The Hunger (37 page)

Then he swung the cloak about his shoulders and let himself out into the street. Three streets over was a tavern. He could hear the laughter, both male and female, even from here. Good. In a neighborhood like this there might be some high play.

John left the tavern a few hours later, his pockets jingling, a coat slung over his arm. He had cleaned his opponent’s pockets at piquet with two septièmes and a rare huitème. He had played in the end for M. Leveret’s coat, since that looked to be the closest fit. It was almost dawn. The din of the night had changed. Early vendors called. Servants hurried to work in the dark. Heavy carts rumbled through the streets. He remembered Beatrix’s warning about sunlight. He must get to a place of safety. So he hastened toward the Seine. He wanted to be close to the docks to find a ship going out to Le Havre and across the Channel to England. If only he could get home, he might be able to think again about what he was to do with himself.

He found an inn along the quay suffused with the reek of the Seine, a bit rundown, but it boasted shutters that looked as though they could be tightly shut. He roused the house. The landlord was a round little man, cranky at being got up at that hour, but glad to have the louis John dispensed. John could smell the fish being delivered at the rear for today’s bouillabaisse.

John asked for wrapping paper and a string, hurried up to his room. He pulled the shutters to and drew the curtains. Then he wrapped the cloak and the money he had borrowed in the paper, wrote the direction on the outside, and tied it with string. He would send it back by the landlord’s boy.

He felt the sun rise. It wasn’t painful. No light leaked through the windows. It was just that he knew that somewhere the sun was rising.

A terrible tristesse came over him. He sat heavily on the bed. It creaked under his weight. He had been so busy tonight he had hardly noticed how different everything was, how different
he
was. Slumping there, he replayed the last hours. The evidence chunked into place. He could see in the dark. He could hear things he shouldn’t be able to hear. He had opened doors and drawers he now suspected had been locked after all. He closed his eyes and felt the roar of life along his veins. It was impossible that he should feel so . . . complete, when he had become a monster. He could well believe that newly made vampires went mad. He clenched his eyes shut. To be condemned to such a life of horror, to be reviled as evil . . . to drink human blood! And worst of all, to feel so whole and alive in spite of it—
because
of it.

How he longed for that simple disillusionment he had felt a month ago! Then he had found his occupation required small acts of sordid dishonor, and all men—and women, he could not forget women!—were disappointing creatures comprised of equal parts selfishness and smallness of soul. Lord, even Barlow . . .

Barlow. Dead now. Deservedly so. The others . . . dead. Barlow had betrayed them. John too betrayed them. They were doubly dishonored. But no, they had died without deserving it, what honor they had intact. He on the other hand . . . Asharti had used him, but his cock had been only too eager to service her. He flushed in shame. And Quintoc . . .

He buried his face in his hands. He drew the line at Quintoc. He could not, would not, think about that. But he could not draw any lines anymore and the final humiliation with Quintoc drenched him. Beatrix had seen it, she must have. God in heaven, he had consorted with Satan’s spawn, and done their bidding. And Beatrix was no better.

Beatrix. He loved her. God help him, he still loved her, in spite of what she was, or what she had made him. His soul would no doubt be forfeit now in any case, he might as well admit he loved the devil himself. Or herself.

He raised his head. Across the room, his reflection in the mirror of a small dressing table stared back at him like some strange wraith. His face was pale, his eyes a haunted green with purple smudges under them almost like bruises. The John Staunton he had been was erased by Asharti and Quintoc, and drowned in dark waters of Beatrix’s cursed blood.

He jerked around, looking for some weapon. Why had he not stolen a pistol or a knife? His eyes came to rest on the flickering candle. He went calm inside. Slowly he held out his hand to the flame. He half expected his strength would wipe out pain. So he was pleasantly surprised by the searing flash of agony. Trembling, he forced himself to leave his hand in the flame. He saw it blacken, smelled the burning flesh. It was only when he realized that if he was trying to kill himself it was a ridiculous way to do it, that he jerked his hand back. He just wanted to hurt the creature he had become. He turned his hand over. The palm was charred and blackened. Pain shot up his
arm. The throbbing anguish made his head swim. Then he focused again. To his surprise the pain receded. The ragged black circle shrank.

“No,” he murmured. His damnation was being laid before his eyes. The black faded to red. “No,” he said, his voice rising. The red faded. The palm was whole. Life and strength flooded through him in deranged joy. He was powerless to change his state. The dread thing in his blood coveted life. “God, no,” he choked, clenching his fist to his heaving chest.

He
must
find a way to kill himself. It was the only way to avoid being a monster now. Beatrix said it was hard to kill yourself. The damned thing in your blood wouldn’t let you. Well, maybe it didn’t get a choice. He must do it before that wonderful feeling of being strong and alive seduced him permanently. What had Beatrix said? Decapitation.

He laughed and the laugh circled up into some animal sound he couldn’t control. Tears filled his eyes. His sides shook. He mustn’t run home to England too soon. The French were experts at decapitation.

Twenty

Beatrix marched under the twin conical towers, Tour d ’Argent and Tour de César, of the most sinister building in France. The troop of vampires had walked across the Seine on the bridge, the long front of the Conciergerie rising into the night in Gothic menace. Asharti had gone ahead to prepare the way, after making certain the five remaining could hold Beatrix. They could. They trooped through the fourteenth-century arches of the guard room, empty now except for an old man with a great set of iron keys on a ring. Prisoners now were held in the dungeons. The group headed toward the cells at the back of the first floor, the old man tottering after them.

Beatrix knew the building well. She had intrigued with Hugh Capet, who built it as a palace, and started the long reign of the Capetuan kings. Frenchmen now stood in awe of this building because it was the last stop for victims of the Revolution as diverse as Marie Antoinette and Robespierre himself. They had suffered nothing compared to Ravaillac, who had murdered Henri IV in 1610. His screams still seemed to echo from the stone.

They stopped in front of a cell. Black bars from floor to
ceiling ensured the prisoner had no privacy. The old man fumbled at the lock. The door protested with a scream of metal, and one of Asharti’s minions pushed her in. She stumbled through the straw to the bare stone bench.

“This cell will not hold me . . .” she said, trying to believe her threat.

“No,” said the oldest-looking of the vampires. His hair was shot with gray. Not Asharti’s usual type. “But we will.” The door screeched shut with a clang. The old human man locked it and hurried away. “There will never be less than five of us here at a time.”

Beatrix’s heart sank. “You cannot keep me here forever.”

The oldest one smirked. “Not required. Madame Guillotine entertains on Sunday.”

“At least I’ll have your fine company,” Beatrix observed as though she was lighthearted.

Asharti appeared out of the shadows. “They are forbidden to speak to you, or look into your eyes.” She glanced around at the men she had made vampire. “Is that understood?”

They murmured agreement, cowed. That was the effect Asharti had on all her victims, and these were victims no less than the ones she drained. Beatrix still might be able to subvert one. Surely some at least were uncertain, afraid, even unstable if they were newly made.

“Now, position yourselves in the cells on either side and here in front.” She turned to Beatrix. “Well, my sister. It is a bit harder to look down your nose at me now, is it not?” Her expression grew almost avaricious. “How I shall love seeing you lay your head in that semicircle of wood with that great gleaming diagonal blade hanging above you. Will you cry, or even—dare I hope—beg for your life? Your Companion will be thrumming in your veins, trying to avoid the death. But there is no avoiding it. No, your head will tumble into the basket with your eyes still blinking in protest, your lips mouthing words
you have no throat to utter.” Asharti shuddered in delight. “I shall arrange a special nighttime execution, just to make sure my . . . associates feel comfortable as they escort you.” She grasped the black iron bars with both hands. “How I wish Stephan could see it!”

Beatrix gazed into eyes transformed by the ecstasy of anticipation into something alien and felt not only fear, but pity. “Then what, Asharti? After I am dead, what then?”

Asharti let a slow smile transform her face. “Then I will make a world where vampires are everywhere.
I
will reign. And I will set us free from Rules and hiding.”

“You will destroy the balance!” Beatrix hissed. “When you have made so many vampires and they make vampires, where will it stop? We will spread like an infection until there is not enough blood to sustain us. Then we all die.” She made her voice as calm as she could. “Every species must live in balance with its fellows, Asharti, or they do not live at all. Even us.”

“We will stop making vampires when there are enough,” she said lightly.

“When made vampires often go mad, drunk with the power the Companion gives them? You will control nothing.”

“You are a small thinker, Beatrix. But I cannot stay to enlighten you. Fanueille is called to the emperor, which means the emperor in reality calls for me. I am the fulcrum upon which the world teeters. I must dispose of business before I can look for your Englishman.”

She whirled and was gone. Asharti’s followers took up their posts. Their will descended like a curtain. It was effective. Could they keep it up if they changed out watch by watch?

Beatrix felt the sun rise, somewhere. She held out little hope for herself. She only hoped John was away to England. He would not survive the world Asharti was planning for long, though. No one would, not even the vampires.

.  .  .

John slipped out into the shadows, determination roiling in his belly. The sun was setting behind the buildings around him. He had not wanted to wait until night, fearing his resolve would dissipate, but he was unable to even peer out the window in the daylight.

How strange! He had always imagined those poor souls who wanted to end their lives as being so empty they drifted into self-murder. In truth, it took a terrible intensity of will. Or perhaps that was only because the impulse to life inside him was so strong, it took an equal, if opposite, urge toward death to withstand it. He was not certain he would be able to do the deed in the end. Perhaps the thing in his blood would win out at the last moment. That was why the guillotine was perfect. Once the blade descended there was no going back.

It was a long way to where the guillotine had been erected in the Place du Trône. The din of the city was a roar in his head, the competing smells almost crushing. He stumbled down the Rue de Rivoli, one of the streets renamed by Bonaparte for a victory. People stared and whispered as he passed. He glanced down. His neck cloth was askew, his shirt wrinkled, his coat creased and ill fitting. He must look wild-eyed. He took a deep breath.
Slow down. Where is your control?
He twitched his cravat into some semblance of order and slowed his step.

The Place de la Bastille rose round him, the hub of half a dozen streets. The guillotine had once stood here. The ruins of the old prison still poked through the new construction. Napoleon was re-creating Paris as a capital fitting for the emperor of the world. He was really creating it for Asharti, whether he knew it or not. She was going to win out. That slowed his steps in earnest. An ache echoed in his belly. He would be dead and she would win.

He shook his head, as if to clear it. Who could stop her? Beatrix said she could not. Only someone named Stephan
Sincai in Amsterdam, and he would not. Or someone named Rubius who was locked in some monastery in the Carpathian Mountains. No, Asharti would win.

He suppressed the wave of rebellion that rose up through his throat. No helping that. His job was to avoid becoming what she was, drinking blood, victimizing . . .

On through the Rue de Faubourg, between the new stone houses rising on each side of the wide boulevard. The cacophony of noise about him banged at his senses. What would he do when he got there? Surely there would be guards. But he was strong now. He could take care of guards. The Place du Trône opened ahead. The rectangular maw of the guillotine outlined itself against the new streetlights. Sere relief first drenched John then forced a gasp as his Companion surged along his veins, protesting. But what was this? Hammers pounded. A crowd had gathered around the perimeter, murmuring. This was bad. How would he achieve his purpose in this crush of humanity? The diagonal blade gleamed above them in a wicked slash.

What was going on here? John drew into the twilight gloom under one of the trees surrounding the great circle of grass. Inside the ring of onlookers, uniformed soldiers were stationed around the huge device, but men in working clothes swarmed over it. Ropes hung from the heavy top rail that held the blade.

“Let the blade go!” one called.

“Stand away, fools!” another yelled. The crowd hushed in anticipation.

The blade sliced down with a metallic swoosh of finality and was secured at the bottom by other workers. John sidled into the crowd of unwashed bodies. The ropes hanging from the top rail tightened as a line of workers prepared to haul.