by Sarah Hoyt
D’Artagnan’s body, tightly bound, went rigid. “Did you? Then you know you should not speak to me of him. Not further.”
A booming laugh answered him. “Ah. Yes. The hot d’Artagnan blood. Your father was just as intemperate. A damn fine dueler though. They should never have turned him against his will. I could have told them it would not work. If they had asked me . . . ”
D’Artagnan chose not to take Rochefort’s bait. He would be thrice damned if he discussed his murdered father with this thing, or let the creature catch even a hint of d’Artagnan’s heartbreaking grief. It was clear Rochefort was hinting at knowing who had turned d’Artagnan’s father. D’Artagnan ignored the vampire and stared straight ahead. If Rochefort wished to tell him who had turned d’Artagnan’s father, he would do so. If he didn’t wish to tell him, d’Artagnan would not demean himself with asking.
They rode for a moment in silence. After a while Rochefort said, “It was very sudden, wasn’t it? Unexpected. I understand you were not home.”
D’Artagnan turned his head to glare at him.
Rochefort let out a curt laugh. “I knew your father when we served together in the musketeers, boy,” he said, and, his voice going distant and soft and far away, “At the dawn of the world, when we were young.”
D’Artagnan could not hide his surprise, which in turn brought another laugh from Rochefort, more genuine this time. “You think that all of us are born vampires or even choose our side willingly? Look at your friend, the Comte de la Fère.”
D’Artagnan had surmised that Athos was a count. Hearing the title did not surprise him enough to wring expression or words from him. There was only the sound of horses at full gallop. Rochefort looked at the heavily curtained window, swaying and rocking in the speeding carriage. The curtains didn’t spring open because they were pinned at the sides, and also pinned together in the center. D’Artagnan wondered if he could distract Rochefort long enough to somehow tumble against the windows and pull the curtains open.
“Your father should have told you,” Rochefort said. “He should have told you about your line and your house and what was so important about it.” He raised an eyebrow at d’Artagnan, “I suppose he didn’t.”
If he wanted d’Artagnan to tell him what there was to tell, he would be disappointed. Not reacting also seemed to keep the vampire talking.
“What I don’t understand,” Rochefort said, “is why they felt they had to die.”
This brought an answer from d’Artagnan, “Perhaps,” he said, “they had no taste for damnation?”
Rochefort shrugged. “If you believe in all that,” he said. “I suppose it matters.”
“And I suppose you don’t?”
Another shrug. “Even if I believed, there are ways to avoid damnation. Blood willingly given from a victim does not harm the state of your soul, provided you do not drain them. And I expect your father had enough retainers, friends and acquaintances willing to feed him and the lady your mother.”
D’Artagnan felt sick.
“I imagine if you were turned you wouldn’t feel the same, my boy,” he said. “It’s easy to be a vampire. Very easy. The pains of mortality are gone, you need not sleep as much, and wounds heal quickly.” He touched the patch over his eye, reflexively. “And feeding . . . feeding is a glorious mix of food and passion . . . and you are feared by mere mortals. You’re harder to kill and you can live forever.”
D’Artagnan looked at the wraiths that filled the carriage. Rochefort called this living? He turned his head and with great accuracy spit in Rochefort’s face.
He expected the man to backhand him, or at least to swat him and send him flying across the carriage. Instead Rochefort laughed. With a lacy handkerchief, pulled from his pocket, he wiped at his face and looked at d’Artagnan intently with his one good eye. “You are foolish beyond measure, my boy. You have immortality offered to you on a plate and you refuse it with contempt.”
“Perhaps,” d’Artagnan said, speaking through clenched teeth. “But if I remember correctly, the last people who accepted the offer to become like onto the gods, knowing good from evil . . . well, it did not end well for them.”
A surprised look and then Rochefort laughed again. “Indeed. The legends of mankind never cease to astonish me.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“To your father’s house, my boy. For your inheritance.”
And though d’Artagnan did not know what Rochefort meant, one thing he knew for sure: Soon either he or Rochefort would lie dead. One or the other. The two of them could not live in God’s green world at the same time.
Into the Dark
ATHOS woke up with his heart pounding so madly his chest hurt. He did not remember dreaming. He did not even know if vampires could dream or if the state they plunged into during daylight was akin to death or simply sleep. He knew, though, by some instinct, that night had fallen upon the city.
Sitting on his bed—the curtains of which were open, though the curtains on the window were tightly shut—confirmed his suspicions. Outside, the noises were not those of the waking city, but the sounds of Paris at night. Few voices, the sparse and distant sound of horses and carriage wheels. Somewhere nearby a wolf howled desolately.
He’d have thought it was a dog in other times, but most dogs, like most men, had fallen prey to vampires.
Getting up, he hurried to the window and pulled the curtains aside enough to see, through the lead-paned windows, the dark, velvety stillness of night. He flicked the curtains open, then opened the window itself, letting in the cool night air. It smelled of smoke, of the cooking odors always present in the city, of horse manure, of flowers, but most of all it smelled of cooling breezes and late afternoon.
From the smell he tried to guess the day, which he thought must have been warm, in the way some days in spring were warm, like a thin promise of the coming summer stretched taut above an underlying coldness that was much larger and stronger. And which at nightfall had overcome the warmth altogether.
He took a breath, two, realizing this was much like a blind person telling the features of someone they could not see by reading the face with extended fingertips.
Instead of concentrating on thoughts of the daylight world that would never again be his, he wondered why he’d awakened with his heart speeding and a sense of purpose—of urgency pushing him to act.
Jumbled ran images of the night before ran through his mind. Charlotte, laying on a chaise, more desirable and rosier than when he knew her before. He thought of her touch on his skin, and the pain in his thigh surged. Her head inclined, her tongue lapping at his blood.
But no, that wasn’t it. That couldn’t be it. There was a different feel to the excitement, the mingled fear and desire now coursing through his veins was not the same exhilaration he’d had on wakening.
And then it came to him, entire, like Athena from Zeus’s head. He’d woken convinced he must go to Gascony and rescue d’Artagnan. Of course he must. The way would be arduous, though perhaps less so for Athos than for mortal humans. He would face some unique perils in traveling only by night, but he felt responsible for the boy. Whether the vampires had meant to capture him all along or not, he’d surely been pulled out of his safe bed to fight vampires in the street through seeing Aramis and Porthos fighting them almost in front of his lodging. From there his capture was inescapable. If the boy had not chosen to join in their fight, on their side—if Athos had ended his own life instead of going to Monsieur de Tréville’s office that morning—it would all have been avoided. Therefore Athos must go to Gascony. He must find the d’Artagnan domain and rescue the boy before the vampires did whatever they planned to do.
His pulse quickened. He then perceived it was even more than that, feeling the pricks of half-formed thoughts he didn’t want to admit to. He felt certain, from their mind contact—if that’s what you could call the experience of her mind and soul overwhelming his—that this was her plan, that taking d’Artagnan to Gasc
ony was in her interests and meant something to her. He also felt sure she would be there. Danger and desire rose in him. His fingertips brushed the wound on his thigh, which burned with pain and heat such that he felt it should glow through the hem of his shirt.
He looked out at the star-sprinkled night and took a deep breath of the city smells on the cool night air. He would go tonight.
He started to walk to his door, ready to call “Hallo, Grimaud,” when he comprehended his servant could not have been sleeping all day and would therefore be tired. He couldn’t in good conscience take Grimaud either, though the man had accompanied him on all the travels. Grimaud’s sleep habits and his needs were now so different from those of Athos that traveling in company would, perforce, be unbearable.
A pang of regret made his breath catch and then he shook his head, accepting the inevitable. He would have to find where Grimaud kept Athos’ clothes. Not just his shirt, but his spare doublet and hose and breeches. He would need, he thought, two pairs of riding breaches and two, no, three doublets. And some hazy number of shirts and undergarments. The idea of how many exactly he might need—he estimated with three days—or in his case nights—of riding to Gascony and back, this left three, perhaps four days in which to solve the problem and either set the boy free from the vampires or die trying. So that made it close to a fortnight. He knew he changed his shirt and undergarments every day and he knew this luxury was not common. He also knew he could not pack that many clothes and expect to carry them without hindrance, in his saddle sack.
He had no more than opened the clothes press when Grimaud entered the room exclaiming, “Monsieur le Comte!”
Athos often thought this was Grimaud’s favorite phrase and marveled how Grimaud could make it mean so many different things. Right then, his tone was—obviously—one of exasperated reproach.
Grimaud was fully dressed in a russet suit, complete to his boots. Athos said, “Have you not retired yet? Have you dined?”
“Monsieur le Comte,” Grimaud said again, his voice full of injury. “I would not . . . ” He shrugged. “I am here to serve you, which I can’t very well do if I must accompany you all night long and then stay awake during the day. I stay awake just long enough in early morning to make sure that the merchandising is done and anything procured you might need, and then I’ll retire to be awake at night.”
Athos felt his eyes fill with tears, his vision blur. There was much he wished to say—such as then they will think we are both vampires, or perhaps you don’t need to—but what he said was, “I thank you. As it happens, though, I must go out of town on a . . . I must travel to Gascony, so all that will be needed is for you pack my saddle sack and then you may have leave for close to a fortnight.”
He could feel Grimaud’s body stiffening and his shoulders squaring before he focused his gaze on him. “If I’ve given offense . . . ” Grimaud said, his voice stiff and proud.
“You’ve given no offense, but I can’t ask you to travel with me by night through the countryside and sleep by day. You would be thought a vampire, and they will know that I am one.”
Grimaud was a small man. Certainly small when compared to Athos. He said, and perhaps it was true, that in his youth he’d been taller. In late middle age, however vigorous, his gray hair had joined a slight curvature of the spine and a general sagging to presage the coming indignity of old age. He did, however, manage to give Athos the impression of towering. “,” he said. “When your illustrious father asked me to look after you, he did not say I was to cease my care, should you be turned into a vampire against your will. I do not wish to desert you. I had foreseen you might want to travel to Gascony, of course, and I have packed the saddle bags. Unless you wish to dismiss me from your service . . . ”
“No,” Athos said. “Of course not. I might think you foolhardy for wishing to serve a vampire—”
“I have no wish to serve a vampire, sir. I wish to serve you.”
Athos bowed his head, feeling suddenly curiously humbled. There was nothing he could tell Grimaud to convey the mix of pride and fear, the sense of not being worthy of this loyalty, which would not completely undo both of them. So he said, instead, “We shall leave almost immediately. Retrieve my horse—and obtain one for yourself, since the matter is of some urgency and your mule will travel far too slowly to overtake d’Artagnan’s kidnappers. I must also give Monsieur de Tréville some excuse for leaving town. I realize mine is a secret that can’t be kept forever and that sooner or later, in some way, Monsieur de Tréville will discover it and perhaps feel obliged to—”
“You shall tell the captain you are taking the waters. To help heal your wound—the wound he thinks you are recovering from.”
This brought Athos’ head up, his brow furrowing in confusion. “The waters? In Gascony? Grimaud, the captain is a Gascon himself; he will know there are no famous waters in Gascony which are good for the healing of wounds.”
“No,” Grimaud said, and pursed his lips. “You are forgetting the captain is a Gascon, M’sieur. He might know there are no particular waters, but if you tell them that some have been found, in the vicinity of Pau or Tarbes or some such place, whose efficacy in healing wounds rivals all the others in France, he will believe you. No. More than that, he will not question it.”
“Of course not,” Athos said, and now he could feel his lip twitching in earnest, amused both by his servant, by the prideful folly of Gascons in general, and of his captain in particular, It was a folly all the more amusing since it was one of the very few nonsensical beliefs the man—who was to Athos like the representative of God—allowed himself. “He will think it is only fair that God, having thought it fit to fill Gascony with rocks and precipices and to make her the center of wars, should now have compensated her by making one of her cities the source of all healing. By God, you have it, Grimaud. We shall go to take the waters.” He frowned slightly. “I must pen messages to Porthos and Aramis, so they will know where we’ve gone. I can get servants of the captain to deliver them to their residences.”
“Certainly, Monsieur le Comte,” and now the words were paternal and indulgent. “But you must have three cups of broth before we go, and you must—” he surveyed Athos with a critical eye, as Athos stood in his shirt and bare feet, in the hallway. “You must wear breeches and boots. I know it is not my place to say, but you must not go out bare bottomed and barefooted.”
“Oh, then,” Athos said, on the crest of a surge of relief that his trusted servant could still joke with him. “Oh, then, I shall not, for I know that in all matters of dressing and demeanor you are the authority.”
Grimaud tried to look stern, but it would not hold. “And a good thing too, for how you would manage your clothes on a trip this length I do not know, but I know for a fact you’d arrive not fit to be seen.”
Not fit to be seen. Surely that, but who would he been seen by? Vampires and . . . other vampires and Charlotte,,.
For the ten years he’d thought her dead, he’d not been able to get her out of his head. What chance had he now that she was alive and masterful and, seemingly, commanding his every breath?
Together Again
MONSIEUR de Tréville’s offices teemed with life and light. Athos had not expected otherwise. Not only had the sun just gone down and, therefore, most of the musketeers were still within their duty period, but this was the time in the evening when Monsieur de Tréville would be handing out the assignments for the night.
For all his repeated injunctions that the musketeers were not to patrol in those areas of the city that had been allotted, by treaty, to the vampires, or that they weren’t—under any circumstances—to provoke the guards of the cardinal or to become embroiled in duels, the real instructions he gave were quite different. De Tréville said what he had to say to obey the treaty between the king and cardinal, so the musketeers received their instructions in his prohibitions. The captain would say, “And you, d’Alphonse, are absolutely not to patrol the area from the Barefoot Car
melites to the rue des Anges. You are not to take Josse with you. Do not to stay alert for any appeals for help and do not to interfere with the guards of his eminence in the performance of their duties.” But he would mean they were supposed to do exactly what he’d told them not to do. It was a game everyone knew and everyone played.
So the musketeers in their best garb—such as it was these days—would crowd the residence, after their dinners and routs, and wait till the captain called them to, particularly and with intent, hand out his prohibitions.
They thronged the receiving room, dueling for space on the stairs, calling boisterous jokes across the room. At Athos’ entrance all talk stilled. The two men who’d been mock-dueling up and down the stairs stopped. Heads turned toward him.
“They know,” Athos thought, then chided himself. It wouldn’t take their knowing, and it would be unlikely they could guess he had been turned. None of them called him out, or even gave him more than the bare room necessary to walk between two rows of them. They were so close he could feel their body heat.
To be honest, they’d always given him only the space necessary to walk between them and no more. The space was a mark of respect. As for the silence . . . the silence was no more than was natural when he’d broken protocol so dramatically on his last visit by collapsing on the floor of the captain’s office and having to be carried out in arms. Having drank broth—too much broth, curse Grimaud—all too recently, he felt his cheeks flush and walked quicker toward the stairs. His foot was on the first step of the broad marble staircase leading to the captain’s office. He was headed toward Gervase at the top, ready to ask him to announce his presence to the Captain, when someone called from the mass of musketeers in the hall, “Athos, how is the wound?” All of them turned to look at him.
He spun around, forcing a smile on his face. The consciousness of all their bodies so close to his, the feeling of their heat, his desire to feed, were unbearable. He had to resist gritting his teeth and making his face wooden. Instead, he smiled pleasantly and spoke in what he hoped was a natural voice, “Very well, d’Ingelger. I am healing. It still pains me, of course, but . . . ”