Follow The Night (Bewitch The Dark) (12 page)

The wind swept a wretched perfume across his face. Gabriel squeezed Roxane’s hand. “You remain out here.”

“He is
my
brother,” she insisted.

“Exactly why you mustn’t continue to torture yourself. Your frequent visits only widen the ache in your heart. Give me his name. I can find him.”

“Doubtful. It took all of two hours the first time I visited. Not much for order or records here.”

She strode forward, and Gabriel followed, thankful that she accompanied him, and fearful of what he would see this day—his future.

A quiet, hump-shouldered man who smiled sweetly at Roxane accompanied them into the lower cells. Gabriel threaded his hand through hers protectively. The fetid smell clung to his clothes and hair. Agony and loneliness had never before felt so tactile, so present in his soul. He felt every whimpered emotion, every raging cry for sanity.

Could he divine the riddle to his own freedom from a man who had succumbed to madness? Whatever Roxane’s brother had done in an attempt to overcome the vampire’s taint had been wrong. Surely, Gabriel need only take a different approach.

With a guttural cry, he bent double in reaction to a sudden streak of pain. Drums beat at his temples. A heady gush of liquid flowed through his thoughts, a raging torrent of pulsing temptation.

“What is it?” Gentle fingers traced his brow, then touched his shoulder. “Gabriel?”

“Can you not hear it? It is like…pounding blood,” he whispered. “
Mon Dieu
, it is so loud!”

At his outburst a scuffle from behind the iron bars erupted into moans of pain. The silver reflection of a mirror, a single shard thrust out from between bars, sought out Gabriel and greedily witnessed his pain.

“This is horrible,” he said. Pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes, he plugged his ears with his fingers in an attempt to alleviate the noise.

“We will leave.”

“No.” He pulled from Roxane’s grasp. “I have come this far. I just need to wait until it subsides.”

The pounding pace thickened, drumming in his ears. Was this the blood hunger? Here he stood surrounded by so many, enclosed in cages, cells and filthy little rooms.

A veritable feast! Take the blood. It will be good then. No worry of madness.

No! He did not want to feed upon these people. He was a human being, not a monster.

“Just concentrate.” He felt Roxane move close to him and press her palms to his cheeks. Bless the coolness of her flesh. Her body limned his. The soft plush of her gown married to his stiff damask frock coat.

In her arms, he could be any man he wished to become. Confident. Not badgered by a ridiculous costume. The pulse beats softened. A new surge of sensation coursed through his body as her hip pressed against his, and he felt the womanly curves beneath her skirts. His body reacted.

He chuckled. Some of the anxiety loosed and flowed away. “You don’t feel it?” He tilted his hips, pressing his erection against her skirts. “You make me want you, Roxane.”

“Is the pounding in your head gone?”

“Redirected. It has moved to my breeches.”

“Even better. A diversion.” She leaned in and kissed his forehead. A faery morsel, so fleeting, yet powerful. It chased away the fear, the angry hunger. “You feel able to move on?”

He nodded. “Tricky wench.”

With a clever smile, she moved ahead and gained a long hall walled on one side with soot-blackened bars. She had explained her brother shared a cell with three other men.

Somewhere along their trek to Hell the silent guard had abandoned them. Gabriel scanned whence he had come and down another dim hallway. Abandoned with a silence that hurt.

“Damian?”

Compelled by a beckon of Roxane’s fingers, he moved to her side and she clutched his hand. Indeed, the drum of hunger had subsided. But in its wake he had gotten an erection. What strange thing had he become that to stand in the bowels of hell and caress a beautiful woman appealed to him? Made him randy?

As he joined her in searching the darkness all lustful thoughts melted. A jitter of anticipation returned.

Gabriel spied three figures moving about in the shadows of the large cell. Overhead, a line of narrow windows—no wider than a man’s arm—cast white morning light over their shoulders and sliced through the bars before him.

“I can’t see him,” she whispered. “I wonder if he has been moved.”

“My liege!”

From around the corner a figure leapt to the bars. Wide green eyes glittered. The miasma of rot, of indifference, doubled in an awful assault. The man tilted his head, an insect scenting out Gabriel. “What have you brought with you today, sister?”

“A friend.” She stepped forward. “This is the vicomte Gabriel Renan, Damian, he wanted to meet—”

“What is it?” The man behind the bars stretched his arms wide, displaying a shoddy blanket across his thin limbs as if a grand cape.

“Not an it; he is a man, Damian. Just like you. He is a vicomte,” she repeated with a glance to Gabriel. She had accepted his truth easily. Even more reason to adore her.

The man tilted his head, studying Gabriel. Thin and looking more the rag and bone man than the real ones, his eyes were sunk inside two dark shadows. Dirty breeches hung at his hips, exposing the sharp slash of bones. Gabriel could not find the words to speak. He should bow, offer a proper salutation—he could but stare.

“He dresses like a vicomte,” Damian said. “But he doesn’t smell right. He is neither man nor beast. Aha! Like
moi
!”

Loud, unhinged laughter burst from Damian’s mouth. He spun round, lifting his tattered cloak, heeding his subjects to bow. The cruel cacophony, a portent of his future, ached in Gabriel’s soul.

“My sister,” Damian announced grandly, “is starting a collection!”

“Do not speak of her so!” Gabriel clutched Roxane’s hand. “I’m sorry for making you bring me here.”

“Ah, so it is you who wanted to look upon your future?” Damian pressed his face between the bars and eyed Gabriel up and down. The bars pulled back his flesh and stretched his eye sockets into narrow slits. “Yes, I see now. Young. Pretty. Isn’t that what the vampire seeks, the pretties?” He spun and did a little jig with his bare feet. “Pretty, pretty! Spin me silly!”

“Damian, please,” Roxane pleaded.

The man stretched his arms wide and thrust out his thin chest. “Is this what you want, vicomte? To join me in my royal quarters? I’ve servants, as you can see.”

A plump man, in what appeared a loincloth, spun in wobbly circles around the room, and the eyes of the others, dark and sunken, crept along Gabriel’s flesh from the filthy shadows.

“Such splendid madness is my own. She has convinced you to fight that damnable hunger, yes?” Gabriel jumped as Damian leapt and gripped the bars. He clung with toes and fingers, as if an ape caged in the Jardins du Plantes. “Take the blood!”

Gabriel felt her tremble against his body. What a fool mission to come here. He was repulsed, and yet, sickened that he should feel so at the sight of another human suffering. Madness ruled Damian Desrues’s mind. Had it seeped into his very soul? Could the man have salvation?

The bars clanged as Damian threw himself against them. Framed by cold iron, his pale green eyes sought Gabriel. Silently he reached out, his fingers grabbing at air—not close enough to touch. So far from a kind touch!

The background idiots had ceased to chant. Gabriel could feel Roxane’s hand tremble. Her brother stood alone in the world, torn from the love and comfort he must have once felt.

Gabriel knew the feeling. So well.

Damian whispered seductively, “Take the blood.”

The vicomte stared into the celadon gaze that matched Roxane’s. The sadness, the pitiful repose, had been replaced by a tightened jaw.

“Take my blood, bleed me dead. If you cannot,” Damian hissed, “pass me your dagger and I will do it myself. Take my blood! Bleed me to death so I am no longer a slave to madness. Take the blood! Take the blood!”

One of the idiots who bowed on the floor pounded the stone with his fist, “Take the blood!” The other imbeciles joined in. “Take the blood, take the blood!”

Damian’s face grew livid, yet his smile widened lecherously as he spread his arms and thrust back his head, silently reveling in the macabre jubilation.

Gabriel remained fixed to the lithe man who stood like a deity in the midst of filth and madness, and knew, without doubt, that he spoke the truth.

Soon he would join Damian Desrues in his kingdom of madness.

Unless he partook of the blood.

They paused in Gentilly to water the horse and seek refreshment. Gabriel settled onto a wobbly half-timber bench outside the tavern and hung his head. Exhaustion stretched between his shoulders and down his back. He was thankful he’d had the forethought to bring along the blue-lensed spectacles. His eyes ached, felt shrunken in their sockets.

He was thirsty, angry and confused. And horrified. He was so close to the asylum. Mentally, but a step away.

Roxane lingered by the horse, perhaps sensing his need for quiet. She was so strong.
He
had requested she take him to Bicêtre. Much as she had not wanted to return, she had agreed to help him try to understand the madness that waited. She had explained his options. Gabriel knew that to drink blood would grant him freedom from life in a filthy cell, ever spinning and giddily pleased to do so.

Hell, he could take a rapier to his heart and be free of it all. But he’d had to see, to observe the other option. And it wasn’t a pretty one.

That look in Damian’s eyes—the man had wanted, and had been denied. He hadn’t been able to fight the madness for the blood.

Gabriel clenched his shirt, fingers digging into his ribs. How did one fight an attack to his very soul? Roxane’s brother was now sentenced to eternal unrest. Much like a vampire?

“Please, Roxane, sit by me.”

“I’d rather stand and stretch my legs. Walk with me?”

He could refuse her nothing. Gabriel stood and walked her down the hoof-pounded street under the blessed shade of a row of cypress boughs, horse following behind.

“He didn’t think much on it. I—he trusted me. Oh, Gabriel, haven’t you figured it out? It was I who encouraged Damian to endure the wait for the moon. I influenced him. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I am wrong to suggest the same for you.”

He stopped near a closed hawker’s cart and leaned against it. Ragged red flags decorated the four corners and a sign scrawled in fading chalk advertised oranges. He swallowed but tasted only dryness and the lingering reminder of the stinking cells.

He touched her wrist, and when she did not flinch he curled her fingers into his. “I value your opinion. You are the only friend I have.”

He sensed the inner stirring, the craving for more than a simple kiss, and fought it back.
What if the madness strikes suddenly?

He swept an arm around her waist and pulled her against him. As he kissed her, her throaty moans fed the desire, the passion, the need to hold and touch. He dove deep into her mouth, feeding upon her taste, upon her willingness to look beyond the evil that loomed over his head. He held life in his arms, he mustn’t stain it, mustn’t damage the innocence.