Chapter 3 Francois
Francois
Itwitched. Had I slept? Found my silence? Surely not… And if not my silence, then was I following my father? Was stasis in my future? I shuddered.
If that slow death beckoned to me, I didn’t want to know. Vampires were eternal. Supposedly. Allegedly. But stasis was other. I needed to research it. After all, the family fucking madness had seemed to follow me like a fucking dog.
I laughed, the sound loud as it bounced off the walls around me.
And if madness, why not fucking stasis, too?
All the family curses. Why fucking not?
“Why fucking not?” I yelled the words out loud after I thought them.
“Why fucking what?” A sultry voice spoke from the other side of the room, and I jerked my head, to the right.
“What the…?” No one should have been able to sneak up on me. I was a vampire. Had I actually been out? How long far?
“Hello, Francois. It’s been a while.” The female vampire sashayed from the gray shadows. She was another relic I thought I’d left in my childhood. “You’re all grown up now, in fact.”
“Clémence?”
She laughed, and it was the same sound it had always been—husky, throaty…sexy—but now I at least recognized it as such.
“Yes, of course. ‘Tis I.” Her French accent was as pronounced as it had ever been, and the general tone of mischief she leant to her words almost made me smile. She’s never failed to make me smile as a child.
“But why?”
“Because you need me, mon amour. You need me.” She dropped her voice low. A soft croon.
I leaned into her touch as she ran her fingers through my hair, but I wasn’t moved by her. My heart yearned for my mate. My body longed for the woman with the red hair and irresistible scent. A frail human, but she was mine.
“Do I?” I didn’t just feign disinterest. I literally was disinterested.
There was nothing anyone could do for me. Not even Clémence.
“And why now?”
“Because, mon coeur…”
I almost laughed as she narrowed her eyes seductively. Her heart. I highly doubted I’d ever meant that much to her. When she’d spent time with me in France, I’d still been wet around the ears—a youngling. She’d almost been my nanny.
She took my hand and stroked her fingers over mine, although her touch did nothing. “You must have questions.”
I sat up a little. “Questions?” Even as the word left my lips, a movement at the door caught my attention. Speaking of those damn ghosts… There she was. The one I saw most often. Almost solid today, in fact.
I squinted as a memory tried to surface. What had her name been? Ma petite? No… That was only what I’d called her. What I’d called all of them.
Every woman I’d tried to take as my own. All of them. Ma petite.
She lifted a hand and played with the ends of her hair where it curled against the white nightgown she’d ended her days in.
None of the ghosts were gruesome, none with any injuries or blood splatters.
Instead, they all wore the plain white I’d provided.
They’d all been so beautiful and needed no other adornment beyond the delicate broderie anglaise and fine stitching.
I nodded even now, pleased with my decision-making skills back then.
“Oh, Francois…” The ethereal voice floated across the room, accompanied by a stream of icy air.
Oh.
Shit.
They spoke now? Was I never to have any peace?
Well, if nothing else, perhaps it was interesting. A distraction. I inclined my head toward her and Clémence followed the direction of my gaze.
“You annoyed by the enchanted doorway, Pookie?” She ruffled my hair again, and I moved away from her reach.
I shrugged, channeling something casual and keeping my frustration at being imprisoned in check. “Gotten used to it.” Clémence looked slight, but she was powerful… And I was crazy, but I wasn’t stupid.
“But no questions?” A soft, beguiling smile curved her lips.
The ghost at the door stepped forward. Damn it all. I just needed to remember her name.
“Lots of questions, Francois, remember?” The ghost’s voice was like music. Silvery bells.
I nodded, and the ghost smiled.
Clémence shifted closer to me. “Need me to start you off?”
I nodded again.
“Well, the magical doorway’s gotta stay. They don’t trust you not to leave.” Clémence chuckled as she spoke.
Apparently, I only needed to nod occasionally for her to believe I was present with her and not trapped in some kind of purgatory where my past haunted me.
“Why are they here?” the ghost asked, and then faded before I could say anything to her.
“Why are they here?” I repeated the question as I looked at Clémence.
She laughed and tapped the end of my nose with the pad of her forefinger. “You silly boy. Silly, silly Francois.”
I waited expectantly. “Well?”
“They’re—We’re—the Ancients.”
“Oui. Bien s?r… Yes, of course.” I could agree with her until my days ended. But that didn’t mean I actually knew what she was talking about.
She jerked back, her surprise evident. “You really don’t remember?” she hissed.
“Of course they’re the Ancients.” But that was the only fucking part I did know. I waved my hand dismissively. “Fucking Ancient bastards took me from my apartment.”
She threw her head back, her laugh this time drawn out and loud. “Putain! Sweet fuck, Francois. How can you not know? What the hell else have you forgotten?”
I shrugged and stood, forcing a laugh of my own. “How can I know that, Clémence? How does one know what one has forgotten?”
She looked me up and down. “Merde.” She cursed again and whirled away before pacing back. “Shit. They’ve come for you.”
“Come for me?” I raked a hand through my hair. “Yeah. I got that much because…” I spread my arms wide. “Here I fucking am, right?”
She sighed, filling it with every bit of exasperation she’d probably ever experienced in her very long life. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Time for what?” Apparently, I was full of nothing but questions now.
“To spoon feed you. Those days are long gone. Been there, done that.” She examined her nails like she was bored, but I remembered Clémence’s games.
I shrugged and dropped back into my seat. “Okay.” I closed my eyes like I might return to my repose, allowing myself the smallest of smiles when she shook my shoulder.
“Wake up, you ancient French bastard.”
“Ancient.” I tsked. “That feels a little…harsh.”
She grimaced. “Idiot. No, you are an Ancient. Well, you could be.”
“Wh…?” I didn’t even get the full question out. My voice dried and died away. What the hell was she saying? “Go away, Clémence. Get out if you’ve just come here to play.” I motioned to the door. “Leave me with the rats and the mice.”
She tapped her foot. “No. You need to understand this. Do you remember who your father was?” She crouched beside me, her gaze earnest, her hand grasping mine like she might believe I was at the very edge of my senses and she could prevent me from tipping over completely.
“Bien s?r. émile Ricard, King of New Orleans.” I kept the contempt out of my voice. The sometimes king. Otherwise, he’d left it to me. And he’d taught me to be cruel.
Was I still that man? Still so cruel?
Surely not. I’d found my mate now. I only needed to get to her and claim her, and then I would be changed forever.
But before I could examine those new ideas, Clémence spoke and interrupted my thoughts. “No, before that. Before he took you and your mother and fled to the new country, to America. What was he then?”
I shook my head. “My memory…” I tapped my temple softly. But I wasn’t being entirely truthful. There were things I did remember. Small things.
Like Clémence. She’d brought me little treats. Mammals to suck blood from when Father was punishing me again.
That old bastard. He’d always been punishing me for one thing or another.
But I didn’t remember everything. Why we’d fled… It was a blur of raised voices, stealing away as though our lives were in danger, and bloodshed. So much bloodshed.
Unexpected corpses everywhere. On the big ship we’d used to traverse the Atlantic, in the small area where we landed, then littered across the country until we found somewhere to settle.
But that had just been a disadvantage of being a vampire traveling internationally at the time.
Only why had we traveled at all? The more I tried to remember, the more the tattered thoughts slipped away. I glanced at Clémence, not wanting to ask her yet not wanting her to leave this room without her telling me what she knew.
“What has happened to you, little one?”
I flinched at the echo of the pet name I’d given all of my women… ma petite… but Clémence had at least anglicized it this time. And I was no longer her mon petit. I wasn’t sure I ever had been. And I certainly had no idea of her role, now.
Why the hell was she even here? In my fucking house. And she wasn’t ill at ease. She was comfortable here.
I ignored her question. I didn’t need to tell her anything immediately. “How long has it been, Clémence?” I sighed.
She half-smiled. “Too long, je pense.”
“You think?” I chuckled.
She nodded. “Yeah. I should have gotten here sooner. Look at you. Your poor mind.”
I flinched away as she ran her fingers through my hair.
I didn’t want her touch. She was nothing to me anymore.
Nicolas’s parents had bought him a pet human.
I’d had a grown vampire to take care of me.
All the times Father had kept Mother to himself or abused her in some way—because there had been abuse.
I couldn’t remember it, but I was sure of it all the same.
It was one thing I was grateful I had no recall of. Mother was an angel in my mind. I didn’t want her tarnished or hurt.
“Why would you have come sooner?”
“As soon as I heard about émile’s bouts of stasis, I should have come. They all need a caretaker when they’re in stasis.”
I looked at her. “I was his fucking caretaker,” I ground out. I’d done all the work. All of it. Run New Orleans. Kept the old fucker hanging on. Looked for my cure.