Read Follow The Night (Bewitch The Dark) Online
Authors: Michele Hauf
“Or I may have been killed by Anjou. Don’t say such things, Gabriel. Just hold me. I feel as though I am…yet slipping. I don’t feel safe.”
“But you are.” Hope was that she truly was safe in his arms, but truth told she was probably in more danger with him than out alone in Paris. Even his accidents could prove dangerous. “So sorry, Roxane.”
“I should have explained everything to you. I secreted my truths. I had initially thought to use you to get to Anjou.”
“I will be whatever you wish me to be. Your lover, your bait—”
“Don’t speak like that. My heart has changed. I love you, Gabriel.”
“You should not love me.”
“It is not that I should not, but that I
wish
not to. Only because I don’t want to cause you any more pain. If you were not mine…”
He closed his eyes and kissed the crown of her head. True words that made his heart swallow. “I love you, Roxane. Forgive me.”
Gabriel woke and looked over the wilted flower he had lain beside through the night. The draperies were drawn, but he sensed it was morning. He could not see Roxane’s face in the hazy light, but he could hear her soft, shallow breaths. Untroubled sleep, he hoped.
Thank whichever God would listen for that.
He kissed her forehead and she stirred. Slender fingers entwined within his. Drawing his lips down her nose and to her mouth, he felt the curve of her smile.
“I feel as though I’ve walked against a raging windstorm,” she murmured.
He fought renewed tears, “I could have killed you.”
“You did not know,” she said, her eyes still closed, but her head turning to find his mouth. She kissed him. Such mercy. “You had to see if you could do it.”
“I did not think the thrall would harm you. I would not have left you if I had known.”
“Where did you go?”
“To find Anjou and—hell, I wanted to kill the bastard. Give you no reason not to choose me to help your brother. It was selfish of me. The evil has cleaved to me. The remnants of my soul are turning black, Roxane.”
“Don’t say things like that.” Her fingers fell upon his mouth. Still so far from her strength.
He clasped her hand in his. “It is truth and it frightens me. Would I have killed Anjou if I found him?”
“You would have ended a life that has taken so many others.”
“Do not in any way make me heroic. I am like Anjou.”
“You do not kill for blood.”
“I am a novice. As my heart blackens so will my ways.”
“Stop it.”
“What?”
“Playing the tragic victim! You are a good man, Gabriel. You will remain so, I know it. I won’t have you thinking any other way. Promise?”
“You do not cease to startle me. Even after all I have done to you, you remain kind and open to my black heart.”
“It is like breathing, Gabriel.”
Her simple kindness killed him. For she loved her own death. “I must know, the thrall. Did you lose your immortality?”
“I suspect so.”
“You can restore it?”
“There is but one way to do that.”
“You mean…”
“Yes.”
He kissed her mouth, soft and warm. In her celadon gaze he saw his reflection. Did he reside there or was it merely a trick of the light?
“If I could give you my heart, I would.”
“You already have. And I did not treat it with the respect you deserve.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “I should not have been so judgmental. Can you forgive me?”
“I have. But can you ever trust me now?”
“Why not?”
“I will always be looking at you as someone who can give me the immortality I have lost.”
“Ah. And I have offered my heart to you. Literally.”
“I could not take it.”
“I don’t imagine how you could have ever performed such a ritual.”
“Charles helped. I won’t elaborate.”
Nor did he wish to hear anything so vulgar cross his lover’s pale lips.
He nuzzled into her neck. The pulse of life tempted him to press his lips there, but he kept back his desires, and instead kissed softly, his lips hiding his fangs.
“Oh, lover.”
He slid his hand down her stomach. The chemise tickled her knees as he inched it up with his fingers. The pillow cupped her head as she pressed back, riding the sudden pleasure of his touch and moving it throughout her body.
THIRTY
They staggered from Bicêtre as if refugees allowed out into the light for the first time. It was not a sunny day. Thunder clouds sweatered the sky. The atmosphere felt heavy, foreboding with a crackle of lightening across the sky.
Stunned, Roxane turned to Gabriel. “How could he have escaped? Where would he have gone?”
“I’m not sure. We will find him, trust me.”
The administrator had reluctantly confessed to Damian’s absence—an escape unnoticed by anyone on duty during the late hours yesterday.
“He could not have gone far.”
“Paris is but leagues away,” Gabriel said. “Can he ride?”
“Very well.”
He gripped her by the shoulders. “We ride to your apartment and check there.”
Damian had not returned to the garret on the rue Vivienne. Roxane strode the room looking for signs that her brother had been there, but everything was to its place, scattered as that was.
“We’ll go to my home and—”
“He would not go there,” she stopped Gabriel abruptly. “He doesn’t know you.”
“True. But we need all the help we can summon. I can send Toussaint out in search. I will search the city as well.”
“Yes, thank you. I’ll stay here in case he returns. You’ll send Toussaint with news if you find him?”
“Immediately.” He kissed her. “You should eat, you’re shaky and chilled. We will find him.”
“I pray he has not gone to Anjou.”
“He would not.”
“You said there was a bond,” she asked. “Between you and the man who bit you. That you…loved him?”
“Only in that moment of the bite. Don’t fret, Roxane, we will find him.”
Afternoon stirred Roxane to impulsive jitters. She could not sit still waiting. Nor did she want to risk going too far from the apartment. Weak and jittery, she needed something in her stomach. Perhaps a meal would calm her. And maybe a walk down the avenue to look about for Damian.
Weary and defeated, she arrived at the Pont Neuf and thought to forego the bridge, packed shoulder to shoulder with hawkers and strollers and children.
She would never find Damian in this bustle of humanity.
She clutched the vial hanging around her neck, but her fingers closed about nothing. She had worn the glass vial since the day she had arrived home to find Damian lying on his bed, bleeding and jabbering about a creature with dark eyes and a sharp, seductive kiss.
Roxane had thought her decision correct by influencing Damian to hold out for the moon. Three weeks he’d waited. She could not guess why he’d succumbed to madness quicker than the signs began to show in Gabriel. Damian had never received magic. Only the females in the Desrues family had. He’d never said anything to her, but she’d felt his jealousy through the decades. Magic had bonded her with her mother.
Thick, frothy elm trees lined the riverside, providing much needed shade. A vendor called out his refreshing wares. Slipping two sous from her purse, Roxane purchased a lemon ice. Finding a stone bench beneath a tree, she sipped the tart ice from the rind.
Just float, she coached. Do not sink.
When a carriage rolled close to the bench she had to tuck her legs to avoid getting crushed. The black coach stopped, effectively pinning her in.
“Driver, move on!” she pleaded, but the cloaked driver remained impassive, his head facing forward.
“Mademoiselle Desrues.”
The voice inside the carriage seeped out the window as if a black fog. A shudder rode her spine. Clutching the window, she stood and peered inside the carriage’s dark shadows. The windows were shaded with heavy fabric and so she did not see more than two pairs of legs until the voice that had spoken leaned forward.
She clutched for the vial, then swore softly—not there. What could she use? She pressed her thumbnail to the blue vein on the underside of her wrist.
“Hold your artillery, witch,” Anjou hissed. “I’ve something you’ll want to see before you splatter me with your blood. If you make one move to cut your flesh, I will slash his pretty throat.”
The glint of silver flashed near Anjou’s head. His arm was draped about something, and his other hand held a dagger to a man’s throat.
A scream lodged at the base of Roxane’s tongue. “Damian.”
Her brother had been cruelly bound about the mouth and his hands and legs. His eyes were maniacal, his stifled mumbles pitiful.
“What do you want?”
“You, witch. Dead.”
A thin crimson line blossomed under Damian’s chin. Not a fatal cut, but enough to warn.
“You’ll let him go?”
“Of course. Step up inside. We’re going for a ride.”
Having no choice, Roxane stepped up into the carriage and sat opposite the two.
Anjou kicked the door and the driver started onward.
Gabriel paced the floor of his bed chamber. It was difficult to concentrate on his hunger when there were more important worries. Had Roxane found her brother at their garret? He needed to be out in the city, searching. He’d taken the coach down the rue St. Honoré, and circled the Palais Royale three times.
Toussaint had taken the left bank. If the valet did not return soon he was prepared to go out again. Not for sustenance, but for a different kind of blood—vengeance.
The front door creaked open. He raced down the hallway to find Toussaint standing meekly in the open door, his head bowed, and hands folded before him.
“What is it, Toussaint? Did you find Roxane? Her brother?” He skipped down the stairs and scanned the carriage, the horses pawing the ground and lather glistening on their withers. No witch, no madman.
“She didn’t make it home,” Toussaint whispered. “She was…”
“What?” Tears glistened on the valet’s face. “You spoke with Roxane?”
“No. I saw her as I crossed the Pont Neuf, but it was too crowded to get to her. I saw her buy the lemon…”
“Toussaint!”
“I think she’s been taken.”
“Taken?” He slammed a fist to the door frame over Toussaint’s shoulder. “I don’t understand.”
“I saw her sitting in the shade eating a lemon ice. A carriage passed before where she was sitting and when it moved by, she was gone.”
Gabriel closed his eyes and winced. There was only one person who had reason to take Roxane—but that made little sense. The vampire would not risk kidnapping a witch. Would he?
Unless he found a way to keep Roxane from dousing him with her blood. Easy enough. Just keep her away from sharp objects by binding her hands.
Morbleu
, had the vampire kidnapped Roxane in an attempt to lure Gabriel to him?
There was no reason for Anjou to fear him; he was now of his kind.
Of course, Anjou did not know that.
“Quickly, Toussaint. My coat and…a rapier, instead of my walking stick. We must ride now.”
Toussaint rushed inside and, Gabriel, left alone on the step, craned his neck back and stared up at the dark sky.
“I wonder.” Staring up this side of the house, he spied two of the drain spouts. Would Charles know where his mistress was?
Up on the roof, he wasn’t sure how to communicate with the stone beast. But it was obvious from Charles’s open-mawed silent yowls he sensed something was not right.
“Can you find her? Can you scent out your mistress?”
How to communicate with a chunk of stone? He tentatively touched the stone wing and felt the flow of…life? “She is in danger.”
“No thanks to you!”
Gabriel swung around to find Xavier Desrues lurching up behind him with hell in his eyes and a stake in hand.
“I see my daughter’s familiar has taken up residence,” Xavier announced. He wielded not only a stake but also a dagger in the opposite hand. “That insufferable beast.”
“Where is Roxane?” Gabriel glanced to Charles, who again cawed silently but insistently. The beast wanted Gabriel to pay attention, to understand—but what?
“Listen, Desrues, whatever it is you have against me, it will have to wait. Your daughter is in danger.”