Divine Madness (14 page)

He took her hand and laced their fingers. “I do. There’s just one more thing I need to tell you about being a vampire and then I won’t bring the subject up again.”

“Only one? I feel lucky.”

“Yes. But it’s a big one. We are infertile, Smoking Mirror’s get,” he warned. “Our long life is purchased with the lives of our children and all the children thereafter. And only male vampires can make other vampires. I guess I should have mentioned this before.”

“That’s all right. I don’t want to make more vampires. And I had a child. One was enough.” More than enough. She had no desire to ever again experience the catastrophic intimacy of bearing someone inside her body, giving that child life, and then watching him grow old and die. Just as all her friends and lovers always grew old and perished.

You could have made him like you, given him the dark gift.
The voice had returned. It sounded stronger too.

Damned him? My own son? No. I wouldn’t do this to anyone.

Unless they were already damned like Miguel?

Ninon looked at Miguel but didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. The decision had been made and executed. She had turned Miguel only because he had already been contaminated by the darkness and in danger of being consumed by a greater evil that would cause him to harm others.

If she was his first, so too was he a first for her. They had traded hells and perhaps saved each other from cruel disease—at least for a time. But it wasn’t something to put on a the calendar and celebrated every year.

“What about your…true father? The Scotsman? Is he your only other family?” she asked suddenly. “Is there anyone you will have to explain this to?”

“No. My biological father is long dead.” He didn’t mention his mother, and she didn’t ask. “I have no siblings either.”

“I’m sorry.” Her brow wrinkled. “But if you’ve no family—no human family—to worry about, why come back
here
and face Smoking Mirror?”

“Not for consolation, that’s for sure,” he said. He gave a wry smile. “I think I came for the same reasons you did. I needed help. The urge to…to draw blood was getting overwhelming. I could tell that I had to do something about it. Or die. Don’t think I didn’t consider that option for a while too. I still keep it in reserve. Mostly, I was looking for a way out. I thought maybe the old tablets would tell me something.”

Ninon nodded with sympathy. “I thought that too, and was upset when the largest stone in the museum went missing.”

“I’m not sure I’ll make a good vampire,” Miguel said idly. He added, “I’ve always been a morning person. I know some of them can go out in the day, but they sure don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to be good. Just good enough,” she answered, telling a hard truth she hoped he was old enough to understand. There were some things you could never win at. Sometimes just surviving was a righteous fight. “Anyway, you may not have a problem with daylight. We’ll have to see.”

“I guess we will. Tell me something about
your
father,” Miguel asked. “I’m trying to imagine him.”

Ninon thought about his request. What could she say about a man as complex as her father had been? A shrink would likely say that her ambivalence toward love and relationships was all her father’s fault. After all, he had been involved in—in fact, caused—a bad marriage. A very bad
marriage. So bad that he’d had an affair with a married woman, committed murder to save her, and then had to flee the country for this crime when his daughter was only thirteen, leaving her to fend off the lechers and fortune hunters who saw her as easy prey with her father gone.

But for all that, she had loved him and was eternally grateful that he had taught her to be her own person. In life, one had to take the bitter with the sweet. She’d learned that lesson early.

Finally she said: “My father was a musician, though it was not fashionable in that era to be passionate about music or dance. Once he and his friend Gaultier had a duel of lutes and played for thirty-six hours straight. My father won when Gaultier collapsed from exhaustion. He taught me to play with equal passion even though the Jesuits and my mother thought it a sin. You play too?”

He blinked. “I did. Not anymore.”

She touched the scars on Miguel’s hands that had been obvious after the electrocution when all their scars glowed. He had similar ones on his feet.

“Miguel, did he…?” she asked hesitatingly when he didn’t say anything more. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“No. It’s all right. How weird that the scars show now. Usually they are invisible.” He curled his fingers inward but only the index fingers could touch his palms without trembling. “Yes, it’s Smoking Mirror’s work. He felt that I was being stubborn about renouncing my Christianity.”

“Bastard,” she muttered.

“Yes, he is. And then some. What was it in Ecclesiastes—what has been made crooked cannot be made straight?” He flexed his hands again. This time it looked marginally easier. “The damage wasn’t devastating, but enough to guarantee that I won’t inflict my guitar playing on anyone—at least not any flamenco. And that was the only kind there was for me.”

“Not into strumming those C, F, G folk songs? We’ll see what happens now. Your muscles and nerves will heal
faster than you can imagine. Your chest is already healing its burns.” And inside she thought:
It’s amazing your psyche isn’t as scarred as your hands.

“I’ll hope, but I’m not expecting too much. It’s better that way. Hope…hurts.”

Ninon nodded, not making a single sympathetic noise since pity would just be a burden he didn’t want. The proud did not want sympathy. She also had learned to travel light, to adapt to the new times, not die clinging to the old. Whenever possible she threw out unhappy memories, old grievances, dark emotions, but also hope and anticipation. People weren’t designed to carry more than one lifetime’s regret and bitterness. And one had to accept that sometimes you didn’t get a happy ending. It was good that he knew this already.

But sad. Very sad to lose this too.

“I play,” she told him. “I learned in Seville.”

“I’d love to hear you,” Miguel said and meant it. There was no envy in his dark eyes, and his generosity about this touched her gently on the heart. Few would be so charitable when their own loss was great. “Don’t frown, Ninon. Really, it would be a consolation prize.”

“You’ve paid top dollar for your father’s sins,” she heard herself saying, again angry at Smoking Mirror for doing this to his son. Though perhaps Miguel was truly lucky. He had lived this long. Some wizards killed their children—grandchildren too—in order to take back any power that had passed to them. That was what Saint Germain seemed to be doing as well, gathering up the power he thought his father had squandered on strangers—reclaiming his inheritance.

Miguel shook his head. “No, the price has been high, but not the highest. I’ve refused to give in to the toxin he put in my blood. I never killed. I still own my soul. I have free will.”

Which he had compromised for her. And if the electrocution did not help, his hunger would be worse than ever,
perhaps impossible to control. A simple thank-you didn’t cover that sort of sacrifice, so she merely nodded.

“Are you ready to return to the land of conspicuous consumption?” she asked, changing the subject. “I think that is where we need to go—eventually.”

“I’m certainly ready to leave here. But aren’t we going after your magician? He’s in Mexico, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but in this we have an advantage—finally. He is actually following me now. Anywhere I lead, he will pursue. We have the luxury of choosing where this confrontation will take place. I think putting some distance between us and Smoking Mirror would be wise. One battle at a time and all that.”

“Do we sneak across the border?” he asked. “I take it you don’t want to leave too obvious a trail for anyone to follow.”

“No, I don’t. There may be some questions about the explosion that blew up my house and a neighbor’s boat that went missing that night. And Saint Germain has probably got contacts in law enforcement. He was always good at befriending powerful politicians and he may have sicced them on me. Fortunately, getting across the border isn’t hard. You should have no problems. Your identity is intact. You can just cross the normal way—if you go soon.”

“Maybe, but your magician may figure out who I am and that we are together. He might try tracing you through me. Do you know a stretch of border where there aren’t a lot of guards? In spite of what you’ve said about our bodies’ ability to heal, I’d rather not be shot.”

“Yes, I hear you. But even if we’re caught, they’ll let us go.”

“They will? Why? Big bribes?”

“Not exactly.” Ninon suddenly peeped at him through her eyelashes and gave him the dazzling I-think-you’rebrilliant-and-I-want-to-give-you-a-handjob smile that worked on all heterosexual males age thirteen and up. St. Evremond
had watched her use this on some of her enemies in the clergy and told her that he feared for the state of her soul.

Miguel whistled in admiration, though not in lust.

“You’re good,” he admitted.

Ninon laughed, tucking the seductress away.

“Practice, and you get better,” she said. Then, with a frown: “Really, we need to get going.”

“I know.” Miguel reached for his belt and threaded it through his jeans. His movements were quick and sure. Usually there were hours of partial paralysis and uncoordinated movement after electrocution. This had to be the vampirism helping him recover. She also felt strong enough to bench-press a car. Two diseases taken together made quite a cocktail.

“Smoking Mirror has done one good thing,” Miguel said. “There are no drug dealers round here, though they have tried to establish themselves more than once. Look around at a lot of these towns down here and you can see narco-dollars at work, buying guns and destroying lives with addiction. But not here. We won’t have to keep watch for drug runners.”

“I am the Lord thy dark god and thou shalt have no other god before me,”
she murmured. “Some people just don’t like competition.”

“And this town ain’t big enough for two mass murderers,” Miguel agreed. “And speaking of that…have you thought of a way to kill Smoking Mirror yet? He’s going to be very unhappy about this turn of events.”

“Not yet. I need to do some reading. I’ve killed zombies and ghouls, fought a demon…Actually, I mostly ran away from the demon, though I have learned how to banish them. But killing an Aztec god is a new one for me.”

Miguel pulled open the small trapdoor in the roof. Rainwater edged over the lip and pattered on the dark floor below.

“Well, suffice it unto the day the trouble therein. We’ll
take care of this Saint Germain first.” He turned and pulled her closer. His body was hot, pouring off warmth into the cool air. Steam coiled around them.

Knowing that Miguel was also wondering if Smoking Mirror would send his minions after them, She asked, “How many vampires are here?”

“I’m not sure. Not many. S.M. keeps the population down. People would probably notice if they were invaded by masses of vampires, and feel moved to do something.”

“They may know about them anyway. Have you noticed that many of the houses have their window sills and doors painted a peculiar shade of blue? Back in New Orleans, that was called
haint blue
. It’s used to keep out wandering spirits. Maybe it works on vampires too.”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath. Most of the vamps down here are made near bodies of water. That’s what seems to hold them, a tie to water. They feed on passersby careless enough to be hiking after dark. The only way most would get into town was if there were a flash flood.”

“That’s good—the water part. It should keep them from coming after us.” Miguel hesitated a moment and she asked: “What?”

“The one exception seems to be my mother. She’s been able to break free and travel to where I am, as long as it’s over land. She’s never crossed the ocean.”

“Your mother?” Ninon shook her head. “You still…you still see her? Well, of course you do. Everyone has a mother, even vampires, and you would want to visit.” She added to herself: “Vamps live long lives, too, so she won’t be headed off to the old bloodsuckers home anytime soon. Damn. I think I’ll have to wait to hear this story though. We need to get going. I’m packed, just need to fetch the cat. Where are you staying?”

“In my Aunt Elena’s old house. It isn’t far from here. I’d like to see her before I go—make sure Smoking Mirror hasn’t hurt her.”

“Let’s split up then and meet outside the hotel. We should take both vehicles with us when we go.”

“Okay.”

Ninon reluctantly forced herself to the trapdoor and stared down at the ladder. It wasn’t that she felt weak—not at all—but she was filled with a sort of strange, almost sexual lethargy that urged her to linger in this place. It wouldn’t take much to convince her to drag Miguel back down to the floor and have sex with him again. Sighing, she knelt down and grabbed the ladder.

Miguel followed her down as slowly. His scars had mostly faded. The only thing that gave away his change was the blackness of his eyes—dark before, but now looking completely inhuman. They would have to get contacts for him right away. Until then, he would have to wear sunglasses.

The world had gone to war. Again. As much as Ninon hated the idea of facing battlefield bloodshed, she knew that she had to, or her conscience would never let her sleep again. The thought of almost-eternal life with no sleep was nothing to be scoffed at.

And this was different while still the same. Some wars were understandable. They were about food or land taken from those who had by those who did not. Others were fought for intangibles—religion or political ideology, some old and some new. It was a shame that real people got caught in real crossfires as these ambitious generals’ theories were tested at the point of a gun. Montaigne had said that it was putting a high value upon one’s opinion to burn men alive on account of them, but the world had never had a shortage of opinionated men.

However, Ninon had never intended, in answering the call to aid, that she would end up playing mother to a group of orphans with whom she shared no language. Childhood—hers or anyone else’s—wasn’t a place she ever wanted to revisit. But here they were—the tangible victims of someone’s intangible ideology—looking at her with frightened, exhausted eyes. It has been almost three hundred years since she had helped an infant or cuddled a child, hungry, sick, and scared. And there were some things a woman never forgot, as much as she might try to, and being a mother was among them.