The Watchtower

“simpleminded” younger brother who had fallen into bad company, from which Will was endeavoring to rescue him. The innkeeper clucked his tongue sympathetically and told us that the “evil-looking, yellow-eyed man” had named Paris as their destination. Then he told us where we could hire a coach to take us to Paris. Before we left, he shook his head and tapped his nose. “You can’t fool me, though. That man is not your younger brother. He looked ten years older than you. He’s absconded with the family money, hasn’t he?”
    Will grunted noncommittally, but I saw that the news alarmed him. When we were seated in our new coach, he told me why.
    “Marduk shouldn’t be aging—vampires don’t age. It must mean he’s unable to maintain the shape he’s stolen, which means he’ll either die before he reaches Paris—or be forced to assume another shape, which will make it harder for us to track him down.”
    “Why do you think they’re making for Paris?” I asked.
    “I’m not sure, but I imagine Dee has his reasons. He knew what creature he was summoning. He must have some plan for Marduk … no doubt one that requires Ruggieri’s help … and whatever that plan is”—Will shuddered, which I’d never seen him do before—“we have to stop it.”
    Will shuddered again and I realized he was actually shivering. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “You look like you’ve caught a cold, but you can’t … can you?”
    “I need more blood,” he hissed. “But not from you. You’ve already given me too much. We’ll have to stop.”
    Will told the driver to pull over on the outskirts of a small village, saying he needed to stretch his legs. He strode away toward the huddle of stone buildings, disappearing in the fog. I tried not to think about where he was finding his blood while I waited. The driver—this one more polite than our last, but also more taciturn—observed a stony silence as we waited for Monsieur.
    We waited so long I was afraid that Will had been caught in the act. I was beginning to picture villagers with pitchforks storming the coach when Will appeared suddenly out of the fog and, with a terse command to the driver to go quickly, swept into the coach beside me. His cloak was soaked through. His face was white and drawn, his skin as icy as when he had left.
    “What happened?” I asked.
    “The whole village was on alert. There’d been an attack earlier tonight. A young boy had been garroted, hung up by his feet and drained of blood.”
    “Ugh! Do you think it was Marduk?”
    “A vampire wouldn’t bother with the garroting or wait for the blood to drain out. Possibly Dee and Ruggieri are collecting blood for Marduk because he’s too weak.” Will lapsed into a thoughtful silence—a chilly silence. The fog seeped into the coach, clinging to our damp clothes. Soon I was shivering almost as much as Will.
    Will tried to hunt again at the next town but found all its occupants sheltering behind locked doors and shuttered windows. The few villagers not in their homes huddled together in the pub, whispering of monsters of the night that drank blood. Each town we passed through was similarly shuttered and barred, as if news of the bloodletting had traveled as quickly as wildfire. Or perhaps these villages were always on guard against such monsters.
    Will thought we should find out. In a small village near Chartres, he sent me into an inn to ask for food and drink and see what I could find out, my too basic French notwithstanding. At first the innkeeper was not going to let me in, but then seeing a lone woman he relented and unbarred the door.
    “Mademoiselle must not be alone on the road tonight,” he said, his eyes nearly bulging out of his head. “There is something very bad afoot.” He lowered his voice. “Some say la bête has come back to these parts.”
    I thanked him for his advice and assured him that I’d stay in my coach until I reached Paris. He was so rattled that he didn’t seem to notice my French was modern, accented, and error riddled. When I rejoined Will, I told him what the innkeeper had said. “He called it la bête . I know that means ‘beast,’ but he said it like it was a particular beast.”
    “La Bête du Gévaudan,” Will said through chattering teeth. “A creature that terrorized the mountains of the Haute-Loire for one hundred and one days. The beast killed over a hundred people by tearing their throats out. Only the beast of Gévaudan