A Drop of Night

by Stefan Bachmann

  He’s shuddering. His whole body is jerking, twitching back and forth like a bad frame of celluloid film. He pauses, motionless, slouched between the mirrors, head lowered, eyes turned up. His reflections extend away behind him, into infinity. They grin and he grins, lips stretching, eyes dull and fevered.

  He drops the tracker. It’s dead now. Will charges toward him. Hayden’s faster. One second he’s standing, hands empty, and the next he has a gun, and the barrel is jammed against Will’s head. Jules makes a cracked, frightened sound, tries to do something, maybe run. Hayden flicks a long steel blade to Jules’s throat, stopping him in his tracks.

  “Hayden?” I whisper.

  Will dives, tries to slash at Hayden’s stomach. Hayden twitches again. His arm sails down, up, so fast I can barely see it, and the grip of the handgun connects with the back of Will’s head.

  “Hayden!”

  “Give the Bessancourts my warmest regards,” Hayden says, and his voice is dead in his throat, thin and metallic. He’s holding Will up by his neck now, one arm snaked around him. “Tell them I win this round.”

  A rattling echoes through the hall. The mirrors begin to move, sliding around.

  I get one last glimpse of Jules and Hayden and Will, frozen in a horrible triptych. Now the mirrors slam into place, and it’s just Lilly and me, and rank upon rank of trackers.

  Palais du Papillon—Salle du Sang Rouge—116 feet below, 1790

  “What have you done?” I breathe. “Father, what have you done?”

  He stands behind me, one hand resting awkwardly on the back of a chair as if he is proud, as if he waits to be carved into monuments and painted on a great canvas. Little tears glisten in the corners of his eyes. He does not answer me.

  I step toward Mother. It is some trickery—strings and mirrors. It must be. I saw her die. I heard the bullet and saw the blood, and Jacques carried down her lifeless body.

  But it is Mama. These are her eyes, blue as cornflowers, with the little scar under one of them like a scratch of moonlight. This is her smile, shy and beautiful, as though she never saw any ill in the world, as though Father and the palace and her brief, sad life were all some strange play, and if she pretended diligently enough the curtain would fall, and the actors would vanish, the lavish sets, too, and she could leave the stage behind her and wander into the fields and the sun. “Aurélie,” she says again. I cannot stop myself: I hurry to her and kneel by her chair. “Mama?”

  She gazes down at me, her face full of tenderness.

  “Mama, how—?”

  “How what, my darling?” She laughs. “Why are you making these silly faces?”

  I am close to laughing, myself, close to leaping up and embracing her and smothering her in kisses. I feel her hand on my cheek. It is cold, colder than ice and marble. I look back at Father.

  “Do my sisters know? Delphine and Bernadette and Charlotte, have they seen her?”

  “No,” Father says, licking his lips. “You are my eldest. I wanted you to be the first to see. Is she not sublime?”

  “They must know! She is their mother and they think she is dead; can you not understand how they must have wept—”

  I look back at Mama. She reaches out to touch my cheek again, but this time she misses and her hand drops to the armrest, a deadweight. She does not attempt to raise it again. She continues to sit, slumped in the chair, smiling.

  “Mama?” I say, and now to Father: “What did you do to her? Father, she is not the same.” Panic is gripping me. I blink away the tears, but they are forming too quickly, flooding their dams. “Father, she died, I saw it, she was dead.”

  Father looks on, his mouth twitching into a smile, his gaze crawling over my face.

  I crouch next to Mama and grip her arm. “Mama,” I say. “Do you remember the château, Mama? The tree we used to eat under in the arbor, what sort of tree was it? Mama, what was it?”

  She continues to smile. “Aurélie,” she says, and her voice is low, a thread of wind in the shrubs, in the rosebushes. “My beautiful, beautiful daughter . . .”

  It is as if she is asleep. She sees me, but it is as if I am a dream to her, a wisp of thought somewhere deep in the vaults of her mind. I clench her poor, cold arm. “Mama, do you remember the tree? Please remember!”

  And all at once, she twitches, like an animal with its back broken.

  “Mama, what’s the matter?”

  Havriel takes a step toward us.

  “Mama?”

  Her eyes begin to change. I see veins in them, strands of black, spreading through the blue. She seems to realize something is wrong, and it is as if she is surfacing, her head coming up out of a deep inky pool. It is my real mother, Mama, awake. Alive. She looks directly at me, and she sees me.

  “Aurélie?” she says. Her voice is panicked. I smell smoke and flames, see her pale hand coated in her own blood, wearing it like a gory ornament. “Aurélie, my daughter, do not leave me behind.”

  Now the veins spread like a wild thicket, unstoppable, and her eyes flood black.

  I jerk to my feet, backing away. Mama writhes, contorting in her chair. “Father, what did you do? What did you do to her?” I scream.

  Father is shaking, crying. “We brought her back,” he says. “We found the key, hidden in the branches, and we gave her life. . . .” He stops shaking. His gaze drifts far away. “We made her eternal.”

  A cold hand clamps my wrist, and I spin to face the thing that was my mother. It is staring at me. It is still smiling, but there is no kindness left there. Only hunger.

  Its head tilts oddly. It opens its mouth. A long tongue slides out, purple and mottled. “Aurélie,” it whispers. “Aurélieeeeeee.”

  Havriel pushes past me. He grips Mama, and she shrieks, slashing at him with hands that are suddenly clawlike, white skin stretched tight over bone. She struggles. Havriel is stronger. He is strapping her to the chair, and the chair has wheels, and he is leaning it back, pushing it away, and she is thrashing, her head whipping like a snake, smiling eyes, smiling lips, and that great purple tongue.

  The doors slam behind her, and I still hear her screams, echoing through the palace.

  “It was an apple tree,” I whisper, when she is gone and it is only Father and I, standing in the red glow and the shadows. “We used to eat under the apple tree.”

  46

  Click. The lights in their helmets ignite. Another click. The trackers start toward us, fast.

  I bring up my gun in an arc, my finger on the trigger. A split second before I shoot, the mirrors swing around. The whole space rearranges itself, revealing the trackers, obscuring them. The spindly gilt poles aren’t supports. They’re hinges, and what used to be one long hallway is now dozens of tiny blocks—passages, corners, dead ends.

  A maze.

  “Move, Lilly,” I whisper. “Anywhere, just move.”

  We start for the nearest opening, my hand scrabbling across the glass. I glance over, see my reflection hurrying next to me, a whole row of mes. I hear the trackers, I think, on the other side. Pounding boots and the soft creak of bodysuits. I can’t hear Jules or Hayden or Will. No voices.

  We turn a corner and almost collide with a pair of trackers. Before I can even react, one of them lashes out, tarry fingers pinching into my throat. I try to bring my gun up. The tracker catches my wrist with its other arm. I kick out desperately. My foot connects with its shin. Pain explodes in my jaw, fear and shock—it’s trying to lift me by my head—and I hear a gunshot, so close it’s like a punch to the ear. The hand around my neck loosens. I drop, start crawling over the floor. A second gunshot.

  “Lilly?”

  She’s next to me, staring at her gun like it’s some kind of disgusting metal slug. I stagger to my feet, and we’re running again, dodging around the mirrors. Footsteps seem to be approaching from all directions. Everywhere I turn I see helmets, red lights, slicing black legs, and I don’t know if they’re reflections or if they’re right there, inches away from me.r />
  Another three trackers burst out diagonally in front of us. They spot us. Whirl. We skid to the right, dart down a short passage, left, left again, deeper into the maze. And now we’re at a dead end, hemmed in on three sides by mirrors.

  I spin, feeling for an opening. I see something skim past. I run for it. And slam against solid glass. I reel back, hot blood trickling from my nose and into my mouth.

  “Whoa,” I say shakily, turning to Lilly. “Whoa, that was—”

  Lilly gasps.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “I’m fine, we—”

  Three trackers are standing at the entrance to the dead end. Another one approaches. Four, five-six-seven, silent and glittering.

  What are they waiting for?

  My eyes flick to the left. We’re trapped. I see Lilly and myself in the glass, desperate, frozen.

  Wait.

  One of the reflections isn’t Lilly.

  About four reflections in is a shape. It’s matching its pose to Lilly’s, head down, arms limp at its sides. But it’s not Lilly. It’s the woman in the dripping red dress. And suddenly she skips a mirror as easily as stepping through a doorway and starts toward us.

  Oh please no. I reach out to touch the glass. It isn’t glass. It’s air. The woman picks up speed, coils into a crouch, and launches herself upward. The trackers leap toward us.

  I grab the first thing I can get out of my pocket: the steel globe with a button at the top. I jam the button and hurl it. The globe cracks against the first tracker’s helmet. Rolls away. Seriously?

  The woman rams into the trackers, and she’s like a tiny vicious hurricane. She swings through them, sinuous and savage, a whirl of red, her arms wrapping necks and legs, breaking them. I catch a glimpse of teeth, long and spiny.

  Lilly and I dive through the opening between the mirrors and feel our way down a passageway. I glance back over my shoulder. I can still see her. She’s corpse white and hunched, and her dress is in tatters, whirling around her like a cloud. She hurls a tracker into a mirror and turns, looking toward us. She’s not breathing hard. She’s not breathing at all. Her eyes are dead black.

  A tracker strikes her aside and heads our way. It never gets a chance to run. The woman catches it by the neck. I spin forward again, but I hear the sound it makes, the bite.

  That thing is not human.

  None of them are.

  Slam, slam.

  The mirrors keep shifting. Something’s coming after us.

  We’re in another compartment, three walls of glass. Another dead end. I hear something running. I hear someone muttering close by, right next to me, then veering away.

  Lilly, I mouth. Gesture toward a gap in the mirrors. We’re going to have to backtrack.

  Snick—soft as a fingernail paring. And there’s the woman, her head emerging between the mirrors.

  I freeze. White skin, glossy and hard like stone. No hair. Not even eyelashes. Her wig’s gone. She blinks once, translucent lids over black. She slides into the compartment, lithe as a cat.

  “Stay back,” I hiss, pulling a knife out of my belt. “Stop, do not come any closer!”

  She lets out an ear-shattering shriek.

  I lash out, and she dodges. Skitters to the side. Now she leaps forward, catching me behind the knees. My legs fold. I fall and my head slams into glass.

  She vaults onto my stomach. Liquid like dirty water is flowing from her dark eyes. She’s sniffling, crying.

  “Aurélie?” she says. One of her hands flies up, and the hand has claws, spiny thin like a cat’s—

  Over her left shoulder, a harsh zapping sound.

  The thing falls in a heap on my chest.

  Lilly’s standing behind her, an expression of sheer horror on her face. She’s holding my Taser. We stare at each other. I push the woman off and scramble to my feet. The woman has a smile on her face even though she’s stunned, convulsing on the floor. Her eyes are open, flipping back and forth between us, and there’s a little scar under one of them, like a scratch of moonlight.

  47

  We follow the glow of reflected light, three turns, straight ahead. Now we’re out of the maze, in a music room with a gilt spinet. A tropical jungle mural is painted on all four walls, lush and colorful, bright birds peeking through the brushstroke undergrowth. There’s a door in each wall. We head for the one straight ahead.

  The lights are on. Finally, finally, the lights are on again.

  “We’ll get them,” I whisper. We’re clinging to each other, stumble-running like a couple of drunks. “We’ll find them; it’ll be okay.”

  But I don’t know that. When we get out, Jules said, like it’s a foregone conclusion. It’s not. It’s wishful thinking.

  A voice, soft and singsong, drifts after us out of the hall of mirrors.

  “Aurélieeee.”

  I let go of Lilly and surge ahead. Rip open the doors of the music room. Step into a gallery. It runs perpendicular to the music room, like the crossbar on a T. There’s another door straight across from me. And about thirty feet away, at the end of the gallery: people. Way too many people.

  It’s a triangle formation of trackers, waiting like inky statues.

  Dorf and Miss Sei are next to them, sitting at a table in high-backed gilt chairs, like they’re posing for a portrait. Miss Sei’s legs are crossed elegantly. Dorf’s hand is resting on the marble tabletop. They both have guns.

  I freeze. Right in the middle of the gallery, like a deer caught in headlights. Behind me, still in the music room, Lilly does, too.

  “Anouk,” Dorf calls out, and his voice echoes, deep and final, like a funeral bell.

  The trackers start toward me. Three steps and they’ve accelerated to full speed. They’re flashing past Dorf and Miss Sei, straight for me.

  They haven’t seen Lilly. She’s still in the music room. I have a split second to make a decision.

  “Lilly?” I keep my voice low, without turning. “Get back, go, RUN!”

  And I throw myself forward across the gallery. I burst through the doors opposite, spin, start closing them. I see Lilly through the narrowing crack. She’s running back through the music room toward the hall of mirrors—

  I slam my doors, kick in the floor peg. Something massive crashes against them, rattling the hinges. I run blindly into the next room, the next, not even trying to lock anything after me. This was your idea, Anouk. This whole thing, it was your stupid plan, and now we’re separated, waiting to be picked off like ducks on a carnival conveyor belt.

  The doors to the gallery crash open. They’re catching up. I dive behind a sofa, coughing, gasping.

  Four trackers burst in. I empty my clip into them. When I stand, there are four bodies on the floor. My hands are shaking.

  “Lilly?” I whisper to the empty room. But Lilly’s gone. I’m on my own.

  Palais du Papillon—112 feet below, 1790

  A serving woman, huge as an ogress, leads me back to my chambers. Her face is a weary mask, her apron filthy. She smells of onions and dirt and sour milk, and yet I feel a strange sort of companionship with her as we trudge up staircases, through chamber after opulent chamber, these treasure rooms of ruby, jet, and emerald. She held a blindfold when she came for me, and perhaps she meant to use it, but she took one look at my reddened eyes and twisted it into her fist. I suppose I should be grateful for this kindness. Or perhaps she should be grateful, for had she tried to bind my eyes, I might have scratched out hers.

  A cold, iron numbness has taken hold of me and settled into my bones. Somewhere deep inside I feel rage, hot enough to melt glass, but I cannot reach it. I stare straight ahead of me, and I try to keep my feet moving, try to forget the cracking of my heart, Mama’s face when she cried out to me.

  We arrive at my chambers. The serving woman unlocks the door and stands aside. She is so still, a great brooding mountain, delicate and hulking both at once. I turn to face her, my eyes pleading.

  “Madam,” I say quickly. “Madam, I beg of you
, let me—”

  But she will not look at me. She lowers her head and pushes me hurriedly through the doors. I hear them slam shut, the wrench of the lock sliding home.

  I slide to the floor and lie in a heap. Still I do not cry. I feel as though I could, feel a strained cord of muscle in my chest, fit to snap, but no tears will fall. All I can think is: We must get away from here. Delphine, Bernadette, Charlotte, Jacques, me. We must escape.

  Jacques finds me this way and pulls me upright, crushing me to him. “They are mad here,” I whisper, and bury my face in his collar. Only now do the tears come, hot and endless, wetting the linen of his shirt.

  “I know,” he says, but he doesn’t. He cannot know the depths of their madness. I try to explain to him what I saw, what has become of Mama.

  He holds me more tightly with every word, and when I am finished there is no shock or outrage from him. Only grim, weary determination. “It is not just la marchioness Célestine,” he says, and I stiffen. “We found Marie-Clair in a chamber near the edge of the palace. She was barely sixteen, one of the youngest. They had emptied her of blood, taken parts of her, and that pale thing in the room . . . Monsieur Vallé saw it walking today in the western wing, free as you like. He said it turned to look at him, and its face opened like a wound. They are keeping it—”

  I push away from him, straightening. “You are here,” I say, steadying my voice and steadying my chin. “That is what matters. I trust your arrival in my chambers means you know the way out?”

  Jacques almost smiles at that. Through the grime and the tiredness, his eyes become merry and warm. “Always straight to business goes Aurélie du Bessancourt. You should be a shopkeeper.” His gaze darkens again. “I have found your sisters, yes. They are safe and as well as can be hoped. And I have found a way out. We will go today. Now, if you will allow it.”

  “If I allow it?” I am laughing now, though my tears have not yet dried. “You tell me this now, when you might have told me the moment you stepped inside? Of course I will allow it, you great oaf! Havriel and Father will be distracted. They will not expect an escape. We must hurry!”