American Gothic (6 page)

9

Les Vampires

T
HE CORPSES HAD accumulated in the mansion during the brief time Peregrine was sequestered within the hidden library. No one seemed to notice him as he walked through the music room, stepping over the body of a young man stretched out between the two parlors. Behind him, the pianist began to play Mozart’s
A Little Night Music.

The foyer was deserted, without a doorman or servants to bring him his cloak—or to dissuade him from leaving. The double glass doors remained open, with only the screen outer doors separating him from escaping into the night.

Peregrine did not move. He stood there, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, trying to make up his mind. He was in a house of death, and he had no more illusions about being able to control his future if he stayed there, beyond seeing himself become one of the monsters’ next victims.

But
she
was in the house. He knew it without knowing quite how he knew it. Surely she had brought him there for some reason. Peregrine did not think it could have been to kill him, or he would have been dead already, at her hand, or the gypsy’s, or one of the other blood drinkers. Why engage him in such a living game of chess, moving and countermoving herself and her deadly chess pieces, unless she was building to something more than Peregrine being slaughtered—or allowed to walk out the door?

A cool breeze blew in through the screens, flowing past Peregrine as he stood rooted, like water dividing around a boulder in the stream. During the intermittent pauses between the phrases of Mozart from the farther room, Peregrine heard the faint sound of bamboo wind chimes. It reminded him of something, although he wasn’t sure what. And then it came to him, the connection to chimes he’d heard that night in the opium den, a sound like the clicking of finger bones laced together with thread.

Peregrine tilted his head, straining to hear the sound. There was more than an overwhelming sense of remembrance or an unnerving moment of déjà vu. A chill of cold sweat broke out on Peregrine’s neck as he realized he was hearing
exactly
the same sound he had heard at Yu’s. He did not know how this could be, or if there really was a wind chime outside the house on Chestnut Street, or if it was all inside his mind. What he did know was that she was able to play tricks with the night, controlling events and perceptions with a power that seemed nothing short of wizardry.

Only a fool would contend with such a being without expecting to pay a severe price.

Peregrine began to take a step toward the door but stopped himself.

The other side of the coin was that only a fool would think he could step willingly into the black widow’s web, then change his mind, turn around, and leave without paying the consequences.

Peregrine’s eyes looked out through the screen. The Spanish moss moved gracefully back and forth in the night breeze, either beckoning him to come or mocking him for his predicament.

If he stayed, he died. If he left, he died. Peregrine was a king in check. The mistake was in the earlier moves, now too late to recover from. All that was left was to see how long it took the endgame to play itself out. Escaping checkmate was not even remotely possible.

He saw a subtle change in the darkness outside the door, the shadows moving across one another. He thought it was just the moss swaying in the wind until the shadows coalesced into something solid. He heard the scrape of shoe leather against wood as the shadow turned, directing its attention away from the street to focus inside the house. Peregrine would not close his eyes for even a fraction of a second. There was someone out there, looking in at him through the door.

Another sliding footstep. A face took shape in the darkness, but it was not the woman. It was someone as big as Peregrine, perhaps bigger. A shock of black hair emerged in the reflected light, then an arching eyebrow and curling upper lip.

It was Safian.

That decided the matter for Peregrine. His reaction was purely tactical, like a general arriving on the field to find the advance blocked and his position untenable. Without the least expression of haste, he turned away from the door and started to climb the stairs, toward the upper regions of the mansion on Chestnut Street in search of the woman he had come there to find.

The broad staircase curved around like the shell of a nautilus, depositing Peregrine in a hallway running the length of the house. The doors along either side of the hall were closed except for the last door on the right, which stood ajar a few inches. A pair of ornate iron stands, whose design might have been copied from an Egyptian tomb, framed the door, shoulder-high oil lamps the only light in the hallway. The windows on either end of the hall were open, their gossamer draperies moving in the breeze with motions as sinuous as Turkish dancing girls. No sound of the gaiety below penetrated the house’s second level. The Garden District mansions were built solid as tombs, with stout brick walls and floors made from thick planks of cypress or oak.

Someone had dropped a woman’s white scarf in the middle of the hall. The breeze stirred the silk, fabric so fine that it seemed to have no more substance than a whiff of smoke. As he stood on the landing, the scarf lifted a few inches from the floor and fell back. It stretched itself, like a snake uncoiling after sleep, and edged toward Peregrine, as if possessing both will and purpose. He watched it rub itself against his foot the way a cat does when it wants to be scratched. His wife had once owned such a scarf, a memento of their honeymoon in St. Louis, traveling there on the newest steamboat in the Peregrine Mississippi & Ohio Line.

The scarf rose unsteadily and levitated in the air in front of his face, twisting and turning, until Peregrine’s hand shot out and grabbed it. Or so he thought. He stared at his empty hand. The scarf was gone.

“Ohhhhh.”

The moan came from the door on his left, the sound of pain and pleasure merging into one. The hair stood up on the back of his neck, like static electricity in the air a moment before lightning strikes.

Refusing to be diverted by whatever was going on inside that room, Peregrine walked straight to the door between the braziers at the end of the hall, a sixth sense telling him that was where he would find her. He put his hand on the knob. It was cast brass, cool to his skin. He ran his finger over the decorative metal raised along the outer edge of the casting. There was no turning back if he opened the door and went inside. No, he thought. That was an illusion. He had passed the point of no return long before that moment.

Behind him, a door opened. Peregrine felt a pair of eyes upon his back, but he did not look around. Instead, he grasped the ornate doorknob, pushed forward, and stepped into the monster’s inner sanctum, closing the door behind him.

The chambermaid greeted him with bowed head.

“Good evening.”

She did not answer. Her coffee-colored face was a blank mask, the same as the other servants in the house. If Peregrine hadn’t seen her move, he would have taken her for a wax model of the sort displayed at Madame Tussaud’s in London.

Peregrine found himself in a sitting room furnished like the rest of the house with elegant European chairs and tables. A low couch with brocade pillows faced the fireplace. The oil paintings on the walls were landscapes except for a portrait of a noble-looking man from another time over the mantel.

“Have you found my scarf,
chéri
?”

The woman’s voice had come through an open door Peregrine hadn’t noticed because it was mostly hidden behind a Japanese screen. She spoke with the slight French accent once common to old Creole families in the Delta. Peregrine recognized the voice. He would have known it anywhere.

“No, I thought I had it, but—well, I’m sure
you
understand.”

He was glad that his voice was firm and level. He was not worried about sounding frightened or uncertain—although he feared he might sound crazy.

The woman did not answer. Peregrine wondered what she was doing in the adjoining boudoir. He stared hard at the Oriental carpet, trying not to picture her in there with someone like Evangeline or even Mrs. Foster, draining them of their blood and life as he stood next door, waiting his turn to die, but secretly harboring obscure hopes that he would learn some great secret and it would all turn out miraculously different for him.

The servant went to the sideboard and poured a snifter of brandy. She put it on the low table before the couch, curtsied to no one in particular, and went out the hall door, closing it behind herself. Peregrine sat down unbidden, for that obviously was what he was supposed to do, and picked up the glass. The cognac tasted rich and warm, and he felt its effect almost immediately. He took a second swallow, this time bigger, and leaned back to wait.

“My dear general.”

The woman seemed to have materialized in front of him.

Peregrine put down the glass as he stood up and bowed. She was smiling up at him when he straightened, more beautiful than ever. She had come out of the bedroom with her long hair undone, so that it tumbled over her bare shoulders. Her skin was as translucent as a cameo held to light. Her lips were shining and full, her profile of such classic shape that she might have been the model for a statue of Aphrodite—and for all Peregrine knew, she might have lived long enough to have been the original goddess. Her sharply drawn eyebrows and lustrous eyelashes served only to accentuate the size and color of her green eyes. She was simply dressed in a plain white gown with raised bodice, the sort of dress a vestal virgin might have worn, golden slippers on her tiny feet. Only two pieces of jewelry adorned her body: a golden bracelet around her wrist in the shape of a serpent chasing its own tail, and a simple golden cross.

“I am delighted to see you again, General Peregrine, but why did you take so long to present yourself to me? Certainly you know that a gentleman never keeps a lady waiting.”

10

Seduction

“H
OW DO YOU know my name?” Peregrine asked in a voice that was curious rather than accusatory.

“I know everything about you, Nathaniel. I am Delphine Allard. Secrets are not kept from Madame.”

He looked at the hand she had extended, which was as tiny and fragile as a songbird kept in a gilded cage to entertain a drowsy empress.

Madame Allard gazed back at him with a Mona Lisa smile, amused rather than insulted that he had not taken her hand. She seemed to know what he was thinking—that such a hand hardly looked capable of belonging to a monster.

“What are you afraid of, General?”

“Excuse me, madame.” He took her hand in his and lightly held it, her skin dry and warm even to the point of feeling feverish.

“You are not really afraid of me, are you, General Peregrine? That is one of the first things I noticed about you.”

Peregrine looked back into her eyes and said nothing. There was no point. She already
knew
what was in his mind and heart.

Madame Allard sat down and nodded for him to join her on the couch.

“It is a curious deficiency you suffer, General.”

“I beg your pardon?” He had been thinking about how beautiful she was.

“This peculiar condition you suffer, never being afraid, it is because you lack something. Do not look shocked, General. I do not doubt your courage. It is plain that you are a brave man. But your inability to fear is a different matter entirely. A vital part of you simply is not there. Part of your soul is missing. That is the real cause of your indifference to”—she looked around her in a manner that indicated the house on Chestnut Street and its murderous inhabitants—“all of this.”

“How is it possible to know such things?”

Madame Allard laughed merrily. “That is what you came here to find out. “You cannot hide your secrets from me, General. No one can.”

The rap on the door brought Peregrine’s chin sharply up.

“That will be Colette,” Madame Allard said. “I have been expecting her.
Entrez.
”

Into the room came the gypsy who had wished to collect a memento mori from Peregrine in the library.

Colette came quietly into the room, her eyes moving from Madame Allard to Peregrine and back.

“I thought you might like more company,” Colette said, addressing Madame Allard. “Three can have such a frightfully good time.”

“A delicious idea, darling, but I prefer to keep General Peregrine to myself.”

There was disappointment but no sign of the temper Colette had shown earlier. She either respected the little Creole girl-woman, or feared her.

“Another time, then.”

“Without question,” Madame Allard said.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Peregrine said when the monster was gone.

Madame Allard raised one pretty eyebrow.

“When Colette and I were in the library,” Peregrine said, “you intervened before she was able to—you know what I’m talking about.”

“Colette has a lovely voice and many fine qualities, but she always wants to monopolize the most interesting men. Besides, I have had my eye on you for far too long to let darling Colette have you all to herself.”

“You weren’t in the library. How did you know what was about to happen? How did you command her to leave me alone? Are you able to project your wishes—even your will—through the walls?”

Madame Allard made a dismissive gesture. “These are trifling matters, General. I can do a great many things that would no doubt astonish you, but they are commonplaces among my kind and hardly worthy of comment.”

Peregrine leaned toward her on his arm, his eyes bright and alert. “Your
kind.
That is what fascinated me. Pray tell me what you mean by that, Madame Allard.”

She raised her face with pride.

“I am a vampire, General Peregrine.”

“And what, pray tell, is a vampire?”

“We can discuss that another time, General.”

“Will there be another time?”

She indicated his glass. “Have your drink. It will relax you.”

The last thing Peregrine wanted to do was relax, but he picked up the cognac. The vampire nodded as he drank, like a physician happy to see her patient taking his medicine.

“The thing that fascinates me about you is not your fearlessness, which is remarkable in itself. What makes you unique, General, is your inability to free yourself from your grief. I have known people suffering the horrors of tragedy and loss, but I have never witnessed grief as profound and deep as I see it in you.” She closed her eyes. “I can feel it burning in you—your grief, and your anger.”

Peregrine locked his jaw and looked away, blinking his eyes rapidly. He wished she would get it over with—sink her teeth into his neck, kill him, and put the whole pathetic tragedy that was his life forever in the past.

“Emotions are like coins, General, with two sides, heads and tails, opposing representations of what is in fact the same whole. Surely you have noticed that the world is made up of dualities: day and night; white and black; inside and out; love and hate; good and evil.”

Peregrine was hardly listening. Madame Allard had summoned the ghosts back into the center of his world.

“Every emotion, every power, has its opposite, and that is where it draws its true power. The converse of grief is not joy but vengeance. Grief and anger are waters that well up out of the same dark place in your ruined heart.”

Peregrine felt himself fall bodily back into the present moment. He looked back at Madame Allard. The hard light in her eyes reflected nothing but cold calculation and a desire to have her way—whatever she was up to with him. Few men could be as cruel as a beautiful woman, in Peregrine’s experience; they grew so accustomed to breaking hearts that they often became hardened to anything but their own desire.

“It is just a question of translation, General. The solution to the pain over your murdered family is not to suffer but to convert the misery into hatred. You have an exquisite untouched capacity for anger. It is a gift, my dear, a talent every bit as rare and precious as what my remarkable friend Liszt is able to do when he sits at my piano downstairs. You have been blessed. The seed that flowers into genius is invariably a wound, and you, my poor dear man, have been wounded to the bottom of your heart. Cradle your lust for vengeance, Nathaniel. Hold it to your breast like a child, like you held your own two poor dead children when they were babies. You can make so many interesting things happen if you devote your mind, your body, and your soul to gorgeous anger. What you want is not oblivion but revenge on the people who killed your wife and children.”

Peregrine stared, too stunned to speak, barely able to breathe. He closed his eyes and felt it, the anger, burning hot as a blacksmith’s fire in his soul.

“Since there is no love in your life, replace it with hate, Nathaniel. We need something inside, something to give us a reason to continue from day to day. You are a hollow man now, but I can see that changing as I watch you fill your soul with pure and glorious anger.”

A bead of perspiration ran down the side of his face, but he did not bother to wipe it away.

“Never have I met a man more marked for doom than you, Nathaniel Peregrine,” she said, her voice seeming to come from within him. “Not marked for death, my love,” she whispered, her lips now gently brushing his neck, “but doom.”

Peregrine started to ask Madame Allard what she meant, but the feeling of her breath against the skin of his neck, so deliciously warm and moist, stopped the words in his mouth.

“The people who murdered your beloved wife and your babies will be made to pay, my darling,” she whispered. “Vengeance
will
be yours. That is my promise to you. The cause of the Confederacy is as lost as you are, and what do I care for any of that? My allegiance, such as it is, belongs to France. You will atone for the death of your family a thousand times over, my beloved. You shall drink your fill of revenge. You will find the taste very sweet indeed.”

“Revenge,” Peregrine said, but that was all he had time to say before Madame Allard’s teeth sank deep into his throat.