Department 19: The Rising (24 page)

Frankenstein leant back in his chair, the tightly woven wicker groaning appreciably beneath him as he did so, drank deeply from his glass of wine and surveyed his companions for the evening, arranged around one of Café de Flore’s round, glass-topped tables on the wide pavement of Boulevard Saint-Germain. He had found himself between conversations, and was content for the moment to merely observe, and listen.

To his left, Jean Hugo, Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein were engaged in a heated debate about the merits and principles of literary patronage. Frankenstein knew without paying attention to the details that the cause of the disagreement was the presence for dinner at Stein’s apartment two nights earlier of a young French writer whom Hemingway thoroughly disliked, and had been actively offended at being forced to share a table with.

Stein was making the not unreasonable argument that she would invite whoever she damn well pleased into her own home, and that Hemingway was more than welcome to decline any future invitations
if he felt so strongly about the issue. Hemingway, the bluff, belligerent American, was slowly colouring a dark shade of purple, and rhythmically clenching and unclenching his fists, a sure sign that his perennially loose grip on his temper was in danger of failing him completely.

Hugo could clearly see it too, and was attempting to play the role of peacemaker; he was suggesting compromise after compromise, to little response from either party. Stein was sitting calmly to his left, a sweet, eminently reasonable expression on her face, while to his right, Hemingway openly stewed, and fought to control himself. Frankenstein watched them for several minutes, then turned his attention to the trio to his right.

Jean-Luc Latour, the only member of the company whom Frankenstein genuinely considered a friend, was discussing art with Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau, gesturing enthusiastically with both of his pale, slender hands as he held forth on the excitement that the recently-named New Objectivity movement was causing throughout the salons and cafés of Paris. He had, he was informing his companions, been greatly impressed with the recent work by André Derain, and was keen to hear Picasso’s views on the matter.

Picasso was, for the moment at least, keeping his own counsel, while Cocteau was agreeing in declamatory terms, praising what he called the “return to order” that had flooded through European art in the aftermath of the Great War. It was, he was claiming, the bedfellow of German New Objectivity, and marked the first steps of a fractured continent back towards the sublime.

Frankenstein, who enjoyed both art and literature, but thought the endless debate that surrounded the two cultural pillars, the use of one’s abilities to criticise the work of others rather than creating work of one’s own, to be the worst type of intellectual indulgence, was beginning to become bored.

The evening had passed agreeably enough, with a hearty northern European supper in Brasserie Lipp, followed by several fine bottles of Lynch-Bages in the warm air of the Parisian night. But his patience had been gradually eroded by the endless, circular conversations regarding every tiny aspect of modern culture, fuelled as they were by the egos of the men and woman sitting around him, all of whom wanted, first and foremost, to talk about themselves. He was thus relieved when Latour stood up from his chair and announced, to the expected chorus of jeers and heckles, that he and Frankenstein had to leave.

“Again?” bellowed Picasso. “Why must every evening end with the two of you sneaking away into the night? This is how lovers behave, not friends. Are you in love with one another?”

Latour swept his arms wide in placation, and smiled.

“I would not dispute that I love this man,” he said, casting a glance at the monster. “But to say that we are lovers is untrue. We merely have another engagement to attend, one to which, most regrettably, it is impossible for you to accompany us.”

“Nonsense,” snorted Hemingway, his red face brimming with anger. “What place in all of Paris is open to the likes of you and not to us? I demand you reveal it.”

“I would love nothing more, Ernest,” replied Latour, his tone smooth and conciliatory. “Believe me when I say so. But the rules that govern our destination are not mine to interpret, much less break. So we must say farewell.”

“Let them go,” said Stein, waving a hand dismissively. “They were beginning to bore me anyway.”

“And me,” said Cocteau, loyally, but when Frankenstein shot him a stern look, he immediately dropped his eyes to the table.

“Then it is for the best that we depart,” said Latour, his expression
remaining warm and friendly. “I apologise if our company has not been to your tastes this evening. We will endeavour to make it up to you. Tomorrow, perhaps?”

There was a grumbling murmur of assent. Everyone gathered round the table knew that the following evening would pass in much the same way as this one had, complete with similar conversations and the same awkward, well-rehearsed ending. The pattern had been repeating itself for more than two months now, right down to the chorus of boos that followed Frankenstein and Latour as they left the café and walked out into the Parisian night.

Their route took them north on Rue de la Cité and across Île de la Cité, before the towering gothic façade of Notre Dame cathedral and the throngs of late-night worshippers and tourists, then east on Rue de Rivoli, heading towards the open splendour of Place des Vosges, the residential square that had been inaugurated in 1612 to celebrate the wedding of Louis XIII.

“I don’t know why you put up with their insinuations night after night,” rumbled Frankenstein, as the two men strolled, the waters of the Seine lapping against its stone banks to their right. “It takes all my strength not to break a bottle over Picasso’s damn head. I wonder how bold he and Hemingway would feel then.”

“Your passion is perhaps your greatest quality, my friend,” replied Latour, smiling. “My self-control is mine. What good would come of splitting that great bald dome open, beyond the momentary satisfaction of the act itself? We would be shunned by all of Parisian society, and though I’m sure that feels like no loss at all to you now, I believe you would feel differently if it came to pass.”

“Perhaps,” grunted Frankenstein.

“Indeed. So let them make their comments, and their innuendoes.
It represents nothing more than petty jealousy, and it does us credit to rise above such juvenile concerns. Agreed?”

“Your words are pretty, Latour,” said Frankenstein, the beginnings of a smile creeping on to his wide, rectangular face. “As always.”

“One tries,” said Latour.

The two men reached the corner of Rue de Sévigné, and turned north once more. Their destination lay halfway between Rue des Francs Bourgeois and Rue Saint-Gilles, behind the old, elegant façades of the Marais.

Standing back from the pale stone pavement, behind an intricate wrought-iron gate, was a theatre that had not presented a production to the public for more than fifty years. The building was immaculate in every way; the rose beds that flanked the path beyond the gate bloomed beautifully, their scents intoxicating in the still night air, the wide flagstones scrubbed clean and devoid of even the tiniest of weeds.

The only features that might have prompted a passer-by to give the building a second glance were its windows, or rather its lack of them. The spaces where they had once been were obvious, four large square recesses in the walls, two either side of the grand carved wood door. But where glass had once let in the light and noise of nocturnal Paris, the spaces were now filled with stone, as pale and featureless as the walls that surrounded them.

Latour drew a key from his pocket and entered it into the gate. There was a whisper of noise as the key turned in the oiled lock, before the gate slid silently open. Frankenstein followed him through, closing the gate behind them, and joined Latour in front of the door, upon which the Frenchman had already knocked three times in quick succession.

After a moment’s pause, the door was opened. Anyone who had been standing beyond the gate and watching this strange procedure take place would have heard a brief burst of music and a mingled chorus of voices, some of which were raised in what they would no doubt have convinced themselves were screams of laughter, before the door thudded back into place, and the theatre was silent once more.

Inside the ancient building an elderly vampire, resplendent in immaculate evening wear, stepped from around a wooden lectern and approached the two newcomers with a deferential smile on his face.

“Welcome back to La Fraternité de la Nuit, gentlemen,” he said, in perfect English. “May I take your coats?”

They were standing in a small lobby, the walls and ceiling lined with thick crimson velvet, the floors varnished wood. At the rear of the lobby stood a second door, through which the riotous piano of the cancan could be heard. Then a second sound emerged from behind the door, rising above the music; a shrill scream, so full of terror and despair that Frankenstein grimaced, even as he handed his long overcoat to the maître d’. Latour, who had already shed his coat, grinned widely at the sound, his fangs bursting into view as unnatural red spilled into the corners of his eyes. He clapped Frankenstein on the back.

“I believe it is going to be a good night,” he said, as he strode towards the door.

The inner door closed gently behind the two men, and Frankenstein took a familiar deep breath, giving his stomach time to settle.

The smell of blood, thick and metallic, hung heavily in the wide arc of the theatre. It rose like a cloud from the pools of crimson
liquid that had collected on the low stage, where grotesque acts were committed each and every night to the baying approval of the vampire audience. It drifted through the air from the great arcs that had sprayed against the once white walls of the building, from severed veins and ruptured arteries. Blood permeated every inch of the theatre, ages old and freshly spilled, dried brown and glistening scarlet.

An attendant greeted Frankenstein and Latour as soon as they entered, telling them that they would, as always, be welcome in Lord Dante’s private chamber. Latour thanked the vampire absently; he was looking around the room, his ears full of screams, his eyes molten red as he watched the horrors that were unfolding around him. His face wore an expression of such naked lust that Frankenstein turned away, even though it forced him to witness what was taking place.

The theatre was small, no more than sixty seats arrayed in a semi-circle before the stage. Perhaps two-thirds of the seats were occupied, by vampires of all races, ages and nationalities. An atmosphere of terrible bonhomie rose from them, with good reason; the Fraternité was a safe place, where they could indulge their darkest desires at their leisure, without fear of interruption. The seats of the theatre rippled with frantic movement, as the vampires who occupied them tortured, abused, bled and murdered the lost innocents of Paris.

Each night, from whence Frankenstein didn’t allow himself to ponder, a new collection of human victims was released among the vampires. Most were young, although all ages could be found, depending on a particular member of the Fraternité’s tastes, and were evenly split between males and females. They were ushered on to the stage as night fell, then abandoned to the hissing, roaring audience of monsters.

Frankenstein had only seen this with his own eyes once; since then, he had insisted to Latour that they not arrive until well afterwards. The utter terror, the hysterical, disbelieving horror on the faces of the men and women, and the snarling, clawing and biting of the vampires as they fought and squabbled over their favourites, had been too much, even for him.

By this time, well past midnight, most of the humans were already dead, ravaged and empty and abandoned in the aisles of the theatre, their last moments spent in agonies they couldn’t possibly have understood.

Frankenstein followed Latour round the rear of the theatre, to a door standing almost invisibly in the wall. A vampire attendant, as elegantly dressed as the others, nodded respectfully to them, and held the door open. They passed through it, into the inner sanctum of La Fraternité de la Nuit.

Into the realm of Lord Dante, the vampire king of Paris.