*If you don’t read vampires, please don’t read further. Also, fair warning because this blog is normally PG — there is EXPLICIT sexual stuff in the prologue (not quite sex) — so if you shouldn’t be reading that stuff, don’t. Or just page down or search for “Ruins and Fallen Angels. This is the first book of the Vampire musketeer trilogy.”*
This book, Sword And Blood, under Sarah Marques is available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble and probably your local bookstore, though you might have to order it. The prequel novella, First Blood, is available in eformat from Naked Reader Press and Amazon.
PROLOGUE
Paris, Wednesday, April 9, 1625
His captors dragged and pulled him past the ruined marble archway, the ropes on his wrists too tight, the ropes on his ankles loosened only enough to allow him the small steps he must take to avoid falling. They had stolen his sword. His blond hair was matted with blood, but he didn’t know whose.
Three of them held him on either side, their supernatural strength making it impossible for him to escape.
Still he struggled, his fevered mind knowing only that he must break free from the hands gripping his arms like vises. He must defeat the bone-crushing grasp of fingers on his waist.
Pulled into the shadows of the defiled church—with its broken cross, its holy statues scribbled with obscenities and painted with leers and fangs—he twisted, suddenly. The frantic hands tightened on him. He managed to sink his teeth into one of the implacable fingers holding his arm.
The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. The one he was biting—a coarse-haired man, who in life must have been a peasant—pulled his hand free and grinned widely, displaying long fangs that sparkled in the guttering light of the candles surrounding the bloodstained altar.
“Oh, good effort!” the bitten man said, speaking as though Athos were a puppy or a kitten. Then, looking up, he said in quite a different voice, “We’ve brought him, milady.”
Athos turned—and his mind stopped.
She stood by the altar, as she had stood by quite a different altar, fifteen years ago, when she had given him her hand in marriage. You could say she was tall and beautiful and slim and blond—but that omitted much of everything she truly was. The first time he had seen her, in the humble cottage that the priest of Athos’ parish was given as a prerogative of his office, he’d thought her an angel descended from heaven.
Whatever had happened to her in fifteen years since he had last seen her had changed neither her countenance nor her figure. She retained the perfect oval face with large, expressive violet-blue eyes. Her hair was still that shade of blond on the edge of silver, still a straight, glimmering cascade down to her waist.
She wore simple clothing, albeit much more expensive than it had been when he met her—a white overdress made of velvet with a collar outlined in ermine shining like ice around her neck. A silver belt delineated a waist that could still fit the span of his two hands.
She stepped down from the altar platform, down the marble steps, between the candles, her steps so graceful and lovely that Athos, unable to breathe, could only think he was seeing her ghost—that she had descended from heaven to redeem him. To forgive him for his horrible crime against her.
The last time he had seen her, he’d left her for dead after hanging her by the neck from the branch of a young tree. He looked anxiously at her neck for signs of the ordeal, but by the light of the candles it looked white and perfect, and he wondered if all this were a dream.
Or had the other been the dream? An evil nightmare, conjured by a demon? Perhaps the whole world they lived in was a nightmare. Perhaps none of it was true. Perhaps vampires didn’t fill half the world and more, maybe France wasn’t at war in all but name. Perhaps he and this exquisite beauty were still married and their lives were whole back in Athos’ domain of La Fère.
He felt his dry lips move, and heard himself rasp out, “Charlotte!”
She spoke in the voice he remembered, the musical tones that fell on the ears like the caress of soft fingers upon the skin. “Did you miss me, Raphael?”
Looking like she was dancing in air, she drew near, until she was standing close by him, her scent enveloping him. So near that were he not still held immobile, he could have leaned down and kissed her. “Yes,” he told her, struggling to embrace her. “Oh, yes.”
And then the fact that she was here, and that he had been brought to her by Richelieu’s guards penetrated his mind, and he knitted his brow. “Did they . . . ” He was about to ask if they’d captured her too, then he remembered one of those holding him had talked as if she’d ordered it. They had called her milady. An English term, but proof they held her in respect. He looked at her in horror. “Charlotte!”
She grinned, displaying sharp fangs he had never seen. They glimmered brightly on either side of her mouth. “What else, Raphael?” she said. “How else do you think I could have survived that noose?” She stared up at him, her eyes gleaming. Then, looking away, she told the men holding him, “Strip him!”
Athos twisted, pivoted, trying to avoid them, but a hand reached out and ripped his doublet, then his shirt, and finally his breeches and undergarment, leaving him shivering in the spring night in his stockings and boots. Those too were torn from him.
She said, “The altar.”
Two of the vampires lifted him and laid him down on cold marble. They tied him down, arms and legs twisted and bent, to the columnar supports.
Athos and his friends had found corpses tied like this. Blood masses they called these rituals, though Aramis had said no masses were celebrated. There was no ritual, just a group of vampires all feeding on the human victim until he was dead. A communion, perhaps, but not holy.
The cold, hard altar leeched the heat from his skin and thought from his mind. He was immobilized, hand and foot, atop, he was sure, old bloodstains. They tightened a rough rope across his torso, biting into his flesh. This was his last hour. He would die here, bound so he could not move. He would die here, and his friends would find him, dead and pale and defiled.
He licked his lips and managed to summon voice to his dry mouth, “Listen, Charlotte, I don’t . . . I don’t blame you for wanting your revenge.”
She checked the knots at his hands, her light fingers just touching his skin as she adjusted the rope. “Oh, good,” she said. “I would hate to think you withheld your forgiveness from me.”
One of the watching male vampires laughed, but stopped abruptly as Charlotte glanced down at him.
Athos shook his head. Before he died, he must make her understand. “It isn’t that,” he said. “I just . . . I realized afterwards I judged you too quickly. Just because you . . . just because you were branded with the fleur-de-lis, it didn’t mean you were a Judas goat or that you served the vampires. I should never . . . I should have asked you first. Before . . . executing you. Trying to execute you.”
She smiled at him and did not say anything. Her fingers moved idly from his wrists, as if of their own accord tracing the contour of muscles on his arm, sculpted and strengthened by his sword fighting day after day for fifteen years. “I think you’ve grown more muscular, Raphael,” she said, smiling a little. “You were too thin when we were married.” Her fingers, at his chest now, moved slowly down, cool and velvety soft, tracing his flat stomach.
“And I see I can still make you react,” she said as her hand traced the edges of his burning erection.
He shivered. She was a vampire. Other vampires watched them. Yet it took all his will to clamp his lips together to keep from begging her to touch him, to forget it all, to be his wife again.
But no matter how much he still needed her—through the horror and fear and remorse, and the mind-snapping craving of his body—the Comte de la Fère would not beg.
And yet . . . and yet, his bound back lifted fractionally off the marble, attempting to arch his body upward toward her touch.
She looked up at his face, and smiled slowly, knowingly, as though she guessed his thoughts and knew the extent of his need. Then she pulled her hand away and leaned in so close to his face that he could smell the familiar lilac scent she wore. “You are right, you know?” she said, confidentially. “I wasn’t a Judas goat.”
“No?” he said, relieved and crushed at once, because that meant he had tried to hang an innocent woman, a woman he’d adored with his whole heart, a woman who had survived only to become this. If only he hadn’t been so quick to judge. If he hadn’t been so proud. If he—
“No,” she said, smiling widely, her soft, moist lips glistening, sensuous and inviting. “I was already a vampire.”
With that she withdrew and struck, her fangs biting deep into his neck and forcing a scream out of him. Pain burned into his muscles and propagated like fire along his nerves, descending, tortuously, down his spine. He screamed until he could scream no more. Tired and wrung out, he lay still in a puddle of his own sweat and looked up at Charlotte’s eyes dancing with amusement.
He tried to speak, but could not find the strength.
Then the feeling changed and instead of pain, bliss radiated from her mouth on his neck, sucking his life away. A tingle of pleasure like nothing he’d ever felt—an overall caress, skin-enveloping, nerve shattering—took him completely and soothed him. Transported on its wings, he felt his body react again, excitement gathering, coursing along his veins—pounding, demanding release.
She bit deeper and his mind fogged. He plunged into the darkness of death.
Ruins and Fallen Angels
Grief carried D’Artagnan to Paris. Like a tidal wave swelling from shock to anger, it propelled him across the devastated country, riding on lonely roads amid denuded fields.
As the anguishing surge receded, it left him sitting on an ornate chair in the private office of Monsieur de Tréville, Captain of the Musketeers.
“I don’t know what you heard in the provinces,” the captain said. He was a small man, a Gascon, like D’Artagnan. Even though silver threads mingled with the dark in his long straight hair, he didn’t look old. No wrinkles marred his mobile olive-skinned face and his eyes remained bright. He stood behind a great armchair facing D’Artagnan. His long thin fingers clasped the frame tightly, flesh dark against the white-painted wood and the threadbare blue-gray velvet of the cushions. “But France is not England. We are not at war with the vampires. Our king and the cardinal have signed a truce between them. His Eminence might have been turned, but he still wants what’s best for France. Neither the king, nor the cardinal—nor I, myself—want to experience here the slaughter and mayhem that engulfs the other side of the channel.”
All the energy drained from D’Artagnan’s body, leaving his arms nerveless and his legs feeling as though they lacked the strength to support his body. He had run to Paris to fight the vampires, and to stand for king and queen. To support the forces of the light. To avenge his parents who’d been turned and had chosen to die as humans rather than live as vampires.
“My father said,” he heard his own voice echo back to him, aged and flat, “that I should come and offer my sword to you. That no matter who else had made peace with evil, you never would. That you knew darkness when you saw it.”
“Your father.” For just a moment, there was a flash of something in Monsieur de Tréville’s eyes. What it was, D’Artagnan could not tell. It flickered and vanished. In a changed voice, the captain said, “Your father and I fought side by side thirty-five years ago, when the first vampires came to France from Germany.” He sighed deeply. “Other times, my boy, other times. Now there’s a treaty in place. Daylighters are not to hunt vampires and vampires are not to turn the unwilling. Those turned must register promptly and become subjects of the cardinal, restrained by his laws. Only undeclared vampires, the ones in hiding, could be a danger, and we don’t have those.” He opened his hands. “Different times demand—”
Behind D’Artagnan, the door opened. A voice said, “I’m sorry to interrupt you, Captain, but you said you wanted to know when the inseparables came in.”
Turning, D’Artagnan saw a thin man in threadbare livery that seemed too big for him, looking in through the half-opened door. Just like all other Parisians, he looked starved, ill-dressed, and not so much worried as anxious. Ready to run at a sound like a hare amid wolves.
D’Artagnan knew no intelligent Parisian could take the truce or the treaty seriously. Monsieur de Tréville did not look that stupid.
In fact, he did not look stupid at all, as his fingers released their death grip on the back of the chair, and his eyes filled with an eager curiosity, leavened by hope and fear. His voice trembling with what appeared to be near-maniacal relief, he said, “All three? Athos, Porthos, Aramis?”
The servant shook his head and looked away as he spoke, as if afraid of seeing the reaction to his words. “Porthos and Aramis, only, sir. Should I send them away?”
Monsieur de Tréville’s face froze, the skin taut on the frame of his skull—as though he’d aged a hundred years in that moment and only iron will kept him alive. He licked his lips. “The two?” His expression became impenetrable. He drew his mouth into a straight line and crossed his arms at his chest. “Send them in, Gervase.”
The gentlemen had apparently been waiting just outside the door, because as Gervase opened it, they immediately entered.
They were splendid. There was no other word for them. D’Artagnan, who had waited in the captain’s antechamber, had seen the rest of the musketeers as something very close to immortal gods. He had listened to them jest about how many vampires they had killed, and taunt each other with the latest court gossip. How—fearless and unabashed—they called evil by its true name—vampire. Yet, admirable though they were, they admired others. They too had idols they looked up to.
All through the other musketeer’s chatter—like a touchstone, a prayer—he’d heard the names of the inseparables: Athos, Porthos, Aramis.
They were, according to their own comrades, the best and the bravest. It was said that in one night, the three of them alone had killed a hundred vampires. It was whispered that if France still had a human king, if the throne still belonged to the living, it was to the credit of none but the three noblemen who hid under the appellations of Porthos, Athos, and Aramis.
D’Artagnan, a Gascon and therefore inclined by nature to discount half of what he heard as exaggeration, and the other half as mere talk, now felt his mouth drop open in wonder at the sight of Porthos and Aramis. He thought that, if anything, the rumors had been an understatement.
Though their clothes looked as worn and their bodies as thin as those of other Parisians, the two inseparables were so muscular and broad-shouldered, and stood with such pride, that they lent their humble threadbare tunics, their frayed doublets, their mended lace and worn cloaks an air of distinction. Pride was an attribute one would have thought departed from mortals since the vampires had taken control.
The smaller of the two—just taller than D’Artagnan—had dark-golden hair and the flexible body of a dancer—or an expert sword fighter. His features were so exactingly drawn that they might have graced a well-favored woman. However old his clothes might be, they looked well matched and even better fitted. Made of dark blue velvet, no mended patches were visible. The ringlets of his hair fell over his shoulders, disposed in the most graceful of ways, with a longer love-lock caught up on the side of his head by a small but perfect diamond pin. Other than that pin, he wore no jewelry save for a plain, flat silver cross on a silver chain around his neck, and an antique signet ring on his left hand.
The other musketeer stood at least a head taller than any man D’Artagnan had ever seen. His chestnut brown hair was shoulder-long, his beard and moustache luxuriant; the bare patches on his tunic had been sewn by an expert hand and embroidered in what looked like gold thread. D’Artagnan only noticed they were skillfully covered rents because there was no other explanation for the haphazard nature of the embroidery, which meandered over his broad torso with the abandon of a gypsy caravan on an endless jaunt. He wore a ring on the finger of each massive hand—most of them ornamented with stones too large to be anything but paste or glass—and on his chest lay a thick gold chain, with a cross composed of rubies and garnets—or their counterfeits—dazzling in its splendor.
This would be Porthos, D’Artagnan surmised. He had heard the man was a giant. Indeed, he had arms like tree trunks, legs like logs, and the most terrified brown eyes that D’Artagnan had ever seen.
His gaze darted around the room in skittish anxiety and, alighting on D’Artagnan, it made the Gascon wish to make his excuses and leave. But the musketeers blocked the path to the door. Porthos’ gaze moved on, immediately, to stare in abject fear at his captain, whom Porthos outweighed by at least half again as much.
Looking at Monsieur de Tréville, D’Artagnan could understand at least part of the fear. The captain’s face had hardened, and his gaze threatened to bore holes in the two musketeers, if it could. Settling on Porthos, the hard gaze then dismissed him, focusing instead on Aramis, who bowed correctly. D’Artagnan had heard how valiant Porthos was and could only imagine his fear in this instance was that common malady known as timidity or shyness in social situations.
Here stood a man who could destroy vampires with a smile but who would be forever in fear of offending another human or committing a faux pas.
“Aramis,” Monsieur de Tréville rasped. “Where is Athos?”
Aramis smiled, as if he had expected this question all along. “He’s indisposed, sir. It’s nothing serious.”
“Nothing serious,” the captain said. He turned his back on them and stared out of his window. Through it one could just glimpse the broken cross atop the cathedral, the marble stark white against the lowing sky. “Nothing serious,” he said again, his voice heavy, like the closing of a tomb. “The cardinal bragged at his card game with the king last night. He said that Athos had been turned. That Athos was now one of them. The rumor is all over Paris.”
“It is . . . not so serious,” Aramis said.
“Not so serious,” the captain turned around. “So is he only half turned? You men and your careless ways. How many times have I told you not to wander the streets at night after your guard shift? Never to go into dark alleys willingly? And if you must go into them, to guard yourselves carefully? Do you have any idea what Athos will become as a vampire? Do you not know your own friend well enough to know what a disaster this is?” His voice boomed and echoed. Doubtless, the musketeers massed in the antechamber were eagerly drinking in every word he said.
Porthos and Aramis shifted their feet, looked down, and let their hands stray to their sword pommels. It was obvious that had anyone but their captain given them such a sermon, he would have paid dearly for it.
Porthos, who had been squirming like a child in need of the privy, blurted out, “It’s just . . . that . . . sir! He has the smallpox!”
“The smallpox?” the Captain asked, with withering sarcasm, even as Aramis gave his friend a baneful, reproachful glance and a minimal headshake. “The smallpox, has Athos, who is over thirty years of age? Do you take me for a fool, Porthos?” His voice made even D’Artagnan—over whom he had, as yet, no power—back away and attempt to disappear against a wall-hung tapestry that illustrated the coronation of Henri IV. “I’ve given the three of you too much freedom because I thought you’d at least defend each other. How can you have allowed Athos to be taken? From now on, I am making sure that none of my musketeers go anywhere, save as a group. Not after dark. And if I hear of any of you starting a fight with a vamp—”
He stopped mid-word, as steps were heard rushing outside, followed by a man’s voice calling out, “I’m here.”
A blond man burst through the door. He was taller than Aramis, almost as tall as Porthos, though of a different build. It was not so much that he appeared lithe and lean, though he was both, but on that leanness was superimposed a layer of muscle. D’Artagnan had seen similar bodies in a book of drawings by someone who had visited Greece. The ancients had excelled in the creation of sculptures of ideal men, which they placed as parts of their temples, supporting whole buildings on their backs. The buildings and the men were both a harmony of perfect proportion. Though D’Artagnan imagined this man must be Athos, and that he must, therefore, be over thirty, he looked like a young man in the early prime of his days. It was as though he had halted at the peak of golden youth and from its summit looked through the ages unafraid, carrying the best of his civilization upon his powerful shoulders.
Like most of the other musketeers, he did not exactly wear a uniform. Instead, he wore the fashion of at least ten years before—a black doublet laced tightly in the Spanish fashion and with ballooning sleeves; black knee breeches, beneath which a sliver of carefully mended stockings showed, disappearing into the top of his old but polished riding boots.
But it was his face that attracted and arrested one’s gaze as he threw back his head, parting the golden curtain of his hair as he did so. He said, “I heard you were asking for me, Captain, and, as you see, I came in answer to your call.”
He looked like the angel guarding the entrance to a ruined cathedral; beautiful, noble, and hopeless. The mass of hair tumbling down his back might have been spun out of gold, his flesh resembling the marble out of which such a statue’s features might be chiseled. The noble brow, the heavy-lidded eyes, the high straight nose, the pronounced cheekbones, and square chin, and the lips—full and sensuous, as if hinting at forbidden earthly desires. All of it was too exquisite, too exact; perfection that no human born of woman should be entitled to.
He also looked cold, unreachable, lost, and—except for still standing on his feet and moving—as if he’d died waiting for a miracle that had never come.
Monsieur de Tréville’s mouth had remained open. He now closed it with an audible snap, and advanced on the musketeer, hands extended. “Athos! You should not have come. You look pale. Are you wounded?”
Athos shook his head, then shrugged. “A scratch only, Captain,” he said. “And you’ll be proud to know we laid ten of them down forever, D’Alene among them.”
“D’Alene? The Terror of Pont Neuf?” Monsieur de Tréville asked, suddenly gratified.
Athos bowed slightly, and in bowing, flinched a little. His eyes, which had looked black at first sight, caught the light from the window—as he turned his head—and revealed themselves as a deep, dark jade green.
The captain squeezed the musketeer’s hands hard. Athos bit his lips, looking as if the touch pained him, though not a sound of complaint escaped him. “As you see,” he said, “we do what we can to defend the people of Paris.”
“Indeed. Indeed. I was just telling your friends how much I prize men like you, and how brave you are to risk your lives every night, in defense of the people, and how . . . ”
Athos, who looked pale and wan as if he were indeed wounded, and, in fact, as if he only remained standing through sheer will, didn’t seem able to withstand the barrage of words, or perhaps the additional pain of what must be the captain’s iron grip on his hands—so tight that Monsieur de Tréville’s knuckles shone white. He made a sound like a sigh, his legs gave out under him, and he began to sink to the floor.
His friends managed to catch his apparently lifeless body and ease him onto the carpet.
Bewildered, D’Artagnan suddenly perceived that the captain must be playing some deep game. The man who’d told him musketeers didn’t fight guards clearly was pleased that musketeers did. Which must mean D’Artagnan’s father was right and that Monsieur de Tréville fought against the vampires still—only carefully enough to not be caught at fault under the treaty.
D’Artagnan took a step forward to help with the fallen Athos, but the musketeer’s two comrades moved, obstructing his path.
The young man stopped, staring. It seemed to him that, as Athos fell—awkwardly caught by Aramis around the chest and Porthos by the shoulders to ease what would otherwise have been a floor-shaking collapse—his hair moved away from his neck revealing two deep, dark puncture marks on his neck.
Athos would not be the first to be bitten by a vampire and live to tell the tale. There was a time, D’Artagnan’s father had told him, that this was the basic requirement to become a musketeer—to have felt the bite of the vampire—and his allure—and to have survived it. But the bite mark combined with Athos’ pallor seemed to indicate a vampire might have gone too far. Far enough, in fact, that the human thus bitten turned into a vampire within twenty-four hours, and would be prowling the streets for living blood by the next evening.
D’Artagnan moved closer. He was barely breathing as he strove to see the musketeer’s neck. Surely, if he had been turned, his friends would not hide it. They were musketeers. Surely—
The two musketeers knelt, one on either side of their comrade, while the captain stood nervously at his feet. Aramis was unlacing Athos’ doublet, a sensible action indeed if he was wounded and needed air. With his movements, Aramis had also artlessly pulled Athos’ hair to hide what might be punctures on his neck. Perhaps it had indeed been by chance, but D’Artagnan found it hard to trust anyone.
“Sangre Dieu,” Porthos thundered, looking up and noticing that a crowd had come from the antechamber and gathered at the still-open door, to watch the excitement. “Back, all of you. Can’t you see the man needs to breathe?”
At that moment, Aramis lifted a reddened hand that he had just dipped beneath his friend’s doublet. “He’s all over blood,” the musketeer said. “He was badly cut in the fight last night.” As he spoke, he undid Athos’ doublet altogether, and showed the red-soaked shirt beneath. There was a sound of relief from bystanders as they released long-held breaths in a collective sigh.
Clearly if the musketeer could bleed still and in such quantity, when he could not have fed as a vampire yet, the rumor of him turning would be just that. Yet D’Artagnan was not so sure. Such things could be falsified.
Aramis pulled back the gory shirt to reveal a cut on the pale, burly chest beneath—a cut smeared in blood, some of it dried.
“My surgeon,” Monsieur de Tréville said.
“No, please, sir,” Aramis said. “Athos wouldn’t even let us bandage him last night. You know how private he is and how proud. He wouldn’t like it if it was known he suffered such a wound.” He looked toward the crowd with worried eyes. “I hope no one speaks of this.”
The mass of musketeers backed a step, then two, under his steely gaze.
Porthos stood, then bent down to pick up his unconscious friend. “I’ll take him to his lodgings, sir. His servant will bandage him up, been with his family since Athos was a baby. Athos cannot resent him. Yes, Grimaud will look after him.”
“Yes,” Monsieur de Tréville said, his gaze heavy on the bloodied shirt. “Yes. Do. Take care of my brave Athos.”
“We will, sir,” Aramis said, bowing a little.
But D’Artagnan had discerned two things. First, the appearance of Athos’ chest and the blood on it was wrong. If he had bled so copiously, most of the blood would have crusted around the wound. Instead, it was smeared around the pale skin in irregular streaks looking like it had gone from the shirt to the wound, and not the other way around.
Second, Athos wore no cross. While there was no requirement that musketeers—or indeed anyone—wear a cross, almost everyone did. A cross or some other chosen symbol of their faith that not only stood between them and the vampires, but which showed to the world that they were, indeed, still free men.
Had a vampire managed to get into the ranks of the musketeers? And were his friends hiding him?
When the three inseparables left the room, D’Artagnan slipped out and followed them.
The Destiny of Fools
Athos woke up held in living arms. For a moment, he did not know whose arms, only that they were strong and too warm and alive. That last truth communicated itself to him through smell and temperature, through feeling and his own quickened heartbeat and a desperate lust to feed, which made it hard for him to think.
He was being held like a child—which even his sluggish brain knew meant that the arms belonged to Porthos. But more important, more urgent, was that his head rested on Porthos’ shoulder, close enough to hear his friend’s heartbeat, close enough to feel the song of living blood through Porthos’ neck veins. Close enough to thirst.
Athos tightened his hands into fists and bit his lips together to keep his fangs from extruding. They had already appeared once today, while he was smearing the shirt. Even though he had used sheep’s blood, the smell had been enough for the fangs to descend from his gums, alien and demanding, in front of his teeth.
With his lips sealed together, Athos found that he could not speak; he opened them, but kept his teeth clenched. The voice that emerged sounded like something from beyond the grave even to him. “Put me down, Porthos. For the love of—” He remembered in time not to stain the holy name with his cursed tongue. “Put me down.”
Porthos looked down at Athos, startled. “Are you sure?” he asked. “You don’t look—”
“Down. Now.”
Porthos started to lower him, and Athos threw himself at the ground and away. He half tumbled, half ran out of Porthos’ embrace, to press his back flat against a wall. The support of stone behind him helped. Its coldness seeped through his clothes to steady his mind with icy sanity. They were in an alley just like the ones he had used to get to Monsieur de Tréville’s office. Narrow ancient alleys surrounded by buildings so tall that the bottom floor never saw the light of day. Daylight was only a mild bother here. Not a danger. He could hardly feel its faint sting on his skin. On the way to Monsieur de Tréville’s he had ensured that his hair and the lace of his sleeves covered every exposed inch of his skin as well. It was only in the captain’s office that he had felt sunlight on his face. Even the attenuated light, coming through the window with its half-drawn curtains, had been enough to fill him with panic and make him want to writhe in pain. That and the temptation to feed when the captain touched him had overwhelmed his senses and caused his faint.
“Athos!” Aramis said. “You are wounded. You bled. Perhaps they didn’t take enough to turn you, perhaps—”
Athos heard something between a gasp and a cackle tear through his lips, behind which, and despite all his will power, the fangs were now displaying fully. “It was from mutton,” he said. “I cut myself and squeezed the meat Grimaud had in the kitchen. I folded it in my shirt and pounded. I assumed the rumors would have started and you two fools . . . ” He shook his head, unable to go on. “Grimaud will never forgive me.” He pressed his palms back, flat against the stone, trying to will its coldness into him, trying to find his fast-evaporating control.
Heat rose through him like a fever, and he could smell his friends as he had never smelled anyone before. Blood rushing through their veins spoke of health and strength, filling Athos with an almost uncontrollable yearning.
It wasn’t hunger, though the mouth-watering need for bread after a long afternoon of work was contained within it; it wasn’t thirst, though the pounding of the blood sounded like the singing of a stream on a hot afternoon when he had been hunting all day. It wasn’t desire, but his entire body strained with the need to bite, to suck blood, just as his whole body had once lusted to join with the woman he loved.
He kept from striking only by desperate strength of will, by near-insane force of rationality. He would never bite Porthos and Aramis. They were his friends. He could not wish this hell on them. And he couldn’t bite anyone—anyone—without surrendering his immortal soul, or his remaining honor. He had abandoned his name, his lands, his home—all for the sake of fighting vampires—but he was still the Comte de la Fère. He would not stain that ancient dignity by becoming a bloodthirsty monster, stalking innocents and condemning them to death or damnation.
He controlled his breathing, as it hissed, ragged, between his teeth. He shook his head. “You do me no kindness,” he said in a voice tinged with the pain of holding back from feeding, “to refuse to grant me the true death. I beg of you . . . ”
“We don’t know that you’ll become a vampire,” Aramis said. “We cannot kill you simply because you’ve been bitten. Half the musketeers . . . ”
Athos’ laughter barked out, startling him. “Aramis,” he said. “My friend. Don’t delude yourself. You wouldn’t have chosen these alleys as the way to take me home, if you did not know how it stood with me.” He looked up at the distant sky, lost in the shadow between buildings, and decided there was enough light here. Just enough. “I wasn’t bitten. After . . . after I parted from you in that fight, they surrounded me. Fifteen of them. They tied me up before I even knew they were there. I was taken to a lair and there . . . ” He couldn’t bring himself to tell them what he’d found there. The wife he’d thought dead for fifteen years, still alive, or at least in that form of death in life that was vampirism. It wasn’t that he didn’t wish to. He couldn’t. He lacked the strength to pronounce Charlotte’s name. “And there I was drained,” he said. “Very thoroughly and carefully, to be at that point of almost full depletion at which one becomes a vampire, before the complete emptiness at which one dies.” He shook his head, as the sound of her laughter echoed in his memory, her musical voice telling him, as he woke from human death to vampire life, that his only way out, now, was to kill himself. “I was turned, Aramis,” he said, lifting his upper lip to reveal the glint of fangs.
Aramis took a step back and crossed himself, paling as he did so.
“Yes, do cross yourself,” Athos said. “Pray for me, Aramis. But give me mercy.”
“Mercy?” Aramis asked, stunned, his usually agile tongue stumbling over itself.
“Death, Aramis, death. While my soul is still unstained. I’m controlling myself by an effort of will. A . . . great effort of will. I came to that office to avoid you or Porthos being suspected of abetting a rogue vampire and being branded as Judas goats because it might be heard you . . . helped me to my lodgings last night and I have neither registered nor submitted to the cardinal’s authority—I’d see him in hell first. People would think you knew. You should have known. Now kill me, and go back. Tell them that you found out I was turned after all, and tell them that you killed me cleanly.”
Aramis took a breath, the noise of it so loud it seemed to echo inside Athos’ brain. He crossed himself again, but shook his head.
“Aramis,” Porthos said. “We are doing him no kindness. He asked for death when we found him yesterday. We should have given it to him. It’s the last duty of every musketeer to his comrade to keep him from becoming . . . ”
Athos looked up at Porthos, who was now far enough away that Athos did not have to concentrate so hard to avoid to tearing into his veins to satiate his unnatural need. From within his darkening heart and soul, Athos fished a word he wasn’t used to uttering, and turning his eyes to his friend, said, “Please.”
“Aramis,” Porthos said, looking sideways, a panicked expression in his dark brown eyes. “We must grant him final mercy.”
But Aramis shook his head again and, looking up, spoke with the sting of his usually sarcastic pronouncements. “Why tell me that, Porthos? You have a sword. You want to give him mercy, do so.”
Porthos’ eyes changed, softening into a sad mix of horror and fear. “I can’t,” he said. “I . . . I did it when I had to, Aramis. To those I loved. Until I came to Paris, I thought my heart dead to all friendship and love. Without your friendship—the friendship both of you offered me—I’d have become worse than the vam— the things we kill. You two have kept me alive and human. I could not . . . I cannot kill him. No more than I could kill you. Unless . . . unless I had to. To defend myself.”
“Well, then,” Aramis said, tartly. “Why do you think I could?”
Athos calculated the distance to his friends. He could charge them. He could grip one of them, maybe both. He could feed. Then they would kill him, and then—
His heart, straining in his chest, scarcely sustained by insufficient blood, made a noise that sounded like a drum in his ears. His body, his mind, his need, all told him to attack. But once he let himself go, he would no longer be able to control himself. Once he allowed himself strike, he would be a beast, intent only on getting what he needed. He knew how to fight, and he had his sword by his side.
Closing his eyes, to blot out the two of them—standing there, like fools, side by side—he could picture it all like a series of paintings behind his closed eyelids. He saw himself jumping out at them, stabbing Aramis through the heart and seizing Porthos . . . Once he closed his fangs on Porthos’ neck, he doubted his friend would fight. Or kill him. Beneath the brazen and admittedly larger than life exterior, Porthos was a shy, gentle creature. Not deficient in courage, but not able to withstand his friend’s will. It would end with Porthos dead, or turned.
Once Athos let go of himself, this outcome would follow, as easily and surely as a river flowed downhill. There would be no recall. Oh, they could fight other vampires and win against great odds. But he’d fought by their side for years. He knew their weaknesses. He could get in under their defenses.
“Traitors!” A loud voice called out, to Athos’ right side. “Traitors all! You’d allow a vampire to live and call himself a musketeer?”
Athos pivoted to face the voice, and saw a very young man running toward them. Small and slight, he had the olive skin of Gascony, an expression of rage on his face, and his sword drawn. By instinct, Athos drew his own sword, so that as the man came close enough to strike, he found Athos’ sword already raised in defense.
The vampire’s reflexes were faster, of course, but the boy seemed to have been made of the skin of the devil himself. He countered every one of Athos’ attacks, and attacked again, like fury incarnate. Something in the back of Athos’ mind whispered, you should let him give you quietus. It would end this and not stain your friends with your death.
But his mind raced ahead of the wishful voice. If this boy killed him, he would denounce his friends as Judas goats. They would be branded as such and banned from all lawful contact with humans. Marriage contracts would no longer apply to them. Even simple commerce with humans would be interdict. Their only choice would be to deal with vampires and to serve them. And, if they lied to hide their disgrace from their fellow men, and were found out, they would be killed. Aramis and Porthos would be at the very least dishonored and barred from free society. At the worst, dead.
“Athos,” Aramis said, his voice full of anguish. “He’s just a boy. What are you doing?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Athos asked. “I’m fighting for all our lives. I would allow him to kill me, but I cannot allow him to condemn you as Judas goats. Do you see what you’ve done?”
As he spoke, he saw the expression of alarm and realization in the boy’s eyes. He also saw the boy’s chin jut out in determination. He was, what, a mere youth? From the incipient moustache on his upper lip and the still-childish roundness of his cheeks, he could not be more than nineteen, and Athos would guess closer to sixteen. Full of righteousness and fury. Doubtless, he came to the capital full of innocent eagerness, to fight the evil of vampires. Now he must futilely end his life here, at the hands of Athos, who would truly be much better off dead.
“Halt, in the name of the cardinal,” a voice called out behind Athos.
Athos, his sword raised, in the act of parrying the boy’s sword, glanced quickly over his shoulder. He could feel and smell and sense Porthos and Aramis, already moving into position behind him, between him and the boy and the guards of the cardinal. He could smell the guards too—the heavy musk that spoke of vampire. The smell he could now detect on his own clothes, though he knew the living could not.
The man who had spoken was Jussac, one of the most feared guards of the cardinal. He had his sword drawn and his fangs bared, his speech almost slurping, as if he were trying not to drool. “What have we here? A rogue vampire and a nice juicy pack of conniving abettors. Best surrender, gentlemen. You’ve more chance at living with our side.” Jussac was accompanied by other vampires whom Athos had met in combat and had been good enough fighters to escape with their heads still attached to their shoulders: Bisarac and Cahusac, and two other nameless adversaries.
“Surrender?” Aramis said. “Never.”
“Not while we live,” Porthos said.
“And you?” Jussac said, looking directly at Athos. “You at least must see it’s in your interest to come with us.”
Athos spun around. The boy wasn’t trying to fight him—he had gone utterly still, probably dazed by the presence of so many vampires, which had that effect on the living that hadn’t become immunized by long habit—nor was he the kind to strike by stealth. Glaring, Athos shook his head at Jussac. “I am not one of yours,” he said. “I was not willingly turned.” Something very much like a giggle escaped him. “I don’t hate vampires less for being one.”
Jussac leered at him, displaying his fangs. “Is that so? And you’d fight us? When you’re a fledgling of less than a night, and you have not fed yet?”
Athos, thinking the greatest mercy possible would be for him to die here and not at his friends’ hands, though he felt as though he were teetering on his legs and staying upright by sheer resolve, sneered back, “I would fight you with my last ounce of strength.”
“Oh very well then,” Jussac said, “if that is so. But the stranger, the boy, there . . . The cardinal needs to at least appear to observe the pact, and I don’t think that boy is of legal age to consent. I don’t think he’s of a legal age to be away from his mother’s apron. You, boy—scamper. You’re free to go back where you belong. And stay away from dark alleys in Paris, even during the day. That’s our territory.”
Athos heard the boy draw breath, sharply, as if wounded, and wondered what had brought it about—was it the mention of his mother? Or the idea that he could not walk where he pleased?
And then, breath was drawn again; Athos heard the boy’s heart speed up, and the faint rustle as he lowered his sword arm. Was he going to run? Athos thought at the boy’s age, he would have. As good as the boy was, how could he face these odds? He had survived one vampire, but only a single vampire who was very weak and who, in truth, did not want to kill him. The guards of the cardinal would not have such compunctions.
A hand dropped on his shoulder, hot even through doublet and shirt. “Sir?” the boy’s voice said, hesitantly.
Athos turned around, shaking his shoulder, to flip the hand away. “Yes,” he said. He wished the boy would not touch him, but preferred to endure the temptation of living contact than to show his weakness in front of the monsters.
The boy looked curiously shy, and all the younger because of it. He was gazing down, his slick black hair half-hiding his face. He looked up at Athos, at his word. “Sir, I heard what you said, and if you hate vampires . . . That is . . . It would do me great honor if you would allow me to fight by your side.”
“No,” Athos said. “Save yourself. Do you see how many of them there are? They have been vampires for years, faster and more cunning than any human being I know of. Even were I a true vampire, I wouldn’t be a match for them, I don’t have my strength. My friends and I will likely meet our death here. It’s only two musketeers and a lamed man against five.”
The boy shook his head, his face grave. “No. Two musketeers, a lamed man, and a boy against five,” he said, and allowed a little smile to appear.
“You don’t have to. You’re not a musketeer. Go, go and fight another day.”
The boy threw his head back, and looked up. His face seemed to age years in a moment. “When my parents were turned and chose to stand in the sun and die, rather than feed,” he said gravely, his voice cracking, “I decided I would be a musketeer and fight vampires. I might not be a real musketeer yet, but in my heart, I am. I must fight by your side.”
Athos read the pride and the pain in the boy’s face. He thought of the moment when he himself had made the same decision. He had been twenty. The boy looked much younger. But grief was the same at any age. As was courage. “Very well,” he said. He turned to his other friends and, though it cost him in self-control, clasped their hands, drawing them together in his strong hand. “Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and . . . what is your name, my friend?”
“D’Artagnan.”
“Very well, Athos, Porthos, Aramis, D’Artagnan, All for one—”
His friends answered, “—and one for all.” D’Artagnan smiled, clapping his hand atop theirs.
“How touching,” Jussac said mockingly. “Have you made a decision then? Any chance of a surrender?”
“Oh, we’ve made a decision,” Athos said and grinned, knowing it displayed his fangs. “We’re going to have the pleasure of charging you.”
