Wicked After Midnight

32

My best friend weighed almost nothing. Her breathing was shallow, her heart beating fast, as I placed her back on the bed. When I went hunting for vials to fortify her for the catacombs, I was horrified to find the opposite of what I was looking for: Cherie’s blud in tiny, ornate vials, marked for shipment to a Darkside winery. She couldn’t drink them, and I couldn’t find any human blood to sustain her, and all the gentlemen outside were cold. I tried to soak up puddles of blood with a handkerchief, but when I put it to her lips, she took one suck and turned away.

“Oil and magic,” she muttered, dashing it to the ground. “Floor wax and poison.”

The only answer was to hurry back to Paradis as quickly as possible and pour as many vintage vials down her throat as she could handle. But first, I had to see the Malediction Club ended forever.

Heading out, the daimons looked like survivors of a war. The gore-stained dancing girls of Paradis supported the half-broken, barely alive girls from the cages, hobbling past the bodies of their captors and hurrying into the catacombs. One girl was so far gone that Bea and Mel had to carry her strung between them. There was a lot of strange machinery hidden in the laboratory, and some of it looked liable to explode once we started a fire. But the paintings had to burn, and with them, the men who had brought women deep underground to use them against their will, raping their bodies and minds. It was dirty work, dragging heavy corpses into the laboratory. I found one still barely breathing, but he was gone by the time I presented him to Cherie where she sat on the narrow cot like a queen, commanding us in the proper stacking of tuxedoed lords. She managed a few token sips before drawing back with a shudder and wiping at empty spots that had once held fangs.

“Cold. And he stinks of piss.”

I smothered a giggle. Cherie’s prissiness and disdain were back, but I’d never heard her utter a single curse word. Perhaps they hadn’t destroyed her spirit after all.

The dragged bodies left slug trails of blood from the grand, soaring ballroom to the smaller laboratory. When Vale began pulling down the paintings and piling them on top of the men, I wordlessly went to work with him, knocking them down with a broom when they were too high up. Men and art were soon piled too high to reach the top, and my shoulders ached by the time we were done.

“Is there anything else here we need?” Vale asked Cherie.

She shook her head primly. “Everything should burn.”

I reached for her hands, careful of the places where her talons had broken off. “If Lenoir used the same magic on you and the girls here that he used on me, you should all go back to normal once the paintings have been destroyed.”

Cherie’s beautiful eyes went faraway and hard. “We will never be normal again.”

Vale picked her up like a child and carried her to the door. I went to a sconce bolted to the wall and used the flame within to light one of Lenoir’s expensive brushes. The oil-soaked bristles went up so quickly that I singed my fingers, and I tossed it onto the pile of paintings with a grim smile. Brush after brush, I stuck the soft hair into the fire and held them to tuxedos, to frames, to raw canvas, to the prince’s curly-toed boots. The flames crackled and caught and spread until sweat soaked my chemise and I choked on oily smoke.

I had saved Cherie’s painting for last, and I selected a long-handled brush to paint it with flame. The portrait was nearly complete, and the surface flared into a blaze of blue, the corners curling as it burned. I had just thrown the brush on top of the pyre and turned to run when someone burst through the door: Bea, with Mel right behind her.

“Bea, love, no! This place is going up quick. We must run.” Mel tugged at Bea’s arm, unintentionally tearing her shirt to reveal blue skin splattered with blood. But Bea shook her head and stumbled past me, past the pyre of paintings and into a corner of cabinets that I’d ignored, assuming it was just a collection of paints and turps or possibly horrible instruments that I certainly didn’t want to see up close, much less touch.

The smoke was thick and getting thicker, and Bea’s mostly silent cough was one of the saddest sounds I’d ever heard. Ignoring us, ignoring the flames, ignoring every shouted warning, she ripped open the cabinet and began knocking its contents to the ground. The first jar that broke carried the stink of Monsieur Charmant and his magic, and the brief snatches I could see through the smoke showed me the same sort of dark ingredients and talismans I had seen in the daimon’s Darkside shop. Soon I couldn’t see what was happening, could only hear the crashes and clanks of Bea’s bizarre desperation.

“Seriously, Bea. This place is about to explode. We have to go!” I shouted. Mel tried to run around me and make a break for Bea, but I caught her around the waist and put my mouth to her ear. “She can’t last much longer in this smoke, and you can’t go over there. It’s too dangerous.”

“I have to get her!” Mel’s voice was part cough, part sob, part scream as she thrashed in my arms.

“No, you don’t.”

The voice was husky and rich and utterly unfamiliar. Every hair on my body rose as Bea fought through the smoke and into Mel’s embrace.

“I am here, my Melissande,” she said, and for the first time, we heard her sob with joy.

Mel danced her around in an ecstatic hug, and I couldn’t resist putting a hand on Bea’s back, hoping she could feel the insane amounts of comfort and happiness I was experiencing, knowing that she had found and reclaimed her voice.

Something exploded in the corner where Bea had been tossing the cabinet, and I caught them both by their sleeves, pulling them toward the door.

Bea grinned at us. “Let’s go,” she said, and I knew I would never get tired of that beautiful, magical voice of hers.

In a confused jumble of hugs and coughs, we dragged one another out the door. I slammed it behind me, twisting the submarine-like wheel to lock it. Vale waited by the curtain, Cherie’s slender arms around his neck and her face held away from his skin as if he smelled like wet dog.

“Is it done?” he asked.

“Completely,” Bea said, and Vale’s face lit up.

Taking Mel’s hand, Bea darted through the curtains and into the catacombs. The amount of joy in the last five minutes had put wings on the girl’s feet, and I couldn’t wait to hear her sing. But I had to get topside, first.

I rubbed my eyes with soot-stained fists and stumbled toward Vale and Cherie. Neither of them would leave without me, of course. A muffled boom made the floor shake, and I hurried past and held open the curtains.

“We’d better get out of here before the catacombs start to collapse.”

Vale sucked air through his teeth. “Oh, merde. I did not think about that part. Can you make it back on your own feet, and fast?”

“I can do anything.”

“I believe it, bébé. I believe it.”

The daimons had left us two lamps, and I took them both and led the way up the slick stone steps. It was warmer in the catacombs, and the dry rasp of rock and bone under my boots was reassuring and familiar. I followed the red string, foot after foot, sometimes putting a raw palm against the wall to steady myself from falling into the sewage. Behind me, Vale shuffled sideways, careful not to hurt Cherie. After the third time her slipper struck the wall, she grunted.

“Oh, this is ridiculous. Carry me on your back.”

I held the lamp up to her face, and she looked ten times better than she had, her eyes bright and her lips pursed in annoyance. I couldn’t help smiling. “How do you feel?”

“Utterly wretched in the best possible way. And thirsty. Now, get that light out of my face and move me around so I don’t break a foot on this hideous wall.”

With his usual grace and good humor, Vale managed to maneuver Cherie onto his back, her ragged slippers wrapped around his waist. After that, we went faster. It was a nightmare, stumbling past piles of fallen bones and tripping over loose rocks. But I could smell Cherie behind me, hear her familiar little sighs of irritation, and the relief thrummed through me with every heartbeat. Burning her painting had killed the magic. She didn’t have fangs, but she was still my Cherie.

A few moments later, the tunnel around us shook with a heavy boom, and Vale hurried to shield me under his arm. We had to close our eyes as dust rained down from the stone ceiling, but the passage held.

“There goes the Malediction Club,” Vale said.

“Not if Charmant is still alive,” Cherie added, and a ripple of unease chilled my spine and set my exhausted feet to a faster trot.

The way back felt longer than the trip out, and even after gorging on my opponents, I’d never been so tired. “Shouldn’t we be there already?” I asked.

Vale faltered behind me, and I turned to stare at him. The left side of his face was bruised, and he was limping, and blood trickled from a gash on his neck, which was probably why Cherie was careful to lean away from him.

“I was waiting to make sure, but I’m sorry, bébé. I think we’re lost.”

“How can we be lost? We’re following the yarn.”

I leaned down to pick up the red string. I gave it a tug, but instead of pulling taut as it should have, it slithered down the rocks toward me. Far away, a howl echoed out of the tunnels, jolting me awake and setting my fangs on edge.

“Oh—”

“Merde, bébé.”

Vale spun, his back to me. Cherie’s back pressed against my corset, and a rush of familiarity settled through me before I realized what Vale was doing: anticipating an attack.

“Do you think—” I started.

“Shh.”

It rankled, but I shut up. Everything beyond our lantern was dark, which made the eerie howls seem as if they came from every side. I threw out my senses, trying to detect how far away the bludhounds were—because they had to be more of Charmant’s demon dogs, cut loose to run free in the catacombs. The half-dead daimon girls would be such easy pickings; we had to get to them soon and do what we could to protect them.

Up ahead, something moved, just a subtle rustle and a rock loosened from a pile. I breathed in deeply, seeking past the scents of stone and sewage and age-old bones and seeping, oily metal smoke to something alive. And there it was, up ahead where the red string slithered into the darkness, a rank scent that I knew well.

Charmant.

“You two stay here,” I whispered.

“No, bébé. Let me.”

“I’m harder to kill, and if I get hurt, you’re the only one with a hope of getting us out alive. So please, shove down your bad-boy brigand thing and let me do what I do best.”

“Oh, Demi. Always so dramatic.” Cherie sighed. “Just—”

A scream echoed down the tunnel, along with heavy splashing and a victorious bark, and Vale’s head whipped around to stare into the darkness.

“That’s Mel,” he said gently.

I sighed and put a hand on his cheek. “Then go help her. I’ve got this. Come find me, once you’ve saved her like a big damn hero.”

I reached up on tiptoe to kiss Vale’s lips, hoping I wasn’t giving him one last taste of me tinged with the stink of Auguste’s daimon blud. “Je t’aime,” I murmured, so low that he might not have heard.

“Je t’aime aussi.” He touched his forehead to mine, kissed me again, and took off with one of the lanterns.

With him and Cherie safely away, I left my lantern on the floor and ran into the darkness like a bat out of hell heading right back in. My eyes adjusted, my fingers curled, and my mouth opened to taste the scent of my prey. I locked onto the daimon where he crouched, waiting in the shadows of a niche up ahead. With a silent snarl, I sped up and launched myself into the crypt.

Even though he had to be expecting it, he gasped as I drove him into the wall. The force dislodged some heavy stones, and skulls and bones fell around us, smashing against the floor and raining against my back. Part of the crypt collapsed behind me, the air going suddenly thick. Luckily, I’d landed against Charmant’s chest, which meant his venomous tail was trapped beneath him, or at least somehow hindered from piercing me. As I plunged my teeth into the first skin I found, I felt something hot and hard punch into my back. Two gulps of sour blood in, I realized it was a knife.