In the Garden of Sin
Page 27
As Darius flew over the castle courtyard, he saw eight of their guards, good men and worthy successors to the Swiss Guards who had served the seigneurs of Grotte Cachée for centuries, awaiting the return of one or both vampires. They were armed not just with handguns and rifles, which would only slow a vampire down a little, but with flamethrowers, as well as piles of chains. As soon as Darius reverted to human form, he would call them on his cell phone—one of the few modern conveniences he embraced, since it helped him to avoid personal contact with humans—and let them know there would be no bloodsuckers to capture tonight.
Darius flew past the castle toward the bathhouse at the entrance to the cave in which he lived, slowing down when he saw a faint glow from within the white marble structure. He lit upon the edge of the big skylight over the pool and dipped his head, taking in everything at once with his panoramic vision. A handful of candles burned at the lip of the pool, their flames twitching on its glassy surface. There was no one in the water, but between the pool and the mouth of the cave, among a heap of silken pillows, two naked bodies lay with arms and legs and hair all entwined: Lili and Elic.
Darius was about to give them his “hello” chirp when he noticed the slow, sinuous movements of their hips and grasped the magnitude of this long-awaited moment. He could hear Elic speaking softly into her ear, his voice hoarse and damp, but he couldn’t make out the words. Lili nodded, a droplet glimmering on her cheek.
Darius pumped his wings and spun away, soaring off into the starry night.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Bastille, the fortress-turned-prison that had become, by the time of the French Revolution, a detested symbol of the corrupt French monarchy, never housed more than a handful of men. Often these were aristocrats incarcerated there rather than in some public jail or madhouse, their relations paying well to have their every need attended to by scores of attentive servants and guards.
On July 4, 1789, the Marquis de Sade was transferred to the substantially less swank Charenton Asylum, leaving only seven names on the Bastille’s prison roles: the forgers Jean de la Correge, Jean Bechade, Bernard Laroche, and Jean-Antoine Pujade, arrested two years before; an elderly Irish lunatic named Major Whyte, who imagined himself at various times to be God, St. Louis, and Julius Caesar; the Comte de Solanges, committed there by his family on suspicion of murder and incest; and the sole political prisoner, a fellow named Tavernier who’d been locked up there since 1759 for participating in the Damiens conspiracy against King Louis XV.
As every student of history knows, on July 14, 1789, the Bastille was besieged by revolutionaries, many of whom died at the hands of their own while plundering arms and ammunition. All seven inmates were liberated from their cells and paraded around Paris (with poor Major Whyte convinced he was Caesar being cheered by the Roman citizenry), only to be swiftly reincarcerated.
History does, however, record a mysterious eighth whose name never made it onto the official list, but who was freed along with his fellow prisoners. The “Comte de Lorges,” as he was known, had been held since 1749 on a lettre de cachet, which was how the French aristocracy at that time made people disappear without benefit of trial, appeal, or even official charges. Presumed to be an unjustly accused victim of tyranny, he came to represent the quintessential Noble Prisoner liberated during the storming of the Bastille.
A journalist subsequently raised doubts as to the existence of this martyred count after failing to find his name in the prison register, and it’s now thought that he was a fictional héro de roman meant to fire up the sympathies of the French populace.
The truth will likely never be known.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LOUISA BURTON, a lifelong devotee of Victorian erotica, mythology, and history, lives in upstate New York. Visit her website at www.louisaburton.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Bantam Books Trade Paperback Original
Copyright © 2009 by Louisa Burton
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Burton, Louisa.
In the garden of sin / Louisa Burton.
p. cm. — (The Hidden Grotto series; bk. 4)
eISBN: 978-0-553-90677-6
1. Incubi—Fiction. 2. Vampires—Fiction. 3. Castles—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.U769815 2009
813’.6—dc22 2009014245
www.bantamdell.com
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