He tried to spin, without having anything to serve him as a base to spin from, and bring the cross in front of the vampire. He’d not managed it yet when the vampire hit Rene’s wrist hard with his free hand. It cracked and blinding pain radiated up Rene’s wrist, to his arm and shoulder.
Now the vampire spun him around. In the same movement, he turned from where the cross had fallen and laughed, a great, amused laugh, “Ah, you’d be a brave one, aren’t you? But why fight it? We don’t kill pretty little boys like you, you know?” The laughter again and something in the vampire’s eye, something that Rene thought fit the word concupiscence which he’d heard before, from his confessor, but never fully understood. Rene had loved Alix. He’d loved Alix a corps perdue, which was why Pons had sent him here. But he’d never looked at her as though she were fresh steak and Rene a famished tiger. That a man, a vampire, should look at Rene that way made Rene’s gorge rise and his mind befog with fear and disgust. “No,” he yelled, and – to the new bout of vampire laughter – his hand that had been clutching the chalice with the holy blood to his chest, rose as though of its own accord and flung the liquid in the vampire’s face.
Laughter turned to scream, an unholy scream that rent the night in two, and Rene had time to see the vampire’s face melting like wax in the fire as the vampire let him go. Rene dropped the cup and ran.
Knowing he was lost; knowing he didn’t have much time, knowing the darkness was full of other vampires, Rene scrambled away, half crawling, before he got to the door of the refectory. He flung it open and ran blindly along the corridor, his bare feet slapping the cold flagstones, his pain-wracked right wrist cradled in his left hand.
He was going to Hell. The one thing drummed into them, over and over and over again, since they’d been in the seminary; the one thing that his priest had drummed into him at home, before the seminary, was that the bread and blood were truly parts of Christ. They were to be preserved from desecration at all costs. In extreme instances, the faithful was to take the communion into himself, if properly confessed, and save it from desecration. Instead Rene had flung it in face of the vampire. He was going to Hell.
It wasn’t until he’d run, headlong, the length of the hallway and emerged onto a street covered in ice, under falling snow, that it occurred to him to wonder how different could Hell be from this France where vampires had taken over, where vampires ruled the night and good people locked themselves in their houses at sunset, hoping that this time the blood suckers would pass them over; hoping to be human one more night.
Rene knit himself with the shadows of the houses and kept running. It was very quiet out here. Every window and door he passed was heavily barricaded. There was no refuge.
After a while, he wasn't sure how long, Rene realized his feet hurt with the burn of cold every time they hit the frozen dirt and muck on the streets. He thought, distantly, as though it were all happening to some other person long ago, that his feet would freeze. And then the rest of him would freeze. And he would end up dead – as dead as he would have been if the vampire had bitten him. Only in that case there was at least the possibility of a life in death and– No. He remembered the look in the vampire’s eyes, and for the first time the phrase fate worse than death made itself clear in his head.
He kept running because his body didn’t know enough to realize he was dead and that there was nothing he could do. He kept running, looking frantically about for an open door, for smoke, for fire, for a hint that there might be hope somewhere. Which was when he saw the light coming from behind him up the street, and, turning around, saw the seminary and the church to which it had been attached go up in a great conflagration of fire. There were vampires leaving in groups, laughing and essaying little jigs. It was impossible not to note some of those vampires wore the same bodies that had, until recently, belonged to his masters and colleagues.
Rene’s gorge rose, and he threw up unexpectedly at his feet, a brief eruption, since all he had in his stomach was the remnants of soup and a slice of bread he’d swallowed for supper, this being Advent and a time of fasting.
The vampires would come. The newly-made ones would be famished They’d spread over the neighborhood, looking for fresh blood. Wiping his mouth to the back of his hand, he scrambled into the first alley he came to.
Where he heard the noise of fighting, the grunt of a man overcome by another. Looking ahead, he saw a man in a heavy cloak and the vampire holding him, bending over him, about to take a bite from the man’s neck. The memory of the vampire’s eyes, the unclean lust in them – a lust for blood, Rene guessed, more than other pleasures of the flesh – flashed into Rene’s mind. Blindly, he looked for something to use as a weapon. He glimpsed a flowerpot in the recessed doorway of a house. It was empty of everything but soil and the withered twigs and leaves that remained of the flower that must have grown in it in spring. Rene would have given anything for a heavy tree limb, but if this was all he had, then this was all he had. He grabbed at the edge of the flower pot with his left hand and, clumsily, flung it through the air at the vampire’s head.
For a sick moment he thought he’d hit the vampire’s victim, or nothing at all. Rene had been good at games of marksmanship and strength, but not with a left hand that felt half frozen. But then the vase hit the back of the vampire’s head. There was a sickening crunch. The vampire started to turn and Rene jumped back to knit with the wall. Then the vampire fell, suddenly, and Rene looked up as the vampire’s would-be victim straightened.
He was a man in his late middle age, with a fringe of white hair and an expression of decided gentility, and he looked tired, as though he’d fought the vampire to a standstill. He glanced across at Rene and his eyes widened, as though not believing the form his savior had taken, then he looked down at the vampire and spat on it. Reaching down, the man retrieved the largest piece the pot had broken into.
“Monsieur,” Rene managed to say, though his words were barely a whisper, all breath and chattering teeth. “Monsieur, we must run. There are many of them, all around. They’re headed here.”
The man looked up. He was positioning the shard of pot on the vampire’s neck and he gave Rene the barest twitching of lips that might pass for a smile, a laughing in the teeth of hell kind of smile that was perhaps amusement but not joy. “I know,” he said. “I know, my son, but we must sever this one’s head from his body, or he’ll come after us. He knows who I am, you see.” As he spoke, he set his foot, clad in a heavy, spurred boot on the edge of the pot shard and stomped down.
Something black poured from the vampire’s body, flowing across the frozen street like oil, and smelling like a thousand opened graves pouring forth corruption. Rene shuddered and found himself trembling as his stomach attempted to bring up contents it didn’t have. He found a hand on his shoulder, warm and supporting. “It takes you like that,” the man said calmly. “It takes you like that, the first few times.” Then, in a concerned tone, “Here, son, what are you doing out here, half naked and barefoot?”
“The seminary,” Rene answered through clacking teeth. “The seminary was attacked. I was asleep. I ran out–”
He couldn’t be sure if the man had sworn. It seemed to him he’d said, “Sangre dieu.” But surely a man like that wouldn’t swear. Or would he? Rene could not decide. What he could decide was that the voice was saying, “I was too late. It is my sin.”
He looked up, “Too late, sir?”
“Yes,” The man said. “I shall explain, but not here. We’re in danger. Come with me.” Then, with a cluck of the tongue that indicated annoyance, he took off his heavy cloak and put it over Rene’s shoulders. “There is nothing I can do for your feet,” he said. “No spare pair of stockings or boots, but refuge is near. Come.”
Rene hesitated for no more than a second. Judas goats were often said to prowl the night, looking for young victims for their masters. But at least in the lore of vampires such as had formed over the last twenty years since those ancient tombs had been op
ened and the even more ancient horror unleashed that was now overtaking France, a Judas goat could not hurt a vampire. And this man had killed one.
The cloak seemed to make Rene feel the cold more. His body was wracked with pain. His skin felt as though it was on fire. His feet, meanwhile, had gone numb and distant. But he turned and followed the man, who removed a sword and a knife from the dead vampire’s body, and then walked, knit to the wall, looking ahead, the weapons glinting in his hands.
***
“I broke my sword earlier fighting them,” the bishop said as he turned to face Rene. Or at least, he said he was a bishop, and Rene saw no reason to doubt him, though he wore neither cassock nor hat, nor anything but a silver cross glowing dully on the chest of his serviceable shirt – revealed when his coat was removed in the warmth and safety of the hideout.
The hideout was in the basement of a public house whose publican, the bishop said, was a good Catholic and an honest man, though Rene was sure that this hideout must in the past have served for smugglers or smuggled goods. Well, it stood to reason, did it not? Why else have it built?
But the man had answered to a careful knock on the door and to a whispered password. He’d shown the bishop all deference, and clucked over Rene’s pain and his now bluish bare feet. Then he’d shown them to the trapdoor beneath the barrels and his wife had brought them food, as well as bandages, clothes and boots for Rene.
So Rene now sat in a chair in the cozy hideout, his feet in socks and boots. The bishop, whose name was Gracien, Monsieur D’Alban, had opined that there was no lasting damage. He’d given Rene wool pants, and a coat which were his to wear when they left. So too was the traveling cloak draped across the back of the chair on which Rene perched as he swallowed warm soup and drank quite good wine.
Monsieur D’Alban had bound Rene’s wrist and absolved him – though the description of Rene’s sin seemed to occasion amusement. It was almost the only thing in the grim description that did. When Rene explained he’d spilled the holy blood, the bishop had smiled and said it was not willing sacrilege but the desire to save himself. And besides, D’Alban had added with reasonable though – Rene was sure, questionable theology – hadn’t Christ died to save men? Surely it was proper that His blood should be spilled for the salvation of Rene’s body – and possibly Rene’s soul
And then, at the end of all this, and after D’Alban had eaten just a little soup and a bite of bread, D’Alban had started pacing the small confines of the room, his hands behind his back.
Once, when he was very little and before his father died, Rene had been taken to see a marvelous beast, a lion which had been brought at great expense from Africa, and which was being exhibited by a motley group of men in all the little villages around the countryside. Confined to a narrow space, the tawny beast, all great teeth and claws, had alternated between biting the iron bars preventing its ravening the spectators, and pacing in its tight confines, its eyes burning with suppressed violence.
D’Alban's pacing reminded Rene of the beast perhaps because, like the beast, D’Alban had golden eyes that burned with the need to do something. Something he was prevented from doing. Words erupted from him, irregularly spaced and abrupt, phrases without beginning or end, less designed to communicate with Rene than as shards of an inner dialog forced into vocalization by turmoil, “I was to warn them,” came. And then. “His majesty signed the treaty with the Cardinal tonight.” Then, “No more priests. No more ordained men. No more church in France.”
This caught at Rene who had been told for the last two years, as he was preparing for unwilling ordination, that his role as a priest was vital in defending France from the vampire onslaught; that only a strong church could prevent all humans being killed or becoming vampires.
He cleared his throat as D’Alban continued pacing, and said, “Pardon me, monsieur, but ... did you say that there will be no more priests in France?”
D’Alban turned and fixated him with an intent golden gaze, “As of tonight, my son, as of tonight. The King has signed a treaty with the Cardinal, according to which no person will be unwillingly turned, in exchange for our turning our churches into wastes, killing all those priests who don’t agree to be defrocked or to become vampires themselves, and ordaining no more. And no one will roam the night killing vampires simply because they are vampires.”
Rene blinked. He remembered priests – and seminarians – chased down and unwillingly turned. He remembered– “No person unwillingly turned!” he said, his words full of scorn.
The bishop nodded. “Just so. But what do you expect? Once turned, no vampire will come to the court of law and say it was unwilling, will he? And no one else will be alive from these attacks.”
“I’m alive,” Rene said. “I would testify.”
A look much like pity suffused D’Alban’s eyes. “I doubt not you would, son. But to what judge will you take your righteous complaint? Who would listen? The king wants to be at peace. He disdains the fights that have erupted in his court. He wants no fighting in the Palais Royal. He wants to pretend everything is as should be: everything is as it was, and he’s still the king of the French and the kingdom still peaceable.”
Rene blinked again. He felt very cold of a sudden. “But, Monsieur, it is not so. Are you telling me that the king... the king has... given up?”
The bishop nodded. “He would say he’s made a private peace,” he said. “I’d say the king has surrendered.”
A long silence fell, and Rene felt colder than he had out in the snow. Then he was running for his life. Now, he felt as though his life and the life of every one in France had already been given up. They were already dead men, it was just their bodies didn’t know it yet. “Monsieur,” he said, and cleared his throat. “Monsieur! What can one do to prevent this?”
A heavy sigh tore from D’Alban, giving the same feeling as the words that had come from him before. “What can one do?” he said. “I’ve talked to Monsieur de Treville, the captain of the king’s musketeers. He is, like me... That is, all the musketeers, to be admitted to the corps, have had to endure the vampire bite and feel its allure, and yet survive. Monsieur de Treville, and myself as well, will continue fighting and refuse to surrender France to the abominations. He, like me, refuses to surrender the souls of France.” He fell onto a chair, heavily. “Son, you've not been bitten, so you’d never qualify for the musketeers. But you were in seminary. And you did fight to defend me tonight. You saved me from death or worse. Monsieur de Treville will prepare fighters for France, and we need that too. But we need priests as well. The things priests can do, the simplest ones: blessing water and salt, and yes, the sacraments, are a threat to vampires, which is why they wish to abolish the church. Oh, not our church alone. Those people we’d for centuries considered in grave error – the protesting sects that deny the authority of Rome, other... other religions, even the folkways of ancient times, seem to have some remedies against the vampires. They too are proscribed. They too are hunted. And for that alone, we must make peace with them and turn against the vampires as common enemy. But our side is ... not enough. Because we are hierarchical and congregate, we’ve been more effectively hunted down than other religions, other holy men and ... and women. We need men to defend the souls of France, son. He needs workers for His vineyard,” the bishop said, alluding to the biblical passage. “Will you labor in it?”
“Monsieur,” Rene said. “Monsieur.” For so long he’d dreamed of being a warrior, of leaving the trappings of the church, the dry manuscripts, the singing, the mealy-mouthed ways of priesthood behind. He’d dreamed of becoming a musketeer, a warrior, a fighting man. He’d call himself Aramis. He’d call himself Aramis and he’d fight, be a true man like his father, to be respected like his older brother.
But he was not a man. He’d taken the coward’s refuge when danger had come. And only by the blood of Christ was he here yet, and still human. His life, as such, now belonged to the church. “Monsieur. I was not... That is... I ha
d not yet... I wasn’t ready to take orders. My studies were interrupted. My ... I wasn’t sure of my vocation.”
An ironical look from the golden eyes, and then pacing resumed, ten paces to one wall and ten paces to the other, while D’Alban cackled in one of his mirthless laughs and said, “Meaning, of course, that you were packed unwilling to a seminary because you were a younger son and there was nothing else that your family could do with you?” He gave Rene an evaluating look, “Why not the army, I wonder?” he said.
“My brother said,” Rene began, and his cheeks burned as he remembered the full extent of what his brother had indeed said. “My brother said I was not the type of man they needed for a soldier, Monsieur. He said I was too weak, too fearful.” The other things went through his mind: hands like a girl’s and that face like a babe unborn, and your mealy-mouthed love of books and words. He did not say it.
“No?” D’Alban said, and shrugged an elaborate shrug. “A man who attacks a vampire with a flowerpot while barefoot and with a broken wrist seems like the sort of a man our poor army needs, but perhaps your brother had other ideas. Or perhaps he preferred you in the church where no cadet line could dispute the succession in future times. Is that it?”
“There– There was Alix,” Rene said, thinking that at any rate he would come to that, eventually. If he was going to be ordained – was he going to be ordained? – he’d need to make a more complete confession than he’d made so far, and Alix would need to come into it.
“Alix? A girl?”
“A... She was my father’s ward, monsieur. Her father was one of Father’s friends, and very... very wealthy, and when he died he left Alix to my father to raise, with the idea she’d marry my father’s heir, of course.”
“Of course. And how old was she, this Alix? How old is your father’s heir, for that matter? Is he the only one?”
“My brother, Pons, Chevalier D’Herblay,” Rene said. “He was my father’s only son by his first marriage. His mother died when Pons was ten, and my father married again five years later. My mother was– Pons said she was of questionably noble blood because her father was the second son of an earl,” he straightened his shoulders and decided to say the worst, “An English Earl, Monsieur. And... and he was a soldier, and... and my mother married my father and died giving birth to me.”
Here Be Dragons: A collection of short stories Page 3