The Watchtower (22 page)

As if his atomsight had now become atomtouch! But then the sensation trailed away and the newcomer's hand, to appearances, returned to flesh.

All of it had happened so swiftly ... but he had looked down and seen his hand holding virtually nothing, he was sure of it--not even the veneer of a hand, just its atoms--before he pulled away with a shudder.

"Charles Roget," the newcomer identified himself.

"Will Hughes," Will said softly. The man's name was French, but the accent was peculiar--more Italian than French--and contained a trace of mockery. Mockery, perhaps, of Will's fear. Only a fiend would mock so, Will reflected. That didn't mean he wasn't sitting next to one.

They rode on, the occasional lit dwelling becoming more frequent, indicating London's dawning proximity.

Then Roget snapped his fingers as if he'd forgotten something, leaned forward in his seat, and said casually to Will, "Charles Roget's my Christian name, but in the street they call me Lightning Hands."

Will was in no mood for repartee. But, fearing that even no response might incite the man to chatter, he turned toward him and murmured listlessly, "Is that so?"

"If it weren't so, why would I say it?" Roget answered sharply. He leaned forward farther, flapped his arms forward, and his hands over his knees, then splayed the fingers on both hands downward toward the carriage floor. The finger splaying was done with profound slowness, as if it carried some hidden meaning. Will gazed at him wonderingly, then Roget snapped his fingers and tiny, iridescent lightning bolts flamed downward from his fingertips and scorched a small area of the carriage's lavender-carpeted floor, turning it a pink-tinted ash black that the subsequent bolts further illumined, reminding Will of the ash-tainted rose smell earlier.

Will felt a strong urge to fling open the door and hurl himself out of the carriage while it was in motion. He'd hit the ground rolling, he imagined, and--

Roget put a lank left arm around Will's shoulders in a comradely way that was the faintest bit improper and brought Will closer to him. "I've spent decades studying the ways of lightning," he said confidentially--as if Will were his oldest friend. "In them lie the secrets to many of the world's ills, I believe. Disease, pestilence, decay--why perhaps even to that final ill--death. I believe that in the power of lightning might lie the secret of immortality. Would that be of interest to you, young sir? Immortality? Now that would be a true miracle, wouldn't it?"

"
Miracle
is a word I associate with heaven. And our Savior. I'm not sure you're using it correctly. What you speak of sounds like the work of demons."

"Ah," Roget said, laughing with a crackling sound. "There are no demons but the enemies who torment us on this earth." He flicked his right wrist upward and sent off a bolt at an angle that caused it to nearly slit Will's right ear, then to pool harmlessly in brittle luminescence against the side window of the cab. The driver might have heard the sparking conclusion not too far from his perch, but gave no sign of it. Roget's crackle deepened with apparent amusement and Will felt even more afraid. His veins chilled with the darkness. But he had the courage to speak.

"Has John Dee sent you?" he blurted. "As a messenger of his powers? Or, to threaten me in this vile way? It won't work, Monsieur Roget," he added importantly. "My miracle is stronger than yours. My miracle is love."

Roget's crackle nearly became a shriek, then died away suddenly like a torch plunged into water. "If you think love is stronger than lightning, you've got a lot to learn about life, boy. Lightning is a condensation of the universe itself. 'Love' is mostly illusion, the mutant offspring of self-interest and moon shadows. As to Dee, that is but a worm to my dragon. I would no more carry a message for him than a hawk would for a goat!" By way of additional exclamation point, Roget fired off yet another bolt, brighter than the others, as if he had added fire and
urge
to it. It found the tiniest scrap of Will's chin before glancing off into a blur of brightness against the window.

Will grimaced with a fiery pain that, though tiny in diameter, carried the force of a too fierce pinch. Almost unthinkingly, he coiled and unleashed a savage left hook against Roget's jaw. The miracle worker semed dazed for a moment, blinking heavily and doubling over, his skinny torso riding his bony lap. But when he came back upright, he held a gleaming Spanish buccaneer's knife in his right hand, one he'd evidently kept concealed in a scabbard affixed to his leg. He drew the knife overhead for a downward blow, grinning with wicked slyness at Will, though all of it a bit sluggishly as if he were shrugging off the effect of Will's punch.

The window to their right shattered with a metallic sound and both men glanced over to see what had happened, but the window was draped in black as though by funeral crepe. Will took advantage of his opponent's distraction to leap from the carriage, rolling onto the ground as he'd reflected on doing moments earlier, hitting the ground with a jarring lurch and in a tangle of limbs despite his effort to remain bodily organized. Before he was able to get to his feet he saw Roget spring from the carriage, his black robe flapping behind him like the wings of the giant black bird Will had spied earlier. Something gold glinted at the man's throat and, as he leaped toward Will, Will felt the first prickling of recognition. He'd met this man before--at the party in London at which the poet and Marguerite had announced their engagement. He was none other than the Italian priest who had denounced their union as bigamous! Was he some avenging Savonarola whose mission was to punish adulterous fornicators? But why attack Will? Neither he nor Marguerite were married. And, perhaps more to the point, where had a priest learned to wield lightning?

All these questions were but the work of a moment, and then the man--priest or no--was above him, sword drawn, and Will saw that he would be run through if he didn't move quickly.

But before he could take evasive action, his assailant was jerked back as though on a string. He seemed to hover for a moment midair, his eyes growing wide, then he dropped to the ground, crumpling into a ball like a piece of scrap paper tossed impatiently away by a frustrated writer. Will looked up into the sky to see what force had so cavalierly disposed of Roget--and saw, hovering above him, the huge black bird. It was beating the air with its enormous wings, its beady, bloodred eyes focused on the inert, facedown figure of Roget. When Roget turned over, the bird dove at him, snapping at his face with its long yellow beak.

Roget screamed and, shielding his face with his arms, scrambled to his feet. Will saw that he was trying to snap his fingers again to generate one of his lightning bolts, but the bird wouldn't let him. It kept pecking at his fingers, drawing spouts of blood where before lightning bolts had sprung. At last Roget was forced to run for the woods to seek cover from the bird's attack. Will watched his halting, bird-pecked progress, grateful that the bird had chosen Roget to attack and not him.

"Oi!" The driver's exclamation brought Will's attention back to the coach. "That there gentleman didn't pay me the last half of his fare."

"That man was no gentleman," Will replied, shaking his head. "How did he engage your services in the first place?"

"I were drinking at the White Horse and he overheard me to say I was taking a young gentleman to the estate of the great John Dee. He told me he'd pay me handsomely if I'd pick him up on the way back, but he only paid half up front."

"That will teach you to trust scoundrels such as he," Will said, getting back into the coach. "But if you promise to get us back to London without stopping for any new passengers--man nor bird--I'll make up what you lost."

The driver was agreeable to Will's suggestion and whipped the horses into a fast gallop. Above the hoofbeats Will thought he could still hear the flap of a large bird's wings, but instead of making him feel threatened, the sound comforted Will, with the notion that he was being watched over from above.

17

The
Astrologer's Tower

When I had confirmed with the night clerk at the Aigle Noir that Sarah had come back, I went up to my room to pack and wait for dawn and the first train back to Paris. I was too keyed up to sleep, so I sat at the window watching the stone walls around the chateau take shape in the gray light of dawn and thought about Melusine.

Oberon had introduced me to her in New York last winter. I'd recognized the name from the fairy tales my mother had told me, but the old, wrinkled homeless woman I'd first met in Central Park hadn't resembled the legendary fairy of folklore. Melusine was supposed to have been so beautiful that the moment Raymond of Poitou came upon her in the Forest of Coulombiers he had immediately fallen in love with her. She agreed to marry him on the condition that he never look upon her on Saturdays, but as in all such arrangements the mortal spouse eventually gave in to doubt. Spying on her in her bath, he'd seen her long serpent tail and blamed her for the aberrations in their children. When he rebuked her, she sprouted wings and fled, although she haunted the castle for generations. When I met her in New York City, she hung out by sewer manholes and park fountains. She took me on a tour, while in molecular form, through the city's waterways and tracked down John Dee to his lair beneath the East River. At least we had thought it was John Dee. The apparition turned out to be a trap and we'd both been flushed out into the bay. Because Melusine was a freshwater creature, she'd begun dissolving instantly. I'd just managed to get her to Governors Island before she dissolved entirely and then decanted her into an empty Poland Spring bottle.

The bottle was locked in my suitcase back in Paris. Her last request had been to bring her home, and I'd been meaning to take the trip to Lusignan as soon as I got my sign. Now it looked as if I might have received that sign. Maybe if I'd taken Melusine back to Lusignan right away, I wouldn't have had to wait at Saint-Julien's for so long or come here to Fontainebleau to meet Hellequin. I shuddered thinking of the ghoulish rider and his cloak stitched out of abducted women.
I'll keep an eye out for you,
he'd said. Even now I could hear the echo of hoofbeats. I had a feeling I'd never really be free of them.

Although it was still too early for the train, I got up to go, unable to stand the quiet of my room any longer. Even the repeating pattern in the wallpaper had become maddening ... all those fleeing shepherdesses glancing coyly over their bare shoulders, so many leering shepherds ... I looked closer at a patch of paper near the door and saw that one of the shepherds had sprouted horns, cloven ling I, and an erection. Worse, the frothy bit of shrubbery behind him now disclosed the hunt in all its horrors--the flayed face of Hellequin, the faces of his victims fluttering in his cloak. I spun around to see if all the vignettes in the wallpaper now held this scene, but suddenly I didn't want to know. I could hear the hoofbeats in my head. I turned and left my room, closing the door behind me and making myself walk down the long, straight hall without glancing left or right at the wallpaper.

* * *

On the train back to Paris I picked up a discarded
Le Monde
and read about the fourth Seine murder. They were no longer being called suicides. All the bodies had been drained of blood. The Vampire Murders, they were being called.

It couldn't be Will, I told myself, wiping the newsprint off my sweat-slick hands. He never killed innocents and he had left Paris in May. A year ago I would have dismissed the appellation as a media affectation, but now that I knew vampires existed, I wondered not
whether
there were vampires in Paris, but
how many.
I'd never asked Will about others of his kind. The only other vampire he'd mentioned was the one whom John Dee had summoned to make Will immortal....

My sweat turned icy cold. Will had the box. He'd taken it to summon a creature to make him mortal. Had something gone wrong and he'd let out the vampire who had made him instead? Was that vampire now ravaging Paris for victims?

When we pulled into the Gare de Lyon, I experienced once again a moment of double vision--only now instead of seeing Holocaust victims being herded into freight cars by Nazi soldiers, I saw the crowds as so many beating hearts circulating blood for a centuries-old monster. I could hear the pulse of the crowd along with the hoofbeats that had lodged in my brain.

I hurried out of the station, urged on by that incessant beat, and walked across the Seine to the Left Bank. I found myself glancing toward the roiling water flowing under the Pont d'Austerlitz. Had it been only a handful of nights ago that I had looked into that water and wondered how despairing a person would have to be to throw themselves in? Had some monster of the night preyed on lost souls--such as Amelie and Sam Smollett--as they paused on the bridge's ramparts? Even though it was full daylight, I hurried on, barely able to keep myself from breaking into a run. Perhaps Madame Weiss would know something about the murders.

When I arrived at the hotel, though, I found that Madame Weiss was not there.

"She's gone to the country," the manager told me, tight-lipped, her eyes slanting sideways. Then she quickly busied herself tidying up some sightseeing brochures that were already perfectly tidy.

"Madame Weiss looked upset when she left," a man's voice informed me as I was opening my door. I turned and found Roger Elden leaning against the hall bookcase holding a cup of coffee. In my overtired state I wasn't sure which smelled better--the coffee or the clean tang of Roger Elden's cologne.

"Did she?" I asked. "Do you know what was the matter?"

Roger shook his head, a soft brown lock falling over his eyes. I noticed lines around his eyes and some silver threaded through his hair that I hadn't noticed before, little signs of age that only made him better looking. Why was that the case with men? I'd never worried before about growing old, but I wondered now if Will wasn't able to become mortal again, what it would be like to grow old while he didn't. Especially with a man who might have cared so much about his looks that he'd traded daylight for eternal youth.