When Vince awoke the night was pitch dark. He was shivering with cold, but nonetheless he pulled back the covers and exposed himself to the chill air. He still felt sore as he moved, and for a moment he was tempted to light up a lamp and check the damage in a mirror, but he had more important things to worry about. He dressed himself as warmly as he could, making sure to choose a pair of looser trousers to avoid causing himself discomfort, and finished off with a long white cloak. Then he climbed once again down the ivy and crept away from his home.
He rushed through the streets and reached the city walls, and it was only as he crept through the guard posts that he realised what a stupid idea it had been to wear white, and he was thankful that the moon had decided not to make an appearance tonight.
He removed the stones from the hole and slipped through, and not bothering to take in his surroundings, hurtled full pelt away from the city, the eyes of many creatures fixed upon him. He ran and ran until he was exhausted, but even then he looked back and realised he hadn't come so far from the city. Tired, he continued at a walk, loathing to hurry, but knowing that if he didn't he might not be home by dawn.
He walked and walked until he felt he was going to collapse. He knew from rumours and gossip that Naboo lived somewhere outside of the city, but Vince had seen no trace of either the shaman or his home. Tears began to well in his eyes, and he dropped to his knees and cried softly, knowing it would help nothing but feeling it was all he could do.
He felt a tiny touch on his face. He wiped his eyes and looked up, and saw his friend the sprite sitting on a branch near his head.
"Shh," she soothed, rubbing her minute hand ineffectually yet lovingly against his wet cheek. With a press on his face to tell him to watch her, she pulled away, stepped from branch to branch to the edge of the bush, and then leapt high into the air. Vince watched awestruck as her body shifted to fluid in mid-air, and expanded and solidified until she touched down as a tall and beautiful unicorn.
"It was you all along," Vince breathed, climbing to his feet and pressing his arms and face to her soft neck. He gazed over her, taking in her pure white fur and golden mane and long silver horn, which was almost eighteen inches long. She inclined her head and her blue eyes met his, and he threw his arms around her neck, stifling a sob. She knelt down for him, and he climbed up onto her back.
She set off at a gallop with no warning, and for a second Vince was afraid he would fall, but he trusted her and knew she wouldn't let him. He leaned forward onto her neck, with a hand either side, fingers just entwined with her silky mane. The wind blasted at his face, and he had to turn his head to the side in order to breathe, and even then his breaths were short, obstructed by fast-moving air. The unicorn charged at a patch of thorns and leapt over it. Vince wrapped his arms as far as he could around her neck and pressed his face into her mane. She landed smoothly on the ground again, and Vince sat up a little straighter, only to press himself back down again as she jumped another shrub. He kept his body flat to hers as she carried him across the moors, so smooth and rhythmic that, were he not aware of the wind in his face and the crash of her hooves, he would have been lulled into sleep.
She slowed gently to a stop, and Vince looked up. She had brought him to a small hut made of wood and bits of old metal, surrounded by reassuring homely touches like a stack of firewood and some farming tools, but also by strange things, like charms and objects Vince had never seen hanging from the door, and what looked suspiciously like some dead things hanging up around the side of the house.
Vince slipped from the unicorn's back and gave her a warm, grateful hug before he approached the door of the hut and knocked hesitantly. He heard a movement within, and looked back to the unicorn, only to see her disappearing back over the moor.
"Who is it?" asked a bleary, somewhat irate voice from the other side.
"It's me," Vince called back. "Princess Vince."
He heard the door being hastily unlocked, and when it opened he was covered in the warm glow of firelight and he felt Naboo's hand grip his wrist and pull him in.
"Come on," said Naboo, closing the door on the night behind him. "The moon give you any grief?"
"No," answered Vince. "He's been really quiet tonight. Don't think he's even there."
"Good. You wouldn't believe how many he's accidentally ratted in with his bloody running commentaries." Naboo smiled weakly. He looked tired as he welcomed Vince into the room. Vince could make out faint shadows under Naboo's dark eyes, though he wasn't sure whether they were bags or just smudged kohl. Regardless, his gait was weary, and his body seemed less upright that it had been the last time they had met. "What's the problem?" he asked as he sat down on the bed against one wall and patted the space next to him. "Sit down."
"No," Vince almost yelped, wincing at the thought. "Thank you."
Naboo looked at him critically. "What's up?" Naboo asked. His face darkened. "Has he been hitting you?"
Vince didn't need to say anything. He just dropped his eyes, and Naboo came rushing forward and pressed a worried hand on each of Vince's shoulders.
"The bastard," Naboo seethed. "Come on," he said, ushering Vince across the room to the bed and pulling him onto it, urging him onto his side. "Tell me what you need."
Vince took a breath in. he realised he was about to break into tears. "I just need to get away from him. Or to get him away from me. Or something."
Naboo smiled understandingly and squeezed his shoulder. "Okay, let me think…" Naboo's eyes rolled upwards, and after a moment he smiled. "Okay, there's only one way you can get away from Bainbridge, and that's with the help of your real true love. Now, I can't bring your true love to you; the universe doesn't work that way, but I can give you a spell that'll let you know who you're looking for."
"That sounds perfect," said Vince, smiling for the first time in hours. It made his face feel odd, after so many tears.
"I warn you though, it's not a nice process," cautioned Naboo. "It's dangerous, it's very risky, and even if you do it right, there's always a chance you won't be able to live with yourself afterwards."
"Whatever it is, I need it," pleaded Vince. "Just tell me what to do."
"Okay," replied Naboo. He took a breath, then looked Vince right in the eye. "Kill a man and cut off his face, then bury him in a secret place, without his face, for three days until all of his identity disappears from him. After three days, come back and dig him up. Then, close your eyes and kiss the skull until you hear your true love's voice telling you to open your eyes. When you do, you'll see your true love's face instead of the skull."
Vince stared at him, wide-eyed with shock.
"You don't have to do it," Naboo said quickly. "Just… if you need to…"
"No," said Vince. "No, I have to do it."
"If you're gonna do it, you've got to do it soon," Naboo warned him. "I don't think Bainbridge is going to stick around much longer."
Vince nodded. Naboo looked at him critically, almost pityingly.
"Do you have a knife?" he asked.
Vince shook his head.
Naboo got up and went to a table across the room, which was covered in all kinds of shamanic oddments, including what looked to Vince like a human skull. He returned with a small, thin bronze knife inlaid with silver, with a leering skull carved into the handle, entwined with twisted snakes. He passed it carefully into Vince's hands, and Vince held it warily, staring at it like it was going to shatter in his hands.
"Be careful," said Naboo. He looked up at the sky through his one window. "Come on, it's nearly dawn. You need to go."
Vince nodded and got up. Holding the knife carefully under his cloak, he let Naboo usher him to the door. "Thanks," he said.
Naboo just smiled, sadness evident in the expression. "Goodnight, Vince."
"Goodnight."
Naboo closed the door, and Vince was alone. The unicorn had gone, but he could see the walls of the city, and thought he could make it if he hurried. The moon was still absent but the sky was paling, and as Vince began his hike back towards the city, he wondered, if anyone were to spot him, how he would look. Would he still be almost invisible to them, in the semi-darkness, or would he look like a fleeting white ghost out wandering until the dawn broke?
But no one did see him, and he reached home again in safety.
The door opened at just gone ten-thirty the next morning, and Vince buried his face in the pillows, the light of the sun stinging his eyes.
"Get up," his mother requested.
Vince grunted in response and pressed his face harder into the pillows. "Why this early?"
"Because we need to get started on your wedding preparations, don't we," his mother smiled, looking down at him. "And do you really think Dixon will appreciate you being in bed half the day when you go back with him?"
"Probably," Vince muttered, just quietly enough for his mother not to hear him.
She looked down and regarded him. "Are you still tired?"
Vince nodded weakly.
"You're not coming down with something are you?" she asked, a note of concern in her voice.
Vince shook his head and managed a groggy reply. "Don't think so."
"I hope not," replied his mother. "The last thing I'd want is for you to be ill at your own wedding."
Vince let out an answering groan. His mother sat down on his bed and turned his face towards her.
"You've got bags under your eyes," she told him. "Make sure they're covered properly."
She went, pulling the covers down off his shoulders, leaving him to pull himself from the bed.
Vince brightened as the day went on. Some miraculous reserve of energy made itself known to him, and he didn't find himself unconsciously drifting off on his feet until the late afternoon. He acted the happy princess-bride as he was asked his opinion on rings, outfits, food and whatever else, and though his fatigue and the fact that he was wearing more makeup than usual were more apparent than he might like them to be, Bainbridge seemed to mistake this for broken spirit, and kept his arms possessively around Vince through the entire day in the belief that he was winning. The satisfaction of having fooled Bainbridge in this way was all that gave Vince the strength to endure it.
The idea had occurred to him at several points during the day to kill Bainbridge for his spell, but the entire day had passed in the company of Vince's parents, with servants from both parties coming in and out, and Vince was sure that trying to lure him into a private moment would seem suspicious.
Vince was disappointed. Bainbridge fucking deserved it.
So for most of the day, Vince's thoughts were preoccupied with who else it could be instead. The only people he could possibly have gotten alone to do the deed were the maids or menservants, any one of whom he could have asked to sort something out in his room, but the problem was he liked them all too much. They had always been wonderful to him, even when his mother wasn't, and betraying them like that was unthinkable. Twice he steeled himself up to ask one, but both times he backed away, unable to bring them into the terrible deed he had to do.
After dinner his parents noticed how tired he looked, and told him to go to bed early. He complied, feeling that he needed it.
He lay still, drifting into short waves of troubled sleep, plagued by dizzy, blurred visions of corpses and open wounds, a creature drinking blood, a creature with his face…
A knock on the bedroom door jerked him from the uncomfortable heat of sleep.
"Who is it?" he called.
"It's Baudouis!" replied he man on the other side.
An uncomfortable feeling flashed in Vince's mind, and he knew he had to act on it.
"Come in!" Vince shouted out to him.
Baudouis, his father's brother, fair, and a little short even by Noir standards, entered Vince's room. "Hey, you," he smiled. "You feeling alright?"
"Yes, thanks," answered Vince. "Just a bit tired."
Baudouis nodded, smiling sympathetically. "I see. Just wanted to say congratulations on the engagement. How's the planning going?"
"It's not bad," Vince replied. "Papa says he'll pay for anything we want because of how short notice the wedding is. And because it's been a long time coming."
"Nice of him," said Baudouis, laughing softly. "Anyway, if you're feeling tired, I'll leave you to sleep."
He got up and headed for the door. Swallowing nervously, and trying to keep the tremor from his voice, Vince called him back.
"Wait a minute," he said. "Uncle Baudouis, do you want some of this?" He indicated the glass of spiked brown liquor that Bainbridge had offered him the night before, which still hadn't been moved. "Dixon gave it to me, to help me sleep, but I don't much like it."
There was an odd look of surprise on Baudouis' face, but it was quickly replaced with a wide smile. "Thank you," said Baudouis, returning to Vince's bed and taking the glass. He raised it to his lips and downed half of the drink in one go. "What is this?" he asked, before finishing the rest of it. He moved to put the glass back down on Vince's bedside table, but stumbled as he did so, having to catch himself on the bedpost. When he spoke again, there was a strong note of fear in his voice. "Vince, what was in that?"
Watching Baudouis struggle to keep his balance, Vince had no idea how much of the shame, horror and guilt that ran through his mind and his body was visible in his face as he stood up and smashed his uncle's head against the bedpost.
Baudouis slumped to the floor, out cold. Vince could have vomited. But he collected himself, and removed Naboo's knife from where he had hidden it under his mattress. He looked down at Baudouis' unconscious form, trembling at what he now had to do.
He stood stock still. He couldn't do it.
But he needed to. His wedding was due to be less than a week away, and he would need time for the spell to work.
It suddenly occurred to him that he wouldn't be able to do it here anyway. He wouldn't be able to hide the blood, and someone, or everyone, would know. He glanced at the window. It was the only way.
He picked up Baudouis' body and hauled it to the window. He felt a twinge of guilt about it, but considering he was about to commit murder anyway, he knew there was no point thinking about it, and he tossed the body out of the window, wincing at the sound of it hitting the ground.
He climbed out himself and descended the ivy. Once on the ground, he found Baudouis' body and dragged it around to the side of the house, hiding in the shadows where no one could see. He held out the knife.
He slit.
He felt warm blood pouring down his hands and up his wrists, and pulled them away instinctively. He retched. He retched again, and then he calmed himself. Then he looked back at the body and had to throw up behind a rosebush.
He leant on the wall, trembling. He had done it. He had killed a man. He had no choice now but to carry on and do the rest of the spell.
He waited until his strength came back to him, and then tied his scarf tightly around Baudouis' throat to stem the blood flow. Then he picked up the limp body, still feeling tiny, ragged attempts at breaths in his uncle's chest, and dragged it away, out of the gates, and through the streets. He stopped on the way to take a shovel from outside a hardware shop, and then continued to the hole in the city walls.
He removed the stones and pushed Baudouis' head and shoulders through. But he had a problem. Baudouis was definitely dead now, and his body had gone stiff with rigor mortis. And his arms were sticking down. The hole wouldn't be big enough for him.
Dropping Baudouis' body on the ground carefully, Vince picked up his shovel and, as quietly as he could, pushed the end underneath brick next to the hole. He pushed harder, jiggling it around a little, until the brick came loose. He prised it out, placing it carefully down with the others, and then started work on another. With two more out, he thought the hole might now be wide enough. Thankfully, it was.
He pushed Baudouis and the shovel through the hole before climbing through himself, and then picked both of them up as best he could and dragged them away from the city. The night was completely still, and the moon was absent from sight again. There were no creatures out tonight, either. Maybe they were just all asleep, or maybe, the voice in Vince's mind kept telling him, they didn't want to see him any more, now that he was dragging the body of a man he'd killed through their home.
Awkwardly, alone, and with almost no light to guide him, Vince dragged the body and the shovel along the moor, around or sometimes through the deadly patches of thorns. After what seemed like hours of walking, he came to a crossroads on an old dirt track, which was full of potholes and that he knew no one ever used. He set down the body and got to work with the shovel.
He dug as fast as he could, sweat dripping from his face and soaking into his top, catching the chill in the air. Eventually, he had a decent-sized hole.
And now for the part that had given him nightmares as a child. He had put this off, just because of the fear of it that came with the surname Noir. It almost seemed as bad as the murder itself.
He pulled the bloody knife out from where he had stuck it in his belt, knelt down over Baudouis' body, and barely able to keep his eyes open, he set it to his uncle's face and cut. As he felt a warm running sensation on his hands that made him feel sick again, he closed his eyes to the nauseating sight and did what Noir children had woken up screaming about in the night for generations.
The sight of the bare skull made him heave so hard he had to run to the nearest bush and throw what little was still left in him right into the middle of it. He stood up, and then the memory of the skull came back to him unbidden, and he threw hot, stinging bile where he had vomited moments before.
Swallowing and tasting the bitter heat in his throat, he disposed of Baudouis' face in the bush, and then went back to the corpse and pushed it into the hole, and shovelled dirt over it as though someone might come and find it any second. Satisfied that it was sufficiently covered, he left the shovel hidden and pelted his way back to the city, through the hole and straight back home.
Back in his bedroom, he stripped off his clothes, and saw the enormous scarlet stains all down the one side, and on the front, and on the sleeves. He would have to get rid of these clothes. But how? If he just sent them to be cleaned, the servants would see them. If he hid them in the garden, someone would see them. And if he buried them, a gardener would notice the disturbed earth. He had no way of disposing of them.
In the end, he hid them in the dank and dusty place under his bed, praying that no one would notice the smell. And as he tried to sleep that night, he couldn't escape the thought that he was sleeping on blood.
He was sleeping on Baudouis' blood.
Vince woke up to two contrasting needs; tiredness and hunger. He was still exhausted from the night before, and the night before that, and all the sleepless nights he'd had before that, and he wanted to snuggle up in his covers and sleep the day away. But he was also so starving after all the vomiting he'd done the night before that he had stomach cramps, and they were absolutely unbearable.
And then he remembered the blood under his bed, and suddenly he didn't want to stay there a moment longer.
His mother did a visible double take as she came into the breakfast room to find him already in there.
"Well look at you," she grinned. "Are you getting excited?"
Vince looked up blankly for a moment, and then remembered he was meant to be getting married. "Oh…" he said though a mouthful of food. "Yeah. Yes I am."
She smiled and sat down next to him. They ate in silence, and Vince began to relax as he realised his tiredness and his nerves weren't showing.
"Hey, morning," said another voice, as the door opened again. Vince felt a wave of fear running through him as he recognised the voice as that of his Aunt Eponine, Baudouis' wife.
The Queen smiled and returned the greeting, and Vince just managed a choked "hi".
"Neither of you have seen Baudouis, have you?" Eponine asked. "He didn't come to bed last night."
"No, not for a while," the Queen replied. Vince just shook his head, not trusting his voice to sound innocent.
"Oh, thank you," sighed Eponine. "I'll keep looking."
She left, and Vince found himself exhaling quite loudly. His mother thought nothing of it.
As the day continued and Baudouis still didn't appear, people began to feel panicked. The police were called in, and Vince woke up a little and managed to get his head together enough to feign ignorance. People kept telling him that it was probably nothing to worry about, and that it would be fine.
If only they knew.
Actually, Vince reflected, that phrase made no sense, because he didn't want anyone to know.
And then more bad news arrived: he'd only forgotten to close the hole in the wall up. It had been found by a guard, and plans were already being made to have it sealed. Shit. He needed that hole.
His day was spent on the distractions of police questions and the preparations for a wedding he hoped would still never go ahead. His night was sleepless, but at least he didn't have to sneak out that night, and he at least had the benefit of a full night's rest. The next day he was relieved to hear that the sealing of the hole in the wall had been foiled by teenage couples who had started using it to sneak out of a nighttime as he had.
No one seemed to suspect a thing, and he felt more and more relaxed as his three days past. On the final night though, when he knew he had to go back to Baudouis' corpse and dig him up, the trembled as much as he had when he'd first killed him.
He descended the ivy carefully, almost slipping once, and ran through the streets, even more used now to the shadows and the dark corners. The hole in the wall, despite now being common knowledge, didn't seem to be any more heavily guarded than it had been before, and he found he had no trouble sneaking out.
He tore through the moors, not looking to see what creatures might be watching him tonight, until he found the crossroads. He recovered his shovel from where he had hidden it and set to work moving the churned earth that marked Baudouis' resting place. Eventually the corpse came to light, and the stench made Vince retch.
He pulled it from the ground, set it down and knelt over it. His eyes were watering and he could barely stand to breathe. The corpse had started to decompose already, and the skull grinned as though jeering at him, the hollow eyes threatening dark promises that would have chilled him if he wasn't already so disgusted.
He wiped as much grime from the bone as he could, then scrunched his eyes shut and pressed his lips down.
Cold still teeth surrounded by rough bone. The lack of movement unnerved Vince every bit as much as the texture did, and he fought back the urge to vomit as he tried to work a rhythm into his sickening kiss. He concentrated and concentrated on listening, straining to hear the voice that would tell him to open his eyes, straining and straining to hear.
He heard a scream.
A terrified teenage boy was standing over him, a girl behind him running.
It seemed barely minutes before the guards arrived, but it never struck Vince how strange it was that they could arrive so quickly. As they dragged him off the corpse, he thought he glimpsed Naboo's face somewhere within them.