Belle Morte Bites (Belle Morte 4.3)

Blood and Roses

Paris, 1673

Ysanne Moreau surveyed the ballroom with an air of faint disinterest.

When she'd been human, events like this would have been the brightest, most exciting point in her social life, but after nearly three hundred years, the novelty had worn off.

Still, balls were a good place to hunt for food, where people were too drunk to realise what was going on, or too eager to experiment with new experiences to really think about what Ysanne was doing.

She eyed a young man nearby, her gaze drifting to his neck, but his long, dark hair and sharp cheekbones reminded her too much of Edmond. She couldn't bite him.

Six years had passed since she'd left behind the human boy that she'd saved from dying in the snow, and she no longer thought of him every day, but sometimes she'd see someone who looked like him, or did something that reminded her of him, and she'd wonder where he was now.

The young man walked past her, and Ysanne surveyed the rest of the room, looking for a better person to bite.

The faint scent of roses caught her attention, and she peered through the crowd, trying to work out where it was coming from. But there were too many people.

Another young man tried to catch her eye, and Ysanne briefly considered him, but upon closer inspection he barely looked old enough to shave. A lady had to have some standards.

Perhaps she should mingle with the crowd more, find some dance partners. She moved away from the wall and put on her brightest smile, ready to dazzle her potential prey. Her beauty had never let her down before.

The smell of roses hit her again as she moved further into the crowd, and she paused, wondering why she found it so intriguing.

She tried to put it out of her mind.

Half an hour later, Ysanne had latched onto a target. She'd danced with him twice, a handsome young man in his twenties named Robert, with a head of black curls and deep dimples when he smiled.

She pressed her body against his, looking at him under her eyelashes, her body language seductive enough that words weren't necessary. His heart was racing, his pulse fluttering like a bird, and Ysanne hid a smile. He'd follow her anywhere she asked.

But as she was leading him to the edge of the dance-floor and towards the entryway to the ballroom itself, Robert stopped and smiled at someone behind Ysanne.

"There you are," he said.

The smell of roses washed over Ysanne.

She turned.

A woman stood behind them. She looked so much like Robert that she could only be his sister – matching dimples in a heart-shaped face framed by thick, dark curls, and a slightly too long nose that should have stopped her being beautiful, yet somehow made her more beautiful. Red roses were woven into all that tumbling hair.

Ysanne stared at her. Deep down, she felt a tug of raw desire, and it took her completely by surprise.

Over the near three hundred years of her life, Ysanne had taken plenty of men into her bed, and while she was objectively aware of other women's beauty, she had never been attracted to one. But she couldn't pretend that what she felt now wasn't genuine attraction.

How intriguing.

"This is my sister, Eustacie," Robert said, beaming at the other woman.

Eustacie.