Page 28 of The Doctor and the Devil
I couldn’t help but laugh, the relief feeling like sunlight after a storm. I should have known that she would stand by my side.
“I feel the same way,” I said with a watery smile. “But it doesn’t matter now, because I rebuffed his advances and yelled at him for making me believe the worst over the last twenty years.”
“Rightly so,” Charlotte chirped. “What did he expect after so long with no word? That you’d simply open your legs and let him in?”
“You mean,open my arms?”
“Oh no, darling,” she said. “I definitely meantlegs.”
I felt my face turn as red as a beetroot.
“What happened then?” she prompted.
“Well, he went cold on me. I fear I’ve really hurt him,” I answered.
“Good.He can have a taste of his own medicine,” she sniffed. “Was that the end of your time together?”
I sighed. “He asked me to help him find Laszlo and to continue looking for a cure for the plague. He seemed concerned that the Order is now after him so aggressively that it puts me in danger.”
“Yes, thatisa problem,” Charlotte replied, her brows knitting in the familiar way that meant she was working out a particularly difficult challenge. Then, noting the anxious look on my face, she patted my knee.
“Don’t worry, Mina. We’re not going to let anything happen to you. Wemightlet something happen to Rafael for this mess, but it wouldn’t be death or anything so permanent—just possible maiming.”
I chuckled. “He is powerful, Charlotte, but maiming would be as permanent for him as it would be for any vampire or human.”
“Would it? Pity. And I suppose if you two reconciled, you’d want the use of all his appendages,” she nodded. “Well, thank you for telling me all of this, Mina. I know it wasn’t easy. But please believe me when I say that you won’t have to bear these burdens alone anymore. When Daphne arrives this evening, we’ll figure out a solution and damnanyonewho gets in our way.”
10
RAFAEL
April 21, 1768
Dunkirk
I waitedin the gloomy corner ofLa Sirène, drumming my fingers in annoyance on the filthy wooden table. In the twenty years between my failed elopement with Mina and now, I’d courted patience and had worked to curb the brash appetites that earned me the nickname “Devil” in my younger days, but in the last few weeks, I found patience eluding me once again.
I had all the time in the world, but these people and the events happening around me did not. Time had become one more enemy for me to plot against.
I was here because of a rumor and a begrudging lead—compelled through force from my last feed. The drunk fool had been harassing a blood whore down by the docks, and I was happy to remove him from her presence. Under the force of my will, he told me to come here and wait for the ancient captain of a Hell-borne nightmare ship, theBlood Bane.According to a few sailors and soldiers, rumor had it the ship was crewed entirely by vampires—a fanciful notion, considering none of them could be on deck during the day, but I wasn’t here to test the veracity of their legends. As the tales went, in their lifetimes, they’d been corsairs for King Louis XIV in his distaste for the English and the Dutch but had turned pirate after the disappointing Treaty of Utrecht. When the blood plague arrived in France in 1748, those remaining leapt at the chance to pillage with near invincibility for the rest of their days. The hard, grizzled crew reconvened under the brutal captain, Lucien the Bloodless—so called because of his cold demeanor, supernatural condition, voracious appetite, and unwillingness to waste a drop of the life-giving liquid. They say he never allowed any of his captives to live.
One wonders how the tales were told.
So instead of lurking around my home and gathering up the shattered remains of my absent heart left in Mina’s wake, I went back to work and played out one of my recent leads in the hopes that it would bring me to Laszlo. If it was true that Lucien was the first turned here twenty years ago, I had a lot of questions for him regarding his maker.
The tavern was cold, damp, and sparsely populated, mostly with men whose true loyalty was to the drink and none other. The very atmosphere of the place felt like purgatory—one had the sense of being enshrined in the fog of stillness and despair. It was nearly midnight when the bell above the door jingled—not a welcoming sound, but simply the herald of something else foreboding. The man who entered could have been a beggar by the looks of him, but I knew he was the one I’d come for.
Long, gray hair clung to his scalp and fell in greasy braids down his back. His pale beard matched, except for the rust-colored mustache that could have been the filth of old blood. His stained, tattered clothes looked more grime than fabric. His keen and all-seeing eyes, however, were the lightest shade of blue, so bright they almost looked white. It was somewhat unnerving being pinned by his icy gaze, and I wondered if that was the main reason for his nickname.
It was not a surprise to me when he came to my table instead of approaching the bar.
“I heard you were looking for me,” he said in a rough voice that sounded like low waves on a gravel beach.
“Captain,” I greeted, smiling enough to show him my dual sets of fangs. “I’m honored to make your acquaintance. Won’t you join me for a drink?”
The lines on the old man’s face spoke of a hard and dangerous life, but his expression betrayed nothing as he sat across from me. I gestured for the barkeep to bring us a round of whatever they served around these parts.
“You aren’t the first to come for me,” he said, shrewd eyes assessing me. “But I expect you might be the only one who lives through the experience.Might.”
