Follow The Night (Bewitch The Dark) (6 page)
Read Follow The Night (Bewitch The Dark) Online
Authors: Michele Hauf
Call out the surgeons! This woman was not in her right mind.
“I feel I shall regret this, but I must ask: Why do you wear a vial of blood about your neck?”
“It is witch’s blood.”
Toussaint brightened from his bespelled haze. “Witches?”
“First it is vampires, and now you’ve added witches to the brew? Surely they do not allow such trinkets in the asylum from which you have escaped?”
“Bastard.”
Gabriel followed her retreat toward the closed door. “What do you expect of me?”
She spun in a grand fury of tight fists and a blaze of strawberry tresses. “Witch’s blood works like acid to a vampire. The two are mortal enemies. That is how I plan to kill the vampire who attacked you. And perhaps, with his death, the madness that awaits you will vanish.”
“You know that to kill Anjou would release me from vampirism?”
“I cannot know for sure. It is only a guess.”
“I see. Very well.” He tapped his mouth, considering. “If I must skip along into this fantasy world of yours, my next regrettable question will be: Who elected you the vampire slayer? What stakes, if you’ll pardon the pun, does a fragile slip of a woman have in pursuing this alleged vampire Anjou?”
“Is not putting an end to his murderous rampage reason enough?”
“You are quite the libertine.”
“Gorgeous.”
“Toussaint!” Gabriel snapped his fingers at the valet clinging to the bedpost. “Snap out of it. She has bewitched you.”
“I have done nothing of the sort!” Roxane protested. “I—oh…men! Always seeing only the surface of a woman.”
“And yet, you have already judged me by my surface. A swish?”
She had no answer for that, save an audible huff. Clutching her skirts in tight creases, she announced, “I am leaving.”
Gabriel apprehended her, pressing her shoulders against the wall. “How do you know so much?”
Her frantic gaze darted back and forth across his face. “Th-the vampire attacked someone close to me two months ago.”
“Who?”
“Someone close.”
“You cannot name this victim?” he pressed, for to summon the color in Roxane’s cheeks gave him a twisted sort of thrill.
Blush for me, my sweet. Reveal your lies.
“It is not that I cannot, but that I choose not to name him. I have not wanted to go through this nightmare again, but I will, if only to ensure another man does not suffer the same pain.” She made a tiny fist to punctuate her mighty words. “I will kill the bastard, that is truth. But first—” She shook her head, as if to shake away the words from her mouth. “Good eve, Leo.”
With that declaration to war she pressed easily from his barricade and strode from the room, leaving Gabriel in a sensational state of anger, surprise and strange wonder.
Whom had she known who had fallen victim to the Rake Ripper?
I choose not to name him
.
A lover? A husband? Whoever it was, she had been close to him. For the fire in her eyes spoke of passion and the compulsive need to seek vengeance. Truly, she suffered a great loss and had slipped from reality. To have designed the attacker as a vampire?
Gabriel turned to Toussaint. The valet pierced him with a castigating gaze. “What is it, man? You chill me with your morbidity.”
The valet stiffened and twisted away from his master.
“You know so much about the woman.” He punched a fist into his opposite hand, twisting it into his palm as if to wring the frustration from his being. “So much time it takes to learn about a person. And yet in two days she thinks me merely a swish.”
“You have mastered the costume.”
“Yes, but can I shuck it off? Anjou remains at large, despite my having him in my grasp. Had I been alert I could have ended the whole thing right there. No worry for the Ripper or vampires, for that matter.”
“Are you going to pursue him now?”
“Of course.” He didn’t need to consider the options. “I can’t have him going after another innocent.”
“Very good.” With a subservient nod, Toussaint left the room.
In the silence that followed, Gabriel wondered if maybe—just maybe—a morsel of truth lived in Mademoiselle Desrue’s macabre claims. Could lunatics hold such a firm grip on outer rationale and calmness?
The woman was beguiling and delicate, yet intriguingly decided in her beliefs. So different from the lamps he had been around. Lamps fussed and primped so much they never did make it out before nightfall. They were weak and vapid, so much
less
.
Roxane Desrues was a lustrous blend of celadon and
fraises et al crème
. Slender as a willow branch, but, he decided, equally as strong. Something about her refusal to lower her head—to be an agreeable female—set his blood to a race. A woman who knew her own mind, and yet, she blushed so gorgeously.
She was more woman than he could hope to touch. To know. To taste. To…
No. He would not think the ‘L’ word. His needs would for ever go unmet—his parents had taught him that cruel truth years ago, and any attempt to move beyond his predestined misery had failed.
To close his eyes and press away the words, the thoughts, the dreams, Gabriel moved to the core physicality of his being. He felt something beyond the pulsing reminder of attack on his neck. ’Twas lower. There, in the center of his chest. An ache in his heart.
A man has to believe in something
.
A long forgotten epitaph issued by his father on the last night he’d seen the man. Cecil Renan had believed in greed, of the flesh, mind, and purse, all in the pursuit of his
comfort
. And ever he sought to please his fickle Juin-Marie.
Determined to create beliefs so distant from his absent parents’ licentious greed, Gabriel had striven to walk higher ground. Much as he had clung to that high path while taking the Grand Tour, upon return to Paris he had been kicked and shoved by the naysayers who could not see beyond his parents’ damning legacy.
His disappointments had turned his heart cold.
A man could lose himself in the cream of Paris, floating upon the surface, mired in the thickness of it all. Mayhap he had already lost. What
did
he believe in?
Could he believe in a vampire?
He fingered the wound on his neck.
You do believe. You just don’t know how to admit it.
He drew in a breath that captured lingering tendrils of rosemary. Traces of her. A breath of freshness he had not hoped to have. Despite himself, he smiled.
“Toussaint!”
The valet’s head immediately popped inside the bedroom. “Yes?”
“Bring along Leo’s clothing. We will go after Mademoiselle Desrues.”
Toussaint knew Roxane lived in a garret not far from the Palais Royale on the rue Vivienne, for the two had talked much during Gabriel’s confinement. She did not occupy a cell in Bicêtre, as he had sullenly mused. Though certainly she did display a tendency toward eccentricity, if not outright lunacy.
His attention focused inward, Gabriel stared out the carriage window at the passing building fronts. He felt oddly envious that Toussaint possessed so much knowledge of the pale beauty. Almost as if the valet had uncovered her secrets, and Gabriel was left to grope through a mire to discover any small fact.
Foolishness. He could learn the woman’s secrets with but a crook of his finger and a wink. Seduction was as easy as selecting a waistcoat from one’s armoire.
But to truly know a woman? That was a different challenge entirely.
Beyond mastering her physical desires, he had never really known a woman. If they were lovers he attended to her pleasures, and in turn, his own. If a lover had ever shown promise toward the future, well, lately, he’d gotten himself as far from their presence as possible. Why risk torturing himself with hope?
Because it is hope that fills your empty heart. If only for a moment.
And moments were often all he was offered.
You’ve but days until the full moon.
Many moments, that wait. But all in all? So little time.
Of the choices Roxane had offered him, the one she was not sure of seemed his best hope. He would kill the vampire before the full moon, thus ensuring he did not become one himself. But to find the man, he needed Roxane. Unless she was correct in her guess that Anjou would seek him.
He hoped for that. He would be waiting, stake in hand.
“She is wrong, you know.”
Gabriel smoothed his fingers across the tender wounds on his neck. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You are not a swish.”
Certainly not.
“You were winded following the duel with the drunk. That is why you were not at the top of your game.”
He had not needed that to be pointed out to him. But Toussaint never avoided the truth. “Winded by a skirmish with an idiot dancing in his cups,” Gabriel mocked himself.
He pressed his forehead against the glass pane in the carriage door. “It doesn’t matter what Mademoiselle Desrues thinks I am.”
“Don’t lie to yourself, man. You’re already falling. I can see it in your eyes. They are seeking, searching, dreaming of Roxane.”
Gabriel clicked his fingernails against the dirty glass and smirked. “Silence, Toussaint.”
Roxane lived in a positively medieval neighborhood unhampered by wide streets or sanitation, to judge from the refuse piled outside doors and leaking onto the streets. No center gutters here to redirect the sewage.
Toussaint directed the driver to stop outside a three-story limestone building sandwiched between others of its like.
Gabriel stepped out onto the cobbled street and stretched his neck to look over the perimeter. Long iron brackets attached to the building fronts thrust over the street, their precious lamps dangling precariously, so that a high-seated coach driver must duck to avoid a fierce thunking. None were lit, for the increasing moonlight. High above, an assortment of chipped and heavily-sooted gargoyles stared down upon the street.
A flying chunk of stone? Truly, his mental state had taken a bruising since the night of his attack.
He untwisted the rapier from its sheath and slid it up and down.
At that moment a miserable moan preceded a creeping shadow that may have been female, but for the oddly distorted skull. Releasing his blade, he went en garde.
The woman suddenly noticed her observers as she took the steps to the same apartment building. She literally held up her head, one hand to a massive confection of wig, ribbons, curls and flour powder. The creation soared three feet into the air and would have given a giant a megrim.
“I’ve no interest, messieurs,” she muttered weakly. Dipping her head forward to enter the building, she toppled across the threshold.
Gabriel dashed up the steps and caught her arm, preventing her from a painful landing. “Careful.”
She pushed him away, but sunk to her knees and literally crawled toward a door but five strides away. The wig collapsed and folded over her forehead. “Please, monsieur, I am well.”
Silently cursing a female’s need to possess such extravagant hairstyles, but at the same time noting the woman wore a very plain dress—hardly a match to the wig—Gabriel stepped to her door and opened it for her. As he sheathed his rapier, she crawled inside and kicked the door shut. Sobs seeped out into the foyer like imperfect jewels discarded with a toss.
Toussaint merely shrugged and gestured they take the dark staircase.
Reluctantly, Gabriel took the first creaking wood step. “You don’t think we should attempt to help?”
“Help her with what? Pry the hideous monstrosity from her head?” Toussaint snorted. “Women.”
“Something was wrong,” he said. “Beyond the wig. I sense it.”
“Save your charity for those who need it.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do, but no one will touch my money.”
“They’ll touch Leo’s money. Soon enough. This must be the place.” Toussaint landed on the second floor and pointed out a plain door with a dash of gold paint swirled in a loose ‘S’ in the center. “What’s the ‘S’ for?”
“May be from a former resident.” Gabriel rapped with the head of his walking stick. “You’re sure of the place? It looks dismal.”
Still concerned with the woman’s crying, he glanced down the darkened staircase. The sobbing could no longer be heard. Had someone hurt her? He really should—
The door opened to emit a gush of warm candlelight and Roxane’s surprised face, enswathed in the faded ruffles of a night robe.
Gabriel had to catch himself from gasping. A woman endishabille. What easy plunder she offered. The balding blue velvet robe clutched at the bottom of her face looked a night flower seeking the sun.
A nudge from Toussaint redirected his straying thoughts.
“Oh, er…yes. I’ve come to beg your apology, mademoiselle,” he spoke the practiced lines. “My treatment of you earlier was unforgivable. I had no right to speak to you so.”
“You are fearful to spend the night alone?” A lift of brow exposed her sneaky mirth.
“Of course not. I merely—”
“I talked him into it, mademoiselle,” Toussaint tossed in over Gabriel’s shoulder. “The two of us know little regarding my master’s condition. If that is what it can be called? A condition? It would be a tremendous boon if you would see to staying a night or two and teaching us all that you know.”