GABRIEL UPENDED THE empty bottle of Monét over his open mouth. The light of the weakling dawn was creeping through the window like a thief now, refracting in blood-red droplets, falling slow onto his tongue.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
That skull-pale moth was still flitting about the lantern’s light, beating upon the glass. With a speed belied by the four bottles he’d downed, Gabriel snatched it from the air and squeezed. Opening his fist, he let the broken body fall to the stone, ruined wings dusting the sevenstar on his hand.
He felt as if he’d been in this room all his life.
The Marquis Jean-François of the Blood Chastain dipped his quill into his ink bottle, scribing the last few words the silversaint had spoken. The pages were filled with his story now, word by word, line by line. Gabriel thought it strange, and in truth, a kind of wonderful; that all he was and would ever be could be distilled into a few elegant lines on a page. The summation of his youth and his glory, his love and his loss, his life and his tears, captured like an errant moth and bound as if by magik into so small and plain a thing.
The simple wonder of books.
Jean-François finished his writing, scowled at the window, as if offended by the daystar’s interruption. Blowing breathless breath upon the ink to dry it, the vampire placed the tome upon the table, steepled pale fingers at ruby lips, and smiled.
“A fine night’s work, Silversaint. My pale Empress shall be well pleased.”
Gabriel dropped the empty bottle to the floor, wiped his lips on the back of his hand. “You honestly can’t imagine the relief I’ll feel at meeting her approval, vampire.”
“There is still much ground to cover. Your truck with the Liathe and your ties to the Faithless. The battle of Augustin and the treachery in Charbourg. The death of the Forever King and the loss of the Grail. But…” Again, Jean-François cast hateful eyes to the dawn rising through the thin window. “Time has caught us for now, I fear.”
“I told you, vampire.” Gabriel smiled, his tongue thick with wine. “Everything ends.”
“For tonight, perhaps.” The historian nodded, smoothing the tall feathers at his collar. “But we have tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow.”
Jean-François reached into his frockcoat, produced a wooden case carved with the Blood Chastain coat of arms. Twin wolves. Twin moons. With a monogrammed kerchief, he fastidiously cleaned the quill’s golden nib, packed it away, and secreted the case within his coat once more. Reaching forth to gather up his tome, he rose to leave.
“Before you go…”
The vampire looked into the Last Silversaint’s eyes. “Oui, Chevalier?”
Gabriel breathed deep, shame burning his cheeks.
“… Could I have another smoke?”
The monster looked at the killer with narrowed eyes. So still, he seemed carved of marble. Gabriel clenched his wine-stained teeth, the want in his skin, the need on its way.
“Please,” he whispered.
Jean-François inclined his head. And though he never seemed to move at all, he now held one hand outstretched. And there, on the snow-white plane of his upturned palm, lay a glass phial of reddish-brown dust.
“You have earned it, I suppose.”
Gabriel nodded, wretched and thirsting. Reaching slow toward the phial. “You know, you never answered my question, Chastain.”
“And what question was that, de León?”
“When your dark mother and pale mistress set you this task … did you think she was locking me in here with you, or you in here with me?”
Gabriel’s fist closed about the vampire’s wrist, silver-swift. And with a speed belied by the four bottles he’d downed, he seized hold of Jean-François’s throat. The vampire’s eyes widened, and he opened his lips to shout, but that shout became a scream as the marble of his flesh began to blacken, and the blood within his veins to boil.
Gabriel rammed the vampire back into the wall, the brick crushed to powder. The chronicler bucked, roaring and trying to break loose. The table had upturned, the historie spilled, the glass lantern crashing to the floor. Gabriel bared his fangs, teardrop scars twisting on his cheek, inhaling deeply of the red smoke rising from the vampire’s skin.
“I told you I’d make you fucking scream, leech,” he spat.
A roar of fury rang out as the cell door was flung wide, and Meline flew into the room. She held a gleaming dagger in hand, eyes burning with the ardor of a mother for her child, a lover for her beloved, a thrall for her master, plunging her blade through Gabriel’s greatcoat and into his back once, twice, three times. The silversaint turned and slapped the woman hard enough to send her sailing across the room, slamming Jean-François into the wall again. But as pain lanced through his chest, bubbling now into his mouth, salty red, he realized the blade she’d stabbed him with was no mere shank of pig iron.
“S-silversteel,” he gasped.
Jean-François burst apart in his hands, the vampire’s body collapsing into a tumbling, jumbling mass. As Gabriel staggered backward, pink froth at his lips, he realized he was holding only the vampire’s feathered mantle and frockcoat; dark velvet embroidered with golden curlicues. A horde of rats was swarming about his feet now, spilling from the legs of the historian’s britches, the sleeves of his fine coat, rushing in a flood from the cell. Meline had rolled to her feet, clutching the historie to her bosom as she dashed from the room and slammed the door, a few rats chittering and squealing as they squeezed below the jamb. And wheezing, drooling blood, Gabriel found himself alone in the cell once more.
The Last Silversaint limped to the fallen table, took up the bone pipe, the glittering sanctus phial. Loading the bowl with a healthy serving of the sacrament, Gabriel sat cross-legged among the upturned furniture and broken bottles, long hair draped about his face, leaning toward the puddle of burning lantern oil. His belly thrilled as it began: that sublime alchemy, that dark chymistrie, the powdered blood bubbling now, color melting to scent, the aroma of hollyroot and copper filling the cell. And Gabriel pressed his lips to that pipe with more passion than he’d ever kissed a lover, and oh sweet God in heaven, breathed it down.
The hatch across the barred window in the door slammed aside. Glancing up, Gabriel saw a pair of chocolat-brown eyes, bloodshot with pain and rage and stained by bloody tears.
He raised his pipe and gifted Jean-François a grim smile.
“Can’t blame a man for trying.”
The historian narrowed his eyes and hissed.
Gabriel breathed a plume of bloody smoke into the air.
“Until tomorrow, vampire.”