The air was damp, drowsy with heat, and the night was full of smells both pleasant and terrible. Plants blossomed madly, but they decayed too. The city had been wrested from the nearby waters and she sometimes wondered if the water resented it. Certainly it was vigilant, always looking for a way back in. It was a fecund city—perhaps doomed. What wasn’t taken by water was slowly being pulled back into the earth by beautiful but destructive vines.
She also wondered how much longer she could remain there before people began to notice that she wasn’t aging. It wasn’t that she would mind being thought a voodoo priestess, but her fame would spread. And that would attract the two men she never wanted to see again.
Invisible hands seemed to reach out and touch her face. She turned her head aside, knowing it was only phantoms of her mind but still dreading their touch. There had been an attempted seduction and then an attempted rape. From that day forward, though she had left the Continent, a ghost had always been with her, conjured to life by her anger and hate and—yes—fear. Someday she would find a way to exorcise it. Someday.
CHAPTER FOUR
She had been expecting another down-in-the-heels hotel, but the Ybarra was fairly nice. Not too friendly though, and not fond of cats, she thought, putting down Corazon’s carrier. Of course, the feeling was mutual. The cat didn’t like places that had the nerve to insist that he be kept in a cage.
The clerk was a woman with streaky foundation that looked like it had been applied with a wide-toothed comb and allowed to harden into textured plaster like the wall behind her. She didn’t bother to smile back at Ninon. Perhaps she couldn’t without cracks. Still, Ninon sensed a certain hostility and disapproval caused part of the facial immobility—and it was undeserved because the woman didn’t know her and she had actually buttoned her blouse almost all the way to the neck. Nor was Ninon traveling alone. She had a cat with her. Women bent on licentious behavior didn’t usually bring pets.
Then Ninon saw the woman’s husband and understood the hostility. She hoped she wouldn’t have to break his fingers because he tried sneaking into her room late some night.
The man came forward from the dark alcove behind the desk, sucking on a cigarette, a man with a big chest and too little brain, one always looking for something easy to fill the void in his mind and heart. He smelled of beer and sweat. The odor leaked from his pores, telling her he was a habitual drunk. Ninon wondered if he suffered from beer impotence yet. If not yet, he would soon. Beer droop went with beer belly.
He swaggered as he walked, moving as if his cojones were too big to fit in his pants. A quick glance told her that the problem was strictly psychological. If anything, he seemed more likely to have tiny equipment. Odd, that he wasn’t aware of his shortcomings. But then many men weren’t. It just went to prove the power of the self-delusion.
Ninon smiled again at the clerk, this time recognizing that the heavy makeup was a cover for bruises, and she decided that perhaps she wouldn’t be sorry if she had to break the man’s fingers after all. Men who beat women disgusted her.
Checking in did not take long, and Ninon was pleased to discover that she had an actual shower in her room. Soap and toothpaste were not essential to her survival, but her brain preformed better when her body was comfortable. Corazon, freed from durance vile, joined her in the bathroom, as happy as she to wash the dust off his paws in the sink, though he declined the use of her shampoo or the tub.
Ninon got out of the shower and found herself being scrutinized. There was a small statuette of a feathered serpent god on the window sill, looking fearsome even in its diminutive state. She smiled. The old religions were here still, just obscured by the hardening sediment of four hundred years of enforced Catholicism. This was a good thing, at least for her purposes.
Still wet, she stood in front of the spotted mirror over the sink and examined her body. It was outwardly healed from the explosion. The burns were gone. Her only marks were the fine mesh of golden scars that covered her torso like lace. It looked like a clever tattoo, but wasn’t. These powers of recuperation still amazed her. She should have been incapacitated by the fire bomb, her skin burned black and peeling, but even with her powers waning, she had managed to stagger away from her grave with only minor burns on her chest and legs.
Still, that had been a close call. She and Corazon had left on a boat that very night, borrowed clandestinely from a neighbor, a gut-shot cocaine-trafficker who had given up smuggling but kept the yacht for auld lang syne. Or whatever. She felt that he would have approved of her actions had she taken the time to contact him.
The crossing to the main island had been rough, but she couldn’t complain about the price of passage or the slutty clothes she had found lying on one of the bunks. And once there, it was easy to join the other tourists from the cruise ship making a surf-n-turf port of call and get lost among them. She’d made a few calls from a pay phone to friends who had friends who did useful and illegal things for large sums of money, and Seraphina of California was born two days later.
She had debated sending Byron a telegram or e-mail to warn him of what had happened, but was certain that he and his lover Brice had left her home and that they were already on the run. And if they weren’t, her action might actually put them in harm’s way, alerting the authorities or even Saint Germain to the fact that the poet was alive and probably involved somehow in that incident with Dippel at Ruthven Towers. Instead, she had simply crossed into the U.S. at one of the illegal border crossings and headed for Byron’s wife’s last known address, hoping to pick up their trail on the way.
The next morning she’d heard about an “incident” where some illegals had been gunned down. It was hard not to wonder if the killers had been looking for her.
She’d known that she was too attractive to fool the other illegals in her group that she was traveling to the U.S. to pursue a career in agriculture, but no one had doubted that she would be taken care of in the land of opportunity. She looked the sort of girl who relied upon the kindness—and bedside tips—of strangers. Of course, that image only held together until someone looked into her eyes. If a person were even moderately perceptive, the role of high-priced mistress began to delaminate. A few hours in her company and the whole role came apart. Some women would never be whores. The men had wisely left her alone, and she’d left that group and joined another as soon as she could, both for her own protection and for theirs.
She’d thought about abandoning her plan. Whore wasn’t a role she needed to play often or for long, and it was unlikely that the government would be looking for her among the illegals further north, so this was safest.
So you will be going back to the States when this is done? the voice in her head had asked.
Of course. As soon as I have help with my problem.
Ninon ran a hand down her belly. Smooth—not one hint of scar tissue. Amazing. The only evidence of the fire was Corazon’s hair. Not one bit of her own body showed any damage.
She had once asked a former island friend who was a retired sports doctor—retired early for prescribing too many steroids for what were deemed trivial reasons—to check her out on the pretext that she was thinking of running a marathon. The results of the examination had astonished him and made him want to recheck the results. Her maximal heart rate was around four hundred beats per minute—nearly twice that of the cyclist Lance Armstrong. Her muscles refused to build up lactic acid so she almost never fatigued—at least not physically. Mentally she was vulnerable to exhaustion, especially near the time when her body needed to renew, but there was no way to measure that fatigue unless she gave herself over to a neurologist or headshrinker, and she didn’t want either near her.
Ninon leaned into the mirror, peering down at her legs. She smiled a little at the patch of red-gold pubic hair she had neglected to color. She would take care of it as soon as she found a drug store that carried hair dye. There had been just enough color for her head and the cat; her nether regions had had to remain
unaltered. She didn’t anticipate getting naked with anyone in the next few weeks, but she knew the importance of details. Perhaps she should just shave.
Turning, she reached for the bottle of skin tanner and began smoothing it over her body. She had to reapply it almost daily. Corazon wrinkled his nose at the scent of soggy cornflakes and hurried away. He was an hour late for his early midafternoon nap anyway.
Ninon waited for the lotion to dry and then dressed with care. She had found a lovely turquoise and sea-green blue sundress by Alfred Shaheen in an antique store in Texas and been unable to resist. She carefully adjusted the angel wings over the bust. She made a perfect vamp—seductive but the tiniest bit innocent. She hoped Miguel would approve.
She touched her dress a last time, marveling in its texture and construction. She loved the feel of the bark cloth, the color, the exquisite architecture of the dress’s form. She was an outlaw in vintage designer sheep’s clothing, she thought, grinning briefly. But so was Miguel Stuart. And that meant there were no rules of engagement that she felt compelled to honor. Anyway, she liked pretty clothing for its own sake and wore it whenever she could. To have done otherwise would be to buy a racehorse and then cut its hamstrings. Of course, in this backwater town, she’d stand out like a whore at a church social in this dress.
The thought made her grin again.
On the run for your life, and still you have time to appreciate clothes. The voice in her head was amused.
Of course. And Miguel Stuart would be coming to see her tonight. Ninon was dead certain of it. He was not the kind of man who waited politely for what he wanted.
As if to underline this fact, a short note and a bundle of flowers—bird-of-paradise obtained who knew where—were waiting for her on the bedside table when she emerged from the bathroom. She didn’t think the maid had brought them in.
You’ll have to see about securing that door tonight.
Indeed. Though legend had it that no lock could keep out a vampire, if he’d been invited.
A vampire?
Perhaps.
Ninon frowned as she looked at the tidy, straight script—likely a result of expensive schooling in Britain that even a long stay in America had not broken. It was her experience that some of the most ruthless men had the most controlled handwriting. It was about power and not being careless, ever.
Of course, it was also possible that Miguel Stuart had had his hands beaten with a tawse until the training took. Children learned what they lived. The thought of childhood made her a little sad. But only until she thought about the fact that this supposed offering was Miguel’s way of checking up on her story, and that whatever he had lived as a child, he had less than honorable intentions toward her now. Sentimental compassion was not an emotion that she could afford to indulge.
I do not know if you have cause to fear her. But, my son, if you feel you must kill her then know you do so with my blessing. However, you must act at once, before she discovers your intent and pulls on the strings of your heart with her wily hands. I have long observed her and can say with conviction that hers is not a citadel that will fall to romantic siege. Especially beware her voice, which can enslave, and also her eyes that are like an invading horde sacking one’s brain and demolishing one’s will. For where her voice and gaze fall, there even wise men are made captive, and their hearts and minds are made to burn until they are but ash which her smiling lips may blow away. She is slow to rouse, but where she finally attacks, she gives no quarter.
—Letter from the Dark Man to his son, Comte Saint Germain
So his father had also attempted a seduction and failed. This was not surprising because she was lovely as well as a vessel of power. But if she could not be had one way, then he would find another. This was dangerous, perhaps even stupid, but faint hearts did not kill fair ladies.
The beautiful magician stepped into the moonlight and raised his right arm on high. In his left hand he held a silver blade.
“I call thee, Evil Spirit, Cruel Spirit, Merciless Spirit: I call thee who sittest in the cemetery and takest away the healing of man and eatest his soul. Go and place a mark on the one called Ninon de Lenclos. Put a knot in her brain, in her eyes, in her mouth, in her tongue, in her windpipe, and put poisoned water in her belly. I call thee and those six knots that you go quickly to her and kill and bring me her soul, because I wish it. Here is payment of my blood. Amen, Amen, Amen.”
The one called Saint Germain smiled as he slashed his wrist and watched his black blood spill onto the frozen ground.
Ninon, now called Ana St. Cyr, boarded the train at Gare du Nord in an uneasy frame of mind. Standing under the metal-vaulted canopy in the cathedral of modern transportation, she had her first small frisson of disquiet. Foolishly, she did not obey the intuitive tug on her skirt that told her to return home. There was no sensible reason for her to abandon her luggage or forestall her visit to London where she had heard Lord Byron was presently staying.
She paused at the top of the steps. There were others on the train, all swaddled in scarves and buried in winter coats, but not so many as normal because the unseasonably harsh weather and illness had kept them at home. There were also few porters about, and few vendors trying to hawk their wares. An eerie quiet surrounded them.
Ninon walked along the dim corridor, the back of her neck and palms tingling in an increasingly unpleasant manner. She drew near her assigned compartment, feeling steadily more alarmed though she could perceive no peril in the deserted car.
The car shifted as though buffeted by a strong wind. The hair on her nape began to rise and something tickled at the back of her throat, a bit of poisoned air perhaps. Ozone was gathering, a lightning storm.
But that was impossible. Not inside the train station.
Danger. She couldn’t ignore it any more. Something bad was close by. Perhaps a ghost. Perhaps something worse.
Ninon stopped. She took a deep breath, allowing her eyes to focus on the curtained glass of the door across from her. Glass, mirrors, still pools all induced in her a hypnagogic state where she could access other senses. She stared into the glass, looking past her reflection.
Something moved inside. Something man-sized, but not man-shaped. And dark. A vague scent of rot and sulfur floated toward her.
Dippel? Could it be him? Or one of his sick creations? But why? And why here?
The train began to move, pulling her off balance in her tiny heeled slippers. She put a hand to the wall and turned her head slowly in the dark shape’s direction. There! At the end of the corridor, someone waited behind an opened door. Someone very large with black shoes and dark woolen pants.
The feet moved, rocking forward slyly, and she saw that it wasn’t shoes at all. She was looking at hooves. And the thing wasn’t wearing trousers, it had knotted legs covered in fur. As she watched in frozen horror, a long snout eased around the corner of the door, drool running down the long tusks that burst out of the mask of bristling quills. Horns glittered on its bull-sized head. A long black tongue unrolled, flicking in her direction. She thought to herself that this impossible thing had to be a hallucination.
Then it looked into her eyes and smiled.
Revulsion rolled through her body, freeing her limbs. She turned and fled back toward the door where she had boarded, intent on nothing except escape. She had seen ghosts, and felt the final trembling shivers of malevolent magic worked in a desecrated graveyard that had been looted by Dippel, but never experienced anything like this.
Demon. The word popped into her head. Then: Saint Germain. Was this a rejected suitor’s revenge? He was certainly egotistical enough to want her dead.
The stench warned her first. She stopped so suddenly that her legs nearly slid out from under her a second time. As it was, she still nearly ran into the thing—or another thing that looked just like the first one—that stepped into the corridor from the opposite end of the car, its ape-like arms spread wide. Taloned hands with too many fingers reached for her. It
s head slashed from side to side as though demonstrating how it would gut her with its horns when it had her pinned to the floor.
With a scream that died before it escaped, strangled in her throat by terror, Ninon thrust open the first door she backed into and tumbled into the empty compartment, slamming the door with all her fear-induced strength. The small window cracked and glass tinkled behind the curtain.
No lock. Not that any man-made device would stop the infernal thing, especially not if it was a thing of the mind.
Hail Mary, full of grace—blessed is she among women—
The train was running fast now, but Ninon didn’t care. All that mattered was escape and finishing her frantic prayer.
She rolled to her feet and lunged at the window, tearing off her thick coat. Using all her strength she wrenched open the frozen sash. Behind her, the door was flung wide and something cold and loathsome began to pour into the room.
Not wasting another instant, even to look back at what stalked her, Ninon threw herself off of the train, legs kicking violently as she propelled her weight over the fulcrum of the windowsill. She prayed that there was not another train approaching on the opposite tracks where her body landed, and began to tumble with a distressing cracking sound that meant bones were breaking as well as corset stays.
The somersault finally ended. Snow swirled around her as she fought for a first painful breath.
No train. Merci, bon Dieu! Though, even if there had been, terror would have still forced her from the window. An iron horse did not scare her as badly as that creature did.
She rolled onto her back, unable to breathe smoothly through the pain in her ribs, and watched as the locomotive disappeared. She couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to her that there was something impossibly huge and dark bulging out of the window she had just exited. Was it flesh, or was it phantom? Probably it didn’t matter. If luck favored her, the demons would return to their summoner and demand he provide them with his own life as payment for their loss. She’d never been that lucky, though. He’d buy his way out somehow. The best she could reasonably hope for was that Saint Germain would be so inconvenienced by the monsters’ demands that he would not call for these evil things again.
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