Addendum
ON THE FATE OF JEHANNE’S REMAINS
Rouen, France
What a night. Try to imagine it if you can.
In short, they are ready to mate.
I am also hungry. See me there among the crowds, just another nun chafing off her nipples in a woolen dress.
I’m following the bone thief—a single guardsman among the many—toward the barracks.
He is almost panting in excitement and he holds one hand over the front of his doublet.
Within is a pouch containing a fragment of the Maid of Orleans, and within that is a vast, wounded, sleeping presence that smolders and murmurs.
But the thing I want you to see most of all is something I missed altogether.
There’s another man watching, too. He’s not looking at the bone thief; his golden eyes are following me, and not for the usual reasons.
He should be easy to see in the crowd. His hair and beard are completely white, and he’s making no particular effort to hide.
But I’m weak and injured, and it’s been a very long time between meals.
And with all the pheromones in the air, I’ll admit I am a little distracted.
She was at first no more than a flicker by the door. Like the last traces of a dream, impressions of her hovered in the predawn darkness. She was but the suggestion of a long-fingered hand on the frame, and the contrary curves of candlelight along her back and hips.
And then she stepped into the room, shedding the shadows like a gown. Naked but for the jewels in her ears, Livia stretched and shook back her auburn hair.
Her evening’s feeding had restored her. She was full and flushed with health, her skin unblemished.
Her blood hummed through her limbs like liquid crystal, and she felt as though she might strike sparks from her fingertips.
It had taken time and perseverance, but the terrible chill inside her was also gone, melted away in the heat of her repast.
She stepped over the corpse on the floor—no doubt the room’s original occupant—and turned her attention to the man on the bed.
Though his eyes were closed, the master was not sleeping—not really—and he was still fully dressed. She approached with a sinuous strut. Ahead of her she pushed a wake of heady scent, filling the bedroom with the aromas of hay, night jasmine, spun flax and sex.
Sebastian was not immune. In his trance, he murmured and stirred.
“Ssh, my darling,” she whispered. “I have returned.” She crawled onto the bed, her body flowing over his.
Gooseflesh rose on her arms and she drew in a long breath.
His anima was rich with the centuries of his life, and being this close to him was very near to ecstasy.
She guided his hands across her too-warm skin and he sighed.
“Yes, love, take your pleasure. I want you to.”
He was swelling hard against her thigh, with only the linen of his trousers between them. Her hands worked at his clothes as he raised his mouth dreamily to her breast. The scent in the room grew overpowering as she teased him, lowering her face close to his.
“Kiss me, Sebastian. Please,” she murmured in his ear.
Their lips met and the man’s eyes slowly opened. “Hmm . . . ?”
“Hush—”
“Livia!”
He thrust her away with a strength that was not his, bellowing in dark speech.
The succubus was lifted bodily and thrown back, striking the wall.
She screamed and clutched at her throat as the Shackles in her ears blazed with blue fire, illuminating an immaterial collar suspended around her neck.
Composed of the sigils of her punishing Contract, it had no true substance and barely flickered as she clawed at it.
The agony was blinding, searing beyond her flesh to the anima within.
Sebastian rose from the bed, his clothes in disarray, and stood over her. Livia writhed as her glamers burned away, exposing her horns, talons and tail. He muttered another impossible word, and the fire was extinguished.
The succubus knelt panting on the wooden floor.
“One day, meatbag,” she said, with a fanged smile, “one day you won’t be able to help yourself.”2
“One day I’m going to eat your heart,” he replied. He muttered below hearing and Livia’s earrings pulsed darkly, sending a weighty throb through the Contract around her neck. “That’s another twenty years!”
“Come, Dominus, I was only—”
“Fifty!” The earrings pulsed again, growing noticeably heavier.
“You—Fifty years?! Are you serious?”3
“Question me again and we will make it a round century! Livia, tell me—please—that this ill-conceived attempt is not an indication of failure. Do you have what I sent you to retrieve? Speak!”
Livia lowered her face. “I was tardy.”
“Tardy?” The air around the master was suddenly charged with danger, like a tree before the lightning strikes.
“I do not have it, meatbag,” she said bitterly, closing her eyes. “Scathe me as you will, and be done.”
The master was robbed of his reply by a snarl of fury from the old one. His myriad eyes, hanging in the ether above the master, were incandescent with fury. The air around them became a black, infinite spiral, bristling with fangs.
Useless half-breed! Scathe you? In my time you would have been peeled like an orange and fed to the flame! If the Olympian has escaped me, I will—
“Sarmodel—Sarmodel, enough!” The master collected himself with an effort. “I knew I should never have listened to you, Livia!”
With some effort, she began to cry. “I . . . have no excuse. I followed the thief to the barracks as you commanded. But . . . it took some time to find him again.”
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. “How many?”
“What do you—”
“Livia. How many soldiers perished on your loins tonight?”
Livia hung her head. “Four.”
“Four?”
She swore miserably. “Six, damn you!”4
“You dallied with six men before you thought to carry out your charge? No wonder, Livia,” he snarled, jabbing a finger at her, “no wonder you were ‘tardy’! And no wonder you are looking so beautifully refreshed.”
“Truly?” She dared the faintest smile through her weeping. It was a thin compliment, but at least he had noticed. She allowed her fingertips to alight tantalizingly atop her trembling bosom.
“Stop that,” he snapped. “Now, tell me what happened.”
“Oh, but you are dull!” she sobbed, letting her hand fall.
“Very well! After . . . after the other men, I found the thief. He was easy meat.” The memory was near and sweet.
She could still feel the guardsman’s warmth flooding into her, a silver torrent of anima that wreathed her nerves in pleasure as it carried his life away.
He was there yet, with all the others, his anima utterly devoted to her, beating in her flesh like a second pulse.
“He liked my teats, so I let him suckle awhile at first. He was quite drunk, though, so I had to use my mou—”
“Not that part,” the master grated. “Tell me what happened to the relic.”
“Oh.” From somewhere in the shadows, she produced a leather pouch, heavy with coins. Her face downcast, she held it up to him. “I don’t know. This was all I found on him.”
“Money—payment, no doubt. Let’s see what a heretic’s bone fetches.” He hefted the pouch and tugged at the drawstring. “Gold?! By the Almighty! Did you open this?”
“Of course.”
Sebastian made a quick count. “So you prowled the streets of Rouen all night with some fifty florins in your pocket?”
“Are you . . . pleased?” She looked up hopefully, wiping her eyes.
“I suppose it is better than nothing.5 And it may be a clue in itself,” mused the master.
“This kind of money must have been arranged beforehand. Your guardsman was no opportunist. Someone very, very wealthy made him an offer in advance, an offer he could scarcely refuse—and he collected in a hurry. But who?”
Gold leaves a trail we can follow, said the old one. I have . . . an associate who can assist, but she is greedy. We will need fresh bait—a female—and one of those coins.
Livia looked up at the swimming ethereal presence, her eyes wide. “Clauneck? Are you so desperate?”6
We would have no need if you were able, just once, to manage a simple task, succubus! Even a dog can fetch a bone!
“Clauneck. Why do I know that name?” asked the master warily.
She is a Spirit with an . . . affinity for gold. The world has never again seen splendor like the riches she drew to the Court of Solomon.
“Until he discovered where the gold was coming from, and by then it was too late,”7 added Livia.
“Clauneck built the mint at the Temple of Juno Moneta in Rome, which I’m sure you remember, Dominus.
She claimed she was also a consort of Midas.
Think carefully before you draw up your Wards for this one, meatbag.
Better to keep that gold and find somewhere quiet to pass the time for a few hundred years.
” Livia gently massaged the muscles of her neck, where the weight of the Contract had settled like a millstone.
She winced as she brushed her throbbing earlobes.
Afraid of some competition, succubus? mocked the old one. Do not fear, Sebastian. I can handle Clauneck.
Livia laughed. “No, you cannot. She will get what she wants, one way or another.” She stood up unsteadily. “Now, may I be dismissed?”
No, succubus. You have work to do. We will need something to bargain with. Clauneck will not sign for anything less than a vessel.
“Possession?” The master seemed far from certain. “Is Mars . . . Barron . . . Avstamet—whatever he’s calling himself now—truly worth it after all this time, Sarmodel?”
Oh yes, my love. He will be power and pleasure like you have never known.
We will be drunk on his anima for a thousand years.
His tendrils caressed the master’s shoulders.
And the world will be free of the Warfather, of course.
This interminable war will find its conclusion quickly enough without his interference.
“That is reason enough. I suppose. Very well, then—go, Livia.”
She restored her glamers with a gentle shiver. Her tail, talons and fangs vanished. Lovely once more, she inclined her head to her master and pulled the shadows around herself like a blanket. “This city is crawling with phlam. I will return soon.”
Mind me, half-breed, called the old one as she left. Do not tarry this time, or it will be your flesh waiting for Clauneck in the Circle.
1. Not nearly as hot or as bothered as the Maiden herself, though.
2. If Sebastian were ever to (finally) succumb to my charms, he would effectively be giving me permission to kill him, which voids a number of fundamental clauses in my Contract.
While I doubt my usual methods would actually dispatch him (he’s quite the banquet), I’d be free for the first time in hundreds of years.
3. Excessive! Of course I expect to pay the piper when I breach my terms, but this was unnecessary—I was at this point already Contracted well into the 1980s.
When Sebastian drafted my Contract back in Rome (about which I will not say more here), it was with specifically this kind of brazen exploitation in mind.
4. Nine.
5. The ingrate! Fifty florins in the 1430s was more money than most would see in a lifetime.
6. I might have taken a little more care if I’d known the old one would get Clauneck involved, but you know what they say about hindsight.
7. Have you ever wondered why the fabled King of Israel had a harem of thousands and only three children?