Chapter Text
The day of the blood moon, the wind whips and howls and screams, announcing the onslaught of rain long before it descends upon the city. From his flat on Daguerre Armie watches the grim sky with eyes that reflect gray, discouraged, chewing his fingernails in agitation. He’s been planning for months to spend this night in Paris, for one reason and one alone: to be near the Catacombs when the blood moon rises. He will be one very unhappy soul if a little blustery storm ruins his viewing plans.
Catacombs + blood moon = great plan. Right? Right.
At any rate he pays no mind to hazard; he’s a hunter, his life is to find, discover, learn. Understand. He doesn’t fear things that go bump in the night; he invites them, has no qualms jumping into metaphorical lion’s dens. When he’d heard a few months back that the Airbnb located in the midst of the Parisian Catacombs was opening its doors for a select group of brave (read: wealthy) partygoers on the night of the pending blood moon, he’d booked his spot immediately, paying no mind to cost. Experience, he always reasons, is superior to anything material.
Tonight he will dwell among bones.
*
The day drags. The sky darkens, lightens, ceases, downpours. Armie wanders the nearby streets in a light rain jacket, stops at a tiny café for hot coffee, sips broodingly as he passes gaudy shops and American fast food chains, looking garishly out of place in the European streets. Normally he loves rain; today his affection is subdued. Half an hour of moongazing, he reasons, shouldn’t be too difficult a request for the heavens to fulfill.
By 8:45 pm, the sky has swept itself mostly clear of damp, but enough cloud remains to paint its canvas with eerie atmosphere. Armie is due at the catacombs by 9:30. He sheathes himself in black and gray, switches from caffeine to alcohol. Worries at his ragged left thumbnail, waits on the balcony with his toes tapping and his stomach roiling in anticipation. In his experience, the blood moon draws witches, vampires, man-wolves. In his experience, the preternatural world alights for its splendor.
Not for the first time, he wonders what company he will keep tonight, when he dwells among those bones.
*
For a time he stands outside the entrance to his single-night tomb, revering the scarlet sphere adorning the ink dome above his head. Several rather gothic-looking individuals slip past him while he observes, calculating the positioning of Mars, senses honed sharp as a scythe. While Armie has a penchant for disregarding danger, he has an uncanny ability to scent it before it comes; when it hovers like noxious gas in the air before striking.
The moon is such a violent burgundy bright it could light the world like a devil sun.
Armie takes a deep breath, assesses. Normally he might enter a situation like the one that currently faces him with blessed crosses and salt guns and holy water, but tonight he has nothing on him but an age-softened leather jacket and a layer of trust. If Nosferatu awaits, let him. He asked for this.
Through the entrance he finds a woman garbed in Elvira black, eyeliner spiky as a stiletto heel, mouth darker than three AM. She curves her lips at him, holds out a coffin-nailed hand so shockingly white as to be nearly translucent, clears her throat.
“Réservation?”
Armie produces the envelope containing the necessary papers, places it in her phantom hand. She inspects them briefly, looks up at him, flashes that closed-mouth smile at him again. He wonders if she dresses like this all the time, or if the Catacombs hired her for tonight alone, their little enchantress serving as a barrier between the world of the living and the land of the dead.
“Merci,” she says. “Suivez-moi.”
So Armie follows.
He expects twisting cobblestone passages illuminated by flickering flame, walls lined with volumes of bones. He is not disappointed. To his left, skulls stack one atop the other from floor to low ceiling; to his right, scapulae and clavicles and pelvic bones crisscross, forming a macabre sort of wall. Armie can’t stop himself grinning; the devil in him is in heaven (hell?).
In total silence they walk for a good quarter mile into the mass tomb. Armie is just wondering what will happen if others arrive behind him in the absence of his ghoulish hostess when they reach a door, inlaid with – you guessed it – bones. Faint noise emanates from behind it – music, voices. Chanting?
The Elvira woman pushes the door open, gestures him inside. Her eyes are full black when she says, rustily,
“Au revoir.”
Despite his courageous nature Armie’s hackles raise, unbidden. He nods once, steps through the entryway without observation, watches her sashay confidently back down the cadaverous corridor. Then, digging his teeth fiercely into his wrecked thumbnail, he turns and shuts himself in a tomb.
For a moment he just watches, listens, smells. What he sees:
Candelabras? Check. Pebbled stone floors? Check. Inhabitants swathed in one thousand shades of darkness? Check. Bones?
Triple check.
What he hears:
Low melodic voices, multiple languages. In the background, Gregorian chant playing at a volume high enough to be heard, low enough to be sinister. Scuffling of feet, rustling of clothing. Glasses clinking lyrically against ice.
What he smells:
Damp. Earth. Clove cigarettes (danger).
Armie shakes it off.
A stone pillar in the center of the room boasts two massive marble plaques, one suspended on the side facing the door, the other perched on the side fronting the left-hand wall, both elegantly inscribed. Armie doesn’t have to move closer to know their words:
Pensez la matin que vous n’irez peut-être pas jusques au soir et au soir que vous n’irez peut-être pas jusques au matin. (Think in the morning that you will not arrive to the evening and in the evening that you will not arrive to the morning.)
And,
Si vous avez vu quelque fois mourir une homme, considerez toujours que le mêmes sort vous attend. (If you have seen a man die a few times, always remember that the same fate awaits you.)
“Memento mori,” rumbles Armie under his breath on a bleak grin, and when he diverts his gaze from the pillar his eyes snag the invasive, utterly indiscreet stare of a young man lounging luxuriantly against the wall of bones directly before him.
The boy is positively magnificent; there is no other terminology to describe him but inhuman. He is synchronously shadow and luminosity; raven curls toppling here and there about his lovely alabaster forehead, the impeccable lines and flawless scaffolding of his face so severe his features might have been wrought from marble. He is wearing an insouciantly unbuttoned dark blazer and coal-colored jeans that embrace his branch-thin body like a second skin and Armie can decrypt in his insolent eyes that he understands exactly how he looks against that grisly backdrop of human framework. As Armie watches him he raises a skinny pale hand to his lips, sucks hard on his cigarette, lets it drop as he puffs smoke enticingly between his bloodless plump lips. Raises his top lip slightly in a smirk.
His white wolf teeth glint; sharp, sharp, sharp, and Armie understands instantly. This boy is the source of the sick-sweet aroma of clove cigarettes.
This boy is the source of the danger.