"His real name is Gilles de Rais," she began. Then she studied my face. "You don't recognize the name?"
"Should I?"
"Do you know the legend of Elizabeth Bathory?"
"Sure. She's one of the sources for Dracula. Killed hundreds of peasants and bathed in their blood, thinking it would keep her eternally young. She was tried, convicted, and walled up. That's the human legend. The supernatural one says that she was a vampire. Also an immortality--"
I stopped. "It was rumored that she wasn't satisfied with a vampire's semi-immortality. She was conducting experiments to extend that. In other words, she was an immortality quester. There's a connection, isn't there? To Anita Barrington."
"Perhaps. What else do you know?"
"That her fellow vampires condemned her for killing so many people, and they're the ones who walled her up, then created the story of her death. The legend is that she'd found the cure for mortality, meaning she's still walled up today. Only no one knows where, because every vampire who put her there has passed on. So who's Gilles de Rais? A follower of Bathory?"
"The other way around," Cassandra said. "De Rais predates Bathory by nearly a century. He was a French knight who fought with Joan of Arc. Legend says he killed hundreds of children. While some claimed it was occult sacrifice on behalf of a demon, trial records indicate he was closer to a modern serial killer, murdering children for sexual pleasure."
I thought of the man I'd met, remembered talking to him, listening to him orate, admiring his skill. I felt sick.
"That's the human story," Cassandra continued. "As with the Bathory legend, there's another one for supernaturals."
"Claiming he was an immortality quester, I bet."
"A successful one. Records show that he was hanged for his crimes. Our stories say that he survived."
"And ours are right?"
"No one knows," Cassandra said. "Some say he assisted Bathory in her crimes, and helped her achieve immortality. Others said she was simply following his example, that she'd procured notes from his estate. For the past four hundred years, supernaturals have claimed to see Gilles de Rais alive. Claimed to have spoken to him. Claimed to have collaborated with him. While there are many reports, none can be substantiated."
"But you've met him, right? You recognized him in the photo."
"I have met the man in the photograph," she said carefully. "He called himself Gilles de Rais. I was skeptical then. I still am. But whether he is de Rais or has merely claimed his identity, I can't say. The point is moot. What matters is that whoever this man is, he hasn't aged since I met him over sixty years ago. He was not a vampire then and, if you are correct, he is not a vampire now."
"Which means de Rais or not, he's discovered the cure for mortality."
"It would appear so."
Cassandra had met Giles during the Second World War, investigating a story about vanished soldiers. I vaguely recalled reading it in the council archives. A small group of American soldiers had been on the move through occupied France right at the end of the war. Ten went to sleep in a barn one night. When one awoke the next morning, he was alone, and found no trace of his comrades, except smears of blood in the hay.
When questioned, the soldier admitted that he hadn't been in the barn all night. See, the farmer had this daughter and, well, we all know how that goes. He'd snuck off to meet her. She'd brought a bottle of wine, and when he stumbled back into the barn, he was exhausted, happy, and drunk. He'd set up his kit near the door, so he could sneak in and out, and had fallen asleep without noticing whether anyone else was there.
Presumably, then, people came while he was gone, killed the soldiers, and dragged them away. As unlikely as it seemed, if that had been the end of the story, it would have been the only conclusion. But it wasn't the end.
For months afterward, local farmers complained of cattle killed and drained of blood. Then came the forest sightings of men in tattered American uniforms, gaunt and hollow-eyed. In most accounts, the soldiers ran as soon as they were spotted. In a few, though, they attacked. Some witnesses managed to fend them off. Others woke hours later on the forest floor, weak, with puncture wounds on their necks. Some never woke, and were found drained of blood, just like the cattle.
Word made it to the American council. The war had ended, but their European counterpart was still in shambles and no one could reach them for comment. So because the soldiers were American, the council sent Cassandra to investigate.
"I didn't want to go," she said. "A recently occupied war zone? Do I look like a Green Beret? And the story was just as ridiculous. If those dead men were anything, they were clearly zombies, and the blood-draining a separate incident. If the council felt the need to send anyone, it should be a necromancer. But, no, I know the language and I'd made the mistake of admitting I was familiar with the region, so they chose me."
The council had offered to send another delegate to accompany Cassandra, but she'd refused. She was French, invulnerable to bullets, and able to knock out attackers with her bite. The gravest danger she'd face was having to forgo hot baths and clean clothes.
So off she went.
"Despite my misgivings, I soon came to believe we did indeed have a vampire. I found two living victims and both had healed bite wounds on their necks. Both had been in the forest. Both had seen a man in an American uniform. Having heard the rumors, they ran. The soldier gave chase and brought them down. He bit their necks. They struggled. Eventually, they weakened and passed out."
"Sounds similar to a vampire attack, but it's not quite right," I said.
"Exactly. Which is what troubled me about both accounts. The vampire's saliva should have induced a quick lack of consciousness and mild retrograde amnesia."
That meant they'd pass out fast, and wake up forgetting the attack.
She continued. "That didn't happen here. Moreover, what they described sounded more like a zombie than a vampire. The soldiers were dressed in filthy and ragged uniforms. Their skin was gray and they smelled of decomposing flesh."
"Maybe an earlier evolutionary form of vampires," I said. "Like those Shifters the werewolves found in Alaska. There could be a pocket of early vampires in that region, and they infected the soldiers. That would explain human legends about vampirism being transmitted by a bite. Plus, if they really are rotting, it would explain why outside supernaturals didn't know about them. Instead of being semi-immortal, they actually rot and die fast."
"That was my thought. I wanted to discuss it with the research expert at the council. At the time, though, it wasn't a simple matter of making a call on my cell phone. The war might have ended, but communication with America was still difficult. From a small village so far from Paris, it was impossible. So, I continued gathering evidence while making forays into the forest, hoping to spot one of the creatures. Several times I saw a figure, yet I didn't detect any pulse of life. If I gave chase, it ran. I even once tried running away, to see if that would entice it, but it went in the opposite direction."
"As if it sensed another predator."
She nodded. "Then, a week after I arrived, a man came to the village inn where I was staying. He introduced himself as Guy Leray. He was the man you met as Giles. He took a room, and had the innkeeper introduce us. I'd been pretending to be a journalist from Paris, investigating the vampire soldiers. Leray said he was a writer and planned to pen a lurid novel on the case. He hoped we might share information. I told him, since he'd only just arrived, that would seem a one-way exchange. He apologized and withdrew. The next morning, he met me as I left my room, and offered me a lead. He'd heard of an unreported attack. Would I care to accompany him to interview the victim? I did. There was nothing new to this latest victim's story, so I reciprocated by offering Leray a few useless tidbits from my own investigation. Over the next few days, he pursued my company relentlessly. It was not a romantic pursuit. Nor was it a professional one. The man made me uneasy, and I began to suspect he was a supernatural, one who perhaps k
new what I was."
"But he wasn't a vampire himself."
"No. He gave off the pulse of life. Then came the news that a hunting dog had found a shallow mass grave. When the villagers dug, they found the soldiers, all in a state of decomposition that suggested they'd died when they'd first disappeared. Local farmers began driving stakes through the soldiers' hearts before the officials could arrive. I managed to examine one corpse before it was impaled, and I can say with certainty that the man was dead. Yet the front of several soldiers' uniforms were caked with dried blood."
"As if they'd been feeding."
"That's what it looked like, though it was clear from the deterioration that they had not been vampires. I theorized that they'd been zombies raised by a necromancer and forced to behave in a vampirelike manner. The council report says that. But there was something that didn't make it into that report. A related incident. After the corpses were removed, I decided to remain in town a few days, to see if I could find the necromancer. I began to wonder if it was Leray and that's how he knew what I was."
Necromancers deal with the dead. A vampire is--however much Cass hates to admit it--dead, and necromancers can tell.
"Supporting that supposition was the fact that Guy Leray left town the morning the corpses were discovered. If he was responsible, then he would have been nervous when he realized another supernatural was investigating. When he couldn't stop me, he stopped his zombies, buried them, and left. The next night, though, I was awakened by the sensation of visitors in my room. Two people stood beside my bed, arguing over the best way to decapitate me."
"Nice," I said.
"I thought so. I kept my eyes shut and listened. I determined which carried the machete, disabled him with a bite, and took his weapon. His companion threw herself on the floor, begging for mercy. A second bite disabled her. I trussed them up, and waited until they woke.
"They said they'd come to the region following Gilles de Rais. Naturally, I knew who they meant. When I was young, our maids used to frighten each other with stories of de Rais. As a vampire, I'd heard the name many times, along with the rumors of his continued existence. As they described the man, I realized he was the one I'd known as Guy Leray. My two would-be attackers were French immortality questers--shamans--and they'd heard a rumor he was here, and had come to offer their services as apprentices."
"Groupies," I said.
"Yes. They'd heard that it was very difficult to win his favor. Then they spotted me. Like most questers, they were obsessed with vampire lore and knew the names and descriptions of many vampires."
"Including you."
"They decided I would make the perfect offering for their idol. I convinced them that they'd made a horrible mistake, and I'd actually been working with de Rais, who was in the forest, conducting an important ritual. If they wanted, I could take them to him. Sadly the man was not as gullible as I'd hoped, and as we walked into the deep woods, he attacked. His partner followed suit. I was forced to kill them both, which is why that part of my story is not in the council record."
While many supernatural bodies, like the werewolf Pack, have become more liberal-thinking in the twenty-first century, you could almost argue the reverse for the interracial council. Led by Coven witches, they'd historically taken a very nonviolent approach to conflict resolution--so nonviolent that they rarely resolved a conflict, and became little more than record-keepers. If Cassandra had killed two supernaturals, even in self-defense, they would have been afraid it would reflect badly on them, and the account would be stricken.
"The fact that it included an alleged sighting of Gilles de Rais by an actual council member made them even more reluctant to record it. That part, I didn't disagree with. I did not believe I'd actually met an immortal, much less the infamous de Rais. I thought perhaps he was a necromancer who'd killed the soldiers, then raised their zombies and instructed them to act like vampires, to further his reputation as Gilles de Rais conducting immortality experiments. I suspect now that what I stumbled upon was an immortality experiment in progress."
Cassandra's theory wasn't as wild a conjecture as it might seem. When questers think of immortality, they turn to the two examples of it in our world: vampires and zombies. Vampires get most of the attention--eternal youth is damned attractive, especially when the alternative is eternal decomposition.
But if de Rais was already immortal, why conduct experiments? Two explanations. One, he wasn't Gilles de Rais, but a supernatural who'd taken on his identity and had, after the soldier experiment, uncovered the secret to immortality. Two, he'd already been immortal, but had achieved it in a way he couldn't duplicate and sell to others, so he was modifying his method.
Now he'd partnered with Anita Barrington, who'd been presumed dead for five years. Did she know Giles was supposedly Gilles de Rais? Was he promising his followers immortality? More important, could he deliver?
I'd dug up an e-mail to the agency from a Los Angeles resident who claimed to have been approached by the group for recruitment. He might have met Anita or Giles. Even if he hadn't we could hope he'd asked more questions than Eloise and might have more answers.
I called and arranged to meet him at a steak house. It was almost nine and I was getting woozy from lack of food. We got there five minutes before the contact--Tim--was due to arrive. We waited fifteen minutes, then I ordered prime rib. Cass got soup and a glass of wine.
Our meals arrived. We ate. I had dessert. Still no sign of Tim. I'd called his cell phone twice and gotten voice mail.
"He's bailed," I said. "Decided he didn't want to get involved."
"So it would appear," she said. "I can't say I blame him."
thirty-one
We'd parked in a lot a couple of blocks from the steak house, and had walked about half the distance back when Cassandra murmured, "Someone's watching us."
I started to glance back, then stopped, took out my phone, and angled it to catch a reflection through the glass. All I could make out was a few people waiting to flag a cab.
"Not them," Cassandra said. "Someone else has been behind us since we left the steak house."
I turned before she could stop me. "There's no one else there."
"Yes, there is. I'm experienced enough at stalking to recognize when I'm the one being stalked. Now I would suggest--"
I strode back along the sidewalk.
"That was not what I was going to suggest," she said.
Once we passed the taxi-waiting group, I saw there was indeed someone behind them, following us. Someone I recognized. Anita Barrington stood in a delivery lane. When she saw us coming toward her, she didn't retreat. Just lifted a hand, as if to motion us closer, then wheeled, staring down the empty street. Without looking our way again, she took off.
"Follow?" I said.
"You're asking?" Cassandra arched her brows. "A little skittish these days?"
"No, a little careful these days."
"As long as I can sense her, we won't get jumped."
We made it to the end of the lane, then Cassandra lifted a hand to stop me.
"Let me guess," I whispered. "She's waiting right around that corner."
She shook her head. "Farther down. She's stopped. Someone else is approaching."
"Where are they?" It was Eloise's voice.
"I couldn't make contact. Someone was watching."
"I'll phone them," Eloise said. "I'm sure if I ask them to meet me for a drink--"
"No. Subterfuge will only make them suspicious. I'll find another way. Giles can't see me meeting with her and he has spies everywhere."
Their voices faded as they walked away. Cassandra motioned that we should follow. We did, only to find the alley dark and empty. We proceeded with caution until we reached a metal door. Cassandra stopped there, paused, then nodded.
"They're inside."
The door wasn't locked. We went through and found ourselves in a back hall lined with doors, ending with one that led onto the street front. Cassandra pas
sed by all of them without pausing. Her goal was the last one on the right. Also unlocked.
She opened it. When I peered through, I saw what looked like the darkened stockroom of a restaurant. I remembered passing an Indian takeout that'd been closed for the night.
Cassandra crossed the dark room and reached for the next door handle. I hurried in and grasped her shoulder.
"They're in there," she said.
"Um, yes. Inside an empty restaurant. In the dark. Alone. Does this really seem like a good idea?"
She turned to me. "Timidity does not become you, Savannah. Has this loss of powers really had such an effect on your nerve?"
"No. I mean, yes, I'm a little more cautious. But having screwed up and gotten myself kidnapped had a bigger effect. It's not nervousness. It's maturity."
"No, my dear, it's not. But clearly this isn't the place to have this conversation, so you will wait here, where I can assure you it's quite safe. The one who is impervious to harm will continue on."
She slipped through the door. It closed behind her.
Damn it. Now this wasn't a matter of maturity. It was a matter of doing what was right, and protecting my partner.
I went through the door. Dark. I took out my phone and activated my new flashlight app. It cast a very weak light, barely enough to bother with. I could survive without magic, but it did make life easier. And safer.
I made it into the restaurant front--a counter for service and a few chairs for waiting customers. A sign pointed to restrooms around the corner. I followed it to a set of stairs. At the top were restroom doors. Farther down the hall, a door was open.
When I peeked through the open door, I found a makeshift apartment.
Ahead I saw Cassandra's back as she crept through a second doorway. I could hear voices, too. Cassandra disappeared, heading in the direction of the voices.
"Hello, Cassandra," Anita's voice said. "I'm so pleased to meet you."
I froze.
"Anita Barrington," Cassandra said. "I've heard a great deal about you. Good to see you're alive and well after your brush with death. It's rather nasty, isn't it?"
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