Midnight Kiss Page 25

  “I thought she was a witch,” Louis admitted to Arabella with a soft, cynical laugh. “A naive guess, but I knew evil when I felt it. And she was evil. She cast a spell upon her victims, winding it about them like a web of pretty dross, and they did not mind being ensnared, even when she drained them dry like a filthy spider. Like the black widow that devours her devoted mate. There was something unhealthy about the cadre of her followers and the possessive way they danced attendance upon her. Gerardo was anxious to be among them, and he would not listen to my cautions. He laughed at me and called me a silly old woman for my worries. And one night, he went off with her and I did not see him again for several weeks.”

  How to describe to her the terror in his heart, the fear trembling within a superstitious mind in an age of splendor and ignorance? He’d searched the city for his friend and, in that quest, discovered a string of missing sons and husbands. He thought he was seeing the devil’s work, but it was the work of just one devil, and he had no idea what he was facing.

  He’d found Gerardo in a slovenly artist’s garret, half starved and wasting away with some unknown sickness of the body and spirit. He refused to return home. He refused to let Louis bring him aid. Louis insisted upon staying in the rat-infested hole to care for him, getting him decent food and clothing, and fretting. Gerardo got stronger, but still, he would not listen to reason and leave. He was waiting. He was waiting for the return of Bianca du Maurier.

  “The longer she stayed away, the more frantic he became. Bewitchment, I thought. The more I argued, the angrier he became. He would not believe she had cast him off in favor of another, and then she was there and it seemed he was right. Except she displayed no great interest in his devotion.”

  Arabella understood without words. Bianca had been intrigued by Gerardo’s serious-minded and beautiful-featured friend.

  “We were an odd and familiar sight about the city, the three of us, each night until the early hours before dawn. Bianca played us like the fools we were. She toyed with Gerardo’s affection, letting him stumble over himself to please her while she tried to entice me. I went with them because I was afraid to leave him alone with her. I thought I could protect him from what I was certain would prove a fatal charm. How he grew to hate me, and his jealousy wounded because it was undeserved—at first. He was in such a fever of upset. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “She’d bitten him, hadn’t she?”

  Louis glanced toward Arabella and nodded. “But then, I didn’t know that was what it was. I had no idea such things as Bianca existed. I was a good Catholic. I thought I understood evil through the Church’s rigid interpretations. But Bianca defied their description. I was afraid for my friend’s life, not knowing it was our souls that were in such terrible danger.

  “She had a way of distracting the mind with the beauty of what she was. You found yourself enchanted without wanting to be. I would catch myself watching her, wishing I could possess her, while Gerardo sat between us, hating me. I didn’t want to feel such things for the woman he adored, for a woman I felt was a demon incarnate. But I couldn’t help myself. And the more I resisted, the more she was amused and the harder she pursued me. She didn’t care that she was torturing Gerardo with her faithlessness. She seemed to enjoy his misery and mine. She was a lovely and treacherous fiend. But knowing that didn’t stop me from falling prey to her.”

  Louis was silent for a moment. In his mind, he pictured Bianca’s sweet mouth, the way it shifted so subtly from taunting mirth to petulant moue to a siren’s bow. He remembered his indignant shock and secret thrill when she’d kissed him playfully in her lover’s presence. Like family, she’d chide, when Gerardo would rant and rage at her. Nothing wrong with a few fond kisses. Except that it was more than kisses. She found every excuse to touch him, just flirtatious caresses that made him flush with confusion while she laughed and called him her pretty little cleric. He’d been in such a torment of desire and moral panic, and Bianca loved provoking it.

  He’d told Arabella he’d forgotten how it was between him and Bianca. He’d said that because there was no way she’d understand what had happened when the predatory blonde had come to him one night in Gerardo’s absence, wearing a fur cloak and nothing else. How she’d let that robe drop from her shoulders and he’d fallen with it right into hell. Her naked arms snaked about him and her kiss sucked away the last of his noble resolve. They’d spent the night on the floor, rolling and writhing together, engaged in a fevered coupling that had nothing to do with passion. He’d been drunk on the violent sensations, reeling from her relentless demands and the carnal wickedness they wallowed in. There was none of the conscious pleasure he’d felt with Arabella, none of the gentleness, the love, the excitement or anticipation. It was raw, hard, and even angry, that fierce union, filled with darkness and depravity. And he’d loved the nastiness of it... until he’d seen Bianca smiling slyly over his shoulder and had turned to see a stunned Gerardo watching from the doorway.

  “She’d called him so he’d find us there together. I’m convinced of it. The way she smiled without a trace of guilt or surprise. I’m sure she planned it for her own amusement. For me, it was like waking from a strange dream to a nightmare. I couldn’t believe the things I’d done with her to betray my friend who loved her. But I hadn’t been able to stop myself. I tried to tell him that. I tried to tell him it meant nothing, that I hadn’t done it to hurt him or have her, but he was beyond reason. He drew his sword and demanded I give him satisfaction.

  “I didn’t want to fight with him, not over a woman who was controlling us both like puppets. He would not listen. I had no choice but to meet him. He was the superior swordsman, so it never occurred to me that I could actually wound him. Perhaps I was hoping he would kill me to take away the shame of what I’d done. But when it was over, he was dying in my arms from a fatal thrust through his chest; my sword had slipped and plunged into him. It was a mistake, a tragic mistake. I hadn’t meant to hurt him. I was only trying to defend against him. But it was done and I was so crazy with grief that when Bianca said she could save him from death, I begged her to do it. The price was my devotion, she told me, and it seemed little enough to pledge. I didn’t know what she was or what she meant to do to us. Had I, I would have slain us both while salvation was still in sight.”

  He paused for a moment, his eyes closing, and in the lamplight, remorse shimmered wetly upon his cheeks.

  “She made him into a vampire,” Arabella whispered, with a dreadful hush of insight.

  “She tore out his throat and drank down his blood, then had him drink from hers as he breathed his last. She laughed at my horror when I said she’d killed him. She laughed and said that was not true. I had killed him. She gave him immortality, just as I requested.

  “The next thing I knew, I was in my own bed at my family’s villa. They said I’d been suffering from some sort of fever of the brain, rambling wild things about the murder of my friend. And when I looked up, there he was, smiling at me from the foot of my bed, and beside him was Bianca. But I knew he was dead. No one would believe me, and they just smiled, those two ghouls, and let the world think I was insane. I wish I had been crazy. I wish it had been my friend Gerardo and his cunning whore there to visit me. They were so solicitous of me in my confusion, and their promise that they would be back to see me again gave no comfort.”

  And they had returned, he continued in a quiet tone, with a composure that betrayed none of his remembered terror. He’d awakened the next night to find Bianca lying alongside him in his bed while Gerardo glowered from the foot of the bedstead as the blond vampiress lapped from the punctures in his throat. When Louis spoke of how she’d forced his face into the gushing wound she’d ripped in her own fair breast, his words faltered slightly, but he kept his expression unvaried. He’d choked on the taste of her blood and listened to her laughter as she’d told him almost lovingly that now she’d never lose hi
m. He would be hers for an eternity. If he died, he would rise up again. He hadn’t understood. He’d swooned, then, from shock and loss of blood, and when he was discovered weak and delirious the next morning, his family assumed he’d suffered a relapse. Fearful for him, his parents were about to have him locked away when Bianca and Gerardo took him, spiriting him from his home in the dead of night to begin traversing the continent, a strange trio of travelers.

  Bianca kept him just weak enough to be docile to her will and protected him from a vengeful Gerardo, who wanted nothing more than to drain him to death. During the day, Louis made the necessary arrangements for the three of them like a sleepwalker, and at night he sat, a somnambulant witness, as the lethal pair lured the unsuspecting to their brutal deaths.

  “I truly do not know how much time passed. Months, perhaps years. There were times when I’d look about in dull surprise and not know where we were. Nothing seemed real... the East, with its brilliant dawns and sunsets, the rich tropic vegetation, arid deserts, dark mosques and temples, the sights and smells and sound of the crowded bazaars packed along narrow streets of Damascus and Egypt, where Bianca spoiled me with expensive gifts and Gerardo would sometimes be of good cheer and make me laugh almost like the old days... almost...” And the ache of melancholy was painful to hear.

  “I do not know why she didn’t kill me. Perhaps it amused her to watch me fret over my mortal soul. Boredom is such a terrible state when you’ve existed for centuries. Perhaps she liked taunting Gerardo by keeping me beside her as her slave where she could kiss me and pet me and drink from me at will. She would let me grow strong enough to resist her, then would take an unholy pleasure in draining that spirit away. And when I was weak, she would hold me in her lap, saying she loved me, and plead with me to join them, to come over to their world of my own choice, tempting me with the promise of eternity, with freedom from the darkness in which I lingered, and I was so tired and so faded, at times I wanted to say, yes, do it, take me, release me—but I couldn’t. Her pious little cleric, she’d say, then she would kiss me and let me fall to the floor like I was nothing to her, and she and Gerardo would be off into the night.

  “And then, one day while they slept, I somehow found the strength to escape them. I was ill much of the time by then, weakened by the traveling, by the constant demands Bianca made upon my blood. I was convinced I was going to die and go to hell.” He laughed softly. “I didn’t know I was already there. Bianca had no patience with my prayers and terrors, and she left me alone just long enough for my thoughts to become my own again. I was obsessed with seeing my family again and begging their forgiveness. I had been planning it for some time in the fever of my mind, stashing away coins and memorizing travel routes, trying to stay alert while pretending to be passive. I suspect Gerardo knew, but he said nothing. I think he was hoping Bianca would be so angry that I ran, she’d agree to let him hunt me down and kill me.

  “When that day came, I stepped out, taking nothing, and placed a princely sum in the hands of men paid to see me home to Florence. I arrived there sick and failing, but I was able to see my homeland and my mother and father before I died within a few days of returning to their door. They laid me to rest in our family plot, never guessing I would rise up again the next night and every night thereafter for three hundred years. But it was never my choice.” He looked to Arabella then, his expression intense and somewhat fearful as he waited for her judgment. She came to him with the soft cry of his name. “Oh, Louis.” And her arms were about his neck, her cheek wet and warm against his. And he hugged her tight, knowing this was as close to heaven as he was ever going to get. He gathered strength from her, not a physical one, as he would from drinking, but a spiritual power absorbed from the love she’d yet to claim. He wanted her so deeply, so selfishly, he thought of ending his story there, with him the sad and sympathetic victim of a cruel and overwhelming evil. Then she would continue to hold him and love him because he’d been wronged and had suffered so greatly for the sake of his friend Gerardo. But the span of his human life was short, making up just a trickle of the time he’d prowled the earth. He knew it would be unfair of him to let her believe he’d gone on as the same self-sacrificing man, tormented by the same moralistic battles. If she was to choose, she had to know all.

  “There is more.”

  The way he said it made her stiffen in his embrace. She pulled back so she could look into his eyes. He tried to block the emotion in his gaze, but it was an impossible feat. How to pretend his precarious soul was not trembling before her will? Then she surprised and amazed him. She touched his face, letting her fingertips explore it as if she had never seen him before, letting that light touch roam the upward jut of his cheekbones and gently sweep along the arch beneath his brows. He closed his eyes and immense feeling rose within him—powerful, poignant stirrings that made him want to weep. She leaned forward to very softly, very sweetly, kiss him on the brow. A sound of confusion and tender yearning escaped him as he turned his head away. She should not show him such compassion. She didn’t know him. She didn’t know all that he was and what he’d done.

  “I told you I was no monster, Bella, but perhaps that is not entirely true. I did not want to be a monster, but that did not stop the beast within me. To live as long as I have, to exist as I do, there must be a certain willingness to survive at any cost. And to survive, I must—” He paused unhappily, not ready to destroy the care in her expression.

  But she finished for him.

  “Kill.” She said it simply, as a basic statement of fact, and that was indeed what it was.

  “Yes. Now, I have learned to be discriminating. I choose carefully, and I try not to take life. But I was not always that way. Control took decades, and many, many fell before me in the night.”

  Arabella didn’t look away from him or that truth he was telling. She’d paled a bit, but her courage was unfaltering. And oh, how he loved her for it.

  “When I first awoke, there was no one to guide me, to tell me what I was to make of my new life. Life, such as it was. I was afraid and I was confused. I didn’t know how to adapt the mortal change to my moral views. I fought the hunger, and you cannot know what that is like, the agony of it. I would not hunt nor kill until the drive was so great it overcame me. And the horror of it, the vile splendor of it, had me close to crazy. I went mad for a time, stalking the streets, killing carelessly, clumsily, then weeping with the remorse of it and praying and hoping I would die. I was so vulnerable, it is a wonder I survived at all. I didn’t know how to protect myself, how to make myself invisible to the eyes of men. All I knew was the hunger, the thirst, and they ruled me completely.

  “And then one night, when I was crouched over my fresh kill, tearing into it in a reckless frenzy, I felt a hand upon my shoulder and heard a voice—a voice like I shall never forget, all low and silvery, saying, ‘No, not that way, my son. Let me show you how it is done.’”

  “ANOTHER VAMPIRE,” Arabella gasped. She was totally absorbed in the tale and the teller, entranced by the darkness of it, forgetting all else, all judgment, all disgust, to hear more of the mesmerizing story. She was sitting close to Louis now, fear gone, her hand resting with an absent familiarity upon his chest. He took up that hand, carrying it up to his lips then encasing it with his own long fingers to nestle it against the curve of his throat, his chin resting atop it. She could feel the vibration of his speech and the fluid roll of his slow swallowing.

  “Yes, another vampire. An old one, as old as Bianca, who had seen the Crusades. He lifted me up from the stones and wiped the blood off my face, scolding as he did, ‘No need to be an animal about it. There is a certain delicacy to such things. You must not forget that or what you are. You are an elegant creature. Behave as such.’ And I was so ashamed and humbled by the grace and beauty of him that I began to weep and to beg him to teach me, because I had no one to show me. He asked who had made me and why I had no master to
help me find my way, and when I told him Bianca’s name, he seemed distracted and said, ‘Yes, I know that one,’ and he said that though I was not his fledgling, he would educate me in the ways of our world. He said his name was Eduard D’Arcy.

  “I was his companion for five decades. I was not always the best pupil. I was young and too eager to learn all. But he was patient with me and tolerant of my faults. Beside him, I felt stupid and rude, for he had such an air of refinement in all he did, such an aura of peace. He was a truly beautiful creature, not vile and corrupt, like Bianca and Gerardo, and it was a joy to be his student. From him, I learned the craft of survival, how to disguise what I was and what I did, to accept with a certain dignity what I’d become. We spoke philosophy and theology. He was very learned and had in mortal life been in the Church. He taught me a reverence for humankind, as if we needed to protect it even as we preyed upon it, as if we, like gods, should be guardians over them. I do not pretend to understand all he spoke of. I was ignorant, for all my noble background. His was the wisdom of centuries.”

  “What happened to him?”

  Louis shrugged slightly. “I do not know. I woke one night to find he’d taken all his belongings from our lodging place. He told me I was ready to assume the role of master of my own fate, and that he must leave. I was shocked and afraid. I didn’t want to be alone. He would not listen to my pleadings or my fears. He said to me, ‘Louis,’—it was he who gave me that name, though he spoke it as the French do—he said, ‘Louis, you no longer need me,’ and he said I needed to find my own way. I was as hurt as a lover would be, for the two of us, we shared much—history. I behaved badly, demanding to know what I’d done to drive him away, what I could do to make him stay with me, and he but laughed in that indulgent way of his and said I should see our parting as something good, not bad, because he was giving me freedom to explore. Of course, I did not want to believe this, and I grew angry because he had hurt me. When he said we should meet again, I told him that was not my wish, that once he was gone, I never wanted to see him again. And I never have.”