Chapter 6
Raoul
Leaving Thibault’s chambers felt like stepping out from beneath a blade.
I did not rush; that would have been unseemly, but there was a distinct lightness to my movements once the door shut behind us.
It felt as though some invisible pressure had eased from my shoulders.
Thibault had always possessed a way of looking through a man rather than at him, of peeling back layers with quiet insistence.
It had been tolerable in the past. Back then, we’d been friends for so long that I knew exactly where he stood.
Now? It felt like he was practically a stranger.
Awakened too early, unsteady, starving, I felt extremely out of my element.
Nothing had gone the way I’d planned, and I did not like that.
I had prepared myself for great changes, but it was not the same as actually seeing them.
The stairwell ended by the kitchen we’d first arrived through, and for a moment I stood at the threshold of a café filled to the brim with humans.
People of all shapes, ages, and ethnicities sat at small tables, sipping coffee with thick foam and eating delicate pastries and luxurious warm afternoon meals the likes of which I’d never even seen before.
Somehow, that I could handle, even if it felt wrong to see so many humans in Thibault’s place.
When Susie led the way, weaving through the tables to an open glass door, I held it together.
It was once we hit the street that everything unraveled.
I stopped dead at the threshold and gaped like an uncouth lout.
I was looking out onto what should have been a familiar street, but it was not familiar at all. This was not Paris.
The street stretched wide and bright beneath a sky far different from what I remembered, the air thick with unfamiliar scents.
Some things I could identify: burning oil, metal, something acrid and artificial.
Gone: the endless plumes of smoke from households all over the city and the scent of burning wood.
Even more importantly, there was not so much as a hint of death and decay.
The city seemed cleaner. The buildings stood where they ought to, and yet not as they had been.
Restored, reshaped, altered in ways both subtle and grotesque.
Then there was the noise; it was deafening.
A constant roar that seemed ceaseless, endless.
A mechanical thunder that filled the air and pressed against the senses.
I was dazzled by it, overwhelmed, and even more so by the source of that awful sound.
Carriages—no, not carriages—but sleek metal beasts that hurtled past at impossible speed.
These wagons had gleaming bodies, their motion too smooth, too fast. Yet, seemingly unconcerned, people moved along the sidewalks in dense currents.
They were clothed in fabrics and styles that made even Susie seem almost conservative by comparison.
For a moment, I could not move. I, who had watched revolutions rise and fall without flinching, stood rooted like a novice newly turned.
“Hey,” her voice came to me in a soft, gentle coo.
It jerked me back from a precipice I’d found myself tumbling off without warning.
Her presence was grounding, real. Susie stepped closer, and she proved her kind heart by very gently, tentatively, but with quiet certainty, sliding her hand around my arm.
“There you go,” she murmured, as if coaxing a startled animal.
“Just keep moving. You’re gonna get run over if you stand there like that. ”
Run over. By what, I wondered dimly, as one of the metal contraptions roared past, far too close for comfort.
She guided me forward, her grip surprisingly firm.
It struck me then, and not for the first time, that there was more strength in her than her earlier panic suggested.
Not merely physical, though she had endured pain with admirable stubbornness, but something instinctive.
Quick, adaptive, the way an immortal like me should be, I could admire that.
She had extricated us from Thibault’s scrutiny with remarkable ease.
A lie, delivered without hesitation, on my behalf.
She had acted like we’d known each other far longer than the few hours in a dusty, cold tunnel.
She’d conjured plans out of thin air that sounded plausible, for my benefit. Why would she do that? Very curious.
“That guy, Teebow?” she said as we walked, glancing sideways at me. “He was…ah, let’s call it intense. I’m guessing that’s normal for a vampire?” I blinked, dragging my attention from the chaos around us.
“Thibault,” I corrected automatically. “And no. He is not a vampire.” The idea was pretty preposterous, really, but I could not blame her for thinking so. After all, only today she’d learned vampires were real, as well as healing magic.
She frowned slightly, but her steps were steady as she continued guiding me along the sidewalk and down the street. Headed for a location only she knew, it was a role reversal that seemed poetic.
“No? Then what is he?” she asked as we walked, her gaze on the crowd around us. Paris had always been extremely busy, but I could not recall ever seeing this many people on a single street unless there was a riot.
A carriage-that-was-not-a-carriage blared some infernal horn as it passed. I resisted the urge to bare my teeth at it. I recalled wagons and carriages to be noisy, and a risk of getting trampled by them, but this? How was everyone so calm as they hurtled past?
“A gargoyle,” I hissed out without thinking, too distracted by the city’s transformation. Knowing a vampire was real was one thing, but to learn that more supernatural creatures existed? It might be too much of a shock for one day.
Next to me, she was quiet as she absorbed that, but her pace never faltered; her grip remained steady on my arm as she guided me along the sidewalk. “Okay,” she said after a moment. “Sure, why not? That’s kinda cool, actually.”
I glanced at her rather sharply, but she did not notice.
“You accept that rather easily.” Her brown hair was not quite brown, catching the sunlight until it looked like spun gold.
With the afternoon’s warm summer sun heating her cheeks, she looked rosy too.
Not pale and in shock, a state that wouldn’t have been surprising if it had persisted.
The sparkle in her blue eyes took my breath away.
She gave a weak huff of laughter. “Honestly? After the whole glowing-eyes, magic-healing crystal situation? My bar for ‘weird’ is pretty high right now.” That was fair. She had seen a lot of strange things in a very short amount of time, and not once had she fainted.
She steered me toward a metal pole bearing a sign I did not recognize, then down a set of stairs leading beneath the street.
It was another tunnel, but this one was wrong in entirely new ways: brightly lit with harsh, artificial light.
The walls were smooth and lacked the organic irregularity of stone.
The air was warmer rather than cooler, filled with the press of humanity.
I stared wildly as Susie calmly guided me through the throng, through gates that ate tickets like a child ate candy. More stairs, into a tunnel passage that plunged toward metal tracks. I was not prepared for what would come on those tracks.
The ground trembled. A thunderous rumble surged through the tunnel as something vast and metallic screamed into view along a set of tracks. I stiffened. “What,” I said slowly, “is that?”
“A train,” she replied. “Underground.” No, it wasn’t.
This was not a train. I recalled the first such machine, though I had not personally laid eyes on it.
Drawings had been circulated, and it had been a great metal contraption blowing steam and smoke.
This “train” was smooth and metallic, but it blew no smoke of any kind. There was not even a wagon for coal.
“Come on,” she added, tugging on my arm.
“We’ll take this. It’s faster.” Faster. I was not convinced speed was desirable.
Nevertheless, I allowed myself to be guided onto the machine.
Where was it even taking us? I was so discombobulated that I’d forgotten to ask where Susie was guiding me. That’s how much I already trusted her.
The doors closed with a sharp hiss, and then there was movement.
The cart lurched into motion: violent, immediate, and entirely unnatural.
The world outside blurred as we were propelled forward at a speed that would have been impossible for any carriage I’d ever been in.
The noise alone was staggering, a deafening roar that echoed through the enclosed space.
I gripped the nearest pole much harder than intended.
“Are you okay?” Susie asked, eyeing me. She had to speak up to be heard over the noise of the “train,” but she was clearly used to it. She was calm as can be, with a faint smile curling her mouth as if my distress amused her.
“I am,” I said through my teeth, “perfectly composed.” The pole creaked faintly beneath my hand. While she had every right to feel smug for having the upper hand in this, damned if I didn’t hate it.
She snorted, clearly not buying my false bravado. “Right. Sure.” She drawled the last word almost like it was a song, and I clenched my jaw, frowning, but glaring in this situation was hard to muster. The noise was excruciating.
It wasn’t silence so much as her refraining from speaking for a moment, letting her eyes dart over my face. Then, more gently, “You can come back to my hotel, you know. We’ll figure things out there. Unless you’ve got somewhere else you want to go?”