The Damned Read online

  Like her first real kiss. The taste of spun sugar on Marie’s soft lips; Odette’s mortal heart racing in her chest. The way their hands trembled. The way their breaths quickened.

  She turned toward the young man on the cross. The Son of God.

  “Is my love a sin?” she asked him without flinching, as she had on countless other occasions. Again he gave her the same response. Odette nodded with satisfaction and repeated the mantra. “Your message was one of love. And hatred should never prevail over love.”

  Once more, her memories wavered at the edges of her mind. She recalled her first brush with death, the day her father was led to the guillotine, jeers accompanying each of his steps. How he still wore his powdered wig, even when the blade fell. The slick sound of his blood splashing across the stones, which brought to mind her first kill, the night after welcoming her maker with open arms. The thrill of holding such godlike power in her grasp.

  Odette’s fingers turned white around the metal spire. Contrary to popular opinion, she was no longer angry. Not at the bloodthirsty men and women who’d left her a shivering orphan. Not at her parents for being unable to fight back. Not at Nicodemus for stealing Odette away from the dregs of her former life. Not at Marie, who had broken Odette’s heart in the way of so many first loves.

  “Because of everything that happened, I’ve learned to love myself more,” she said. “And is that not the best gift any trial in life can give you? The power to love yourself today better than you did the day before.”

  Odette angled her chin into a violet sky spangled with stars. The clouds above shifted like feathers of mist in a passing breeze. Nigel used to say the skies over New Orleans were filled with the smoke of the city’s misdeeds. The lapses in judgment so often celebrated by the Vieux Carré’s well-heeled tourists, who helped make New Orleans one of the wealthiest cities in the entire country, despite the recent War Between the States. Whenever Nigel would sit down to share his most salacious bit of weekly gossip, his Cockney accent would deepen with prurience.

  Something clenched around Odette’s dead heart.

  This time, she hesitated before glancing toward the metal cross in her periphery.

  “I know I have no business thinking of Nigel Fitzroy with anything resembling warmth,” she whispered. “He betrayed us.” She swallowed. “He betrayed me.” Incredulity flared across her face. “To think this happened only one day ago. That the rising and setting of a single moon has changed all our lives in such an irrevocable fashion.” In that single night, Odette had lost a brother she’d loved for a decade to a bone-chilling kind of treachery. This loss was keenly felt, though she dared not mourn it in the open. To do so would be une erreur fatale, especially in Nicodemus’ presence. The loss of a traitor was no one’s loss at all.

  And yet . . .

  She’d cried in her room this morning. She’d drawn the velvet curtains around her four-poster bed and let blood-tinged tears stain her ivory silk pillows. No one had seen hide nor hair of Boone all day. Jae arrived not long after sundown, his black hair wet, his expression somber. Upon returning to Jacques’, Hortense took to playing Bach cello suites at inhuman speed on her Stradivarius, while her sister, Madeleine, wrote in a leather-bound journal nearby. In short, every member of La Cour des Lions mourned in their own way.

  On the surface, it had been business as usual. They exchanged stilted pleasantries. Acted as if nothing were amiss, none of them wishing to give voice to their anguish or breathe life into the worst of Nigel’s offenses, the proof of which was soon to follow.

  Nigel’s worst offense?

  The loss of Sébastien’s soul. The unmaking of his humanity. Nigel might have betrayed them, but he had killed Bastien. He’d torn out his throat in front of the only girl Bastien had ever loved.

  Odette shivered, despite the fact that she hadn’t felt truly cold in decades. She let her vision glaze as it spanned across the square toward the glittering waters of the Mississippi. Past the twinkling ships along the horizon.

  “Should I tell them about my role in this sordid tale?” she asked.

  The figure on the cross remained contemplative. Silent.

  “You would probably say honesty is the best policy.” Odette tucked a sable curl behind an ear. “But I would rather swallow a handful of nails than face Nicodemus’ wrath. And it was an honest mistake, so that should count for something, non?”

  Again her Savior remained frustratingly quiet.

  A mere hour before Bastien’s death, Odette had allowed him to strike out on his own, knowing full well that a killer nipped at their heels. She’d gone so far as to distract her immortal brethren so they would not waylay him in his task to find Celine, whose safety had been threatened moments prior.

  Should she confess her role?

  What would Nicodemus do to her once he found out?

  The last vampire who dared to cross Nicodemus Saint Germain had had his fangs torn from his mouth.

  Odette swallowed. Not necessarily a fate worse than death, but then again not exactly one to inspire honesty. It wasn’t that she feared pain. Even the idea of the final death did not frighten her. She’d born witness to the rise and fall of empires. Danced with a dauphin beneath the light of a full moon.

  Hers was a story worthy of being told.

  “It’s just . . . well, I like the way I look, damn it all!” She liked her smart nose and her impish smile. Missing fangs were sure to mar the effect. “I suppose at least I will not starve,” she mused. “That is the gift of family, among other things.”

  If gluttony and vanity made her evil, then tant pis. She’d been called worse things by worse creatures.

  Odette reeled around the metal spire, the crucifix at its top creaking with the shift in weight. Gas lamps danced in the shadows below. Her vampiric senses flooded with the scent of a New Orleans spring evening. Sweet blossoms, sharp iron, sultry wind. The beating of hearts. The whicker of horses, the striking of hooves against pavers.

  Dark beauty, all around her. Ripe for the taking.

  A mournful sigh flew past Odette’s lips. She never should have permitted Bastien to go, even if Celine’s life did hang in the balance. Odette had known better. Where blood flowed, murder followed. She’d simply allowed sentiment to get the better of her.

  Never again.

  For years Odette had eschewed the use of her special gift, one unusual among immortals. The ability to foresee glimpses of another being’s future, with nothing more than the touch of her skin to theirs. She avoided it because she often saw flashes of misfortune in those rash enough to indulge their curiosity.

  Just as she’d seen when Celine Rousseau asked her to look the day they first met.

  History had taught Odette that informing a person of their impending doom did not exactly endear them to her. Often the individual in question would demand how they might avoid their fate. No matter how hard Odette tried to explain that her gift didn’t work like that—that she was not, in fact, a worker of miracles—they would continue pressing her to the point of exasperation. Twice she’d been accosted. Threatened with bodily harm, a knife flashed before her face, a revolver pointed at her chest.

  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 r
easons, 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.

  It broke what remained of Odette’s heart. This life that once held such promise.

  No matter. This woman’s fate was not her concern.

  Through it all, Francine remained the heroine of her own story. It was as it should be. At the very least, every mortal should be the hero of that particular tale.