Revenant Eve (59 page)

“I didn’t start out that way,” I said. “I was just dancing and more dancing, and I wanted to push the limits…” I stopped, aware that the challenge, the lure, the
insanity
—was gone. Ignoring the hot-eyed guy who’d come right up behind me, the insinuating jazz, the disappointed, scoffing audience, I jumped off the stage.

A couple of big, menacing guys stepped toward me, led by a cold-eyed woman with long nails. Ruli murmured, “Allow me.”

She bared her fangs. They backpedaled with less dignity than haste and returned to their shadowy little tables as the jazz band started up again behind us.

“Whoa,” I croaked, as we walked out into the street. “First time I ever enjoyed seeing the flash of vamp teeth.”

“I truly enjoy that,” Ruli said, and that was definitely Tony’s smile. “The demons don’t like us stealing their prey, but they can’t do anything about us
here.
” She didn’t explain what she meant by
here
, but went right on. “The last time I walked through my old house, you’d not shown up for some meeting with Cerisette, and she was hoping you’d changed your mind and run out on Alec. Someone else said you were ill. What’s happened?”

“It’s too long to go into,” I said, then what she said hit me with sickening force. “You mean time
has
passed? Oh no! How long? I’ve got to get back!”

“Relax. You’d been missing a day or two, and I just told you: Time does what you want here. Talking to me is going to make no difference. What
are
you doing here?”

“I came to this Paris with some others to rescue one of us. We were told she’d be fine by the strike of nine…” The anvil finally clonked me on the head. “They said to meet them when the bells ring
None
. The bells aren’t going to ring, is that it? We’ve been scammed?”

Ruli took a hit from her cigarette in its long holder. The cherry-red end glowed and faded. She let out a stream of smoke (which I didn’t smell) and said, “I can answer that better if you tell me who
they
is.”

What would that have to do with telling time?
Nothing is as it seems
.

I put up three fingers. “Seraphs, three. Named Uriel, Raguel, and Jeremiel.”

“Seraphs?” Ruli repeated. “Aren’t those the names of angels?”

“Angels? There really
are
angels? Seraphs seems less…” I searched for a word and shrugged, “Biblical? But even then, I just don’t believe they’re angels, however they call themselves, or even if they have smoky sets of wings.”

“There are seraphs in the Bible, too. Kim, what’s going on?”

I gave her the fastest rundown in history. Not always in order, and skipping huge wads, but she listened all the way through and then said, “I’d be skeptical, too. If they said
call me
something, it could be they wanted you to believe they were angels.”

“So you think they’re something else? Like what?”

She shrugged. “Demons.”

“Those beautiful creatures? I thought the uglies were the demons.”

“Demons can look like anything and will claim to be angels. Some say they
were
angels once. Everyone says two things about angels: They are made of light, and they don’t lie, even by indirection. So, for instance, a real angel—if there are any, and I haven’t met any—would never claim to be a demon.”

“I’m pretty sure they even said that the uglies were the demons.
Demon-spawn.
You know, the gargoyle creatures. They go
pop
if you stab them. They carried Elisheva away!”

“That’s because they must execute the will of the demons, even to die. And die again and again, until they…” She lifted a shoulder, “disappear, a piece at a time. As does everyone who comes here and gives the demons life.”

“Life?”

“I’d better show you. It won’t take long.” She led the way across a square and down an alley to a picturesque street of what in Paris had been grand houses, with sculpture all around doors and windows. The fleur-de-lis was prominent, and coats of arms. We walked inside an open one with light spilling out, and the civilized resonance of violins and violas and winds in a restrained minuet. The marble hall opened onto a magnificent ballroom filled with guests as quiet servants in black livery moved about, carrying trays and candles. No one paid us the least heed as couples with snowy white wigs promenaded down the center of the room, the women in panniered gowns polonaised with lace and ribbons, the men in fitted silken suits, tight in the body and legs, the coats with skirts that accommodated their small-swords, their high-heeled shoes glittering with diamond buckles.

We passed arched openings into little anterooms. A couple canoodled
in one. The woman was wearing a mask. “The mask means that her identity is officially not known. Probably she’s sneaked away from her husband,” Ruli said. “There will be a demon, dressed as a servant, to bring them whatever they need, while feeding off them.”

“Sucking their blood?”

“Call it the energy of their relishing illicit lust. Angry lust.”

“So they feed off sex.”

“It’s not the sex so much as the man’s intent to steal from some other man, and the woman’s intent to cheat this other man. Anger and violence—destruction in all forms, that’s what they feed on. The two will get a little weaker, the demon a little stronger.” She glanced at me, and laughed when she saw the horror in my face. “It’s a teacup. War gives them a river.”

In a gallery at the end of the hall, a couple of men dueled with rapiers. “Ah! Here you go,” Ruli said. “Watch.”

Before we’d taken two steps, one of the duelists stabbed his opponent through the heart. He fell, and servants flowed out of the gloom of the corners to tend him. The creepy thing was, they seemed to bring the darkness with them. The gallery was lit by chandeliers on stands, so the lighting was uneven on the gigantic paintings of posed noblemen and generals astride rearing horses. But the shadows above were not as obscure as those between the kneeling servants and the fallen.

“Those servants are demons?”

“Yes.”

“And they’re feeding instead of healing that guy?”

“That’s difficult to define, here. Both, I guess you’d say. It’s not healing in the sense you understand it. The man will shortly be back on his feet, but he’ll be a little slower, a little weaker, a little unsteady.”

“Do the victims know?”

“They might. Some do, some don’t. They find their way here by various means. Or find themselves here. Ignorance,” she added with that mocking smile, “is no excuse.”

“So the Nasdrafus is all about creatures that feed on others?”

“This part is,” she said. “Where you have come.”

This was so disturbing, my mind couldn’t grapple and reached for a side issue. “They can’t see us?”

“Not now. You were willing to follow me, and I chose to keep us invisible.”

“Wait. I don’t get it. You wish things, or will things?”

“Watch.”

She didn’t do anything but suddenly the winner of the duel and his seconds looked up. Their expressions changed from surprise to a smarmy interest.

“What are you doing in my house?”

“Women? Of the streets, perhaps?”

Ruli smiled at me. The men blinked, then turned back to talking among themselves as Ruli said, “Now I want us invisible.”

I tried.
See me
, I commanded mentally, and sure enough, one man pointed with his rapier. “There’s one of ’em again!”

Don’t see me
, I shouted mentally.

“
Sangdieu
, de Châtelet! You’re seeing phantasms.”

Ruli lifted her shoulder in a shrug, and sent a stream of smoke in the direction of the bewigged aristocrats. “Let’s go.”

We walked out. The clues were fitting together into a puzzle of horror.

“The uglies are controlled by demons, and demons lie, and they are like vampires who vacuum up life energy. Oh, hell. That forest of maples.”

“A convenience, masking the truth with acceptable symbol.”

“So she’s being drained of blood?”

“Not blood, Kim. Think beyond the purely physical. You know that is not your physical body, it’s your memory of your body,
n’est-ce pas
?”

I fingered my perfect hair, still not the least tangled after all that wild dancing. Nor was I sweaty. “Oh.”

“None of us go near the demon grounds. The Place de Grève has belonged to them for centuries.”

A sudden thought. “Do demons fly?”

“They can, in the form they often take.”

“Would they seem to stream across the sky, to one who can see them?”

“They can,” she said.

The clues inexorably locked together. “So, if great numbers—thousands—are flying somewhere, where are they going?”

“To the slaughter, of course,” she said. “As I said. They are drawn to death, the more violent the better. Then they can proliferate.”

“So in Aurélie’s time, those shadows I saw around Fouché and Napoleon?”

Ruli tapped her cigarette on an iron railing topped with fleur-de-lis, and watched snowy ash drift into the garden to vanish among perfect flowers, not a petal withered, not a leaf grown old. “First at the trough are the strongest and most dangerous,” she said. “I am surprised you survived that.”

Aurélie’s necklace had protected her, even as it drew them. I saw it now, but I didn’t explain that. I was too sickened by a realization I could not escape. “What have we done?”

“You have not done anything,” she said. “From what you’ve told me.”

“That’s just it. While we’ve been having fun, Elisheva is…I don’t get it, how fun could be evil. It seems a cheat. If the demons had threatened us, come at us with weapons, we’d know the rules. We could fight back.”

“Violence is best. Destruction next. They get little from what we were taught as the seven sins. Worst of all for them are the emotions at the polar opposite of destruction.” Ruli took another hit off her cigarette. “Did you ever read
The Adventures of Pinocchio
?”

“Collodi’s book? Yes, I struggled through it when I tried taking Italian my second year in college. Oh. This aspect of the Nasdrafus is like Toyland, is that it? Except here the donkey ears are more insidious and interior? I’ve got to find the others.” I faced Ruli, urgency poising me to run. “Thank you.”

She gazed back at me, her eyes so like mine, yet so different. “Remember your promise to me,” she whispered, and was gone.

Promise—yes. I’d promised if she ever turned evil, I would push her into the sunlight. With a great sense of relief I let her go.

Remembering what Ruli had said about time (
time does what you
want here
) and place (
in the Nasdrafus, affinity, connection…
), before I took a step I shut my eyes, willing myself to see Aurélie.

And there she was, not far away. Then I began to run. Wish and will, I repeated to myself, willing the shadows to recede. Where had I left my sword? Back at the theater, blocks away.

They’re gonna send uglies after me
. I tried to halt the thought. I didn’t want to end up willing them to come after me because I dreaded not being able to fight them.

“Think about Aurélie, think about Aurélie,” I muttered as I darted around the strolling crowd.

Paris had become the ideal Paris, though some buildings were blurry and others clear. But my eyes were drawn to rows of pretty trees filled with twinkling lights, the clean sweep of the quay along the quiet Seine, the lovely arch of the bridges. I had to look away from intriguing glimpses—the carving of a king on a bridge, a cute little café with stained glass windows, the sounds of ballet music through the open doors of a little theater—and keep Aurélie firmly in mind, because the lure was there to take just a look. Just a moment.

I found the two sitting in a tiny booth at a cozy café near a lovely fountain of the Three Graces. Aurélie and Jaska had their arms wrapped around one another, every line of their bodies expressing tenderness, affection, passion. For the first time, they were alone without the invisible ears of Yours T.

The sight triggered off my sorrow and longing for Alec. Not only for his arms around me but for the broken conversation we’d barely begun.

They looked up, shocked at my abrupt appearance.

“We’ve been had,” I said, and at their incomprehension: “The demons are killing Elisheva a drop at a time while we wait.”

Aurélie jumped up. “Where?”

“They?” Jaska asked.

“Demons. Come,” I said and explained as we went.

“A vampire? You got the truth from a
vampire
?” Jaska asked, halting.

“Let’s test the truth of her words,” I said. “It’s still not sunset yet, the sun above the city roofs. Right?”

They assented, Jaska warily, Aurélie with a troubled expression.

“Let’s each will it to be nightfall.” And when nothing happened, “
Expect
to see it. No.
See
it. The sun is gone. There are stars overhead.” I pointed at the sky.

And there they were, twinkling peacefully. My heart chilled as Aurélie gasped, her eyes filling with tears.

“We have done evil,” she whispered. “In wanting to be alone, just the two of us.”

“Oh, no, you haven’t.” I waved my arms. “No,
that
was natural. It was good. The mistake, which you made without being aware, was in accepting the manipulation of time.” I thought of Las Vegas casinos, always well lit, no clocks, no windows, the addition of oxygen to keep you feeling fresh and frisky as you empty your wallet. But there was no explaining that! “You were together, at last able to talk things out without me perched on Aurélie’s shoulder. And it’s pretty here, and the bells never rang.”

“It was temptation,” Jaska said, looking distraught. “Don’t say we didn’t know. We didn’t ask, didn’t want to know.”

I could see guilt in both their faces, and shame. “There are the trees,” he said, brandishing his sword. “I hope the demons come out. I’ll find out if they bleed or not.”

Aurélie caught his wrist in her hands. “No. No more killing.”

“They will send the demon-spawn against us,” Jaska said. “What good do we do if we are overcome and carried away into darkness?”