This Hellish Alchemy
By April French

Part Four

"I--I understand now," Fleur said, eyes wide. "Strange behavior... the pallor of your faces. I have heard of this. The vampire."

Nicholas nodded reluctantly. "He will make you one of us whether you wish it or not."

"My only wish is to be with the one I love. I am interested in so many things that are of another world!" Fleur insisted passionately. "Why should this be any different?"

"Please, Fleur." He released his master and approached her. "I do not regret what I am. But when I chose this, the future of our family fell to you."

"There is no future without Lucien--!" she cried, trying to run past him. Nicholas caught her.

"This is not right for you, Fleur."

"Nicolas," she retorted indignantly, breaking free of his grip. She went to LaCroix, who put his hands on her shoulders protectively.

"Whose heart do you choose to break, Nicholas?" he asked, his husky voice laden with emotion. "Your mother's? Your sister's? Mine?"

"For you, this is just another conquest. Another death to satisfy your craving!"

"Aren't you a little confused, Nicholas? She is mortal. Therefore, she will die. And all her beauty will die with her. I can preserve that. Forever." He kissed her hair, and Fleur closed her eyes and leaned into his touch.

"It is the beauty of her innocence you love," said Nicholas quietly. "And that you will kill with the first taste of her blood. If you truly love Fleur, LaCroix, you won't destroy that." He shook his head. "You will not..."

Incensed, Fleur turned to the man she loved, to protest, to plead with her brother--and then she saw LaCroix's face.

It was not that Nicholas was right. Far from it. It was not Fleur's innocence that LaCroix loved, but that she was not an innocent. And yet despite that, she could still have such a lovely way of looking at life. He loved her intelligence. He loved her... She had a spirit, a wonderful vibrant spirit that still flourished, despite the attempted crushing of it by her family and her society. I love her. So I will do ask Nicholas asks.

LaCroix took Fleur's face in his hands. Her great blue eyes looked up at him, not understanding. "'Tis a great irony, is it not?" he murmured hoarsely. "That such a cold, still heart could feel such pain?" He would do as Nicholas asked because he knew his son hated him, and if he brought Fleur across... I do not want her to become infected by Nicholas's feelings for me.

He leaned his forehead against hers. Can I hear the stars weeping? he wondered. His cold heart thudded once, heavily, in his chest.

Nicholas tugged his sister away. "Fleur."

"No, Nicolas," she protested, tearing her eyes from the pale man in black, "I don't want to go--" Nicholas gripped her head in his hands and she froze.

"Don't be afraid." His face filled her eyes, and his voice resonated in her ears. "After we are gone, your life will be good again. Sleep. Sleep and forget." Mutely, she nodded. Nicholas kissed her forehead tenderly, and then he watched his young sister leave the garden. LaCroix did not. "We will leave as soon as possible."

"Yes." LaCroix lifted his head. "You've probably done me a favor," he hissed, coming up beside his fledgling. "But you must realize, Nicholas, that I will retribution." His voice dropped lower and lower until it finally resembled the warning growl of an angry lion. "One day, when you have fallen in love, I will take from you what you have taken from me. We're agreed?"

"If I ever truly love a mortal--"

"Are. We. Agreed?"

Nicholas nodded. "We are agreed."

LaCroix stalked into the castle and grabbed his belongings from the guestroom. Leave as soon as possible. We'll leave now, and damn his family! And he slammed the door so hard, he broke the great iron hinges.

But he paused outside of Fleur's chamber. Just go on, his mind urged him. Leave her. Forget her! He put his hand to the latch. It was unlocked.

She had fallen haphazardly onto her bed, unable to fight the hypnotic stupor. LaCroix slid the saddlebags from his shoulder and knelt beside her. A hand hung off the bed; it was the same hand whose finger his rose had pricked. The wound had healed days ago. There was not even a tiny scar left for her to wonder over, nothing left to jar her memory.

"Ma Fleur..." he whispered, in agony. He leaned over to kiss her lips, but thought better of it. He saw the leather thong around her neck, from which hung the key to her book, her book of the heavens. Carefully, he untied the string and lifted the key from her sleeping form. LaCroix tied it around his own neck. He took the book of the heavens from her table, and in its place, left his rebec.

When she awoke the next morning, it was the first thing she saw. And, as LaCroix had hoped, she remembered everything. "An impossible dream." Her tears fell on the smooth, well-worn wood. "An impossible dream. Lucien... Lucien..."

That day, when they stopped to shelter in an abandoned barn as far from the castle as their horses would take them, LaCroix chose to make his bed far away from his children. Nicholas would not speak to him, and Janette did not want to press him, so they let him be. In this way, Nicholas did not recognize the book that his master had surreptitiously slid from his saddlebag.

LaCroix did not sleep that day. Instead, he settled back against the old, musty, slightly molding straw, and unlocking the book with the key he had taken from around Fleur's neck, he read of the heavens until sunset.

"Love exists. Rages within. A silent scream of endless pain. Hellish alchemy indeed. Without equal. Not death, not hell itself... but a precious, precious flower... long withered... and gone."

~Finis--March 4th, 2003~