Words And Meanings
by Bonnie Rutledge
(copyright 2001)Chapter Seven Screed nudged my sleeve. I shifted my gaze, and he nodded toward the door. He wanted to lose our company for a private talk. It was easy enough. Bourbon demanded that the other men tell him more about the absent revenuer, and the tradesmen, their fingers blistering with anxious friction to fondle their money owed, jumped at the chance to complain over the subject at length.No doubt one or more of the crowd noted our departure, but as soon as we stepped out the front door, we flashed with unnatural speed into the stables, leaving a hard trail for anyone save another vampire to follow.
While I'd been away, Screed had settled upon one section of the stable, putting it in the mind of the grooms to keep a wide berth. The stall Screed had requisitioned was tidy, the ground piled with fragrant hay, a bench pushed in a strict line against one wall. A length of coarse twine stretched between the post supporting the door and a nail hammered into the wood directly opposite. A dozen rats dangled from the cord, their tails held fast by wooden pins. The bench had stations of small earthenware jars beneath each small body. It was as if he had a booth at an open market, with a grotesque twist. The rats had the same glassy eyes as a rack of fowl or hare for sale, with not a drop of blood out of place. Industrious, yet simultaneously unnerving.
"Who else are you feeding?" I asked. I'd spotted a row of neat wine skins tucked under the bench. Obviously Screed had been at the rat draining all day. The result was more blood than he'd down in a hungry week.
"Jes' meself," he said happily as he began to tug the now-dry bodies free of the line. "H'inspiration paid h'a visit last night. Stockin' tha' cupboard h'is lookin' ta tha' future-like. H'add h'a few preservatives, yer good ta' tipple h'at leisure."
"Why do you need to store away for winter? There's never a shortage of rats," I laughed. "If anything, they're dropping into your lap."
"Ya don' like h'it." Screed shot me a scowl, his nose wrinkled with revelation. "Yer pissy-prancy h'about whiskers onna rope!"
I held my arms out at either side to protest his unfounded accusation. "Did I say that? I didn't say that."
Screed hurumphed. "Fine bit o' snarky comin' from you. Tell me one thing - wot's tha' difference twix me leechin' h'a few extra squeaks an' wot yer lot plugs h'a corker h'in?"
He was on the defensive, and I didn't understand why. "Plenty. You know I only do the bottled thing when we're at sea and there's no choice, and it's always crap."
"Not 'uman ya mean."
Oh. Was that it? Maybe talk of carouche bothered Screed more than he'd let on at first. "You know me," I answered lightly, as if our differences weren't a big deal. "I'm an old-fashioned guy who likes to use his teeth. I do my killing one at a time, face to face. No leftovers. If mortals were to suddenly get it in their heads to start giving blood donations, well, maybe things would be different." I grinned at the crazy thought. "But what are the odds of that happening?" I looked expectantly at Screed. If my offer had soothed him, he'd promptly issue me a wager on the possibility.
None was forthcoming. "Don' be h'oblivious. Aye'm not parlayin' h'about 'tween ship 'n sail. Ya know h'as well h'as ol' Screed wheres yer smashy party wine comes from - human, 'n not tha' face-ta-face."
I froze. Hell, if he wasn't right, and I hadn't spared a moment to care. The night before had been a banquet of blood, and I hadn't questioned who'd provided a drop of it. Mortal it had been, all right. Sweet, but empty. None of the echoes that come only from a life taken in the heat of passion or the sweat of terror had been in that blood, just the fragrant essence of life stillborn. "It's not the same," I said, when I really didn't know the answer. I'd been hungry, and I drank. It was as simple as that, I thought, ignoring how well I understood that nothing was ever so simple as that.
"Bloody 'ell h'it's not, h'unless ya peculiar 'bout rat h'or man." Screed made a disgusted snort and delved back into angrily dislodging his rodent corpses from the cord and building them into a pile. "'As tha' fancy gone ta' yer 'ead then, V-Man? Ya've changed since ya got tangled h'inna silk skirt, givin' me 'abits tha' cross-eyed jammie."
"That's a crock," I argued. "You're the same person you've always been. I can see that."
He stared at me steadily for a moment, then hoisted his sack over his shoulder and began to load it with bodies for their disposal. "Tha's not tha' words Aye said, mate. Things h'are same, things h'are diff'rent." He plucked the clothespins from the line and added them to his satchel, then followed them with the wine skins and bottles. "Some un-mate chasin' h'us down, fire h'in their h'eyes ... Same ol' la même thingee - wot wit' these H'enforcers been squawked about, 'n h'iffen Dumarchais don' turn up ta honor me debts, Aye'll be hittin' tha' road soon h'enough. Change h'is, will ya be comin' h'along fer tha' run this time?"
There it stood. He'd asked the question flat-out, at least in flat-out terms for his vocabulary. Were we still running as a crew or not? My reply sounded as undecided as I felt, 'I don't want to make a decision' painted all over it in mile-high letters. "I'm not ready to leave yet, Screed."
My indecision insulted him more than anything could have. I don't blame him for feeling that way. We'd always put everything out in the open between us, and I was trying to change the rules. Screed closed his sack roughly, his hands strangling the handle as he slung it over his shoulder. "Tha' h'answers h'a lot, thank ya very much!"
I caught his arm when it looked like he planned to stomp out of the stable. "You don't have to leave town. I'll find the money to cover your gambling debts, okay? Just hang around Lyon a while longer."
Screed sarcastically cupped a hand behind one of his ears. "H'a sorrier bribe h'iffen Aye h'ever 'eard tha' like! Would work, mindja, weren' fer tha' carouche-stakin' faction could be lookin' fer me h'address." He jerked his arm out of my grasp and made for the door. "Gracias, muchacho, mais adios! Aye'm layin' me brainpan low fer h'awhile. You coo wit' yer bird h'up h'in tha' castle. Tweet, tweet." Screed paused halfway out the stable entrance, his features shuttered in unusual concern. "Do us h'a favor, mate?"
I stood there numbly as the reality sunk in that he was walking away, and I wasn't going with him. Not making a choice hadn't been my choice. I wanted something that leaving, returning to scrambling around the globe with Screed couldn't give me. I wasn't ready to quit without it. Without her. Silken sheets and Lucrece, or twisted words and Screed, and I'd swayed toward staying. I swallowed any remaining doubts, banishing them as I made him a confident promise, the only kind I bother giving. "Anything."
"Aye've got peepers 'n 'earin' fer trouble - h'always h'anticipated that's why Aye h'anchored wit' you. This Lady Sunshine might be h'a golden piece; she might soon h'as be h'a flashy coat h'over iron." Seeing my quick frown, he lifted his palms in front of his chest to ward off my protests. "'Old h'on. Don't know tha' Jane fer good h'or bad. She's got ya wound tighter than h'a cuckoo clock, so's Aye speculate there's somethin' worth knowin'. Casin' 'er chest, she looks ta 'ave h'a mighty nice -" He made a suggestive gesture with his hands.
"Screed," I growled. "You have a point?"
"H'a sharpie," Screed assured me with a nod. His warning came frank and earnest. "H'even h'iffen she's golden, Sunshine burns tha' likes o' us, V-Man. Pretty she h'is, but ya can judge h'a body by tha' friends they keep. H'it's h'a cold lot she's stokin' h'in 'er chateau. No one ta warm ta tha' likes o' h'us. H'iffen ya don' watch yourself 'round her, watch yourself 'round them."
Judge a body by the friends they keep - wise and true words. I looked at Screed emptily wondering what to say. I wasn't keeping him - the only friend I'd known to be true - what the hell did that say about me? I couldn't think of any reply to his concern that felt as solemn as I did in that moment. Instead, I forced a grin and made light of it. "Quit worrying. You're acting like my mother. I'll be dancing on your grave first, sailor."
"Flower me wit' h'affection, why don'cha?" Screed scowled. "Me ass ta' you, Spaniard!" With that, he turned his back, dropped breeches and irreverently gave me the full moon as he hooted. Split between avoiding the view and shouting with him, I backed up until my legs met the bench. Collapsing into the seat, clutching my sides, I felt the stretch of twine give resistance at my shoulders, then snap. My laughter began to ebb as I realized Screed had gone. Just a draft pushed at the stall door now, giving a squeaky sigh.
I sat staring at that door. I could still catch up with him.
I glanced down, catching a glimpse of the frayed edge of twine where it clung to the arm of my coat. Picking it up, I rubbed the fibers between two fingers as I searched for the other end. Pulling them both taut, they hardly met, certainly not enough to tie together. I let the pieces of split twine fall back where they may.
I could still catch up with Screed.
But I wouldn't.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * I returned to D'Asile alone. I figured that Bourbon could handle himself, and if his attitude happened to raise havoc, my compliments to the havoc.On my way, I deliberately hunted down a meal. I walked through the streets, the darker the better, just waiting for someone to pick me out as easy prey. Their choice - more than they bargained for, but their choice, all the same.
Maybe I ripped into the pickpocket's throat with more viciousness than necessary, but the thought that I'd just shucked my only friend distracted me. Face-to-face, death mask and last glimpse of life, fangs and flesh seeping red, I was everything I said I was. I was hungry, and my victim hadn't intended to do me any favors. Under that shadow, murder felt logical, soothing, right. The blood tasted crisp with the fear, full of shock that it was too late to escape this path to the afterlife. That kill tasted more satisfying than any I can remember, gratifying in the raw mechanics of it. A hungry mortal would bring down a deer, bagging the first one that got too close, then seize his fill. Hungry mortals take, and they kill. One throat bent back, ravaged by my teeth, it was that same, simple theft: you take to survive, and in that ultimate moment of thievery, you feel the rush, the power, that you are going to live to see another night.
Reaching the boundaries of the chateau, I found myself lingering in the gardens, the pathways soft with grass, trees pruned into archways overhead. The moon filtered through the branches, causing the palest blooms to glow with an inner light. I could taste the dew in the air, cool and waiting, clinging with the perfume of roses and bergamot. Ah…bergamot and incense.
When we first met, I hadn't sensed Lucrece immediately, but I could smell her now in the night breeze. Her scent was imprinted on my memory, her identity permanently branding the associations of soft sheets and hot water, golden hair and bad poetry. I could see her with my eyes closed, treading with silent steps on the path behind me, purposefully clandestine. I could feel her as she discovered me, the flare of doubt and longing, culminating in pleasure. I heard Lucrece approach, steps light enough to tempt flying. Her choice to approach me - maybe more than she bargained for, but her choice, all the same.
Capricious fingers slipped over my eyes. "Guess who?"
The point of the game is to get the answer wrong, to play a fantasy. A name popped out of my mouth, prompted by the afternoon's reading. "Circe."
She laughed at the comparison, her hands leaving my eyes as they settled on my shoulders, and she moved to stand in front of me. "Circe. What sort of haven do you think I'm running?" she asked with jesting severity.
I buried my fingers in her hair, losing myself in the silken web of it. "You tell me."
"Hmm." She pursed her lips together, appearing innocently contemplative, even as her hands wandered wickedly low. "If I am a seductress, my motives are highly suspect."
I let out a groan, reaching under the folds of her cloak, pulling her hips against me. "You are a seductress," I whispered in her ear.
Lucrece rested her cheek against my chest and held me. Her voice came again, soft and musing. "Seductresses are, by their nature, very selfish, are they not?"
She remained very still, so still that I tugged lightly on her hair, leaning back to look at her face. "Lucrece?"
Her features were whimsical, but her eyes carried that same hint of being lost that I'd seen before. "Do you suppose I could be someone else?"
I trailed my thumbs along her cheekbones, knowing that she wasn't fragile, yet feeling… "It was just a word plucked from myth and moonlight," I said, my lips brushing her lobe again. "Names are moments. You are who you are." One hand scooped behind her legs, the other supporting her shoulders, as I swept her off the ground and spun her in a circle.
She gave a girlish peal of laughter as I rolled to the ground, pulling her on top of me. Her cloak entangled us. Less than enamored with it, I made short work with the fastening. Lucrece helped push the fabric aside, our fingers clasping as we got in each other's way. Her fair skin shimmered once free from the heavy velvet wrap, glowing under the blessing of the moonlight. Under her cloak, Lucrece was only wearing her shift, revealing tantalizing glimpses of shadows and valleys.
I teased her neckline with one finger, still grasping her other hand. "Your normal business attire?"
The corner of her mouth quirked as she swung her unadorned curls over one shoulder. "Normal after-business attire would be more accurate," Lucrece murmured.
I suddenly shifted direction, rolling her onto her back, holding her down with my weight. Stroking a line along her jaw, I said, "You never mentioned what kind of business you have."
"I didn't, did I?" she said enigmatically, then laughed at my resulting expression. "You've caught me! I'm engaged in trade."
That had a wealth of meanings. "The trade of what?"
"Hmm…" she breathed airily as I nuzzled her neck. "I obtain and transport perishable goods for the rich and powerful. I am paid appallingly well for their convenience and luxury, in money as well as favors."
"Milady, I have reaped the rewards of your convenience and luxury for some time," I declared, back in my gallant playacting mode. I slipped her shift from her shoulders, brushing my fingers along her collarbone before drifting down to the laced edging and pulling slowly. "I have no money."
My mock concern had her laughing again. "Do I look inclined toward giving charity?"
"At the moment," I said, answering practically as I gazed at her naked skin, "it would appear you have given the very clothes off your back for the comfort of a poor soldier."
"Oh, that won't do." Her voice carried her smile. "That won't do at all," she repeated. I touched her with my lips, and she sighed. "I'll have your favors," she murmured, "or I'll have nothing."
I sank my teeth into her, savored the buzz of her rushing through my body, then I paused, struck by a sudden, intense desire to lift my head and scan her face. She had on her death mask, eyes on fire and a predatory smile to mirror mine, fangs flexing with the hunger to take and devour and fill another night.
Selfish seducers - hell, aren't we all?
Her mask flickered questioningly at my lingering study. "What is it, Vachon?"
I glanced at the marks I'd left on her throat, then licked at the seeping wound, the drop on my tongue transforming into a surge of pleasure that had me closing my eyes for a second as I held on for the ride. Eyes open again, I grinned, shaking my head that she shouldn't wonder. "Just checking to see if you're real."
"And am I?" she whispered.
I kissed her, her plump lower lip beckoning to me. She tasted rich, of gold, scented oils and ecstasy. She seemed unsure, as if she worried what my answer might be. "I need more time," I said into her mouth. "I need more time to be sure."
When I entered her again, I could almost swear her blood tasted like tears. Like the best of selfish seducers, I took all that I could.
Chapter Eight Later, Lucrece fidgeted uncomfortably at my side, one arm stretched over her head. "This is unusual."I gave a small grunt. That one's not in the handbook of post-coital comments typically received. My response had to be inconclusive.
"Yes," she mused. "Sleeping at the edge of an arbor canopy, the moon and stars overhead ... " Her voice trailed off as she fidgeted some more. " ... Intrusive insects ... gnarled roots digging into my spine. Yes, this is very different."
I broke off a blade of grass and propped on one elbow, dancing the tip along her arm. "Are you trying to tell me you've never slept a night outdoors?" I asked incredulously.
"Of course I have. Only there were tents and netting." She made a wistful sound. "And cushions."
"You are so deprived. Come here," I said, pulling her body atop mine. "I'll be your cushion."
She hummed warmly, settling her fingers over my hand splayed across her stomach. "And they say chivalry is dead. You're much better than a coat over a mud puddle or a posy of flowers."
"That's good to hear," I murmured, devoting my free hand to winding her hair about my fingers as my thoughts turned serious. "Lucrece?"
"Yes?" she said, her voice thick with languor.
"There's something I want to ask you about."
I could feel her body tense, then forcibly relax again. "I'm beginning to live in terror of your questions."
I didn't relent, neither in twisting her lock about my index finger, nor in my inquisition. "The blood you served at the banquet, the bottles you pour - where does it come from?"
Her response was bright and gregarious. "Mortals, of course. I didn't expect your question to be a schoolroom one."
I tugged at the lock of her hair, dissatisfied that she'd chosen to play dumb. My hand pressed firmly against her belly, urging her to treat my question seriously no matter how simple. "You know that isn't what I was asking."
"Perhaps I don't wish to discuss it. Does it matter so?"
I shook my head. "I don't know." My answer was honest enough. Did it really matter now where the blood had come from? Did I really care? I had drunk my fill without complaint. This was territory better consigned to the past, hands washed clean. Because the past cannot be altered, why waste a moment on it? But it's like my telling this story - does any of it matter here and now? Not an instant of it can be undone. No simple utterance will take away Screed's sickness, or change the way things have passed. But the story is an explanation, a way to filter out what's unimportant, letting go of the trivial idiocy that confuses the truth. The story is a way of accepting the truth.
Screed's words at the stable hung in the back of my thoughts, a driving suggestion. He'd learned something while I'd been enchanted by gray eyes and perfumed curves. Had pigs begun to talk, I wouldn't have noticed. That's why it mattered. I wasn't leaving with the sailor, but in this way, I was still catching up with him. "It's my morbid curiosity," I told her lightly. "Humor me."
Lucrece relented, but she still didn't sound eager to speak. "I hope it is a good humor." She twirled one hand absently in the grass, twisting the shoots into a knot as she gathered her thoughts. "We passed an accident on the road from Paris. A hospital had caught fire. It was a distance from the nearest town, so no one had come to lend them aid in the emergency. At least twenty of the victims had crawled to freedom. Some of them gasped their last breaths, while others had collapsed on the ground, weeping and howling because their hair had been scorched away, their faces and hands spoiled into innumerable blisters, their bodies alive, but ravaged beyond their minds' comprehension. The racket of their torture, the way they screamed and begged for deliverance - I hated it."
Lucrece stilled her fingers on the knot of grass, pinching the base and snapping it away from the earth. She let the blades fall from her grasp, allowing them to scatter with the breeze. "We cut their throats, and they stopped howling. We siphoned their blood for another time, crating it away in one of the traveling coaches, and the servants buried their remains in a mass grave. It sounds rather grotesque, I know. We robbed them of their proper burial in a churchyard, but they were dying - why waste so much blood for the sake of appeasing a god that would not spare them such pain? They were mortals - why sacrifice anything for them?"
She waited silently for my response, the tremolos of crickets the only backdrop of sound. When I said nothing right away, Lucrece clasped my hand. "Does my tale bother you, Vachon? Do you believe I should have let them be?"
I caressed her hair as I replied slowly, "You spared them a lingering, agonizing spiral into death. That's kindness of a sort."
As stories go, it was an affecting one. Blood won at a dear price, obtained by chance, spilt with a myriad of mortal sins, but with a necessary mercy. I could have fallen in love with her again for a tale like that. I could have, if her story hadn't made her a liar.
You're the detective, so you may have noticed where the pieces didn't fit. When Lucrece's carriage had broken down on the road from Paris the night we met, she hadn't been able to control her hunger during the wait for repairs. Why feed from Marie if there were crates of blood at her disposal in the next vehicle? One story could be true, but not both. The agony those mortals experienced before Lucrece slit their throats would have transferred to their blood as an edgy kick, but the portion I'd drunk had the infusion of a somnolent death.
I could have called her on the falsehood then and there. I had my answer. She wasn't golden to the core any more than I was gallant and noble. Maybe we'd turned each other into a matched pair - two liars in love. My deceptions seemed frail and white in comparison, sins of omission if they even counted. Her deceit rang loud, large and deliberate. Lingering there with my arms around her, I was damned. I couldn't push her off of me. I still couldn't let her go. I craved the answer to a new riddle - why had she lied? Why did the silence make her uneasy?
The absence of words had Lucrece shifting in my embrace so that she could hunt my expression for the reason. She could sense that something remained unspoken between us, so her search progressed warily. I could pick out the signs of remorse in her gaze, the hollowness I'd attributed to a woman lost, in need of rescue. Just like a woman - my moment of revelation had rendered her no less of a mystery. She could be a selfish seductress, or she could be -
"My love?" she whispered hesitantly. "Vachon?"
I couldn't reduce how I felt to one emotion and stick to it. I ached, resentment clawing at me from the inside as her voice laced each word together in a melodic thread. In the usual course of things, when I caught someone stringing me along, I cut the cord, going after them like unholy scissors. If she could lie to me once, she could lie about everything. My love…it stung my ears like a prayer. Yet, even with the bitterness, the surge of mistrust winding through me the same way my grip wound in her hair, she felt no different. She felt like longing in my hands, still carrying the scent of bergamot, incense and gold. I breathed deeply of her perfume as I answered, shoving the instinct to fight down in my gut, clinging to the spell of her fragrance, the Lucrece I wanted. "Yes?" I loved her. I nursed my pride with the thought that she could only lie to me when she was looking at the fathomless ebony sky.
New rule, querida. Face to face, I told her with my eyes, face to face, Lucrece, we only speak with our hearts.
"You asked me about my business earlier," she said softly. "I didn't tell you everything."
"Go on." My voice was flat. I wanted truth and explanations; I wanted her to lay herself out naked and genuine before me, but I wasn't going to beg for any of it.
"I was surrounded by riches as a mortal, but, of course, most of that was lost when I died," she began quietly. "Most remained under the control of my husband's family; a small portion passed on to my children."
"Children," I echoed. Of course she had been a mother. I don't know why the possibility hadn't occurred to me before, but the image flared in me now. Lucrece ripened with some other man's infant. Lucrece screaming as the labor tore at her body with its natural ruthlessness. I could imagine Lucrece hating that control taken away from her, but finding herself a helpless prisoner praying for deliverance that never came quickly.
I'd trafficked with very few mothers over the years - avoided them like sunlight. Part of it was out of a lingering honor for my own, but the rest was simple superstition. A mother had the power of giving life. She was a possessed vessel devoting every cell of her being to the force of creation. I've known vampires who would face fire and holy water to spill expectant blood, obsessed that an instant double-kill transported them into a god-like state of bliss, like we don't feel enough ecstasy as it is. Feeding on that power intentionally is the only kind of kill that's ever struck me as parasitic and pathetic. You don't take that; you respect it.
"I had six children that survived the cradle, more that did not," Lucrece recounted. "Granted, they are all dead now, as are their children and grandchildren. It was the last infant - Isabella - her refusal to enter this world was so strong that she had to take me with her. She died almost as soon as she arrived, and I fell into a fever from the struggle. Isabella was a spiteful little girl determined to have her way and stay in the womb where she felt safe," Lucrece joked feebly. "I'm afraid she inherited her temperament from her mother."
I wondered if Lucrece could sense how her talk of motherhood affected me, even as I wondered how the subject related to her business. My attention centered upon her belly, slightly rounded, yet now permanently barren, the weight of her curves pressing against my stomach. Oh, I never dream of children I will never have. I don't desire or need that fantasy, which is just as well, because I'm not father material. But a woman…a woman who has endured the process not just once, but over and over…a woman who died for the sake of it…a woman like that left me feeling like a weak quitter. Damn, if she didn't awe and terrify me all at once.
I watched Lucrece's faraway look and shivered. Her private memory of the circumstances of her mortal death held a mysticism I could only understand to a point. My own end brought to mind the rage of war and pure eroticism. Lucrece's expression suggested emotions I couldn't comprehend.
She spoke again, solemnly, as if deaths carried no meaning, even when they came from her own flesh. "But all that has left me behind. It carries no consequence now." I could tell it was another lie from the tense line of her back, this one spoken straight into my eyes. My heart cursed her for that, even as I hung on to her words for illumination. "My wealth, for what it is worth, has been reclaimed slowly but surely. From trade, as I said before, as well as another type of contract. The ladies who wait upon me - haven't they roused any curious questions in you?"
"You mean, about why they linger here, despite knowing that you and Bourbon are vampires?" I said wryly. "I had wondered."
"Some are mortal friends, like Marie used to be." She paused for a pained moment. "Most, however," Lucrece continued, "are heiresses in their own right, with fortunes and property under their own control coupled with a strong aversion to growing old gracefully. This is how I acquired D'Asile - from a contract with Thérèse, the lady whose neck I had to pry Thomas off of the other night. She signed her riches over to me, a dowry in a sense, in exchange for the promise that I will make her into a vampire in good time."
"'In good time?'" I mocked. "Sounds like a loophole. Either you plan to bring her across, or you don't. Which is it?"
"Oh, I would bring Thérèse across, if she remained steadfast," she assured me. "But I have entered these arrangements over many years. In my first two contracts, I satisfied the terms right away, only they weren't truly satisfied. I suppose becoming vampires wasn't the experience they imagined it to be. They soon walked into the sun and left me feeling like a peddler who'd sold them poor goods with false promises. I soon resolved that, in the future, anyone who entered such a contract must reside in my household until I am firmly convinced they will not have second thoughts. Case in point, there were some - Thérèse and two more, Danielle and Annalise - who, perhaps wisely, lost their nerve after Marie's death. They're frightened of my temper. They decided to leave tonight," she added, almost deliberately casual.
At this point in my existence, I hadn't brought anyone across. To listen to her speak of it in business terms, as though converting a mortal could be boiled down to the basic nature of supply and demand, price and quantity - it was weird. She had a gleam in her eyes, the pleasure in finance that put me in mind of Screed rambling about his betting strategy. "What will you do about them?"
"Nothing," Lucrece declared, "as long as they keep to certain restrictions…"
"Why am I not surprised?"
"First and foremost, they must not breathe a word of the contract terms to any mortal once they leave. I make it perfectly clear that, if they do, I will hunt them down."
"Isn't that pointless overkill with the honor system," I asked, "when you could just wipe their memories clean?"
"I cannot wipe their memories clean."
"Of course you can," I protested. "You just look them in the eyes and -"
She rested a fingertip against my lips, cutting off my rudimentary description of the basic whammy. "I misspoke. It isn't that I cannot wipe their memories clean, it is that I will not. If I did, I would have to restore all their money and property as I found it. Would I sacrifice D'Asile for the sake of some debutante's faint heart? No! Speculation is the road to ruin. This leads me to my second restriction: if someone decides they do not wish to become a vampire, I still retain all of their property as well as half their money. No exceptions."
I let out a low whistle, silently wishing Thérèse, Danielle and Annalise long and happy, though considerably less rich, mortal lives. "You charge a high price for having second thoughts. Just how many faint-hearted debutantes are we talking about here?"
"Not counting my poor initial showing, I've made six out of a possible twenty-six vampires."
"That's a lot of mind changing."
"I suppose," Lucrece admitted. "Keep in mind that many wealthy people are not born with my determination and force of will. The rich don't know what they want. That is why they want everything."
I smiled at her theory. It sounded perfectly accurate to me. "And what do they do once you've brought them across?"
"What do you mean? They live as vampires, naturally."
"But like you, they've lost all their mortal wealth. What do they do? Make a bunch of their own contracts for others to become vampires?"
She appeared perplexed, bewildered that I bothered to ask. "What would be wrong with that?"
"It's just not sustainable in the long run," I told her practically. Reading may not have been my strong suit, but I had no problem with numbers. "Look." I gestured with one hand, motioning to a point in space. "You're the one at the top."
Lucrece nodded. "Uh-hmm - which is good."
I motioned a layer in the air below her symbolic point. "Then there's the twenty-six people who've made contracts with you."
"But I've only brought across six!" she reminded me.
"Right, and they follow your example, making six times twenty-six new contracts. That's one hundred and fifty-six new deals!" I signaled a third imaginary level, much broader than the second.
She waved a hand impatiently in the air as if to erase my third layer. "But only thirty-six new vampires, which is the important part."
"Very important," I agreed with her, conditionally, "because those thirty-six vampires will need another nine hundred and thirty-six contracts to keep their flow of wealth going strong."
"Nine hundred and thirty-six?" she repeated, her voice strained. "But -"
"Exactly. Your scheme is like a pyramid," I said, outlining the full shape in the space beside us. "The people at the top, like you, are all lounging in the grass by arbored canopies outside your chateaus, but pretty soon you run out of rich people that want to become vampires that aren't already vampires. The bottom's screwed."
Lucrece scowled prettily. "A pyramid scheme. Really, Vachon, that's a terrible metaphor. I've tried business with Egyptians - they don't cooperate at all. They haggle too much over the conditions. And even if my scheme does fit a pyramid, I am at the top, so the problems of those at the bottom hardly concern me, do they?"
I rolled my eyes. "They do if -" Another disturbing thought struck me. "Was Bourbon one of these contracts?"
"Oh, no!" she insisted. "No, no! I told you he's a descendent of my brother. I wanted to bring him across." She'd lost her completely clinical air toward making vampires, and now seemed disgustingly thrilled about turning the Frenchman. "He was a Musketeer - did I mention that?" She said it like being a Musketeer made Bourbon a prince, when he was really just another soldier with a fancy uniform.
"No," I grunted. "Neither did he." But it wasn't Bourbon's history I wanted to hear about. I wanted to know every thread of her pointless past, even as I knew it should signify nothing compared to the here and now of the woman in my arms: the beautiful lover, the lying bitch, the lady that I couldn't abide to set aside.
"He took to dueling as much as breathing," Lucrece confided. "Always to satisfy some notion of his honor being insulted. It stood to reason - with a name like Bourbon, his family's choices when he was a child, people were always questioning his loyalty to the Crown, accusing him of Huguenot sympathies, when really nothing was further from the truth."
"He did mention that part," I offered casually.
"So Philippe would declare his allegiances with his sword," she continued, "leaving him with very few allies and quite a number of people who wished him dead."
"I can sympathize with the feeling," I murmured, then added a bit more graciously, "He's a born rebel."
Lucrece tilted her head, as though I'd presented her with a disturbing prospect. "Is he?"
"He is. That's Bourbon's problem. He was born a rebel, but he was also born on the side that rebels tend to strive against. He knows he wants to fight, but he hasn't decided what he wants to fight for."
Lucrece ran a finger along my cheek while her brow furrowed in concern. "Did he tell you that?"
"You're joking, right? Trust me, I'm not his confidant any more than he's my boot cleaner." I laughed at the idea. "It's just what I see."
"If Bourbon fights for anything," she said emphatically, "he should fight for me."
"Because he's your family?" Bourbon hadn't struck me as devoted to that concept, at least not with her same passion.
"Because I saved him from an early grave. His rebellious nature involved him in a duel with a viper who could not bear to lose. Though Bourbon left the field of battle victorious, his vindictive opponent had used a poisoned blade. It was only a minor cut, hardly a scar to come of it, all things normal, but with poison that was all it took to fell him. If I had not taken an interest in my nephew, he would have died alone and unlamented."
"And you wanted to bring him across," I reminded her. She'd wanted to bring Bourbon across, and some dishonorable dueler had spared her the bother of asking his opinion. "Pretty convenient, the way things worked out."
"Convenient." Lucrece smiled whimsically. "That's one way of putting it."
Whimsical, I wasn't. "And all the vampires you've made, the ones you didn't want so much as you desired their money, were they also convenient?"
"You're beginning to make convenience sound like a foul circumstance," she said, the humor in her voice turning waspish. "Convenient it is ... for a woman, especially a dead woman such as myself, to acquire and maintain a chateau such as this in uninterrupted prosperity requires as much convenience as she can marshal. I have to appease the King, and the vampire community, bribing dozens of stepping-stones in between. Were it not for convenience, I would have nothing."
Love. Freedom. Eternity. Were these things nothing to her? "And me, Lucrece?" I said roughly, searching her face for some shadow of the truth. "Am I convenient?"
"You are extremely inconvenient to me, Vachon." The raw honesty in her tone had me drawing her against my chest. I couldn't trust her, but I wanted to keep her. I heard her voice softly incant, "I don't know what to do about you. I don't know what to feel."
"I don't know what to do about you, either," I whispered into her hair, so gently she may not have even heard.
She spoke again after a while, her cheek resting next to my silent heart. I could still smell her perfume. I could feel her, the determination she boasted of radiating from her voice, the uncertainty that tangled her tightening the line of her back. "Did you see your friend Screed when you went into town?" She didn't want that, I could hear displeasure underlying her tone. There was something in the prospect of it that threatened her.
"No. I don't think I'll be seeing him again," I lied, joining in with the theme of the evening. But I didn't meet her eyes when I said those words; I couldn't bring myself to do that. I couldn't be that callous. Instead, I stared at the fathomless ebony sky and wondered what might be my next direction. She was the one carrying a lost look in the center of her world, but I'd become equally lost in her. One of us would either stumble across the path out of this web eventually, or we'd become a pair of perpetual strays.
I strummed my fingers up and down her back and tried to imagine forever split in two, the shape of eternities that came to an end.
Read Chapters Nine and Ten Return to Story Index