Read Follow The Night (Bewitch The Dark) Online
Authors: Michele Hauf
“Damian, please!” she pleaded.
“I want to sit in the spinning chair!”
“Damian.”
“My liege!” One of the men pushed from the wall and swaggered toward the back wall. “My—”
Damian spun around, cutting the man’s tirade with a slice of his hand before his throat.
Once tall, lithe, and ever the charmer—he would have given Leo a challenge—Damian Desrues retained a look of suave removal. Dark eyes saw nothing. Or had they seen too much? A spittle-laced mouth formed a moue.
He stared at Roxane for a long time. She could not read his expression. Did he see through her? Or did his vision stop at the bars? Always she knew her brother’s moods by the merest curl of lip or a tiny crease at the corner of his eye that would signal oncoming mirth. Not a single line marred his flesh, not a hint at emotion.
Then he stepped forward, pushing aside the spinning man, who was merely diverted from his east/west course to a northeast/southwest twirl.
“I want to spin!”
“Stand back from the foyer!” Damian announced grandly, as if a palace guard.
“Yes, my liege,” one of the men murmured, and scuffled into a dark corner, a spider for the shadows.
The one who wished to swirl his brains stood five paces behind her brother, his attention keen and maniacal.
“Roxane,” Damian said in a tone that sounded so normal.
“Damian, I love you.” She reached for him. His hands were warm but the right was slippery with his own blood. She lifted her skirt and pressed it to his bruised knuckles. “You should not harm yourself so. You’ve such pretty hands. Don’t you want to wear fine gloves and peel them slowly from your fingers to catch a lady’s eye?”
“I have caught your eye, lovely lady.” He dipped his head. Thick clumps of greasy hair swept his face. Lifting her hand to his mouth he kissed it, so gently—she might swoon were he a lover—then held it against his lips. “You taste of the meadows. Of a time I cannot recall.”
“Of course you can remember, Damian. It wasn’t less than a few months ago we lived in the parish. Remember how every morning you strolled through the fields to bring me a bouquet of wildflowers? Bright yellow coltsfoot and those white daisies that always made me sneeze. I-I want to take you home, Damian. I want things to be the way they were.”
His clutch grew tighter and Roxane impulsively pulled away.
But one eye was revealed between clumps of Damian’s hair. Was it pale celadon, the color of a fop’s whimsy, or had the madness muddied it to seaweed? No sparkle, not a single glint. Indeed, his face had grown gaunt. Roxane sensed it was not from hunger, but the insanity that taxed his soul. “You dare to take me away from here?”
“When you are better—”
Malice curled Damian’s thin mouth. “I see. When they have finally spun my brains into position? Is that the way of it?”
“Damian, I am doing what I can to help you.”
“A little late for that.”
His sneering retort cut to her bones. She did not deserve forgiveness. But had he chosen the other option would she have regretted the monster?
Why should it have been
your
choice?
Indeed, it should not have been.
He’s a google-eyed moon hunter. Ever gazing to the sky. No hope for him, love.
“I’ve met someone,” she said, hoping to make Damian smile. To let him think of things other than the bars and the filth and whatever hells infested his mind. “Of a sort.”
“Is he pretty?”
She lifted her head at his interest. The charming rogue wanted to hear some gossip. “Yes, he is handsome. A fop, but—”
“Oh, oh, oh! A pretty man for my pitiful, penniless whore of a sister!” Damian announced grandly. A splay of his arms was silently mimicked by the man standing behind him. “Triumph! Triumph!”
The spinner spun into a new dance of mumbles and pleas for his favorite pleasure.
“Damian, please,” she pleaded over the idiots’ rants. “It is not like that. It is…he is in trouble. I have been following the creature that did this to you. This man…he may be the key to attracting the enemy. I feel it, Damian. As soon as I’ve the vampire—”
As she spoke the word, Damian’s head jerked violently. He flung himself backward, as if to splash into a pond. The man behind him caught him with an expert lunge and a gleeful giggle.
“My liege!” the one huddling in the corner rushed forth. “He has taken ill!”
“He is not your liege!” Roxane’s anger unloosed. “Let go of him. Don’t tear at his clothes! Step away, dotterels!”
She pressed her forehead against the bars and concentrated. Mental magic was difficult for her without preparation, and she could use very little, but success came and she managed to part the two imbeciles from her brother with sheer will power.
Damian landed on the stone floor, and curled into a ball of limbs but two feet from the iron bars. She slid down to squat and stretched an arm through the cold iron.
“I’m sorry, Damian. It was my fault.”
“It
was
your fault,” he hissed, his head tucked into a curled arm. He began to rock back and forth. “Do not touch the royal flesh!” he snapped at the idiot crawling closer. He lifted his head and pierced Roxane with a flat stare. “Wait for the moon? Ha! You should have run a dagger through my heart.”
“No!” And yet, she wondered now if perhaps she should have. “This man I’ve met, he was bitten, like you.”
Damian twisted his head inside the curve of his arm. A cruel smile taunted her like no spoken admonishment could.
“He did not die,” she offered. “His valet rescued him before the vampire could finish. He has but days before the full moon.”
“You’ve done it AGAIN,” Damian growled in a voice that clutched her heart. “You’ve DONE it again.” His rocking increased pace and he moved up to his hands and knees. “The bitch has done IT again. Dancing between death and madness, she spins a mighty reel! Dance with me, my loyal subjects! Whirl me upon my spinning chair.”
He sprang up and his long legs skipped like a spider dancing across its web. The two men joined him. Every time they collided with the spinning man his path was redirected, which he assumed without protest.
Roxane pressed her back to the opposite wall.
“Come, my subjects!” Damian called, “Let us dance for the witch. Follow me, skip and twirl! Spin, spin, spin!”
She
had
done it again.
NINE
Breakfast without Roxane felt peculiar. In two days, Gabriel had grown accustomed to the pale beauty’s presence. Odd. He knew the dangers of establishing emotions for women. To summon hope. He hadn’t the time or luxury for that with Roxane. So why did he already notice when she was absent?
Perhaps because he missed her kisses?
“You are too soft, Renan.” He slunk in the vanity chair, stretching out a leg and staring at his lazy sneer in the mirror. “Take it like a man. Stand up and show it your teeth.” He leaned forward and bared his teeth.
“You would make a splendid creature, yes?”
His reflection snarled back.
Certainly well dressed, but hardly frightening.
“What a pitiful madman you would make, pacing your cell in tattered lace and obsessively counting the minutes on your cracked gold watch.”
He sighed and bent forward, placing his forehead on the vanity, and stared down at his feet, slippered in indigo damask. Only the finest for Leo. When taking on the role of Leo, he’d thought enhancing the façade would prove himself more attractive to the upper echelon Gabriel so hoped to crack. How difficult must it be to give away money? Tainted or not, it could only help others.
“I am…” Another sigh forced his private confession. “Frightened. I don’t want to change. Yes, yes,” he defied his reflection, “I know that is all I have dreamed of for years. Change. A life of domesticity. Someone to care for, to spoil, and to make happy. Someone to cherish, as I have never before been cherished. Someone to”—a swallow lodged in his throat— “
see
me.”
Toussaint entered the room with a tray of shaving utensils.
Gabriel tilted his head, studying the damage on his neck. “They haven’t begun to heal. Don’t you find that odd?”
“Maybe.” Toussaint glanced at Gabriel’s neck, then, with a double take, really looked at the wounds.
He read the valet’s surprise. “You do find it odd.”
“Do you think you will change? That you will suck another person’s blood and become immortal?”
“Must you be so bloody morbid?”
“Forgive me, but is not immortality a marvelous future to imagine?”
“Your mind dabbles with strange ideas far from my imagination. To drink another man’s blood can only be a curse.”
“Of course.” Toussaint’s tone did not at all agree with his agreement. “But if it is to survive and if you did not murder…”
Gabriel caught his forehead in his palm and closed his eyes. “As pitiful as it sounds, I have begun to question that very thing, Toussaint.” He picked up the stake and spun it round between his fingers. “What could be so terrible about immortality? It would be a hell of a lot more favorable than Bicêtre.”
“You would make an exquisite hunter of the night, Gabriel. Elegant and mysterious; you could lure women to a ravishing swoon. And just think—to walk through the ages, witnessing the world as it changes.”
“That would be a remarkable feat.” Something he’d not considered. What a joy to witness the changing times. To experience different cultures and lifestyles because he had been afforded the time to do so? On the other hand… “You forget one thing, Toussaint, the vampire kills. Murder is not my mien.”
“Monsieur Anjou did not kill you.”
“And look where that has gotten me. If I should not kill I would leave a trail of helpless lackwits in my wake. Mad minions roaming the city in search of blood. I could not justify that.”
“You’re the furthest thing from a lackwit, vicomte.”
“Madness yet threatens,” he muttered.
“What if there was a way to drink blood without killing and without risk of creating a minion?”
“Do you know of such ways?” Tapping the stake against his jaw, he peered into Toussaint’s reflected eyes. “Does Mesmer know things about the vampire?”
“Would you consider it if there was a way?”
Gabriel stared at the vicomte in the mirror. He
would
make a delicious creature. He certainly had the finances to afford a long life. And to experience the centuries….
Travel, adventure, and education called to him. He could learn so much. Grasp new ideas and see them through. And the women, ever a new supply to slake his lustful thirst.
But wouldn’t loss be all the more painful to carry it so long? And what of the domesticity he craved? If he were ever to marry, his wife would die while he lived on. Could he fathom such a life?
A man has to believe in something.
“I don’t know, Toussaint. I want this to all be done, one way or the other.”
“Then I will go to Mesmer this afternoon and see if he can answer some of your questions, yes?”
“Fine, but do not allow Mademoiselle Desrues to know what you are up to.”
The last thing he wanted was for Roxane to learn his fortitude had begun to falter. Because he knew without doubt, such a fine woman could never love a creature.
It was a relief to return to the vicomte’s home. Roxane needed to be with someone mentally sound. Someone male and charming, and capable of seducing her up from the bitter emotions that yet clung to her soul.
Toussaint directed her to the music room where Leo was seated before the pianoforte, using it as a desk as he paged through a stack of documents. He covered them with a leather folio as she strode in.
“Ah, the vampire slayer returns to her nest.”
“Sarcasm does not suit you, vicomte.”
“But the autumn air suits you, mademoiselle. Have you heard the term blowsabella?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Italian, I think. Your cheeks are flushed and you are radiant. Gorgeous.”
Yes, a male’s charming presence; just the thing to feed her starving soul.
“Where were you all day?”
“I stopped by my apartment this morning to visit Ninon.” Partial truth, for she had stopped by before coming here. “She has no other friends in the city. As well, I enjoy her company. She seemed a trifle…changed.”
“How so?”
“I’m not sure.” She thought about Ninon’s cotton dress and the lightness with which she had carried herself. As if the world had been lifted from her shoulders, or rather, a really big wig. “She offered me fine pastries. I was surprised because she has so little. I wonder if she’s been to the coiffures again?”
“What did her hair look like?”
“That is the surprise, it looked rather plain. As though it hadn’t seen curling rod or pins and powder in weeks.”
“Did you ask her about it?”
“I did, but she merely shrugged.”