The Bloodshade Encounters & The Songspinner (Shadeborn Book 2) (9 page)

The Truth of the Matter

This was exactly the kind of thing Ed and Ugarte were talking about: going off alone into a situation with wild and incalculable risks. And yet Novel enjoyed every step that led him closer to the Abomination’s hideaway, not far from the seedy club. He kept a firm grip on Belnerg’s thick shoulder as the boy led him forward, and Novel could feel the magic in his blood rising, ready for the challenge of the fight. Ugarte and Ed were tasked with getting Dharma to the theatre and protecting her until she was revived, and no amount of arguing with them could have deterred Novel from hunting down Belnerg’s master, no matter how hard they might have tried.

A beast who desired the blood of other magical beings was someone Novel could hardly wait to meet. He could imagine the grandeur and smugness of the Abomination as he walked the dark streets of Piketon. The creature would take a vain pride in being so feared among the petty vampires of this so-called sleepy town. Novel was used to having that particular privilege – his name and his power preceded him everywhere he went – and this tiny town was certainly not big enough for the both of them to reign supreme in it. Novel would meet his match in the Abomination, and he would rise triumphant from the carnage of the aftermath.

“This is it,” Belnerg said suddenly, pointing with a pudgy, gnarled finger.

The site was a derelict barracks, perhaps fallen into disrepair after the Great War. It didn’t form part of a larger area, but simply stood as one lone housing unit for soldiers, and Lemarick supposed it used to contain those who had been kept in reserve in years gone by. It seemed an illogical, rather cowardly place for a superior vampire to hide himself, just one structure in the middle of a dark, empty yard. For a moment Novel heard Ugarte’s imagined voice in his head, warning him that the situation looked like a trap. The shade curled his fists, eager for her to be right.

Dragging Belnerg behind him, Novel marched in the starlight towards the barracks’ doors, drinking in a deep breath of magic from the skies as he went. He let the doors fly open with a wild burst of power, extending one hand as a massive gust of air blew the entryway wide-apart, jagged tendrils of lightning permeating the wind, to light the cavernous space in sporadic flashes. Novel waited for the onslaught to come, for the unseen attackers to leap down from the rafters, for the Abomination himself to challenge the shade to a fight that would end all fights.

But all he found was Baptiste Du Nord.

The hunter was lying on a camp bed in the far left corner of the room. Even before Novel began his approach, he could sense in the air that something was terribly wrong. Baptiste was clothed only in slack brown trousers that looked about three sizes too big for him, until Novel reached his side, where he realised that the hunter himself was three sizes
too small
.

“Monsieur Perkins, is that you?” he croaked, slowly beginning to turn over.

Baptiste Du Nord was skin and bone. He was starved so severely that Novel could count his visible ribs, watching with horror as his hollow stomach convulsed with the strain of turning. His skin, once the hue of caramel, was white as bleached bone, so translucent that his thin, blue veins ran like a river-map over his torso, arms and face. That face that had once been handsome, angry, sharp-toothed and dangerous, now held only helpless eyes and a withered, hollow jaw.

When he laid eyes on Novel, Baptiste tried to smile, but the strain was too much for his weary lips. He raised a hand more bone than flesh, rubbing at his visible collar bones. His skin was so weak that it broke and bled at his touch.

“I already knew you were the death of me, Monsieur Novel,” he whispered, “but I did not think that you would come to see me off in person.”

“Are you…” Novel began, surprised by the quiver in his own voice, “Are you saying that I did this to you?”

“No, no, dear fellow,” Baptiste said with a hacking laugh, “I did it all to myself. You left me to be consumed by Yannick, so when the time came for revenge, I crossed a line that we vampires are never meant to cross.”

“You drank from me.”

Novel’s hand hovered up his neck, touching the familiar ridge of the scars just below his ear.

“Human blood no longer sustains me,” Baptiste continued, his low voice getting weaker by the moment.

“So you drink from those with magic in their veins,” Novel concluded, beginning to nod. “Sirens, werewolves, perhaps even other vampires?”

Baptiste shut his eyes, perhaps for shame’s sake, perhaps in exhaustion.

“Nothing works like the blood of a shade, and it’s been too long since I found one weak enough to drink from. Do your worst, Novel, I beg you. I know my time has come to pay for the chaos I’ve caused you.”

The sight of Baptiste in his vicious prime, his shadehunter knife at Ugarte’s throat, came unbidden into the shade’s memory. Novel clenched his fists, but a moment later he remembered the townhouse in Paris so very long ago, and the body of the human hunter who had once fought the threat of darkness by his side. Baptiste’s once-dead eyes and bleeding throat were a sight that he had never quite forgotten. It was harder still to see Baptiste now, so ruined and so withered, knowing that the hunter’s state was all down to him, and that split-second choice he’d made in the heat of battle. Novel had ruined Baptiste’s life so many times over, and he couldn’t bear to think that this was how it would finally end.

“Baptiste,” Novel began, “Do you have regret for the humans you killed in years gone by?”

The hunter let his dull eyes slowly flicker open once more. His weak mouth was pulled into a thoughtful frown.

“I always did, in the moments that followed their deaths,” he replied, “but in the heat of the fight, when you’re taking their blood to survive, something else takes over. The state of the vampire is more than just physical. The bite does something to your soul.”

Novel felt a mass the size of a cannonball growing in the pit of his stomach, a guilty weight that brought a sudden flash of Ed and Ugarte to his mind. He was glad they weren’t here now, to see what he was about to do. He held out his forearm inches from Baptiste’s lips.

“Drink.”

The fading creature gave a short, pained sigh. “Why would you let me do that?” he asked.

“There are things about the bite that I want to know,” Novel replied, swallowing hard against the dryness of his throat, “and I think you’re the only man who can help me discover them.”

Baptiste broke into a weary smile, shaking his head.

“I fear that I will never understand you, Monsieur,” he whispered.

Novel leaned close, pushing his arm against the hunter’s lips.

“Then drink, and give yourself a little more time at the puzzle.”

The sensation was something like drawing blood with a needle, but the initial sting of the pierce lasted far longer. As his blood drained into Baptiste’s mouth, Novel looked away, repulsed by the sensation and the thought of what he was permitting. He understood the name Abomination all the better now, for everything about letting the blood of shades become Baptiste’s sustenance was more wrong than Novel could stand to accept. Yet there was something freeing in the intense pain that shot through the shade’s body in the few minutes that the feeding took, something that made him feel as though part of a centuries-old debt was finally being repaid.

“Gods preserve us,” Belnerg whispered, his voice trembling.

Novel had quite forgotten about the boy. As Baptiste released Novel’s arm from the vice grip of his long, sharp teeth, the shade turned to see the young servant standing at the door to the barracks, staring out into the night. It seemed that he was frozen to the spot, shaking his head and saying prayer after prayer with his trembling tone. Then, suddenly, he ran clean out of the barracks, his arms waving wildly as he went. Novel heard his voice carry into the darkness outside.

“Please, have mercy!” the boy cried. “It isn’t me! I just work for him! Please!”

Belnerg was even more afraid of what was outside the barracks than he had been of Novel: a very bad sign. The shade was about to approach the barracks’ doors to see what had shaken him up so badly, but a growing light at the edge of the doorway stopped him dead. Torches appeared, held by men who arrived in droves, pouring into the barracks with ferocious expressions and weapons in their clutches. It seemed the whole of Guttersnipes had arrived, armed to their overlong teeth, and ready for destruction.

“Thanks for your help, stranger,” a familiar vampire said at the head of the pack. “We’ve been waiting for someone to lead us in the right direction.”

Novel stood firm over Baptiste where he lay on the camp bed. He held up his palms as if in surrender.

“Gentlemen,” he crooned. “You’ve no need to dispose of this creature. I have the situation in hand.”

The furious mob didn’t look as though they believed him.

“You’re either with us, or against us!” shouted one fellow, holding up a pistol.

Novel set his jaw, covering his bloody forearm with his sleeve.

“So be it,” he replied.

Bloodlust

The mob barely made it an inch nearer to Baptiste before Novel let rip with his powers. At first he detained the ferocious attacks with a solid wall of gravity, but soon the anger rose within the shade’s veins and he felt compelled to teach the brood a lesson or two. He dropped each one of them to the floor with a slam of his fist in the air, and they fell in unison, as though lead weights had been fastened to their spines, struggling against a force that they could neither touch nor see. Novel felt his feet rising a little from the floor of the simple barracks as scores of men lay on the ground before him, trembling and crying out their apologies for allying themselves against him only a moment ago.

The shade found that he tired quickly of their pleas. Gravity held them at the neck, closing their throats enough to make them struggle and splutter. A wave of fire curled from Novel’s hands and looped around his back, spreading out to encircle the mob and tickling at their bodies with agonising proximity. When flashes of anger took hold of Novel, flashes of lightning matched his mood by shooting forwards and shocking straight through the mass, setting off a chain reaction of strained groans of pain. The men were captive to any destructive force, choking and writhing on the ground like the mewling beasts that they truly were.

Novel could have killed them all without even concentrating on it. He could have snapped their necks in unison, a deafening crack that would rid the world of a roomful of scum and warn others that there was a new power in Piketon now. Novel wanted very much to send that message. He raised his hands slowly, ready to bring about the ultimate cautionary tale.

An arm slid round his middle, rising up to take hold of his chest. He could feel Baptiste’s ragged weight behind him as he held his victims in limbo, trying to shake off the weak hunter. Even as he struggled, Novel realised that Baptiste’s arm was still thin, but no longer its pale, deathly colour. The hunter’s strength was on the rise. And now he was reaching for Novel’s throat, his face coming level with the same spot where he had bitten the shade in Paris long ago.

Novel wondered how he could have been so foolish as he felt the hunter’s breath on his neck. He ought to have known that Baptiste Du Nord would always be his enemy, and he ought to have left him to the mob, or let him wither away from starvation as the hunter himself had requested. Now he had made him strong again, renewed his life out of misplaced guilt, so that Baptiste could deliver that deadly bite he’d never finished at the Populaire. Novel waited for the bite in the seconds of regret that followed.

But it never came.

“Listen to me,” Baptiste whispered, his palm flat over Novel’s heart. “This bloodlust isn’t yours. The need for destruction that you feel right now, you’ll come to regret it. Take that from someone who knows.”

Novel listened, the hunter’s words carrying over the sounds of the choking sufferers who still lay captive in the fire circle on the barracks’ floor.

“Look what you’re doing to these men,” Baptiste reasoned. “So many lives about to end, yet you saved mine. Show them that mercy.”

The shade’s heartbeat began to slow. Anger receded from his veins, and the men on the ground stopped choking. The fire faded away and soon Novel’s hands came to rest by his side, the pull of gravity abating from his fingertips. The mob got to their feet in a scrambled haze, racing to trample one another and to get out of the barracks as soon as possible. Few dared to take a backward glance at the ferocious man who had just set them free.

Baptiste collapsed back onto the bed, letting go of Novel and clutching his own chest to recover his strength. Novel was shocked by the transformation in his face, now young and handsome once more. Colour radiated from the once-translucent body, his stomach and chest muscles were returning before the shade’s very eyes. Novel’s blood had restored Baptiste to a weak but visible health. The hunter’s eyes glowed once more with life.

“No more battles Monsieur,” Baptiste began. “You must settle down somewhere and learn to control the instincts that my bite has given you.”

“I know just the place,” Novel replied.

Auditions

“I have never known a producer who conducts auditions so late at night,” Dharma whined as Novel opened the double-doors of the Theatre Imaginique to let her in.

“You’ll find there are many unusual things about this place,” Novel answered thoughtfully.

The central foyer was in a state of transformation: a new crimson carpet half-laid, a chandelier in pieces waiting to be assembled and hung, new electric lights glowing in the glass fixtures on the corridor walls. Novel led Dharma through into the main auditorium, where the sultry siren nodded in approval at the newly-painted interior and the polished, shining wood of the theatre seats. Her eyes travelled to the stage itself, where a strong young man lay flat on a high scaffold, with a paintbrush in his hand.

“Come away from there Monsieur,” Novel called up to the fellow. “We must make space for Miss Dharma Khan to perform her audition.”

The man held onto the scaffold’s edge and hung himself over it, dropping several feet to the stage without so much as a cry of pain at the impact of hitting it. He set down his paintbrush and put on a fine velvet jacket that had been hanging over a beam, preening his slim beard for a moment with a finger and thumb before he alighted from the platform. He reached Dharma with a warm, outstretched hand, his voice rich and welcoming.

“I am enchanted, Mademoiselle Khan,” he said.

Novel put a hand on his shoulder and nodded.

“This is my Master of Ceremonies, Baptiste Du Nord,” he explained.

Dharma made an approving shape with her lips that was somewhere between a gasp and a grin. She took Baptiste’s hand and curtsied a fraction. When they made contact, she let a dark brow rise on her exotic face.

“Not human, I think?” she suggested.

“Indeed not,” Baptiste replied.

“We do have a human though,” Novel interjected, giving Baptiste a wary look. “Belnerg. He’s a foul little thing, but he does all right for a dogsbody. He’s arranging accommodations upstairs for the troupe.”

“Accommodations?” Dharma repeated. “Are you offering residence to your performers, Monsieur?”

“A select few,” Novel answered, “though I can’t guarantee the building is entirely secure.”

Dharma flashed a catlike grin.

“I can,” she replied.

As Novel and Baptiste watched, Dharma glided to the stage and hoisted herself so that she was sitting on its stairs. She crossed her stocking-covered legs and titled her head back to admire the grandeur of the Imaginique once more.

“I’m a great persuader of people, Monsieur Novel,” Dharma continued, “and I have been talking to many residents of Piketon in the short weeks since you saved my life. I can promise you that no human will intrude on this place without your consent.”

“I’m grateful to hear it,” Novel answered, remembering the deal he had made with her in the club’s back room, “but what of the vampires underground?”

“Are you joking with me?” Dharma said with a giggle. “The vampires of Piketon are long gone. There are few supernaturals left in the town since you moved in. You are a vicious man, Monsieur. The name of Novel strikes fear into the hearts of everyone that hears it.”

Dharma rose to stretch and prepare for her dance, leaving Novel to recede and take a seat in the front row. Baptiste sat down beside him, both men identical in their expressions of concern. The hunter put a hand on Novel’s forearm, but instantly pulled it back as the shade hissed with the recent sting of another feeding.

“Did you hear what she said?” Novel muttered. “They think me a monster.”

“At least it will keep you safe from violence,” Baptiste reasoned, “until you can learn to control the darkness that the bite brings.”

Novel let his fingertips ghost over his sleeve, thinking about the feel of the hunter’s teeth in his skin. He shivered suddenly, overcome with a terrible fear.

“Will it worsen in time, do you think?” he asked.

“It’s bound to,” Baptiste answered, “if our arrangement stays the same.”

The arrangement, as the hunter put it, was simple on the surface. Novel would keep Baptiste alive on the condition that he never fed on any other shade. Baptiste, in return, had agreed to do everything he could to help Novel contain the growing desire for carnage that plagued his soul.

“Hey, Monsieur!” Dharma called from the stage, hands on her hips.

Novel waved a hand at her impatiently, his thoughts in a scramble.

“Whenever you’re ready, Miss Khan.”

“But where is the music?” Dharma scoffed.

“Forgive me,” Novel replied.

He made a sweeping gesture with his hands. A sudden eruption of music from the orchestra pit shocked Dharma and Baptiste. The hunter rose from his seat and peered down into the pit, marvelling at the instruments that had begun to play themselves in a startling rendition of Carmen’s Toreador Song. He looked back to Novel with a curious grin.

“An opening night gift, from my friends,” Novel explained.

The music quelled his worries, as it had time and again over the years. Dharma began to dance, but Novel didn’t have to watch her to know that he would let her join his troupe. Instead, he focused on those early memories he had of the theatre, the thrill of his first opera and the delight he took in pacing out the steps of a new dance. He could feel the darkness pulsing in his veins, the pleasure he’d taken in the destruction of the Populaire was always hanging just behind his enjoyment of the music. The hunger he had for violence would never truly disappear.

Two visions came to his mind to silence those thoughts, as he had started training himself to think. One sight was the human corpse of the man who now sat beside him, stamping and clapping along to Dharma’s dance. The other was Baptiste’s withered form from less than a month ago, the rotting shape he’d taken before Novel’s mercy brought him back to life.

“I’m here to help you,” Baptiste said suddenly. Novel realised he had been staring into space for quite some time during the audition. “For as long as you’ll keep me alive.”

The shade looked into the eyes of the hunter, wondering exactly how long that offer of help would last.