Follow The Night (Bewitch The Dark) (24 page)

He clung to a cold marble pillar in the back of the nave and pressed his cheek to the smooth surface, relishing the chill. Far down the aisle, the chancel glittered with a row of tall white tapers. An immense gold cross mastered the background. The thought to dash up and cling to the cross struck him. To cleave to the holy, testing, daring, drawing down His wrath.

Insanity. Blasphemous.

Exciting.

Gabriel curled his head down, his cheek hugging the cold column. Often, as a child, he had followed his nanny down the aisle to the second pew up front. She would bow her head and whisper prayers, often for a time so long he would nod off to sleep. But occasionally he would bow his head and whisper as well. Pleas for a little sister, or a house in the country surrounded by flowers. The heartfelt plea for his parents’ attention. Those prayers had gone unanswered.

“Will you listen to my prayers now?”

Silence flickered in the myriad candles flames. Tiny noises formed a symphony of human utterances, throat-clearings, and shuffling bodies upon the wooden pews.

Walking with purpose he hugged the right side of the arcade, approaching a lavish baptismal font carved with saints, crosses and other gothic apocrypha.

“I am not evil,” he whispered, closing his eyes, and this time forcing his very soul into the plea.
I cannot be.
“I will not be. I did this to help another. Can you hear me?” He searched the high ceiling, buttressed with magnificent arches. “Do you curse me now?”

What did it matter?

It mattered so much. For where else would he be granted unconditional acceptance? God could not possibly have abandoned him, for then he could not now stand here in the presence of such holy sanctity.

With a nod, Gabriel decided he would become what he wanted. Life was his to shape. He must use the hands of a sculptor and work well. A careless plunge could result in horror. He must do this right, if not for himself, for the safety of the innocent. The life he had led—his true self—would not be abandoned. The rake was but outer decoration. Inside he knew who he was. Alone, but eager to see that no others suffered abandonment.

He turned and found himself vis à vis the Holy Font. Stepping forward and kneeling before the marble bowl, he dipped his fingers into the pool of blessed water. Before he could bring his fingers to his forehead the foolishness of his act burned through his flesh.

Stumbling to a stone pillar and pressing his fingers between his knees. Wisps of smoke hissed from his skin. Carefully, he pulled them from between his knees. Red boils covered the tips of his fingers. He gaped, his cry of horror a silent wail deep inside his heart.

Rejected by the holy. He spun into a run and raced from the cathedral and out into the cold, unforgiving world.

Roxane spun into the kitchen and spied Toussaint leaning over the butcher block. He glimpsed her from the corner of his eye, casually went back to his business—then let out a shriek and shuffled around to the other side of the wood block.

“And what has happened today to make you so fearful of me that could not keep you from me yesterday? I have no intention of harming you, Toussaint.”

“You say that, but it’ll be too late by the time you’ve bespelled me!”

“
Losh
.” She went for the cheese.

Toussaint shuffled back against the wall, setting the porcelain cups to a rattle on their iron hooks.

“I don’t work spells on people,” she said between bites. “I am a simple country witch who deals more with healing herbs and potions than any physical magic. Though I would like to master air magic.”

“Oh.” The dagger fell to his side. Toussaint rubbed the back of his neck. “But the hex signs. How did you gain the vicomte’s home without…? Are they not effective?”

“Very much so. If they were a bit larger and fire forged.”

“Fire forged?”

“Fixed with fire to stone. Unless the hex marks are secured in flame they really serve little more than a curiosity. A witch has to step in the center to prove effective.”

“I see.” Still rubbing his neck, Toussaint turned and pulled open a drawer and shuffled through it.

“So you are startled to defense by the presence of a witch, and yet does not the resident vampire put you to greater worry?”

Toussaint tossed a hunk of chalk from hand to hand. “It does. And it doesn’t. Truth? I don’t know what to think. Today is not the same as yesterday.”

Leaving the valet to his warding ritual, Roxane gobbled the piece of brie and walked toward the music room. She might worry about what she’d encounter next time she tried to cross the threshold, but she trusted Toussaint would not overdo it, nor would he figure how to effectively fire forge the symbols.

A devilish adagio raced behind the music room wall, thundering in her throat and cleaving to her pulse. His talent was remarkable. Pity Gabriel had not touched the violin since his parents’ departure; the man might have played concerts.

The waning afternoon darkened the house, and she could not see candlelight through the glass pane in the door. Did he dance about in the shadows, playing to his dark demons? For the music was demonic. Grating, yet smoothly running from note to note. Evil, yet enticing. It pushed away and at the same time beckoned. A vampire’s lament drenched by angst and shadows.

Slipping inside the room, Roxane stood by the door and took a moment to adjust to the darkness. She could not determine Gabriel’s position; the whole room bellowed with the cry of his beast. A vampire taunted the strings. A wicked melody, his weapon.

She cried out as something soft fluttered across her cheek. Cinnamon scurried into her senses.

“You like?” came the heavy whisper. He spun away, drawing the bow in another macabre cry.

Clinging to the wall, her fingers tracing the ornate chair-rail, she moved along the room, closer to the window. When she could see her hand before her, Gabriel danced up, sawed the bow in a wicked arpeggio, and then ceased, bowing grandly before her.

“It is…remarkable,” she managed. Difficult to keep the strange fear from riding her soul. Her heartbeats raced faster than the music. Had he meant to frighten her?

Roxane touched flint to tinder and ignited three candles in succession on the candelabra upon the pianoforte. “I don’t understand.”

“This is my farewell recital.” He bowed a scale of rapid notes across all four strings and ended with a grand flare. “As I’ve told you, I once played for my parents in hopes of winning their attention. I fooled myself by thinking that I had succeeded, but I had not. I was merely background noise for their comfort.” He eyed Roxane. “It is what they called the opium haze, when they slipped into its settling grip. ‘I’m taking my comfort now, Gabriel, do not trouble me.’ Or, ‘Gabriel, play me to comfort.’”

She stroked his arm, thinking to show him she understood, but he tugged from her with a stride into the center of the room.

“They never really
saw
me. Never heard me. Couldn’t swim up from the depths of their comfort to love me. So!”

He swung and thrust the violin across the room. Roxane let out a shriek as the delicate instrument crashed against the wall. Blue splinters, strings, and carved tuning pegs clattered across the harlequin floor.

Gabriel stood beside her, his expression unreadable in the dim light, but the pain in his voice evident. “I don’t need their validation,” he growled. “I don’t need them to come home. It won’t restore their love. It won’t squeeze the opium from their bodies and make them kind or real or even see me.”

She looked from his angry intensity. At her feet a string clawed at the hem of her skirt.

“I need nothing from anyone.” He stalked away. “So begins my journey to vampirism. I no longer fear the past. Isn’t that a marvel?” He leaned on the pianoforte and pushed the silver candlestick toward her. “Today, I merely am.”

Looking as if he’d tumbled from bed more than a smartly-dressed swish, dark, tousled, beraged with a new beast, he winked at Roxane, before setting the bow on the piano.

“Oh?” She clung to his shirt.
Don’t fear him. Settle him, calm the beast within.

Before she could protest she was lifted high and set upon the smooth-lacquered pianoforte. Like a black cat mounting a rocky outcrop, Gabriel climbed the bench to join her.

“It will surely break,” she said.

“Never.”

“How can you know?” She swung her head to the right. He approached on the left. “Have you tried this before?” A twist of her waist. He’d slipped to her right. “With another woman?”

“Not if you never leave.” A kiss to the tops of her breasts, and he buried his tongue between her cleavage. “We’ll hope he doesn’t barge in when I’ve your skirts over your head.”

“My—” Her sight blackened by the billowing silk falling over her face, Roxane felt Gabriel’s fingers slide down her hose. He’d found exactly what interested him. And who was she to argue with a vampire?

Roxane watched the carriage roll away
from the Renan estate, the springs glistening and the midnight bays shining blue under the moon’s illumination. Spittles of foam from the horses’ mouth glittered on the cobbles before the hex-marked steps. Just down the street the clatter of coaches jostling for prime space on the linden-lined boulevard de la Madeleine and the yelps of unaware pedestrians signaled the Comédie Française had pulled aside the heavy velvet curtains for the night.

Sitting upon the vanity chair she tossed her hair over her shoulder, propped her elbows on the padded chair arm, and informed the woman who looked back at her, “He’s left for the evening.” And she knew that even after the delicious lovemaking session in the music room, he’d left hungry. “He’s going to find a woman and bite her. Not me.”

The thought made her frown. She didn’t want to think of Gabriel touching another woman. He’d promised her he would not—could not—ever make love to another woman. But it was the blood hunger that called to him, she felt sure. And she hadn’t decided if she wanted him to bite her again. She should be pleased he sought blood from someone else.

But what was to keep him from answering
all
his desires while extracting blood? Until four days earlier the vicomte had been a confirmed rake. She could not expect him to give up the lifestyle after making love to her but a few times.

But she wanted him to give it all up. To hold her exclusively in his heart.

Because it feels right.

Did vampirism feel right to Gabriel? Might he become a cold-blooded killer like Anjou?

“No.”

The vicomte was kind at heart. His philanthropies proved it. Toussaint kept his master’s magnanimous accomplishments a secret, but Roxane suspected he had large sums of money, and perhaps gave as much as he gained. Surely the darkness of vampirism would not overwhelm his soul.

If he had a soul now. Had darkness stolen his soul?

I beat the madness. I am free.

Free of what? Had Gabriel merely descended to a new Hell?

He had gone in pursuit of a victim this evening. Knowing so little. He would not know to hide, to blend in the shadows, to be stealthy.

Would he?

Her reflection shook her tousle of red curls. She looked at the ceiling, seeing beyond the wood and the tiles and to the creature that sat in stony silence waiting her command.