Beneath Ceaseless Skies #56

by Cheney, J. Kathleen

  I thrust her away, horrified. She fell against the vanity table but didn’t cringe as if afraid of me. Instead, she turned knowing eyes on me.

  “The way of life?” I asked. “It sounds more like the way of death.”

  “I can make him comfortable here, for what time is left. Do you want him to suffer?” She reached a hand toward me.

  I batted it away. She clearly believed Jeremy was as good as dead. Having witnessed his continued decline, I didn’t have much doubt myself. “What can I do to help him?” I demanded anyway.

  She shook her head sadly. “There is nothing. I swear.”

  I considered wringing her neck, but that wouldn’t help. “I’m not leaving until you tell me exactly what you did to him.”

  “But I did tell you,” she said. “The seed was planted, Bertrand. When it comes to fruition, I’ll retrieve the bulb. Once in my workshop, I can determine if the growth is healthy.”

  And I wondered if her selection of Jeremy as her victim might not have had some deeper significance, if she might not have known about me all along. “Why?”

  “If anyone would understand the process, it should be you.” She stroked my chest, which I knew for an invitation. “I can only allow the most successful of my children to be planted again. So after I harvest the bulb, I have to watch them carefully.”

  “Planted again?” I repeated, feeling dazed. I could not seem to focus with her scented skin so close.

  “Just as I am, in this body,” she said. “I pass my seed on to others, but the process is unpredictable. In some part, the child comes from the host.”

  My mind spun that over as I looked down at her. She came closer, pressing against me. She was poison, any way I looked at it. I felt my hands curl about her shoulders, almost of their own volition.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” she whispered, and once again, I felt almost as if I heard her words in my head rather than my ears. “Jeremy is gone, whether you admit it or not. You can only choose how you act afterward. Truly, Bertrand, if I could give you your brother back, I would.”

  She was a monster, perhaps not one of Baudeliare’s vampires, but something just as inhuman. I reconsidered my decision not to strangle her, but my traitorous hands moved to push the robe from her shoulders instead, craving the feel of her skin under them. “Are there others like you?”

  “A few,” she said, coyly holding her dressing gown closed even as she came closer. “But I will not tell you who they are, if that’s your question.”

  Her silk-clad breasts brushed my chest then, and my mind suggested other ways to convince her to help me to save my brother. I laid one hand on her hip and drew her savagely against me. When I leaned toward her, she set one surprisingly strong hand against my chest and pushed me back. “Not on the lips, Bertrand. Never on the lips, or I will lose you.”

  Which made me suspect how her ‘seeds’ passed to her victims. That I would not forget, no matter how much I wished to defy her.

  * * *

  I walked along Boulevard Haussman in the pale morning light, my ruined shirt hidden under a tightly buttoned suit jacket. Some things about French girls I liked excessively, particularly in this new Paris.

  I still did not know what to make of her appetite for me, when I’d made it so plain that I did not like her. I wondered if it might only be my knowledge of botany that drew her—or if it was the other way about, my interest in her stemming from her bizarre glass-enclosed garden. Either way, she hadn’t told me anything that would help me halt my brother’s decline.

  And when I reached his studio, I discovered Jeremy sitting in his favorite chair, the coverlet from his bed draped across him as if he’d sat up waiting for me. But his eyes were open, unblinking, fixed on some place I couldn’t see. He was already dead. For a moment, I simply gazed at his unmoving form, trying to decide what I would tell the police.

  I wondered then if there was inside him a seed of sorts, a slender elongated bulb like those I’d seen in Anne’s workroom. Thinking the police would never know, I drew the coverlet away, revealing the bloody mess of his shirt. A large hole gaped several inches beneath his chin, just to the left of the breastbone. I dropped the blanket back over him and stepped back, shaking in fury.

  It hadn’t been Anne. I knew that. I knew where she’d been every moment of the previous night. My chest still stung from the scratches her nails had left behind.

  A few, she’d said. A few like her existed—only a handful, all close by in Paris. Any of them would have motive, a reason to cut into his body and remove that thing which had killed him. One of them must have done this to Jeremy, and I swore to myself then that I would do whatever I must to find them, every one.

  A frisson of premonition warned me, and I turned. A policeman stood in the open doorway, nightstick in his hand. Behind him, other voices sounded in the stairway.

  I had been set up, I realized, to take the fall for my brother’s death.

  * * *

  For a long time I sat in a cell at the police station on rue des Prouvaires, waiting for someone who would listen to my protestations of innocence. I had ample time to think, to consider the tangle that had ensnared both my brother and myself, but I couldn’t decide what to say.

  Whether to tell them that my brother and I were distant at the best of times; whether to tell them I had recently stolen his paramour just as he had, several years ago, taken my wife; whether to admit I wouldn’t deeply mourn my brother’s absence, as I had never known him half as well as I should have? Nevertheless, whatever his flaws, Jeremy had been a scion of the Everslee family, and I intended to avenge his death. My family would expect no less.

  As the hours passed, I became anxious, my hands shaking and my thoughts scattering. Their design, no doubt. It was late afternoon by the time a Lieutenant Golairde came to hear my explanation of events. When asked where I spent the night (for the hotelier had given out that I’d not returned to my rented room), I told them I’d been at the house of Anne Dubourg. None recognized her name. As I couldn’t recall the name of her street, I offered to lead them to her house instead. I would expose the room full of globes, I decided, and reveal that each represented a life stolen.

  After much confusion, Goliarde located a couple of officers to escort me to locate the house of my mystery woman. They put handcuffs on me and as we neared the front door of the station, she walked over the threshold.

  “Bertrand!” she cried. “I went to your brother’s flat, and the landlady told me they’d brought you here.” She turned her innocent eyes on the officers who held my arms. “What is this? Why does he wear these?”

  She had come to deny my claim, I guessed, the final seal on my condemnation. I scowled as she grasped my cuffed hands, her red lips pouting up at me. I caught the scent of her skin then, and my anxiety eased.

  The officer on my left gazed down at her legs. She wore the shortest skirt I’d seen yet, one that actually bared her knees. “Who are you, mademoiselle?” the man asked.

  She primly held out one hand. “Anne Dubourg, officer. Monsieur Everslee was at my flat all night last night. A party, you understand. I’m sure the other guests can attest to his presence as well.”

  I hadn’t told Goliarde what I was doing at her flat, merely that I’d been there all night. He shrugged and bid the officers to uncuff me.

  I gazed down at my unexpected rescuer and wondered what she planned for me. I was not, it seemed, the sacrificial lamb after all.

  * * *

  In the workroom on the third floor, she gazed raptly at the new globe that sat upon her worktable. She stroked the glass, but the bulb had no fronds yet to reach for the warmth of her fingers.

  That was all that was left of foolish Jeremy. Although I knew she hadn’t been the one to take my brother’s life, I could not deny that she’d been a part of it. Nor could my involvement be an accident.

  I would have to handle her carefully. In her presence I could not seem to keep focus on my ultimate goal. Sooner
or later she would trust me enough to introduce me to the others, her children. When I knew their names, I would reveal them all. If the police would not act, I would bring an end to them myself. I raised my eyes to hers, hoping my face did not show my intentions.

  She watched me with a shrewd expression. “A healthy start,” she said, still stroking the glass. “If this one does well, then a part of your brother will live on forever. Together we will find a strong host for him, and he will never grow old, never die. He will have children as numerous as the stars.”

  I’d heard that sort of promise before, somewhere. “What do you need me for?”

  She smiled up at me, those strawberry lips drawn up into a smile as lethal as the angel’s trumpet. “Who would be better than you to help us select potential bearers of our seed, Bertrand? You understand breeding like few others—how to look at a plant and see what traits would breed true. How could I let you molder in prison when you might learn so much here?”

  I couldn’t argue that. I did have much to learn. “Still, it is a shame about my brother,” I said, searching her eyes for a hint of remorse.

  “I have said I was sorry, Bertrand. He pressed me for my kisses, and he paid the price.”

  Not what she had told me the night before. All her words might have been lies, from the very beginning.

  She stroked a lily-scented hand up my sleeve, and that suspicion faded from my mind. I felt it slip away, like an unpleasantness forgiven after a bottle of fine wine.

  “Not on the lips,” she said, her breath on my cheek. “I am pleased you understand the importance of overcoming that desire.”

  Even dazed as I was, I kept that warning well fixed in my mind.

  * * *

  To my mother’s sorrow and my father’s ire, I didn’t escort my brother’s body back to England, leaving them to see him buried. I worried that if I left France I would return to find Anne and her kind gone, beyond my grasp. I might lose my chance for to expose them I put off my assistant’s queries so I might stay, and then the furious demands of my superiors at the Gardens.

  I studied the glass-encased bulbs fervently, wanting to understand what sort of creature would destroy its host and move on to another. The bulb stolen from my brother’s body grew leaves that resembled the fronds of the asparagus fern, a warm flesh tone much like the one I’d seen that first night. My attention kept returning to it, as if it were actually a part of my brother as Anne claimed. I might save this one, I thought, and then just as quickly reminded myself that I must, when the time came, destroy them all. I must.

  If there were aught of my brother there, I saw no sign of recognition. When Anne touched the glass, the fronds reached for the warmth of her fingers. They did not respond to me as they did to her, perhaps recognizing their own kind.

  Just as I am, inside this body. That passing comment of hers came back to me time and again.

  I had no doubt that one of these things lived inside Anne’s warm body, set inside her chest near the heart. What I did not know was whether she told me the truth—that the ‘plant’ inside maintained the hosts’ health, no more—or if it took a firmer hold of the body it inhabited. More than once I wondered if it was truly Anne Dubourg whose body I clutched at night or merely the remnant of her, a husk animated by something else altogether. The lily scent of her skin, the sweet taste of her perspiration—those hinted that she was not human any longer.

  I began to have nightmares, imagining delicate fronds unfurling throughout my own body, infiltrating or even supplanting my own flesh. I would wake entangled in Anne’s poisonous limbs, but my suspicions would fade with her touch.

  * * *

  After some days, I received an ultimatum from the Royal Botanical Gardens: return or be quit of my position. I ignored that, too, as my plan had not reached fruition. In fact, it hadn’t proceeded nearly as far as I’d hoped. I had only identified one of Anne’s compatriots by that time, the glassmaker who made the globes for her, a man who’d once worked for Lalique. But I didn’t even know his name. I couldn’t leave.

  And the bulb I’d first seen had reached maturity. Spores appeared along the undersides of those feathery fronds, and Anne declared it time to find the creature—for I knew it to have some sentience by then—a new host.

  For the first time, I wondered if that host might be me. I didn’t know whether I feared that opportunity, or craved it. Anne assured me it would only cost a fraction of my own mind. In return I would have health and long life, and eventually offspring of my own.

  And if I let them place it inside me, surely they would trust me, my mind reasoned. They would allow me into their inner circle. It would mean sacrificing myself in the end, but that would be worth it if I could achieve their destruction. Or would I be so lost to my own self that my sense of purpose would fade away?

  It would make me more of a match for Anne in every way. I had to believe that I would be strong enough to enforce my will over it, that I could defeat the designs of such a pale and fragile creature, even if it were set inside my chest next to my heart.

  * * *

  When the time came, the glassmaker came to the house. In the third floor workroom, he used a ball hammer to tap a small hole near the bottom of the globe. Seeming to recognize the danger of the shattering glass, the feathery fronds of the bulb folded inward. The stems curled up like a fern’s nascent fronds. I watched as the glassmaker removed the bulb from the broken globe and slipped it into a silken bag, hiding it away before I could even touch it.

  “Were you able to secure him?” Anne asked.

  “With no difficulties,” the man assured her. He nodded to Anne and left the workroom.

  I was clearly not the chosen one, not this time. I felt the sting of betrayal, even though she’d promised me nothing.

  “There are priorities,” she said vaguely when I regarded her with raised brows. “You will have your own soon, my love. There are others.”

  I glanced about the workroom and gestured at the shelves. Most of these specimens lacked the vigor she favored. “Where?”

  Smiling secretively, she took my hand and led me out into the hallway. She unlocked the second door and let me peer within. “You see, there are others.”

  If there were dozens in the first room, there must have been more than a hundred in this one. I ran back in my mind and counted the number of rooms that led off the hallway. Six in all, a frightening number when added together.

  “And when they are all ready?” I asked.

  “Then we will scour Paris for the best and wisest to make them of us. Like you,” she said, her hand stroking my cheek. My anger with her fled, and I breathed in her wonderful scent. And that led to other things.

  * * *

  In the morning, I stood on the steps of the house watching the early sun. I was surprised to see Lieutenant Goliarde coming up the street, finally searching me out, I assumed, to deliver news of my brother’s killer. I feared he would ruin my chances by acting too early, so I moved to intercept him before he entered the house. But he strode up the steps almost as if he didn’t see me there.

  “Lieutenant, are you here to see me?”

  He blinked at me. “Excuse me?”

  “About my brother’s death. Is that why you’re here?”

  “Your brother, monsieur?” His attention wandered to the stone of the house’s facade.

  I resisted my desire to slap him. “You were investigating my brother’s death, man,” I said. “Jeremy Everslee?”

  Goliarde regarded me as if there were nothing in his brain. “I suppose,” he said, and brushed past me into the house. He did not come out again.

  * * *

  “He was asking difficult questions,” Anne explained later that evening in the cacophony of the nightclub. “We could not afford to let him pursue his inquiries further.”

  The choice of Goliarde had been expedient, I understood then, not a slight against myself. “He seems much changed.”

  She stroked my hand in t
ime to the music. “He will regain some personality once the two parts have had a chance to merge together. And it will be useful for us to have a man among the gendarmes.”

  A man among the police. Just as it was useful to have a glassmaker in her retinue—and a botanist.

  Goliarde did improve over the next day, but I saw little resemblance to that officer I’d briefly met. He seemed healthy. His eyes took on a new innocence, and yet he eyed girls as they walked along the street as if he wished to devour them. He now seemed that which I was destined, in Anne’s greater plan, to become.

  And then I began to question if that was her intent at all, or another of her lies. Were I to become like Goliarde—a mere caricature of his former self—my skills as a botanist would be blunted.

  And then Goliarde brought back a bulb. It was small and covered with blood—but his own, he claimed proudly. I watched with narrowed eyes as Anne carefully placed it inside a new globe. At that size, my studies suggested it would not fare well.

  “Curb your eagerness next time,” Anne told Goliarde sternly. “This child of yours should have been given time to gather strength before removing it.”

  He stroked the globe and smiled down at his child regardless.

  “And when is it my turn?” I asked Anne after he’d left the house.

  “Soon,” she whispered, her strawberry lips pursing.

  Which meant never, I suspected. I was more valuable to Anne as I was—human, and vulnerable.

  She held me in her thrall. I had discovered that too late, much as I had discovered my regrettable dependence on morphine after being wounded in the war. I was addicted. I could not bear to be too long out of her presence now. My determination to avenge my brother’s murder would return when she left the flat, then turn to anxiety and sometimes even pain, only calmed by her touch and the scent of her skin.

  Given what I’d seen of Goliarde’s change, I should have been relieved. But in some part, I still craved it, and her.

  * * *

  I always rose earlier than she did. The next morning, I stood on the steps and scowled at the sunrise. A policeman walked by, swinging his nightstick.