Sword And Blood (Vampire Musketeer Book 1)

by Sarah Hoyt

  As they started to canter down the road back to the last safe village, figures came out of the darkness behind them. They were armed with pikes. If they could get close enough, the assailants could trip the horses. Athos shouted a warning, and they spurred the horses to a gallop, half expecting to find their progress blocked. But they did not. The vampires had not expected retreat as a means of escape.

  They were halfway back to the still-human settlement when Athos thought that if he lived a thousand years—and as a vampire, he might—he’d never forget those figures. Shambling creatures, who’d once been peasants and were now lost somewhere between human and animal, their clothes filthy and in tatters and their eyes filled with nothing but hunger.

  Home Exile

  IT was the smells of home that made everything worse, d’Artagnan thought as he sat in this same carriage in which he’d been imprisoned for two days. He could smell the pine trees, the flowers just starting in the fields. When the curtains of the carriage were open, at night, could occasionally glimpse the round, rocky outcrop of a bastide—one of the fortified towns of Gascony. And sometimes when he slept—he would never have believed he could have slept while tied up in a carriage, but he did, such was his fatigue from three days of continuous travel—he dreamed he was home and that his mother was shaking him awake from an awful dream. There had never been any vampires, she said. You have to wake this minute.

  He did wake, still confined in a carriage, with his eminence’s right-hand—or perhaps left-hand—vampire, and several wraiths that had been vampires for longer than d’Artagnan could imagine.

  On and on the horses devoured the road. Day and night, the carriage wheels trundled beneath. When they stopped, even to allow him to relieve himself or to procure him food, he was never untied, and Rochefort was always at hand.

  It wasn’t until they got to the Comminges—the carriage straining up steep slopes, then rolling perilously close to the edge of narrow mountain roads—that d’Artagnan truly knew they were taking him home. Rochefort had claimed they were taking him to father’s house for an “inheritance.” It appeared the vampire had told the truth, but what he had meant by an inheritance d’Artagnan, as the only son of an impecunious house in impoverished Gascony, had no idea.

  If d’Artagnan had a choice, he would rather die a thousand painful deaths than see the land of his birth, much less his home again. He would not be able to see the sun-warmed walls of his homestead without thinking of his mother, without hearing her voice.

  And yet, more and more, his thoughts drifted to that part of Gascony that was his home. If he closed his eyes, he could hear the mountain cascades and smell the wildflowers in the fields. If he tried hard, he could hear Gascon men call at each other in the language of the region, the language spoken at home by noble families and by villagers, peasants, and merchants all their lives.

  They stopped at a village with a roadside hostelry. The locals, d’Artagnan had quickly discovered, could not refuse custom to a large carriage even if it were filled with vampires and the horrible old vampire-wraiths.

  The carriage rocked as Rochefort got out. He came back with a flask. D’Artagnan had become used to this. With his hands bound behind his back, he was not able to eat, unless Rochefort held the food. Rochefort had learned early that d’Artagnan’s teeth made a formidable weapon which could and would snap at fingers that close. He now would purchase some sort of gruel or soup in a flask and feed d’Artagnan that way. D’Artagnan had tried spitting the food or refusing to swallow it, but that simply resulted in going hungry.

  It was soup this time. Chicken broth with vegetables and ground grains, and even in this most bland of dishes, d’Artagnan could taste the garlic and rosemary of Gascon seasoning.

  As soon as he was done, Rochefort descended from the carriage. D’Artagnan heard him speaking outside and was surprised—from what words he could catch—that he was speaking in Gascon. He edged closer to the door of the carriage, moving into the seat Rochefort had occupied. The wraith sitting by him made no effort to move, so d’Artagnan crept all the way to the edge, where he could look through the open door.

  Outside the moon was full, the sky was a deep, dark blue, and a light breeze played on the branches of pine trees and grasses. From what he could see—a fork in a road, with an hostelry planted solidly in between, its name just visible on a faded sign, proclaiming it in Gascon: THE MUSKETEER’S HEAD. He swallowed, knowing where he was. Bagnères-de-Luchon, a few hours horseback journey from home. It sat in a narrow basin, little more than a mile across, where the River One flowed into the Pique.

  He closed his eyes, trying to shut out memories of coming with his friends to bathe in the rivers, in what now seemed like the golden afternoons of his childhood. Oh, they knew there were vampires, that they were dangerous, and even that they were everywhere or near enough. They didn’t know vampires would ever come close enough to their safe, happy lives to make any difference. And then Luchon had become half-occupied by vampires, a miniature version of Paris. The vampires seemed to be smart enough to allow about half the population to remain human in order to keep the land tilled and the wool spun, to keep a semblance of regularity over the deep, dark chasm of life with vampires. D’Artagnan’s parents had forbidden his visiting there and then at other villages, until he was confined within his native bastide, its deep walls and bell that tolled to keep vampires at bay.

  Behind his closed eyes, he saw a handful of small boys, slick and tan, playing in the basin, darting in and out of the water. Those sun-splashed, happy boys seemed to belong to another world, perhaps another species.

  He woke up to “Jean, come,” spoken loudly by Rochefort.

  “Milord?”

  “Come.”

  Rochefort resumed his seat in the carriage. The man, Jean, entered the carriage with a halting step, dragging his injured leg—a result of the runaway horse incident at the beginning of the trip. He paled at the sight—or perhaps the smell—of the wraiths.

  Rochefort reached out, his hands grabbing Jean around the shoulders and pulling him down. His fangs tore into the man’s neck without warning, prompting a scream. But then Jean quieted. A sudden moan escaped him, as though having his blood sucked were a sensual experience. His body went lax, his eyes rolled into his head.

  D’Artagnan stared, unable to look away, but wanting to do so more than anything. Rochefort pushed the man from him and got up, wiping his bloodstained mouth. Outside, d’Artagnan heard him speaking to the hosteller and to another man. From the words, it seemed obvious that they’d acquired a new Judas goat to tool the coach.

  He still could not tear his eyes away as the wraiths took over sucking Jean’s blood, wherever they could attach. Jean looked like a rag doll, boneless, spineless, a pale and poor imitation of a human.

  He knew death had come to the man; he could smell the former contents of Jean’s bowels. And, as the wraiths tossed the broken human from the other door of the carriage and down a steep embankment, d’Artagnan sat, unable to move, until a lurch from his stomach made him lean over and empty the recently-drank soup onto the floorboards and—mostly—outside the carriage.

  He’d just finished when Rochefort reentered the carriage. He did not ask d’Artagnan why he’d been sick, or the wraiths where Jean or his body had gone. Instead, he took his seat in the carriage, muttering something about damned nuisances.

  At his sign the carriage moved, rolling through the still night. D’Artagnan turned his face toward the side with the window, hiding as much as he could against the wooden wall of the carriage, and sobbing. He hadn’t cried like this since he was a very small child, tears rolling down his face unchecked.

  But he could no more stop it than he could stop breathing, and so he cried—for those young boys long ago who didn’t know what vampires were or what they could do. For Jean. For himself. For the whole of humanity now consigned to unending damnation.

  De la Fère

  THE blood tasted sweet, hot in his mouth.
It ran in a steady rivulet down his throat. He didn’t know whose blood, only that her neck was long and slim and the little bit of her ear he could see was a delicate conch-like pink-whiteness that gave the impression of transparency.

  Her hair—he was sure it was a woman—fell, dark and heavy over the arms he’d wrapped around her shoulders. She smelled of the sun and summer and long careless days. Her skin was soft, soft against his fingers, his bare arms, his chest.

  He’d just ripped into the pulsing vein on her neck, quieting her brief scream of pain. Blood poured into his mouth. It warmed him and filled him with joy, as a cup of hot chocolate had done on a bitter winter day, when he was very small. But there was more to it than that, he thought, as he suckled desperately at the open vein. It was the pleasure and innocent union of the infant with his mother, but also the heated adult consummation of fleshy desire. The blood had a spicy edge, a feeling of the forbidden.

  He could feel his spirit intertwine with that of his victim, could feel both her pleasure and her fear in her struggles, which grew feebler and feebler, until a great sigh escaped her and her body went limp in his arms, He turned her to look at her face and—

  Athos woke up. His heart beat a mad drum in his chest and he was hot, burning. Was it the sun? Had he been caught in the sun and . . .

  Opening his eyes showed him only night, a blazing full moon above, and around him the relative stillness of the dark woods, punctuated by the noises of crickets and birds, by the sound of some creature crawling in the undergrowth and something else making a moaning sound in a tree. The pine branches swayed in the wind above, filling the air with scent.

  He lay on the ground, half atop his cloak and half covered by it, panting with the exertion and shock of his dream. He threw the covering away from him, trying to feel the cool spring night air on his body. He undid his doublet, but it did not help. He could still taste her blood on his tongue, hot and spicy, spicy and hot, warming his cold body and returning it to a semblance of the life that had been taken from it.

  He untied the laces that held his shirt closed at the throat. His mouth felt dry and hot, craving the remembered taste of blood. He felt his hands tug at the fastening to his breeches, and caused himself to stop, forcibly, from touching an erection that throbbed with unsatisfied longing.

  He remembered her struggles against him, her half-hearted attempts to escape, her moans of pleasure.

  The brisk air didn’t cool his skin at his chest or throat. He had swallowed three cups of broth for his supper, warmed over the campfire, but he felt as if he hadn’t eaten in years. He needed food. But the thought of broth made his stomach twist.

  He wanted blood. Her blood on his tongue, her body in his arms, her surrender, her craving, his craving. He needed living blood, from a living vein.

  Then he smelled it, heard it. The scent of living flesh nearby, the sound of breaths drawn, the pounding of living hearts.

  Here, lying next to him, seven necks offered that fountain of sweet life that he’d dreamed of, that satisfaction to the thirst he felt growing, unslaked, within him.

  If he drank just a little. If he controlled himself. If he . . .

  He remembered the taste of the blood and its precious flow, calming his many aches and pains, his despair. Calming everything, as her body, pliant and warm in his arms, made him feel as if he were alive again. The power to take her life made him feel as if he were better than he’d been when alive.

  He listened to the pounding of heartbeats. He imagined his teeth tearing into flesh, creating an open tear from which blood flowed, hot, spicy.

  His own moan startled him, and his erection hurt so it felt like an individual thing, independent of him, craving satisfaction as much as he did, feeding his need.

  If he fed just a little.

  But something within warned him it wasn’t so. If he waited, if he let himself start—tearing skin and flesh with his fangs, lapping at the flowing blood—he would not be able to stop. Not until the body he was holding—warm, soft, living—lay dead in his arms, while his victim’s blood—he cared not who’s—coursed in his veins. He would lap and suck and—

  He was on his hands and knees, crawling fast through the undergrowth, away from the camp. Morning would come in an hour or so. They had bedded down in the early hours of the still-dark morning, with the understanding he’d return to his barrel on the back of the oxcart for the day journey before daylight.

  Stung by pine needles, skin lacerated by rocks, he scrambled away from the camp, from his sleeping comrades, from their sleeping servants, sure that if he remained he would tear open the nearest throat, he would drink living blood, he would . . .

  His body craved blood and physical release entwined, and both together could not be satiated. Not here. Not now.

  “Monsieur!” Grimaud, in a whisper, his voice hoarse. “Monsieur, what is wrong, are you ill?”

  He heard the steps behind him. Doddering fool. Athos would rip into his throat, he’d rend—

  No! “No,” he said aloud. “No. Come no further. Stay.” He dragged himself to standing by clawing himself upright on a young pine sapling, feeling it tremble with his push.

  “Monsieur le—”

  “No, you fool,” Athos tried to shout. His voice came out more growl than human voice, and he was afraid that Grimaud would not arrest. His heart was pounding so loudly, he would not hear the man’s footstep behind him. He let go of the tree.

  He ran, tottering, blindly, snapping branches and kicking rocks, slipping and scrambling back up again: running into trees, then edging around them.

  He tripped over something and, falling, felt a warm body under his extended arms. It was warm and furry and squirmed under his grasp. He felt for the vein at the neck, without thinking. He could not have stopped himself if he had tried. His teeth sank into the vein.

  Warm, living blood poured into his mouth. He was in his dream again and it was her blood, warm, heady with her scent of summer and sun.

  He nursed and suckled and suddenly, remembering the feel of her in his arms, of her voluptuous body, his body erupted in pleasure as the blood trickled to a stop.

  He opened his eyes, suddenly cold and sober; aware that his undergarment felt wet and clammy. The thing he’d grasped, the thing whose life he’d sucked in great, gulping pulls, was a wolf pup too young to have run at his noisy approach. It lay in what had been a safe nest beneath the roots of a great tree. The mother wolf must be hunting.

  Athos wiped his mouth with back of his hand and marveled at the red streaks left. He took deep breaths. He willed his fangs to retract.

  “Monsieur,” Grimaud’s voice said nearby.

  “I’m well, Grimaud. I’m . . . well.” His mouth tasted metallic. Looking at the corpse of the pup, he was afraid he’d vomit what he’d just ingested and thereby make the pup’s death more atrocious. He dragged himself up, forcing himself to look away. “I am well.”

  Looking up he saw Grimaud eyeing him dubiously and was gratified to see the stake, clasped tight in Grimaud’s hand. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand again, and said, “It was a dream, I think.”

  As Grimaud took a step toward him, he said, “No. I can find my own cloak.”

  But when he returned to the camp and lay down, awake, staring up at the darker shadows of the pine tree branches again the lightening sky, he knew that whatever creatures might go in stealth through the dark woods were not half as terrifying as the beast in the darkness within.

  Betraying Memory

  “WE will untie your hands,” Rochefort said, as they tossed d’Artagnan back into the room in which he’d slept from his earliest memories until three weeks—could it truly be only three weeks?—ago. “So you may care for yourself. But make no attempts at escaping. There will be two guards outside the door and two more outside every window.”

  D’Artagnan verified. How could he not? He crept to the door and looked through the sliver of space underneath at the feet pacing back and forth. Two f
eet in heavy boots. Rochefort had said men, but d’Artagnan presumed he meant vampires. Or perhaps not. There was no way to tell, and, exhausted from the mad travel, d’Artagnan couldn’t stand against either. No, he had to find another way out.

  On the other side, at the base of the tree that almost touched his window, he could tell the two men moving confidently in the darkness of the night, had to be vampires. Which made the idea of opening the window, shimmying down the tree and attempting to escape a foolish one. Not that he intended to do it, d’Artagnan thought as he rolled his shoulders, trying to make his arms stop hurting like the blazes.

  He sat on his bed, on the feather eiderdown his mother had stitched, made of her old dresses. Pink satin and blue silk and embroidered linen flowed one into the other, like little cushions filled with down. It was old. D’Artagnan had slept under it every winter of his young life. He traced his finger along the stitchery, feeling his eyes swim in tears.

  His room took up the western corner of the second floor, and its window—in daytime—admitted enough light to make the scrubbed, polished oak floor glow like gold.

  How to get out of his room? Thoughts of hurling the clothes press through the door and then leaping over it, a sword in each hand, stabbing at each of the guards outside at the same time swept briefly through his tired, disordered mind.

  A rueful smile played across his lips and he touched his fingers to his lips, as if to assure himself of the expression. Such feats of derring-do were, of course, beyond him. However, if a certain three musketeers were at hand: Porthos could hurl the clothes press and, swords flashing, Athos, Aramis, and he would leap out the window . . .

  D’Artagnan didn’t even have a sword.

  He rubbed at his chin, which was starting to feel scratchy with stubble—though he didn’t have enough growth yet for a proper beard. If only they’d given him a blade to shave with. He looked toward the basin with a wild hope of a blade’s presence and of picking the lock with it, slitting one of the guard’s throats, and then perhaps appropriating one of their swords . . .