Follow The Night (Bewitch The Dark) by Michele Hauf Read Free Book Online Page A

epitaph issued by his father on the last night he’d seen the man. Cecil Renan had believed in greed, of the flesh, mind, and purse, all in the pursuit of his comfort . And ever he sought to please his fickle Juin-Marie.
    Determined to create beliefs so distant from his absent parents’ licentious greed, Gabriel had striven to walk higher ground. Much as he had clung to that high path while taking the Grand Tour, upon return to Paris he had been kicked and shoved by the naysayers who could not see beyond his parents’ damning legacy.
    His disappointments had turned his heart cold.
    A man could lose himself in the cream of Paris, floating upon the surface, mired in the thickness of it all. Mayhap he had already lost. What did he believe in?
    Could he believe in a vampire?
    He fingered the wound on his neck. You do believe. You just don’t know how to admit it.
    He drew in a breath that captured lingering tendrils of rosemary. Traces of her. A breath of freshness he had not hoped to have. Despite himself, he smiled.
    “Toussaint!”
    The valet’s head immediately popped inside the bedroom. “Yes?”
    “Bring along Leo’s clothing. We will go after Mademoiselle Desrues.”

FOUR
     
    Toussaint knew Roxane lived in a garret not far from the Palais Royale on the rue Vivienne, for the two had talked much during Gabriel’s confinement. She did not occupy a cell in Bicêtre, as he had sullenly mused. Though certainly she did display a tendency toward eccentricity, if not outright lunacy.
    His attention focused inward, Gabriel stared out the carriage window at the passing building fronts. He felt oddly envious that Toussaint possessed so much knowledge of the pale beauty. Almost as if the valet had uncovered her secrets, and Gabriel was left to grope through a mire to discover any small fact.
    Foolishness. He could learn the woman’s secrets with but a crook of his finger and a wink. Seduction was as easy as selecting a waistcoat from one’s armoire.
    But to truly know a woman? That was a different challenge entirely.
    Beyond mastering her physical desires, he had never really known a woman. If they were lovers he attended to her pleasures, and in turn, his own. If a lover had ever shown promise toward the future, well, lately, he’d gotten himself as far from their presence as possible. Why risk torturing himself with hope?
    Because it is hope that fills your empty heart. If only for a moment.
    And moments were often all he was offered.
    You’ve but days until the full moon.
    Many moments, that wait. But all in all? So little time.
    Of the choices Roxane had offered him, the one she was not sure of seemed his best hope. He would kill the vampire before the full moon, thus ensuring he did not become one himself. But to find the man, he needed Roxane. Unless she was correct in her guess that Anjou would seek him.
    He hoped for that. He would be waiting, stake in hand.
    “She is wrong, you know.”
    Gabriel smoothed his fingers across the tender wounds on his neck. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “You are not a swish.”
    Certainly not.
    “You were winded following the duel with the drunk. That is why you were not at the top of your game.”
    He had not needed that to be pointed out to him. But Toussaint never avoided the truth. “Winded by a skirmish with an idiot dancing in his cups,” Gabriel mocked himself.
    He pressed his forehead against the glass pane in the carriage door. “It doesn’t matter what Mademoiselle Desrues thinks I am.”
    “Don’t lie to yourself, man. You’re already falling. I can see it in your eyes. They are seeking, searching, dreaming of Roxane.”
    Gabriel clicked his fingernails against the dirty glass and smirked. “Silence, Toussaint.”
     
     
    Roxane lived in a positively medieval neighborhood unhampered by wide streets or sanitation, to judge from the refuse piled outside doors and leaking onto the streets. No center gutters here to redirect the