Follow The Night (Bewitch The Dark) (23 page)

“I don’t believe so. At least, I didn’t feel I was on an edge of mental suicide. It was physically challenging, fighting the hunger for blood, but no—I’m quite sure I could have survived to the moon’s fullness.”

“Very well. I was no help in keeping you from such a decision. Heaven knows I take an interest in the occult. You don’t look any different. Are you quite sure, Renan?”

The valet ceased protest when Gabriel once again flashed his fangs.

Despite the gravity of the situation, Toussaint’s fears made him smile. That he could produce such a reaction with but a toothy sneer!

“Why the long face, Toussaint? I’ve become something remarkable for you to study and preen over.”

“Much easier to wish for than to actually accept. Was it very painful?”

Now there was the curiosity he expected from his valet. Shoving back the counterpane with a kick, he stretched out his legs before him. “Not at all. Save for running my tongue across these damned teeth the first time.”

“What do I want?” He moved forward, but the sunlight beaming through the oculus was too bright so he pulled up the counterpane over his shoulders, hooding his head and eyes.

“Does the sunlight hurt?”

“No. But my eyes feel dry and I blink a lot. I don’t think I’ll burn. On the other hand, I haven’t stepped into the sunlight. Everything is so new. I just don’t know.”

Gabriel speared Toussaint with such a vexing glare the valet actually cringed. “She knows nothing, Toussaint. Only how to drive men to madness and fops to evil.”

“They were decent people as well. They choose a different lot. Nothing can change what is inherently you, Gabriel. Do you
feel
evil? Do you feel like killing?”

“No.” He sighed and shrugged his fingers through his hair. With a frustrated splay of his hand he said, “I feel no different than I did the day before, or for that matter, a week earlier when none of this had happened to me. I feel like a foppish vicomte. With sharp teeth.”

The valet nodded. “You’ll have to wield those carefully around the women.”

Gabriel curled a sly grin at the man. “Who says?”

What had Roxane done but create a bigger mess? She was now responsible for changing the lives of two men. And of the two she could not determine who was the worse off.

Leaving Gabriel’s estate without telling anyone, Roxane had rushed home, not out of fear, but in search of answers. Now, she paged through Granny MacTavish’s grimoire to the well-thumbed section on vampires. It listed defensive potions and items used against the creatures: stakes, garlic, wild roses, witch’s blood. There was even a notation about giving the vampire a pile of seeds or knotted rope to count to keep him busy.

Prevention detailed the three choices she had initially given Gabriel. But saving a victim from the madness that ensued instead of the vampire’s taint was not covered. Nor was reversal from vampire to common mortal possible.

She tapped the book. Just because it was not detailed did not make it an impossibility. There may yet be hope for Damian.

It was too late for Gabriel. He was now immortal. He would walk the earth for centuries.

Would he grow to hate her for the part she had played in his transformation? Would they become enemies simply because that is what they should be? How could either of them ever again be comfortable with the other?

Maybe he had wanted it more than he’d been willing to admit? She recalled the music room, his declaration that he needed nothing, that he was ready for the night.
To follow the night
, he had said. Had she frightened him with her portent of sure madness? She did have a knack for inadvertently influencing the men she cared for. And oh, she did care for Gabriel.

Could you love a vampire?

Of course, for she already did.

Catching her face in her palms, Roxane bent over the ancient grimoire. What cruel irony had her secrets granted? If she had been truthful from the start, Gabriel would have had no inclination to bite her to force the change. But then, would he have sought someone else?

The thought of the vicomte seeking his pleasures—his vampiric origins—with another woman bothered her.

Only me, she thought.

TWENTY

Toussaint reported Mademoiselle Desrues had left; things to do at home. While part of Gabriel fretted about her absence, his practical side guessed she needed distance. Toussaint also reported Mesmer had told of a particularly heinous vampire who could travel by day. He had not the strength in full daylight, but he had yet been a force.

Very well, Gabriel had the answer he sought.

He shrugged on a plain black frockcoat of watered silk. He’d foregone the lace for a simpler shirt with a plain jabot tied at the neck.

Tonight he did not want to be noticed. He needed to break free from the sweltering closeness of walls, ceiling and floor. To breathe in the world. To think. To answer the jittery curiosity that stirred him to a fidgety jumble of nerves. To spend some time with the vampire—
himself
.

A twist of his arm displayed a plain hand, shucked of lace. He would meld with the shadows now Leo had been murdered. No longer would he prance about in search of an audience, of approval—

Oh, to the devil!

Shrugging off the coat and practically ripping the shirt from his arms, Gabriel replaced it with a finer piece. Chinese silk, trimmed with lace wider than his fingers. He tugged the shirt over his head, tied the jabot, and replaced the frockcoat. Now he tugged out inches and inches of Alençon lace so his fingers were barely visible.

Just because he’d become a beast did not mean he must appear uncivilized.

Gabriel walked south, avoiding the bustle and gaiety surrounding the royal palace. He’d thought to slip a dagger into his sleeve, for protection. But the idea proved absurd. His walking stick with the concealed rapier would serve. He knew his heeled shoes and lace presented him as a target, as well, the clink of gold watch chains calling to every cutpurse within range.

On the other hand—he ran his tongue along his sharpened fangs and grinned—this target would startle more than a few.

He would relish this new life as he had never before savored life.

Striding confidently, the brisk autumn air acutely twanged at his senses. Every movement, the click of his heels, the sway of his frockcoat, had its own tune, an exact note in his sensory arsenal. Refuse rotting in the gutters speared his nostrils. Faggots stacked outside a garden gate reeked of charcoal. The lingering perfume of a climbing rose closed to the night tinted the miasma with a sweet top note.

Striding the wet cobbles, he adjusted his path to avoid an oncoming carriage. A liveried footmen ran ahead with a torch yelling “Make way!” All were headed for the theatre. Within the hour, streets would be literally emptied, save for the stray child slapping a stick against a wrought iron gate or hanging, fingers gripping tight, from a low cypress branch, not a care in the world.

Gabriel passed the dangling tot, nodding at the child’s exuberant smile. Did he not fear the night? Worry that a racing carriage might spin around the corner and clip him? Childhood ignorance granted ineffable bliss. Should something evil happen, only then would the child discover the meaning of fear.

Gabriel had never feared. His childhood had been as lacy and leisurely as Leo’s life. The count and countess had spent much time at court, and later in India, leaving him in Toussaint’s care. His parents had inadvertently taught him self-sufficiency. And to abandon hope.

What of the madness? That prospect frightened you, surely?

Certainly. But more so, this venture into darkness had been spurred by his blind love for a woman who may very well consider herself his enemy.

You never told her you loved her. If you do not speak it, it can never become truth.

“I could have spoken it. I
should
have.”

Now Roxane would not have him. Her history preached to her of evils and foes. Vampires and witches were enemies. But why, he wondered? So little he knew about this preternatural society he had subscribed to as if merely receiving an annual encyclopedia.

Dodging under a low-hanging metal sign advertising nostrums, he strode to the cool stone balustrade edging the river and leaned on it. He looked down upon half a dozen skiffs and two barges floating the moon-silvered Seine, loaded with cargo from Le Havre or Rouen. Rotting fish filled his senses, quelled only when he tilted back his head to draw in the salty air.

He pressed his palms over his face and rubbed, closing his eyes and for the moment quieting his senses. Inside he had become a beast, a creature of the night that could scent out the indistinguishable with but a sniff.

He didn’t feel like a creature. Monsters did not wear Alençon lace.
You bit her and drank her blood!
No, monsters wore ancient velvet and gold trim.

Why had she lied to him? Concealed the truth. Or had she?

At a tap on his shoulder, he twisted. Two men in peasant rags and no shoes flashed their teeth. One slapped a thick stick against his dirty palm.

Expecting the worst, Gabriel calmly propped his elbows on the stone balustrade and crossed one ankle over the other. Leo would never react with such sanguine élan.

“We’ll be taking care of your coin for you then, monsieur,” the thinner one said. Dirt coated his face so Gabriel could not be certain if he were a Frenchman or a Moor. “Make it quick and my brother here won’t find the need to break anything of yours. Bones included.”

“And what if I should counter with my own desire to break something of yours?”

The burly one grunted and eyed his brother with a crenellated mouthful of brown stubs. “He’s a right lackwit.”

“Coming from one who should know,” Gabriel countered. “Really, messieurs—and I do use that form of address loosely—I will offer you a moment to dash away and find yourselves a new victim. Before…”

“Before you break something of ours?” Both burst into laughter and the one beating his stick swung it, thrashing the air inches from Gabriel’s face.

Gabriel flashed a toothy snarl at the men.

Gape-toothed mouths stretched wide. “He’s—do you see that? Look at those teeth! Run!”

The offensive stick landed on the ground before the vicomte’s damask shoes. The would-be robbers vacated the area faster than he had thought possible for the accumulation of dirt they carried on their bodies.

Slicking his tongue across his lower lip he tasted the bead of blood drawn by his sharp incisor.

“Fangs,” he said to himself. “Who could have imagined? I should start a vogue at Madame de Marmonte’s salon!”

The rush of victory lightened his strides. Such a wonder. He looked the part of a monster now. An elegant, deceptive monster, who could easily attract his victims before revealing the truth.

This could prove fortuitous.

A covered wagon, gypsy-like with curved canopy, ambled by, the horses as unenthusiastic as the driver. Keeping a double pace to the echoing horse hooves, Gabriel skipped forward, insinuating himself onto the island’s tight streets and seeking the shadows—for that is what monsters did, stalk the shadows.

To his left, Nôtre Dame mastered the east end of the city. It taunted, defying him with a religious sneer.

“Can I?” he wondered, and quickened his pace toward the cathedral, trotting across the tiled courtyard before the church. Stopping, he drew his gaze along the stone archway coving the entry. To his right, a couple exited the Portal of the Virgin, their arms draped together, their heads bowed. Overhead, myriad kings carved into the jamb invited with silent expressions. Or did they condemn?

The narthex was quiet, perhaps three or four dozen candles lit the stone walls with manic flickers. Gabriel’s heels clicked dully on the swept floor. The long, wide nave was spotted here and there with a bowed head whispering silent prayers, or perhaps pleading simply to be heard. To be rescued from their lives.