Adrien grew very still. The last thing he’d expected was Alfonse encouraging him to explore a true bonding with Lily, the kind that for Alfonse had led to marriage to Giselle. He shook his head. What you’re suggesting can’t be. You know what I am.
At that, Alfonse’s lips quirked. Yes, I know what you are. But do you?
Lily glanced up at Adrien. “Is there something I should know?” she asked, looking from one to the other.
“No,” Adrien said.
Alfonse struck the pillar with a single sideways motion of his fist, which depressed a stone lever. In turn, another part of the broad base of the pillar slid open.
Alfonse squatted and pulled out a black metal box. He set it on the floor then slid it across a flat stretch of ground that Adrien realized comprised pavers of some kind, very old. Even this deep into the Trevayne system, though perhaps millennia ago, vampires had worked the cavern.
Adrien released Lily then dropped to his knees. He opened the lid. Inside were a dozen documents or so. He flipped through them and found several engineering schematics, but unlike anything he’d seen before, as though designed with some kind of code.
He glanced up at Alfonse. “Have you looked at these before?”
“No. I never wanted to. I agreed to house them here, at Sebastien’s request, over fifty years ago. I asked him why he didn’t just destroy them but he said he feared that one day our world would have need of them. I guess that day’s come. Just tell me that you’ll do right by them.”
“You know I will.”
Adrien glanced at each document, written in French but also translated into English. When he finished scanning one, he’d hand it to Lily, who dropped to sit beside him on the stone floor.
As she read them, he felt her excitement as she sought the weapon’s location. But as his stack grew smaller, and nothing emerged except scientific notations, experiments, and the like, that excited jolt diminished until she read the last one and examined the final schematic.
“There are references to at least two dozen countries where experiments were held,” Lily said, “but nothing else, nothing of real use.”
“But working from a list of twenty-four countries instead of two hundred narrows the field.” Alphonse closed the metal box and put it back in the vault. Another fist on stone and the apparatus sealed up again.
Adrien gathered up all documents into a single tight stack, tucked them into his waistband, then zipped up his jacket to keep them pressed against his chest.
Lily had grown very quiet. He felt her disappointment that the discovery hadn’t yielded immediately usable details. He also sensed her fatigue and that her head still ached.
He shook hands with Alfonse once more and was about to depart when Alfonse said, “Take off to the north. If you’ve been followed, they’ll be waiting to the south. You’ve got a couple of hours until dawn, so you have time to take a different route back. I’d head west to the coast, if I were you, and not return to Paris until you can enter from the east.”
“That’s sound advice.” He held his arm out to Lily. She stepped onto his foot, but as he slid his arm around her waist and drew her close, she slumped against him. She was human, unused to altered flight travel, and the hours were all wrong for her usual sleep patterns. In her world she would have been in bed a long time before now.
He needed to get her home, back to Paris, back in his bed.
But the thought of having her there, beside him, her warm body and soft curves, sent sudden desire streaking through him all over again. He took a couple of deep breaths.
Adrien, I can feel your desire. Will you need blood again? Even telepathically her words sounded exhausted.
Just ignore that. Let’s get you home. Ready?
Yes. Just … please try not to go too fast.
I won’t.
He nodded to Alfonse then shifted to altered flight.
As he took off and passed through solid rock, aiming in a skyward direction, she asked, What difference does it make which way we go? Why go all the way to the coast?
Couple of reasons. This kind of slow travel leaves behind a trail. If fanatics are trying to locate us, then they probably would have found the trail to Sebastien’s by now.
Which means the trail would also have led to the Trevayne cavern system.
Yes.
When nothing more returned to him, he realized Lily had fallen asleep. Just as well. He sustained his slow speed heading west to the coast of France.
* * *
Lily awoke as Adrien dropped them into his bedroom. She was surprised she’d slept but grateful even though her head throbbed.
She released Adrien, and took a moment to steady herself before crossing to the window. She could see the Eiffel Tower, lit up and misty through the rain. She was exhausted and confused about all that had happened, especially with Adrien. She put her hands on the cold glass, trailing her fingers down the rivulets.
Adrien had caught the boy up in his arms, a sign of affection, yet he was a vampire. And the system had three hundred more children, which meant families, something so human in design that she still had difficulty processing this new reality.
She felt Adrien behind her, very still and waiting. The chain at her neck didn’t even vibrate, but lay inert. She needed to sleep, but sleeping through the flight had keyed her up.
“How’s your head?” His deep resonant voice soothed her, but why should anything about Adrien soothe her?
“Much better.” She glanced over her shoulder, needing to say more. He took his coat off, laying it over the bench at the foot of the bed, and set the documents on the dresser. “Thanks. I’m not even nauseated.”
“Good. And I know you need your sleep. Dawn will arrive soon and I’ll need to rest as well. But I’ll sleep on the floor if you want.”
At that she turned to face him. “Why are you being so kind to me?”
He scowled. “Am I being kind? Am I, in your opinion, even capable of that?”
She put two fingers against her forehead and rubbed. “I’ve always believed that you know someone by what they do, not by their past, their family, or, in this case, their species. When I learned that vampires had killed my family, I had believed that you were all made like sharks, restless killing machines that devoured anything in their path. You’ve proven so much to me this night and I owe you an apology.”
He stepped closer to her and took her arm gently in his. But as she looked up at him, she saw the deep frown between his brows, something that seemed as much a part of him as the shade of his dark hair or his flecked teal eyes. “Lily, I want to apologize for what happened before, here, when I took blood from you. I wasn’t myself and I’m sorry.”