We were both infatuated with her when we were seventeen, and after a long courtship where she couldn’t choose between the two of us, she finally chose Michel – the soulful one – instead of me, the hot-headed and impetuous one. When I realized she loved him more, I gracefully moved aside. Michel and I would be starting seminary the following year and so this was our last few months of freedom. I didn't want any hard feelings between us over a girl, even one as pretty as Danielle. Besides I had lost my virginity several years earlier while Michel had planned to save his forGod.
I talked him out of it and there are times now that I blame myself for everything, for if he hadn't met Danielle, perhaps everything would be different today. But back when I was seventeen, I thought I was a man and knew my own mind and the ways of theworld.
"You have to make a sacrifice to become a priest. If you've never made love to a woman, how can you know the depth of your sacrifice? At least I know what I'll be givingup."
Michel thought that was a reasonable argument for losing his virginity, but he was very picky, always looking for a woman who met his high standards of moral conduct. She had to be a virgin, like he was, and she had to be a good Catholic. One who would do her penance for having sex with him before being married. Oh, he was so idealistic! So wide-eyed and full of faith in the possibility of chastity, believing that God would beenough.
He and Danielle met in a barn in the countryside and lost their virginity to each other in a hayloft, and spent the next few months in a heated romance, their youthful passion never completely slaked no matter how often they met. I thought it might make him change his mind about the priesthood, but I was wrong. While my commitment to it waxed and waned with every pretty girl I met and romanced, Michel's wassteadfast.
There were tears that fell when it was time for us to leave for Toulouse and the seminary. He told me that I was right – having lost his virginity and having had a true sexual relationship with Danielle gave him something to sacrifice when he took his vows. He was almost happy to feel the pain of separation from her. The pain made him feel closer to God in some way, as if he deserved pain and heartbreak for some wrong he had committed, but if he had committed a wrong, I was never aware of it. He'd always been so good, so loving, soforgiving.
So it was with some mixed feelings that he saw Danielle a decade later, after he'd gained and then lost the Bishophood and became a vampire. For her part, the lovely Danielle had never married and might as well have committed her life to Christ the way Michel had, considering her own chaste life. Perhaps she never recovered from Michel leaving her. Perhaps she just never met another man whom she loved as much asMichel.
He saw her and I think his heart broke. She was still lovely of course, but she had aged and time had worn lines of care and sacrifice into herface.
"Go to her," I said, urging him on from theshadows.
"I can't," he said. "She'd be terrified to see me thisway."
"She loved you. She'd be happy to see you,Michel."
And so it was I who was truly responsible for her death, not my poor brother, still so young and inexperienced in the ways ofvampires.
He did go to her one night, knocking at her door where she lived still with her aging parents, the spinster daughter who kept theirhouse.
"Michel!" she cried when she saw him. She stole out from the house to meet him, so happy that he'd returned after all these years that she barely noticed how pale he was or how cold was his skin. She fell into his arms as if they'd only parted the previous day. He was, of course, in heaven being with her again. Sentimental Michel, the soft-hearted one. The idealist. Washing away the memory of Marguerite's depravity with Danielle's purelove.
He thought he could drink her blood without killing her, drinking only so much and then letting her recover for a few days so she could once again be healthy. They went on this way for some time, and it was the happiest I had ever seen Michel since we were turned. Everything seemed to be going well for us – Marguerite was nothing more than an uncomfortable memory, we were in our familiar haunts, and the continued crusade in southern France kept us inblood.
Danielle wanted to become a vampire to be with Michel, but of course, he wouldn't agree. He felt guilty enough about drinking her blood and being her lover, let alone creating another vampire. And so a month and then a year passed in this way, with the three of us living in a house we rented, and Danielle offering Michel some solace after his ordeal with Marguerite. Here was a woman who loved him, who was, if not his equal, then a willingpartner.
When a new vampire came into town, killing townspeople at will, seemingly not caring if there were rumors of a monster at loose, my first thought was that this was Marguerite's Sire come to find her and take her back under his wing. Michel and I were so naïve at that time. Neither of us knew much about our own kind as Marguerite had no time for teaching us nor did she know much. So we had no idea that the strange sensations we were experiencing were just our heightened senses detecting the presence of another hunter in ourterritory.
He foundus.
One night he turned up at our doorstep and we made our first acquaintance with anAncient.
Ancients are not like ordinary vampires. They were born that way, made of the union of Nephilim and mortals and were the first vampires, infected with a curse that would turn any who drank their blood into their servants, addicted toblood.
Soren was magnificent, unnaturally beautiful in a cold cruel way, tall, with pale hair, white skin and eyes that were red even when he wasn't feeding or hunting. A man of the Northern realm of ice and snow, he had been made by a Nephilim and had grown up and killed his own maker, drinking his blood and becoming more powerful than all othervampires.
We knew none of this when we killed Marguerite. We learned only toolate.
Danielle made the unfortunate mistake of admitting him when he said he knew Michel and wanted to become reacquainted. He came in and went directly to Michel, grabbing him by the neck, demanding to know where Marguerite was. Of course, Michel couldn't hide the truth from him and Soren demanded reparations. He demanded that Michel turn Danielle over to him in blood price. Michel pleaded for her life but Soren was not moved by his talk of how virtuous Danielle was and how much he lovedher.
"Either you give her to me and I kill her," he said. "Or you do it yourself. You choose. Either way, she'sdead."
Michel was helpless to fight Soren, being only a few years a vampire rather than severalthousand.
"Me, then," Michel said. But he couldn't do it, stopping well before she was too weakened by bloodloss.
Soren then compelled Michel to kill Danielle, and he did, draining her in front of us, only realizing what he'd done when he finished and she lay dead in his arms. Before her body was even cool, Soren tore her from Michel's arms and threw the body over the city wall, onto a pile of refuse as if it were nothing more thantrash.
"Now we're even," he said to Michel but of course, we weren't for Marguerite was a vampire, and Danielle was only mortal. Then Soren compelled Michel to join him, travelling across France and then north to England as hisservant.
The night Danielle died, after Soren had retired to his room with two young women, I searched around, looking for Michel and he was nowhere to be found. I went out and scoured the city looking for him, fearing the worst, but instead I found him in the cemetery just outside the city gates, digging Danielle's grave. He'd left our rooms and gone to retrieve her body from the garbage heap outside city walls and carried her to the cemetery, digging the grave beside our family crypt with his barehands.
And so it was that we buried Danielle and left Carcassonne. One more wound to my brother's heart that I fear will never heal. He and I have killed so many mortals. Most we tried to ensure were already dying but this death was hard and Michel has not yet forgiven himself for putting Danielle atrisk.