“If one considers a woman terrified at the mere thought of being touched by a man no little problem, then, no, I had no problems.” It was only with great difficulty that Giordan was able to keep the great loathing from his voice and expression.
“She did not give you difficulty?” Those eyes looked closely at him, then slipped away to scan over his torso as if to look for signs of wounds or injury. An unnaturally slender brow lifted at the sight of the bitemarks on his bicep.
“But of course not.” Giordan was fairly certain there had been no witnesses—either visual or aural—during the events of the evening; for he surely would have scented the presence of anyone near enough to see or hear. But, yes, he had been a bit distracted, so he couldn’t be completely certain. “I had all that I wanted, and now I have finished.”
“Very good. Very good. It’s just that I find it unusual for a man to leave my delightful sister any earlier than he must, hm?”
Giordan gave a meaningless shrug and said nothing more as they walked along the corridor.
Moldavi continued smoothly, “Would you care to join me for a drink, then? I have just received a most delightful vintage from Barcelona. They are are calling it a champagne, but of course that is impossible if it is grown in Spain, is it not?”
Giordan hesitated for a moment. He wanted more than anything to get away from this abhorrent man, out of this dark, close place and back to his own…but the more time spent in his presence, here in the highly secure, subterranean locale, the more he could learn about its layout and his host’s habits…and the sooner he could find a way to relieve Cezar Moldavi of his favorite plaything.
Thus, although he truly wanted to be alone—with his thoughts, his memories, his fears—his concern and care for Narcise’s future easily prevailed. “Perhaps…perhaps, yes, for a brief time. I would be delighted to sample your offering. It sounds most intriguing.” He kept his voice mellow and even enthusiastic with effort.
Moldavi’s face changed, a brief contortion, and his eyes widened a fraction…then it was gone.
“Please, then, with me,” said his host in his imperfect French. “And, if you like, Cale, I would be happy to provide you with new attire. I suspect you don’t wish to be traveling back to your home in nothing but breeches. I have retrieved your coat from our dining area, of course, but perhaps you would accept my gift of a shirt and shoes as well.”
Giordan realized that his host was correct, and that he hadn’t given his bare feet, legs, and chest any thought at all.Ah, Narcise. You’ve already destroyed me.“I would be very grateful.”
As he walked along with Moldavi, Giordan considered the option of killing the man right here, right now. It was an efficient way to resolve things; one he’d employed far too many times, if the priests had anything to say about it. Which, of course, they didn’t. It was a plain truth: Giordan had grown up with violence and poverty all around him, and was more likely to kill a man who crossed him than he was to waste time trying to find other resolutions.
That was yet another reason, he was certain, that Lucifer had found him an appropriate addition to the Draculia.
Killing Moldavi would end the man’s domination over Narcise, and they would find their way out of this labyrinthine lair beneath theruesof Paris.
But Giordan was forced to reject the fantasy nearly as soon as it presented itself, for a variety of reasons, the simplest being, he didn’t have a weapon. It wasn’t as if he could choke the man to death or pummel him into the ether. Either a wooden stake or a sword that would take the man’s head off were the only ways, and aside of the wooden sconces, there was nothing else that would work. And to tear down a sconce, break it into a ragged point, and then attack Moldavi…even Giordan wasn’t confident it could be done quickly and without mishap.
Aside from that, to do anything that would make the man suspicious would ruin any chance he might have of further access to Narcise.
Patience.
“So you have lived in Paris since you were a child?” Moldavi asked as they approached a heavy wooden door.
“Yes. Although the place I lived while a boy was much different than La Marais,” Giordan said with a sidewise, wry smile.
“I have come to prefer Paris myself,” Moldavi said. “Romania is rough and wild with its own beauty, but also dark and sharp and difficult to navigate…and I find the City of Light a much welcome change.” He had the key on a ring at his waist, but there was a guard stationed there to provide additional security.
“Although I travel much now for business purposes, I always return to Paris, for it’s my home,” Giordan replied.
It appeared even the guard didn’t have access to the door, for it was his master who used the key to unlock the door. From what Giordan had observed on his journey to and from, the single purpose of this corridor was to provide access to the chamber where he and Narcise had been. There was no other entrance or exit along here, no other rooms, and certainly no other way in or out of the room in which they’d been.
He wondered, suddenly, and with a painful shaft of horror, whether Narcise was kept in that place of torture all the time, or if she had some other sort of living space.
They walked through the door and Giordan took in the details of what he’d only vaguely noted the first time through. This underground tunnel had been in Paris much longer than Moldavi had.
“How did you come to choose the catacombs as a place to live?” Giordan asked as they passed along the corridor. What he really meant was how had Moldavi taken over control of these underground tunnels where varlets and vagrants had lived for centuries. “I would have thought you’d prefer a chateau or some other mansion.”
The walls of this hallway were lined with neat rows of skulls, their empty eyes and toothy upper jaws an eerie and morbid decor. Above each row of skulls were lined several layers of large bones—femurs, he guessed by the size of them, with the joint ends facing out. They made for bumpy texture, and the hollows provided homes for spiders and other insects.
Giordan made no attempt to hide his surprise that a man as refined as Moldavi was—at least in attire and his selection of food and drink—would choose to live in such base surroundings. But then again…this was a vampire who bled children to death and who imprisoned his sister for the pleasure of others. He tightened his jaw to control the rage. Perhaps he would kill the man now.
“It is a bit gauche, isn’t it?” his companion replied, brushing a hand lovingly over one of the skulls. “But I find it such an interesting topic of conversation. At the least,” he said with his faint lisp, “they are long dead and gone and we don’t have the rot and smell of the decomposing bodies in the…the place where they are moving all of them now…what is it called?”
“The Ossuary,” Giordan replied, having regained control of his temper. He noted that the skull-lined corridor had branched off into two different directions and that they’d taken the eastern route. “In the old stone quarries.”
He recognized that the tunnels they now traversed were old quarries as well, but that these bones must be the original ones from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The placement of these bones decades ago were the inspiration for the disposal of the bodies from the overcrowded church cemeteries, the newest wave which had begun thirty years earlier from parishes like Holy Innocents.
