The thought only makes me laugh. We are a nest of juvenile Nosferatin. We have no vampire protectors. No matured Nosferatin to guide us. Only me. And I am only eighteen. Seven years shy of my maturity. I have seven years before I must kindred-join; before my Nosferatin powers come into their own.
Seven years to find us shelter. To make alliances and accords to protect us. Seven years as easy pickings.
I should not have brought us here.
“You scowl when you’re angry.” Suzette’s voice reaches me before she does. I don’t reprimand her for falling asleep on the watch, or for crossing the precarious beams to find me. Suzette is young and impulsive, and all too soon, she will need to grow up.
We will all need to grow up if we’re to survive reality.
“I met a vampire last night,” I tell her. “An Iunctio councillor. They know we’re here now.”
She bites her lower lip, her face paling. “Are you sure you weren’t followed?”
“Yes,” I say, not elaborating. A leader should act decisively. Speak with authority. Treat with empathy. Or so, my trainer taught me.
I did not ask to be our leader. But here we are. Maybe Augustine could see the future. Maybe he knew what I would have to become.
The path so lonely.
“I’m scared, Yves,” Suzette whispers to me.
“Never show fear,” I say back.
“Never give an inch,” she adds by rote.
“Always stay on guard,” we both complete.
I offer her a smile. She smiles back. Suzette is going to be a looker when she finally grows up. If she grows up.
I’m scowling again. I push to my feet. “Can you stay awake for the watch?” I ask.
She ducks her head, embarrassed that I must have seen her sleeping. All she gives in the way of answer is a nod.
“I’m going to find us better shelter while the Nosferatu sleep,” I reassure her.
“Be careful, Yves,” she says, gripping my hand as I move to pass her.
Her hand is small and warm, and rough where she has trained with swords and daggers and stakes from the age of three. We all have. It’s what we’re born to be. Fighters. Warriors. Hunters.
Our future now, though, is so uncertain. I must find us a safe haven. I must treat with the Iunctio before they accuse us of trespassing in their city. I must find vampires for each of us to kindred-join with when we mature fully. I tell myself I have time.
I have less time than is needed.
“You have no need to worry, Suzette,” I tell her, squeezing her hand gently. “I have a good feeling about this city.”
I leave her with a puzzled look on her face. I haven’t lied, although she’s trying to find the lie in my words, in the tone of my voice. She won’t succeed. Augustine was a good teacher. And I do still believe coming here was the right decision.
Well, part of me does. The other part of me can’t stop remembering the vampire from last night.
Who was he? A councillor, certainly. Powerful, definitely. But he did not hunt for food. He was not rogue in the slightest. Was it amusement that set him on my tail? Or something else?
Welcome home, Nosferatin.
I shake my head, adjust my cloak, and step out into the city.
Now the Iunctio knows of our arrival; I will have to approach the Palais. But before I do such a thing, I want the nest secured as much as it can be. And the smelter’s building is not in the least secure enough for me. I walk down the street using the shadows to hide me. It’s a natural thing to do. It also keeps me out of the way of the carts and pedestrians. Paris is a busy city.
Noise assaults me. Smells confuse me. A shoulder bumps mine; a hand fumbles in my pocket for coin it won’t find. My blade to their wrist has them running. I am not invincible; the vampire last night proved that. But I am not an easy mark, either.
I work my way closer to the city centre, hunger making me pause long enough to purchase a croissant and some cheese from a stall vendor. We have coin; we just hide it well. Our nest was well provisioned.
Until it wasn’t.
Still, Augustine died making sure we escaped with more than just the clothes on our back. Had we just run, when they attacked, would he still breathe?
It is a dangerous path to let my thoughts wander, so I push away the question and study my surroundings.
I’m in the city centre; I can tell by the signs of supernaturals. No vampires walk in the light of the sun, but a shapeshifter does. As do some ghouls. They keep to their own sides of the street, and then the shapeshifter climbs a building until he is higher. A dragon, perhaps? An avian shifter of some description. It doesn’t matter; both forms of supernatural ignore me.
I walk the streets. Familiarise myself with the city. Paris is beautiful. The roads well paved. The gutters surprisingly clean. Stormwater runs through the deep troughs, cleansing everything. Perhaps it would not smell so sweet during summer, but right now, in the rainy season, Paris is almost pretty.
And then I see the island. The Île de la Cité. The Iunctio’s Palais.
I almost stumble with the weight of vampyre. There is no Pull, as such — no rogue vampire about to feed indiscriminately. Not so close to the councillors, they wouldn’t. But there are more vampires here than I have ever felt. It is a shock — an assault to my Nosferatin senses.
But if I can feel them, then they can surely feel me.
I sense them stirring in their sleep. I feel some rising. They will not risk the sun, but the sun is setting, and I haven’t much time to finish my sightseeing.
I turn to walk away from the river that surrounds the vampire council’s home base, but something calls to me. I still; the hair on my arms rising. I search the street, the bank of the Seine, the Île de la Cité. Then my eyes look further afield.
There is too much haze in the air to see clearly, but I know what I seek is across the river, past the Palais, and on a rise. I have no way of knowing what it is I feel, but I do know it is calling.
A trap, perhaps?
I purposely turn my back, my shoulders hunched against the undeniable sense that I shouldn’t be heading away from this call but towards it.
My eyes close as I let out a breath of air, and when I open them again, I see a vampire watching me.
He stands in the shadows. But the sun is still up. A quick search of his Sanguis Vitam informs me he is not the same vampire as last night. The young councillor. This vampire is old. Old enough to walk while the sun shines.
A shiver races down my spine.
He is in shadows, I remind myself. If I stick to the sunlit part of the streets, he cannot reach me.
But something tells me he will try.
I stare at him as he stares at me.
I sense his Dark.
He lets me see it.
And then he pulls something from his pocket and unfurls it.
It takes a moment for my panic-stricken mind to recognise the cloth he holds in his gloved hands. To recognise the scent of blood upon it. To understand who he is.
An Evil One. One of our attackers. They have found us. Found me.
I don’t hesitate. I brought us to Paris because the Iunctio is here. The vampire council are the overseers of all supernatural; my kind included; not just the Nosferatu. They scare me because they scared the elders. The Iunctio was only ever spoken of in whispered voices. But the Evil Ones scares me more.
So, I turn. I walk away from the vampire. Not toward the nest. But toward the Palais. I cross the Seine. I feel the wards surround me. They prickle, but I forge on. The vampire does not follow, which is a good thing. He fears the council more than I do.
But then maybe he is right to fear them to such a degree.
The elders did.
I laugh to myself, thinking I am more impulsive than even Suzette, who is only thirteen.
And then I’m surrounded by vampires. Powerful vampires. The sun hasn’t fully set, but I am behind the Iunctio’s wards; it’s almost a different realm here.
I still. The vampires still. And then the vampire I met last night steps out of the shadows and stands in the sun.
He shouldn’t be able to do that. He’s young for their kind. But powerful already. And the wards bend the rules.
But not all of them.
I bow; a hand fisted over my chest as I have been taught.
“Greetings from Ventimiglia,” I say when I stand. “I am Yves Bertrand, and I seek an audience with the Champion.”
Things go from bad to worse after that.
* * *
I am led in complete silence to the Palais. It is not a peaceful silence. My ears buzz and my flesh crawls with the magnitude of their Sanguis Vitam. It takes everything in me not to scratch my skin raw. Some of those vampires present try to glaze me. I keep my eyes down, my face averted. But I watch them most keenly. Well, I watch their feet. I dare not raise my head any further.
I think the vampire I met last night is in charge of the group which surrounds me. One low growl from him has the others giving me more space. But I still feel like a condemned man being brought to the gallows. The weight of something heavy, something Dark, pushes down on me; makes it hard to breathe.
Nosferatu are inherently Dark. Nosferatin made of the Light. I can feel their Darkness; it calls to me. Can they feel my Light? Does it sting?
My mind keeps me thinking of inconsequential things; trying futilely to stop the panic welling. The elders cursed the Iunctio, but their fear was couched in respect. A respect I did not understand until right this second. The power. Oh, the power. It is humbling.
It also hurts, making it hard to breathe, hard to put one foot in front of the other as we approach the Palais.
It is a large flat building made of intricately carved stone. At any other time, I might have found it pretty. But there is something also foreboding about the structure. As if the Darkness that dwells within attempts to hide the aesthetic beauty of the architecture. The Palais does not want to be considered handsome — It wants to be considered formidable.
I smile to myself as we cross the threshold. It helps settle my heartbeat; strengthen my spine.
Inside the building is marble and high ceilings: archways and statues; some of them depicting typical vampire things. Heavily carved doors show the barbaric history of their species; the odd homage paid to other supernaturals, but the message is clear — The Nosferatu are at the top.
I was taught many things growing up. How to fight. How to survive. How to never show fear in the face of such Darkness. I was also taught that without the Nosferatin, the vampires would be lost. For some centuries now, that has appeared the case. We have been hiding. The elders more so than some, I would guess. Ventimiglia was hardly a hotbed of rogue vampires, and yet we were a thirty-strong nest of Nosferatin. Now we number only six.
It breaks my heart. So many hunters and their kindred-vampires lost. All because of the Evil Ones. And I don’t even know why yet.
I hope the Iunctio has answers. But I fear because our kind has been in hiding for so long that the Dark that dwells in the Palais is as evil as that which consumed the Nosferatu who attacked our stronghold.
Maybe I have made a mistake, but alone we would inevitably fade out completely.
I know of no other Nosferatin nest. I have not felt any here in Paris since we landed. If Nosferatin exist in other parts of the world, I am not aware of them. Could we be the last of our kind? Adrift, alone, out-numbered?
I feel the weight of my silver stakes in their pockets as we cross the marble flooring; it’s a magnificent mosaic in a multitude of vibrant colours. The sun has set, but inside the Palais is brightly lit. Sharply angled shadows provide cover for vampires who watch our procession in silence. Do they not realise I can sense them standing there?
How long since they treated with a Nosferatin?
Too long, I bet.
Not all the vampires who greeted me on the island continue our silent march to my impending death. Some peel off and return to their duties. Or perhaps, they go to hunt. I cannot feel a Pull, but I am yet immature, and the Pull does not always work for those of us not reached our twenty-fifth year on this earth. Besides, the Sanguis Vitam buzzing in my ears and tickling my skin makes it hard to concentrate on anything else.
I try to focus, but the closer we get to our destination, the harder it is. Fear consumes me, but I valiantly ignore it as I have been taught.
Everything is wonderful in the abstract. Every lesson learned is a life saved. But in reality, I fear I have left my nest abandoned. A fate in this city, I believe, is a death sentence. I alone cannot protect them, but without me, they have no chance of success. I cannot see Suzette approaching a vampire for protection, and if she did, what would the price the vampire extracted cost her?
Suzette’s sweet face flickers before my eyes, and I let out an involuntary growl of distress. I must succeed. I must protect them. I cannot fail.
Abruptly, the vampire who chased me across the rooftops last night turns and leads us down a narrower hallway. Not that it is so narrow we cannot still walk two abreast. But it is not the main thoroughfare we had been traversing. The tapestries are equally as abhorrent; death and battle and blood lust. But the passageway is less travelled, and fewer vampires are watching from the shadows.
He opens a door and enters a softly lit room. It has comfortable armchairs and a fire in a large hearth. The door shuts at my back, but the vampire and I are not alone. Sitting in one of the chairs, drinking something that smells fermented laced with blood, is a vampire with blond hair and sharp features. A scar mars his face; his eyes flash platinum and silver. His Sanguis Vitam reaches out to wrap around me, but the moment it makes contact, it springs back as if hurt.
I have done nothing, save stare at the vampire; which is something I should not be doing at all, but I can’t seem to help myself. He is powerful, like my shadow-companion, and only slightly younger than the darker clothed vampire at my side. But there is something familiar about him. I can’t describe it. If it were not for the horror that mars his imperfect-perfect face, I would think him kin; family.
“Do I know you?” I ask.
He says nothing as he stares at me. I avert my eyes to a spot just above his right shoulder, but he is not attempting to glaze me. He looks stunned.
“Where did you find him?” he asks the vampire at my side.
My vampire glides across the room to a drinks cabinet and pours himself a glass of wine. He turns and lazily leans against the trolley, a soft curve to his lips as he watches me from behind hooded eyes. He looks relaxed, uncaring, in control, and yet for some reason, I know he is on edge.
“Traversing the rooftops, if you can believe it,” my vampire says.
“In Paris?”
“I’ve not been elsewhere for some time, mon ami.”
The blond vampire continues to stare at me. He seems unable to look away, but he appears as though he wishes he could.
“Why did you bring him here, Michel?” he asks our companion.
“He required a moment to get his anger under control before he met with the Champion.”
My anger? And then I think of Suzette again and the rest of the nest and how I feared for their survival if I did not make the Champion allow us to stay. Allow us to live. I work on relaxing my posture and centering my mind; my heartbeat slows, my muscles unfurl. I am ready.
“He is trained,” the blond one says.
“It appears so. Intriguing, non?”
“Where?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
The blond vampire stands in a fluid motion and begins to prowl toward me. I remain still. Relaxed. Breathe slowly. It requires skill — and he is right: training — and also faith in one’s ability. Augustine could be arrogant and obnoxious in the classroom, but his methods brought results. He also knew how to meditate while in the middle of a battle, something he had me practise while he beat me to a pulp.
I draw on all of that training now.
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The blond one is close now. I can smell his cologne. I feel his Sanguis Vitam, but it does not try to touch me again. If I did not know better, I would think him scared of me. But this vampire is strong. Old enough to hold his own against most creatures, I should guess. Perhaps, he too is a councillor?
“Where did you train?” the blond one demands.
“Ventimiglia,” I say.
“Italy?” He shakes his head; looks toward the other vampire — Words are shared but not spoken.
The blond returns his attention to me, a scowl marring his face. I have already forgotten the scar. Perhaps it is warded to make the observer do so. It does not detract from his beauty or his power, though, so I do not see the point of hiding it.
“Why are you here?” he asks.
“I seek asylum.” I do not mention the rest of my nest. “I’m being hunted. My home destroyed. My kin murdered. I have nowhere else to go.”
“Your kin?” the blond one presses.
I nod. I will not give details just yet.
The blond turns and looks at the one he called Michel. “There was more of them,” he says, sounding stunned.
“You thought them all dead, Gregor?” Michel asks.
“I had assumed.”
“Well, you know where assumption can lead, mon ami — dangerous places.”
“He cannot stay here.”
“I have nowhere else to go,” I say.
“It is not safe for one such as he,” Gregor reiterates, his words for Michel and not me. He’s trying valiantly to ignore me.
He isn’t succeeding.
“The Champion is aware of him now,” Michel says with a casual roll of his shoulders. “She will insist on meeting him; seeing him for herself.”
“She will eat him alive,” Gregor insists.
“Then we should perhaps provide an escort, don’t you think?”
“You plan to go against the Champion?” Gregor accuses.
“I never said that,” Michel offers with infuriating calm. It infuriates Gregor at any rate.
He storms across the room and whispers fervently in Michel’s ear; words which are kept from me by a sudden flare of his Sanguis Vitam.
Never Show Fear Page 15
