by Various
Eliane retched, but now Gaston Roux grew eerily calm.
“This is your work,” he said. “Are you proud?”
Eliane peered into the darkness outside the door. Who was he talking to?
“This maid was your neighbor, a lass from your own village. A lass whom it was your duty to protect.”
Eliane stared at him. He was talking to her. He was blaming her for this atrocity.
“How dare you?” she cried. “I have not done this! I am no monster! It is your fault the village is unprotected. You had only to bring Michel back to me—”
“Silence, selfish wretch!” he thundered. “You were born to be a protector of the people, a force of light, one who sacrifices her own needs for the benefit of others. Yet you, mindful only of your wants, have left the people vulnerable. You’ve brought the undead here like vultures to a funeral. Here they are free to wreak their evil. Here they feast and grow strong—”
“And don’t think we don’t appreciate it,” a smooth voice broke in.
Eliane whirled back to the doorway. Outside stood the vampire, the first one she had seen, Tatoul. He looked stronger now, his pale skin firm and his lips red from drinking blood.
“We’ve been frolicking in your little hamlet for two weeks now,” the vampire said. “It’s rare that we have such a prolonged period of feeding.”
Kill him, a voice inside Eliane urged. Take the needle from the girl’s belly and stake him through his unbeating heart. Eliane held tighter to Gervais, fighting the urge. She must think of Michel. She must put her family first.
“But I must confess we are getting bored,” Tatoul went on. “We want the Slayer to come out and play with us. How many more corpses do you need to see before your anger gets the better of you?”
“I will not give in,” Eliane whispered.
“Then you are killing these people yourself,” Roux told her, his voice shaking with fury. “The undead horde will move on to the next village and the next. All those people will be murdered just like the people of Beauport, and their deaths will be on your head.”
“He’s right, you know,” the vampire remarked.
The need to hunt was almost unbearable. “I will not give in,” Eliane repeated.
“As you wish.” Tatoul reached out and lifted the arm of the girl on the door. He raised her limp wrist to his mouth and slowly bit down, his yellow eyes never leaving Eliane’s. The girl moaned again, too weak to do anything more.
Eliane was struck dumb with horror. But Gaston Roux was not.
“I will kill you myself, you damned creature!” he yelled. Before Eliane could move, Roux leapt through the doorway, leaving the protection of the cottage. He did just what Eliane had thought of: grabbed the wooden needle from the girl’s stomach and pulled it out.
For Eliane, it was as if time itself slowed, but the actions of the others sped up. All at once, she heard the girl’s scream of pain as her body fell to the ground, the wound gushing blood like a fountain. She saw Roux lift the wooden needle, heard his roar of anger. She saw the vampire’s smile. Saw his hand move with the speed of lightning, catching Roux’s arm and snapping it in half. She saw the vampire spin the watcher, pulling him close, bending to his throat.
She saw Roux’s eyes meet hers, filled with terror and a silent plea for help.
Then the vampire bit down. Blood ran everywhere—down the Watcher’s neck, over his white shirt; down the vampire’s chin as he drank hungrily.
Gervais squirmed mightily, trying to escape the horror. But the Slayer within Eliane did not even register the movements. Forgetting her son, forgetting all other concerns, the Slayer leaped forward, through the door. She hurled herself at the vampire, heedless of the child who still clung to her neck.
They were outside now, no longer protected by the dwelling. The vampire roared with pleasure and dropped Roux to the ground.
“You join the fray!” Tatoul cried, dancing away from Eliane’s assault. “You have become the Slayer!”
The words hit her like cold water running down her back. “No,” she gasped, reining in the Slayer instincts. “No, not without Michel.”
She stared about her as if seeing through new eyes. She stood outside, unprotected. Gaston Roux lay at her feet; his lifeless eyes would no longer watch. Her little boy screamed in her ear, terrified beyond all reasoning. From inside, baby Isabeau’s cries matched her brother’s. And the vampire stood not two feet away.
“No?” he repeated. “Not even killing your watcher will make you accept your call?”
“No,” Eliane whispered.
Tatoul studied her. “I think you have lost your way, Slayer,” he murmured. “But no matter. Once you tried to bargain with me. I told you I make no bargains.”
He seemed not to move. Yet suddenly Gervais was gone from her arms. The weight of her darling boy, the heat of his skin—gone. The vampire stood ten feet away now, though Eliane had not seen any motion. It is said he can move like the winds of a hurricane, so fast that he is almost invisible to the human eye, Eliane heard Roux’s voice whisper in her memory.
“You and yours are not untouchable,” Tatoul said.
In his arms he held Gervais—her child, her baby. He still screamed. He still looked at her with his father’s eyes.
The vampire bit him. The monster’s deadly sharp teeth sank into the babe’s soft neck. Her child’s lifeblood spilled out, feeding this unholy hunger. From inside, Isabeau’s wails grew louder.
It is an abomination, something whispered inside Eliane. A slayer cannot have children, a slayer and a watcher cannot know love.
They were being punished.
Eliane flew at the vampire, but he was gone. Again she had not seen him move, but now he stood behind her. He smiled, fangs dripping the blood of her son.
“You have let me grow strong,” he mocked her. “And you yourself are weak and untrained.”
She ran at him again; again, he eluded her. Eliane let out a sob. Gaston Roux had been right: She had not truly understood evil until this moment. She had not seen the villagers killed, had not had to watch them die. Not like this.
“Your child’s blood is sweet,” Tatoul murmured. He stood now near the edge of the clearing around her cottage. Gervais lay limp in his arms. Isabeau’s screams were fading. Eliane’s head swam. She watched helplessly as the vampire leaned again to her son’s throat, sipped again of his life.
The vampire moaned ecstatically.
Eliane moaned in response. She wanted to shake off this dream of horror, but could not. She seemed rooted to the ground now.
“Intoxicating, the death of a child,” Tatoul said. “His final moment of life.” His yellow eyes held Eliane’s own as he drank the last of her son’s blood.
Then he turned and melted into the darkness, Gervais along with him.
Eliane collapsed to the ground as if only the vampire’s will had been holding her up. The Watcher’s body lay in a pool of blood. The village girl’s twisted corpse lay across the doorstep. Inside, Isabeau cried softly. Gervais was gone.
“My baby,” Eliane gasped, unable to breathe through the pain that filled her soul. “My darling child.”
Suddenly she heard him behind her, only a few steps away. “I will come back for the other one,” he whispered.
By the time Eliane turned, he was gone again.
* * *
“Farewell, my beauty, my sweet one,” Eliane whispered. Isabeau played with the rattle Michel had carved and watched with wide, innocent eyes as Eliane tucked cloves of garlic into the cradle. Finally she lifted the cross off her own neck and placed it over her daughter’s head.
“I have let innocent people die.” She leaned forward and kissed Isabeau’s forehead. “But maybe God will have mercy on you if I pay for my sins,” she murmured. “I go to face the demon.”
“There is no need,” said a voice behind her. “The demon has come to you. Tonight we will take your second child.”
Eliane straightened, still loo
king down at Isabeau. Her senses were sharp, almost painfully so. She could smell the demon at the doorstep, and she could smell the others who had come with him. They were outside, at least fifty of them, surrounding the cottage.
They wanted the baby. Their hunger was so intense that Eliane could almost taste it. He still wove his spell, sharing everything with her.
“More than the baby,” the vampire said. “We also want you. Blood of the Slayer is the strongest blood there is, I hear. When I have drunk you dry, I will dance in the air, I will survive even in the sunlight, and I will be unstoppable. The babe is simply a whet to my appetite. You are my true desire.”
“I am not prey,” Eliane told him. “I am the hunter.”
“You are no hunter,” he spat. “You are weak, a miserable slave to your emotions. So you have ever been.”
“No longer. Now I understand true evil. Now I know that I have the blood of innocents on my head. I have learned the error of my ways,” Eliane said. “I am the Slayer. Tonight I will kill you . . .”
She turned to face the demon. His pale hair fell across his tiny forehead, and he watched her with his father’s eyes.
“ . . . Gervais.”
“I do not believe you,” said her son. He smiled a cherub’s smile. “You put your family first. I heard you say it over and over to the Watcher.”
Eliane looked over his shoulder. Behind him stood the vampire who had killed him, Tatoul. Before her mind had recognized the creature, her body took action. Moving quickly, fluidly, she reached behind her back and removed the stake from its sheath of cloth. A jerk of her wrist, and the sharpened wood streaked across the room, embedding itself in the monster’s chest. Once more, his yellow eyes met hers.
“Slayer . . .” Tatoul whispered. Then he exploded into a fine, ash-like dust.
“Do you see?” Eliane asked Gervais. “My first kill. Now I am truly the Slayer.”
The little boy laughed. It sounded like the harsh caw of a crow, no longer like a jaybird. His tiny features transformed, thick ridges marring his perfect forehead, Michel’s beautiful green eyes turning to the yellow eyes of the undead.
“Did you think he was still the leader?” Gervais mocked her. “Why should I care if he’s gone? He was a thorn in my side.”
He stepped forward, and Eliane hesitated. She had thought seeing her boy’s living corpse would be difficult, but in truth, seeing this transformation was even harder. How could it be possible that this was the child she’d held in her arms?
“Has there ever been a vampire sprung from a slayer before?” he asked. “I don’t think so. I take after you—my blood is strong.”
“It was you today,” Eliane said, “weaving a trance about me. The dreams had always been just dreams before, but today I saw clearly. I saw the atrocities. It was you. That’s why the dream was different.”
“I share your blood, Mother,” the vampire said. “I see your heart. You and I dreamed together when I was still in the womb. Don’t you remember?”
Eliane did remember the connection she had felt to Gervais, even before he was born. But she also remembered the dream of today—the monster tearing peasants apart, no longer as a hunter but now as a senseless butcher. No longer drinking blood, but now also eating flesh.
The creature that wore Gervais’s face smiled as if he could hear her thoughts. His full baby lips were deep red, his cruel fangs as sharp as the stake hidden in Isabeau’s cradle.
“Yes, I have eaten them all,” the vampire said. “I grow tired of Beauport. I will move to a larger village now, and then on to the cities. There is no one to stop me. But first I will take the rest of your blood.”
He stepped forward, his small feet teetering on the very brink of the doorway. He could come no further.
Eliane reached for the baby’s cradle.
“I will keep the family together, Mother,” the vampire said. “Your blood will join mine. And Isabeau’s blood. And when I find my father, I will take him as well. You two created me. You shall share in my crimes.”
“Our love created you, and it was wrong,” Eliane whispered. “It is my duty to correct that mistake.” She closed her fingers around Isabeau’s rattle and pulled the toy from the baby’s hand.
“Mother—,” Gervais began.
“Stop,” she said, moving toward him. “I will give myself to you if you spare the babe.”
The vampire smiled, revealing his fangs. He held out his chubby little arms. “Then come and hug me, Maman.”
Eliane had reached the doorway. She stepped across the threshold and knelt to hug her son. His baby arms went around her neck, his mouth seeking her vein. As his fangs pierced her flesh, Eliane felt again the sense of seeing through his eyes, of feeling his sensations. Triumph, she felt, and insatiable hunger. Her blood filled his mouth, coursed through his body like a drug.
He is an abomination, Eliane thought. A vampire sprung from the Slayer . . .
His gaze fell on the baby’s cradle, and the hunger increased. Eliane saw what he saw, felt his desire for Isabeau.
As darkness crowded her vision, Eliane yanked the ball off the top of the rattle, leaving only the sharpened wooden handle. Michel had whittled it to a deadly point. It was so with most of his carvings; he had wanted Eliane to be always prepared.
She plunged the stake into her son’s back and through his heart.
“Your father and I love you, Gervais,” she whispered into his soft hair.
The blood within her grew hot, too hot. She felt what Gervais felt: fire running through his body, white-hot like the fires of hell, burning him from the inside out. So hot . . .
As Gervais turned to dust, Eliane felt the heat within her own body. The heat which consumed her as it took her firstborn child. Flames filled her vision, and she realized that they came from herself.
Eliane fell forward on the ground, watching the fire spread from her body. “I have paid for our mistakes,” she whispered.
Then all was fire.
LONDON
The cold stone hallways echoed with footsteps for the first time in the month Michel had been here. He leapt off the straw pallet he slept on and hurried to the thick iron door of his cell.
The watchers didn’t consider this a dungeon. They called it a retreat, a place for him to meditate on his transgressions until he was ready to ask forgiveness. But all he could think of was Eliane’s smiling lips, the way her breathing matched with his as they lay on their bed. The way baby Isabeau’s soft skin smelled, the sound of Gervais’s impish laugh.
Would they let him out now? He already knew the answer: No. Eliane was the Slayer. He had never doubted that she was truly called. He’d seen the strange new light in her eyes on the morning that Gaston Roux came. And as the Slayer, she had a duty that transcended her duty to him or even to the children.
Had Eliane understood that duty? He wasn’t sure that he had made it clear to her. Those years when they were so happy together, had he let his own duties as a watcher slip? He feared it was so. He feared that Eliane would put him first, put their love before her calling. But surely if there were vampires, she would fight them. Surely if the villagers were in danger, she would know that her first duty was to protect them.
Michel tried to swallow his fear. He had not taught Eliane the importance of her post. He had let her believe that love was the greatest calling of all.
They had made a terrible mistake.
The door swung open. A woman stood outside. Michel stared at her, then slowly sank to his knees.
* * *
“But what became of her?” the Elder asked impatiently. The Watchers Council was depending on him to bring back a satisfactory answer. He did not like to rely on the occult, but in the present situation it seemed the only option. The council hadn’t received any news of the Slayer or her watcher, and at such times they turned to people such as this medium for help. It was an errand little to his liking.
“I cannot see clearly,” replied the medium. “It see
ms there was a great fire. The villagers are all dead, and there was a tremendous amount of blood, but no bodies. They all must have burned, dead and undead alike.” She shivered—it was indeed cold in the tiny hut where she lived—but she did not open her eyes or break her trance.
The Elder ground his teeth, staring at the medium as if he could force the woman to see all that had happened in that faraway place. “How did the fire start?” he demanded. “Where did it start?”
“At the Slayer’s cottage,” the medium said.
“And Gaston Roux?”
The medium was silent for a moment, her eyes moving under closed eyelids. “He was not there. I cannot see him.” She gasped. “There is an intense heat. It scalds me from within.” She opened her eyes and stood. “I will not seek there again,” she announced.
“But my council has no records,” the Elder protested. “We watchers must find out what happened. We do not know how it’s possible that the one life was spared among so many—”
“Eliane the Vampire Slayer is dead,” the medium snapped. “Another is called. That is all you need to know, and I will not seek there again.”
* * *
Michel wept on his knees before the woman.
“You are free to leave here now,” she said. “The Watchers Council has found you a position in Ireland.”
“My wife?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.
“There is a new slayer,” the woman said. “The village of Beauport has been burned to the ground.”
Eliane was dead, then. Michel hung his head and sobbed. “I should have been there to die with her,” he cried. “Her transgressions and mine were the same. Why should I be spared rather than Eliane?”
“Because you are needed here,” the woman said gently. She held out a small bundle. “She was found in a circle of destruction. The land was burned for a mile around, but her cradle was untouched. The Watchers Council says it is a sign of forgiveness.”