Fighting Destiny (Central Coven) (33 page)

I could have returned to England and requested assistance from any of my fellow peers, however, I am a vampire, and I reacted as a vampire.  I decided that I alone had the power to help him.  I alone had the power to save him.  I determined the best and only way to do that was to turn him into a vampire.  The fact that I found his company entertaining, and I was in desperate need of a real friend after several hundred years of isolation, I’m sure played a large part in my decision.

When King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, and their children were arrested, I knew it was only a matter of time before the other nobles were rounded up as well.  I went into the Isle de la Cité, where M. de Valmont owned a fashionable residence. 

Just after sundown I rang the bell and was invited in.  M. de Valmont received me in his parlor, where I approached him with my outrageous offer.  I played on his fear of the guillotine.  I offered revenge against those who persecuted his friends and family. 

I did not tell him about the pain he would feel while he died and transitioned.  I did not tell him he would be abandoning the daylight forever.  I didn’t want to give him too many reasons to refuse. Instead I told him to put his affairs in order, because we would need to leave France for a short period of time. Eager to leave the impending revolution, Alexandre did exactly as I directed.

The next evening I returned, and let myself in.  He walked into his office, and found me sitting in a chair in the corner.  ‘Have you decided?’ I asked, giving him his last chance to change his mind.  ‘Oui, I am sure,’ he answered. 

I flashed out of my chair and grabbed hold of him.  I arched his head back.  Before he could gasp I sank my fangs into his neck.  He began to struggle against me, but I held him tighter, not allowing him to change his mind.  He moaned in agony, but I clasped my hand on his mouth to silence him. 

When he was almost completely drained.  I slashed my own wrist and forced it to his mouth.  He tried to refuse, terror stricken by his ordeal, he forgot I was offering him life.  Or maybe he realized that I was just as much a monster as the revolutionaries.

I told him he would not get another chance to change his mind, and I wasn’t about to relent.  He tried to turn his face away from me, but I clasped one hand over his nose to prevent him from breathing.  Still he stubbornly persisted in resisting me, until his involuntary need to breathe took over.  He opened his mouth to draw in a breath and I forced my wrist into his mouth.

I am not proud of myself, now.  Then, however, I was very pleased I would share my secrets and existence with another being.  I placed him in a coffin I had prepared, and laid him to rest until he rose to his new life the next evening.

The revolutionaries stepped up the
Terreur
, and they had stopped by Alexandre’s apartment to arrest him the night I turned him.  They came in and saw Alexander resting in his coffin.  I pretended to be a prominent member of the
bourgeoisie
paying my respects to him.  When he rose the following evening I had us prepared to flee to England.  The growing frenzy was so for only focused on the French aristocracy, but the growing mob wanted blood, and any nobleman would suffice.  Initially, Alexandre was confused and angry about what I had turned him into.  Once he learned about the increased violence, and that his name had been added to the list of those to be arrested, he realized I had saved him.

I had already sent all of our valuable possessions back to London with my house staff the evening before.  Only my footman remained to help provide us safe passage across the English Channel. 

My footman set out to obtain a modest carriage; one commonly used by members of the
bourgeoisie
not the nobility.  In his absence a few revolutionaries arrived at my front entrance.  It seemed like the perfect time to allow Alexandre to exact some revenge.  I opened the door, and we passed along the same horror to them they had been handing out around Paris.

The well-mannered gentleman from one day before was gone, replaced by a bloodthirsty creature intent on revenge.  He leapt on them with his unnaturally lightning fast speed.  He viciously ripped open the throats of the first two, barely savoring any blood.  I lounged casually against the wall, watching the spectacle.  One of the members of the mob began to flee while Alexandre was finally indulging his thirst on the only other surviving member. I bounded out the door and caught the man unaware.  I drained him and tossed his body out into the street.  A dead body found in the streets of Paris, was an all too common occurrence in those days.  In any case, I was not concerned about concealing it.”

How could someone change so much over a lifetime?  Is this what forever could do to me?  My forehead drew into tight wrinkles. I thought about all of the possibilities of my future, and the past Grey unveiled. 

Grey smoothed the creased skin with the cool tip of his thumb.  “Where has your mind traveled now?”  “You implied that Alexander deserves to be staked, but so far it sounds like he was an innocent victim.  I’m confused, because I really hate him. I don’t want to feel sorry for him.”

“Yes, I suppose that is confusing.  But, that is probably because you don’t have the entire story.”  I tilted my head to the side thinking, and then nodded.  “Let’s hear it then.”  Grey gently kissed the side of my neck, and continued.

“Once we arrived in London, Alexander (as he now preferred to be called), was obsessed with the French Revolution.  He sought out every piece of news he could find.  At first I thought that it was just a natural attachment to his loved ones, but the anger he nurtured was more intense than I realized.

When Louis XVI was sent to the guillotine, the peerage of England knew Marie Antoinette would be next.  Of course we hoped we were wrong.  But, we hoped like a condemned man hopes for a miracle.  In reality we were waiting. 

Alexander, on the other hand, believed her brother the Emperor of Austria, would come to her rescue, but he never did.  When she finally went to the guillotine, Alexander flew into a rage.  He vanished into the city and murdered nearly a dozen bourgeois citizens of London before I was able to catch up and subdue him. 

I forced him to assist me make it look as if a small outbreak of tuberculosis hit London. Afterwards, we left the city for a few years.  I kept any news from him until Robespierre, one of the main leaders of the revolution, was sent to the guillotine. Once Alexander learned of this he settled down for a number of years.

Before too long there were many questions about whom I was related to. Many people wondered why I resembled the portraits of many of my ancestors.  I created elaborate ruses for over a hundred years, and continued to be my own heir. However, as a member of the aristocracy, it is very difficult to conceal not aging. I decided it was time to move to America.  Alexander and I sold all of our belongings, property, and booked passage to New York.

In life
Alexandre
was idealistic, compassionate, charismatic, and caring.  In death,
Alexander
was crass, violent, and callous.  I wanted a completely new start when we moved to America, and I hoped Alexander would re-discover some of his humanity as well. 

I initially sought him out because he represented for me everything I realized my existence was missing.  He was uncorrupted, while I had been polluted by every vile sin I could imagine in several hundred years.   When I met him he seemed like a way to escape a despair I didn’t even realize I felt.  The tragedy, for me, was that my despair only grew.  Once I turned him he became even more tainted than I had ever been.

I began to withdraw from society, and within fifty years of arriving in America I was nearly a hermit.  Alexander and I saw each other every few years or so.  Each instance the time between grew longer and longer.  I tortured myself over the life I had taken from him, and the lives he was taking from countless numbers of innocent humans. 

Gone were my days of rampant hunting of humans for sport.  It had taken nearly eight hundred years, but I was regaining my humanity.  The cost was too high, but I held on to it with every ounce of strength I had.  It was such a fragile thread, and he knew it.  He taunted me and plucked at it relentlessly.  Still, he kept his transgressions small and unnoticed by the human population.

I loved the culture of the United States.  The skepticism and love of knowledge made it so much easier to live here than in Europe. There, people believed in age-old tales of the supernatural.  Of course, the Europeans were right, but I preferred the skepticism. 

About forty years after we arrived, the atmosphere began to sour. Brother turned against brother, North against South, abolitionist against slaveholder, and I forever against Alexander.  He could not resist a bloodbath, and he followed every battle. He decimated the wounded and dying at night, and laid waste to innocent citizens caught in the middle.

War is bad enough.  As the cliché says, ‘War
is
hell.’  I have seen enough of them to know that is true.  I did my best to stay out of the conflict, because I’m not equipped to join the fight during the day. I have an unfair advantage at night, and it was not my world to alter.  Alexander had no such qualms, only the sinful joy of bringing pain and death. 

I left the eastern United States after that, and I haven’t been back.  I have heard about Alexander appearing in nearly every major disaster in the history of the U.S. since the Civil War.  He was in San Francisco soon after the great earthquake in 1906, the Midwest after the flooding in 1992, and he went to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. 

I lose track of him for long periods of time, but when something horrible happens I always find him nearby.  He doesn’t cause the disaster, but he loves to feed off the pain.  It has only been the last couple of years that he has started to taunt me directly.  How you and Anita play into this, I’m not sure. 

I know you hate hearing about your destiny, but this is a part of it.  This is a part of mine, and Anita’s.  You think you hate destiny, imagine what Anita must think about it.  When I found her, he had tortured her for three days.  He drained her blood from her body completely, over and over again.  Each time he forced her to drink from him. 

He could not figure out why she was not converting into a vampire.  Something I have learned he has done several dozen times.  Sunlight was initially very painful to her, but he would ‘check’ to see if she had finally changed by exposing her to it to see if she would burn. 

Her father told me that she went missing.  It took me the entire three nights to learn who took her and where.  I got her back as soon as the sun went down on the fourth night.  She was so weak.  I gave her some of my blood, and I had to do it over and over for several nights.  I was afraid she would change, but I was more afraid she would die.  I have known her father for a very long time, and I consider him a friend.  I could not fail to save his only child.

No one had ever heard of a half-witch/half-vampire before.  We weren’t even sure it was possible.  Once we realized what she was the
Council
ordered I keep her with me until she knew what she was, and I taught how to control her abilities. 

Simone cannot control me because I have rediscovered my humanity.  Amulets work for the most part, but they aren’t a hundred percent effective.  I discovered a long time ago how the magic of Necromancers work.  They pull on the human part that has fled to another realm.  When a vampire manages to reclaim the part of them that is human they have less of their soul split and kept in purgatory. 

These ghosts that are being pulled from the fabric of my past, they are the shell of my guilt I carry around every day.  She can throw that back at me if she chooses, but it will do her no good.  Now that you know what kind of monster I was, she may do her worst.  I already know you are meant to leave me, if this is the cause of it, so be it.  I know who is to take my place, and I know when the time comes he will keep you safe.”

I hit him on the arm.  “Stop doing that!” “What?” he feigned confusion.  “You know damn well what.  Stop acting like we are going to break up over every little thing, or I’ll dump your ass for being annoying,” I snapped.

“Darling, I do not think murdering a large portion of Europe is a little thing,” he teased.  “Well, not when you put it that way, but everyone has their faults.  Anita snores.”  He laughed for the first time since he awoke for the night.  “I haven’t scared you away?” he asked, displaying uncharacteristic vulnerability.  I shook my head.  “Well you are either more stubborn than I thought, or I am luckier than I dared imagine,” he said and drew me close again. 

“It isn’t that I want us to end, but we each have a destiny that is pulling us apart.  I want to fight it, but it seems hopeless.”  “Only if you let it be,” I argued.  “Chloë, I am a
Watcher
.  It is my duty to contain this exposure, no matter how long it takes.  I am bound by that duty to find the other members of the
Watchers
, and to carry out my part in our sacred responsibility.  You can see how this will tear us apart eventually.”

“You have no faith in me to wait for you, do you?” I accused.  “Darling, I know how conflicted your feelings have been in the past.  I can’t imagine that if I weren’t here, those feelings would not arise again.  I am only telling you I wouldn’t blame you if you chose to explore them.  I love you enough that I want you to be happy.”