Page 49 of Besieger
“Yes,” Elay nodded eagerly and took another step. His eyes fell back on Emerick and this time he marvelled at how the velvet of the breeches melted like a second skin over the legs. How desperately he wanted to get near and touch, to run his hand overthe fabric. “My sister, I understand, is in Paris. But it is my maker I seek. Perhaps… perhaps he is here, in your beautiful home?”
“How did you find this place?” TheMarquisinquired, his shoulders tense.
Uncomfortable clothes or not, Emerick was suddenly glad to be standing up, half-screened by Silvio’s chair. If he wanted to, he could lunge forward and have his hands around the man’s neck in seconds; crush his fingers into the skull and hear the bone crack and ooze out fluid.
“A vampire,” Elay answered, oblivious to his host’s intent.
Without being prompted, he told them how he had seen the tower in another vampire’s mind as he walked the streets of Paris. The immortal’s imagination was aflame with the very scandal—the delicious betrayal of one’s blood-kin. They did not wish to join Silvio’s household but they had journeyed into the countryside in search of this mansion, this new vampire coven. And as for Dulior, she took out her frustrations on mortals. When she was not leaving corpses behind, she was seen amidst the crowds at trials, marvelling at the horrid efficiency of the guillotine. She had been present at so many executions that she had become a necessary part of the spectacle. Some swore the blade would not fall until the executioner spotted her in the crowd. In a manner, the executions were done as a tribute to her, this lady dressed in her finest, lips splattered with red, hair like hell-fire. She was so easy to pick out, his sister.
“They have made her into a folk-tale. They say that if you saw theDame Vermilion, you are meant to die. She does not kill you herself, but you die for her,” Elay chuckled, finding this romantic.
“Your maker,” Silvio had no patience for tales, let alone those involving Dulior. He gestured for the man to come and take a seat. “You said you were looking for your maker.”
Startled by the interruption and the look on Silvio’s face, Elay sat down. He moved—a little too fast and too rigid for the way humans carried themselves. His gestures and facial expressionswere unnatural, somewhere between the comic and the grotesque. Like a puppet. Or someone who had spent too much time in solitude and had forgotten how their voice sounded with no one to talk to.
He picked up a crystal glass from the tray the servants had brought in earlier and examined it between his fingers in the light before he poured himself wine out of the carafe, without his hosts’ leave.
“Sweet,” he uttered to himself after taking a whiff of the liquid, a sad little smile touching his lips. He started to lift the glass to his lips, until he remembered, belatedly, that he could not stomach the wine.
Emerick and Silvio had tried pretending to eat and drink, approving bills of fare with the head cook and ordering supplies for the larder. They quickly grew tired of it, of the waste and mimicry. There was no point in trying to pass as humans in this household, and Emerick had exhausted himself with writing and rewriting a maid’s memory or scrubbing an entire afternoon from the mind of the stable-master—he still regretted having done that, the damage to the man’s mind was irreversible. By taking a small memory away, Emerick had opened a gap; erosion took root in the brain, all the mortal’s memories on the verge of erasing themselves overnight, the grip on reality lost.
No, it was easier to be vampires than vampires pretending to be humans. Let the servants see their masters for what they were and decide for themselves if they wished to serve in the house of the devil.
“His name is Rorgon.” Elay’s mind was blooming with images of his master—a tall, imposing man with ashen hair and eyes the colour of gold. “I must confess, he disappeared the very night he made me. Centuries ago. I thought he might be with my sister. He did come to me from her house. The di Flaviari estate—the count there was good to my father… a kind man. My sister must have loved him dearly. She still keeps his name. But Rorgon…” the name sounded strange on his tongue, as if it hurt. “I was told you cannot read or hear the mind of the vampire who made you. And the master cannot hear his fledgling. Hence my failure in finding him. But you have this coven, this haven for those like us. Has my master come through here? Or have others mentioned him?”
The name did not ring a bell. Neither did the face which kept flashing in Elay’s mind. The longer Emerick studied the spectre in the vampire’s memories, the more he understood the infatuation. Those golden eyes did captivate, and the echo of the voice—Mon ami…—a memory of Rorgon by the door on his way out.You would make an excellent groom, mon ami. How Elay wanted him, the need burned and itched. Like the itching patches of skin around his throat where Rorgon’s teeth had left their mark as a pledge. The ring on Elay’s little finger had been a gift, the only physical thing left of his maker.
“We have not met your master. This is the first we have ever heard of him.” Silvio sounded unimpressed. He turned in his chair and looked up at Emerick, who shrugged in echo of the words.
“Did Dulior not talk about him?”
“No.”
The hurt that crossed Elay’s face was astonishing, almost pitiful. He placed the glass on the table, and stared at it for a moment longer, chewing his lower lip. Slowly his eyes moved, scrutinising the room, the painted glass windows, the beautiful wallpaper and potted plants. He licked his lips; his tongue peeping between the fangs.
“What is she like, my sister?”
“She was wedded to her delusions—enamoured of them.”
The finality in Silvio’s words would have made anyone abandon the conversation, but not Elay. He appeared impervious to theMarquis’hostility and to how much the topic displeased him.
“My master is like that. He is a difficult man to love. He has his vices. His ambitions.”
There it was again, the ghost of a memory, snaking through Elay’s mind. It was so loud Emerick had to push himself out of the man’s head and block it.
What would this broken fledgling do if he knew how the only man his sister ever cared about was the man sitting before him now? How she had dug her nails into him and demanded fealty, to the point of obsession. They said madness ran in the blood, and Rorgon’s lineage appeared rife with mania. From Dulior, who was set on possessing Silvio, to this orphan sitting at their table.
“She is not aware of your existence, is she?” Emerick asked and his hand gripped the back of Silvio’s chair, leaning in a little.
Elay looked up at him, his face motionless, his thoughts suddenly still. He was silent for a moment, the realisation hit him as it had Emerick. Dulior did not know she had a brother, nor would she care to have one. TheDame Vermilionwas not going to grace him with her presence, no matter her bloodlust. Elay and his maker were of no worth to her.
“No…” Elay muttered and shook his head.
“You are welcome to stay,” Silvio said, satisfied by the answer. Suddenly, Elay’s presence was tolerable. “If your master is out there and wishes to visit my coven, you may wait for him here.”
TheMarquisrose from his chair, thus signalling the end of the audience. He reached forward, picked up the wine glass, and poured its untouched contents back into the carafe.
One of the maids was feeding a stray cat, a striped tabby that kept finding its way inside the house and up the stairs. Sometimes Emerick heard a sorrowful yowl, the little creature stuck somewhere, impossible to find. He would watch the maid,Margot, searching room after room with a small saucer of pâté in her hand. He tried to help find the thing, attuning his senses to the sound of the tiniest of heartbeats, but soon gave up. As long as the cat did not cause trouble, it could stay. The tower was meant to harbour strays, and a cat was better company than the vampires who sent them letters. Recently, members of the Berlin Council had expressed interest in visiting.
