by Michele Hauf
Stunned, Roxane turned to Gabriel. “How could he have escaped? Where would he have gone?”
“I’m not sure. We will find him, trust me.”
The administrator had reluctantly confessed to Damian’s absence—an escape unnoticed by anyone on duty during the late hours yesterday.
“He could not have gone far.”
“Paris is but leagues away,” Gabriel said. “Can he ride?”
“Very well.”
He gripped her by the shoulders. “We ride to your apartment and check there.”
Damian had not returned to the garret on the rue Vivienne. Roxane strode the room looking for signs that her brother had been there, but everything was to its place, scattered as that was.
“We’ll go to my home and—”
“He would not go there,” she stopped Gabriel abruptly. “He doesn’t know you.”
“True. But we need all the help we can summon. I can send Toussaint out in search. I will search the city as well.”
“Yes, thank you. I’ll stay here in case he returns. You’ll send Toussaint with news if you find him?”
“Immediately.” He kissed her. “You should eat, you’re shaky and chilled. We will find him.”
“I pray he has not gone to Anjou.”
“He would not.”
“You said there was a bond,” she asked. “Between you and the man who bit you. That you…loved him?”
“Only in that moment of the bite. Don’t fret, Roxane, we will find him.”
Afternoon stirred Roxane to impulsive jitters. She could not sit still waiting. Nor did she want to risk going too far from the apartment. Weak and jittery, she needed something in her stomach. Perhaps a meal would calm her. And maybe a walk down the avenue to look about for Damian.
Weary and defeated, she arrived at the Pont Neuf and thought to forego the bridge, packed shoulder to shoulder with hawkers and strollers and children.
She would never find Damian in this bustle of humanity.
She clutched the vial hanging around her neck, but her fingers closed about nothing. She had worn the glass vial since the day she had arrived home to find Damian lying on his bed, bleeding and jabbering about a creature with dark eyes and a sharp, seductive kiss.
Roxane had thought her decision correct by influencing Damian to hold out for the moon. Three weeks he’d waited. She could not guess why he’d succumbed to madness quicker than the signs began to show in Gabriel. Damian had never received magic. Only the females in the Desrues family had. He’d never said anything to her, but she’d felt his jealousy through the decades. Magic had bonded her with her mother.
Thick, frothy elm trees lined the riverside, providing much needed shade. A vendor called out his refreshing wares. Slipping two sous from her purse, Roxane purchased a lemon ice. Finding a stone bench beneath a tree, she sipped the tart ice from the rind.
Just float, she coached. Do not sink.
When a carriage rolled close to the bench she had to tuck her legs to avoid getting crushed. The black coach stopped, effectively pinning her in.
“Driver, move on!” she pleaded, but the cloaked driver remained impassive, his head facing forward.
“Mademoiselle Desrues.”
The voice inside the carriage seeped out the window as if a black fog. A shudder rode her spine. Clutching the window, she stood and peered inside the carriage’s dark shadows. The windows were shaded with heavy fabric and so she did not see more than two pairs of legs until the voice that had spoken leaned forward.
She clutched for the vial, then swore softly—not there. What could she use? She pressed her thumbnail to the blue vein on the underside of her wrist.
“Hold your artillery, witch,” Anjou hissed. “I’ve something you’ll want to see before you splatter me with your blood. If you make one move to cut your flesh, I will slash his pretty throat.”
The glint of silver flashed near Anjou’s head. His arm was draped about something, and his other hand held a dagger to a man’s throat.
A scream lodged at the base of Roxane’s tongue. “Damian.”
Her brother had been cruelly bound about the mouth and his hands and legs. His eyes were maniacal, his stifled mumbles pitiful.
“What do you want?”
“You, witch. Dead.”
A thin crimson line blossomed under Damian’s chin. Not a fatal cut, but enough to warn.
“You’ll let him go?”
“Of course. Step up inside. We’re going for a ride.”
Having no choice, Roxane stepped up into the carriage and sat opposite the two.
Anjou kicked the door and the driver started onward.
Gabriel paced the floor of his bed chamber. It was difficult to concentrate on his hunger when there were more important worries. Had Roxane found her brother at their garret? He needed to be out in the city, searching. He’d taken the coach down the rue St. Honoré, and circled the Palais Royale three times.
Toussaint had taken the left bank. If the valet did not return soon he was prepared to go out again. Not for sustenance, but for a different kind of blood—vengeance.
The front door creaked open. He raced down the hallway to find Toussaint standing meekly in the open door, his head bowed, and hands folded before him.
“What is it, Toussaint? Did you find Roxane? Her brother?” He skipped down the stairs and scanned the carriage, the horses pawing the ground and lather glistening on their withers. No witch, no madman.
“She didn’t make it home,” Toussaint whispered. “She was…”
“What?” Tears glistened on the valet’s face. “You spoke with Roxane?”
“No. I saw her as I crossed the Pont Neuf, but it was too crowded to get to her. I saw her buy the lemon…”
“Toussaint!”
“I think she’s been taken.”
“Taken?” He slammed a fist to the door frame over Toussaint’s shoulder. “I don’t understand.”
“I saw her sitting in the shade eating a lemon ice. A carriage passed before where she was sitting and when it moved by, she was gone.”
Gabriel closed his eyes and winced. There was only one person who had reason to take Roxane—but that made little sense. The vampire would not risk kidnapping a witch. Would he?
Unless he found a way to keep Roxane from dousing him with her blood. Easy enough. Just keep her away from sharp objects by binding her hands.
Morbleu, had the vampire kidnapped Roxane in an attempt to lure Gabriel to him?
There was no reason for Anjou to fear him; he was now of his kind.
Of course, Anjou did not know that.
“Quickly, Toussaint. My coat and…a rapier, instead of my walking stick. We must ride now.”
Toussaint rushed inside and, Gabriel, left alone on the step, craned his neck back and stared up at the dark sky.
“I wonder.” Staring up this side of the house, he spied two of the drain spouts. Would Charles know where his mistress was?
Up on the roof, he wasn’t sure how to communicate with the stone beast. But it was obvious from Charles’s open-mawed silent yowls he sensed something was not right.
“Can you find her? Can you scent out your mistress?”
How to communicate with a chunk of stone? He tentatively touched the stone wing and felt the flow of…life? “She is in danger.”
“No thanks to you!”
Gabriel swung around to find Xavier Desrues lurching up behind him with hell in his eyes and a stake in hand.
“I see my daughter’s familiar has taken up residence,” Xavier announced. He wielded not only a stake but also a dagger in the opposite hand. “That insufferable beast.”
“Where is Roxane?” Gabriel glanced to Charles, who again cawed silently but insistently. The beast wanted Gabriel to pay attention, to understand—but what?
“Listen, Desrues, whatever it is you have against me, it will have to wait. Your daughter is in danger.”
“Petty tricks. I’ll not leave until
you are dust, Renan.” Xavier lunged, nicking Gabriel’s hand with the dagger.
“We don’t have time for this! Do you not care about your daughter? Or your son, for that matter?”
“What of my son?”
Roxane had insisted he not tell her father about Damian. But if the man could help his son? No time to hide the truth.
Xavier lunged and pinned Gabriel against Charles’s massive body. “Don’t try to fool me with lies, vampire. I want the truth.”
Gabriel wrestled with the dagger but could not get it from the man. He stroked backward and heard the blade cut through—not flesh, but stone. Charles moved, knocking Gabriel to the ground. The familiar sliced out a wing. Xavier stumbled backward, grasping his cheek. Blood spilled down his neck. But when he pulled his hand away a macabre grimace exposed glinting fangs.
Gabriel gasped. “You’re a—” The wound healed. “You and Anjou? Allies?”
“You’re not very quick on the uptake are you, vicomte? Sorry, but I won’t have my daughter’s heart broken. As well, you are in Anjou’s way. I’m here to remove you. Permanently.”
“If I have put myself in that bastard’s path it is only to save your daughter.”
“Anjou is not after Roxane. He knows the danger in dallying with a witch.”
“You don’t know, old man. He tried to kill your son. He’ll not blink an eye at killing Roxane.”
Xavier ran across the roof.
Gabriel ran toward him. He kept his eye on the stake, raised high. Their bodies collided in a crush of bones and racing blood. Gabriel gripped Xavier’s hand, wrestling away the stake. But he could not hold his ground, the force of their collision shook his equilibrium. He stumbled backward, Xavier in his grasp. The old vampire let out a shriek as they fell together.
THIRTY-ONE
A guttural cry chuffed from Gabriel’s lungs as he fell one story and landed on the floor of his bed chamber. Xavier’s body cushioned his fall. Multi-colored glass rained about them. Shards tore his flesh, letting out his blood in agonizing streams.
Xavier’s face poured up tears of blood. He was out cold.
Thundering beats crackled overhead. A shard of emerald glass clung to the lead frame of what had once been the gorgeous oculus. Charles peered down through the destruction.
“Do you think you can find your mistress?”
The beast stomped a foot, shaking the entire room to a rattle.
Gabriel would take that as a yes.
Roxane hadn’t a clue where the vampire had taken her, save that she had spied the city walls when he’d shoved her out of the carriage and forced her inside a three-story house. The darkness caused her to stumble, but she did not walk into any furniture.
’Twas as if a dungeon here in the dark, dank, earthy room. An iron torch flickered on the wall to her left, another across the room filled the air with a smoky brume. A tattered chaise and a half-tester bed with strewn sheets sat in one corner. No windows. No ventilation to let out the choking smoke. Did the vampire live in this squalor?
The manacles that secured her were attached to the wall by heavy, rusted chains. She moved her wrists, wishing her hands were narrower so she could slip free of the iron bracelets. Her feet were not bound, but it mattered little. With no way to get free she was at the vampire’s mercy.
After securing her, Anjou had slapped her face with his open palm, and then left her alone to wonder if the scratching in the corner were a rat or something worse. For as much as she called to Charles, she was too far away for him to hear her mental plea.
What plans had that bastard for her brother? Poor Damian! How had Anjou gotten him out from Bicêtre? In her next thought, Roxane knew it took but a bribe to rule that asylum. Each day visitors arrived to gawk, to marvel, and to purchase inmates for use in all manner of twisted rituals.
She wracked her brain for a spell. An earth witch could not cast a spell through iron. But maybe there was another way. She could coax the flame in a torch, but if she were not exact she could start the faggots stacked near her feet aflame. The last thing she needed was to be trapped in a room aflame.
Concentrating, she mentally lifted one of the logs. It dangled top to bottom in the air above the stack. Blowing out a breath, she released hold and the log landed on the floor. A direct hit to the head might take out the vampire, but it wouldn’t kill him.
Beseeching the goddess, Roxane bowed her head and began to chant.
What the hell to do with the idiot and the witch?
Henri d’Anjou paced the darkened carriage run paralleling the side of the house he had claimed weeks earlier. The owner had not minded. In fact, the shoeless nothing had left this world with not a whimper of protest. ’Twas good fortune it was so easy to dispose of bodies. Les Innocents was being dug up and quick-limed to cover the remnants of plague. One additional body to the stack of bones and partially decomposed was never noticed.
Pity the younger Desrues man had not died. Anjou had left him bleeding, fully believing him dead. Had the witch brought him back to life? He wasn’t sure that was possible. He believed in black magic, but Roxane Desrues was too weak for such powerful sorcery. She had yet to lift a finger in her own defense. Not that he’d given her opportunity.
Strange how life worked a man’s world into such small rotation. Henri had not known, at the time, that the pretty taste was Xavier’s son. Xavier would not forgive him the truth. Hardly a pity, for Henri had already booted out the sniveling old bundle.
Of late, all his troubles could be traced to that meddling witch!
Meddling, and oh, so dangerous. She had but to cut herself and his breaths were numbered.
Henri yanked open the carriage door. The stench of urine crept out in a miserable wave. The madman pounded his forehead against the padded velvet seat. Child-like whimpers decorated each miserable beat. Through it all the scent of blood rose to tempt Henri closer.
He reached in and jerked the younger Desrues out by the ropes binding his wrists. Light from an oil streetlamp highlighted the blood smeared across the man’s forehead. Henri bent and licked the enticing treat.
Enough to satisfy. For the moment.
“Bloody creation!” Toussaint literally slid into Gabriel’s bed chambers—blood and glass spattered every surface—barely stopping himself from collapsing on Xavier Desrues’s inert body. “What is the calamity?”
“I’ve had a bit of a disagreement with Monsieur Desrues.” Gabriel shook off the shards of colored glass from his shirt. He stood, apparently unharmed, adjusting his jabot.
“That is Roxane’s father?” The valet bent over the sprawled body, his shoes crunching glass. “Is he dead?”
“Unfortunately, he is immortal.”
“What?”
Gabriel smirked at the frightened rise in the valet’s voice. “Another vampire, Toussaint. Can you keep an eye on him for me?” He tilted his head and looked to the ceiling, seeing beyond to the quiet sentry who waited. “Charles and I are off.”
“But I—” Toussaint looked from Gabriel to Xavier to the glass littered about. “This man…vampire? Does Roxane know? How will I—You’re going to leave me alone with him?”
“Grab a stake, Toussaint. Tie him, or secure him in some manner. Don’t allow him to leave until I’ve returned with Roxane. And if I should not return…”
“You will!” The valet drew up his shoulders and nodded decisively. “I will take care of this matter. You can rely on me.”
“I know I can, Toussaint. Off to find the woman I love.”
The heavy iron door that secluded her from light and fresh, smokeless air creaked. In stumbled a tangle of limbs and sodden clothing. Falling, Damian caught himself upon his bound forearms and rolled to his back. The cloth binding his mouth had slipped to his chin and giggles erupted near her feet.
Anjou barely avoided stepping on Damian’s toes as he paced near the end of the tester bed. The torch flamed wildly behind the vampire’s mass of curly black hair.
�
�It is the witch!” Damian announced amidst his giggles. “The bloody witch!”
“I see your brother admires you,” Anjou stated coolly. “It is amazing what the moon will do to a man, no?” He bent to Damian and gripped a thatch of his tangled hair. “Why don’t I kill him now for you, save him years of suffering?”
“Don’t touch him,” Roxane warned. She looked upon her brother’s wasted form. The cloth bindings were loosened, though he was still contained. Yet should he concentrate he might wriggle free. “You did this to him.”
“Oh no, it was not my choice that saw the idiot to Bicêtre. He was dead when I left him in his bed.”
“You are a stupid creature! Following your vicious attack he had merely passed out. He bled, but not enough to bring death.”
“Take the blood!” Damian shouted, and continued the chant.
Anjou strode to Roxane and lifted her chin with his finger.
“Take the blood! Take the blood!”
The pale-eyed vampire grimaced, revealing the tip of one sharp incisor. To look him in the eye felt as if she stood on the precipice to Hades.
He nodded toward Damian. “Shall I? He seems to want blood. If I transform him, do you guess we’ll have a mad, blood-sucking fiend on our hands, or might he be restored to his former self? A pretty boy he was…” The vampire swung a lingering gaze at the squirming man whose chants had mellowed to frantic whispers. “I considered making him my own. A toy to keep close. A replacement for one of whom I’ve grown tired. Shall I tell you a tale of my lover fair? Claimed many years ago. Stolen from his family?”
