“I’ll be fine in, what, three weeks?” I ask, and marvel again that this is my destiny. A never-ending cycle of life, death, healing, and awakening.
As scattered cheering begins to rise from the survivors, Uta moves to the center of the arena, the blood and grime on her face making her look like a barbarian warrior. Putting her fingers to her teeth, she gives another ear-splitting whistle. “For Vincent Delacroix, the leader of Paris’s kindred, we claim victory!” she yells and thrusts a wicked-looking battle mace above her head. “Victory,” shouts the crowd, and a forest of weapons are waved in the early-morning air.
Vincent raises a hand, accepting the honor with grace.
“And more importantly—sorry, Vincent—” Uta says with a joking grin, “victory and glory to the Champion, who has more than proven her strength tonight.” She presses her fist to her heart again as if to remind me, your strength is in here. I smile and mimic her gesture.
“Champions are rare,” she continues, “and it has been an honor to fight with one. To the Champion!” she yells, and the place goes berserk, with people cheering and dancing around. Charles’s clan do some kind of battle chant in German and throw themselves on one another in wild victory hugs.
I am overwhelmed—my heart is in my throat as I realize that these immortal beings are all ready to follow my lead. To help me fight whatever battles the future holds. As I look around, I notice a lone figure kneeling beside the bonfire. Leaving Vincent, I make my way over to him. His hair has escaped its ponytail and sticks out around his head like a black halo.
“What’s wrong, Gaspard?”
“Before . . . before I could get to him . . . ,” he stammers, looking up at me with vacant eyes. “The numa. They threw his body onto the flames before I could get to him. Jean-Baptiste. He’s gone,” Gaspard says.
And lowering his head to his hands, he begins to weep.
FIFTY-ONE
THE BATTLEFIELD IS A SCENE OF DESOLATION. A low wind blows acrid smoke in a sickly yellow haze across the arena. Body parts and weapons are strewn everywhere, and the ground is sticky with dark red mud. Everyone works quickly to clean the mess before the sun rises so that no evidence remains that a massacre has occurred in the middle of Paris.
Everything that can burn is thrown onto the fire. As ambulances begin to arrive, Vincent and Arthur direct volunteers to carry stretchers with bardia corpses to the vehicles waiting at the park gates. Medics—all bardia, I notice—begin to attend to those whose injuries are light.
A medic approaches me, but I nod toward Vincent. “Do him first,” I say.
“Gallantry?” Vincent asks, raising an eyebrow.
“No, cowardice. I hate needles,” I confess, with a smile.
I watch as Vincent’s small cuts are washed and bandaged and the larger wounds to his arm and side sewn up. He doesn’t even wince when the needle threads through his skin, but watches me calmly from where he sits a few feet away. The bardia are used to flesh wounds, as I too will soon be.
“Geneviève is gone. The numa tossed her on early in the fight,” Vincent says, as the medic works on him. He pauses and looks thoughtful. “This probably sounds bad, but I’m glad I wasn’t forced to make that decision.”
There is a pang in my heart as I watch the fire rage, knowing my friend is within the flames. But in my heart I am relieved for her. “She got her wish, then. She’s with Philippe.”
Another medic approaches where I sit with my good arm around Gaspard, who has stopped crying and is very still. His normal twitchy nervousness has been replaced by a calmness that is more dead than numb, as if a part of him has traveled to the grave with his partner.
My injured arm hangs uselessly in its Vincent-made sling and blood still trickles from the knife wound. Helping me shuffle out of my jacket, the medic rips the sleeve off my shirt and begins silently cleaning and then stitching up my shoulder. Gaspard repositions his head on my shoulder, seemingly unaware that mere inches from his forehead someone is piercing my skin with a needle and yanking a thick black thread through it.
My eyes are already clouded with tears, and my heart so full of hurt for my friend’s loss that the pain to my body seems little more than an annoyance. The medic bandages my shoulder, puts my jacket back on over it, and sets my arm in a new, clean sling. “Are you injured, Monsieur Tabard?” the man asks.
Gaspard shakes his head numbly, and the medic moves on to the next group of injured. Vincent meets my eyes. I know he’s asking me to take care of Gaspard. I will, I say without speaking. Go do what you need to do. Vincent stands and starts to round up the remaining troops and herd them to the fire.
As we watch people assemble, I ask Gaspard, “How long were you and Jean-Baptiste together?”