Stakes & Stilettos - Michelle Rowen [18]
And even though I wondered who he was, what he wanted, and where he came from, I forced myself to forget all about the Red Devil.
Or, at least, I tried damned hard to.
Interlude
Paris, France, A.D. 1547
Thierry, I’d like you to meet Marcellus.”
He came to Veronique’s side and raised his eyes to meet those of the man he’d heard about for two hundred years. The man his wife had never stopped caring for, even though he had left her to fend for herself during the darkest days of the Black Death plague.
It was very difficult to be married to someone who was hopelessly in love with another.
Difficult, but not impossible.
Thierry nodded at the vampire and forced a semblance of a smile to appear on his face. His collar felt stiff at his throat, as if he was being choked by it. Veronique constantly accused him of being unfriendly to others they met in their travels through Europe, of being a miserable man filled with a festering darkness.
He had to admit, the woman was an excellent judge of character—except when it came to Marcellus, that is.
Marcellus was a handsome man. Tall and imposing, with fair hair and skin, but with a charming smile—the ease of which Thierry admired—and an obvious taste for fashion. His clothing was perfectly tailored and expensive enough that the cost of it could have fed Thierry’s entire family for years.
His family. They’d all died during the plague. Four sisters, two brothers, and his mother. Gone. His father had died years earlier, and as the eldest by five years, Thierry had taken on a parental role with his siblings. Yet, only he had survived.
Survived, he thought with bitterness. Yes. After two hundred years of life, survival was all that mattered anymore.
Veronique, he had to admit, was a beautiful woman. Hair as dark as night that she wore in the latest styles. She dressed in the latest fashions. Her wrists and neck and ears dripped with jewels—all of which Veronique had acquired for herself. Thierry didn’t know how she had paid for such luxuries, but there was always money to spend. He had long since stopped questioning their resources.
Marcellus had invited them to a performance of the commedia dell’arte and then to dine in the vaulted cellar of a tavern near the river.
The tavern was filled with vampires—something that stunned Thierry. He’d never seen so many of his kind in one place before. He’d been a vampire for two centuries but he was still amazed that such a thing existed. Veronique had sired him into this life after the point he’d wanted to continue living. He had already made his peace before he’d been saved from the death and disease of the plague years.
Now he was to live forever. Much like the beings that surrounded him. They laughed and drank and danced and listened to the music in the tavern as if they were normal.
But they weren’t normal. They were creatures who looked human but needed blood to survive. He ran his tongue along the sharp tips of his fangs. Veronique indulged her thirst frequently but he did not. He didn’t care for the feeling of intoxication when he drank blood—the feeling of being out of control. He valued his control above all things.
“Don’t be silly,” Veronique always told him. “You should relish this second chance at life I’ve given you.”
“I do,” he assured her.
He wondered if she regretted siring him. Or marrying him. He did care for the dark-haired beauty in his own way. After all, despite her self-involved actions and behavior, Veronique was not evil. She did what she could with the life she’d been given. As did he. She made for a fine companion and had taught him many things about being a vampire.
But he didn’t love her.
He had loved his family, but they had been destroyed by the plague. One of his sisters had still been healthy when the villagers had taken her late one night and burned her body among the dead to prevent the spread of the disease. There had been nothing he could have done to prevent it. That was the night Thierry ran as far away from his village as he could, only