Read Chapter 27: Flight from Home

The rain had begun again by the time Camille slipped through the service door of the printing house, the ledger wrapped in oilcloth against her breast. She had not gone three streets before she felt it—the prickle at the back of her neck, the subtle shift of shadows that did not move with the wind.

She quickened her pace. The gaslights of the boulevard cast long amber pools across the wet cobbles, and in each one she caught the suggestion of movement just beyond the edge of vision. Not vampires. These footsteps were heavier, deliberate, carrying the weight of flesh and bone.

Hunters.

She turned down the Rue de Sèvres, cursing the heels of her boots. In the old life—the human life, barely a week gone—she would have flagged a cab, pressed a coin into a driver's palm, and disappeared into the night like any other respectable woman with secrets. But the hunger had sharpened something in her, and she knew the cab would not be fast enough.

The first shot came as she rounded the corner.

The bullet tore through the fabric of her sleeve, missing flesh by inches, and embedded itself in the wooden doorframe of a closed boulangerie. Camille did not think. She ran. The alley ahead gaped like a wound between the buildings, and she took it at a sprint, her new senses painting the darkness in shades of silver and grey.

Behind her, boots slapped against wet stone. At least three of them. Maybe four.

"The priest's flock," she muttered, finding the service stairs that led to the flat she shared with Philippe. She took them two at a time, her breath coming in sharp bursts—not from exertion, but from the anger coiling in her chest. She had come to Paris as a woman who reported on monsters. Now she was fleeing from men who thought themselves holy.

The door to the flat was already open when she reached the landing.

Philippe stood in the doorway, coat half-buttoned, a revolver in his hand. His eyes went to her face, then to the blood on her sleeve, and something in his expression shifted from alarm to grim comprehension.

"They found you."

"The priest's acolytes. Or whatever's left of them." She stepped inside, locked the door behind her, and pressed her palm against the wood as if she could feel their approach through the grain. "They're not vampire hunters in the old sense. They know what I am now. They're culling."

Philippe was already moving through the flat, gathering things into a leather satchel—the ledger, her notebooks, a change of clothes. He did not argue. He did not ask why. That was one of the things she loved about him, she realized. He had accepted the shape of her new life with less hesitation than she had.

"We can't take the train," she said. "They'll watch the stations."

"The vineyard." He paused, a folded shirt in his hands, and looked at her. "I have a friend who owns a property outside Meudon. We used to swim in the Seine together as boys, before his family's fortune turned to wine." A thin smile. "He's... unconventional."

Camille raised an eyebrow. "Unconventional how?"

"He'll understand what you are. That's all you need to know for now."

The first thud came against the door as he finished speaking. Then another. The wood shuddered in its frame.

"Now would be a good time," Philippe said.

They went out the window.

---

The carriage ride to Meudon was a blur of rain-streaked glass and the rhythmic clatter of wheels over wet roads. Camille kept her hand pressed to the wound in her arm—it had already begun to close, the flesh knitting itself with an unnatural haste that still made her stomach turn—and watched the city lights recede behind them.

"When did you learn to shoot?" she asked, nodding at the revolver Philippe had tucked into his belt.

"Oxford. There was a club." He did not elaborate, and she did not press.

The vineyard appeared as a dark smudge against the horizon, then resolved itself into rows of sleeping vines and a stone manor house whose windows glowed with warm, golden light. Philippe helped her down from the carriage and paid the driver double to forget he had seen them.

The man who opened the door was not what Camille had expected.

He was tall, grey-haired, with the weathered face of a man who had spent decades in the sun. But his eyes—his eyes were the pale gold of old champagne, and they held the same ancient weight she had seen in Philippe's after the transformation. No. More. Philippe's mortality had softened that weight; this man wore it like a mantle.

"Philippe." The man's voice was low, warm, touched with surprise. "It's been—" He stopped. His gaze shifted to Camille, and she felt the weight of his attention settle on her like a physical thing. "Ah. I see."

"Camille, this is Étienne."

She froze.

"Not your Étienne," Philippe said quickly, reading the alarm in her face. "Different Étienne. Étienne Moreau. I've known him since we were children."

The vampire's mouth curved into a dry smile. "I can assure you, Mademoiselle Delacroix, I have no interest in Church conspiracies or faked deaths. I grow grapes. I make wine. And occasionally, I help those who find themselves in your particular... circumstance."

He stepped aside, gesturing them into a great hall hung with tapestries and lit by a fire that crackled in a stone hearth. Camille entered cautiously, her senses cataloguing exits, weapons, shadows. Étienne Moreau watched her do it with something like approval.

"You're very new," he said. "Days, not months."

"Six days."

"Six days, and you're already fleeing vampire hunters through the streets of Paris." He shook his head, pouring three glasses of wine from a decanter on the sideboard. "You've had a violent introduction to our world."

"The priest who tried to kill me—Father Aloysius—he had followers. They've scattered, but they've clearly regrouped. They know what I've become." She accepted the glass he offered but did not drink. Her throat was dry, but the hunger was a different thirst entirely. "They'll keep hunting me. They consider me an abomination."

"Unworthy," Philippe said quietly. "That's the word they use. The Church faction has been purging Paris for decades, culling anyone they consider beneath the light of God." He glanced at Camille. "She shot the priest. Didn't kill him—"

"I aimed for the heart. I was still learning my strength."

"—but wounded him badly enough that he won't be leading any more midnight masses for some time."

Étienne Moreau studied her over the rim of his glass. His golden eyes were unreadable, ancient, patient. Camille had the uncomfortable sensation of being examined from the inside out.

"There is something I can offer you," he said at last. "I am not merely a vintner, Mademoiselle Delacroix. I am also a healer. Of vampires." He set down his glass. "Your thirst will grow more powerful before it becomes manageable. It will test you in ways you cannot imagine, especially under stress. If you do not learn to control it, you will hurt someone you love. Or kill them."

Camille felt Philippe tense beside her.

"What do you propose?" she asked.

"A tincture. It dulls the hunger, gives you time to build the discipline you'll need. But I require a component I do not have, and cannot easily obtain." He paused. "A flower called the last chrysanthemum. It grows in only one place in all of France—a greenhouse on a remote estate in the Loire Valley, owned by a reclusive artist who guards it fiercely."

"And this artist will simply hand it over?"

Étienne Moreau's smile was slow, and did not reach his eyes. "No. But you are persuasive, Mademoiselle Delacroix. And you now have something far more useful than charm."

"What's that?"

"Time." He picked up his glass again. "You are immortal now. You can wait out any refusal, outlast any guard, outmaneuver any obstacle. The question is whether you are willing to become the kind of creature who takes what she needs."

Camille looked at Philippe. He did not look away. In his face she saw the same calculation she was making—that this was a test, and how she answered would define what she became.

"I'll go," she said. "I'll find the flower."

"Alone?"

She felt Philippe's protest before he voiced it, and she silenced him with a look. "No. We go together." She turned back to Étienne Moreau. "But you will tell me everything about this artist first. Everything you know."

The old vampire inclined his head in something that might have been respect.

"The artist," he said, "is a woman. And she has been pulling strings in Paris for longer than the Church has existed." He paused. "Her name is Marguerite Valois. And the last time I saw her, she was wearing the face of someone you both know."

The fire crackled. The rain continued to fall against the windows. And Camille realized, with a chill that had nothing to do with the cold, that the chase was only just beginning.