Sunset #3
Meline bristled at the name, her lips pressed into a pout.
Jean-Francois could still recall his majordomo’s jealousy as the lad was presented to him by Viscontessa Nicolette.
Dario hadn’t been a gift freely given, of course—Empress Margot had been displeased at the Viscontessa’s conduct during her recent expedition in Talhost, and Nicolette expected a kind word in Margot’s ear in exchange for the boy.
But Nicolette was Jean-Francois’s niece by blood, and Dario was so beautiful, the Marquis hadn’t been able to summon will to refuse.
Yet now, he wondered how much of his newest thrall might be left.
Lions were rarely merciful to their victims.
Soundless as cats, the historian climbed the remaining stairs and opened the cell door.
A figure stood at the window, hands at his back, smeared with fresh blood.
Looking to the fireplace, Jean-Francois saw the source, crumpled on the hearthstone.
A handsome beau in his fresh twenties, dark hair splayed across ashen cheeks, blood congealing on the twin punctures in his throat.
Jean-Francois drifted to the hearth, standing over the fallen thrall. The lad looked a corpse, yet by the featherlight drum of his pulse the vampire could tell …
“You didn’t kill him.”
The figure tensed at the Marquis’s voice, but did not deign to turn.
“Of course I didn’t.”
“I wouldn’t have minded.”
The figure glowered over his shoulder then. “Of course you wouldn’t.”
Jean-Francois found his lips curling at the sight of the Lion enraged.
Dark leathers hugging his powerful frame, hair spilling down his back in ink-black waves, shovelblade jaw dusted with stubble.
Two scars cut down his right cheek, like twin teardrops.
His eyes were the grey of the ocean before a tempest, his skin the shade of an empire’s ashes, and upon the sumptuous curve of his lip was smudged the dark and delicious stain of sin.
Gabriel de León.
Last of the Silversaints.
Sweet Mothermaid, what Jean-Francois wouldn’t give to—
“Should I fetch help, Marquis?”
Jean-Francois glanced to the doorway, the leader of his thrallsword cadre standing on the threshold beside Meline.
Capitaine Delphine was a mountainous man, dark beard shaved to a point, widow’s peak slicked back from a heavy brow.
Warrior’s eyes were fixed on the silversaint, hand on his blade.
But de León had already turned back to the storm.
“A moment, Capitaine,” the Marquis replied. “Merci.”
Jean-Francois lifted wrist to mouth, biting deep.
Blood welled forth, viscous and slow; the passions of his bed already cooled in his veins.
But as Jean-Francois knelt and pressed his wrist to the fallen thrall’s mouth, the lad’s eyes flashed open at once.
Pupils dilating to pinpricks, the thrall seized hold and drank, covetous, starving, the power of the Marquis’s blood dragging him back from the cold dark he’d tumbled into.
Or more accurately, had been left in after the silversaint had his way.
Jean-Francois’s gaze drifted to Gabriel, the iron-heavy scent of blood now hanging between them.
The Marquis could feel Dario’s pulse thundering as he drank, delighting in this sweet subjugation—both of the young man lying beneath him, and the older man standing before him, steadfastly staring out the window and pretending not to listen.
“Easy, love,” Jean-Francois whispered, smoothing back Dario’s hair. “You shall make a husk of me. And I have work to do this night.”
The thrall ignored him, greedy, groaning, drinking still.
“Enough,” Jean-Francois hissed, snatching back his wrist.
Dario blinked, bewildered, like a newborn awaking from a dream. As his bleary gaze fell on the silversaint at the window, the young Nordling suppressed a shiver. But looking up into Jean-Francois’s eyes, his blood-slicked lips curled in a lover’s smile.
“Master,” he breathed.
“Hush now, sweetling. Master is here and all shall be well.” Jean-Francois glanced to the thrallsword capitaine. “Take him to my bedchamber, Delphine. See him watered and fed. No duties this day. My brave young beau has earned his rest.”
The capitaine nodded to two of his blades, the soldiers stepping to the hearth and helping Dario rise. The boy still seemed weak as a fresh foal—Gabriel’s hungers may not have ended him, but by the look he’d come perilously close.
Meline watched as Dario was carried from the room.
Scowling, she placed fresh goblets on the round table, a new bottle of Monét and a glowing globe of chymical light between them.
Setting a large leatherbound tome on one of the plush armchairs, she turned to Jean-Francois, fingers laced before her like a prioress at prayer.
“Do you desire anything else, Master?”
“I’m uncertain.” Jean-Francois plucked a laced cuff down over his bloody wrist, eyes on the figure at the window. “Do we desire anything else, Gabriel?”
“Goddamn you,” the silversaint hissed. “Straight to hell.”
“I believe he shall oblige you there. If I am ever foolish enough to die.” Jean-Francois glanced to Meline, smiling faint. “See that Dario is comfortable, my love. But return swift thereafter. I shall have want of you, before this night is through.”
Jean-Francois looked to the figure by the window, ruby lips quirked.
“We both may.”
Meline’s breath came swifter, pulse quickening along the pale plane of her throat.
With a deep curtsey and a swift glance to the silversaint’s bloodstained hands, she slipped from the room.
Jean-Francois noted the click of the lock, the soft pulses of Delphine’s cadre lurking outside.
And in a blink of preternatural speed, he sat himself in one of the antique chairs, that leatherbound tome now resting in his lap.
“Will you sit?” Jean-Francois slipped a wooden case from his coat, a gold-tipped quill within. “Or are you too wracked with guilt to allow yourself a moment’s comfort?”
Gabriel de León made no reply, his eyes yet fixed beyond the glass.
“Know no shame at your hungers, Gabriel. Like all in heaven above and earth below, they are the will of God.” Jean-Francois drew a bottle of ink from his coat pocket, unstopped its cork.
“And made as you are in his image, your sickness is but a shadow of his own, mon ami. For there are none of us so bloodthirsty as the sovereign of heaven himself.”
“On that score, vampire, we’re in complete agreement.”
“Come then. My Empress desires her finale. Sit with me and speak. Indulge no guilt at the hurts you bestowed the boy. I’ve no doubt the little slattern enjoyed it.” Jean-Francois smiled, dark as poison. “He certainly relishes the pains I bestow.”
“Fucking monsters. All of you.”
“Oui. But a monster can no more change his nature than a man.”
Their eyes met then, storm grey and dark chocolat.
“You pay the beast his due,” Jean-Francois smiled.
Gabriel sighed. “Or he takes his due from you.”
Jean-Francois watched, eyes like heavy-lidded coals, as the Last Silversaint turned from the window and eased himself down into the chair.
There was a grace to Gabriel de León, undeniable; not so timeless as Margot, but rippling with ferocity and vitality, thrumming with life and heat.
A warrior’s hands, a hunter’s eyes, fixed now on his as he reached for the bottle of Monét and plucked the cork with tattooed fingers.
“The Dyvok are here.”
Jean-Francois opened his history, smoothed down a fresh page. “And so?”
“So your Empress is running out of time.”
“Time is meaningless to the timeless, Gabriel.”
“I’d heard rumors. Margot was calling for Conclave even before the Battle of Augustin.
A gathering of Priorem, to decide the fate of the realm.
” The silversaint filled one goblet to the brim, staining the air with its dark perfume.
“Was that the Draigann I spied down there? Slim pickings for royalty among the Untamed these nights. How did your Empress draw him here? Promise of my throat as vengeance for Maergenn? It’s going to get messy when the Voss start crowing for the same. ”
“Hardly your concern, mon ami.”
“Oui. It’s yours. Because if all the leeches I’ve pissed off over the years are about to start queuing outside your Empress’s door for the pleasure of ending me, her hourglass has run out.
Margot wants the history of the Grail. But you’ve only kept me talking this long through threat of starvation.
And you’ve not got time for that anymore. ”
Thunder shook the walls as Jean-Francois ran his quill over his smile.
“We can devise other tortures, Silversaint. Far swifter in their meting, and far more pointed. But the promises my Empress made to draw these flies to her web are irrelevant. This may shock you, Gabriel, but Margot has been known to lie on occasion. If your tale pleases her, there is no reason you could not live out your life as her honored guest.” Dark eyes roamed the silversaint, head to heel.
“Think of it. To dwell here in Sul Adair, paying blissful homage to darkest gods, to know the pleasures of s—”
“Cut the shit, vampire. You and I both know I’m a dead man. Even if Margot deigned to spare my life, it has me. It owns me.”
The Last Silversaint leaned forward into the light, and beyond the storm grey of his eyes, Jean-Francois could see a glint of it; the debt come due for all those years of blood and sin in the arms of his bride. The curse. The madness that awaited every paleblood alive.
“Sangirè,” Jean-Francois murmured.
“The red thirst.” With haunted gaze, the silversaint looked to the hearth where he’d left Dario, twisting his shaking hands together.
“That boy … Seven Martyrs, it was all I could do to stop myself. And one day soon … I won’t be able to anymore.
The sangirè will claim my mind, and the hunger will rule my heart.
Nothing left but the beast. There’s no life of pleasure awaiting at the end of my road, Chastain.
There’s insanity. And depravity. I’ve spent my whole life killing monsters.
And I’ll be damned if I allow myself to die as one. ”
Snatching up the goblet, Gabriel drained it in one gulp.
“I’d rather you fed me to the fucking Dyvok.”
“That would be a shame.” The Marquis’s gaze roamed tattooed hands, bloodstained lips up, up to the silversaint’s eyes. “A far more glorious end might someone else grant you.”
“We don’t always get what we want, Historian.”
“You still may. If you told me your desire.”
The Last Silversaint stared for what seemed an age of the earth.
The hymn of distant thunder rang outside the window, the chymical globe glittered in his eyes as he set aside his goblet, and a kaleidoscope of dead butterflies took to the wing in Jean-Francois’s belly as Gabriel leaned in, so close the vampire could taste the wine on his whisper.
“Celene.”
Jean-Francois blinked. “What of her?”
“I want to watch the light die in her eyes,” Gabriel growled. “I want to see her terror as she falls into the hell awaiting her. I want to watch that treacherous sow die, Chastain.”
“Tsk, tsk. Such rancor.”
Gabriel leaned back, fangs glinting in his bitter smile as he filled his goblet.
“It took a lot of love to hate her the way I do.”
“One wonders what the Last Liathe did to earn that hate.”
“I’ll bet one does. And that story will cost you. The rest of my tale. Dior’s. The Battle of Augustin. The bloodbath at the Charbourg. The final betrayal. I’ll give you your damned history, Jean-Francois. But you give me my sister’s throat.”
Their eyes met, monster and man, over a brimming goblet of gold.
“I believe that can be arranged, Gabriel.”
The Last Silversaint slowly nodded. Eyes drifting back to that chymical globe. A pale moth had emerged from some dark corner of the cell, beating its wings upon the glass. Gabriel watched its courses, battering in vain upon that glowing arc, lost in false starlight.
“Are you thirsty, coldblood? I fear it’s going to be a long night.”
Jean-Francois dipped his quill, expectant. “I have patience.”
The silversaint chuckled, but his smile died as swift as it had begun.
“I did too, once.”
He sighed, running one thumb over his knuckles.
“I did too.”