The audacity!
A bitter smile curled up one side of her face. The fools in question had met with fates befitting their folly. Jae, La Cour des Lions’ resident assassin, had helped her. He stalked those men through the darkness. Terrorized them for hours. Made sure their last moments were soaked in fear.
“They never suspected it was me who orchestrated their deaths,” she murmured.
Of course, knowing whether something unfortunate was going to happen was all well and good in theory. But what if that knowledge pertained to someone Odette loved? Bien sûr, she could push a friend out of the way if a carriage with a spooked horse was careening toward them. But it was rarely that simple.
For this and many other reasons, Odette lied when asked about what she’d seen in Celine’s future. Celine would indeed be the tamer of beasts, as Odette divulged. But Odette would never forget the muffled words that followed after, whispered in her ear like a wicked secret:
One must die so the other may live.
Putain de merde. Another ridiculous prophecy, the kind Odette hated for most of her immortal life. They were all unforgivably vague. Why couldn’t they just say what they meant? This connard will be killing this connard at this specific time and place. Here is how you might spare them this fate. Allons-y! Would that be too much to ask?
To whom did this prophecy refer? Celine and Bastien? Or Celine and someone else entirely? It was impossible to be certain. So, in Odette’s opinion, they were all better off not knowing.
But Odette’s opinion had changed last night. Even if it caused her pain, she would help those dear to her avoid disaster.
Her brow lined with determination, Odette looked to her silent guardian and made a promise. “I will set things right,” she swore. “Not for Bastien alone. But for me.”
Failure of any kind had never sat well with her.
Odette wrapped her fingers tighter around the metal spire at the cathedral’s apex. “C’est assez,” she said. It was time for her to do as she’d been bidden. To sate her hunger before Bastien woke in truth, for Nicodemus would need all his children at full strength when that time came.
She could only guess what kind of newborn vampire Bastien would be. He’d been difficult as a boy, prone to outbursts in temper. Likely to resolve disagreements with his fists rather than with words. This tendency had caused his expulsion from the military academy at West Point, a position Nicodemus had labored for years to make possible. After all, the son of a quadroon and a Taíno did not sport the necessary pedigree for such a lofty institution.
If Bastien survived the change, Nicodemus believed he would be the strongest of his children, simply for the fact that they shared blood in both their lives, mortal and immortal. Blood sharing was like the flipping of a coin. On some occasions, a brilliant and powerful immortal would rise from its ashes.
On others?
A murderous madman like Vlad Țepeș. Or Countess Elizabeth Báthory, who had bathed in the blood of her victims. Or Kato Danzo, who’d terrorized the skies on giant wings resembling those of a bat.
Odette wanted to believe none of this spoke to what might become of Bastien’s character. Would he be bookish like Madeleine? Hedonistic like Hortense? Morose like Jae or playfully malicious like Boone?
“Assez,” she announced to the night sky.
Odette let her attention drift across Jackson Square, her eyes flitting over the many through streets nearby, searching for a lone figure embarking on a solitary stroll. Her gaze locked on someone traveling past a flickering gas lamp along Rue de Chartres.
Without hesitation, Odette bid her Savior farewell before letting go of the spire. She shut her eyes as she fell, relishing the rush of cool air and the wind whistling in her ears. Just as she was about to strike the pavers, her body curled on itself, tucking into a roll. She hit the ground with a muffled thud, her shoulder taking the brunt of the force, allowing her to spin to standing in the next breath. Straightening, she glanced about before thrusting her hands in the pockets of her buckskin trousers. She hummed as she sauntered down the dark lane known to locals as Pirates Alley. The words of “La Marseillaise” graced the night sky, the clip of her booted heels echoing through the darkness.
“Allons! Enfants de la Patrie,” Odette sang softly.
She glided past the iron bars along which the famed pirate Jean Lafitte had been known to sell his ill-gotten gains in the earlier part of the century. Dark stained glass glinted in her periphery. Inside the church, Odette swore she could see the ghost of Père Antoine swinging his thurible, the smoke hazing about him. Or perhaps it was an apparition of the monk who’d resided beneath its cavernous roof a hundred years ago, often heard chanting the Kyrie on stormy evenings.
“Le jour de gloire est arrivé,” she continued singing.
The stories of this haunted alleyway nestled in the heart of the Vieux Carré had always fascinated Odette. Much like the countless tales about this shining land known as America, they often cloaked the darkest parts of its history. In the case of New Orleans, they masked hundreds of years as a port city in the slave trade. The untold deaths of those who had lived and breathed and loved along this strategic crescent of land long before the conquistadors had sailed through its harbor to stake their flags in the ground and declare it their own.
A seething darkness. Shadows shifting, lengthening behind all the glimmering beauty.
Odette repeated the next line of the song twice, her voice clear as a bell. “L’étenard sanglant est levé!” She rounded the corner and hastened her steps, veering in the direction of the lone figure two blocks ahead in the distance.
When the woman heard the sound of Odette’s steady footfalls behind her, she paused. Canted her head, the silver at her temples flashing in the light of a flickering flame. Then she stood straight, her elegant bonnet tipping up to the sky as if she were offering a prayer to God in heaven.
The silliness of mortals, Odette thought. Your God will not help you now.
It wasn’t that she found the notion of God silly. She counted Christ among her closest confidants. Besides that, hope was a powerful force.
Just not as powerful as Odette Valmont. Not for this woman. Not in this moment.
She waited until the woman continued walking. Then Odette moved into position behind her. Many vampires would prolong the hunt until the last possible second to allow the terror to mount in their victim. To make them wait until they were panting, tripping over their feet, begging for reprieve. Boone enjoyed doing this. But Boone was a hunter by trade. And Odette had never been that kind of immortal.
Instead she took a final glance around to make sure they were alone. Before the woman could blink, Odette blurred forward and grabbed her from behind, covering the woman’s lips with one hand and yanking her into a narrow alleyway with the other.
Odette tilted the woman’s chin back so she could meet her gaze. “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered, allowing the dark gift to weave through her words and imbue them with soothing magic. The woman’s panicked eyes softened at the edges. “I promise you won’t remember a thing,” Odette crooned, steadying her in an embrace.
“Who—who are you?” the woman breathed.
“Who are you?”
The woman’s eyelashes fluttered as if she were on the cusp of falling asleep. “Francine,” she said. “Francine Hofstadter.”
“Bonsoir, Madame Hofstadter.” Odette shifted her hand from beside Francine’s mouth so she might cup her jaw. She paused to study her warm brown eyes. “You remind me of my mother, beautiful Francine.”
“What is her name?”
A thin smile twisted Odette’s lips. “Louise d’Armagnac.”
“Such a lovely name,” Francine drawled. “So lovely . . . just like you.”
“She was a duchess.”
“Are you a duchess?”
“Perhaps I might have been.” Odette stroked an index finger along Francine’s chin. “But my mother likely would have objected. She would never have relinquished the title, not without a fight. You might say she . . . lost her head for it.”
“I’m—sorry,” Francine said, her body going lax in Odette’s arms. “It sounds like she didn’t love you as a mother should.”
“Oh, she did. Of that I am quite certain.” Amusement rounded Odette’s tones. “She just loved herself more. For that, I have no objections. My mother is a hero to me. Until the bitter end, she remained true.”
“But how could she love herself more, when she has a daughter like you? That’s not right.” Francine mirrored Odette’s gesture, bringing her right hand to frame Odette’s face. “I wish I had a daughter. I could have loved her. I could have loved you.” She marveled, her eyes twinkling like pools of water. “Perhaps . . . I do love you.”
“Who doesn’t, ma chérie?” Odette wove Francine’s fingers through hers. Brought their joined palms toward her lips. “I love you, too,” she whispered into Francine’s warm, vanilla-scented skin.
Before Francine could blink, Odette sank her teeth into the delicate flesh along Francine’s wrist. A gasp punctured the night air, but Francine did not struggle. Her limbs went languorous. Dangerously soft. Odette breathed through her nose as she took in another hot draft of blood. Her eyes flashed closed. Images wavered through her mind. Francine’s memories. Her entire life story, colored by countless remembrances, which—Odette knew—could be unreliable, even among the most earnest of mortals.
People tended to recall things not as they were but as they wished them to be.
A memory of a birthday celebration when Francine had been a young girl, praline icing smeared across her lips. The death of a beloved grandmother, Francine following the funeral carriage down a wide lane in the Garden District, a lace parasol filtering the hot light of the sun. A wedding to a boy she’d believed to be her one true love. Years later, another man who’d dashed that belief to smithereens.
Between these vignettes, Odette saw glimpses of a possible future. Of a son who visited each year at Christmas, along with his wife who wished to be anywhere else. Of a distant husband who died clutching his chest, and of twilight years spent in regret.