The Watchtower

strongly sulfurous tinge to it. Then he felt himself shoved over backward into a prone position on the bed, as if invisible hands, or a violent wind, had pushed him down.
    As he struggled back to a sitting position, Will had the odd sense that he might have blacked out while prone on the bed. He sensed some small acceleration in time, and the sky outside seemed palpably brighter when the flash and flames receded. He had no sense of how long he’d entered the blackness or where it had been located. But he had this odd sense of time lapse as an external change and not an internal blackout, some room he’d entered, almost some nation he’d become a part of. A place far away, and a new Will Hughes emerging from this sojourn in eternal darkness. It was all so irrational, and hazy … but this Will Hughes, like a man possessed to a new way of thinking, did want to go to Pointe du Raz, overwhelmingly so. He wouldn’t hear of doing otherwise. This Will Hughes only wanted to be with Marguerite for eternity. Or else not at all! And he felt no caution about Dee ambushing him as Lightning Hands and Russwurin had done. Will would be extraordinarily cautious and have a weapon on him.
    He scribbled a note to her and put it in the wall compartment:
    My love, if you’re reading this, you know I have borrowed your ring and your box, and my deepest apologies for not being able to notify you first. With any luck and Godspeed I will be returning them (and myself) to you shortly! I know what meager reassurance my own ring, left in the absence of yours, provides. Trust me that I would not have taken such an extraordinary measure as removing your property without the most absolute justification, and that my loyalty to you, I trust, will soon be rewarded by the most perfect harmony between us. In the meantime I am, lovingly, your servant and ever-devoted [signed] Will Hughes.
    He cursed Dee for his night-visit requirement; otherwise he might well have been able to next see Marguerite, in the joy of new immortality, this very evening! He gathered up his belongings and concealed the box among them.
    He was halfway out the door when another thought occurred to him, a thought that brought hot blood to his face. Although he’d paid in advance for the room, he had not left a gratuity for the maid, a sweet, simple girl who had been tireless in her ministrations to him throughout his stay. It was bad enough he was abandoning Marguerite; it was an outright affront to his conception of himself as a gentleman to stiff the maid. He removed several gold coins from his pocket and, depositing them in a pouch, left them on top of a chest with a quickly scrawled note: Pour Anne Marie, Merci! Satisfied that he had behaved like a gentleman even in dire circumstances, he descended to the street and walked briskly to the farrier’s on the edge of town, where he retained a horse to ride to Pointe du Raz. The quick storm had cleared, and the sun was rising bloodred behind him as he rode out onto the main road. In his face was a hot wind from the west, rough and dust-streaked, like one that might blow down an alley in hell. In his mind was Marguerite and how, when he returned to her on the morrow, their problems would be gone forever.

26
    Blood Moon
    As soon as we were over the crest of the hill, the light grew brighter. For a moment I was afraid it was the rising sun, but then I saw that it was only the full moon—a huge, rust-colored moon that hung over the next valley like a glowing jack-o’-lantern. A small village nestled in the crook of the valley a mile or so away was blood-tinged as if it had lately been the scene of a massacre. The lake beside the village reflected back the ruddy face of the moon.
    “Is that Paimpont?” I asked. “It’s closer than I thought.”
    “It must be. I recognize the abbey, but…” Will looked thoughtful. The moonlight gave his skin a menacing cast.
    “I saw the tomb of your ancestor there,” I told him. “Guillem de Hughes.”
    “A bloody crusader. When I first came here, I was so excited to discover that it was the ancestral home of the Hugheses, but then the more I learned, the more I found that the whole family history was soaked in blood. From that first selfish bastard who shot his swan bride to keep her from leaving to mercenaries and crusaders to … well, to me . Over the years I’ve come to wonder if becoming a vampire wasn’t the natural evolution of my lineage.”
    “Don’t talk like that.