The Bloodshade Encounters & The Songspinner (Shadeborn Book 2) Read online

  “I ought to head back,” he sighed. “I promised Mother I’d return after lunch for my training.”

  Ed made a loud scoffing sound.

  “Would it really be so awful if you got on her bad side for once?” he asked.

  Lemarick gave him a look that silenced all doubt, leaving the trio mute in the quiet, vast foyer for several awkward moments. No-one would be so bold as to broach the subject of Mother Novel in full. Her wrath was known throughout entire generations of the shadeborn, and Lemarick himself was a walking miracle to have lived with her for so many years and still be in her favour. Lemarick knew that his friends wanted him to walk away from Mother and devise his own path. After what he’d seen that afternoon, he was starting to wish it were possible to do just that. Ugarte fumbled with the folds of her dress, clearing her throat to break the tension.

  “Well, are you free any of the evenings this week?” she suggested.

  Lemarick nodded gingerly.

  “Tomorrow, I think,” he answered.

  “Aha!” Ed said, delving into his jacket and producing a slip of fine green vellum. “Then come to the opera and see my instruments play! Tomorrow is opening night!”

  In all other circumstances before that moment, Lemarick Novel would have politely declined such a frivolous invitation. The pursuit of power had always been so important that the pursuit of art had never before entered his thinking. Now, he took the emerald ticket and drank in its details with a vigour he had never known.

  “I do believe I shall,” he replied with the ghost of a grin.

  The Reunion

  The Populaire was well-named, for on opening night its seats were packed with hundreds of Paris’s most esteemed clientele. Lemarick’s ticket directed him to a private box where he found Ugarte waiting, along with some wealthy-looking gentlemen who were casting her frequent leering glances. The Spanish beauty was evidently grateful to seat Lemarick between herself and the gathered businessmen, affording him a spectacular view of the stage and the pit that contained the musician-less orchestra below. The top of Ed’s sandy hair was visible where he stood waiting for the opera to begin.

  The performance was Carmen, a tale set in Seville and, at the first sign of the traditional Spaniard music, Ugarte began to ease at Lemarick’s side. Lemarick, on the other hand, was growing more inspired by the moment. He had never experienced music to this degree: the lights, colours and motions of the theatre awoke in him a new zest for artistry that he never would have guessed that he possessed. He felt as though he wanted to be involved in the goings-on of the stage, imagining himself as the director, the performers and as the conductor in Edvard’s place.

  That was until the ballet began. It was traditional, Ugarte informed him, for an opera to have a ballet, but the arrival of this sudden change in pace brought with it the harem of dancing girls that he had seen the day before. Nearest to his side of the stage, Lemarick spotted the mysterious girl he had danced with, her unmistakeable dark locks setting her apart from the fairer-haired girls in the troupe. He craned his neck hard to see her face, but the height of the theatre box prevented him from more than the sight of the top of her head as she spun and pranced in time to Edvard’s notes.

  *

  The opera was lengthy, but Lemarick savoured every moment. After the performance, the entire contents of his theatre box were invited backstage to take drinks with the conductor, so Lemarick followed the trail of now-half-drunk businessmen down through the stairwells that led to the non-public parts of the Populaire. The post-opera atmosphere behind the scenes was one of pure elation, and everywhere Lemarick looked there were happy performers congratulating one another on a show well-performed. Once more the desire to be part of their world consumed him as he gazed around, so much so that he lost sight of the group he was supposed to be following. He thought he saw the last flicker of Ugarte’s crimson gown disappearing down a corridor ahead, so Lemarick picked up his pace to trail her and hopefully find the room he was seeking.

  If it was Ugarte, then she had vanished without a trace. The corridor that the young shade had entered was totally barren, in stark contrast to the busy scenes of mirth Lemarick had just left behind. He might have turned back and explored another avenue at once, save for the sight at the end of the corridor, the sight that froze him in his tracks.

  “Entrez, Monsieur.”

  The dancing girl was there, in the farthest doorway, for just a moment. Her dark eyes fixed on Lemarick as her rouged lips spoke the welcoming words. And then she was gone, in a flurry of pale skin and jet-black curls. Lemarick stepped forward, determined to know who the temptress was and what she was after. He felt the hum of his powers rising in his veins as he strode down the corridor and turned sharply into what he soon discovered was a dressing room.

  “Do you remember me yet, magic man?” the girl asked with a chuckle.

  She was seated on a chaise longue beside her make-up mirror, dressed in a sheer red gown that was even more revealing than the beaded creation she had worn the day before. She was no longer the coy, retiring beauty full of excuses. Now she lounged brazenly, closed-lipped and smiling at Lemarick with a knowing look that was far beyond her years. As a shade, Lemarick knew the sight of an old soul in a young body all too well, yet he could not place her, even now that he had seen the delicate beauty of her face as a whole.

  He took one step farther into the room before the door slammed shut behind him. Reeling on his heel, Lemarick found himself face to face with an even more disturbing sight.

  “My dear girl, I fear your face is not quite so memorable as mine.”

  The gentleman blocking Lemarick’s only path of escape was covered in horrendous burns. Where his skin lay undamaged it was a pale brown shade, his lips cracked and dry when he offered Lemarick a smile. His teeth were razor-sharp like those of a beast and, from a century-old place in his memory, Lemarick began to speak the name that raced to the forefront of his mind.

  “Yannick Ferve,” he said with a twisted grimace.

  The vampire lord revelled in Lemarick’s look of disgust, laughing in a dark tone as he took one limping step towards the young shade.

  “It is not every day that the Lord of Paris gets to reunite with the man who gave him his signature look,” he mused with a grin. “It pleases me that shades live for so long. It gives one plenty of time to prepare for revenge.”

  Lemarick glanced to his right, where the sultry girl in red was sidling up to him. A pang of sadness mixed with his growing adrenaline.

  “Time has been kind to you, Elise,” he said.

  “And to you, you handsome thing,” she replied with a wicked giggle.

  Before Lemarick could utter another word, something huge and heavy connected with the back of his head. He went crashing to the ground, the sight of the dressing room turning blacker by the moment as his consciousness slipped away. The limping stance of Yannick was visible in the doorway as Elise’s delicate ballet slippers passed him by.

  “Come, sweet one,” Yannick purred, “We have a theatre to destroy.”

  Hostages

  When he next awoke, it took Lemarick several long moments to rise from the floor. When he moved his neck, he found that the right-hand side stung incredibly and he gripped it with a sudden instinct. His hand came away from the source of the pain covered in deep, crimson blood. The shade stumbled to his feet and raced to the mirror, recoiling in horror at the butchery that had taken place just below his ear. Two holes had been ripped into the side of his neck by overlong teeth, now glistening with the half-sticky residue of drying blood.

  The pair of vampires had said something about harming the theatre. Lemarick gathered his senses quickly and recovered his neckerchief from the floor, tying it securely around his new wound. When he found the door to the dressing room barricaded, the young shade gathered his strength and blasted through the obstruction with a force that smashed every ornament, picture-frame and light fixture in the room. He stormed out into the corridor with t
he kind of rage he usually reserved for training with Mother, his powers carrying him clean off the ground. A rush of air howled at his back as he picked up speed.

  The busy backstage of the Populaire was no more. Trails of blood indicated that several fights must have taken place in the time whilst Lemarick was unconscious, but now the space was empty as a graveyard. Lemarick levitated across the blood-stained props and sandbags, listening intently for the low mumble he thought he could hear. He stopped at the theatre’s great crimson curtain, watching it sway in reaction to the proximity of his powers. A voice suddenly spoke from the other side of the stage.

  “Who will be next to feed?”

  Yannick Ferve was still in the building, his maniacal cackle rising over the sound of a terrified crowd. Silent as death itself, Novel flew gently from the curtain to the side of the stage, peering out from a shadowed spot to scope the situation. The vampire lord had amassed at least a hundred of the theatre’s patrons, and the wealthy guests were herded into the centre aisle by row-upon-row of Yannick’s horde of vampire lackeys.

  From his position in the wings, Lemarick could see at least two dozen human bodies slung into the orchestra pit, blood dripping from their slashed-open throats as their soulless eyes looked up at the grand theatre’s painted ceiling. His stomach quivered but did not lurch at the sight, only anger rose within the shade’s veins. Where were Ugarte and Edvard? Had they escaped before the fray began or were they, like Lemarick, obstructed somewhere from intervening with Yannick’s plans? Elise stood beside her old enemy, now revering him as though they were the greatest of friends. She held her arms out in invitation as the crowd continued to whimper.

  “Come now, next to feed!” she urged with a sharp-toothed smile. “Bring me a human to prepare!”

  A grunt from two vampires near the edge of the stage indicated motion. Lemarick watched as a trembling old man was plucked from the edge of the crowd, screaming in protest as he was dragged up the steps to meet with Elise on the stage. Lemarick realised with horror that he was one of the businessmen in the box that had been leering at Ugarte. His friends had to be here somewhere, though they were nowhere to be found in the crowd. Elise would surely have recognised them and put them out of action, as she had Lemarick. The shade found his hand rising to the bite on his neck as an unthinkable thought tried to push its way to his consciousness.

  Could she have killed them if she’d drained their blood for too long? Were they at the bottom of the body pile in the music pit already?

  Lemarick wouldn’t wait a moment longer to find out. He made to step forward and intervene as the next human victim was held down with his neck exposed, but the sight of another man approaching the stage forced him to freeze in his tracks.

  “Oho,” Yannick crooned at the new figure, “I thought you were more of a private diner, Monsieur Baptiste?”

  Baptiste Du Nord’s fashion had changed very little in his transition from human to vampire. He still gave the air of a well-turned-out gypsy, his elegant waistcoat matched perfectly to the golden scarf about his neck. His beard was cropped in a short, sharp line and his eyes gleamed with malice as his long legs took him up the steps to the stage. He was still only 29 in body, but his spirit reeked of pain and loss and more death than Lemarick could stand to sense. The hunting belt at his waist was still fully-equipped with weapons, but now bracelets made of tiny bones jangled on his caramel-coloured wrists. His teeth were long and sharp when he opened his mouth to speak.

  “That’s not why I approached the stage, my lord,” Baptiste explained.

  He stood beside Yannick and inclined his head in a polite bow before he leaned in towards the burned beast’s gnarled left ear. In the very last moments of his whispering, Baptiste let his bright eyes flash straight to Lemarick’s, where he hid in the darkened wings. He knew in less than a second that Baptiste had spotted him.

  Everything after that was a wild and hasty blur. Yannick barked orders and pointed his withered hands to have the intruder captured, whilst Baptiste and Elise lunged themselves at Lemarick with absurd speed. This time the shade was much sharper in his reactions, dodging their outstretched hands and letting his powers take him high into the domed ceiling of the theatre itself. He looked down on the assembled crowd as he assessed his next move. The humans were gazing up at him in shock and awe, but the vampires were already grouping and listening to more frantic shouts from their lord.

  Then came the hazy, black cloud that Lemarick had once seen in the tunnels, beneath the earth on which the Populaire was built. The all-consuming blackness had been large enough to fill a tunnel when a single vampire had used it, but now several dozen of the beasts were rising into the air as their transformations began. The cloud rained darkness on the once-bright theatre as vampire after vampire made the hazy transition from beast into bat, flying at Lemarick with deathly precision and fearless grace. The shade took off in a blast of air and gravity that saw him speeding like a bullet as he tried to evade their attacks. Sweeping low over the heads of the stunned humans, Lemarick barked at them at the top of his voice.

  “Run you fools! Run!”

  In his low swoop, Lemarick swerved towards the stage to try and take a swipe at Yannick, a fireball slowly burning at his fingertips, ready to give the vampire lord a fresh taste of the past. As he reached the hideous lord’s expression, however, Lemarick was met by the sight of Baptiste, who threw a clod of dirt straight into his eyes. He spiralled back into the air to protect himself, horrified when the earth on his face began to burn like acid.

  Shadehunters often used ritualised earth as part of their arsenal against the shadeborn. This sacrosanct earth was to shades as holy water was to vampires, and Lemarick felt the wild sting in his eyes as he pawed and clawed at his own face to get the burning substance away from his skin. It appeared that the vampire Baptiste had not given up the ways of the hunter. He was still as prepared as ever for the enemies he needed to face.

  Lemarick scarcely had time to wonder what other tricks the hunter had up his sleeves before the first of the bat swarm smacked into his stomach. The horde of creatures were larger and far stronger than natural bats, and they smashed into Lemarick’s body time and again, focusing hard on his chest and stomach until he had little breath left in his lungs. Without the chance to breathe and with his eyes still stinging from the sacred earth, Lemarick found his powers starting to dwindle. He struggled to keep himself aloft in the air, sinking more with every bone-breaking smack as the bats continued their assault. Some of them died from the repeated impact, falling out of the air with a final screech, yet still the others came to continue the onslaught.

  Lemarick landed with a thump on the stage and the bats ceased, clearing a path for Yannick and his two flanks to approach. The old, burned lord sneered at him gleefully, then reached out to lift him up by his neckerchief. The emerald fabric broke away, splitting Lemarick’s skin once more where it had dried and stuck to the wound on his neck. Yannick and Elise both stood back, apparently horrified by the sight of the punctures below the shade’s ear.

  “Who…” Yannick began with a stutter, “Who has done this? Who drank from him?”

  The demand echoed through the bat swarm and Lemarick noticed, with some small amount of triumph, that most of the humans had made it out of the theatre alive, save for a few unfortunate souls who were still being feasted on at the theatre’s exit. The sound of a throat clearing brought the shade’s attention back to those on the stage.

  “I drank him,” Baptiste replied.

  The Broken Code

  The hunter crouched down, looking deep into Lemarick’s pale blue eyes, his own shining gaze far beyond that of a senseless, violent beast. He was too evolved to be overtaken completely by the bloodlust that sustained his eternal life.

  “Why would you drink from him?” Elise asked with a gasp.

  Baptiste merely smiled. “I wanted to see what would happen,” he replied.

  A loud smack made Lemarick flinch. A moment l
ater Baptiste too was on the floor of the stage, lying unconscious beside the shade he had defeated. Yannick stood over the hunter’s form, his hand still raised from the blow as his eyes clouded with thought. Elise and the vampire lord spoke in hushed tones above the pair of prone figures, clearly worried by the fateful news that Baptiste had wounded the shade in his unconscious state. Lemarick didn’t understand the laws of blood by which they lived, but he knew that their state of worry was his only chance to escape their clutches alive.

  He needed power. Lemarick heaved himself onto his back with a faint whimper of pain, feeling his ribs reverberate with agony at the motion. He looked up at the domed, painting ceiling of the opera house where pleasant cherubim were at play. Beyond those false daylight skies lay the real night of Paris and with it, the stars. Lemarick concentrated hard on the scene above, dredging every last scrap of energy from his ailing form to penetrate the ceiling in a burst of all his elemental powers. Only the bats overhead seemed to notice what he was doing, but the creatures were as exhausted as he by the fray and they remained hanging from the theatre boxes and the rafters as Lemarick bored a single hole into the roof, right through the heart of a particularly plump cherub.

  When the starlight poured down into the vast theatre, Lemarick felt calmed by its presence. Though its effects were only tiny at first, Lemarick took in a deep, satisfied breath and began to feel the bruises on his torso healing. If he was lucky, then Yannick and Elise would continue their distracted worrying long enough for the shade to regain his ability to fly.

  Lemarick Novel was seldom lucky. Mere moments after he had started to heal from the starlight, Elise grabbed him hard by the back of his neck and dragged him onto his knees. Though he had amassed a little power again, Lemarick knew that using it to be free of her grip was a fruitless effort. Elise’s sharp nails clawed into the back of his fair blonde hair.