Chapter 2
Raoul
When you’ve been around as long as I have, you start to believe you’ve seen it all.
Paris felt like it had been imploding, and I’d seen so much war and death and disease that I’d had enough.
So I slept, with a little help from my Necromancer friend, letting time pass me by while I dreamed and forgot about boredom, about despair; ennui.
It was not unusual for someone as long-lived as I was to do so, but it was my first time.
I’d gone above and beyond to ensure my resting place would remain secure, undiscovered.
What she had done was impossible; it shouldn’t have happened.
The little human had tripped into my sanctuary, literally—sprawling into the dust with a scream that had roused me despite the cloak of a Necromancer spell keeping me under.
Unless she was a powerful witch or sorceress, or perhaps a vampress with talent herself, this shouldn’t have been possible.
I had not expected to wake yet. How I knew that, I wasn’t sure; I just knew I’d woken far sooner than I’d planned.
I gazed at the dust that covered much of my resting place, including my clothing despite the sealed “coffin” my friend had helped place me in.
I wrinkled my nose in disgust but shrugged it off.
For two centuries, perhaps more, time had thinned into something irrelevant. Long before sleep claimed me, the world above had been of no consequence. That’s why I had chosen stillness. Chosen silence. Chosen to outwait the vulgar churn of history. And yet, something had intruded.
The woman was noisy: a stuttering rhythm of breath, too fast, too loud, echoing obscenely against stone and carved pillars. Her heart pounded in her chest as it pumped life through her veins. Then came the scent, as rich as I remembered, and just as alluring.
Blood.
It was just a faint trace, but it was fresh, and it was human. I saw her the moment I looked, my eyes drawn to her like she was a magnet. Yet I forced myself to look at the other details first. She was no threat, and she clearly wasn’t going anywhere fast.
The chamber remained as I had left it: my chapel alongside the dead, ribbed with femurs and skulls stacked in reverent geometry, a sanctuary untouched by time or trespass.
Well, until now. My friend had done a very good job creating this place for me, hidden, warded, supposedly forever secret.
Only he could come here and wake me; there were no exceptions to that spell, as far as I knew.
Either three centuries had passed, or Louis was supposed to wake me. Not this...woman.
She stood at the threshold like an error in the world.
Having finally allowed my eyes to look her way, I simply stared.
It was unforgivably unmannered, but I could not help myself.
The improbability of her presence was almost offensive.
No one came here; no one could come here.
Yet she’d done it somehow, she’d broken through magic created by one of the most powerful Necromancers who had ever walked the earth.
For such an amazing feat, she was… underwhelming.
That was my first, rather uncharitable thought.
Her hair was a simple, nondescript brown—what one might call mousy.
It clung in damp strands around her face, curling in silky wisps across her forehead.
Her clothing was absurdly informal, scandalously so, though I suspected, even as I judged her, that modesty itself had long since gone out of fashion.
Her posture lacked grace; she favored one side, her weight uneven, and there. ..
Ah, my gaze settled. I saw it now. Perhaps this explained her lopsided stance.
Her knees were torn open, the strange dark-blue fabric ripped, and her skin bloodied.
Now that I’d locked eyes on the blood seeping from her scraped skin, the scent sharpened instantly.
Rich and metallic, it threaded through the stale air with intoxicating clarity.
My fangs descended before I consciously permitted it.
How… inconvenient. I had always prided myself on control.
Even if I had not slumbered the full three centuries, her appearance made me suspect I’d gone a very long time without feeding anyway.
That broken fabric clung to shapely legs and soft thighs; pants.
Not a skirt, ankle-length and modest, but actual pantaloons. A man’s clothing.
She shifted, wincing, and lifted the object she was holding in her hand.
It was a strange, flat, glowing thing with no flame, no wick.
The light it cast was harsh, unnatural, painting me in pale illumination.
It caused shadows to dance sharply across the ceiling, and the eyes of some of the ancestors of my lineage Louis had placed here stared in accusation.
They were supposed to be ties, guardians, a line to my past and my blood, but in that harsh, pale light, they accused me of hiding like a coward.
Or perhaps that was simply my guilty conscience talking.
Her eyes widened when she saw me, and I heard her pulse spike in her chest, the blood through her veins rushing faster, louder, as her fear intensified. “Okay... What the… Nope, I can’t deal. Who the hell are you?”
Her voice, it was such a shock I nearly recoiled.
The accent was atrocious: clipped, nasal, entirely devoid of elegance.
American, I realized with immediate distaste.
I’d only had a handful of dealings with them before I’d decided to lie dreaming beneath the City of Light.
I did not recall any of those interactions as particularly pleasant, and braced myself for more of the same.
“How did you come here?” I asked instead, my own voice emerging rougher than expected, unused.
I needed a drink, blood, followed by something much stiffer.
My mind was already adjusting to her language, the changes time had wrought.
That was how a vampire’s mind worked; we adapted, evolved.
Not everyone of my kind was good at changing as time changed, but I had always managed.
At least, I believed I did. Though Louis had called me dated and stiff even that last day before I began my planned, three-century-long nap.
“Excuse me?” She blinked, then gestured wildly with her glowing device. “I asked first. Who are you? And where is this? This was not on the tour.”
Tour. I ignored the word for the moment.
She sounded like she was panicking, and I wondered if she’d appreciate a gentle slap with my handkerchief to snap her out of it.
I reached for the normally snow-white cloth jutting from my jacket pocket and discovered, with horror, that it was covered in dust.
“I am Raoul,” I said with the dignity the situation demanded.
“And you are trespassing.” Fine, no handkerchief for now; she appeared to be pulling herself together anyway.
In fact, she was probably responding with far more pluck than I would expect most women to show.
Not many would dare venture into the catacombs in the first place, but this one wore pantaloons, so perhaps she was different.
She squinted at me, and I noticed that her eyes were a pale blue, but her eyebrows were delicate arches. They were actually rather elegant, but I didn’t want to think that yet. She wore pantaloons and a sleeveless shirt. I could not begin to figure out what to think of that.
“Raoul,” she repeated, as though testing the name for authenticity.
Her gaze swept over me, slow, assessing.
To my surprise, something crept into her expression; it was inexplicably skeptical.
“Wow. Okay. Commitment to the bit. That outfit is… very intense. What are you, like, a reenactor? Cosplayer? That’s cool.
I gotta say, I’m very glad I found you! I was certain I’d never find my way out. ”
I frowned as her words landed, but some struggled to make sense.
Cosplayer, what was a cos, and how did you play it?
Also, reenact what exactly? “I beg your pardon?” I asked, my voice rising in pitch and, again, escaping my control.
I might have opened my mouth a bit too wide and given her a glimpse of my still embarrassingly protruding fangs.
It was that damn scent of hers, the lure of her blood as it dried on her skinned knees.
She pointed at my attire—my coat, my waistcoat, my boots—with a baffling mix of amusement and disbelief.
“The costume. It’s, like, super detailed.
You guys really go all out down here, huh?
” Down here, those words made me glance up at the ceiling as if that would help me make sense of what she was saying.
Down here in the Catacombs? Down here beneath the city?
She talked about my clothing as if I was the one dressed strangely.
I was beginning to think I’d made a grave mistake sleeping this long, and the world had gone to hell in a handbasket while I slumbered.
“My costume,” I repeated, each syllable edged in frost. “Mademoiselle, your own clothing is an affront to decency.”
She looked down at herself—at her torn jeans and sleeveless top, her strange, odorless square light dancing over her body as she did so. Then she lifted her chin and glared at me. “Wow. Rude,” she snapped in that odd, clipped accent of hers.
“Indecent,” I corrected. “And impractical.” The way the dark blue fabric cupped her rear was scandalous, and she had not even turned around yet, I just knew.
It made me want to look, my eyes skating over her shape, clinging to the pale fabric that was barely covering her chest. There was cleavage and the thrum of her heartbeat visible at her throat.