Gabriel tilted his head and spoke by rote:
‘From holy cup comes holy light;
‘The faithful hand sets world aright.
‘And in the Seven Martyrs’ sight,
‘Mere man shall end this endless night.’
A cold chuckle rang on bare stone walls. ‘I am a chronicler, de León. History is of interest to me, not mythology. Save your callow superstitions for the cattle.’
‘You’re lying, coldblood. Dead tongues heeded are Dead tongues tasted. And if you believe for one moment that I’ll betray …’
His voice faded, then failed entirely. Though the monster never seemed to move at all, it now held one hand outstretched. And there, on the snow-white plane of its upturned palm, lay a glass phial of reddish-brown dust. Like a powder of chocolat and crushed rose petals. The temptation he’d known was coming.
‘A gift,’ the monster said, removing the stopper.
Gabriel could smell the powdered blood from where he stood. Thick and rich and copper sweet. His skin tingled at the scent. His lips parted in a sigh.
He knew what the monsters wanted. He knew one taste would only make him thirsty for more. Still, he heard himself speak as if from far away. And if all the years and all the blood had not long ago broken his heart, it surely would have broken then.
‘I lost my pipe … In the Charbourg, I …’
The coldblood produced a fine bone pipe from within its frockcoat, placed it and the phial on the small table. And glowering, it gestured to the chair opposite.
‘Sit.’
And finally, wretch that he was, Gabriel de León obeyed.
‘Help yourself, Chevalier.’
The pipe was in his hand before he knew it, and he poured a helping of the sticky powder into the bowl, trembling so fiercely he almost dropped his prize. The coldblood’s eyes were fixed upon Gabriel’s hands as he worked; the scars and calluses and beautiful tattoos. A wreath of skulls was inked atop the silversaint’s right hand, a weave of roses upon his left. The word P A T I E N C E was etched across his fingers below his knuckles. The ink was dark against his pale skin, edged with a metallic sheen.
The silversaint tossed a lock of long black hair from his eyes as he patted his coat, his leather britches. But of course, they’d taken his flintbox away.
‘I need a flame. A lantern.’
‘You need.’
With agonizing slowness, the coldblood steepled slender fingers at its lips. There was nothing and no one else in all the world then. Just the pair of them, killer and monster, and that lead-laden pipe in Gabriel’s shaking hands.
‘Let us speak then of need, Silversaint. The whys matter not. The means, neither. My Empress demands the telling of your tale. So, we may sit as gentry while you indulge your sordid little addiction, or we may retire to rooms in the depths of this ch?teau where even devils fear to tread. Either way, my Empress Margot shall have her tale. The only question is whether you sigh or scream it.’
It had him. Now that the pipe was in his hand, he’d already fallen.
Homesick for hell, and dreading to return.
‘Give me the fucking flame, coldblood.’
Jean-Fran?ois of the Blood Chastain snapped his fingers again, and the cell door creaked wide. The same thrall woman waited outside, a lantern with a long glass chimney in her hands. She was just a silhouette against the light: black dress, black corset, black choker. She could have been Gabriel’s daughter then. His mother, his wife – it made no difference at all. All that mattered was the flame she carried.
Gabriel was tense as two bowstrings, dimly aware of the coldblood’s discomfort in the fire’s presence, the silk-soft hiss of its breath over sharp teeth. But he cared for nothing now, save that flame and the darkling magik to follow, blood to powder to smoke to bliss.
‘Bring it here,’ he told the woman. ‘Quickly, now.’
She placed the lamp on the table, and for the first time met his eyes. And her pale blue stare spoke to him without her ever speaking a word.
And you think me slave?
He didn’t care. Not a breath. Expert hands trimming the wick, raising the flame to the perfect height, the oil’s scent threading the air. He could feel the heat against the tower’s chill, holding the pipe’s bowl the perfect distance to render the powder to vapour. His belly thrilled as it began: that sublime alchemy, that dark chymistrie. The powdered blood bubbling now, colour melting to scent, the aroma of hollyroot and copper. And Gabriel pressed his lips to that pipe with more passion than he’d ever kissed a lover and … oh sweet God in heaven, breathed it down.
The blinding fire of it, filling his lungs. The roiling heaven of it, flooding his mind. Crystallizing, disintegrating, he drew that bloody vapour into his chest and felt his heart thrashing against his ribs like a bird in a bower of bones, his cock straining against his leather britches, and the face of God Himself just another bowlful away.
He looked up into the thrall’s eyes and saw she was an angel given earthly form. He wanted to kiss her, drink her, die inside her, sweeping her into his arms, brushing his lips along her skin as his teeth stirred in his gums, feeling the promise thudding just below the arc of her jaw, the hammerblow beat of her pulse against his tongue, alive, alive— ‘Chevalier.’
Gabriel opened his eyes.
He was on his knees beside the table, the lamp throwing a shaking shadow beneath him. He’d no inkling how much time had passed. The woman was gone, as if she’d never been.
He could hear the wind outside, one voice and dozens; whispering secrets along the shingles and howling curses in the eaves and shushing his name through the boughs of black and naked trees. He could count every sliver of straw on the floor, feel every hair on his body standing tall, smell old dust and new death, the roads he’d walked on the soles of his boots. Every sense was as sharp as a blade, broken and bloodied in his tattooed hands.
‘Who …’
Gabriel shook his head, grasping at words like handfuls of syrup. The whites of his eyes had turned red as murder. He looked at the phial, now back in the monster’s palm.
‘Whose blood … is that?’
‘My blessed dame,’ the monster replied. ‘My dark mother and pale mistress, Margot Chastain, First and Last of her Name, Undying Empress of Wolves and Men.’
The coldblood was looking at the lantern’s flame with a soft, wistful hatred. A skull-pale moth had surfaced from some dank corner of the cell, flitting now about the light. Porcelain-pale fingers closed over the phial, obscuring it from view.
‘But not one more drop of her shall be yours until your tale is mine. So speak it, and as though to a child. Presume the ones who shall read it, aeons from now, know nothing of this place. For these words I commit now to parchment shall last so long as this undying empire does. And this chronicle shall be the only immortality you will ever know.’
From his coat, the coldblood produced a wooden case carved with two wolves, two moons. He drew a long quill from within, black as the row of feathers about his throat, placing a small bottle upon the armrest of his chair. Dipping quill to ink, Jean-Fran?ois looked up with dark and expectant eyes.
Gabriel drew a deep breath, the taste of red smoke on his lips.
‘Begin,’ the vampire said.