That was interesting. And probably right. It was Peter’s association with me that had changed Jeremiah’s mind. “Hey, I’m sorry if I messed things up for you,” I said. “But the real question isn’t whether or not these people can trust you. It’s the other way around.”
“Are you giving me advice?” He bristled. “Because—”
“I’m not,” I said, exasperated. “Do whatever you’ve got to do. But why didn’t you tell me, at least? I was in my room.”
“What could you have done, Katy?”
“I don’t know. Something.” I threw him a dark look as I turned to leave the room. “I have to do something.”
• • •
It was a long journey to the house in Vincennes, most of it by bus. For a while I just stared out the window as the scenery changed from city to country, but my mind kept going back to Marie-Therèse.
Don’t let your imagination run away with you, I told myself. She might not even be at the Poplars, although I couldn’t imagine anywhere else she might have been taken. But even if my worst fears were true, there wasn’t anything I could do until I got there.
To calm my nerves, I took the remaining pages of Azrael’s manuscript out of my bag. Reading it would at least pass the time until I could either make sure Marie-Therèse was all right or get her out of that place.
Toujours
Jean-Loup arrived late for the ritual, and left the abbey in search of his carriage as soon as it was over. He didn’t worry about Drago; the evil whelp would have no difficulty finding his own way back to the farm. Jean-Loup was never certain whether or not Drago was even in the house with him. He moved like smoke, silent and invisible, unless he wanted something. Then he would appear with a terrifying presence, making it clear that he was the new master of the house.
In the courtyard of the abbey, Henry slipped his arm in Jean-Loup’s just as the old man was about to fall on the uneven stones of the pavement. “You shouldn’t have come alone,” he said. “I could have brought you.”
“How pleasant that would have been.” Since Henry’s return, Jean-Loup had made a point of keeping a certain distance between them. He knew that if he ever asked for help against Drago, Henry would do everything he could, including dying in the old man’s service. And he would die, Jean-Loup was sure of that. Against Drago, neither of them would stand a chance.
“You’ve delivered the gold?”
“Every month, Captain Loup,” Henry said. “You don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
“Good, good,” the old man answered. “I appreciate that.” He patted Henry’s hand. “And you. Are you doing well?”
“Wonderfully well,” Henry said, fairly bursting with happiness. He looked up at one of the windows of the abbey, where Sophie smiled and waved to him, her diamonds sparkling in the torchlight.
Jean-Loup sighed.
“Are you all right?” Henry asked as he helped the old man into his carriage.
“Yes, quite.” He knocked for the driver to go, then tipped his hat to Henry. There was no point in warning him that by allowing himself to be entranced by Sophie de la Soubise, Henry was playing with fire. How could he, when he himself had such an intimate familiarity with Hell? Jean-Loup knew well that he and Henry Shaw had both already been burned beyond redemption.
• • •
When he came in sight of his house, Jean-Loup saw that a carriage he did not recognize was outside, the horses still bridled and stomping with hunger. There were a number of other horses tethered to the post as well.
Visitors? He had not had a visitor since Henry’s homecoming a hundred years ago. With a sinking feeling of foreboding, he walked through the open front door. A half-dozen men in makeshift uniforms rose and faced him.
“Are you Jean-Loup de Villeneuve?” one of the soldiers asked in guttural French.
“Yes,” he answered, looking from one Revolutionary soldier to another.
“We are confiscating this house in the name of the people of France.”
Jean-Loup was taken aback. What reason would they have to come here, to this tumbledown farmhouse in the middle of the countryside? There was nothing for them. . . .
But of course there was. He realized what the “soldiers”—who were as far removed from trained military men as the women in the Abbey of Lost Souls were from religious nuns—had come for. One of them hefted a bag of gold in his hand. Another placed his foot on top of a chest that Jean-Loup knew was filled with treasures, including the necklace that Charlemagne had given Veronique. “Where’d you get this?”
“My savings,” Jean-Loup said, although he knew that whatever he told them would not matter. He was done for.
The soldier whose foot was resting on the chest sneered. “Then you are guilty of hoarding gold that the Revolution needs,” he said. The others laughed. He scratched his belly. “What is it he was hoarding, boys?” he asked. “Not this.” He gave the treasure chest a little kick. “This is for our expenses.”
“I think he was hoarding this,” another man said, pulling Veronique’s gold heart pendant from his pocket. He squinted at the inscription. “Mon amour toujours,” he read. “Very sweet.”
Jean-Loup lunged at him. It was the perfect opportunity for the soldiers to beat him with whatever came to hand. Once he was on the ground, they kicked him until he was unconscious.
CHAPTER
•
FORTY-ONE
By the time I got to the Poplars, it was nearly dark. I didn’t know how I’d get in, but for once I was lucky: One of the servants was out in the back courtyard gathering firewood, and the kitchen door to the house was open. Moving as quickly and carefully as I could, I dashed inside and made it up the stairs without running into anyone.
Here were the bedrooms that Marie-Therèse and I never got to see during our visit. And I was willing to bet they were all empty. I flung open the first door I came to. It was dark inside, and I snapped on the light.
To my horror, I saw a frail, ancient woman lying in the bed. Shocked at my entrance, she whimpered and tried to shield her eyes with her hand.
“Oh, excuse me, I’m sorry,” I said, flipping off the light. I was closing the door when the woman spoke.
“Katy?” she croaked.
I stopped dead where I stood, unsure if I’d heard anything at all.
“Katy?” she repeated.
Suddenly air whooshed into my lungs, and I realized that I’d forgotten to breathe for some time. “Who . . .” Oh, no. Oh, God, no. “Marie-Therèse?” I whispered.
“Take me . . .” She tried to sit up. I ran to her side to help her, and turned on the lamp by her bed. “. . . out of here,” she rasped.
She was almost unrecognizable. It was as if she had aged forty years literally overnight. Yesterday, Marie-Therèse hadn’t appeared to be anywhere near eighty years old, but now she seemed too aged to even be alive. Her head, once covered with a beautiful coiffure of white hair, was now nearly bald except for a few stringy strands that lay across her pink scalp. Her once-beautiful face was now a map of wrinkles and brown spots. Her hands were like claws, their bones stark beneath her papery skin. And she was so thin! She looked as if she’d lost fifty pounds or more. But how could that be? It had been only one day since I’d seen her.
It couldn’t be Marie-Therèse, I decided. I must not have heard her right. “Ma’am, I’m sorry I disturbed you,” I said, reaching for the bedside light.
She grabbed my hand. “Don’t leave me!” she hissed.
With her touch, I felt every experience that Marie-Therèse and I had shared—our first trip to this place, my botched magic spell, her birthday party. The memories weren’t clear. They sparked in and out of one another like dreams. Like a mind crossing into senility.
So old. What had happened?
“Who did this?” I asked. There wasn’t enough time to ask politely. “Jeremiah?”
“Jere . . .” She looked up at me with haunted eyes.
“How did he
do this to you?”
“No,” she said, her voice raspy. “Not Jeremiah. The . . .” She blinked once, slowly. “. . . the young one.”
I stumbled, nearly falling on top of the old woman. “The young one?” I repeated stupidly as I felt my stomach drop. “You mean Peter?”
Marie-Therèse’s eyes were closed.
“Was it Peter?” I shouted as I put my arms around her and lifted her out of the bed.
She was so light, as if she had no blood left in her.
“Answer me!”
Just then the door opened, and the maid I’d tried to talk to on our last visit stood staring, aghast. For a moment she didn’t move as she took in the sight of me screaming at an unconscious old woman in my arms. Then she recognized me, and turned abruptly to leave.
“No, don’t go, don’t go,” I hushed. Gently, I lay Marie-Therèse back onto the bed and rushed over to the maid. “Your name’s Rose, isn’t it?” I spoke quickly, careful not to touch her. She’d panicked the last time I’d done that. She’d also been thinking that she didn’t want to watch anyone else die. Those words had been shooting through the pores in her body.
“Help me get her out of here,” I said quietly. “No one’s going to blame you, I swear. But we have to talk.”
Rose’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s too late,” she whispered. “None of them lasts more than a day or two.”
Fear was drying out my mouth. “Are there many . . . like her?”
She shook her head. “Not now.” She spoke as if she was in a daze. “They’re all gone.” She nodded toward Marie-Therèse. “She’ll be gone soon too, that one.”
Suddenly she jerked her head toward the door. “Miss, you’d better—”
The butler stood in the doorway. With a glance, he sent Rose out of the room. “Take it,” he said.
I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Take what?”
“Take her last breath. The Master has saved her for you.”
I closed my eyes. This couldn’t be happening. What I’d been reading about wasn’t real. It was a story! You couldn’t really take a person’s last breath, as if it were some kind of good-luck charm.
How many people knew about Azrael’s book, anyway?
“Quickly, mademoiselle. She is expiring.”
I went over to Marie-Therèse and put my arms around her. She seemed so frail, as if she were a sculpture made of dry leaves. So helpless. So doomed.
“Yes, that’s it.” The horrid butler moved close to me on his silent, predatory feet. His eyes were wide with anticipation. His thick lips touched and parted, like a fish feeding. “You will enjoy it, mademoiselle. The Master has provided a very special treat. Just position your head . . .”
Then his big clammy hand touched the back of my head and pushed it toward Marie-Therèse’s face. In that instant I felt all the cowardice and venality that coursed through the man’s veins. He was a heinous excuse for a human being, a toady for forces too evil to imagine.
“Get away from me!” I shouted, ducking out of his grasp.
“But—” For a moment he seemed bewildered that I could possibly turn down such an enticing offer. But in another moment his expression turned hard with anger. “Very well,” he said as he bent over my friend. “Her life’s end will not be wasted.” It was perfectly clear what he was about to do.
I threw five fingers out at the bedside lamp. It levitated instantly, then followed my direction to smash into the side of the man’s head. “You filthy pig,” I said.
He lunged toward me. I sent a porcelain figurine crashing into the middle of his forehead.
He reeled backward. “I’ll notify the Enclave of your visit,” he said, trying to muster his butler’s dignity while a red goose egg grew between his eyes. “Someone will be coming for you shortly. Someone you won’t be able to hurt so easily.”
“Ooh, I’m scared,” I said, thwacking him with Marie-Therèse’s shoes.
“I’m afraid the authorities will have to be contacted as well. Whatever you’ve done to this patient . . .”
“Get out of here,” I said as I moved back beside my friend. Marie-Therèse looked like a waif, lying in the middle of the white sheet. Her eyes were clouded. And open, fixed. She was dead.
I felt the air rush out of my lungs. I hadn’t been able to save her after all. My vision wavered with tears as I closed her papery eyelids.
“Don’t think for a minute that you’re going to get away with this,” the butler panted from across the room. His eyes darted back and forth, trying to anticipate what I was going to send his way next. “I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”
“You do that.” I flicked five fingers at him, and a huge mahogany table crushed him against the wall as I walked out.
CHAPTER
•
FORTY-TWO
There wasn’t much left of Azrael’s manuscript to read, only a few more pages. But I knew now that it wasn’t just a story. Somehow, in some way I didn’t yet quite understand, the ancient tale of Jean-Loup de Villeneuve affected me in a very personal way.
What I did understand was that the aura surrounding the house called the Poplars was coming from the Darkness. The Darkness, my old friend. It had almost killed me once; now it loved me as its own.
The Master has saved her for you . . . a very special treat . . .
The Master.
Yes, I knew who that was. What it was. And I guessed it remembered me, too.
I sorted out the pages, but it took me a while to be able to concentrate. It wasn’t what the butler had said that preyed on my mind. He’d been trying to scare me, but I’d already seen too much to fall for that line about sending the police after me. He knew as well as I did that the Enclave had killed Marie-Therèse. It had happened just as I’d feared it would, only on a different day.
“It was the young one,” Marie-Therèse had said.
What I hadn’t known was that her killer had been Peter.
Going Home
Jean-Loup awoke near dawn. His left eye was swollen shut, and his hair was stuck to the floor where he had lain in a pool of his own coagulating blood. With a groan, he pushed himself into a sitting position. His sides and back were already mottled with bruises, and he felt a constant nausea in his belly from the beating he’d endured.
He stumbled out of his house. His carriage and horses had been stolen. His treasures were gone too, all of them: Charlemagne’s necklace, the pot that Henry Shaw had turned to gold, the golden heart he’d made long ago for a black-haired woman with violet eyes.
Mon amour toujours. My love forever.
Nothing was forever. That was God’s ultimate revenge for cheating death, the lesson learned by all who lived too long: There was no such thing as forever.
“Veronique!” he cried, falling to his knees in the dry earth.
He wanted to stay there until the life left his body, but death is cruel and slow. It brought insects and filth and the stink of rotting flesh. It brought Drago and his kind, eager and hungry.
“No,” he said aloud. “No, I will not wait for him to gobble me up like ripe fruit.”
And so Jean-Loup began to walk, not toward anything in particular, but away. Away from the house that had been stripped of everything that had made it a home. Away from the horrid perversion his life had become.
By the time the sun came up, the house was out of sight. Nine hours later he arrived back in Paris. Where else, he thought as he watched a Revolutionary guard smash a woman’s face with the butt of his musket. All roads led here, to the center of the apocalypse.
Then he heard loud gunfire, close enough that Jean-Loup could smell the cordite. A group of five or six young men were running down the street, with a cadre of soldiers some distance behind. One of the men fell in front of him, his head exploding like a melon.
Jean-Loup looked about in confusion and fear. He knew the soldiers wouldn’t care if they shot him by mistake. Turning swiftly, he followed the young men who were being pursued in
to an old building and down the stairs into the earthen basement, where they disappeared.
The old man searched frantically for them, but when he heard the soldiers thundering down the stairs, he had to run anywhere he could. Perhaps he could find a corner littered with debris somewhere that the guards might overlook, he thought, scrambling into the darkness.
But he never reached the corner. There was no corner. The basement of the building was part of the complex underground configuration of tunnels that had honeycombed the limestone beneath the city since the time of the Romans.
Some of the tunnels were well used, even by respectable citizens. There were occasional torches, and even signs on some walls indicating which streets were above. Once or twice Jean-Loup thought he saw the young men he had followed from the street, but they were much faster than he was, and he lost them, although he continued to hear the shouts of the guards. He knew they would not trouble themselves to question him about whether or not he was associated with the others. After this long and tiring chase, the soldiers would make a game out of snuffing out his life as painfully as possible.
So he ran willy-nilly into the darkest and most narrow tunnels he encountered, into the catacombs, where King Louis had decreed that the bodies in the city’s fetid cemeteries be transferred; and past them into the horrific, stinking pits where multitudes of headless corpses recently killed lay putrefying. At one point he screamed as he tripped over one of the bodies and felt its slimy flesh under his hands, but he kept running. Running, and then walking in stages steadily down, farther, farther, until the air grew still and cold and he could no longer hear the orders issued by the guards.
Why didn’t I let them kill me? he asked himself.
He had long ago tired of living. But soon he realized the futility of even asking the question. It no longer made any difference whether he lived or died. He just kept walking.
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