by Lee Carroll
When his swallows ceased at last, he lowered her gently to the ground. He caressed her neck gently, feeling for her pulse to assure himself that she was still …
“Alive? Yes, she’s still alive.”
Will looked up and found to his horror that he was not alone in the alley. A hooded figure was standing in the shadows.
“But not all your victims will be so lucky,” the man said in an angry snarl.
“Who…?” The man’s voice was familiar and—more amazing still—he seemed to know his thoughts, as if he somehow shared his mind. “How…?”
“Is this where you want to spend eternity? In the shadows hiding from your beloved, or…” The man stepped out of the shadows and lowered his hood. Will gasped at the sight of the man’s face. He’d thought discovering that Marguerite was mortal was the worst surprise of the night, but this … this got even further under his skin.
“Or would you like me to show you another way?”
33
Château Hell
The coach took me ac
ross the Seine to the Left Bank and went south down a long, straight street. Although much looked different from the Paris I’d left a few days ago, this street looked familiar. I recognized the imposing edifice of the Sorbonne and a number of other academic buildings. Although they weren’t wearing jeans and backpacks, the scholars in robes walking the streets in rowdy groups laughed as loudly and drunkenly as their twenty-first-century counterparts.
As we drove farther south, though, the city looked less and less familiar. Where I’d have expected the Luxembourg Gardens we passed instead a monastery. We drove through a gate in a stone wall and into a rural area, then pulled up to an elegant château, its limestone façae distinguished by a tall, octagonal tower.
Which looked familiar.
As I got out of the coach, I turned around in a slow circle, trying to get my bearings, but without the Eiffel Tower flickering in the distance or the light of the observatory tower …
“Monsieur,” I asked the driver, “what sort of monastery did we just pass?”
“It belongs to the Carthusians.” Then, crossing himself, he added, “But this ground was once the site of Château Vauvert, which many say was the home of the devil himself. It is not a good place, mademoiselle, but it is where Monsieur told me to take you.”
“It’s okay,” I told the driver. “I think I know who lives here.”
As soon as I’d given him permission, he whipped the horses into a gallop and sped away. As I walked to the door, I recalled that the Château Vauvert had taken up the ground that was occupied in twenty-first-century Paris by the Luxembourg Gardens and the Paris Observatory. I also remembered that the expression go to Vauvert was synonymous in French with go to hell because of the reputation of the château, from which strange screams and cries were often heard. It was a lonely place, I reflected, staring up at the enormous doorway of the later château that had taken its place. This château was decorated as if it guarded an entrance to the underworld. Caryatids framed the doorway, voluptuous women whose lush bodies resolved into scaly tails. Sea creatures swarmed across the arch above the door. I lifted the heavy iron doorknocker—carved in the shape of a seahorse—and knocked twice. The sound echoed in the still night. When the door opened, I was only half surprised to find Madame La Pieuvre, her silver hair piled high on top of her head, wearing a low-cut brocade dress with a wide lace collar from which hung a long train.
“Octavia,” I said with a relieved sigh. “I’ve never been so happy to see anyone in all my life!”
A smile dimpled her plump, white cheeks, but she looked confused. “Do I know you, my dear?”
“You will,” I said with a more tired sigh. “It’s a long story. I know it’s a lot to take on faith, but…”
“I’m sure I’ve taken a lot more on faith,” she said with a sympathetic pat on my shoulder. “Come on in, ma chère, and you’ll tell me your long story over dinner.”
* * *
Madame La Pieuvre took me to the top room of the château’s octagonal tower, which was lit by cleverly designed lanterns and fitted out with a telescope and a number of other astronomical devices I wouldn’t have thought had yet been invented.
“I have some observations to make later,” she said, waving me toward a silk-upholstered chair. “I’ll ring for our supper to be brought here.”
Supper was a delicious fish stew seasoned with Provençal herbs. “Bouillabaisse, my favorite!” I exclaimed.
“Bouillabaisse? What a lovely word for it. I’ll have to remember that.”
When I’d slaked the worst of my hunger and drunk two glasses of a delicious sparkling white wine that she was amused to hear me call champagne, I told Madame La Pieuvre my story. I told her all of it, from my first glimpse of the silver box in New York City, about which she had heard rumors, to our trip to the Val sans Retour. I thought she’d stop me there, but she continued to listen with the same grave attention, her gray eyes as placid as a morning fog rolling over the sea, to my entire marvelous tale. The only sign she made that this part of the story had affected her was that she poured us each a glass of green liqueur, which she told me the local Carthusian monks had made. “They call it Chartreuse,” she told me. “I love it for its color.”
I sipped the surprisingly potent liqueur and continued with my story. When I finished, she asked me one question.
“May I see that timepiece you crafted?”
I slipped its chain over my head and handed it to her, surprised that this was the detail that most interested her. She examined the front of the watch, opened it, watched its gears moving, then turned it over. Her eyes widened when she saw the design of the Watchtower on the back.
“This wasn’t on the original watch you saw,” she said.
“No, I added it.”
“Do you know why?”
I shook my head. “It just seemed to belong there.”
She closed the watch and handed it back to me. “I imagine Cosimo Ruggieri strived for years to find the correct symbols to make his time machine work, but only a descendant of the Watchtower would know what symbol to add.” She rose to her feet and crossed to the north window, where her telescope was set up. Her arms, released from her train, plucked instruments from shelves as she went.
“Cosimo has been endeavoring to trick time all his life,” she said, adjusting the telescope. “Here, come take a look.”
I put my eye to the telescope. It was not trained on the heavens, but on the low skyline of Paris to the north. The view of dark, huddled buildings brought home to me the reality that I was not in my time. Paris had not yet become the City of Light. But by the glow of the nearly full moon I could make out the twin, square towers of Notre Dame, the three towers of Saint-Germain, the Tour Saint-Jacques, and the slim spire of Sainte-Chapelle. Brightest of all, though, northwest of Notre Dame, was a glowing orb. As I watched, a thread of lightning descended from the sky and struck the orb, illuminating a skeletal framework of interconnecting circles and ellipses. It looked like one of the astronomical contraptions I’d spied in the Musée des Arts et Métiers.
“What is that?” I asked, my eye still glued to the telescope.
“Cosimo Ruggieri’s tower,” Madame La Pieuvre replied. “It’s been drawing lightning for the last seven nights. I’ve been watching it, waiting for Ruggieri to return from his abbey in Brittany where my Bretagne friends have been keeping an eye on him, wondering what he was bringing with him that required so much power. Last night I received word that he and Dee had awoken la bête.”
“You mean Marduk?” I asked, glancing away from the telescope. Madame La Pieuvre’s face, lit by flickering lantern light, was round and pale.
“Yes, Marduk. The name is a perversion of the name he took many centuries ago. He called himself Duc du Mar—Duke of the Sea. I am ashamed to say that he was originally one of the fées de la mer. He arrived here in Paris on the boats that brought us after the fall of Ys. The aristocracy of
Ys was a proud group. They enjoyed the way that humans worshipped them. Some genuinely fell in love with humans…” She looked away from me, her face wistful. I recalled that Monsieur Lutin had told me that more than any of the other fairies, the sea fairies had thrived off their contact with humans.
“But others abused their power over their human consorts,” Madame La Pieuvre continued darkly. “The worst offender was the Duc du Mar. He surrounded himself with human slaves whom he ravished and then disposed of when they no longer pleased him. His appetite was insatiable. Soon he was no longer content with mere physical abuse. He wanted to literally devour them. In his attempt to possess his humans wholly, he began to drink their blood. Some say he even ate their flesh.”
“Ugh. How could the rest of you—the other sea fairies—allow that?”
“We weren’t sure at first what he was doing. We realized it only when his victims began rising from the dead as vampires. He made hundreds of them. They swept over Paris terrorizing the populace. The fées de la mer met and decreed that Marduk—as he then began calling himself—must be stopped, but by then it was too late. Marduk had gained the power to take on the appearance of his victims. Thus he slipped from our grasp and escaped Paris. He went on a rampage across the countryside, leaving a path of drained bodies and vampires in his wake. Eventually we hounded him into the Pyrénées. There, without enough human victims to sustain him, he began feasting on beasts of the wild—boars, wolves, and bears. He took on traits of all the animals he had devoured and became a monstrous beast with an insatiable appetite for human flesh.”
“Like the Beast of Gévaudan,” I said, recalling what Will had told me. I described the legend of Gévaudan to Madame La Pieuvre.
“Yes, that sounds like Marduk—or perhaps one of the creatures he spawned. I’m afraid that the forests of Europe have never entirely been free of such creatures since Marduk went on his rampage. At last we hunted him down to his lair high in the Pyrénées. I was among the hunting party. We captured him, but only after he had taken many lives … including that of someone very dear to me.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“It’s not Will’s fault. He had no idea what Dee was planning, and he tried to kill Marduk. He did kill him, I think, but when my—I mean Will from the future—tried to drink his blood, Marduk revived and attacked him.”
“And you say Morgane told you Marduk’s blood would make Will human again?”
“Yes. Do you think she was telling the truth?”
Madame La Pieuvre shrugged with typical Gallic resignation. “Maybe yes, maybe no. One never knows with Morgane. But one thing is clear. We must hunt down Marduk and destroy him. Your Will is free to do what he likes with him when we find him.”
“But how will we find him? We don’t know where he is.”
“I think we do. Look again at Ruggieri’s column.”
I looked through the telescope. For a moment I thought I was back in twenty-first-century Paris where the Eiffel Tower lit up the skyline with pyrotechnic displays, but the flashing lights came from the Medici Column, which looked now like a Roman candle setting off sparks. At the center of the blaze, the metal cage was glowing and revolving, shooting fireworks into the Paris sky.
“I believe Ruggieri has been preparing the column for Marduk’s arrival, and therefore Marduk, Dee, and Ruggieri will be in the Hôtel de la Reine. I only hope they haven’t gone ahead with their experiment tonight.”
“They haven’t.”
The voice came from the doorway. Will stood beside a flustered maid, his face less pale than when I’d seen him last, but no less grim.
“I tracked Marduk down to the Hôtel de la Reine and spied Dee and Ruggieri feeding him the blood of victims they must have previously slain in anticipation of Marduk’s arrival. I overheard them say that they must let the beast rest today before ‘transforming’ him tonight.”
“Were you able to get his blood?” I asked, taking a step toward Will. His cheeks had the flush of blood in them, but he shook his head.
“I couldn’t risk it while Marduk was conscious. He2019;t 019;s grown too powerful. But during the day while he rests…”
“I can draw his blood,” I said. “If I can get into the Hôtel de la Reine.”
Will looked toward Madame La Pieuvre. They exchanged a look I couldn’t decipher. For the first time I wondered how Will had thought to send me to her. How did they know each other?
“I can get us into the Hotel,” she said. “I knew Catherine de Médicis well. She showed me the secret passages she had built. Like any Medici she was an inveterate intriguer—for good reason.”
“Will you go with Garet, Octavia?” Will asked. “And make sure she comes to no harm?”
“Of course, mon cher. When we have Marduk’s blood, we will go to Ruggieri’s tower. I believe that with the watch Garet has made, the two of you will be able to travel forward to your own time.” One of her arms drifted toward Will’s face. At a warning look from him she let it flutter back down. The Medicis weren’t the only intriguers, I suspected.
* * *
Madame La Pieuvre led us to a room with heavy drawn shutters. “You will be safe from the light here,” she told Will. She offered to show me to my room, but I said I’d stay with Will until dawn.
“As you please, my dear, only remember that you will need your rest, too. We must be on our guard when we go into the Hôtel de la Reine.”
When she had gone, Will drew me down onto the bed and tried to kiss me, but I turned my face away. “You two seem very friendly. Was Madame La Pieuvre also one of your conquests?”
Will grasped my jaw firmly in his hand and turned my face so I had to look at him. “No. I did her a favor. When did you become so jealous? I wouldn’t have thought you were the type.”
“I suppose since I’ve had to take a seventeenth-century tour of your exes,” I replied, hating the bitter tone of my voice but unable to get rid of it. “You mentioned quite a few in your sleep yesterday. Who is Bess?”
The corner of Will’s mouth twitched. “I called out Bess’s name? How extraordinary! I haven’t thought of her in centuries. How strange to think she’s still alive in these times!”
“Perhaps you’d like to go pay her a visit,” I said, getting to my feet. “As long as you’re in the same century.”
Will was on his feet blocking my way to the door before I’d even seen him move, his hands gripping my shoulders, his face centimeters from mine.
“Is it really these trifles that concern you, Garet? Do you really care about the women I took to my bed over the centuries more than the men and women I took to their graves?”
I started to answer that I shouldn’t have to choose, but then I saw the anguish in his blood-rimmed eyes. “You couldn’t help taking blood. It’s what Dee made you.”
“But I could have helped killing. I started out believing I could drink without draining my victims, but I soon learned that the blood was too much of an addiction. The first deaths may have been accidents, but then I stopped caring whether I stopped in time or not. All I cared about was the blood. For centuries I was a monster no better than the creature who made me.”
“But then you stopped killing?”
“Yes, about a hundred years ago I learned to control my thirst enough to leave my victims alive. It only becomes dangerous when I feed from the same source over and over.” He caressed my neck and I felt his touch thrum through my body. I’d been holding myself tight with anger, but his touch made me vibrate like a plucked violin string. “As I’ve warned you.”
I sighed and felt the tightness in my muscles melt further. The release brought me an inch closer to him. I could feel the heat of the blood he’d drunk moving through his flesh. Suddenly it didn’t matter to me where he’d gotten the blood—or what other women he’d loved in the past. What did the past matter? I had warped time with the timepiece I’d made—couldn’t I wipe our pasts clean?
“After tomorrow you’ll be free of thi
s curse and free of your past. You can start over.… We can start over.” I closed the centimeter gap between us and pressed myself against the heat of him. I lay my head on his chest, tilting my head so my throat was bared to his lips. I felt him hesitate.
“Perhaps there is a way to start over,” he murmured as if to himself. Then he lowered his head to my neck. As his lips grazed my skin he whispered in my ear, “But tonight I want to be with you one last time … like this.”
As his teeth sank into my neck, every muscle in my body turned to liquid. I would have fallen straight to the floor if he hadn’t caught me. I might, I found myself thinking, fall straight into hell in his arms, but it no longer mattered to me. I’d go to hell to be with him. But I didn’t fall. Once he had hold of me, I felt the blood in my veins catch fire as if they were filled with that green liqueur Madame La Pieuvre had fed me earlier. I wrapped my legs around his waist and pressed my mouth against his, tasting my blood on his lips. I could taste, too, the venom his fangs released. It made my mouth tingle and sent a ripple of electricity through my veins. I undid his pants as he carried me to the bed. He was inside me before we hit the bed. I felt his urgency and matched it.
34
The Hotel of Crocodiles
I watched death come
upon Will at dawn. It wasn’t just sleep, I realized, it was as if he died at every dawn. I couldn’t bear the thought of his dying one more day. I had to find Marduk.
