Follow The Night (Bewitch The Dark) Page 4

  What sort of idiot did she think him?

  “All men have teeth. A bite mark is not so unusual when one has been bitten. The man was an idiot. Demented. Yes, that is it. He—he gnawed me.”

  “Gnawed?” She lifted a brow. “Perhaps. But the impression leaves only the two wounds from the canine teeth?”

  He flicked his tongue along his own teeth, noting the two upper teeth that did extend further than the others. No way to leave such marks without the middle front teeth also leaving an impression. And human teeth could not puncture flesh without brute force. His attacker had been disturbingly gentle.

  “Did he suck blood from your body?”

  The question raised bile to Gabriel’s throat.

  “Very well,” he said resolutely. “Since you are the most delicious wench I’ve had in my bed chamber for a time, I will allow you your little fantasy. Not the Rake Ripper? Instead, a creature who tore his way up from a rotting grave to stalk the precieuses in Paris? Ancient attire aside, he looked rather tidy to me. Difficult to imagine the man sleeping in the ground.”

  “The Rake Ripper and the vampire are one and the same,” Roxanne offered. “Paris does not know what sort of creature the man truly is. And Monsieur Anjou did not rise from a grave. That is a lot of nonsense. Vampires are not dead, they are undead.”

  “But of course, merely undead.” A burst of nervous laughter escaped. At times like this he was thankful for the façade Leo offered. “And what makes you so knowledgeable, Mademoiselle Desrues?”

  “I just…” The color in her cheeks brightened. As well, her bosom colored.

  Triumph curled his mouth. He enjoyed the sensual victory. If she moved closer, he could trace his fingers along the plump curves of her breasts.

  “I have studied the vampire for a time,” she said. “Monsieur Anjou in particular.”

  “And yet for all that study you did not know his name?”

  “Why won’t you believe me?”

  “Because your claim is utter nonsense!”

  Allowing his anger to emerge, Gabriel fisted the counterpane. He’d been prepared for a duel that night, not to have his blood sucked from him. He wouldn’t believe it. He could not.

  “Vampires do not exist. Nor do giants or fairies or mermaids. They are manifestations of a child’s fairy tale. Bogies concocted from imagination and a cruel desire to frighten the little ones.”

  “What of witches?” Toussaint conjectured from the end of the bed. “At least once a month another witch is burned at the Place de Greve. You cannot deny their existence.”

  Roxane’s posture stiffened and Gabriel reacted. “You know a witch or two, mademoiselle? Toussaint’s silly chalk markings before the front door tend to keep them from my home.”

  She stood from the bed and smoothed her hands over her skirts. With a pert jut of her chin, her expression segued from unsure to determined. “If you will not believe me, there is nothing I can do for you. Suffer at your own peril. I will take my leave.”

  “My own peril? Such dramatics!”

  Gabriel crawled out from between the sheets. He wore but a linen nightshirt that flowed to below his knees. The sleeves were long and billowy, hanging over his wrists, and the blasted lace concealed his hands. Damned nuisance concoction.

  “Do stay, Mademoiselle Desrues. I want to hear it all,” he entreated. “I am starved for entertainment of a sort I have not known. Please, amuse me with tales of the undead.”

  Toussaint dashed to the door, blocking Roxane’s exit. She spun to face Gabriel, anger firing her cheeks to a luscious bloom.

  He crouched at the edge of his bed, easily assuming the role of predator. It felt far better than the prey of which he’d been posing lately.

  “If I have—allegedly—been bitten by a vampire, why then, am I not stalking the night? If I recall my bedtime scaries correctly, is that not what happens when one’s blood has been sucked by a creature of the night?”

  “Of a sort.”

  “Ah.” He eagle-eyed the nervous demoiselle. “Not very decisive, are you?”

  “I am a very resolute person. You just—”

  “I just what? Confuse you?”

  “No!”

  “Tempt you?” He flexed an arm, though the nightshirt hid his muscles. It wasn’t a move Leo ever employed. “Do you find it difficult, mademoiselle, to be in this lair of sensual delights with my overwhelming maleness?”

  “Please.” She actually rolled her eyes. “You are a swish.”

  “Rake,” he countered coolly, confident of his own masculinity.

  “Same thing.”

  “Not at all,” Toussaint corrected from the door. “One is much more concerned for fashion as compared to the other, who cares far more about the women who frequent his bed.”

  “Swish,” she countered.

  Gabriel rolled to his back and splayed out his arms in defeat. A chuckle was most appropriate, because the role he played could not be abandoned until he’d achieved his goal.

  “Very well, I concede.” No sense in arguing with an image he had worked months to concoct. Lifting his head, he speared Roxane with an engaging look. “Though I would not hesitate to choose you, mademoiselle, over an ell of Alençon lace.”

  “That impresses little,” she said, following with a stifled yawn. “I must go home and rest. But before I do, you need to know what to expect.”

  “Expect? Beyond this damned wound healing and me getting on with my life?”

  “Monsieur Leo, life as you know it will never be the same.”

  THREE

  Roxane’s celadon gaze did not waver from his. Where had the woman garnered such confidence? Any other time he would have sent Toussaint from the room, and seduced the woman into his bed.

  The situation as it was, Gabriel drew in a contemplative sigh, spread his hands open before him, and said, “Humor me.”

  “Very well.” Roxane paced the end of the bed, her hips swaying in delicious taunts to Gabriel’s resolve.

  “You have been bitten,” she said. “Which means you may or may not become a vampire.”

  “So I have a choice?”

  “The moon is waxing gibbous.”

  “I give the moon no regard.”

  “You should. Or rather you must from this moment forth. You’ve less than a week before the moon is full, Leo. And it is not so much a choice as options.”

  He managed a false gaiety. “Options? What man does not favor options?”

  Mademoiselle Desrues strode the length of the bed. Her earthy scent was so unlike the powdered creations that normally landed on his sheets. Gabriel could not stop breathing her in. The urge to gasp, choke at a dusty, musty odor wasn’t there. Because she was fresh. Alive.

  Just breathe. Inhale the purity and keep it.

  After a few lingering inhalations, his agitated state softened. As did Roxane’s gaze, yet her pale eyes remained intense, liquid and clear. What sort of disease had planted itself in the mind of this exquisite beauty? To forge her belief in such hideous myth?

  “It is rare the vampire does not kill,” she explained matter-of-factly. “Since the murders have been noted, Monsieur Anjou has been meticulous—save two cases.”

  “Two? Another besides me?”

  She nodded.

  “And another who survived such an attack?”

  “Survived…to an extent.”

  “An extent? Woman, why do you not simply speak what you mean to say? You dress up your fears in euphemisms. Of a sort. To an extent.”

  “Will you listen to me?”

  He sighed. Another breath of rosemary filled his senses. It appealed so strongly after breathing nothing but powder and greasy hair pomade for months. Captivated against his will, Gabriel conceded. “Fine.”

  “Should the victim find himself in such a situation—having been bitten” she began again, “he can do one of three things. First being suicide.”

  Gabriel’s jaw dropped open.

  The valet clutched the
bedpost, his knuckles growing white.

  “Not a consideration, I assume,” she said. “Now, the second option is that you drink blood and complete the change.”

  “The change? You mean become a vampire?”

  “Yes.” She blinked calmly. “Ransom your mortal soul for immortality.”

  “Immortality.” Toussaint’s eyes brightened into mystical beacons.

  His mortal soul? “You really are a mad bit of work. And so are you,” Gabriel shot at Toussaint.

  He clutched his throat. This was not a laughable farce performed by the Comédie Française. This was reality. A sickening reality this woman somehow made more evil by the moment. Suicide or vampirism? How far would she go with this charade? He had merely been bitten by a lackwit!

  On the other hand, what did he know?

  Gabriel swallowed the hollowness rising in his throat. “You said I had three options?”

  “Indeed. The final option is that you wait it out until the orb of night has grown tumescent.”

  “The orb of night,” Toussaint repeated in fascinated wonder, his stance like a street charlatan seducing the crowds to buy his potions.

  Gabriel sat up straight. “What sort of blather is a tumescent orb?”

  With a shrug, Roxane pointed toward the oculus. “The full moon.”

  One could never see the midnight sky for the lantern suspended above to rain light through the colored glass. Toussaint never missed a night.

  “The moon is nearly full,” she said. “If you can abstain from drinking blood for the next few days you will triumph and the vampire’s taint will pass through you. Your mortal soul will remain intact and you will continue to be the swish you are.”

  He should challenge her assessment of him, but at the moment, Gabriel had graver matters to consider.

  He mined the depths of his charm and finessed a smile. “Mademoiselle, I’ll have you know, of the many wonderful drinks that top my favorites list, blood is not one of them.”

  “It is not so simple as it sounds.”

  “Oh, I imagine not. I wait, engrossed, to hear your next words.”

  “Certainly, I shall assist you in your endeavors to overcome the blood lust.”

  “Blood? And—” Lust? Gabriel squared a palm flat before his face. “Do not place those words in the same sentence. It is utterly insane!”

  “You need someone close by who knows what to expect,” she said. “Of all the men who have attempted to fight the call to drink blood none have succeeded. Most give in to the blood hunger within a few days.”

  “Give in to drinking blood?”

  “It is a powerful temptation. At least, that is what I have come to understand.”

  “Through your studies?”

  She nodded.

  What sort of person studied blood and vampires and lust, all tossed together? Much as the woman attracted, she also repelled him like no female had before. Best to put an end to this charade. “Toussaint, remove this mad scrap of satin from my home.”

  The valet merely stared at Roxane, his lips parted and a yes, Mademoiselle, whatever you wish glaze to his eyes.

  “It is not I who is mad,” Roxane said. “It may very well become you, Leo. For if you are determined to resist the compelling and exceedingly tempting hunger for blood then the only result can be sure madness.”

  “Madness,” Toussaint whispered in eerie wonder.

  “Indeed.” She paced to the wall where a cheval mirror reflected her tense jaw and crossed arms. “Which option will you choose: madness, vampirism, or suicide?”

  Those were the least appealing choices Gabriel had ever been offered. And he had been offered some horrendous choices in his lifetime.

  Would a few days find him stalking innocent people in hopes to suck out their blood? He was not a man to become such a monster. Monsters did not marry or raise families. Monsters could not…have love.

  “No!” He punched a fist into the plush counterpane. “This is all a spectacular lie conjured by a lone woman in need of attention.”

  Roxane made an objective chirp. She remained facing the mirror.

  “Yes, attention,” he countered, knowing well the need for such. “You appeared from out of the blue. I have no idea who you really are. You say you have come to hunt the Rake Ripper? Sounds rather dangerous for one so petite and female as you.”

  “It is. But I have no choice. Listen to me. What has been done to you is not finished. Know you are not safe until the full moon. As soon as Monsieur Anjou learns you survived his attack he will seek to finish what he could not complete the other night.”

  So now he would be pursued by a vampire as well as facing madness? “I certainly hope he does. I will be waiting for him, rapier en garde.”

  “He is ten times stronger than a mortal man. You will be defeated.”

  Shoving up a sleeve to his elbow, Gabriel punched a fist into his palm. “How can you know so much?”

  “It is a guess. Anjou cannot risk creating a minion.”

  Morbleu, this was wrong. Was the Rake Ripper really a creature of the night? By acting the fop had Gabriel lured a monster to him?

  He wanted to believe in Roxane’s innocence and her sweet, seductive scent. He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her. Kiss away the evil. Take back the night of his attack. But the evidence remained as two painful and deep punctures upon his neck.

  “If I succeed…” He slid off the bed and paced the floor. “If I fight the madness, then it is sanity and a normal life that waits?”

  “Sure.”

  That was the least convincing assurance he had ever heard.

  He sought out the celadon sparkle in her expression. Only now did he notice the glass vial suspended around her neck by a fine silver chain. Why, it looked like—

  “What is that?”

  She held the vial between two fingers, tilting it to move the thick red liquid inside from side to side. “This is blood.”

  Call out the surgeons! This woman was not in her right mind.

  “I feel I shall regret this, but I must ask: Why do you wear a vial of blood about your neck?”

  “It is witch’s blood.”

  Toussaint brightened from his bespelled haze. “Witches?”

  “First it is vampires, and now you’ve added witches to the brew? Surely they do not allow such trinkets in the asylum from which you have escaped?”

  “Bastard.”

  Gabriel followed her retreat toward the closed door. “What do you expect of me?”

  She spun in a grand fury of tight fists and a blaze of strawberry tresses. “Witch’s blood works like acid to a vampire. The two are mortal enemies. That is how I plan to kill the vampire who attacked you. And perhaps, with his death, the madness that awaits you will vanish.”

  “You know that to kill Anjou would release me from vampirism?”

  “I cannot know for sure. It is only a guess.”

  “I see. Very well.” He tapped his mouth, considering. “If I must skip along into this fantasy world of yours, my next regrettable question will be: Who elected you the vampire slayer? What stakes, if you’ll pardon the pun, does a fragile slip of a woman have in pursuing this alleged vampire Anjou?”

  “Is not putting an end to his murderous rampage reason enough?”

  “You are quite the libertine.”

  “Gorgeous.”

  “Toussaint!” Gabriel snapped his fingers at the valet clinging to the bedpost. “Snap out of it. She has bewitched you.”

  “I have done nothing of the sort!” Roxane protested. “I—oh…men! Always seeing only the surface of a woman.”

  “And yet, you have already judged me by my surface. A swish?”

  She had no answer for that, save an audible huff. Clutching her skirts in tight creases, she announced, “I am leaving.”

  Gabriel apprehended her, pressing her shoulders against the wall. “How do you know so much?”

  Her frantic gaze darted back and forth across his face. “Th-t
he vampire attacked someone close to me two months ago.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone close.”

  “You cannot name this victim?” he pressed, for to summon the color in Roxane’s cheeks gave him a twisted sort of thrill. Blush for me, my sweet. Reveal your lies.

  “It is not that I cannot, but that I choose not to name him. I have not wanted to go through this nightmare again, but I will, if only to ensure another man does not suffer the same pain.” She made a tiny fist to punctuate her mighty words. “I will kill the bastard, that is truth. But first—” She shook her head, as if to shake away the words from her mouth. “Good eve, Leo.”

  With that declaration to war she pressed easily from his barricade and strode from the room, leaving Gabriel in a sensational state of anger, surprise and strange wonder.

  Whom had she known who had fallen victim to the Rake Ripper?

  I choose not to name him.

  A lover? A husband? Whoever it was, she had been close to him. For the fire in her eyes spoke of passion and the compulsive need to seek vengeance. Truly, she suffered a great loss and had slipped from reality. To have designed the attacker as a vampire?

  Gabriel turned to Toussaint. The valet pierced him with a castigating gaze. “What is it, man? You chill me with your morbidity.”

  The valet stiffened and twisted away from his master.

  “You know so much about the woman.” He punched a fist into his opposite hand, twisting it into his palm as if to wring the frustration from his being. “So much time it takes to learn about a person. And yet in two days she thinks me merely a swish.”