by Michele Hauf
Leave me, Gabriel, mama is in her comfort.
His parents and their comfort. Hell, they were the marionettes that had danced awkwardly through his childhood, wide-eyed and controlled by opium.
After one trip to China the count had returned with a cache of the heinous substance. Juin-Marie had quickly taken to it. “‘My Juin-Marie,’” he recalled his father always singing as he’d prance through the estate, his shirt tails untucked and his wig askew. “‘I met her in June; I married her in June; I fucked her in June. ’”
His parents were victims of their addiction. Leave it at that. Put a new foot forward, remember? His life was not miserable. It must not be.
Gold moonlight illuminated the moist cobbles and managed to make the streets a trifle elegant, as if littered with shards from fallen stars.
Skipping across the center gutter glutted with refuse, he made for the Place de Greve, the massive square in front of the city hall.
Well after midnight, the theatre goers had all settled either in salons or were at home packing up their monstrous hairstyles. Lovers were likely engaged in sweaty embraces. It was rumored a majority of children were conceived during the half hour time period when the opera let out, for the sudden swell of noise roused many to a sleepy conjugal coupling.
Such a coupling flashed in his thoughts. He and Roxane had not been sleepy last evening. Rather spirited. He should not have been so worried about deflowering a virgin. She had taken to love making as a well-seasoned courtesan. He enjoyed a woman who did not balk, one who was unafraid to discover the pleasures her body could give her. Or a man’s body, for that matter. She had touched him, tentatively, and then more boldly. By sunrise she had been comfortable stroking him, licking him, and nibbling at various rigid body parts.
Pity his affectionate feelings for her had been cooled by the overheard conversation. Was she so callous to use him? Did she not feel anything toward him? Not a morsel of attraction? Or were the feelings so separate that she was unaware she might emotionally wound him with her indifference?
He was hurt. But he was also in for the count—last night had cemented his determination to keep Roxane in his life. How to do that seemed to involve her brother. And the return of Damian’s sanity.
The square was quiet. He strode the wide cobbles to the bare gallows erected at the north end. Executions occurred once or twice a week here; it was the ideal location since the city hall looked down upon the square, and it opened onto the Seine and the island. People unable to get close on foot could still have a decent view of the macabre events, even when standing across the river on the island.
Rapping his knuckles on the wooden platform that would bear many guilty—as it had in the past—Gabriel lifted a hip and slid onto the edge, his legs dangling. He leaned back, remarking the absence of a noose hanging from the wooden crossbar overhead. He supposed it wasn’t wise to leave the thing hanging when not in use.
Smirking, he stared into the sky. Gray velvet clouds did not touch the moon, as if fearful of her icy glow.
“Bitch,” he muttered. “It is all your fault. I lie in wait of your pleasure, fearing, wondering, hating. But soon, yes?”
His pitiful plea went unanswered. Though in his head, he heard Roxane’s voice shushing him to a tender silence. Kiss me again, Gabriel. Make love to me. Touch me there.
Was he insane to surrender to her allure when he was so close to the end?
Or was it a beginning? He could not decide. Did not want to think on the results should he give in to the blood hunger. It seemed evil. On the other hand, who was he to recognize such?
An ache bit into his ribs. Rolling to his side, he fought against the pain shimmering through his veins. The wooden planks that had seen many a trembling bare foot caressed his cheek. How many hogsheads of blood had been spilled…
He sniffed, scenting the odor that had become his nemesis. Morbleu, but he could smell the blood soaked into the boards. He slid his hand across the warped planks and reveled in the bouquet.
The ache in his body burgeoned to a gentle but insistent want. Delicious seduction coiled into his veins with the sure touch of a seasoned courtesan. He relaxed, released a sigh.
Why must he wait out the moon? Why not surrender to this delicious ache? He had no such religious morals that would keep him from a fall. Cecil and Juin-Marie had never been concerned for his salvation. Now was too late to seek divine intervention, not when the call to hunger echoed so sweetly within his being.
“It is truly divine, yes?”
Startled upright, Gabriel jerked his head around to spy the man who had approached without sound. Scrambling for protection, he pulled the stake from inside his coat.
“Back off, Anjou.”
The vampire bowed grandly and took a graceful step back. Courtly, yes, but sans wig this evening. Coal-dark curls capped his head and spilled across red velvet shoulders.
“You can scent the blood of centuries past, yes? Does not death smell rich to you? Like fruiting bodies buried within the fibers of the wood their souls breed and live on, attracting—”
Gabriel jumped from the gallows and, wielding the stake as if a spear, approached the man. “How did you find me?”
“You are not difficult to track. Especially with my essence coursing through your veins.”
He winced at such a notion. Had this man marked him? He had wanted to swoon. If only the bite had not had such mixed sexual connotations, perhaps it would be easier to accept his fate.
“Why didn’t you finish with me?” he asked. “Why leave me this terrible choice between madness and murder?”
“I wasn’t given a choice.” Still wearing the extravagant red frockcoat littered with stiff gold threading, Anjou toed the base of the gallows. “If you’ll remember, that damned valet of yours beat me away with a stick. I should have torn out the man’s throat, but there was too great a risk.”
“And so now you’ve come to finish me?”
Gabriel lowered the stake. Surrender would obliterate the difficult choice he faced. Could he do it?
The future offered much to one who possessed immortality.
With a decisive nod, he tossed the makeshift weapon and it clattered hollowly across the cobbles. Spreading his arms out, he revealed himself, opening wide to the future he wanted to face. But only if she loved him.
Can you love someone you cannot trust with the truth?
“Do it then,” he said.
Anjou strolled before the empty gallows. Moonlight and mirth glittered in his eyes. “Sorry to disappoint, but I prefer a challenge. A fight, you see. Struggle draws the blood to the surface and brews it to a delicious bubble, much like champagne.”
“Damn you!” Gabriel shuffled in his pockets for another weapon—why had he not brought Leo’s walking stick—but produced only the tangle of netting. “This idiot net!”
“What is that?”
He flung it at Anjou, perturbed that he’d allowed Toussaint to send the thing with him. The vampire caught it and held it above his head.
“Oh, you are a cruel one, vicomte. One, two, three…”
Nothing more. No threat, no cruel command over his soul. Not even a lunge for his neck. The vampire stood there, running his fingers over the mesh of knots.
“That really works?”
The vampire nodded. “Damn you!”
Compelled by the twist of knots, so many of them, and all uncounted, Gabriel lifted an end of the netting and lowered his head to the task beside Anjou. “It is a lovely bit of knotwork, isn’t it?”
“Don’t interrupt, I’m on…damn, now I have to start over. Why are you out alone this night? My spies report you have the woman guarding your every footstep. One…”
“…seventeen, eighteen— I needed some time to think about my choices. Nineteen. Must you kill? Can a vampire be good? Twenty, twenty-one…”
Anjou propped a hip against the gallows, his fingers moving precisely over the network of knots. “Goodness and evil are two
like things.”
“Blasphemy. Thirty. Oh hell, what am I doing? I don’t need to count this!” He flung away his end of the net and shoved up to sit on the edge of the gallows. His heels beat the base of the wooden structure. “You murder your victims. Is it necessary? Why not drink from them and leave?”
“I could. But I prefer a long drink. Reduces the need to feed frequently. Generally one does not survive after having so much blood extracted. I once seduced then left. Now, I do my pretties a favor by completing the transaction.”
“But if a vampire were not to kill…” Gabriel leaned back and pressed his palms to the platform. “How to ensure you do not leave those victims like me, ready to change?”
“There are ways to drink and not taint the victim with the vampire’s saliva.”
“Saliva? That is what facilitates the change?”
“I guess.”
“You guess?”
“There is not a course in basic vampire function. I had not a mentor, nor would I have desired one. I do as I wish. I serve the addiction exactly as it demands.”
Gabriel jerked his head up at that word. “Addiction? T-to the blood?”
“Oh dear no, to love, my good man. The love!”
“Love?” He winced. Addiction and love were two words that should never be paired. Why was it every step he took led him to a place of addiction? He wanted to be far away from the debilitating loveless condition!
Anjou muttered a string of numbers. “You will be loved.”
Impossible.
But he could not resist hearing the vampire’s reasoning. “How so?”
Anjou shrugged and rattled off another number. “The look in their eyes. The pining. That is love in the moment, pulsing with need. Irrefutable. Immediate. Love.”
“You speak nonsense.”
Dark eyes void of sparkle turned on Gabriel. “You loved me, yes?”
“No.”
“Truth.”
“I thought you…”
“Yes?” He leaned toward him. Gold threading scraped Gabriel’s knee. “I felt you pull me closer, vicomte.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Not sexual, no, but real. For that moment, you loved me.”
There was a difference between romantic love and an abiding love for friends and family. He could buy into the nonsexual love excuse. “Maybe so.”
What power the vampire had, to harvest love with but a kiss? Could it really be so close at hand? The love he had always desired?
“One hundred and seven, one hundred and eight…”
To gain such emotion—such as Gabriel had felt at the moment of his attack—would that appease the emptiness in his heart? What of the trade? The good for the bad?
“So, feasibly—” he started, “A vampire could take blood from someone, and that person would not be at risk to become a creature himself?”
“Yes, yes.” Anjou waved off the remark. “But why bother? Why dilute the glory? The vampire is not a saint; he is a creature. A splendid beast.”
“You must kill so many.”
“A few a month,” Anjou offered with a shrug. “They are not missed.”
“They are certainly missed. The Mercure de France reports their absences. You choose young, aristocratic men who have families. Why not a beggar or an orphan?”
Anjou shrugged. “I like them pretty. And clean.”
Gabriel cringed at the reference. “I am not pretty.”
“Oh yes, you are. Your face beholds an elegant bone structure and your eyes speak without words. Noble, most definitely, though I do know you’ve not a drop of noble blood in your body. The Countess Renan pandered her title from the king.”
All of Paris knew as much. Another reason Gabriel kept far from court, for the king no longer held Juin-Marie in high accord. The man knew his true identity? Damn.
“Those sad, glittering eyes,” Anjou said. “Your gaze literally does pierce, mon ami.” Net in hand, he beat a fist against his chest. “Straight to the heart.”
“Enough. I do not subscribe to your penchant for the equal sex.”
“Oh, I do not limit myself. Women, men, they are much the same when it comes to the delicious red elixir flowing in their veins. You…” Anjou reached to touch Gabriel’s chin “…were too pretty to resist. Oh!” He recoiled and redirected his attention. “Lost count again! Damned bloody net! One, two…”
Gabriel stroked the spot where Anjou had touched him and recalled the intense desire to pull the man close, to surrender to his commands when he’d been bitten. A hideous twist on his sexual leanings. You wear my scent. It made him shudder.
“Do it,” Anjou said quickly between counts. “Take a woman. Use a dagger and slash a fine cut along her throat to drink from her. Leave her in a swoon to awake without memory of your visit.”
“That will suffice? She won’t remember I’ve been there?”
“Seems to be the case in my experience. Without the bite, the toxins that begin the change are not introduced. Or that is my determination. But once you sink your teeth into them, there is no turning back. Unless you seal the wound with your saliva. Thirty-two, thirty-three…” He paced before Gabriel, meticulously fingering the net. “There is also the thrall.”
“Thrall?” Mesmer had told Toussaint a vampire could enthrall a witch.
“If you put your victim in a thrall they wake with no memory of your…” Anjou looked up from his counting to smear a greasy smile across his face— “…extraction.”
“How does this thrall work? Tell me.”
“Why? Have you plans to make any changes soon?”
“No. I—tell me or I will stake you.”
“You do not threaten me, vicomte. Of course, the pretty ones never do.”
Gabriel stopped Anjou’s pace with the end of the stake to his chin. “This thrall. Explain.”
“Very well.” He clutched the netting and tilted it toward Gabriel as if to say do you mind? I must tend to this. “It is a mind thing. You step into the victim’s thoughts and…relax them. Make them promises you don’t intend to keep. It is not so much that I can explain how it is done; one simply needs to attempt it. I believe it is an innate vampire quality. You couldn’t do it as you are. A mere pretty mortal.”
Anjou turned and strode to the side of the gallows where the dark concealed the steps up to Hell, but also away from interruption.
“Why are you suggesting this? I thought you wanted me dead?”
“I do! Damn it!”
So long as Anjou held the netting he could not attempt a murder, so compelled he was to count. The notion was ludicrous, yet effective.
“How would you do it?”
“Do what?” Anjou spat, his fingers twisting into the net.
“Kill me.”
The vampire jerked up his head. Rage tightened his features. He flung away the net, then dove for it, clutching and tugging at the nemesis he could not shuck.
“I would break your bloody neck!” he hissed. “No.” His voice softened and his rage slipped as if rain from his shoulders. “First, I would drink from your succulent neck. I would drink so much you would slip close to death, dance a quadrille with the Old Lad Himself in your dreams.” He twisted a look at Gabriel, smiling the death’s head grin that only evil could smile. “I would tease you. Play with your life. Then…” He straightened, his concentration fixed to the net, but his thoughts obviously on rich plans. “…I would make you mine. A delicious partner of the night. Damn you!”
Gabriel backed from the simmering beast.
“I love you,” came out on a sigh, and the vampire worked a few knots across his fingertips. “You must do it. Take the blood. Then come to me.”
Shaking his head, Gabriel could not summon resistance. His body repulsed against the antics of this creature, but his mind, well, that was something else entirely.
“The advantages,” Anjou explained calmly, “far outweigh the evils. How old do you think I am?”
Much as h
e should forego further conversation with a bloodthirsty creature, the compulsion to learn as much as he could riveted him there.
Gabriel splayed a hand up and down the man’s attire. “Is that horrid frockcoat yours?”
“Culled from a victim many decades past my prime. I was born in 1551.”
“Impossible.”
“Over two centuries, boy. You mark my words. I have lived and I have learned. And what I have learned is that living is better than dying.”
The man lied. Immortality did not exist. It fell into the same category as witchcraft—a fantasy concocted by an unhealthy mind. Gabriel dismissed the idiot with a wave of his hand. “Insane.”
“No—Twenty-three…” Anjou nodded upward. “She is the only one to grant insanity. The blood gives life, get that straight. Dare you risk a showdown with la Luna? Why not surrender to my offer? I will make you such a delicious mignon.”
“Be gone with you. Kill me now or be killed!”
“Think of what the centuries can give you, vicomte. I live. You haven’t begun to scratch the surface of life. You’ve experienced the enhanced senses?”
He nodded.
“It is always like that. You can hear their blood, and taste it on your tongue before it spills from their veins. There are other things. Tricks. Skills.”
“Like what?”
Anjou turned down to his counting, beginning again with one. This time he simply did not answer.
Vampirism, splendid? Perhaps. He’d considered as much, especially if it would allow him to walk through the centuries.
I’ve been using him as bait.
