American Gothic (16 page)

26

The Fallen

N
ATURE IS AN indomitable power in the tropics, the heat, rain, and sun creating paradoxically twin drives for growth and decay that can be resisted but never overcome. The coastal jungle quickly reclaims gardens, farm plots, and plantations that are not constantly maintained.

The plantation surrounding Maison de la Falaise had the look of abandonment about it, as if disease or war had carried away the inhabitants, leaving the vines, ferns, and monstrous orchids to reclaim their humid kingdom. The gravel of fine white shells paving the lane from the road to the great house had almost completely disappeared beneath Bahama grass and overgrown oleander bushes that slapped Dr. Lavalle’s legs as he rode, leaving the trousers above his riding boots wet with dew.

But the workers had not run away—or been murdered. They had merely abandoned their former duties. Their presence was plain enough in the drumming and firelight flickering against the trees from a clearing beyond the cottages where the field hands lived. Peregrine allowed voodoo to be practiced openly on the plantation. And why not? The American had abandoned all pretense of civilization, even to the extent that he participated in whatever dark rituals were carried out around the huge bonfires that sent sparks mingled with pagan incantations into the starry Caribbean night sky.

Lavalle did not turn Napoleon toward the ceremony but continued to the house. If Peregrine was off with the witches, dancing around the fire, he would wait until the American returned to the house to deliver the news.

Maison de la Falaise was lighted but in a haphazard way—a lamp here, a candle there, more dark than not. The house was disintegrating at an amazing rate. One corner of the porch was sagging—termites had gotten into a pillar—but Peregrine apparently had no interest in having his people repair it. One of the shutters had come loose during the last thunderstorm and hung against the house at a crazy angle. It was madness to let the property go, especially when Peregrine had the employees and money to maintain the plantation as it deserved to be kept. But then there was a madness to the American that Lavalle was only beginning to appreciate. Peregrine had given up on Maison de la Falaise as he had given up on almost everything and seemed content to wallow in misery as his world disintegrated around him.

There was no way of knowing how Peregrine would react to the sad news of Lady Fairweather’s death. Lavalle would have preferred to flee the island than to be the one to tell him, but he knew there was no way to escape the vampire, and even if he tried, Peregrine would hunt him down.

Science was the doctor’s only hope now, which was fitting enough, for he had lived his entire adult life as if the laws of science, as postulated and proven by research, were the only laws that applied to him. If he could make Peregrine understand he was beginning to make progress with the research, the monster would not kill him. It ought to be easy enough to convince him, with Lady Fairweather dead, that the best course for them was to leave their green hell for somewhere civilized, where Lavalle could avail himself of the laboratory facilities required for the breakthrough that would lead to a treatment for Peregrine’s bizarre condition.

A woman was sitting on the top porch stair of Maison de la Falaise, her figure silhouetted against the light shining through the open entryway. She sat with head slumped forward, knees far apart, like one of the bawds at the whorehouse in Cap Misère. The doctor didn’t see the second woman until he got closer; she was lying on her back at the bottom of the steps, arms and legs splayed out, as if she had been shot at the top of the stairs and fallen backward, dead.

Napoleon sensed death, the way animals do, and began to shy. The reins snapped against the horse’s neck as Lavalle pulled them sharply back just short of his destination.

The woman’s head rose enough for her to look up at him through the long tangle of hair falling around her face. Lavalle was caught completely off guard. It was a
white
woman. Where had she come from? Lady Fairweather was the only other white woman on the coast, and she was dead.

Lavalle jerked the reins again when Napoleon began to back away. There was no avoiding the scene, repugnant as it was. Lavalle swung himself out of the saddle, grunting as his boots hit the ground. He looped the reins around the branch of a tree felled in the last storm. He could feel the woman’s eyes on him, but something made the ever-charming Parisian doctor wary.

Lavalle knelt next to the prostrate woman long enough to assure himself of what he already knew. Marie France’s corpse was still warm to the touch. The savage wound in her neck was the cause of death. He was surprised he hadn’t seen the shoe on her right foot and recognized her sooner, for Marie was the only black woman Lavalle knew on the island besides his nurse, Magalie Jeanty, who wore shoes. The left shoe was missing. Perhaps it had come off when her lifeless body was pitched down the stairs. Or maybe she lost it while trying to run away from Peregrine, the coldhearted killer. The American’s interest in sorcery hadn’t prevented him from killing the voodoo priestess. The larger question, though, was would he kill Lavalle?

The doctor looked up at the white woman, who was watching him with what appeared to be a drugged fascination. Lavalle had her to worry about now, too, not that he would put a stranger’s welfare ahead of his own, even one so lovely. She was young, scarcely past childhood, and far too innocent looking to be anywhere near a creature like Nathaniel Peregrine. Her face had the same refined, idealized preciousness seen in the face of a little girl’s doll. Her skin was the most amazingly perfect shade of white, as if she were made from porcelain. Lavalle guessed she was sixteen, maybe eighteen at the most. Despite his fear, and his determination to look after his own best interests, he could not help but feel a twinge of yearning for the delicious young thing.

“Hello, my dear,” Lavalle said.

She did not answer but got to her feet and turned to go into the house. Lavalle went up the stairs after her.

“Excuse me, young lady, but I am not sure it is a good idea for you to go inside.”

When she did not stop, Lavalle stepped quickly forward and put his hand gently on her shoulder. She turned, her lips the shimmering red hue of wet cherries. The impulse to take her in his arms and kiss her took command of Dr. Lavalle with such force that he was barely able to keep himself from behaving poorly. There was a dreamy, faraway quality to her eyes. Peregrine must have drugged her, Lavalle thought, perhaps with a draft of opium.

“It is not I who am on drugs,” she said. She spoke in French, but her accent reminded Lavalle of the Creoles he knew in Port-au-Prince. “I see you have gone back on the cocaine, Dr. Lavalle,” the girl said. “I can smell it in your blood.”

She pulled a lady’s handkerchief from a sleeve and daintily patted her lips. Some of the red from her mouth transferred to the lace. Her lips were wet with blood, Lavalle realized, his eyes growing wide. She, not Peregine, had killed Marie France. That could only mean she was…

“A vampire,” she said, and smiled sweetly, finishing his sentence with the same tender expression and tone she would have used to help a beau too shy to ask for the next dance. “But of course I am a vampire, Monsieur le Docteur. Surely you do not think anyone as perfect as I could be mortal?”

Lavalle turned to run but his body inexplicably froze in midstride. He could not make his legs move by exertion of muscle or will. It was as if he had become completely, instantaneously paralyzed. But unlike in nightmares where Lavalle found himself unable to command his legs to work, now he could not even drag himself away from the thing he feared. He stood there, an awkwardly posed living statue, sweat trickling down his neck and the hollow of his spine. There was nothing to do but wait to see what she was going to do to him—and if Peregrine would intervene on his behalf before it was too late.

“Won’t you please have a seat in the parlor, Doctor?”

Lavalle felt an invisible force jerk him back around toward the main salon, his movement a series of jerks and spasms, as if he were a marionette controlled by strings in the puppet master’s hands. There was a fire burning in the fireplace. Lavalle could not turn his neck, but he saw that much from the corner of his eyes. Someone was moving back and forth, throwing things into the growing conflagration. Lavalle’s body was tugged around and abruptly dropped into a chair.

The other figure was Peregrine. He ignored Lavalle, busy burning his paintings one at a time. The flames mingled the watercolors’ reds and golds with the rich, sometimes lurid colors of the tropical flowers the American had learned to paint from Lady Fairweather.

Lavalle had no love left for Peregrine, yet it was excruciating to see him destroy the art he had spent so much time creating. The doctor disapproved of the American’s style, but watching Peregrine burn his art was like being forced to witness Saturn devour his children. There was something almost inhumanly hateful about the act. When an artist destroys his own creations, it is akin to infanticide.

The woman moved into Lavalle’s field of view. She was holding a lamp in both hands like a votive offering, the glass hurricane chimney a few inches from her face. Lavalle did not know what she intended to do with the lamp, but it made him nervous.

“Sometimes I think you are entirely driven by self-pity, Nathaniel,” she said. “There is nothing easier to get than a new lover.”

Peregrine did not answer or look up from his grim work. He fed another painting into the flames, squinting against the firelight as it flared brighter.

“Love is not meant for creatures like us, my darling.”

The American turned toward the dwindling stack of his paintings, walking in a benumbed shuffle.

“Did you love your English wench more than your wife?”

Peregrine stopped and stood up straight, his back still to them both.

“I didn’t love her more than my wife, but I did love her.”

The female vampire shrieked with laughter.

“Helen and my poor wife were more alike than a monster like you could ever imagine, Delphine. They shared the same simple goodness of soul.”

“Oh, do please stop! You were just like this when I found you in the French Quarter after the Confederate raiders butchered your family. Do you remember what a simpering fool you were? You were killing yourself by degrees with opium, afraid to put a gun against your head and get it over with. It is unfortunate the Change has put you beyond the influence of narcotics. You and the decadent doctor could go on quite a spree together to forget your beloved Helen.”

Lavalle held his breath as Peregrine stood there, but instead of the great explosion of wrath the doctor expected, the American started again for the stack of artwork he was progressively destroying.

“If you’re going to burn the pictures you painted with Lady Fairweather, get it over with!” she cried, and threw the lamp. It smashed against the wall above the fireplace, spraying burning oil and fire across the room.

Peregrine seemed undisturbed that his house was on fire until the paintings propped on the mantel burned through to reveal the oil painting behind them.

“My Matisse!” he cried, but it was already too late, the oil painting burning brilliantly as the reclining nude disappeared behind a curtain of golden flame.

The woman’s response at seeing what she’d done was to burst into mad laughter.

“What fun is it to destroy if you don’t destroy things that are valuable, Nathaniel? You can buy more paintings when you come back with me to Paris. I am tired of New Orleans. And besides, we have worn out our welcome there for another generation or two after our latest visit.”

With growing panic Lavalle watched the flames climbing the walls, licking toward the center of the ceiling. The draperies behind Peregrine caught fire. Lavalle could feel the heat on his face from across the room.

“Why did you kill her?”

Lavalle felt a glimmer of hope. If the American regretted that Marie France had been killed by the other vampire, maybe he would protect Lavalle from the lunatic, and from the flames.

“He doesn’t care about Marie, you fool,” the woman mocked Lavalle. “He is talking about Lady Fairweather.”

Lavalle’s eyes grew wide.

“Oh, yes, you are correct: I killed Lady Fairweather, not that she was anything but as good as dead,” the woman said, returning her attention to Peregrine. “I merely ended her suffering. You should thank me. If I really wanted to be cruel, I could have left her to endure the torment of having you and Dr. Lavalle moon over her in her final weeks.”

“You are a horror, Delphine,” Peregrine said.

“Yes,” she said as if receiving a compliment. She nodded toward Lavalle. “Do you want the pleasure of killing this parasite or is he mine?”

“Let him go. There’s been enough killing.”

Lavalle would have thrown his arms around the American and hugged him, had he been able to move a muscle.

“You must be joking,
chéri.
”

“It is finished for me here. I have no further need of him.”

Peregrine turned his hawk’s face toward the doctor. He blinked his eyes with a deliberation that reminded Lavalle of a bird of prey looking down on the world. Lavalle wondered why he had never seen the remote coldness in Peregrine’s eyes before. It was like looking into the eyes of a raptor; the only thing he saw in the American’s dark eyes was a sharp, predatory intelligence devoid of mercy.

“I am not taking you with me, Doctor.”

“But what of your dreams of Lavalle finding a so-called cure?” Delphine Allard asked. “As if any of us would ever choose to give up power and immortality to go back to being a weak, pathetic human.”

“I would have, if I could have shared mortality with Helen. I know, Lavalle, that you think unlocking the secret of what made me what I am is beyond the power of science, at least today. You thought you were using me, but it was just the reverse. My thinking was that if Helen believed you might one day find a cure, she would agree to the Change so that we could be together forever.”