his passion for my father—another man. I understand him better
and acknowledge that he cared for my father in a way I didn’t—
and still don’t—understand. Now he seems to care for you in a
similar way.”
“He loved your father very much,” Adin admitted. “He still
carries it in his heart like a flame. What he feels for me is different,
but I don’t think it’s less… Maybe I’m kidding myself.”
Santos kicked at a pebble on the ground. “I don’t understand
this passion between men at all.”
“Because you don’t share it. Believe me, if the situation
were reversed I couldn’t…well. That’s not entirely true, is it…?
Whether I can feel sexual attraction with a woman or not, I enjoy
any truly great literary love story. I have a particular fondness for
Tristan and Isolde
.”
“I’ve had comrades in arms I have mourned. Men I trusted
like brothers.” Santos frowned.
“I have a sister that I love very much, but I would be incapable
of romantic love for a woman. I just think that’s how I was made.”
Santos gazed at the cathedral again. “It flies in the face of
religious tradition.”
“I can see where you might have a problem with homosexuality,
biblically speaking—” Adin tried not to laugh, but it wasn’t easy.
“—after its injunction in the Pauline Epistles. Unlike becoming
a blood-sucking monster, homosexuality seems to be forbidden
to Christians. Why, just the other day I was reading that glowing
welcome to the Christian vampire brotherhood in the apocryphal
St. Paul’s letter to the Undead
.”
“You simply can’t help yourself, can you? You always make
a joke when you should be pissing yourself with fear.” Santos
reached out and cuffed Adin on the shoulder. “A better question
is why you’re still human?”
Vigil
21
Adin paused. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Look around you. Man reaches for immortality like a frantic
junkie looking for drugs. He will claw and devour and kill for
it if he sees it within his grasp. You remain human, and
I
want
to know why.” Santos turned so they were facing one another.
“Have you already displeased your vampire protector? Is my
father’s eternal flame proving hotter than your human love?”
Adin swallowed hard.
Why does that feel like tearing off a scab
?
“For your information, I don’t choose immortality. I don’t
want it. I’ve told Donte that, and we don’t see eye to eye at all. He
worries that I’ll be hurt, and so he wants to turn me. For the last
three months there have been alternating bouts of heated debate
and brooding silence, interminable kendo and self-defense
lessons, and what Donte tells me are bodyguards, but can only be
described as sloe-eyed, brooding undead nannies.”
“What an inconvenient pet you’ve turned out to be.” Santos
laughed. “Color me delighted.”
“I’m thrilled you approve.”
“Since your lover is my oldest enemy, don’t you worry that
we’re meandering around Paris together in the middle of the
night? Tell me you fear me still or I will weep.”
“It’s always the same with the undead. Do you ever ask why
people skydive or swim with sharks or walk on hot coals?”
“I do not. In general, people are fairly stupid, and you may
consider it a compliment that I don’t think that’s true of you,
Adin.”
“Actually, I see that it’s a compliment. Thank you.” Adin
stopped midstride. “I didn’t get the chance to thank you for
your help this evening. You and Boaz saved me a great deal of
trouble.”
“You may thank Boaz; he insisted.” Santos stopped in front
of a café that was still open for business. “Are you hungry?”
“No.” Adin stepped aside as Santos opened the door. “But
after everything that’s happened, I could very definitely use a
22 Z.A. Maxfield
glass of wine.”
Adin entered the café first, and Santos helped him out of
his coat. He found a rack and hung it up before they scouted a
suitable table. After sitting, they ordered a bottle of Bordeaux.
When the waiter uncorked and poured it, Santos showed the
same disinterest Donte usually displayed. Adin wished it were
Donte sharing the cool Parisian evening with him. He felt hollow
and sad at the thought of Donte brooding alone somewhere.
“What?” Santos asked. “You’re thinking of Donte again…?”
“It’s nothing. What brings you to Paris? If it’s not a deep and
arcane secret…”
“It is!” Santos’s eyes fairly sparkled. When he relaxed Santos
was an extremely handsome man, and his smile held a certain
boyish charm. “It’s the oldest, deepest and most arcane of all
secrets. I almost always spend
Pâques
in Paris. I like to come for
Easter Services and stay through the end of May for the feast of
the Ascension, although this year that will not be possible. I need
to leave tomorrow for a series of business meetings in Taiwan.”
Adin blinked in surprise. “You celebrate
Easter
services?”
Santos nodded. “Of course.”
Adin shook his head and drank his wine. Why shouldn’t
Santos still be an observant Catholic? “I guess I didn’t realize it
was so close.”
“Next Sunday.” Santos appeared to be reasoning something
out in his mind. “I have a place in the seizième. The sixteenth
Arrondissement. It’s a nice neighborhood.”
“I know.” Adin blinked at the understatement. It was
the
nice neighborhood in Paris, on the west side across the Seine. It
boasted upscale businesses and grand apartment homes.
“If you run out of options, Boaz can take both you and the
boy to my home where he can look after you.”
“What on earth would make you think I’d take you up on an
offer like that?” Adin wasn’t entirely over nearly being killed the
last time he’d been forced to accept Santos’s hospitality.
Vigil
23
“Bygones,” Santos murmured. “Besides, I won’t be there but
Boaz will. You’d be safe as a child with its mother.”
“In a species that eats its young,” Adin snarked.
Santos shot Adin an exasperated glance and then looked
down at his untouched wine glass and chuckled. “You really are
a handful. I hope someday Donte realizes that by letting you live,
I’ve given him far more grief than I had reason to hope for by
killing you.”
Adin’s muscles relaxed as the wine hit his bloodstream.
“Certainly. Wasn’t that your plan all along?”
“Well, no, it wasn’t.” Santos grinned, and it was the first time
Adin had ever seen it when it wasn’t meant to be cruel. Santos
could be attractive, dark like Donte, but with curlier hair and
softer features. Very much the offspring of the beautiful boy
Adin had seen illustrated in Donte’s journal, Donte’s dead lover,
Auselmo. Even if Santos was far more deadly than he was letting
on in that moment. “But I have to take it as a win that he’s tearing
his hair out with worry over you.”
“As long as you’re happy.”
“I am happy, actually. For now.”
“Happy Easter,” Adin said over the rim of his wineglass. “A
new life awaits.”
“I’d prefer you didn’t share that information with Donte. I
find I’m reluctant to let him relax.”
“Fine.” Adin watched as Santos’s eyes strayed every now and
again to the door. “Expecting someone?”
“I estimate I have about twenty minutes before Donte finds
you, and I’d rather he didn’t find you with me.”
“
What
?” Adin nearly knocked his chair over in his haste to
rise from the table.
“He may have called Boaz to aid you with your little problem,
but I doubt he’ll be satisfied to leave your safety to someone else
for long. I imagine he’s hopped a flight to be here and is even as
we speak racing to the rescue in a cab.”
24 Z.A. Maxfield
“
Shit
.” Adin made for the coat rack even as Santos dropped
extra coins on the table for the waiter.
“How romantic you are.” Santos caught up with him at the
door. “Someday perhaps the thought of seeing me after a respite
will inspire some young woman to profanity as well.”
“You don’t understand. He’s only coming here to yell at me
and tell me I’ve proven his point. He’ll try to change my mind
about being turned and we’ll only argue until he goes back to
Spain.”
“Adin.” Santos’s brow furrowed as he caught Adin’s hand and
stopped him. “I hate him for turning me. I
hate
him for it. If it’s
truly going to come to that, you must accept protection from
me.”
Adin nearly gaped at Santos with shock. “
Why
?”
“Why what? Being turned is a horror I wouldn’t wish on
anyone, even those who desire it, although the chance to deprive
Donte Fedeltà of his pretty toy is an added incentive. The
process is painful and disorienting and the results are anything
but guaranteed. Tell me why you refuse him.”
“I want to remain who I am,” Adin whispered. “I never want
to be loved
if only
I were something else, even if who I am gets
sick and rots and dies. It’s my journey. And without its beginning,
its middle, and its end, I’m not ever going to be the man I was
born to be. Do you understand that? Does it surprise you so
much?”
“Yes,” Santos continued, holding Adin’s arm. “It’s
extraordinary, really, but not unexpected from a troublemaker
like you.”
Adin shrugged and retrieved his coat, then donned it and his
scarf before exiting the restaurant.
“Come to my place in the morning. I’ll be gone. As for your
boy problem,” Santos looked around at the darkened street before
he spoke again, “I have information that may change things.”
“What?”
Vigil
25
“Harwiche fears the men he’s dealing with, he used you as
an intermediary, and now that you have made the monetary
exchange, he will either try to trade for him or take him from
you.”
“That much I figured out all by myself.”
Santos cuffed Adin’s shoulder again. “Patience, pet,” he
warned, but without the usual sting. “Boaz can and will get your
money back.”
“But—”
“Don’t ask how. It’s confidential but I’ll tell him to do it. Or
Donte will.”
“Donte?”
“Yes, I never know who Boaz is serving from one moment to
the next. But there’s something Harwiche has recently acquired,
and Fedeltà will do anything he has to do to get it. Including
giving up the boy.”
“What could Harwiche have that Donte will want so badly?’
“My father’s letters.”
“Your—” Adin’s stopped, closing his mouth over an
expression of shock.
Santos’s eyebrows rose slyly. “I may have told Donte at one
time that I burned them.”
Adin grasped the lapels of Santos’s suit. “Your father’s letters?
Truly? Donte would kill for those.”
“Ah.” Santos peeled Adin’s fingers from his coat. “If that’s
the case, it might be wise to turn the boy over to him. Harwiche
will ask for Bran in return for my father’s letters.”
“But I promised to protect—” Adin gasped. “You
bastard
!
You knew.”
Santos shrugged, then shot Adin a radiant smile. “I suspected.
Well… maybe I suggested to Harwiche that the men he was
dealing with were unsavory and his problems might be solved
by an intermediary. The Harwiche family and I have a history,
26 Z.A. Maxfield
of sorts.”
Adin closed his eyes. “You are
such
a shit.”
“It’s really a simple matter, Adin.” Santos draped an arm
around his shoulder and began walking him back toward the
Pont Neuf, where they would cross the Seine. “All you have to do
is give the boy to Donte—”
“You know I won’t do that, I can’t. And Donte will try to
force me…”
“Yes…” Santos gave Adin’s shoulder a hard squeeze, just
short of painful. “Well. Eternity isn’t much fun unless I’m making
some kind of trouble for Fedeltà.”
“I have to think.” Adin shoved Santos away. “What
is
the boy
that Harwiche wants him so badly?”
“That is a very good question.”
“All right,” Adin growled and looked at his watches. “You’ve
made your mischief, and if you’re right, Donte will be here any
minute. If you want to add jealous outrage, be sure and stick
around.”
“Never. That would be too pedestrian for me and he knows
I don’t share his peculiar tastes.” Santos shook his head. “You
won’t believe me, but it’s always a pleasure to see you Adin.”
“The pleasure was all yours.” Adin headed across the bridge
toward the Right Bank but stopped when he’d gotten about ten
feet. He sighed and turned back to shoot Santos a cheeky smile.
“
Almost
, all yours. Thanks for the drink, Santos, and Happy
Easter.”
A brief burst of Santos’s laughter followed Adin as he
crossed over the river. Once on the other side, Adin couldn’t