Sword And Blood (Vampire Musketeer Book 1)

by Sarah Hoyt

  Through a crack in his shutters—so small he’d never seen it before—moonlight poured in, blinding. By that moonlight, outside, Charlotte . . .

  No.

  He bit his lip and thought of Latin declensions, which he’d learned by rote as a child. He didn’t dare mutter prayers, but this he could mutter, until the sheer repetition of words, like hypnotism, drove every thought from his mind and ushered in sleep or its surfeit. “Pater, patris, honor honoris, terror terroris, uxor uxoris, salus salutis . . .”

  Not aware of having lulled himself into sleep, he was brought awake by a soft whisper at his ear, “Raphael!”

  His eyes opened. The sliver of moonlight coming through the window seemed to have swelled, filling the entire room, making every object resplendent with silver-blue light. His clothes, hanging neatly in their peg. His candle, blown out. His bed, brought from his estate fifteen years ago—not his wedding bed, quod avertat Deus—its posts carved and fretted, and shining with polish.

  He could see his body, under the covers: large, powerful, and lean as it had been since it had crested adolescence and not ever got quite enough—from the land that had to subsist on its own produce since its neighbors had succumbed to vampires that neither sowed nor reaped—to put on even a little fat. Not from his hunts, even, which always went to feed the needy among his tenants. and serfs. The children, the aged, the helpless woman whose vampire husband had left for more friendly lands, the lost young men made vampire-orphans, like the young Gascon now: all those had depended on his charity to survive.

  So there were his sturdy long legs, with their nimble knees, his powerful trunk, the chest muscled from incessant dueling. From vampire killing. All of this delineated by the linen sheet and the thin blanket over it. In the light of the moon it looked like a whole landscape. Valleys and peaks, all of it unknown territory, as different and separated from his former self as though it had been the face of the moon.

  As much as he did not wish to turn and look to his right—the direction from which the voice had whispered his name—he knew he would have to. Yet he held rigid in stubborn immobility.

  She could not have gotten in. She could not be in his room. The site where her teeth had penetrated his flesh burnt like a fire.

  “Raphael,” Charlotte’s voice called again, and this time, he could feel her breath, warm upon his ear, and smell her perfume—like lilac, sweet and intoxicating.

  No.

  Her laughter rang like music in the room, so loud, so real, that he was sure that even now, upstairs, Grimaud would be slipping his feet into his shoes and coming down to see what was happening.

  But there was no sound from above of Grimaud’s feet hitting the floor boards. No sound of feet on the stairs. No rescue.

  Her laugher came again, like music, like cool water, like a dream. And now her lips touched his ear, the barest caress, so gentle that it might be no more than the wind, or the sliding of a rose petal. So gentle, that it might not be more than a dream.

  “Very well,” she said, each of her exhalations a soft breeze against his earlobe. “Very well, Monsieur le Comte. We’ll dance to your tune.”

  A trail of kisses, each of them petal-soft, made its way down the underside of his chin, where his well-trimmed beard left the skin bare, and to his Adam’s apple, where her tongue came out to flick at his skin, and the teeth touched—just barely. Not enough to be called a bite, or even a nibble. Just a slightly rougher touch.

  He’d closed his eyes and it was all he could do not to throw his head back, not to bare his neck, not beg her to take what remained of his life, to finish him—if finishing him brought her pleasure.

  The covers were lifted from his chest and thrown back. “What, a shirt? You were never modest,” she said.

  In his mind, despite himself, their wedding night replayed itself. She’d been virginal, or so she played it. Now thinking on it, he thought there was no way she could have been virginal. Not if she was a vampire and shared the group mind. He’d been virginal but unwilling to admit it, and he’d intruded on her with his caresses, and pushed what he thought were the bounds of her female modesty.

  Now it was she who denuded him, pulling his shirt up, to reveal his body, protected by nothing but bandages. It was he who closed his eyes, and hoped against hope that his pleasure in the assault wouldn’t show, and she who lowered her mouth to his chest, who kissed sinewy muscles and ran her silken hands over them, to his flat belly and then down twin paths to his thighs. “Oh, Raphael,” she said, her voice soft and sweet, as it had been when she married him. “I have missed you.”

  He opened his eyes then, to see her, straddling his waist. She was naked and her body was as white and perfect as he remembered, each of the flawless breasts crowned by a nipple the delicate coral pink he’d only before seen inside a seashell. Evil she might be but her features, perfect and tender, could have been sculpted for some Madonna before which mortals prayed.

  Her gaze rested on him and she smiled, and either her fangs hadn’t descended or she hid them. The place where she had drunk his life felt as though it were glowing—a haze of pleasure diffusing from the wound onto his whole body, making his skin more sensitive.

  It was as though a layer of his skin had been peeled away, leaving what was beneath, newly exposed and raw, alive to every touch, every caress.

  She was stroking him, her hands everywhere, her lips coming down to cover his as she leaned forward.

  Her tongue pushed into his mouth, cool and purposeful, tasting like honey and fresh apples. He could not resist her. His tongue followed hers into her mouth, feeling the even, smooth pearls of her teeth. Her thighs, wrapped around his waist felt warm and as soft as silk, compared to the roughness of the linen still enveloping his calves and feet.

  “How . . . how?” he asked, as she pulled up, wishing to ask her how she had gotten in, how she could be in his room, and why. But he could not form coherent words and his body, for once in control, did not care to question. She was here, she was his. She could do as she wished with him. He was hers.

  She smiled at him and her finger came down to seal his lips in the gesture of silence. Then her mouth returned to his broad chest, tracing the sprinkling of golden hair, down along his belly and . . .

  She stopped just short of his erection, wringing from him a moan of deep frustration, which brought a soft laugh from her.

  And then her lips were at his thighs, now kissing, now nipping, just enough to allow him to feel the touch of her teeth. Her hands roamed upward, touching everything except what he most wanted her to touch.

  For fifteen years, every thought of fleshly desire had brought a thought of Charlotte. And every thought of Charlotte brought the memory of her death, the certainty he had killed her, and the doubt of her guilt.

  For fifteen years he’d been like a man encased in granite, afraid of all touch, even of his own hand, if that touch brought pleasure and if pleasure brought a memory of Charlotte.

  But now Charlotte was here. Charlotte was now straddling his still-covered calves, and caressing him, her touch like fire upon his sensitive skin, her lips by turns soft and teasing on his hips, his thighs, then up again.

  A tentative finger touched his testicles. He arched and moaned, and would have begged had any words remained in his overwrought mind.

  But she seemed to understand what he could not say, and she sat back and looked at him with vaguely amused eyes. “Was that a plea, Monsieur le Comte?”

  His throat and lips worked in vain, and only one word came out, raspy and all breath, “Charlotte!”

  “All you have to do is let me in.”

  He did not understand her. His mind filled with odd images. His grandfather had owned a collection of leather-bound woodcuts depicting, of all things, Roman orgies. Athos suspected his father didn’t even know the book existed, high up on a shelf in the library. Athos had stumbled upon it one summer, while looking for reading material. Though none of the pictures interested him particularl
y, in the inchoate desire of adolescence—desire for everything, so long as it was touch—he’d spent many an afternoon studying them.

  Now those images came to mind and, could he have summoned speech, he would have told Charlotte that was impossible.

  She must have read his mind or seen something in his eyes, because he saw her eyes widen and, for the first time, a hint of surprise in her gaze. “Raphael!” she said, and her voice sounded both shocked and amused.

  Then she leaned forward and kissed him, hard—teeth catching at his tongue and almost, but not quite biting. Lifting her mouth a little, she spoke against his lips, “Into your mind, my dear. Let me in.”

  With that, he could feel a scraping, a scratching, on the edges of his mind, around it, pushing, tugging, seeking entrance.

  “No,” he said, but it was almost a sob.

  She said nothing. Her hands and mouth returned to their work, caressing, feeling, gentling. Her hands like silk, like rose petals. Her hands on him, heated, warm. And the pain from the bite, radiating, mingling with pleasure, blotting out his thoughts.

  His spine arched. His legs locked. He sobbed, close to begging. But let her in, he would not.

  His body felt so hot that at any minute it might burst in flames, and the air around him was filled with the scent of her. She leaned forward and her firm breasts pressed against his chest.

  “Raphael,” she said. It was the tone an adult might use to a disobedient child. And he knew, he knew as certainly as he knew that one day he would be nothing but dust, that if she went on, if this continued—he would give in. He would not be able to resist.

  The enemy of the soul is the flesh. The flesh. The–

  His body had a mind of its own and glimpsed a way out his mind could not see. Moving swiftly, he lowered his own hand. Her hand tried to intercept his, just too late.

  Her nails raked his wrist, and her voice said, “No!”

  But his hand, warm, strong, had already closed on his member.

  It took only a touch. His whole body spasmed.

  It lasted a second or an eternity.

  When he became aware again, he was alone, in his rumpled bed, his body cold and soaked with sweat, his breath coming in small, labored gasps.

  And Charlotte was quite gone.

  The Bells

  D’ARTAGNAN plunged into the fray on the street, his sword out, a scream caught in his throat. Both Aramis and Porthos were battling three vampires apiece.

  As he took his place next to Porthos, two of the vampires turned to him. They looked gaunt and famished, aged and goat-like, their skin thin and yellowed like parchment stretched over their skulls, the eyes dark and sunken and unreadable. And they moved fast, fast, fast, but with peculiar darting movements. Like snakes or insects, not humans.

  On his toes, his heels barely touching the ground as he shifted, d’Artagnan charged when he could, parried when he had to. He wanted to kill vampires. He wanted to sate his rage. But they were fast; unpredictable. They dove under his guard again and again. He couldn’t help but parry and retreat, step by step by step.

  His coming to relieve them had allowed Porthos and Aramis a respite. They danced forward in unison, shoulder to shoulder, swords flashing, metal clashes ringing in the still night air. They caught up with d’Artagnan and d’Artagnan kept up with them, his shoulder pressed against Porthos’ side.

  He glided forward, parrying his adversary blindly. His sword moved by instinct, smooth and alive, seeking its vengeance. Porthos’ and Aramis’ swords flashed beside him.

  A smell of corruption told him one of the musketeers—d’Artagnan did not dare look to see which—had killed an adversary. A scream soon told him another vampire had died. Porthos boomed from his right, “A moi, Monsieur Bloodsucker,” and one of d’Artagnan’s adversaries answered the call, giving d’Artagnan a free hand to press his enemy closer.

  But the vampire’s sword still flashed too fast, and the cloak he had wrapped around one stick-thin arm parried all of d’Artagnan’s thrusts, while the vampire’s blade sought out d’Artagnan’s heart again and again. It took all of d’Artagnan’s concentration to avert those thrusts.

  D’Artagnan’s blood coursed through his ears with a hissing sound. His heart pounded an unavoidable meter of despair. He could smell with more intensity than ever before, each of the night smells of the city—mud and cooking, smoke and humanity—all in sharp relief beneath the pall of rank vampire blood. The buildings around them, glimpsed at the edge of his vision were like unreal sketches made in blue and darkness in shining moonlight and crisp night air.

  He heard Aramis’ adversary scream his death knell. He smelled the corruption of Porthos’ dying opponent. He thought nothing of it.

  He thought of nothing but movement—his feet on the cobblestones, his fingers, cold and locked around the pommel of the sword. The vampire’s sword seeking his death—his sword countering and striking.

  Porthos said, “A moi.” The vampire turned. As d’Artagnan glanced in the Porthos’ direction, it registered that the two friends had been watching him for some time. Their expressions were somewhere between amused and approving.

  D’Artagnan’s rage flared. They’d come here, in the night, to guard his door. They’d come to protect him. They were cosseting him as if he were a child. Dismissing him. Belittling him. Just like those vampires earlier, telling him to go back to his mother.

  He charged haphazardly. Grabbing at the vampire’s cloak, the pulled it away from the vampire’s arm. He felt resistance and thought he heard a snap, a sound like a dry branch breaking, but it did not matter.

  He flung the cloak over the vampire’s sword, as he plunged his own sword into the vampire’s heart. Panting, sweating, he pulled his blade free before the falling corpse could drag it down.

  He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and rounded on the two musketeers with cold fury. “You didn’t need to come,” he said. “As you see, messieurs, I am quite able to defend myself.”

  Aramis frowned slightly at him, his eyes blank with seeming incomprehension, and Porthos said, dully, “Yourself!”

  “Well, yes, myself, as you see, I killed my vampire.”

  “Yes, but why—” Porthos said.

  Aramis tossed back his head, throwing his golden hair into place, every lock falling perfectly as though he’d spent hours arranging it before his mirror. He wore fawn-colored suede gloves, which perfectly matched a suit of velvet highlighted by dove-colored silk.

  D’Artagnan was sure that if it were daylight, he would see that both velvet and silk were quite worn and mended. But here, by the silvery light of the moon, Aramis looked all of one piece, perfectly knit, impeccably attired, and the sort of creature—a chevalier of legend, a man who always did what he should—that would intimidate d’Artagnan, the provincial boy with his raw manners.

  It did no more than make his gorge rise. He felt he was being put in his place. He did not like his place.

  Aramis’ mocking dark eyes scrutinized him from head to toe, with an almost pitying gaze. He did not speak to d’Artagnan.

  Instead, he turned to Porthos and his gaze sharpened to intentness, “Porthos,” he said, urgently. “This is not the time. They will feel these deaths, they will be here. They will be on us.”

  “They were not the ones they should have been,” Porthos said, slowly, his forehead wrinkling in thought. “Not the sort I’d expect.”

  Aramis shrugged, a nervous gesture. “No, not the ones I’d expect for this sort of ambush.” He poked one of the fallen corpses with his foot. “Eastern European, I’d say. The older ones. The wraiths. The sort that—”

  D’Artagnan heard himself hiss his impatience. “I don’t understand why anyone should ambush me? Or what you mean, or—”

  “Will you be quiet?” Porthos asked. “This does not concern you.”

  “Porthos, that was rude.” Aramis looked pained. He gave a little dismissive flick with his gloved hand. “D’Artagnan, we are very gr
ateful indeed that you helped us with our adversaries, but now you should go back to your lodging and barricade the door. We must concentrate on how to defend from the next attack which might very well mean our deaths.”

  D’Artagnan took a deep breath and exhaled. Oh, he knew very well that he had a hot temper. The rest of France assumed Gascons did, through the infusion of Spanish blood, so near the border. D’Artagnan thought it was more that Gascony had been at war so long. Only those quick with a blade survived.

  But now he knew nothing could mark him more as a young man and one who, therefore, deserved to be treated as a child by his more experienced comrades than a sudden outburst of fury.

  He shook his head and swallowed hard, to control the fury that would otherwise choke his voice. “I understand that you might feel worried about me, since I just arrived. I also understand that I am, compared to you, a novice at killing vampires. And perhaps I should not—as you said—have left my lodgings. But I came to Paris to kill vampires and I—”

  “Oh, good,” Porthos said, softly, his voice almost a whisper. “You are then about to get your wish, my friend.”

  Aramis looked over d’Artagnan’s shoulder and his eyes narrowed. The sword he’d never sheathed rose as he stood straighter and called, loudly, “To me, musketeers,” a call echoed by Porthos, in stentorian tones. “To me, to me of the king.”

  Their shouts peeled echoes from the surrounding buildings, reverberating in the night with an edge of despair.

  Half-fearing that a gross joke was being played on him; ignored by the musketeers; frightened of the bleakness in their gazes, d’Artagnan turned around.

  A wall of vampires advanced toward them. So dark that they seemed to meld with the surrounding night, three rows of vampires, at least, walked toward them—shoulder to shoulder, rank on rank, all of them strange, thin, almost insectile creatures, their faces frozen masks showing no emotion at all. They weren’t even dressed but looked, rather, as though the clothes they’d worn while living had fallen to pieces on their bodies, and remained attached only by dirt or rot.