Stakes & Stilettos - Michelle Rowen [20]
“You are the Red Devil?”
“It is a silly name, but yes. I am. Until tonight.”
Thierry shook his head. “Then it’s too important for you to continue. You must escape.”
He smiled, but it was a sad smile. “Do you know what it feels like to be betrayed by those you consider your friends? All is lost. The papers have names, locations, details that in the wrong hands would do too much damage… If the Red Devil is gone, then that information must follow.”
“How can you accept something like this? So easily? After all that you’ve done to help others?”
“I am almost five hundred years old and am weary with life. To be a vampire is to live forever, but it is finally time for me to rest. Seeing Veronique again has given me a last happiness.”
The other man stepped back outside. “Marcellus, they approach.”
Marcellus nodded to him and then handed Thierry the key. “Take this.”
Thierry took it and looked down at it with a frown. “But, Marcellus… you cannot—”
“I must.”
“What about Veronique? She is still downstairs.”
“I will ensure her safety if it is the last thing I do. I swear it.” Marcellus smiled, and Thierry could see the strain of such a long life in his expression. “Now go… hide yourself. They must not find that key.” He paused and grasped Thierry’s shoulder. “Take care of Veronique for me. Farewell, mon ami.”
Thierry watched his wife’s sire and ex-lover descend the stairs to the secret tavern and knew there was nothing he could do or say to stop what was to come.
His mind buzzed with the information he’d received.
The Red Devil. Marcellus was the Red Devil and he was about to die. Thierry’s throat felt thick at the thought.
Then he clenched the key in his fist and turned away from the tavern to disappear into the shadows.
That night, Thierry traveled to Marcellus’s home near the city wall. He found the papers. Lists of the names of vampires pretending to be human. Lists of names of humans who now hunted vampirekind. Lists of the names of informants, both vampire and human, and how much money these informants expected to be paid for their information. There was a bank of weapons hidden in the home. And money. A great deal of gold and other coinage spilled forth at his touch.
He also found Marcellus’s detailed journals of the Diable Rouge. What he had done. Where. When. Why. Thierry sat in Marcellus’s home and read the many journals twice through, amazed at what he discovered. The Red Devil’s identity was a closely guarded secret and had been for nearly five hundred years. Through Thierry’s investigation, he could not find one living person who knew what Marcellus had done during the dark hours of night. Even Marcellus’s assistant the other night, the man who warned of the approaching hunters, might not have known the whole truth.
The truth was that Marcellus was saving his kind from slaughter at the hands of the hunters.
The thought that it was now over, that the Red Devil was dead, disturbed Thierry greatly. Even though his past relationship with Veronique soured him in Thierry’s eyes, Marcellus had done such good with his long life, had saved so many people, that it couldn’t be over.
There was a letter tucked into the journal at the last entry made. It had not yet been opened. It was from an informant and told of a planned massacre later that week.
A closely knit clan of vampires with loose ties to French royalty had been targeted to be an example to others. Three men and four women. And now that the Red Devil was dead, there was no one to save them from certain death.
Thierry’s knuckles were white from clutching the journal so tightly. He had watched his family die and had been able to do nothing to prevent it. The Black Death had not been selective. It had eaten through the surrounding lands with an insatiable