by Sarah Hoyt
Athos experienced none of this, but then crosses did not disturb him. He swallowed and nodded. Panicked and filled with energy, he ran up the stairs. “My breeches, Grimaud,” he said, as he ran into his room. My doublet. My sword.”
His servant handed him hose, then the articles he asked for, and helped him strap on the sword, then held him by the sleeve. “M’sieur, your boots.”
Those took a little longer—and Grimaud’s help—to pull on. Athos, sitting on his bed, listening, said, “I think it comes from the rue des Fossoyeurs.”
“Is that where Monsieur Porthos and Aramis . . . ”
“Usually patrol?” Athos finished his question for him and nodded.
The idea that his friends were in danger put yet more urgency into his movements as he stood up.
“Monsieur,” Grimaud said, behind him.
He turned.
“I will be coming along also, after I dress,” the servant said. As Athos opened his mouth to protest, Grimaud added, “You know Bazin and Mousqueton—the servants of Monsieur Aramis and Porthos—and I have killed vampires in the past. I think this might be a time we need to do so again.”
Ringing In
ATHOS ran all the way to the rue des Fossoyeurs, which required him to run headlong across Pont Neuf. The great span of bridge, with no houses on either side, looked more like an otherworldly construction than something solid.
What made it odder was the bright moonlight—very clear and cold—pouring down on the confusion of other musketeers crossing that bridge, running, one after the other, in scrambling haste. Some of them wore the uniform of musketeers—the blue tunic with the cross on the chest—some wore ordinary clothes, some their nightshirts, but in these days of relaxed regulations and scarce fabric, mostly they knew each other by sight with no need for uniforms. All wore looks of grim determination.
Athos counted at least three men with whom he’d fought shoulder to shoulder many times, d’Emile, Morel, Voclain. They ran within steps of him, and didn’t spare him a look. Not a glance. To them, if they noticed him at all, he was just Athos, running to the call as they all were.
And then he wondered whether any of these vampires they would meet would reveal his nature. It didn’t matter. If they did he would simply say it was all lies and nothing more. He knew that Aramis and Porthos, for good and sufficient reason, had made the rue Des Fossoyeurs their private policing district.
In fact, the musketeers had no assigned patrol sections and nowhere they were supposed to be after the sun went down—except for the half dozen assigned to guard the royal palace or the royal quarters. By the bounds of the treaty with the vampires, musketeers—daylighters—were not supposed to walk the shadows of the night.
But they did, of course they did, for the same reason and in the same way that they engaged the vampires in duels all around town. To protect the innocent. To hold back the darkness, just a little.
Porthos and Aramis had a particular interest in the Rue des Fossoyeurs, where the queen’s maid of honor lived. Madame Constance Bonacieux, all of twenty-two, married to a grocer twice her age, was one of the very few and very brave people who used her special status and not inconsiderable strength of mind and body to keep the queen of France safe. Safe from murder, of course, but most of all safe from being made a vampire.
Since the first vampire had been found, during the excavation of a tomb in the frozen steppes of Eastern Europe, kingdom after kingdom, land after land had fallen under the sway of the ancient evil. Kings and queens had been turned, queens impregnated with vampire children.
Most principalities in Germany had fallen to vampires, as had Greece. Portugal and Spain had been taken via the north of Africa where the vampires had gone from the east and where, reports had it, vampires ran rampant. And Italy . . . Italy was a terra incognita, having fallen under the internal disputes of its many princes. Rome hadn’t been heard from in years and no one knew if the world still had a pope.
In the turmoil, the confusion, the half-lies propagated by the vampires, all that was certain was that England ran with rivers of blood, riven by a civil war. And that France still held. For now. For a given value of holding.
If it was capitulating, it was doing so slowly and step by step, succumbing under the machinations of Richelieu, the weakness of the king. Slowly. Man by man, woman by woman, one by one they were being taken by the vampires. And Athos would slow that spread yet further if he could.
Without realizing it, he’d crossed Pont Neuf ahead of all the others. It was that extra strength of the vampire and the extra energy. He reached the rue des Fossoyeurs—a quiet street, inhabited by respectable people—to find Aramis and Porthos, their backs to the tower of a little chapel, where the bells rang madly.
Around them was a sea of vampires. Vampire wraiths, old. Athos wouldn’t allow them in his mind, but he could feel them—he could almost taste them. So old they could not have been changed since that tomb in eastern Europe had been opened fifty years ago, unleashing vampires upon the unsuspecting world. These were the ones of whom people spoke in hushed tones, when they told of the first vampire awakened going on to wake the ancient ones. He’d moved stones that had stood in front of cave openings from time immemorial. He’d opened crypts. He’d torn mounds asunder.
And out of them the ancient dead had poured out—so long parted from humanity and feeling, so long kept underground and sharing nothing but their communal mind—so old that their thoughts, their movements, even their appearance, bore little resemblance to humans. They’d swarmed out starving, ravening. And now they were used as shock troops in any land the vampires were trying to take. Just as now, they were pouring into France through all borders.
Sensing them made Athos hate them more and feel a revulsion that was more than bone deep. He lay about with his sword, cutting a path through the abominable crowd toward his friends.
They tried to push him, to take him down. They bared their fangs and hissed at him, like things that had forgotten they were once human and had once had voice.
He reacted slower than they, but he could think. He could think for himself and without consulting the communal mind. This made him faster. And perhaps it made him more ruthless too, as his sword cut and sliced and sent pieces of the ancient evil to clatter onto the street. He wasn’t even trying to kill them. Just get them out of the way till he could come close to Aramis and Porthos.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to see a skeletal head with bared fangs descend toward his neck. He didn’t have time to react, before a sword, rather close, cut the head neatly at the neck. As it fell, the hand on Athos’ shoulder lost force, and the jovial face of d’Emile, above d’Emile’s lowering sword, grinned at him. “Go on, I’ll guard your back.”
Athos turned just in time to avert an attack from his other side. Back to back, he and d’Emile made it to Aramis’ and Porthos’ side.
There was no time for more than a smile between them, but his comrades’ expressions betrayed all the relief in the world, as Athos turned to stand beside them, and more and more musketeers poured in, till there was a line of them, facing the onslaught of vampires.
For a while it was heavy fighting, hand to hand, sword to sword, human facing vampire. There was nothing they could do but slice and cut and cut and slice, while the bells played madly over it all, and more and more musketeers and vampires poured onto the rue Des Fossoyeurs.
Under the moonlight, judging from the tightly closed shutters, the silence from the human habitations, they might as well have been alone. No human would come out of the buildings—not unless it was a musketeer. But if Athos read things properly, every one of those doors, those windows, behind every shutter, peering through every knothole in every door, there was a human, watching this.
And it was important they should see it, that they should know humans weren’t defeated yet, that they should be made aware that vampires hadn’t won France. Not yet.
“Athos.”
It w
as almost a whisper, and the hand on his shoulder, this time well known—Aramis’ long-fingered hand—the touch of a friend.
Athos had just dispatched the vampire facing him, and now he turned to see Aramis gesturing with a finger to his lips for him to keep silence, and then for him to follow.
Athos followed, and Porthos did also, leaving behind the long line of fighting musketeers, under the sound of the bells, in the moonlit street.
Rounding the corner, Aramis said, “Should we get d’Artagnan from the tower?”
“It was d’Artagnan who rang the bells?” Athos asked. “What? All this time?” Athos said. “The boy must be tired.”
Aramis looked confused. “It is just . . . ” he said. “If we do take him with us to do what we must do, we’ll have to explain . . . ”
“Hardly,” Porthos said. “What need is there? Only tell him we’re performing one of our duties.”
“But—” Aramis said.
“I think Porthos has the right of it,” Athos said. He looked toward the tower and frowned. The question was how to go get the boy. Bells disturbed vampires, but what if the vampires were just out of reach of the sound? What if they were waiting to jump the boy? To send Porthos or Aramis in there, would surely risk their being attacked. While for Athos to go in . . . The sound of church bells were known to adversely affect or even kill vampires, but Athos seemed unaffected. Even if the sound began to hinder him, the worst outcome would be death. And if he died . . . if he died it meant his struggle would be over and he wouldn’t have to fear becoming a monster.
“I will retrieve him,” he said, as he went into the tower.
Two vampires were dead, collapsed across the threshold, their hearts pierced and the dark blood that poured from them filled the air with what Athos, logically, knew should be a repulsive smell. But to his own vampire senses, it smelled enticing. It called out to him, like sweets to a hungry child.
He felt his mouth water, and gagged at the thought of what was making him salivate. Mind and body locked in dispute, he turned left past the chapel door, and headed for the spiral stairs that led to the tower.
On the stairs two more vampires lay dead. One of them beheaded, the other merely run through.
Up again to the tower, from which the roof had been removed, but not the bell, perhaps because it was very heavy or perhaps so heavily blessed none of the vampires could find their way this close to the bell and even the Judas goats felt uncomfortable.
Athos felt the bell—it was like a silvery presence, its song insistent in his mind. But if it neither hurt him nor impaired him, as it must have done to the two vampires at the top of the stairs: their heads had literally exploded, brain and blood coating everything, including d’Artagnan, as the boy now hung from the bell rope, making it toll with his weight, and now jumping, only to pull down fully again.
“Enough, my friend,” Athos said, softly, smelling the dead vampires, and trying not to think of their blood as food. He’d never heard of a vampire feeding on other vampires. He didn’t know if it were even possible. And if it were, he wanted no part of them. “Enough. There are enough musketeers.”
The boy let go of the bell rope, and turned to Athos, his face aglow, covered in perspiration. “Did we . . . are we winning?”
It was so sudden, so full of the hopefulness of youth, that Athos heard the cackle before he felt it leave his throat. “I believe so. And Porthos and Aramis and I have a . . . duty, we must fulfill. Will you come with us?”
D’Artagnan nodded. Athos thought that—human or vampire—if he had spent what must be an hour tolling the bell, he’d be falling with tiredness. But the boy seemed indefatigable as he rushed after Athos down the stairs. “Did you hear the bells?” he asked. “Did you come to the bell tolling?”
“Yes,” Athos said, looking over his shoulder more to avoid thinking of the vampire he was stepping over than because he felt a need to see d’Artagnan’s face.
“You don’t . . . ” d’Artagnan hesitated. “I mean . . . the vampires, when they got close enough and I was ringing the bell . . . You saw how it happened there on the tower.”
Athos nodded. He stepped carefully over the last vampire. “It doesn’t seem to have that effect on me. At least my head feels remarkably unaffected,” he said. “No. I don’t know why. It feels . . . odd, that close,” he said. “Like . . . a silver light, a silver sound. But it’s not . . . lethal or even unpleasant.”
D’Artagnan gave him a searching look, as if to determine if he’d offended him, and Athos thought it best to calm the youth’s fears. “You fought well. Even if you fought with bells. But now you must help us in a most secret endeavor . . . It’s a duty we perform for Her Majesty, the Queen.” As he spoke, he was escorting d’Artagnan behind the line of fighting musketeers and around the corner to where Porthos and Aramis waited.
“The queen!” d’Artagnan said.
Athos nodded.
“You told him?” Aramis asked, who was near enough to have heard that ecstatic exclamation.
“No,” Athos said. “No more than . . . I don’t think it’s necessary that he know all.” And seeing the look of betrayal in d’Artagnan’s face, he added. “It’s not that we don’t trust you, d’Artagnan, but knowing this secret could cost you your very life.”
“Like knowing what you are and not having denounced you?” d’Artagnan asked.
There was just a hint of defiance in the Gascon’s face, and in the upward tilt of his eyebrow. And Athos wondered—not for the first time—if he were a Judas goat. A Judas goat would act convincingly like that, and he would be, of course, utterly corrupt.
But d’Artagnan had a certain naive impetuosity that Athos thought could not be feigned, or not this well. He sighed. “We are here to escort one of the guardians of the queen. It is one of the duties the three of us have taken onto ourselves.”
“Athos!” Aramis said, dismayed.
“Hush, my friend,” Athos said. “D’Artagnan has fought by our side and he already knows a secret that could get us all killed. Himself, too. There is no reason that he shouldn’t know another.”
“It is not just our lives we’re putting in danger,” Aramis said.
“No, but if we are captured, then everything else will come out and you know it, Aramis. You know it better than I.”
“But—”
“There are special guardians to her majesty,” Athos said. “People who have . . . who by their mode of life have the ability to keep her majesty safe. And we escort them and keep them safe too, when they need it. Your landlord’s wife is one of these. Her name is Madame Bonacieux and she lives on the floor beneath the one you rent. Customarily we meet her at the front door, but I believe tonight, we’d best go to the back entrance.”
“Oh,” d’Artagnan said. His forehead furrowed. “Women? A woman is a guard for her majesty?”
“One of the best,” Aramis said. and from the tone of his saying it, it cost him something.
D’Artagnan looked daunted, but merely nodded. “If she guards Her Majesty and keeps her safe from vampires, then it will be an honor to help you escort her.”
“Good,” Aramis said, drily. “She should have been on her way to the palace an hour ago. She will be impatient and she has a temper. Come.”
And he led them, quietly, to the back gate to the house where d’Artagnan lived.
There, in the shadows, a blond woman stood. Blond she was, like Charlotte, but there the resemblance stopped. Where Charlotte was tall and pale blond and looked like a heartbreakingly beautiful statue, Constance Bonacieux, probably many years younger—even if Charlotte’s age had frozen at the time of her mortal death—was dark blond, plump, with a heart-shaped face and laughing blue eyes.
“Madame Bonacieux,” Aramis said, advancing and bowing. Athos drew himself into the shadows, hoping she didn’t see him or that if she saw him, she wouldn’t discern what he’d become.
He noted with interest that the rose she wore at the closing of her c
loak, the sacred symbol of her particular beliefs, didn’t look any more shining or confusing to him than did the cross.
And then she looked through the darkness, straight at him, and asked, in an altered voice, “What is that doing here?”
The Rose In The Thorn
“MADAME,” Athos said, the word coming out through suddenly rigid lips. He bowed politely removing his hat as he did it. “That has escorted your guardians to you. And if it’s not needed anymore, it will now take itself off.”
Even as he heard in his voice the forbidding chill of offense, Athos felt baffled at the sting of the one word. His pride rose within him, reproving this woman, a commoner, lowborn, for speaking of him as though he were less than human.
Yet at the same time, he understood. He was less than human. How many times had the inseparables referred to vampires as it? Vampires were not, after all, truly human. Theologically, mentally, emotionally.
The bewildered gaze of Madame Bonacieux’ blue eyes expressed all that. “But—” she said and then, as though confused by his stare on her, “But surely . . . ”
“Surely I was turned and surely I am less than human,” Athos said, his umbrage and his understanding, his confusion, his shame and anger catching in his throat and making his voice strangled. “But while I can, I’ll do what good I can, which I did, by bringing your rescuers to you. And now I shall take my leave.”
“Oh, Athos, stay,” Porthos said. With the sudden, explosive frankness of the very shy, Porthos could voice things that other people would not. Athos knew him well enough to understand how uncomfortable Porthos felt in company, and how his blurted pronouncements often originated in his discomfort, not stupidity as many assumed. Now his words expressed the annoyance that shone in eyes.
Before he could say more, Athos spoke, “No, Porthos, she is right. I’ve been telling you the same myself, since that first night when you found me crawling home, after being unwillingly turned. You should have killed me then. I am dangerous.” Finding he agreed with the words as they left his mouth didn’t placate his fury, at himself, at her, or at the world in general for playing this joke on him.