Page 32 of The Doctor and the Devil
“We promise nothing bad will happen to you,” Daphne insisted. “And nothing bad will happen to us, either.”
“Absolutely,” Charlotte agreed. Then, throwing a mischievous grin over her shoulder, she added, “But if anything does, rest assured Daphne and I will disembowel the lot of them and feast on their entrails.”
“Hush, my love—I’m already hungry,” Antoine growled. “Be safe.”
“We will,” Charlotte replied. She fixed Antoine with an intense stare. “Protect her, darling. At all costs.”
He nodded firmly, eyes fierce.
With that, they left, trudging through the mud from the late-April rain. I watched as they wound their way through the long-forgotten graves until they reached a mausoleum at the back of the cemetery. Daphne pulled on the heavy door, and I saw flickering golden candlelight spill across the ground for an instant as they entered the Order’s secret entrance. Darkness quickly followed as they disappeared into the tomb and closed the door behind them.
“I hope they will be well,” I whispered.
“Don’t worry, Doctor,” Antoine said, his deep voice vibrating throughout the carriage interior. “Charlotte is my maker. I’ll be able to sense if she’s in trouble. Besides, the Order has no reason to suspect they know about your attempted kidnapping.”
“Antoine is right,mon amie.I would wager the Order will imply that you were abducted by Rafael and use that to try and forceles DDto increase their efforts in hunting him. Without the tortured testimony of Pascal, there’s nothing that would connect those two men to the Order,” Étienne added.
“At this point, do you believe they would listen to reason?” I asked. “Perhaps it would be in everyone’s best interest if Rafael and I were to come before them and explain the situation.”
Antoine scoffed and Étienne tutted gently.
“No, Doctor. I don’t know that truth has much to do with anything at this point. Trust me as one who has been hunted—and nearly murdered—by the Order before. When this man, Derais, started spouting his poison about vampires being the spawn of Hell and threatening the law and order of France, the wealthy, fearful fools heeded his words. We all see the tension building between the classes. If the aristocrats have an enemy to turn their ire against, they’ll do so to gain support and keep the out-of-balance status quo. When it comes to these men, I’m afraid to say if their minds are determined by fear, and I believe they are, their course has already been set,” Étienne replied.
I knew he was right, but I was still disappointed by the truth of his words. I tried to distract myself from the chaos of my mind, but my thoughts continued to return to Rafael, the Order, and the past twenty years. I chewed at my bottom lip. I needed to focus on a problem. Whenever I became sad or distracted at home, I typically turned to my work.
“Antoine,” I said suddenly, shattering the silence that had descended inside the carriage. “What did you mean about your connection to your maker?”
“Just that,” he replied. “Despite my love for Charlotte, this connection between us only grew after she turned me. No matter where she is, I can sense strong emotions from her. Anger, frustration, fear, joy. I feel it almost as if it were my own.”
“And you, Étienne? Do you share the same connection with Daphne?” I wondered.
“Not nearly as strong, but yes. I believe most vampires feel such a tie to those who drink of their blood. A way to keep track of one’s blood offspring, I suppose.”
I heard the rustle of fabric in the darkness and suspected he’d shrugged.
“How interesting,” I said absently. My mind immediately returned to Rafael, and I wondered what it would be like to feel so connected to him. What it would have been like for him to sense my emotions for the past twenty years—all the loneliness, hurt, emptiness, fear, frustration, and tender joys I’d collected in my life. He might have sensed them from his hidden world, perhaps while he slept and dreamed during the day. Would it have made a difference? Would he have come for me? Part of me was seized with a powerful melancholy, despondent at the thought that he’d been so close and still hadn’t sent word of his presence or motives, and the other part of me felt a pervasive sadness that he, too, had been alone in that time, unable to reach out.
“I can practically hear your mind racing, Doctor,” Antoine said. “What do you wish to know?”
“How long does such a connection last, I wonder? Does it lessen or intensify over time?”
“We were only recently turned,” he answered. “But I don’t feel much of a change in it now than I did before. I am getting better at managing the entirety of another person’s emotions, but I suppose I feel them the same way.”
“The same for me,” Étienne said.
“Forgive me for my bluntness, but how many people have you turned?” I asked the vampire.
“Only Daphne,” he replied. “Before her, I couldn’t fathom spending eternity with another person. In a momentary lapse of judgment brought on by the loneliness of my early vampire days, I offered to turn my half-sisters—they were wee things when I was a new vampire and now they are grown and have children of their own—but they refused.”
“Your Rafael,” Antoine inquired, shifting to better face me. “Has he turned many?”
Shame, guilt, and anxiety rose in my chest. How much could I tell these men? Certainly, I trusted them, but how could they understand my complicated history with the man everyone believed would be the downfall of humanity?
“Truthfully, I do not know,” I answered honestly. “But when we—Papa and I—were at their home, it was forbidden for them to turn anyone outside of their family. Only the partners who married into the family would be turned. It was their great penance, they told us, to live for eternity with this curse and to remain isolated from the world and the people they wanted and needed.”
“Honor can only take you so far,” Étienne said. “The preceding generations must have been driven mad with such cruel fates.”
“As I understand it, many were,” I said.
