The Vampire Narcise (20 page)

The pang of conscience, combined with the fear that he’d
never see her again, and never be able to set things right—for he’d had his own harsh words:
We all have our God-given abilities, and some of us actually use them, Sonia
—unlocked something deep inside him.

Narcise was more familiar with the makeup of the house. Having her with him might slow him a bit, but at least he wouldn’t get lost.

He could always slay her later if he had to.

“Be ready,” he said, parrying sharply at her, lunging at her. The more he fought and moved, the easier it seemed to get. His body was returning…even as hers slowed. Although their conversation was soft, lost in the noise of battle and their distance from the spectators, he took care to keep his face away from Moldavi when he spoke.

She met his eyes, hers wide and hopeful, if glazed, and he reached into the pocket of his breeches with his free hand. “Thank you.”

He had the packet, he was lining them up alongside the roaring flames. “Way out?” he asked, slamming his blade against hers to muffle their conversation.

“There,” she gasped, her eyes going to the corner as she raised her blade weakly.

She was so slow and clumsy that he sliced along her arm without meaning to, and heard a shout from the dais: “First blood!”

Chas saw a small door in the corner and noted that it was far from the dais. Perfect. He might have a chance after all…as long as Jezebel wasn’t leading him into a den of lions or something worse. Like a locked door.

“Locked?” he asked, circling around and creating a vicious thrust that clashed with her sword.

“Don’t…think…” she gasped. “No.”

He flipped the packet into the fireplace as he eased her
toward the corner, waiting for the telltale explosion. Hoping to hell Miro’s chemistry worked as well now as it had during their trials.

He was just about to give up when there was a soft muffled
boom!
and something shot from the fireplace.

Sparks and coals blasted into the room, and in the moment of surprise, he grabbed Narcise, half lifting her against his hip, and ran unsteadily toward the door, sword still in hand.

People were shouting and Moldavi was giving orders, but Chas ignored everything but the door. They had to get around the table and off the dais, and across the room…and he had the element of surprise. The puff of smoke rolled into the chamber, more slowly than he would have liked, but it was effective enough. His legs wobbled, his arms trembled and Narcise was little help in an ambulatory fashion. They fell into the door, the momentum of his running clumsy and imprecise.

She shifted, gave a groan of exertion…then all at once, she was moving. The door opened and they burst out of the room.

Narcise turned, suddenly strong and quick. “Help me,” she said, leaning against the door as something slammed against it from the other side. Chas found the wooden bar and fit it across, barring the door, and then she said, “This way,” and started down a dim corridor.

She must have lost the feathers along their way through the chamber, or maybe even yanked them off her neck, because now she was faster and more agile than he.

Chas wasn’t about to complain; he still had his sword and a partner who seemed able.

They were going to make it.

She ran and he followed, his legs protesting, the aches in
his torso screaming, but this was for life—the pain could go to the Devil. He was going to make it.

They came to the end of the corridor—a large, locked door—and just as they approached, a
vampir
guard turned to see them.

Chas didn’t hesitate; it was second nature for him to duck under the attacking man, spin—albeit wobbly—and come back around from behind with the blade of his sword at neck level.

The man’s head rolled to the floor in a gush and splash of blood, but Chas didn’t hesitate. He went for the door, looking for the lock, and realized that Narcise wasn’t with him.

Turning, he saw her, pale-faced, half-collapsed against the wall. The blood. It had to be the blood. He grabbed her arm and towed her toward him, but her eyes were rolling back into her head and she was having trouble breathing.

She collapsed into his arms and he realized it wasn’t the blood—
vampirs
craved it, but it didn’t make them faint.

“Where’s the key?” he demanded, hearing shouts in the near distance. Damn the vampire sense of smell…they could track them as well as a dog could.

She murmured something he couldn’t understand, and saw that she was severely incapacitated. Then he realized, through the intensity of the moment… “Feathers.”

Narcise nodded, barely, and he realized why she’d never escaped on her own. Moldavi had the entrances and exits lined with feathers, or somehow used them to block it for her. He glanced around but didn’t see any sign of them…but for all he knew, they could be embedded in the door frame. She shuddered and tried to grasp him, but her fingers were weakening.

Now he didn’t know if it would kill her to go over the threshold—assuming the feathers were there, and in great
numbers, obviously—or whether once past, they would no longer affect her, even if she was so greatly weakened. But either way, he had to decide to take the chance, or leave her behind.

“Where’s the key?” he demanded again, then realized the guard was there for a reason.

Gingerly, still holding Narcise up with one hand, trying not to step in the pool of blood—he didn’t need that scent clinging to him as well—he fumbled around the vampire’s body.

Just as the voices turned down the hallway, and he could feel the pounding of feet on the floor, he found the key hanging on a ring at the man’s waist.

Chas yanked it, praying it would come free, and the man’s body jolted in protest. He used his sword to slice down blindly and cut the bloody thing from his waist, taking a chunk of clothing and skin with it.

Key in hand, a weak and useless Narcise over his sword arm, he lunged for the door. They were coming, and he nearly dropped the key from his weak and clumsy fingers…but he fit it in as their pursuers appeared in the hall behind them.

Fifteen feet away and the door opened. Chas lunged through and dumped Narcise on the floor as he spun to close it behind him, struggling with the lock again in the light of a dim sconce.

By the time he had it in place the force of the others on the opposite side had the door surging in its hinges. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said, turning to gather up Narcise again.

But, praise God, she was on her feet—if pale—visaged and wide-eyed…and she was bloody damn smiling. He yanked
the torch from the wall, even though she wouldn’t need light in the dark, and they started running together.

“We made it,” she gasped. “We made it. We’re in the catacombs.”

Chas looked around and realized they were in a stone-hewn tunnel lined with…skulls. Giordan Cale had described it to him, and had even drawn a rough map of the tunnels that Chas had committed to memory.

She was right. They’d made it.

And despite the fact that he hadn’t accomplished the task for which he’d come, he felt more than a little satisfied.

N
arcise drew in the fresh, cool air and felt the tears gather in her eyes.
Free. I’m free.

It was well into the night, and Paris lay beyond her, around her…waiting for her. Paris, and the world…all of it, waiting for her.

Yes, she’d been out of the apartments many times in the years of living here…but this was different.

This time, she didn’t have to go back. This time she wasn’t accompanied by the insidious darkness of her brother, whose presence clung so heavily even when he was absent.

This time she was
walking
, on her own two feet, instead of being transported in a dark vehicle with guards.

“Are you coming with me?” said Woodmore in an impatient voice. “Or are you going to stand here and wait for them to catch up to us?”

“With you,” she managed to say, terrified at the thought, as he grabbed her arm and began to walk off briskly.

He had her clutched to his side, a bare-chested, battered man towing along a slender effeminate partner. At least, that was what she thought they might look like. And, apparently, even such an appearance wasn’t remarkable enough to glean notice from anyone else.

“Where are we going?” she asked, still drinking in the air, the activity of people walking and talking and laughing.
There were women smiling slyly, with red lips and very low bodices…there were lanky youths watching from the shadows…there were couples, strolling arm in arm as if they had nowhere to be…and no one to escape from.

A group of the emperor’s soldiers wandered past, leaving Narcise to wonder if they knew their master was several feet below them, eating and drinking with a
vampir.

“I don’t bloody damn know, but wherever it is, we don’t have time to dawdle,” Woodmore replied. “Nothing went as I planned.”

There were smells, too…lovely smells of spring flowers on the breeze, and fragrances from some of the well-dressed (and not so well-dressed) women strolling by. She scented sausages and cheese and wine and ale, cakes and bread and crepes all offered for the late-night patrons. A rolling lust for a cake, iced with cream, surprised her. She hadn’t had a sweet—or at least, hadn’t enjoyed one like that—since she was a girl in Romania. And beyond the food, there was the underlying stench of sewer and refuse, the damp and algae of the Seine, coal and wood smoke, and blood.

The bloodscent was coming most strongly from the man next to her, mingling with sweat and burned flesh, and it teased her…for it had been some while since she’d fed.

A blonde woman wearing a long, simple dress was standing near one of the columns along the Tuilieries. She seemed oblivious to the passersby who jostled through the narrow walkway beneath the covered promenade, bumping into or next to her.

She was watching them closely, but her calm gaze wasn’t unsettling in its intensity. Instead, Narcise felt a wave of peace slip over her as their eyes met. The woman smiled as Woodmore fairly dragged her past and the Mark on Narcise’s back twinged painfully. It surprised her, for Luce hardly ever
expressed his annoyance with her. Perhaps because she never had much chance to make a choice that would annoy him.

The first step
. Those words rang in her head and Narcise smiled to herself as she happened to meet the blonde woman’s eyes. She nodded at her, although of course there was no possible way the woman could know why she was nodding. But, yes, this was only the beginning.

It occurred to her, then, as Woodmore snapped his hand at a hackney cab—then decided not to climb aboard when a well-dressed gentleman pushed his way ahead of them—that she didn’t have anywhere to go herself. She had no money. She knew no one—an uncomfortable memory pinched her belly and she thrust away the thought of someone she did know—and didn’t know whom to trust.

But then a name did appear in her mind. Dimitri, the earl, in London. Cezar hated the man ever since he ended a business association with him when Dimitri learned that Cezar was a child-bleeder. And…there’d been that night in Vienna, when Cezar had offered Narcise to Dimitri.

Although she’d been dull with pain from a feather bracelet, Narcise still remembered that night…the cold, dark man who looked at her with a modicum of sympathy, but not even a flicker of lust.

She would go to him. Any enemy of Cezar was a friend of hers.

But in her fantasies, when she’d planned to make her escape, it was much less chaotic. Narcise had imagined a scenario in which she’d slipped from the house with a bag on her shoulder when the place was quiet and everyone was sleeping or otherwise distracted. Or that she’d be standing over Cezar’s headless body saying a fond farewell as his blood coursed onto the floor.

Just as Woodmore said: Not as planned.

But, nevertheless, it had worked.

“Here,” he said suddenly, towing her into a shadowy alcove.

The next thing she knew, they were at the backside door of a small public house that smelled of old ale and stewing meat, and Woodmore was negotiating in rapid French with its proprietor. He flashed that white smile, made a lewd gesture and then produced a small pouch that clinked—which she swore he hadn’t had moments earlier.

The pouch’s contents seemed to be the deciding factor for the proprietor, and the door opened wider. She felt the man’s amused grin on her as Woodmore led her inside and then directly up a set of dark, dingy stairs where the smell of coitus and ale clung to the walls. She wasn’t certain whether the proprietor recognized that she was a woman and not a man, but in either case, it didn’t matter.

After all, this was Paris.

And the recently liberated Narcise had no qualms about following the
vampir
hunter into a small bedchamber lit only by the glow of a lamp.

“Shut the door,” Woodmore ordered, and when she turned back, she saw that he’d sat on the bed.

For the first time, she noticed how much difficulty he seemed to have breathing. His torso and arms were a mass of cuts, bruises and large burns. “You’re hurt, what—”

“You just noticed this?” His voice was harsh. He seemed to struggle for a moment, then added in marginally softer tones, “I need to get cleaned up. They’re going to bring a bath.”

Even his sharp words didn’t offend Narcise. She was
free
. Nothing would upset or annoy her now. Yet, she felt that she owed him some explanation. “It was the only way to get him to allow us to fight.”

“And how precisely would fighting have helped us if one of us was dead? Or did you simply plan to kill me—but then how would that benefit you?” His voice was rough and unsteady.

“I didn’t expect him to make us fight till the death. I thought I would allow you to win, and then you would take me to…well, it doesn’t matter now, does it? We are here, and I’m free. Thank you. Do you need food? And where did you get the money? Surely you didn’t have it in your breeches all this time.”

“I venture to guess that such a bulge would have been noticeable,” he said, flashing a surprise smile. “At least, in certain places. I lifted the coins from the sot who stole our hack. He’ll never miss them, and I can’t draw on my resources until tomorrow.”

She’d walked over to turn the light up and by then, a knock sounded on the door. She opened it to reveal a maidservant with a jug of ale and a platter of cheese and bread. The girl brought it in, put it on a table, then turned to the cold fireplace.

“I don’t believe they have your particular vintage,” Wood-more said, gesturing to the food.

Narcise nodded, and realized again that it had been more than a few days since she’d fed, and with the hint of his bloodscent—just barely oozing—still lingering, her gums began to contract and her breathing roughened. Her glance went briefly toward the maidservant and she considered the possibility of enthralling the girl so she could feed, but when she felt Woodmore’s eyes on her, she discarded that idea.

If he was like any other man, he’d enjoy the erotic sight of two women in such an intimate arrangement, and then she’d have another problem on her hands if he wanted to participate. The last thing she wanted or needed was another man
trying to control her—or to have her bloodlust take over. Woodmore might be a mortal, but he was a legendary one in her world. He wouldn’t be easily denied.

She turned her attention away from him and back to the fact that she would have to find a way to feed. She’d never actually had to arrange it for herself; Cezar had always, as part of her captivity, provided a servant—a male as often as a female—or other mortal for feeding.

But this was a problem she welcomed.

A fire now blazing in the grate, the maid stood and gave a short bow, then left the chamber.

Woodmore had taken a few swigs of ale, and was selecting a piece of cheese when he looked up at Narcise. He didn’t speak, although he seemed to be searching for something to say…and then he returned his attention to the tray. She realized she was trying not to breathe, for the chamber—especially the bed—reeked of coitus and perspiration, and over it all was Chas Woodmore’s scent. His blood.

Narcise suddenly felt awkward and out of place. And, all at once, exhausted. Her knees wobbled and as her head spun, she reached blindly for the chair and eased herself into it.

But she was free. A smile erupted, happiness welled inside her so much that her Mark twinged again…and suddenly, tears flooded her eyes. The tears rolled down her cheeks, catching her by surprise—she hadn’t even realized she still knew how to cry—but all at once, she was sobbing uncontrollably.

A handkerchief was thrust into her face, and she took it blindly, gratefully—and at the same time, ashamedly. She’d been through so much…why, now when she was happy, did she have to show such weakness?

The cloth smelled like Woodmore, of course, but dense and thick—rough with blood and sweat and pain and the
pleasant smell of his skin and hair, too. She dried her eyes and lifted her face to find him watching her with a detached expression. “Thank you.”

“I have three sisters,” he replied with a shrug. “Sobbing females don’t unsettle me in the least. And I suspect you have more of a reason to cry than Angelica did when her favorite yellow gown was stained with ink.”

Narcise gave him a wavery smile and wiped her nose again. “I cannot remember the last time I cried,” she told him.
Not even ten years ago.

Another knock came at the door, and Woodmore answered it this time. She noticed the way his feet scuffled a bit when he went to open it, as if he could hardly lift them. He held on to the door while a half-full tub was brought in, followed by five huge pails of steaming water, and she suspected that he was doing so in order to keep his own knees from collapsing. There was a drawn tightness in his face and around his eyes.

But now that she’d become fully aware of his scent, Narcise found herself noticing his bare torso, half illuminated by the glow of the lamp. He was tall and the skin of his chest and ridged belly was as dark as that of his hands and face. He had dark hair trailing down his stomach, into the sagging waistline of his breeches, and up to a full expanse of it over his chest. His arms were rounded with muscle, scarred and marked, but powerful nevertheless.

Her eyes started to heat when she thought about the texture of his skin and the essence of his lifeblood, and she had to look away. It was a reaction she couldn’t completely control, but she could hide it, for it didn’t mean anything.

After the water came the maidservant who’d brought the food, and this time she was carrying a pile of cloth and
a small pot of unguent. These she left near the bath, and Narcise realized it was for Woodmore’s injuries.

When the door was closed once more, and they were alone, Woodmore turned to her. He seemed even more unsteady, and she thought he actually swayed on his feet. “I don’t expect you have delicate sensibilities, but if you do, you’ll either have to leave or close your eyes.”

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” she said quietly.

He gave her an inscrutable look and turned away. And then all of a sudden, he made a sort of half turn, as if to grab for the chair, and he began to sink.

She heard him groan a low curse just before he hit the floor with a dull thud.

Narcise rushed over to kneel next to him on the ground. “Woodmore?” she said, and went to shake him by the shoulders…but stopped when she realized that would mean closing her fingers over two ugly burns.

She saw the red oozing from his arms and the sides of his torso, recognizing Cezar’s handiwork with the metal spikes, and wondered how he’d managed to do what he’d done—fight her, carry her, run and slay and even pick a pocket—with these sorts of injuries.

At the same time, she felt a wave of remorse that she hadn’t noticed how badly he was hurt during their fencing match. Of course, she had been a bit distracted…but she should have at least gauged his weakness as her rival if nothing else.

“Woodmore!” she said more urgently, still hesitant to touch him. But when he still didn’t move, she had to, and was shocked to find his skin flaming hot. He moaned, rolling his head to the side as her fingers brushed over his shoulders.

He couldn’t remain on the floor. Narcise picked him up awkwardly—he was long and loose-limbed, and heavy
even for her—and got him to the bed. And then she began examining him in detail.

She’d had enough injuries of her own, inflicted by Cezar or any number of his friends, to recognize all of the different manifestations of burns, piercings, cuts and bruises. She’d also had some experience in caring for them, although she wasn’t certain whether washing and cleaning injuries on mortals would even help, since they could die from injury and she, of course, wouldn’t.

But she did the best she could, using the warm water and the dubiously clean cloths that had been brought in with the unguent to wash away blood, sweat and grime. Narcise even immodestly stripped away his breeches, leaving him fully naked, so that she could examine him for other wounds. A particularly nasty one, which had been hidden by the trousers near his right hip, had her sucking in her breath in alarm.