by Nancy Morse
The sputtering candle cast the room in shifting darkness, but his keen eyesight saw the goose bumps that raced over her naked flesh. “I do not know,” she said. “When I was a little girl, she was loving and kind. And then, she was not. When maman died, Madame came to me and said ‘cher, I will teach you the things you must know to woo men and destroy them.’ I said if that is what I must do, I will do it. But only to make money to feed myself, not to destroy anyone.”
“And what did she say to that?”
“She laughed, and said that when I am used by enough men, I will want to destroy them all. I do not understand what she meant by that. Do you, monsieur?”
If Sabine Sejour was indeed inhabited by that evil witch Lienore, he knew full well what she meant. “No,” he lied, “I cannot imagine. Tell me, Marie, how long has your mother been dead?”
“Two years.”
“And you have been selling your body to those ruffians since you were fourteen? How dreadful. Well, there will be no more of that. And enough of this monsieur stuff. You will call me Nicholas. That is my name. Now run along and put on some clothes. As lovely as you are without them, I wouldn’t want you to catch cold.”
“But what about you, Nicholas?” she sweetly inquired. “Your skin is so cold. You are sick, maybe?”
He thought back to those nights in London with Prudence, when he had initiated her into the world of vampire sex and she had asked him if he was ill due to the coldness of his flesh.
“I am plagued by an illness you cannot understand,” he replied. “One for which there is no cure.”
“Ah, I see,” she murmured with false understanding. “Like the illness that keeps you so hard.” Her hand slid between them to cup his phallus. “I will have to work very hard to satisfy you.”
There was nothing in the mortal world that could satisfy him, Nicholas thought bitterly as he nudged her hand away. Not the tight pink lips between her thighs, nor the sweet lips of her mouth, providing a momentary sating of animal lust, nothing more, nothing less.
There was only one thing that could satisfy him deep within his being, and it was the blue-eyed immortal who hated him. He left the little whore and went out into the night, his footsteps against the wooden planks of the banquette making no sound as he turned the corner and headed in the direction of Rue Bourbon.
Chapter 14
Babette answered the knock at the door and showed Nicholas into the parlor where James was seated on an upholstered settee reading the day’s edition of Moniteur de la Louisiane.
“It’s a good thing you are fluent in French,” Nicholas remarked of the French-language newspaper.
“Ah, my friend, how good of you to come.” James placed the newspaper aside and rose to greet him with a handshake. “Yes, my years in Paris prepared me well.”
Gesturing toward the newspaper, Nicholas inquired, “Anything interesting?”
“It seems every day there are new hostilities between the Creoles and Americans. Just now I was reading an account of a ball in which a group of Americans insisted that the musicians play a jig instead of the cotillions the Creoles prefer. It caused quite a row.”
“During the thirty years of Spanish rule, the Creoles were never forced to dance the fandango,” Nicholas said. “The same respect should be shown by the newly-arriving Americans. But enough of that. I have been counting the hours until this evening. I took the liberty of sending my instrument on ahead. Has it safely arrived?”
“Yes. It’s waiting for us in the music room. I trust you’ve had a pleasant day.”
With the little quadroon whore in mind, Nicholas replied, “It has been somewhat satisfying, but not nearly as pleasurable as this evening promises to be.” If Prudence will let me devour her, he thought licentiously. “And where is your daughter?”
“She’ll be down in a while.”
Nicholas nodded knowingly. “It took some convincing on your part to get her to join us, didn’t it?”
“A bit,” James confessed. “I’m afraid she is still quite peeved over what she perceives as the injustice you did to her.”
“Is there nothing I can do to atone for the sin of saving her life?” Nicholas lamented.
James shook his head. “I don’t understand it. She used to be such an agreeable girl.”
“Immortality does strange things to us all,” Nicholas said. “Personally, I prefer her this way.” Eager to spread her legs.
“What way is that?” James asked.
“Capable and resourceful, of course,” he said, masking his scandalous thoughts behind an air of nonchalance.
“Well, my capable and resourceful daughter grows unhappier every day. She thinks I do not notice, but I do. She bemoans the prospect of never finding true love.”
“Love is often where we least expect to find it.” He was a prime example. In all the centuries since his making he had never imagined falling in love, least of all with prim little Prudence Hightower. “Love,” he said with a sigh of dismay, “is a sickness full of woes.”
“It sounds as if you’ve had your share of love,” James observed.
“I have. The unrequited kind.”
“I say, you’re not in love with my daughter, are you?”
“Of course not.” He hoped his too-quick response did not register with his friend.
“That’s good,” James said. “For it seems my daughter has found a suitor she is enamored with.”
Nicholas stiffened. The pirate again. “And is her suitor equally enamored?”
“I would not know.”
“You don’t sound pleased.”
“What good can come from falling in love with a mortal? Although, to hear my daughter speak, she is determined to be mortal again.” He looked askance at Nicholas. “It’s impossible, isn’t it?”
“Nothing is impossible,” Nicholas answered. “You and I and Prudence and others of our kind are proof of that.” He was hesitant to tell James about the tome he removed from the alchemist’s bookshelf in London all those years ago, the one that held the chant to reclaim lost souls. “And if there was the possibility of regaining your mortality, however slight that chance might be, would you take it?”
“Prudence asked me the same question earlier this evening. Now that I’ve had a chance to think about it, I must confess I’m content with things as they are.”
“I’m relieved to hear it,” Nicholas said with a chuckle. “I would hate to lose a friend. Among the undead, friends are hard to come by.”
“How many others of our kind are there? Surely, we cannot be the only vampires on earth.”
“It’s a thought I pondered in those first decades after my making,” Nicholas said, “when I felt lost and abandoned and so utterly alone. But they’re out there. You do not hunt when the sun goes down, so it’s understandable that you would not have encountered them. In my nocturnal wanderings I have caught glimpses of them. I just never felt the need to befriend any of them. Perhaps it’s because they remind me too much of myself.
“I cannot help but wonder what became of that evil witch who tried to kill me.”
“Oh, I’m sure she hopped into someone, somewhere,” Nicholas said evasively. What good would it do to tell him that Lienore was close at hand? “Tell me, did Prudence say how she would go about regaining her mortality?”
“No. Just some nonsense about uttering words that could make me mortal again. My daughter’s imagination is quite fertile.”
“Indeed,” Nicholas responded. But his casual reply belied his suspicion that Prudence was up to something.
***
It was the music that brought her out of her pique and lured her downstairs. She found her father and Nicholas in the music room, each seated behind his respective instrument. She didn’t relish seeing Nicholas, but as she stood in the doorway listening, the music soothed her troubled mind and calmed her bewildering feelings toward him.
She thought back to the time so long ago when she thought music such as his could on
ly come from the depth of his soul. His music then and now filled a place in her heart that felt empty and bereft. It nourished her spirit and lifted her on wings of beauty to places not found in the ordinary world of mortals or the dark abyss of the undead.
She came forward without making a sound to disturb them. Her papa’s eyes were closed and he wasn’t aware of her presence, but Nicholas lifted his head slightly and gave her a sweet, sublime smile. One would never guess from it that he was such a dangerous man, Pru thought as she sat down in a chair before the fireplace. She rested her elbows on the arms of the chair and closed her eyes. When playing his violoncello and creating his exalted, noble music, it was easy to imagine him not as a monster, but as a man, as human and vulnerable as any mortal.
She forced herself to keep her eyes shut, not daring to gaze upon him for fear of the emotions his beauty would stir inside of her. It was when he was seated behind his instrument, holding it to his breast as if it were a lover, running the bow passionately across the strings, eyes closed, dark head bowed, that the impact of his looks was most striking. Try as she might, however, she could not prevent her eyelids from fluttering open and gazing upon him as he played.
The firelight lovingly caressed his face, sharpening the line of his jaw, etching his cheekbones to perfection, deepening the shadow of the dusky lashes fanning his pale cheeks. His hair fell across his brow in thick locks, and a thousand little lights seemed to hover around his mouth. His expression shifted, from almost angelic, to tragic and torn, savage and hostile, depending upon the mood of the passage being played. He wasn’t just playing the music; he was the music.
The composition closed with Nicholas drawing his bow across the strings in a final plaintive chord while her papa brought it to an end in his own distinctive style.
The silence that followed was deafening. For several moments no one spoke. Pru looked at her papa and could tell by the look in his eyes that the piece had drained the energy from him. He may have been immortal, but he was still an old man.
Nicholas flicked the locks of hair from his eyes and rose. “Prudence, how good of you to join us.”
James opened his eyes and smiled at her from across the room. “Did you hear it, Pruddy?” he asked eagerly.
“Yes, Papa. It was wonderful. You played beautifully.”
“And what about our young friend here?”
She flicked a contemptuous glance at Nicholas. “You too,” she said grudgingly.
“How kind of you to notice,” Nicholas replied as he rose from behind his instrument.
“I dare say a little sherry would be just the thing to celebrate our collaboration,” said James. “Pruddy, would you do the honors?”
“Of course, Papa.” She went to a small round table upon which sat a crystal decanter. Removing the stopper, she poured three glasses. She carried one to her father and placed it in his thin, veined hand. The other she handed to Nicholas whose beautiful, strong fingers brushed hers as they closed around the glass. She felt a cold current pulse through her and pulled her hand away, shocked that so simple a gesture could produce such unwanted sensations.
Lifting her glass, she said, “To a beautiful collaboration between teacher and pupil. Do you have any plans for the piece? I hear a big celebration is planned to commemorate the purchase of the territory. Perhaps you could debut it during the festivities.”
“From what I read in the newspaper,” said James, “the American purchase is not looked upon too kindly by the Creoles.”
Nicholas sipped his sherry and said with a laugh, “That’s quite an understatement. Poor Laussat. Before the French Prefect even learned to appreciate a good gumbo, Bonaparte sold the territory out from under him. Many citizens still long for Louisiana to become a French colony again. I doubt the festivities will be all that festive.”
“But we are neither American nor Creole,” Pru said.
“You’re quite right, Prudence. We’re not like them. In more ways than one.”
Pru frowned at the pointed reminder. “You’re so good at stating the obvious.”
“Now, Pruddy,” James said in a lightly admonishing tone. “Let’s have none of that this evening.” He lifted his brows and said wistfully, “I do so wish for us all to get along.”
She tore her disdainful look away from Nicholas’s smug smile and focused her attention on swirling the sherry in her glass. What was it about that rogue that had her hating him one moment and drawn to him the next? It was the music, she told herself. But from a corner of her heart a small voice whispered words she did not wish to hear, telling her it was more than the passing of a bow across the strings that drew her to him like a moth to a savage flame. It was his animal magnetism, his ability to shift seamlessly from refined gentleman to heartless rogue to cunning immortal. He could be playful and yet devious, solicitous yet mocking, with a boyish exuberance and intelligence as keen as Satan’s. Possessing appallingly good looks, he could have had his pick of any woman anywhere, yet to her dismay, he had set his sights on her. She might have been flattered were she not so determined to loathe him.
“So, tell me, Nicholas. What have you been up to these days?” she said conversationally.
“Nothing quite as intriguing as what you have been up to, I’m sure.”
Bristling at the faint insolent smile on his lips she tersely replied, “I don’t know what you mean.”
There was a flash of mockery in his laughter. “Oh, Prudence, when did you become so humorless? I was jesting, of course.”
In the shimmer of firelight she saw the knowing glint in his eyes. He knew what she was up to, flashed through her mind. She controlled the urge to moisten her lips nervously. At least he had the decency not to bring up the matter of the voodoo queen. She looked from his impassive face to her papa’s, and breathed a sigh of relief to see nothing in those kindly old features to suggested he suspected anything.
After an hour of trivial conversation had passed, Pru made the mistake of suggesting that they go outside for a bit of air. Her papa sighed, a little too conveniently heavy, she thought, and said, “I’m tired, Pruddy. Why don’t you two run along?”
She knew what that sly old fox was up to. He clearly disapproved of her liaison with Stede Bonham and made no secret of his fondness for Nicholas. A quick look at Nicholas and the smirk of satisfaction on his handsome face made her cringe.
“Good evening, then, my friend,” Nicholas said to James. “I’ll send my man around in the morning to pick up my instrument. Come, Prudence, the night awaits.”
The night was cool, and the candlelight poured from the open doors. An early evening rain had left the air sultry and sweetly scented, with drops glistening upon the leaves of the Spanish lime tree like tiny diamonds in the starlight.
He leaned against a pillar at the end of the gallery and said, “Are you thirsty? Perhaps we could go hunting together. You know what they say. The vampires who hunt together stay together.”
“Certainly not!”
“Well then, perhaps another activity,” he said, smiling devilishly.
“You’re out of luck,” she coldly informed him. “I have no intention of coupling with you tonight.”
“It wasn’t you I had in mind.”
“Oh?” she ventured, trying hard to impart disinterest. “Who then?”
“My paramour.”
“Your what?”
“My—”
“I heard you,” she snapped. She eyed him suspiciously. The silvery aura of a full moon fell across his face, lighting a pale fire in those green eyes. “What game are you up to?”
“No game at all. If you don’t want my love, there’s someone who does. Her name is Marie, and she’s quite lovely.”
“What a beast you are,” she uttered with disgust.
He replied cynically, “That may be, but it’s not of my choosing.”
She brushed his claim of innocence aside with a scowling look. “You may have been the victim of that creature who made you, but eve
ry sinister thing you do is of your own making.”
In a monotonous drone, he said, “How many times must I tell you I cannot help what I am?”
“Are you going to drain her?”
“Are you going to drain your pirate?”
“Is she in love with you?”
“Is your pirate in love with you?”
“Does she know what you are?”
“Does your pirate know what you are?”
“Would you please stop doing that? You sound like a parrot, for goodness sake.”
“And you sound like a spoiled child,” Nicholas shot back. “Why don’t you just admit that you are beside yourself with jealousy?”
“A mortal emotion,” she huffed. “And I’m not mortal, or have you conveniently forgotten that?”
Nicholas rolled his eyes. “You may not be mortal, but your humanity is showing.”
The air had grown suddenly stale with bitterness. “I lost my humanity thanks to you,” she muttered as she turned away from him.
“You hate me, and you’re jealous of my paramour. Those are human emotions. No, you haven’t lost your humanity, Prudence. Your soul, but not your humanity. And speaking of your soul, your father tells me you mentioned something about words that could be uttered to regain mortality.”
She felt the weight of his eyes upon her as he waited for her response. “Did you bring the book?” she asked
“Yes. I left it in the parlor for you. What are you going to do with it?”
“Nothing. I wish to study it, that’s all.”
“How do you plan to get her to chant the words?”
It was futile for her to deny it. He was much too astute and would see through any subterfuge. “I will get her to trust me,” she answered, not daring not reveal the extent of her plans.
“Prudence,” he said warningly.
When she turned back to him, she saw the rigid unease in his posture. His jaw was set, and his lips were compressed in a tight line. His dark brows were drawn in a scowl. Beneath them, his green eyes shot fire.