Chapter 49 Arabella
Arabella
Celeste: Arabella, please come to Black Crag tonight with me, Dora and Winnie.
Beth won’t be there to remind you about the importance of self-care, so I will.
We’ll light chocolate-scented candles, do facials, and summon a demon to take vengeance on all who have wronged us while we snuggle beneath a blanket fort.
That’s what Beth means by self-care, right?
ASTOR HAD ONCE BEEN HANDSOME – the most eligible man in the fashionable Cairo circles I ran in. As a young, naive courtesan, I thought his beauty, money and influence would be my ticket to an easy life. Instead, he took my life – and my innocence – from me.
Why do all the men who wrong me keep coming back from the dead?
Fear twists inside me – a physical, palpable weapon that blows out my chest and lodges in my throat. I try to think, but my mind is a blank sheet of white terror.
This isn’t possible.
“How are you here?” I whisper.
“Do you mean, existentially, how do vampires exist?” Astor tilts his head to the side, amused by his joke. “Or do you mean, how am I here in your lovely home in Argleton after you cut off my head, burned my body, drank of my blood, and stole my property?”
I snap my mouth shut. Anything I say will betray my fear. I won’t allow him the satisfaction.
He must have opened the outer door of Cleo VII’s enclosure and climbed up the tree that twists inside it. All those blips in the Sanctus security system. The beheaded songbirds. They were from him.
But that still doesn’t explain how he’s alive.
Astor smirks. “I see my little songbird has gone silent. I do so love surprising you. You thought you were so clever, training yourself to endure the sunlight, hiding that blade, tempting me into bed one final time. I must admit, it was quite a shock to wake up with my head separated from my body. But one doesn’t get to my age without taking precautions.
A vampire is most vulnerable during his dreamless sleep, and I’ve seen enough persecutions to know that I could not trust my immortality to chance and good breeding.
Some time ago, I had amulets sewn inside the lining of my coffin – a forbidden type of Dusk magic that would keep me alive even after a sneaky, disloyal concubine cut off my head. ”
My mistake blares like a trumpet inside my skull.
Astor was high up within the Dusk Court – the court of magic and secrets.
I never saw him use anything other than lesser magic to entertain his guests or close a drawer from across the room.
It never occurred to me that he’d be capable of this sorcery.
I’ve never heard of a vampire bringing themselves back from death, but I guess that’s because the Dusk Court hold their secrets close.
“You left me beheaded and burning,” Astor continues mildly, as if we’re exchanging pleasantries at a cocktail party.
“My maid came home and put out the fire before it consumed me completely. I lay inside the coffin, alive but wishing I were dead, in an agony you could only dream of, while my body knitted itself together again over months. It was a full year before I could even rise from the coffin. By then, you’d disappeared, and the amulets and my natural vampiric healing could only do so much.
I needed another magical item – one as old as I am – to return me to my full splendour. But you had stolen it.”
The necklace.
That’s why Astor has that hideous scar – it’s from when I slashed blindly at his face. Beneath the collar of his shirt is another bulging, jagged scar from where I hacked through his neck. He’s burned all over from being sealed inside the coffin I set alight.
He couldn’t repair himself completely.
“You see now, don’t you?” he hisses, his fingers tightening around my throat, pushing against my windpipe so I gasp for breath.
“Cleopatra of the Blood Ptolemy filled her court with Dusk vampires, including yours truly. She knew her position with Rome was precarious. She craved more power, more beauty, more immortality. At her command, we poured our magic into that collar, creating a spell so powerful that it could return a vanquished Upyr to perfect health. But, like a foolish woman, she had to go and get herself captured before the spell was complete. She killed herself, not with a snake as the legends claim, but with the only type of poison to work on Upyr, hidden in a hollow hair comb. We were supposed to use the necklace to bring her back, but a fight broke out among us over who would present it to her, and one of my brethren threw the collar into the ocean. There it remained until the seventeenth century, when I heard it had resurfaced and spent a fortune to possess it once more. It hung around many pretty necks before yours, sweet Arabella, and now, your pretty neck belongs to me. Give me the necklace.”
“It’s gone,” I choke out. Red welts dance in front of my eyes.
I rake my sharp nails across his hands, trying to relieve the pressure on my windpipe.
But that only makes him grip me tighter, shoving my head back into the kitchen wall so hard that my crystal wine glasses topple from their stand and smash on the floor.
“Mmmm. I wouldn’t lie if I were you.” Astor flicks his wrist, jerking my head to the side with savage force.
Lord Astor leans in close, his breath reeking of death, and licks a trail down my cheek with his cold, coarse tongue.
“I can smell it. The magic calls me. The necklace is close. But never mind, I don’t need you alive to take it from you.
I have been hunting you for a long time, Arabella Macquart.
I promised myself that when I found you, I wouldn’t just kill you.
I would torment you the way you tormented me.
We’re going to have such fun. We’ll pick up where I left off in Paris.
I was just getting started with you and your little theatre when you disappeared without a trace. ”
He lets go. I drop to the floor, my knees slamming against the Italian tile with such force that it cracks. Cleo VII slithers out of the way, disappearing behind the kitchen cabinet.
My whole body grows icy cold as Astor’s words sink in.
He burned La Petite Mort. He sent the brigade des m?urs after me.
He left those creepy messages and beheaded birds backstage – not for one of my ladies, but for me.
He was toying with me back then – the beginning of a wretched game he intended to draw out for his pleasure, until Gideon stormed into my life like a cautionary tale and ruined Astor’s plans.
Gideon fought Astor in Paris and won. And Astor died and rose again a second time, like an annoying vampiric Jesus.
But Gideon’s not here, and nor are there any conveniently placed vampiric criminal overlords I can drain for strength. I carry some of Astor’s power in my blood from when I drank him, but if he’s brought himself back twice, if he’s as ancient as he says, I don’t have a hope of beating him.
Gasping, I try to get to my feet. Astor kicks me in the side. I slam against the wall, the air driven from my lungs. Plaster chunks rain down on my head. Age in a human means weakness. In a vampire, it means danger.
“You escaped the institution before I arrived to have my fun.” Astor looms over me, flashing me that broken, charred grin.
“La dame fléau de la Salpêtrière vanished without a trace, but I sensed the necklace was still in the city. I dug through the ruins of that wretched theatre, but found nothing. I became convinced one of the sapeurs-pompiers had taken it, so I had them all tortured, but that was a dead end. I lost hope of finding the necklace and I lost the chance to punish you for losing it.” He unfolds something from his pocket.
“Until my Thrall sent me this, and I knew I had a second chance.”
He holds the paper close to my face. It takes my oxygen-starved eyes and fear-addled mind a few moments to recognise it.
The poster for Beth’s studio opening.
“Imagine my surprise when a little birdie placed you and the necklace in my lap.” Astor snaps his fingers.
“Tweet, tweet.”
A second figure sweeps through Cleo VII’s enclosure and steps into the kitchen, cheap heels clacking like typewriter keys against the tiles. She must’ve had a time climbing Cleo VII’s tree in those.
“Hello, Arabella.”
It’s Gideon’s assistant, Sinead.