The Vampire Narcise

She was right. They’d made it.

And despite the fact that he hadn’t accomplished the task for which he’d come, he felt more than a little satisfied.

13

Narcise drew in the fresh, cool air and felt the tears gather in her eyes. Free. I’m free.

It was well into the night, and Paris lay beyond her, around her…waiting for her. Paris, and the world…all of it, waiting for her.

Yes, she’d been out of the apartments many times in the years of living here…but this was different.

This time, she didn’t have to go back. This time she wasn’t accompanied by the insidious darkness of her brother, whose presence clung so heavily even when he was absent.

This time she was walking, on her own two feet, instead of being transported in a dark vehicle with guards.

“Are you coming with me?” said Woodmore in an impatient voice. “Or are you going to stand here and wait for them to catch up to us?”

“With you,” she managed to say, terrified at the thought, as he grabbed her arm and began to walk off briskly.

He had her clutched to his side, a bare-chested, battered man towing along a slender effeminate partner. At least, that was what she thought they might look like. And, apparently, even such an appearance wasn’t remarkable enough to glean notice from anyone else.

“Where are we going?” she asked, still drinking in the air, the activity of people walking and talking and laughing. There were women smiling slyly, with red lips and very low bodices…there were lanky youths watching from the shadows…there were couples, strolling arm in arm as if they had nowhere to be…and no one to escape from.

A group of the emperor’s soldiers wandered past, leaving Narcise to wonder if they knew their master was several feet below them, eating and drinking with a vampir.

“I don’t bloody damn know, but wherever it is, we don’t have time to dawdle,” Woodmore replied. “Nothing went as I planned.”

There were smells, too…lovely smells of spring flowers on the breeze, and fragrances from some of the well-dressed (and not so well-dressed) women strolling by. She scented sausages and cheese and wine and ale, cakes and bread and crepes all offered for the late-night patrons. A rolling lust for a cake, iced with cream, surprised her. She hadn’t had a sweet—or at least, hadn’t enjoyed one like that—since she was a girl in Romania. And beyond the food, there was the underlying stench of sewer and refuse, the damp and algae of the Seine, coal and wood smoke, and blood.

The bloodscent was coming most strongly from the man next to her, mingling with sweat and burned flesh, and it teased her…for it had been some while since she’d fed.

A blonde woman wearing a long, simple dress was standing near one of the columns along the Tuilieries. She seemed oblivious to the passersby who jostled through the narrow walkway beneath the covered promenade, bumping into or next to her.

She was watching them closely, but her calm gaze wasn’t unsettling in its intensity. Instead, Narcise felt a wave of peace slip over her as their eyes met. The woman smiled as Woodmore fairly dragged her past and the Mark on Narcise’s back twinged painfully. It surprised her, for Luce hardly ever expressed his annoyance with her. Perhaps because she never had much chance to make a choice that would annoy him.

The first step. Those words rang in her head and Narcise smiled to herself as she happened to meet the blonde woman’s eyes. She nodded at her, although of course there was no possible way the woman could know why she was nodding. But, yes, this was only the beginning.

It occurred to her, then, as Woodmore snapped his hand at a hackney cab—then decided not to climb aboard when a well-dressed gentleman pushed his way ahead of them—that she didn’t have anywhere to go herself. She had no money. She knew no one—an uncomfortable memory pinched her belly and she thrust away the thought of someone she did know—and didn’t know whom to trust.

But then a name did appear in her mind. Dimitri, the earl, in London. Cezar hated the man ever since he ended a business association with him when Dimitri learned that Cezar was a child-bleeder. And…there’d been that night in Vienna, when Cezar had offered Narcise to Dimitri.

Although she’d been dull with pain from a feather bracelet, Narcise still remembered that night…the cold, dark man who looked at her with a modicum of sympathy, but not even a flicker of lust.

She would go to him. Any enemy of Cezar was a friend of hers.

But in her fantasies, when she’d planned to make her escape, it was much less chaotic. Narcise had imagined a scenario in which she’d slipped from the house with a bag on her shoulder when the place was quiet and everyone was sleeping or otherwise distracted. Or that she’d be standing over Cezar’s headless body saying a fond farewell as his blood coursed onto the floor.

Just as Woodmore said: Not as planned.

But, nevertheless, it had worked.

“Here,” he said suddenly, towing her into a shadowy alcove.

The next thing she knew, they were at the backside door of a small public house that smelled of old ale and stewing meat, and Woodmore was negotiating in rapid French with its proprietor. He flashed that white smile, made a lewd gesture and then produced a small pouch that clinked—which she swore he hadn’t had moments earlier.

The pouch’s contents seemed to be the deciding factor for the proprietor, and the door opened wider. She felt the man’s amused grin on her as Woodmore led her inside and then directly up a set of dark, dingy stairs where the smell of coitus and ale clung to the walls. She wasn’t certain whether the proprietor recognized that she was a woman and not a man, but in either case, it didn’t matter.

After all, this was Paris.

And the recently liberated Narcise had no qualms about following the vampir hunter into a small bedchamber lit only by the glow of a lamp.

“Shut the door,” Woodmore ordered, and when she turned back, she saw that he’d sat on the bed.

For the first time, she noticed how much difficulty he seemed to have breathing. His torso and arms were a mass of cuts, bruises and large burns. “You’re hurt, what—”

“You just noticed this?” His voice was harsh. He seemed to struggle for a moment, then added in marginally softer tones, “I need to get cleaned up. They’re going to bring a bath.”

Even his sharp words didn’t offend Narcise. She was free. Nothing would upset or annoy her now. Yet, she felt that she owed him some explanation. “It was the only way to get him to allow us to fight.”

“And how precisely would fighting have helped us if one of us was dead? Or did you simply plan to kill me— but then how would that benefit you?” His voice was rough and unsteady.

“I didn’t expect him to make us fight till the death. I thought I would allow you to win, and then you would take me to…well, it doesn’t matter now, does it? We are here, and I’m free. Thank you. Do you need food? And where did you get the money? Surely you didn’t have it in your breeches all this time.”

“I venture to guess that such a bulge would have been noticeable,” he said, flashing a surprise smile. “At least, in certain places. I lifted the coins from the sot who stole our hack. He’ll never miss them, and I can’t draw on my resources until tomorrow.”

She’d walked over to turn the light up and by then, a knock sounded on the door. She opened it to reveal a maidservant with a jug of ale and a platter of cheese and bread. The girl brought it in, put it on a table, then turned to the cold fireplace.

“I don’t believe they have your particular vintage,” Wood-more said, gesturing to the food.

Narcise nodded, and realized again that it had been more than a few days since she’d fed, and with the hint