by Мишель Роуэн
“A week tomorrow night.”
She looked surprised. “Truly? I would have taken you for much older than that. You glow with an inner energy one normally only sees in much older… executive assistants.”
“Yeah, that’s sort of what Zelda told me, too. She said it’s because I’ve had Thierry’s blood… er… coffee. Yeah, Thierry sure does make a strong cup of coffee. More like espresso, if you ask me.”
She nodded. “Of course that would be it. Yes, his coffee would be strong by now.”
I sighed. “I can’t deal with the office analogy anymore. Can we talk about something else?”
She studied me for a moment. “I’m beginning to think that your friendship with my husband is more than I originally thought.”
I shook my head. “No, don’t think that way, because it’s not true. We’re just friends, and after tonight I’m not sure I even want to be that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sorry if this comes off as extremely naive to somebody like you, but I didn’t like what I saw tonight. That he would do something like that, it’s just so horrible. Even if he feels that he’s doing it for the right reasons, I’ll never understand it.”
“It is true.” She took another tiny sip of her drink. At the rate she was going, we were going to be there all night. “It is more his style to hide when danger appears and not come out until it’s gone.” She laughed then, and her voice sounded like delicate wind chimes.
“Excuse me?”
She smiled. “I’ll tell you one thing, my dear, you are very brave to go through all you have in the past week and come out on the other end looking no worse for wear. Truly admirable. But then there are those who would rather hide their heads like ostriches in the sand and hope no harm befalls them.”
I blinked at her. “Are you trying to say that Thierry’s an ostrich?”
She had to be mistaken. Were we talking about two different Thierrys? Maybe I’d blanked out at that part of the conversation earlier. Could happen.
“He once was. Oh, I could tell you stories.”
I ordered another drink. “For example?”
“No, no. I should say no more. I wouldn’t want to ruin his fa?ade as a brave and powerful leader of the… executive assistant community.”
I spotted an empty booth in the corner, which would afford us some privacy. My heart thudded in my chest at the thought of learning something about Thierry he’d prefer I didn’t know.
Veronique followed me as I moved through the wall of muscled beer-drinking men—and a few muscled, beer-drinking women—to the new table.
“I told you the other night that we met during the Black Death in Europe centuries ago, yes?” she said as she flicked her dark, gorgeous hair so it draped perfectly over one pale shoulder.
I glanced over to see a large, hairy man crack his pool cue into the next game so hard that several of the balls went flying off the table.
I leaned forward so I wouldn’t have to raise my voice to be heard. “Yes, you mentioned that.”
“Before the plague, it was a glorious time in France. I was the daughter of nobility, living on a vast estate.” She sighed. “Good times, let me tell you.”
“No indoor plumbing,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“No indoor plumbing,” I repeated. “I couldn’t have handled that. I can’t even deal with going camping. Okay, uh, never mind. Please continue.”
“One day my family entertained a very rich, very handsome gentleman. I fell immediately in love with him.”
I nodded. “Thierry.”
She laughed at that. “No, silly girl. Decidedly not Thierry. His name was Marcellus, and he was a powerful vampire. He took a liking to me and made me what you see before you today.”
Annoyingly perfect ? I hoped I hadn’t said that aloud.
“We were together for twenty glorious years. I was so happy. And, might I add, he was a magnificent and insatiable lover.”
I signaled to the bartender to bring me another shot. Immediately.
“Alas, my happiness was not to last, for one day he did not return to our homestead. I didn’t know if he’d been murdered, or if he simply felt that it was the right time to move on. I would have liked to believe that he was murdered.”
“Of course.” I nodded.
“By this time, the plague had befallen Europe. Without Marcellus’s money to support the way in which I was accustomed to living, I had to take to the streets. There were no servants to bring me my blood in a silver goblet anymore. I had to fend for myself. But during such a time of illness, there was plenty to drink just lying around.”
The bartender brought us three shots of tequila each. That would do for a couple of minutes.
Veronique continued when he walked away. “This was a terrible time for me. The sick would drop at your feet and die in a stinking mess right in front of you. It was rather unsavory. And unclean. No wonder they were all so ill. They can blame it on the rats all they like, but a proper floor scrubbing does no one any harm. Except perhaps the scullery maid.”
I glanced at my watch. It was nearly eleven o’clock. I hoped this wasn’t going to be a long story. I’d been the only one I knew who’d fallen asleep during Titanic.
“So, how did you meet Thierry?” I asked wearily.
“I’m getting to that, dear girl. But first I must set up the background of the story. So there
I was, a beautiful, helpless—yet immortal—woman in the middle of plague-ravaged Europe. Wandering aimlessly, searching for more of my kind who might take me in.
“Finally I came upon a small town called Le Vieux Cochon. Most of the peasants had left, but their homes were still fairly intact, so I decided that I would stay there for a while.
Wait out the plague, for I knew I had the time to be patient. I set myself up in a small but quaint cottage, and hoped not to be disturbed.”
She frowned. “But disturbed I was. One day there came a knock at the door and when I opened it, there was a wild-eyed man outside. Dirty, long-haired, and desperate. He begged me to take him in, that there was a mob after him. You see, then, those who were still healthy ran off those who were ill. If they couldn’t run them out of town, they simply killed them, burned their bodies in large piles in an attempt to prevent the spread of the disease.”
“So the man,” I said. “That was Thierry.”
“Yes. Not quite the same man you see before you today, but time can be an interesting thing when it comes to change and evolution, n‘est-ce pas?”
“So you helped him.”
There was a big, boisterous cheer from behind us and I glanced over my shoulder. A man the size of a small elephant had just sunk his eight ball in the corner pocket to win the game. The loser broke his pool cue over his knee in anger.
Nice place.
I turned back to Veronique, who didn’t seem to notice anything unusual about our surroundings.
“No, of course I didn’t help him,” she said as if that was a stupid thing to suggest. “I shut the door in his face. I wanted no part of his or anyone else’s problems. Ah, I see the look of surprise on your face. Trust me, you would have done the same thing. There is no comparison to what was going on then, the sheer paranoia running rampant. There is nothing to compare it with today.”
She waited to see if I had anything further to say, and when I didn’t, she continued.
“The mob caught up to him finally. He tried to hide on his own, but it was to no avail. The amusing part of it all was that he wasn’t ill. Not yet, anyhow. I’m sure it would have been only a matter of time before he became so. The crowd captured him, and they ran him through.”
“Ran him through? What does that mean?”
“Killed him,” she said as though she were discussing no more than the weather outside.
“At least they believed him to be dead. His bloodied body was thrown upon a pile of corpses nearby, and lit on fire.”
“Then what?” I yelped.
“Sarah, dear, you must learn patience. Being what you now are, you have the luxury of time. Use it well, for sometimes it is all we have.”
I gritted my teeth. “Sorry. Please go on.”
“By this time the crowd had dissipated. They’d seen enough death to hold them, and they found no reason to stay behind and watch the fire burn away the illness they so despised. I, at this time, was feeling rather peckish. I left my house and walked amongst the dead, stopping here and there to have a small taste, most of which was quite unsavory.”
I felt a cool breeze as the door, a short distance away from our booth, opened up and a group of about ten men entered the already-crowded pub. I tried to ignore them and focus on Veronique’s story.
“I came upon the man… although he seemed more of a boy to me. At this time I was nearly fifty years of age, though I appeared much as you see me today. I believe my hair was a little longer.”
I was trying for the patience thing. I really was. My knuckles were white, gripping my knees under the table to keep from punching her in her perfect face.
“He was still alive,” she said. “But barely. His injuries great, his blood loss high. He wasn’t to be much of a meal for me. But then he opened his eyes and stared at me from the top of the burning pile of bodies. His eyes are the most extraordinary shade of gray. Especially as they flickered in the firelight.
“Suddenly I felt quite taken with him, despite the grime and sweat. I dragged him from the top of the pile and carried him to my cottage. I cleaned him up as best I could and then I sired him. It was silly for me to do such a thing after only finding his eyes attractive, but I suppose I was lonely. I desired companionship. By the next day I regretted my actions, as I was not interested in looking after a fledgling. I required someone to look after me, but it was done and I have never been one to turn my back on any responsibility that befalls me.
“He awoke the next day terribly confused. He had never heard of what I am, what he was now, and it took much explaining for him to understand. He was very scared. Hid from me much of the time.” She laughed softly. “Called me a devil. Ah, the memories.”
She took another sip of her first tequila as I downed my fourth.
“But in time he came to accept what had happened, even cherish the second gift of life.
We hid in the town for several years before moving on to Paris. There we came into contact with our first hunters—even I was ignorant to their existence until that time. Marcellus had not mentioned that we were so reviled there would be those who would wish to do us harm. We wore our immortality on our sleeve, proud of what we were, and spoke of it to many, looking for others of our kind. We were married in Paris, and I thought for a while that I could be as happy as I had been with Marcellus.” I saw her grip the edge of the table and her knuckles whiten.
“Until that one day when I saw him again. Across the River Seine. He was with another woman, a young girl of no more than sixteen, with fresh marks upon her neck. I then realized that Marcellus had left me because”—she stopped talking and took a shaky sip of her drink—“because I was too old.”
I shook my head. “But you looked exactly the same. You’d stopped aging.”
“Men,” she said simply, as if that explained everything. Actually, it did.
“Thierry and I went to an opera that night. I was trying to take my mind off seeing Marcellus again after so many years. But he was also there. He spoke with me privately, giving me compliment after compliment, attempting to ease my hurt feelings. His charm was so compelling, and perhaps I was a fool to believe him, but I forgave him everything in no more than a blink of his beautiful eyes.”
She stopped talking again as the men who had entered the club a few moments ago walked past our booth toward the pool table with drinks in hand.
“He took us with him to a secret club, and it opened up a whole new world to us. That night Marcellus was the man I remembered. Charismatic, engaging, electric. I felt more alive than I had for the ten years since I’d last seen him.”
“What about Thierry?”
“He watched me from the other side of the club. I could sense his jealousy, but what was I to do? My true love had at last returned to me. But it was not to last, for that night the club was raided by hunters. It was chaos. They came in like the plague itself, attempting to wipe out everything in their path. Marcellus fought bravely, but…” She stopped talking.
I waited.
Veronique sniffed and drew a nearby white paper napkin to the corner of her eye. “He was killed. They surrounded him and killed him with swords carved from wood. Our eyes met as he disintegrated before me. Gone forever. My true love, Marcellus.”
She sobbed into the napkin for a moment.
“What about Thierry?” I said again.
She looked up at me sharply. “If I did not know any better, I would say that the only thing you care to learn about is Thierry. Thierry’s life, Thierry’s fate. But it’s my story. My story. And my love was dead.”
She was feeling such pain for something that had happened more than six hundred years ago that my heart bled a little for her. Just a little. I decided not to provoke her, to make the pain any worse. I waited until she was ready to continue.
“When it finally registered with me that he was gone for good, rage filled my soul. Such rage, such vengeance— but they gave me strength. I, who had never fought anything in my life but perhaps a light cold, took to arms and fought back against the hunters. But I was not the only one. Others in the club fought back. It was a true moment of glory for me as I fought, shoulder to shoulder, with those I’d never met before but now considered as close to me as my own family.
“In the wee hours of the morning, when it was finally over, I looked around for Thierry. He was nowhere to be seen and I felt a sharp pain go through my heart.”
“You were stabbed?”
She looked at me. “It was a metaphorical stab of pain. Not literal, dear. I was concerned, for I thought that my young charge—not to mention, loyal and devoted husband—had met the same fate as my beloved Marcellus.”
She shook her head. “It was not for two days that I found him. At the first sign of trouble he had left, hid himself away from danger. He had not come out until he felt that it was safe.
“I did not greet him with the open arms he perhaps expected. I was angry with him. Marcellus had fought bravely and died, and he had hidden like a coward and lived.”
I let her story settle over me. This was her proof that Thierry was a big, fat coward because more than six hundred years ago he hightailed it out of a fight to the death? Didn’t seem like the Thierry I knew nowadays, a man who came off as brave and strong and impenetrable. But I was pretty sure that six hundred years could change a lot of people.
Veronique smiled at me, though her eyes were a bit red from thinking about this Marcellus dude. Yeah, the man who cheated on her and left her without a word. I could see why she was still in mourning. Sounded like a great fellow.
“You’ve lived a very interesting life.”
She nodded solemnly. “Yes, I have.”
“How long have the two of you been apart?” I asked. “At least I got the impression that you and Thierry didn’t live together anymore.”
“That’s a rather personal question, isn’t it? But I feel as if we’re old friends now. I don’t mind personal questions from old friends. Our marriage has been in name and memory only for over a hundred years. It was patchy before that. Ever since the incident at the
Paris club, I have not felt the same toward him.”
“If Marcellus had lived, would you have left Thierry?”
She blinked. “Goodness, what a question! He was my husband; how could I have left him?
I simply would have taken Marcellus as a lover.”
“Oh.”
I saw someone approach the booth and figured it was the bartender wondering if we wanted more drinks. I looked up, and my breath caught in my throat as I s
aw Quinn’s father staring down at me.
“Hi there,” I squeaked.
“I recognize you.” He wagged a finger at me. “You were in here with my son before.”
“Uh, that’s right.”
He frowned. “Have you seen the boy? I cannot find him anywhere tonight.”
I swallowed hard. “No. Haven’t seen him.”
He shook his head. “I have reached the end of my patience with him. He’ll receive no more mercy from me.”
“Roger?” Veronique said, and Quinn’s father glanced over at her.
“Veronique?” He raised a bushy eyebrow. “It can’t be you.”
She stood up. “But it is.”
His eyes tracked down her tight black dress. “Stunning. A vision of beauty, just as I remember you from so long ago.”
“You have a few more lines in your face,” she said with a smile. “But it suits you. You are as handsome as I remember as well.”
He smiled back at her, and it was almost a leering grin. “And how long ago was that?”
“Thirty years? Perhaps more? Sarah, dear, would you excuse us for a moment?”
I nodded, since I couldn’t find my voice to speak. I watched Veronique follow Quinn’s father, the leader of the vampire hunters, into a dark and smoky corner of the bar. Their faces grew close, and they whispered and laughed and touched each other like old friends. Did he know that she was a vampire? He had to. I think he was smart enough to figure out if someone hadn’t aged a day in decades that something was up. He was acting a little different than I would have expected him to in a situation like this, not that I knew him at all. All I knew was what I’d overheard when he reprimanded Quinn as if he were a naughty toddler. Quinn had been bullied all of his life by this zealot of a father who despised vampires and had devoted his life to wiping them off the face of the planet.
Then why was he giggling with Veronique like a schoolboy with a crush? It just didn’t make sense. Unless… A thought so horrible went through my mind that I immediately pushed it away. But it came back and poked me, insisting that I give it more consideration. Could it be that Veronique was the vampire traitor? Was that why she’d shown up in the city just before the hunters had come up with their new and improved annihilation plan? Veronique gave me the impression that she cared about one person and one person only— and it wasn’t Thierry. It was herself.
