Seduction (39 page)

And so here we are in the palace, while outside the peasants are fomenting another rebellion. Eighteen years from now, this king will also be taking a midnight ride to England, leaving the throne of France to his ten-year-old grandson. “Better him than me” will be Louis-Philippe’s epitaph.

Only one thing is certain: Nothing will ever change. How many lives were taken in service to an ideal of liberty, equality, and brotherhood? Thirty years after the first heads rolled off the executioner’s platform, are the poor any cleaner? Are the rich any kinder? Is anyone better off?

Of course not. It was all for nothing. Pain, misery, suffering, despair, war . . . they are always for nothing.

The night is dark, and as I walk, I fill my lungs with it.

• • •

The brazen opulence of the court of King Louis-Philippe is laughable. These aristos who, thirty years ago, were hiding in public toilets while armed revolutionaries marched their families to the guillotine are now dancing again as if the horror of those times had never happened.

I am one of them now, incidentally. In the confusion following the Reign of Terror, it was easy and commonplace for nobodies with money to buy titles. I am, I will admit, truly Nobody, but I have a title now, the fifteenth Duc du Capet.

It was easy enough to come by: My ancestors shared the name. It was my father who foolishly forsook it in favor of the life of a tradesman and farmer. Jean-Loup de Villeneuve never appreciated the heady pleasure that power brings. Having possessed the greatest magic possible—the ability to create gold—he chose instead to dine on thin soup and live in a tunnel like a sewer rat.

But that has changed. I am the duke now. I have the power. In my blood stirs magic greater than poor Villeneuve could ever imagine.

The occasion I am attending is a ball, and I am looking for a woman. A particular woman, a young witch who has learned that she can remain young and beautiful forever if she will decline marriage to the fop her father has chosen for her and join the Abbey of Lost Souls.

The young woman’s name, I believe, is Helène, or Helena—something falsely Grecian. She is not a very talented witch. I think I was told that she starts fires, which means she could easily be replaced by a hot coal or a piece of flint, but no matter. If her freakishness were to be discovered by the outside world, she would surely be persecuted, as her kind has always been, unless she were clever enough to hide it. But these girls are rarely clever.

I have come to rescue her. It is a humanitarian service I render, one of several. I have brought a great number of these poor girls to a place of safety, where their extrasensory abilities will be appreciated, if only by their mirrors, since the witches at the abbey use their gifts solely to maintain their beauty and youth. One might say they literally live for fashion, the dears. And despite their wasted lives, they live nearly in perpetuity. Or they think they will. I have made a point of seeing to it that they do not overstay their welcome in this overpopulated world.

Still, they love me for my help to them. To be truthful, they would love any man with a well-cut frock coat and connections to the theater.

Ah, there she is. My God, her dress is covered with pink bows! There are bows along the gigantic hooped hem of her skirt, around her hips, on her shoulders, and decorating her bodice. Bows are even in her hair, which is coiled into tubes that resemble sausages dangling from her head.

Yes, without my intervention, this one would surely go to the gallows.

She is flirting with me, too young to realize how boring she is. She’ll be right at home in the abbey.

We dance. She is nimble and lithe, and smiles prettily at me behind her fan. I suppose she imagines that she has some sort of power over me. Amusing.

“We are near the door,” I whisper into her ear, and she blushes so deeply that you’d think I’d just made an indecent proposal to her. Beneath her perfume, I sense a faint odor of fear. The lovely if bovine Helène probably has never defied her parents before this. No doubt she feels as if she’s betraying her family.

I wonder why the gift of magic is so often given to the undeserving.

“Come with me,” I say, forcing her to look into my eyes. “Now.”

She swallows. She wants me. She allows me to lead her through the doorway into the corridor, past the footmen and into the night.

“My coat!” she exclaims, but I wave away her objection.

“We can’t go back.”

“But . . .” She looks back at the festive lights of the palace. I push her forward.

• • •

At the entrance to the abbey, I speak with the officious harridan who believes she is in charge of the place. She tries to take the girl inside, but I prevent her.

“What do you have for me?” I ask. The woman’s eyes do not meet my gaze. I take her arm, roughly. “You said someone was dying.”

“She . . . she recovered.” The woman tries to pull away from me. “Please, Monsieur le Duc, for the sake of the girl . . .”

I shove the “abbess” away from me, and she falls to the floor. With the same motion, I clasp Helène’s arm and drag her away from the abbey’s door.

“Monsieur—” she begins, but I force her around the corner of the building. Before she can become frightened, I press her against the stone wall of the abbey and kiss her full on her lips.

At first her eyes are open. She is like a deer in the moonlight, trying to decide whether or not to run. But I touch the tip of her tongue with my own, and she emits a little gasp. It is only a moment, but that is all it takes to make her abandon her natural caution. She kisses me back with wanton passion, her eyes closed now, her breath coming fast. She thrusts her breasts at me; she explores my mouth with her own. She touches my face as if I were an honorable lover. Such pretense!

“My wicked darling,” I murmur, and she smiles through swollen lips. Boldly she pulls my head toward hers, and that is when I do it.

I press her wrists against the wall as I begin to pull her life out of her through her willing, loving mouth.

As the breath rushes out of her, she begins to struggle. The dainty wrists push feebly against my hands. Her eyes fly open. She wants to speak, but cannot. The pink ribbons in her hair tremble and quiver like petals in the wind. Then she makes a sound like a rabbit caught in a trap, a rasping cry that wants desperately to grow into a scream but fails because with every second, the life is rushing out of her. Into me. I feel myself expanding as she falls nearer to death.

It is always delicious, even with cowen, but with witches the feeling is particularly satisfying. It makes no difference if they are young and beautiful or ancient, with hobbled feet and rotten teeth, although the more magic they possess, the better the harvest. At the last, when I take that magic, the sensation is magnificent.

Tears spring to Helène’s eyes. Poor creature, I would comfort her if I could. I would tell her that the pain will soon end, that it would be better for her not to spend her final moments in a frenzy of terror, but I doubt if anything I said would make much difference at this point.

This is the moment when all the masks come off, both the disguise of the demure and obedient daughter and the silly pretense of the sensuous, worldly woman. All that’s left is her naked, animal fear as she expels her last breath.

My masks are gone as well. As her soul flies into my mouth and her body crumbles to ash before me, I feel my leathern wings stir. I grow enormous, filling the sky. Passersby look up, uneasy, ignorant, their arms instinctively wrapped around themselves as if trying to hold on to their own souls, and in the lightless night they see my face and shiver, and hurry on, denying to themselves that they’d seen anything at all.

They always deny what they know to be true, because as anyone who has seen me clearly in those last few precious moments of their lives would attest, the sight is too terrible to remember.

And I . . .

I am simply here.

With you, Katy, now and always.

Forever.

CHAPTER

•

FORTY-SIX

With a shiver, I jumped up and threw the book on the floor as if it were on fire.

How did he—it, that is, IT—know my name?

My name!

I felt myself shaking. How? How? But a part of me already knew the answer to that question.

How could It
not
know me?

That chapter had been written by the Darkness itself, and even though I’d never met Drago, I was well acquainted with the Entity that possessed him. I had seen It in Its true form. And much as I’d tried to tell myself that it wasn’t true,
that that was then, this was now
, as much as I’d wanted to believe Azrael when he’d said my soul was pure, I knew it was just a matter of time before the snake I’d fought in the Meadow would find me again.

Because the Darkness is patient. It waits. It knows. And It never forgets.

It hadn’t forgotten me.

I stumbled into the kitchen, trying to think, and poured myself a glass of water. But my hands were shaking so hard that the liquid sloshed over the side of the glass. I was looking for a paper towel to clean up the mess when the phone rang, scaring me out of my wits. Forgetting that it wasn’t my home, I automatically lunged to pick up the receiver, but before I could hit the “talk” button, I slipped on the spilled water on the floor.

I skidded across the kitchen on the heels of my sneakers until I ran into a tall chrome garbage can, at which point I fell over backward, letting go of the phone in my hand. Still ringing insistently, it went flying along the marble countertop, finally crashing into a glass jar filled with coffee that exploded into a thousand pieces while its contents spewed over everything like a black cloud.

The phone was still ringing. “Oh, shut up!” I shrieked. Wiping coffee grounds off my face with my sleeve, I resigned myself to a massive cleanup.

Great,
I thought. Just what I wanted to do at three in the morning after having the snot scared out of me.

And the phone kept on ringing.

I must have misread the last line of the book,
I reasoned while I tore off some paper towels. That was the only explanation that made sense. I mean, sure, I’d been spooked by the Darkness in the past, but that didn’t mean It had decided to include me in Its memoirs. I was just punchy with fatigue and still reeling from the events of my day.

“Shut up!”
I screamed at the still-ringing phone.

I swept the shards of glass into a dustpan as the phone
finally fell silent. “Thank God,” I mumbled. Quiet at last.

And then I saw it, facedown in the corner under a pile of spilled coffee grounds: a green earring.

I squinted at it for a moment. What was it doing there, tossed in a corner of the kitchen like a discarded gum wrapper? I reached for it, but the moment I touched it, I nearly slammed against the wall, so powerful were its vibrations.

A woman, knowing she was going to die. In a desperate move to reveal her killer, she throws the earring into the corner as her life is leached out of her. She gasps as she slides down the wall toward the floor, where this monster will finish feeding on her. But before she closes her eyes for the last time, she catches a glimpse of herself in the shiny metal of the toaster.

So old,
she thinks.
He has taken my youth.
She marvels, horrified, at the wrinkled, aged creature she has become. One emerald earring dangles against her wizened neck. Her once-beautiful features transform into ropy strands that resemble an abandoned hornet’s nest. And she thinks, at the last:
My face! What has he done to my face?

Joelle’s face,
I realized numbly. The murdered woman in my vision had been Joelle. I remembered the earring on the body on the Rue Déschamps. The one in my hand was its match.

The body in the alley had been hers.

While the sounds of Joelle’s final agony reverberated through my mind, the phone made a clicking sound as the message light flashed and I heard Belmondo’s voice being recorded.

“Katy,” he said in that teasing, smiling way he had that made my insides turn to jelly. “I know you’re still awake.”

My breath came in a swift whoosh as I reached for the phone. Belmondo! Belmondo would know what to do. He always knew.

But something was wrong, I could feel it. My hand seemed to stop of its own volition before it reached the receiver.

Joelle’s face, reflected in the toaster as she sinks to her knees. So old, so old . . .