Fiend, page 16
part #3 of Voice of Blood Series
Chicot was coming.
I sat bolt upright and turned my head until I heard his footsteps, the heavy boots on wet, dead leaves, and the swish of his cloak against the backs of trouser legs. He was a good kilometer away. I thought to myself that if I ran now, he might not be able to catch me and I could remain alone; but the absurdity of that idea occurred to me instantly, and I slapped my own face. I could not outrun Chicot. If he wished to kill me, I would have no choice but to die. And the idea of death appealed to me. He would not be cruel.
Simultaneously, Chicot’s consciousness permeated mine like a soft, sweet fog, settling gently inside my own. He walked along the road bounding the graveyard, eyes closed against the rain, using only his higher senses to guide him toward me. “Ricari, I am here,” he spoke aloud. A cold wet wind whipped his hair against his cheek. “There is no need to run.”
Resisting the urge to relax, I gathered my body into a knot, toes against the floor, arms locked around knees, ready to spring up and fight. “I ought to be alone,” I replied, my voice thick and rusty. “There is nothing more to say. There is nothing more to do.”
Chicot appeared before me presently. He had taken a few great leaps along the trees, as silently as a cat, and slipped into the coach house, bringing a brief gust of chillsome air with him through the door. “You are right,” he said, tipping rainwater from his hat. “If you must be alone, you must. But you must master your grief; you are all but screaming into the void. Every vampire in Paris can hear you. I was going to leave you alone, but one of my elders suggested that I offer my consolation directly.” He gave me a slow smile. “I didn’t get a wink of sleep today; you should be grateful for my generosity. And our bond—do not forget that. It has saved your life today.”
I could not be grateful for surviving. “Where is Georgina?” I asked. “Please tell me that you know. You are so much more powerful than I—surely you can find her and tell her . . .”
Chicot slowly shook his head. “I do not know,” he said. “If she does not want to be found, she will not be, by either of us. I am not so much more powerful than you; not anymore.”
My mouth remembered the raw contours of Maria’s slit throat, and my eyes remembered tears. Chicot removed his wet cloak and stood by, impassive, while I took hold of my grief with both hands and cried until my eyes felt raw and the painful swelling inside me had been slightly relieved. Chicot handed me a miraculously dry handkerchief.
“Rest, and mourn,” he said to me. “I shall return tomorrow night, and we should go a-hunting. The Seine,” he added, staring into the distance with his mellow smile, “runs red.”
“I should leave Paris,” I mused. “Before they destroy the place.”
“No,” said Chicot, as if I’d suggested something wicked. “Not yet.”
He reapplied his cloak and hat, gave me a slight bow, and said, “Good night, M. Ricari. Do not despair completely; you now have immense power, and you still have friends. Take comfort in that; friends among the undead are more valuable than diamonds. You will see. Adieu.”
Over the course of the next several months, I placed myself into Chicot’s excellent care. Fortified by Maria, I found that I needed much less blood than I had before, and blood that I did take gave me enormous energy and power, and vastly improved my mood. Perhaps because of that, I did not take any blood for the first few weeks. I did not want to feel better. It seemed sacrilegious to smile or lift my head. Chicot forced me into it, though, exploiting my rising gut-hunger, and the pliability of the youngest, consumption-stricken daughter of the nearby manor. He initiated the midnight seduction, and the sight of Chicot’s jaws dripping with life-sustaining scarlet literally made my mouth water and my stomach growl. “Do her a favor, Ricari,” Chicot said to me. “Save her from another year of decline; rescue her while she is still a tender young maiden with corn-silk hair.”
She even opened her eyes and said, “Thank you; I couldn’t bear it any longer.” At her bedside was a well-thumbed copy of Polidori’s The Vampyre.
“An admirer,” mused Chicot, folding the girl’s limp arm across her chest.
Throughout the subsequent months, we made short work of the rest of the family and most of their servants.
Chicot also went through all the papers that Maria had made me pack. While I slumped despondently in a corner of my coach house, twisting straws into tinder sticks, Chicot leafed and stacked and hummed, puffing cheerfully on a long clay pipe. At one page, he sat back onto his heels, blinked, crossed himself, and let out a low whistle. “Heh,” he said at last. “It is as I suspected. She’s left you everything.”
“What?” I raised my head.
“All of it—the houses, the property, the estate in Metz, the accounts. I wonder if Georgina knew about this. You are now a most wealthy hermit.” He arched his eyebrow at my scruffy, halfhearted beard and torn, muddy clothes. “If I were you, I would go into the city to see how much of this is left, and have it given to you in gold. The currency of the old regime is not worth much anymore, but gold will retain its value. Of course, then we have to find somewhere to keep it.”
“Land is more valuable than gold,” I said, feeling as though my father were speaking through me. My voice was colorless and flat, and my lips moved of their own volition. “I will retain the properties and acquire more. Bring me materials to write with.” When he had done so, I scribbled awhile and told him, “Now you may act as my agent, and take the accounts, and buy what you will with them. Every man should own land.”
Chicot laughed. “The last thing in the world I want is property,” he said. “I live nowhere; I belong nowhere.”
“Take it off my hands, I beg you,” I insisted. “I will retain the property I have, but you deserve something for your assistance.” I held up my hand to still further argument. “I won’t hear it, Chicot; do this for me. Take the bank accounts! Buy yourself a new cloak, a horse . . . Give the money away, for all I care. Buy yourself a woman. Buy all the human slaves you want. You need never hunt again.”
“Whyever would I want that? That’s the best part of life,” Chicot replied; but he accepted the note I handed him and slipped it into his coat. “You will have to come out sometime, unless you mean to entomb yourself here. And believe me, it wouldn’t work.”
Chicot did convince me to sell the house on the Rue d’F—. I fetched a handsome price from the city planners desperate to demolish the old, cramped, easily barricaded Paris in favor of precision, light, and hygiene. In celebration, Chicot insisted that I join him at Dumarchand’s restaurant, near the Varieties, the theater that still showed La vie Parisienne to adoring crowds each night. I arrived early, slipped unseen (and unpaid) into the Varieties, and watched the play from the back of the room, amazed to find that my heart still stirred inside me at the plight of fictional characters. I knew in my heart that the fiction was a mere veneer painted over actual lives; I recognized each character from the streets and cafés where I had lived. Like them, I was unchanged, artificially held forever in a single moment in time.
The restaurant Dumarchand’s mouth was full, and excess patronage spilled and trickled from the corners. Even I had some difficulty navigating the sea of giant hoop-skirts and snapping, mothlike ladies’ fans. I smiled when I thought of what Georgina must think of the imprisonment of hoop skirts. The play had put me into a good humor.
Chicot stood encircled by actors and theatrical producers, purchasing magnums of champagne in a loud, jokingly imperious voice. He wore a coat of green Chinese embroidered silk and pale-pink trousers; his cheeks were enlivened with rouge, his eyes lined in black wax pencil, almost as though he were another actor who had just quit the stage. I hardly recognized him, and it startled me when he embraced me and kissed both my cheeks. “Ah, there you are, Ricari. I had begun to worry that you wouldn’t make it in. Won’t you have a glass of champagne?”
I blinked at him. “I hardly need it; the atmosphere is intoxicating enough.” Indeed, the air reeked of spilled champagne and tobacco smoke, almost completely swamping the delectable scent of garlic and butter, rising yeast, roasted goose, and thyme. “I think, instead, that I should like to dine. Is there a table, or do I have to pick bits out of the kitchen?”
Chicot, his arm still around me, turned me away from the reveling humans and pressed his head gently against mine. I have taken your suggestion, his voice in my head came, softer and higher than the sounds produced by his throat. I have bought a woman.
“You what?” I jerked away from him.
“Just the one,” he said, smiling, a little embarrassed. “Oh, don’t worry, I have no intention of mistreating her. Raissa!” He gestured at the gaggle of actors, and a woman broke away from it and approached us with a smile. She was not young, one of the bit-part actresses whose single line I could not recall, with a round, pleasant face, still coated with white and scarlet makeup. She and Chicot looked oddly suited for one another. “Raissa, this is my friend, M. Grise. You have him to thank for this evening’s enjoyments.”
She curtsied to me, lowering her eyes. “I very much look forward to making your acquaintance,” she said, and when she looked up again to meet my eyes, I saw exactly the kind of acquaintance she had in mind.
I looked at Chicot. “Was she very expensive?”
Chicot only chuckled, but his eye twitched warningly as he led Raissa away.
Incensed, I enfolded a pliant young costume girl in my arms and had a deep draft from the side of her neck. I wanted champagne after all.
Later, I followed Chicot back to the house on the Rue d’F—. The sight of it nearly struck me blind with memories. Yet it had changed in the twenty-odd years since we had left it, and I had become M. Grise. The previous inhabitants had only recently quitted the residence, and it retained their scents: the sweat, powder, perfume, and waste of half a dozen families, some with dogs, and the familiar barnyard smell of rabbits and chickens in the courtyard. I stared at the stonework of the doorway; my blood had been scrubbed away, but traces of it remained in the crevices around the hinges. My humanity, reduced to a faded stain!
Chicot was too drunk on champagne-saturated blood to notice my distress. He danced with his arms about an invisible partner. “Ah, my Raissa, how difficult to part from you and say ‘till next time’! I hope I do not accidentally kill her; she is a fine woman indeed, and more than worth eighteen francs a month!”
“Eighteen francs!” I said. “You have made her a rich woman.”
“She can make better use of the money than I,” Chicot said. He put his coat on the first chair that he saw in the front room, and sat with a heavy sigh. “Ah, Ricari. Take comfort in the fact that this house will no longer be standing by the end of the week. Feel despair as well. You won’t be able to forget about it; you will know these details all your life, and nothing you do to forget what’s happened will do any good. But if you wish to look upon it to refresh your memory—well, there will be a street here instead. There will be no trace of how you came to being.” He yawned. “It is a valuable lesson in your eternality. All passes away in time. . . .”
I went out to the courtyard again and gazed up at the impassive sky, starless and dark, as if the Almighty hid backstage, behind a dusty black velvet curtain, preparing for the next act.
When I returned to the house, Chicot lay limply sprawled on his coat on the chair, head thrown back and mouth open. He was falling asleep, his glow muting away into nothing. As I stood watching nearby, his breathing ceased, all color drained from his skin, and then even the whiteness faded into a dull pale gray. His gums shrank back from his brown-grooved yellow teeth. My own heart nearly stilled in my chest. His flesh lost its muscularity, collapsing and shrinking over his bones, wilting like accelerated autumn leaves, until he resembled a man who had died of starvation. And yet I knew he was not dead; the link between our minds, forged in blood and proximity, remained. He was not yet dreaming, but held in a soft, black, restorative limbo.
“I see,” I said to the still house. “This is what you did not let me see! And I . . . I too . . . every night . . . how awful.” The gland of pain inside me clenched itself and doubled its output. “I’m sorry, George . . . if you can hear me, I’m sorry . . . I thought you simply didn’t love me enough. . . .”
I slid down next to the emaciated Chicot, kissed his marble-cold hand, and rested my head on his thigh. I would be there when he awoke, as he had been for me; and in the meantime, we would see each other in our dreams.
A Generation Come and Gone
I had no intention of leaving Paris for good when I set out.
I had never really completely reintegrated into society. The sight of all the lively human faces, rich and poor and middle-class, only reinforced my alienation from the minds underneath. Instead of eagerly eavesdropping on their thoughts as I had before, I now sought refuge from the unceasing noise of mundane worry and obsession. It never really varied. Still, I did not feel superior; I knew my own thoughts were as tiresome, and I endeavored to keep them to myself.
Instead of visiting the new restaurants and buildings, I spent my nights in the coach house, writing dull but mathematically precise Latin poems, and painting a pastoral scene with nymphs, horses, and sheep onto a long scroll of uncut paper. Weeks and months would pass without my leaving the coach house, losing myself in tracing intricate details of running water and vines, weakly illuminated by the dull light that fell through the cracked windowpane. The only humans who saw me with any degree of regularity were my bankers, though once in a while I would make my way to the artists’ cafés to listen to the heated and outrageous conversations held there. They were the only fresh ideas I had heard in decades. I had no desire to show my work to anyone. I did not fear criticism, only the poison of mediocrity, politics, and commerce. I had all I needed; praise, gold, women, and fame were mine for the taking, but I chose to leave them.
The loss of Georgina had killed my desire for physical intimacy with anyone, male or female, human or un-dead. I desired only her. My most painful moments occurred when I saw a thin young man, shabbily dressed but with an elegant stride and a loud laugh, or a brash young woman with her dark hair loose, gesturing with a vulgar cigarette; and I would gaze upon them with a sick despair. No man could ever be my George; no woman could ever be my Jadzia.
Chicot was an admirable companion, though our socialization was limited to the parameters of the hunt, and the idle conversations that took place while we stalked unwary, gullible prey through half-demolished streets, and the newly gas-lamp-lit avenues that had once been crooked stone houses. Though he always had a favorite—sometimes bought with francs, sometimes with posies and promises—Chicot could not limit himself to one flavor of blood. Variety was his spice of choice, and variety we had; musky Dutch sailors, syphilitic old whores, clear springlike virgin youths, and dozens of flavors of hashish, laudanum, tobacco, chocolate, and savories. Chicot liked the Les Halles escargot families, with their blood like a buttery, garlicky sea. “You would never know it by my figure, but I am a gourmand,” he bragged. “I have tasted an infinity, and I wish to taste an infinity more!”
But eventually, I grew restless in my hermitage, with twenty feet of golden rolling hills and cerulean river spread out on the floor, daring me to step into it. Though I had a small amount of Batignolles countryside surrounding me outside the coach house, the flora that I illustrated was of a ruder, more exotic species, and the cleft summit of Vesuvius floated on the horizon in my dreams.
“I am homesick for Campania,” I told Chicot one evening as we sat, poring over my painting. “I have been painting from memory. I want to see it again. I want to be there again.”
“You should,” Chicot answered, to my surprise. He had taken to wearing a beard, which only made him look smaller, thinner, and more kindly, his dark eyes sparkling above the heavy thicket of his whiskers. “Truly, you need a holiday; you have been in this ruin for more than twenty years, staring at the walls. And this is a wonderful time of year to travel; the springtime weather has been very kind recently, and the passage is clear. And your Italy is now unified as a single kingdom; think of that!”
I smiled at him, and shooed him aside to roll the painting. I tapped the scroll on the floor to even it; it had never been furled before, and I hoped that the colors would remain fixed and vibrant. “I have seen much,” I said. “I know that all earthly unities are temporary. That fact saddens me; I still long for the eternal, the unchanging, the ultimate stability.”
“Ah, you are not so very wizened,” Chicot said knowingly. “You still have the mind of a young man. What are you—seventy?” He laughed at himself. “Still so young. I wish you safe travels, young man, and I will see you when you return.”
The journey was more difficult than I had anticipated, for wholly unanticipated reasons.
I had not yet, in my life, traveled a long way by carriage, and though I had endured the jolting and noise of farm carts for months when I was young and mortal, my heightened senses struggled to cope with the squeaking, creaking boredom. More than anything in the world, I longed to unfurl my painting and continue working on it, though it was as complete as it could be without negating what I had already done. Therefore, somewhat like reading a long novel, I amused myself by silently examining the mind of my driver, a M. Louis-Jacques Regule, and his memories of his mundanely fascinating youth spent in the stables of the Emperor Bonaparte III, looking after the coach horses of the minor nobility. To access these cognitive jewels, I found myself hacking through a jungle of overwhelming worry about the planned war with Germany. He bitterly cursed the Emperor and the Prussians. He knew that when he returned, he would be pressed into service as an infantryman, fighting against men who held no threat to him.
When we arrived in Toulon, I did the only compassionate thing: I shot him dead with two bullets in his forehead, and supped upon his flowing, shock-tinted blood. I, too, had become a connoisseur.
