Night Fires Read online

  Night

  Fires

  Karen

  Harbaugh

  A Dell Book

  Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  About the Author

  Preview of Dark Enchantment

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgments

  The conception of this book is all Mary Jo Putney’s fault, bless her heart. If she hadn’t planted the idea of creating a vampire heroine in my brain, I wouldn’t have been tortured with it for years afterward and been forced by my muse to write it and send it out.

  In truth, fellow writers and friends are always the spur to greater growth and greater joy in creativity, and for this I’m thankful. Many blessings to my critique group; to my agent, who persisted in sending it out and who put up with my fears and worries; to my editor, Wendy McCurdy, who took a chance and bought the book; to Kathy Carmichael, who figured out where the action was mere running in place; and to my dear husband and best friend, John, who believed the completion of the book was more important than finding yet another full-time technical writing job.

  Prologue

  1793, Normandy, France

  SHE MADE ALMOST NO NOISE AS SHE slipped through the forest, and the brush of ferns against her skirts sounded like the cold wind through the trees. It was her way, traveling swift and silent as a ghost. The light of the gibbous moon glinted on metal gates in the distance; she could see no movement near them, or hear any sign of the living. The heat of fear burned her feet; her steps quickened.

  “Marthe!” she whispered. “Marthe!” But she was not close enough yet for the old nursemaid to hear; the name was a prayer, the first in many winters. There was blood in the air, and she was afraid. Her fingers touched metal at last, and she controlled the tightening of her throat.

  “Marthe!” she cried, still afraid.

  A sigh and a whimper, a soft weeping, and then a gray shape in the moonlight, a wisp of mist arising from the ground. Almost she thought it was a spirit, but she put her hand beyond the gate and her hand touched cloth as the shape came near.

  “Mademoiselle Simone?” The voice shook with age and grief.

  “I am not too late, Marthe. Tell me I am not too late.”

  Grief and shadows furrowed the old woman’s uplifted face. She sighed. “At least you are left, my little one, my little one.” She began to sing a lullaby.

  Simone clutched the woman’s cloak. “Tell me I am not too late!”

  Marthe’s face crumpled. “Ah, mademoiselle, mademoiselle! They took them, and there are none left.”

  “You lie!” Simone clutched the cloak more tightly, and it tore in her hand, as hope and fear began to tear her heart. The old nursemaid had become senile, her memory disordered. She tried not to remember that Marthe had always had a sharp mind, up to last week when she last saw her.

  The old woman shrank from her. “Your face—Simone, mon infant, you are ill to be so pale.”

  Simone drew in a deep breath and stilled the weeping that threatened to rise up from her belly. “No, Marthe, I am . . . well. My family—they are living, yes? They have not been taken?”

  A cunning look smoothed out the wrinkles on the old woman’s face. “No, not all. Look you, mademoiselle, I have saved one.” She held out in her arms a ragged swaddled shape, silent, too silent.

  Simone gently opened the gate. Marie’s child, perhaps? Or perhaps Antoine’s? She took the bundle from Marthe.

  It was light, too light to be what she hoped. She pushed aside the blankets and moaned.

  It was a doll, its ivory face painted with a knowing smile. She remembered it; it had been hers when she was a child, almost too long ago to remember. She looked at Marthe and did not scream the anger and the sorrow that hammered for release behind her teeth.

  “Is this all, Marthe?” Simone asked at last.

  “All? But this is the heir, mademoiselle!” The old woman shook her head and began to sob. “I have saved the heir of the de la Fers! If I had not, there would only be Simon de la Fer left, and defenseless . . . defenseless as I, alas. She may be dead now, without children, for I would have heard if she had married, poor lady.”

  Simone pulled up her shoulders, as if she felt a chill, though she rarely felt heat or cold, or the passing of seasons. “She is not dead, Marthe. I have seen her myself.”

  Marthe’s expression turned eager. “Then give her what I have saved, mademoiselle. Give her the heir until the Terror has passed.”

  Simone de la Fer lifted her head as the breeze increased in speed and moved the trees to rustle. The blood in the air sharpened her senses so that she could feel at last the cold of late autumn, and the promise of a colder winter. “I will take this—this to the lady, Marthe.” Simone drew her shawl from around her neck and tied it around her shoulder and back in a sling. “The others, Marthe. Where are they?”

  Marthe’s voice became a whisper. “I do not know. I fled with the heir, you see. I did well, did I not?”

  Simone drew in her breath, holding back her impatience. She touched Marthe’s face briefly, and the woman flinched. She dropped her hand and sighed. “Yes, of course. Go, now, Marthe.” She lowered her voice and made it soothing and soft, though her heart hammered in grief. “Go to your son’s house—he is a good citizen of the Republic—and do not ever mention the de la Fer family again. You do not know them; you have never known them.” The old woman’s eyes became glazed in the moonlight and she blinked slowly, then nodded. “Go now.”

  “Yes, mademoiselle.” The woman turned and shuffled away. Simone stared at the retreating figure until Marthe’s shape became mistlike and faded into the night.

  The wind pulled at Simone’s skirts and the blood rose again upon the air. It called to her, and her stomach churned with need. Simone clenched her teeth together. She knew from whence the blood came; it came from the home of the de la Fer family, her home. She closed her eyes. Marthe must be wrong; perhaps it was from their enemies; perhaps the de la Fers had fled.

  It had been many years since she had stepped within the gates of the de la Fer estate. She hesitated from habit before she pulled the gate open further and began to run toward the château. It had been so many years, but her feet flew over the grass and earth as if she had never left. Simone closed her eyes briefly against the familiar rise and fall of the land, the familiar trees and gardens.

  It hurt her to remember. Best to think of her family. Marthe had spoken nothing but nonsense; what Simone feared could not be true. And look, there were lights in the windows—the drawing room, in fact, where her mother had once entertained brilliantly dressed lords and ladies, and where Simone herself had met—

  No. No memories. No memories.

  The windows were closed, but they were large, and bright candles shone through them, as if a ball were in progress. She braced herself against the sound of music she wanted desperately to hear—the one thing she had left to her was music, and it was a knife-thrust through her soul whenever she heard it.

  There was no sound, just the sound of the blood-laden wind, just the light of candles through the windows.

  She reached the door of the house; it was ajar. The scent of blood made her gas
p and the cold wind bit into her suddenly hypersensitive flesh. She pushed open the door until it stopped halfway from some obstacle. She slipped within, and saw what had kept the door from opening all the way.

  She should be used to such by now; she had seen death in many guises. But this was her home, and the man—the butler, it must have been, by his livery—was dead from a slit in his throat, no more than a few hours dead perhaps. Simone closed her eyes and crossed herself—an automatic gesture of which she could not rid herself. It did not matter. She did not know what she believed any more.

  No sound, of course, for there would be no ball—the thought of it almost made her laugh hysterically. She stilled. Yes, sound. Her hearing was keen now. The sound of voices, laughing, drunken. She ran through the house, ignoring the torn wallpaper where paintings had obviously been pulled from the wall. She remembered rich draperies at the windows; they, too, had been torn down.

  Rage and grief, sudden and hot, rose up from her belly; her hands shook with it. She stilled them, stilled the shaking inside as well. The tears would not come—they were forbidden her—but the rage turned as cold as the autumn chill that pierced her flesh like knives. Her feet became quiet; she walked like a cat in the night, hunting mice, though her spirit wailed in protest.

  The drawing room. The candlelight blaring through the open door like the noise of brass trumpets upon her eyes. The drunken voices of living men inside. The smell of blood, thick and heavy, the smell of spent lust.

  She tenderly laid down the bundle within the shawl, and then entered the room. She dropped the cloak from her shoulders, and her flesh gleamed white.

  The black-clothed men were drunk with wine stolen from her family’s cellars. They were drunk with the lust they had spent upon serving maids and ladies now dead, they were drunk with the power of killing men they envied. Simone’s glance took in the age-scored, knife-scored faces of brothers, sisters, parents; grief filled her heart with poison. The bodies still strewn about the drawing room showed that the murderers had not spared terror on their victims, her family.

  She turned to ice.

  She smiled her cold rage at them, her smile a sensuous thing they should have feared, but none ever had. She moved toward them on cat feet, with a serpent’s seduction in her body.

  She was prey, she was predator, she was light, she was dark. The fire in her belly moved onto her mouth and lips and became the hunger she feared so many times. But this time rage obliterated all fear. Her sharp teeth pricked the flesh of her lips as she smiled at them. The men’s eyes filled with lust and violent power as they looked at her and came at her with knives.

  She allowed the first one to put his lips upon her and lay his knife against her neck before she tore the life from his throat—easily, quickly, and more mercifully than he deserved. She was the handmaiden of Death; they fell without knowing what had come upon them. The alchemy of rage and grief turned her into fire; her mind burned with vengeance, vengeance.

  Then it was still and dark. The candles guttered in the chandeliers and in the sconces against the wall, and the only sound in the drawing room was the crackling of the embers in the hearth.

  The murderers for the Republic were dead now, and her rage and thirst were sated. But sorrow and horror lay leaden in her stomach, and though she was filled with the power of the blood she had taken from the killers, she lifted her moon-pale face to the sky and moaned, grief and shame biting deep.

  She was the last of the de la Fers. There were no others. She, Simone de la Fer: she who was outcast and stained, and cursed to live forever young when her family—who had wept when they turned their backs upon her—were now all dead.

  Dead. Death. She was the embodiment of it, for she was as deathless as Death itself, and she dealt it swiftly, unstoppable as stormwinds. Her breath sobbed in her throat. Mon Dieu. She had not wished for the blood-thirst, she had resisted it, but it took just one taste of rage and despair and she had loosed it upon these men. Would she never be rid of it?

  She worked until almost dawn, cleaning the drawing room and the hall of blood and bodies. She was strong and tireless and could do this until the light of morning made her weak. And then she washed herself, tied the doll upon her back, and walked aimlessly inside the house and then outside, groaning her grief, until she reached the abbey nearby, where the good Abbé Dumont was already awake and done with his matins.

  She paused before the church, hesitating. She did not deserve to be here. And yet, she entered, and stepped into the confessional and crossed herself, ignoring the sizzling pain that crept across her skin at being in a holy place. If she stayed here long, she would surely die, as she had seen others of . . . of her kind do. It did not matter, and perhaps be a blessed relief. At the very least, she would make sure the priest would say prayers for her family’s souls and attend properly to their burial. She could hear a suppressed yawn from the other side of the screen.

  “How may I help you, my child?” The abbé’s voice was warm and soothing, and she wished the warmth of it were tangible so that she could wrap herself in it, and cease shaking with blood-power, soul-deep cold, and the angry dance of fire on her skin in this holy place.

  “Forgive me, mon Père, for I have sinned—” She stopped, her throat closing. She wanted to weep, for she could never confess all that she had done, and surely no penance would erase the curse of what she was.

  “Yes, my child?”

  “I cannot . . .”

  “Is it that you are afraid? No sin is so great that it cannot be forgiven.”

  Forgiven. Could she be forgiven? She listened to the abbé’s warm voice, and remembered when she had come to this confessional, when he first arrived at the abbey perhaps as long as fifteen years ago. He had not been the de la Fers’ father confessor then, of course. She sighed. A long time ago, when her father and mother were alive, and her brothers and sisters—not dead, as they were now. Abbé Dumont’s voice was warm back then, too, as it was now.

  “Mon Père, the revolutionaries have murdered my family. . . .” She heard the rustle of cloth, a whispered prayer, as he crossed himself. And then she told him, it seemed forever, her body and her voice shaking. She could not stop her voice or her shaking.

  “Stop, my child. It is enough.” His voice trembled with grief or anger, and she knew them as she knew her own heart. He would cast her out now, as her family had cast her out, for she was no better than an animal, her hands wreaking death as if they were the claws of a wild beast. She put her hands over her face and drew in a breath. She should leave. Surely it was an abomination that one such as she should be here.

  “I have seen atrocities,” the abbé said slowly, and his voice made her stay. “Not even the priesthood is exempt from the madness.”

  He had not told her to leave. Her body shook harder with the pain of being in a holy place, with the power of blood, and with the painful hope of acceptance.

  “You have committed a grave sin. But these men would have committed more horrors if you had not stopped them; the laws are gone that we have relied on for so long. These sort of men are the law, now.”

  “What should I do?” she whispered.

  “Penance, boy.”

  Boy . . . He thought her a youth. Of course. The abbé could not see through the screen. Her voice was deep for a woman, and how could a mere woman avenge herself upon so many men? She opened her mouth to correct him, then closed it again. What did it matter?

  “That is all?” she said instead.

  He laughed dryly. “You have not heard your penance, my child.” He paused, and she heard him take in a deep breath. “You must be strong to have killed so many by yourself. Go out and save those whom evil men wish to kill. And do not kill again, unless it be in self-defense. That is your penance. And if that is not enough for you, you are to say ten Paternosters and Marias as well.”

  “Merci, mon Père.” She waited for his blessing, and when he gave it, she rose and left, mindful of the doll she carried, and ca
reful to run quickly so that the abbé would not see her.

  There was not much time left now; the sun would be rising soon. Simone ran into the woods again, running with feet now light with hope. She would do it; she would save those marked for death. Perhaps the penance would erase the curse upon her. Perhaps saving lives would erase the sin of having taken lives.

  Her steps slowed for a moment as the shaking overtook her again. She took in a deep breath, and the autumn air bit into her lungs. She ran faster, and now she was in the depths of the wood, the dry leaves thick upon the ground, rustling around her ankles. Yes, she would even look through her family’s belongings and find a rosary; perhaps she would find the one her mother used to wear. Such holy things hurt her hands when she touched them. She did not mind pain so very much. She knew she was still alive when she felt pain.

  At last the dry leaves at her feet came almost to her knees; the wood was thick with trees and fern here. Here was a hollow in which she burrowed for a bed, a shallow cave of stone, oak roots, and dirt. She laid herself down against the deep side of the hollow where she could feel the wood of the oak, and dug deep into the leaves she had gathered there. They would cover her and protect her from the light; the ferns were a curtain against intruders.

  Simone sighed and closed her eyes. Tomorrow night she would begin her penance. She would save those marked for death, she who knew death like a lover. She would strike swiftly for life, she who could see life only in darkness.

  She took the bundle Marthe had given her and pulled it close to her. She would even say her prayers.

  And perhaps . . . perhaps, she would cease to be a vampire some day, and see the blessed sun at last.

  Chapter 1

  London, 1793

  HE PUT HIS FINGERS—SPLAYED, AS IF playing a harpsichord—on the chill library window, and watched the fine mist collect upon the glass around each fingertip. He could see it clearly against the dark dawn sky. Then he removed his hand, and blew upon the marks he made. His breath obliterated the fingertip mist in a large, round circle of gray, then the winter chill outside the window permeated, and made it all disappear.