chandelier didn’t kill me. The psycho butterfly thing didn’t kill me. Hayden didn’t kill me. You’re going to kill me, but hey, I made it all the way to the end, boss. That’s not too shabby.

  Havriel doesn’t even blink. He lashes out with the nozzle. I duck, drop to the floor, and scrabble away on hands and knees—

  And now I hear something behind me, coming from the double doors. The click-click of a handle being tried, cautiously.

  Havriel kicks me in the shoulder. The pain is unreal, more like a white shower of sparks, like my nerves can’t even really deal with that much anymore. I’m reeling, dragging myself over the floor.

  The doors are opening.

  I look up.

  It’s Lilly.

  No way.

  But it is.

  Lilly, standing in the doorway, her face filthy, her clothes torn and ragged, grimy with sweat and blood. She’s not crying. She’s holding an old-fashioned flintlock pistol. She pulls back the hammer and raises it at Havriel.

  Seeing her makes me smile like nobody’s business. “Shoot Havriel!” I shriek from the floor. “I mean Dorf, shoot Dorf!”

  The marquis starts toward her from the left. She wheels around, pointing it at him.

  I start to crawl for the door. Havriel lets out a low growl and comes after me, fast and liquid like a panther.

  Lilly jerks the gun back and forth between them, confused. The marquis is digging something out of his pocket, another glinting bottle—

  “Lilly!” I scream. “SHOOT THEM!”

  The gun goes off. There’s a bright flash, a dull cracking sound, and a puff of gray smoke.

  Havriel freezes, inches away from me.

  Who’s been shot?

  They’re both
still standing. I get myself upright. Hobble toward Lilly.

  The bottle falls from the marquis’s grasp. Bursts against the floor. He brings his hand down to his stomach.

  “Aide-moi, mon frère . . . !” the marquis breathes. And he collapses, folding at the knees, the waist, neatly, like a length of fabric.

  Lilly points the gun at Havriel. Aims at his leg and pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. She pulls again.

  One shot, Lilly. Flintlocks have one shot.

  She throws the gun full force at Havriel’s head, grabs my arm, and we race out of the room.

  I glance back. See Havriel kneeling next to the marquis, pressing his hand to the wound. He’ll be up in a second. Maybe the marquis will be, too. Can these people die from bullet wounds?

  We’re in a long hallway. It’s blazingly bright, and it only seems to get brighter up ahead. Wild, crazy elation bubbles up inside me. I feel weightless. I’m gripping Lilly’s hand, and she’s got mine, and we’re running so fast. We’re flying.

  “Where are we going?” I shout.

  “The boys!” Lilly shouts back. “I found the boys!”

  Palais du Papillon—Chambres du Morelle Noir—112 feet below, 1790

  I watch from the ceiling, my gown drifting about me like a pulsing black stain. A girl lies below me. Her body is fetal, her knees drawn up to her chin. A younger girl darts around her, trying desperately to drag the dead girl upright. I see the younger girl’s tears, watch her mouth open in a wail, but I do not hear the sound she makes. Everything is silent. Calm and warm, like floating on a pond, in a boat, in summer.

  A small, pale man drifts into the scene below, his crimson coattails like twin fangs, or a dark cloven hoof. He is circling the girl on the floor, drawing nearer, nearer.

  Aurélie!

  It is Delphine. I hear her now. She turns her tear-streaked face and looks up at me, hovering just under the ceiling.

  Aurélie, wake up!

  The butterfly man leans down over the girl on the floor. His satchel lies open against the wall. He is lifting something out of it, a glass bottle tipped with a long, silvered needle. The bottle’s contents pool at its base, black and oozing.

  Pain explodes in my arm. I am on the floor again, in the cage of my body, and something is buried in my wrist. White fingers are pressing, pressing a vile serum into my veins, and I see it wriggling below my skin like dark snakes, crawling into me.

  A wretched burning sickness rises in my chest. Images flash before my eyes, nightmarish concoctions, empty faces and roiling skies, snippets of sound and color—

  I return to consciousness with a gasp. I am lying on the floor of the boudoir, four empty glass bottles lined up beside me, and Bernadette, Charlotte, and Delphine huddled close by, their faces stricken, peering at me through their tears.

  I see their arms. I see my own. We all bear the same marks: four red entrance wounds and something spreading away from them, stretching up through our veins like dark trees, branches and tendrils reaching toward our shoulders, our necks, our hearts.

  “What has he done?” I whisper. I prop myself onto my elbows, fear rippling through me. “Where is Jacques? Where is he?”

  “There are garments here for you to wear. Rise quickly, and change.”

  I gasp, turning in the direction of the voice. The butterfly man stands by the door to the hall, statue still, eyes fixed on me.

  “They will help you go undiscovered.”

  He gestures, and I see a stack of striped cotton, aprons and bonnets, spotted with age, folded neatly against the skirting board. Servants’ clothes, well worn.

  “Bring him back!” I cry out, and my voice is a savage, broken wail. “Where is he? What have you done?”

  “Do not think of Jacques. Listen to me: you will return to the surface. You will leave France behind you. My masters have been given what they most desire. They will live twenty years longer, perhaps thirty. Then they will die. My discoveries shall be safe from them.”

  I drag myself to my knees and raise my head. The pain in my arm is fading, but the veins are still darkened, purplish threads swollen grotesquely.

  “What have you done to us?” I say to the creature. “What is this?”

  Bernadette is beside me, crying and picking at her arm, as if she might somehow pull the veins from her flesh and fling them away.

  “I have made you a vessel,” the butterfly man says. “A carrier. Were my masters to possess the serum that I have created, they would wish to live a hundred years and a hundred more. I would be held captive to their foolishness, their greedy whims. They would live forever. They could never be sated.”

  I stand and stagger toward him.

  “And so I have put it inside your veins. You and your sisters shall be my strongboxes. You will take it far from here. The wondrous potion shall be passed down through generations, locked away in safety—”

  “No . . .” I want to scream the word, but my throat closes. “We do not want your vile discoveries. You cannot do this! Take them yourself and leave!”

  “Aurélie,” the butterfly man says softly, and his hands go to his face, to the cuts, his fingers moving quickly and nervously across the carved-open skin, as though he is trying to close them. “Were you not listening? I cannot escape. They build traps to keep me contained. They hang mirrors in every chamber to repel me, to remind me of my place in this world. I know what would become of me were I to walk among your kind: I would be detested. I would be hurt and imprisoned, some curious wretched specimen, wrapped in chains and bound to a flaming pyre, or sunk to the bottom of the sea. They would call me a demon. I would have nowhere to turn. Here, at least, I am safe. They protect me. . . .”

  He trails off, his fingertips hovering over his throat, a sliver of white skin visible above his collar. He drops his hand abruptly, as if only now realizing what he is doing.

  “Do you know, they made me hideous so that I would be meek? Knowledge and power and eternal life I could have, but they would not give me beauty. They would not give me love or kindness. For then I would have more than they have themselves. I would have everything. I desire everything. Such is the folly of man. And such is my folly, too.”

  “To be unhappy?” I ask. “To be cruel?”

  The butterfly man does not move, and it is impossible to tell if he is pondering my words.

  “Change out of your finery,” he says at last, drifting out of the room. “Follow me. Your name shall be the strongest shield, your skin the hardest iron. To harvest the precious material inside your veins would require your death. I do not think they would kill their own children.”

  My head throbs. The door stands wide now. The lights in the hall are blazing.

  Bernadette and Charlotte are crawling over the floor. Delphine is clinging to my skirts. Jacques is gone. And suddenly I feel as though I am standing at a crossroads under a fierce blue sky, and on one hand there is a girl lying in the dirt, weeping and unable to move. It is her right to weep; she has been lied to and betrayed, locked away in solitude, and I see the darkness under her flesh; her own veins are treason against her. The other road is empty, stretching away, because that girl has already gone far down it, running fast and desperate.

  “Aurélie,” Charlotte says. “What will we do?”

  I stare at the open door. “We will go, of course,” I say. I dash to the heap of clothing. I help my sisters change. Now I dress myself, slipping the rough woolen skirt over my head. It smells of lye and dirt, the stench embedded so deep in the threads, it has become a part of them. I reach the doorframe and see the butterfly man far down the passage, his back turned, waiting for us.

  “Follow me,” he says over his shoulder, and I lift Delphine up and hurry the others in front of me. We follow him down the hallway, the chandeliers passing overhead like watchful, glittering spiders.

  We come to the corner. The butterfly man is gone, but I still hear his voice, crawling through the arteries of the palace, flooding every passageway and chambe
r, flowing like putrid water up the walls.

  “Go now,” he whispers, and I leave the girl in the road, leave her to weep and mourn. “Run far with your precious cargo and do not let them catch you.”

  53

  I’m pretty sure Lilly’s lost it. She’s laughing hysterically, crying, swooping her free arm in circles like some kind of demented windmill.

  “I found them! I found you! We’re getting out, Anouk!” She screeches it at the walls and the chandeliers: “We’re getting out!”

  The screaming is not a good idea. Someone’s going to hear. But I’m laughing, too, running as fast as I can in my Pilgrims-R-Us nightgown, and I feel like I could run forever. Everything’s crazy. Everything’s awful, but I’m alive and Lilly is, too, and Jules and Will are, too.

  “Where are they?” I shout, and we skid around a corner, into a room that seems vaguely familiar—a spinet I recognize, a portrait of the woman in the red dress, only she’s wearing summer silks here and smiling kindly, and her eyes are cornflower blue, and she looks a bit like me. It’s somewhere we trekked through before. Maybe somewhere near the library.

  “I’ll show you. I think they’re knocked out, but they’re still alive. Hayden must have just hidden them and gone to look for us. I don’t know what happened to him, but he is not on our side. Better hope he doesn’t come back until we’re gone.”

  We slam through a door, into the salle d’opéra. A vast theater. Red seats curve like rows of bloody gums. Gilt figures extend up every armrest and pillar, mermaids and cherubs and bundles of pikes wrapped in thorns. I glance up. The ceiling is one huge butterfly, translucent and ghostly, spreading its massive wings over a stormy sky.

  “How long were you on your own?” I ask her.

  “Ages. It was fine, though. The trick is to get off the main floor plan of the palace. There are servants’ passages everywhere and spy holes—”

  Lilly points to a pillar in the far wall, crusted with gilt leaves and a shield. “See that pillar over there? There’s a door in it and a glass hallway like the one we ran down when we first got here. I think it’s the emergency exit. Maybe the one Perdu meant. We’re getting the boys and we’re getting out of here.”