Jean-Fran?ois turned his eyes to the moth, still beating in vain upon the lantern glass. ‘Too much hate will burn a man to cinders, Chevalier.’
‘Oui. But at least he’ll die warm.’
The Last Silversaint’s eyes flickered to his tattooed hands, fingers curling closed.
‘I couldn’t have hurt my sister. I loved her even then. And so, I picked up the wood axe and I brought it down, right on Julieta’s neck. The blow was solid enough. But I was only thirteen, and even a full-grown man will struggle severing a human head, let alone a coldblood’s. The thing that had been Julieta fell into the mud, pawing at the axe in its skull. And Amélie lifted her head, bloody drool hanging from her chin. I looked into her eyes, and it was like staring into the face of hell. Not the fire and brimstone Père Louis promised from his pulpit, just … emptiness.
‘Fucking nothingness.
‘My sister opened her mouth, and I saw her teeth were long and knife-bright. And the girl who told me stories every night before we slept, who danced to music only she could hear, she stood and she hit me.
‘God in heaven, she was strong. I felt nothing until I struck the mud. And then she was straddling my chest, and I could smell rot and fresh blood on her breath, and as her fangs brushed my throat, I knew I was about to die. Looking up into those empty eyes, even as I hated and feared it, I wanted it.
‘I welcomed it.
‘But something in me stirred then. Like a bear waking hungry after winter’s slumber. And as my sister opened her rotten mouth, I seized hold of her throat. God, she was strong enough to grind bone to powder, but still, I pushed her back. And as she pawed my face with bloody fingertips, I felt a heat flood up my arm, tingling across every inch of skin. Something dark. Something deep. And with a shriek that turned my belly to water, Amélie reared back, clutching the bubbling flesh of her throat.
‘Red steam rose off her skin, as if the blood in her veins was boiling. Red tears spilled down her cheeks as she screamed. But by then, Celene’s cries had brought the whole village running. Strong hands grabbed Amélie, threw her back as the alderman pressed a torch to her dress, and she went up like a Firstmas bonfire. Julieta was crawling about with my axe still stuck in her curls as they lit her too, and the sound she made as she burned … God, it was … unholy. And I sat in the mud with Celene crouched beside me, and we watched our sister twirl and spin like a living torch. One last, awful dance. Papa had to hold Mama back from throwing herself onto the blaze. Her screams were louder than Amélie’s.
‘They checked my throat a dozen times, but I’d not a scratch. Celene squeezed my hand, asked if I was well. Some folk looked at me strangely, wondering how I’d survived. But Père Louis proclaimed it a miracle. Declaring God had spared me for greater things.
‘Still, he refused a burial for the girls, the bastard. They’d died unshriven, he said. Their remains were taken to the crossroads and scattered, so they’d never be able to find their way home again. My sister’s grave was to stand forever empty on unhallowed ground, her soul damned for all eternity. For all his praise, I fucking hated Louis for that.
‘I smelled Amélie’s ashes on me for days afterwards. I dreamed about her for years. Sometimes Julieta would come with her. The two of them sitting atop me and kissing me all over with black, black lips. But though I’d no idea what had happened to me, or how in God’s name I’d survived, I knew one thing for sure and true.’
‘That the kith were real,’ Jean-Fran?ois said.
‘No. In our hearts, I think we already believed, coldblood. Oh, the powdered lords of Augustin and Coste and Asheve would have thought us backwards. But fireside tales in Lorson were always of vampyr. Of duskdancers and faekin and other witchery. Out in the Nordlund provinces, monsters were as real as God and his angels.
‘But the chapel bells had just struck noon when Amélie and Julieta came home. And the day seemed not to bother them at all. We all knew the banes of the Dead. The weapons that kept us safe: fire, silver, but most of all, sunlight.’
Gabriel paused a moment, lost in thought, eyes of clouded grey.
‘It was the daysdeath, you see? Even years later, in the monastery at San Michon, no silversaint could explain why it happened. Abbot Khalid said a great star had fallen in the east across the sea, and its fires raised a smoke so thick, it blackened the sun. Master Greyhand told us there’d been another war in heaven, and that God had thrown down the rebellious angels with such rancour the earth had been blasted skywards, and hung now in a curtain between his kingdom and hell. But nobody really knew why that veil had covered the sky. Not then, and perhaps not even now.
‘All the folk of my village knew was that our days had become almost dark as night, and the creatures of the night now walked freely in the so-called day. Standing at the crossroads outside Lorson as they scattered my sister’s ashes, holding Celene’s hand as our mother screamed and fucking screamed, I knew. I think some part of us all knew.’
‘Knew what?’ Jean-Fran?ois asked.
‘That this was the beginning of the end.’
‘Take comfort, Chevalier. All things end.’
Gabriel looked up at that, blood-red eyes glittering.
‘Oui, vampire. All things.’
III
THE COLOUR OF WANT
‘WHAT CAME NEXT?’ Jean-Fran?ois asked.
Gabriel took a deep breath. ‘Mama was never the same after my sister died. I never saw my parents kiss after that. It was as if Amélie’s ghost had finally killed whatever remained between them. Sorrow turned to blame, and blame to anger. I looked after Celene as best I could, but she was growing up a hellion, always looking for trouble and simply making it if she couldn’t find it. Mama was scarred by her grief, hollowed and furious. Papa sought refuge in the bottle, and his fists fell heavier than ever. Split lips and broken fingers.
‘There’s no misery so deep as one you face by yourself. No nights darker than ones you spend alone. But you can learn to live with any weight. Your scars grow thick enough, they become armour. I could feel something building in me, like a seed waiting in cold earth. I thought this was what it felt like to become a man. In truth, I’d no fucking idea what I was becoming.
‘But still, I was growing. I’d sprung up tall, and working the forge had turned me hard as steel. I began noticing the village lasses looking at me that way young girls do, whispering among themselves as I passed by. I didn’t know why at the time, but something about me drew them in. I learned how to turn those whispers into smiles, and those smiles into something sweeter still. Instead of having kisses stolen, I found them given to me.
‘In my fifteenth winter, I started trysting with a girl named Ilsa, daughter of the alderman, niece of Père Louis himself. Turned out I could be a sneaky little bastard when I chose to be, and I’d steal my way to the alderman’s house at night, climb the dying oak outside Ilsa’s window. I’d whisper to the glass, and she’d invite me in, sinking into desperate, hungry kisses and those clumsy first fumblings that set a young man’s blood afire.
‘But my mama didn’t approve. We didn’t quarrel often, but when it came to Ilsa, God Almighty, we shook the fucking sky. She warned me away from that girl, time and time again. One night we were at table, Papa quietly drowning in his vodka and Celene poking her potato stew while Mama and I raged. Again, she warned of the hunger inside me. To beware, lest it devour me whole.