This final night of revelry, the eve of Ash Wednesday, was the wildest, loudest, most beautiful festival she’d ever experienced, and although she would rather have been seated safely in a high barouche where she could gape all she liked, Victoria had other responsibilities.
Her switch, in fact, was more than a bit thicker than the ones other revelers were holding. In fact, it was not only thicker, but had been whittled to a lethal point on the bottom end.
Eschewing the long-beaked peregrine mask she’d worn the night before, Victoria had donned a more manageable one tonight. The upper part of her face was covered by a gold mask painted with glittering streaks of blue and green, sparkling curlicues of orange and pink, and had no protrusions that would catch on nearby shoulders. White feathers sprouted from the top and sides, and long curls of red ribbon hung from the edges to her shoulders. Only her mouth and chin were free, which made eating those delicious roasted chestnuts and speaking much easier than the previous evening’s disguise.
“Senza moccolo!” a man masked as a banditto shouted in her ear, and he flicked his switch toward her candle.
As she had quickly learned to do, Victoria shielded her flame whilst grabbing at the handkerchief, and plucked the switch from the person’s hand. With a nod behind her own mask, she tossed away the handkerchief, but left off from dousing the switch holder’s taper.
Zavier looked at her. “You are very quick,” he said with a smile beneath the heavy-brimmed sombrero he’d chosen to wear this night. She wasn’t certain how he’d gotten away without wearing a mask when Ilias had insisted she do so. “You protect your candle like you protect those of this city.”
“This is madness,” Victoria said, looking about. All she could see were large, painted masks and acres of shoulders and necks and throats everywhere, everywhere. Cast in shadows below arm level, lit from above, glowing and stark by turns in the night, loud and more of a crush than any ballroom back in London, the extinguishing ceremony was by turns breathtaking and horrific. “Even if I knew a vampire was about, I’d never be able to identify it, let alone get to him or her.” She had to raise her voice to be heard above the din.
“Aye, so perhaps we ought to just enjoy the festivities as much as possible until the candles are doused at midnight and everyone begins to go home. After that it will be much easier to move about.” The way he looked at her, so intently for a moment, as his hat brushed the feathers of her mask, made her stomach do a little flip.
But before Victoria could reply, a sudden prickle at the back of her neck intensified into a chill. She turned quickly, sensing the presence of an undead in close proximity, and her shoulder slammed into the angel next to her, and then into a gypsy, and then into an owl, as the masked people pushed past her.
Glancing back toward Zavier, she saw him starting off in the opposite direction as if he, too, had felt something and was pursuing it. Despite their agreement about the difficulty of identifying undead in this crowd, neither of them would stand aside and do nothing when a vampire was near.
They were well separated by now, and as Victoria turned once again and tried to move in the opposite direction from the people near her, she scanned the crowd, looking for red irises behind the masks that streamed past her, or for a disguise that could be covering the face of Sara Regalado.
She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to sense which direction to go after the creature that skulked nearby, and finally set off toward the left, through the milling people. The chill at the back of her neck began to intensify as she made her way through to the edges of the crowd. Suddenly, not so far from the darkness that lingered beyond the revelry, she saw the glowing red orbs in a masked face two persons away.
Edging her shoulder through the throng, playing the senzo moccoletto game, Victoria squirmed along until she was close enough to touch the vampire. Her neck was frigid, and she felt the odd rush of the presence the undead gave in close proximity. Angling her switch cum stake, Victoria turned to face him—or her; she wasn’t certain of the creature’s gender—and closed her fingers around an arm.
The crowd was so thick and full of shouts and movement and the flicking of switches that Victoria could have slammed the stake into the vampire’s chest before he realized that she was a Venator, and without drawing any attention to herself, but she didn’t.
Instead she said, “Tell Beauregard the female Venator is looking for his grandson.”
He looked down at her, fangs gleaming. “I’m no message boy.”
“You aren’t? Well, then, my apologies.” She moved easily, angling her stake, plunging it up and into his chest.
The vampire disintegrated, as vampires did, into a poof of ash that burst over the partygoers, causing a dainty little shepherdess to forget about protecting her moccoletto for a moment in favor of brushing away the sudden gust of dust.
The chilly prickling at the back of Victoria’s neck had eased, but had not disappeared completely. There were other vampires in the vicinity. Perhaps one of them would rather be a message boy than a pile of dust.
Even so, she’d already given the message to two others last night, after returning to Carnivale from the graveyard and Sara Regalado’s aborted kidnap attempt. Perhaps that would be enough to get the message to Sebastian.
Her neck still prickling, she began to push her way back through the crowd in search of Zavier. Behind her Victoria heard the shepherdess’s shriek of annoyance as her candle was doused.
Suddenly something slammed into her from behind. She stumbled and would have fallen to the ground had she not knocked into a Pulcinella. Her flame guttered in its pooled wax, and the Pulcinella whipped his switch-laden handkerchief down on her moccoletto.
When Victoria regained her balance and turned, her now-dark candle still steady in her grip, she found herself face-to-face with a masked man. His eyes weren’t red, and she couldn’t see the shape or color of them behind his black domino. But she recognized the angle of his chin, and the crop of fair curls that brushed the side of his neck. The smile he gave her was bemused, and laced with challenge.
Apparently the message had been delivered.
Before she could speak he moved sharply, yanking a nearby Joan of Arc between them and pushing off through the crowd.
Victoria shoved a laughing Saint Joan out of her way and followed, her heart pounding. She didn’t hesitate to go after him, even though she certainly recognized that she’d been followed twice in as many nights, despite wearing two different masks. It was a risk, but not an unexpected one.
Her stake was in her hand, and another was in a deep pocket where she also had a metal dagger Kritanu had given her when she started her ankathari training. The kadhara had a curved blade and was about the length of her forearm. She was also protected by the large crucifix she wore beneath her costume, not to mention her duo of vis bullae.
Watching the back of the shadowy domino and following its irregular path through the crowd was no easy task. He didn’t carry a taper and Victoria’s had been extinguished, so as they neared the edge of the light-filled festival, she paused to catch a flame from the fat wick of a donkey’s candle.
When she pushed through the last barrier of people and found herself in a small, narrow viuzza—what she would call a mews back in London—Victoria stopped and looked around. It was an odd setting: behind her thousands upon thousands of people laughing and shouting with their glowing yellow candles, and here, in front of her, a dark alleyway lit only by her single flame, and silent. Still as death.
Her neck was still cold, the hair still raised to attention, but she saw no one. He’d been there a moment before, just as she burst free of the crowd, but now she was alone.
Ripe for another black canvas cloth to come wafting down over her head.
Victoria braced herself, half crouched, turning slowly and peering into the shadows. Then she saw one of them move.
“Ah, it is you. I was not altogether certain, but the way you wielded that stake convinced me.” The voice was soft as the figure moved into the dim light.
“Beauregard.” Victoria stepped toward him, warily casting about to see if he was alone, or if someone lurked nearby to pounce on her from behind. Sebastian, perhaps. Her stake was firm in her palm. The back of her neck remained cold and prickly. But it itched, as though there were something else watching them. “Did you receive my message?”
“But why else would I seek you out?” His response was easy, but she could sense the respect and wariness in his demeanor as he flipped back the hood of his domino.
“Perhaps the message was garbled, then,” she replied. “It was your grandson I wished to speak with. Not you.”
“You needn’t brandish that stake as though you are a novice Venator out for her first hunt,” he said, crossing his arms over his middle in a picture of nonchalance that pulled up one of his sleeves and revealed a strong, elegant wrist. The stance, the expression on his face, reminded her again of Sebastian.
Although the two shared a similar, elegant facial structure and thick, curling hair, there wasn’t a great resemblance otherwise. Beauregard, who must have been in his forties when he was turned, had a slightly wider nose and more delicate lips than his grandson, and his hair was more of a silvery blond than the tawny color of Sebastian’s. He was handsome enough in his own cool fashion, and that, along with his persistent charm, and the fact that he was exceedingly well dressed, was what reminded her of the younger man.
“I’ve done nothing to threaten you or to harm anyone,” Beauregard continued.
“You’ve been undead for four hundred years; I’m fairly certain you’ve mauled at least one mortal during that time. And once you’ve fed from one mortal, your sentence of eternal damnation is assured. I thought I might help you more quickly on your way there.”
“Er…almost six hundred years, my dear Victoria. Six hundred. Yet, a pittance when one looks at the age of the elegant Lilith, yes?” He shifted, his eyes beginning to glow ruby, narrowing with annoyance. “Put the stake away. After all, you did send the message, and it’s not as if I’ve tried to bite you.”
