A Dance in Blood Velvet (60 page)

“On the contrary. Your actions provoked me to bring my own daemons into their full power. Don’t you see? We are not enemies, Ben, and never were. I started this because I love you and I want you at my side. War was necessary to bring out the deepest courage in us both!”

Benedict stared. He couldn’t believe Lancelyn was sincere. “All this trouble and pain... just a test?”

“A crucible. You cannot refine base metal without fire.”

Ben was still raw with anger, yet he thought,
What if I assume Lancelyn is telling the truth?
He tried, and was astonished by the perspective that unfolded... “Are you telling me you haven’t abandoned the search for truth in favour of money after all? But how can you excuse the wicked things you’ve done?”

“Imagine a higher plane where morality is subservient to the greater good.”

“Complete amorality, you mean.”

Lancelyn sat forward, his bruised face shining. “In the search for the Veiled Goddess, any means may be employed. And I’ve found her, Ben. I’ve found the Meter Theon, the Black Goddess.”

Ben gaped at him. Lancelyn meant it. “And this is not Holly.”

“Nothing to do with Holly. There is to be a marriage.”

“What are you telling me?” Ben was shaking his head, incredulous.

“A story, dear boy, in which you’ve played a noble part. My daemons are intermediaries between the astral world and me. They are Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof, the angels who always accompany Lilith. They came back to Earth to find her, and she came into existence for them. And they came to help me because they saw my unique qualities, and they’ve awoken the Black Goddess in all her guises - Sophia Nigrans, Cybele, the Black Virgin, Lilith - to be my bride. This is a circle of causality at work, without beginning or end. Our marriage will be the union of Earth with Heaven, the Goddess with the Dying and Rising King, God with the Shekinah, Lilith with Samael. I shall do what no mortal has achieved: uncover the darkness of ultimate wisdom.”

“Are you saying that the Goddess is a real person?” Ben’s anger dissolved in confusion, but his suspicions lingered.

Lancelyn’s narrow eyes sparkled. “Yes, and she’s the most beautiful creature you’ll ever set eyes on. Come and meet her.”

“What?”

Lancelyn rose and beckoned, his face full of joy. Bemused, Ben followed him down a short corridor towards the family chapel.

“Three of your vampires were with me all the time, Ben.”

“How? They couldn’t be in two places at once.”

“Let’s say they were halves that have been reunited; Senoy with Simon, Sansenoy with Fyodor, Semangelof with Rasmila.”

“So I never stood a chance?” Ben said acidly.

“You have great talents; all you lack is the confidence to use them.” Pausing with his hand on the chapel door, Lancelyn turned to him, his expression sincere. “Benedict, you still see this as a battle. It isn’t. Your vampires didn’t betray you; as they became whole, they drew us back together. We’re all on the same side, and this is a new beginning. I need you as my right-hand man.”

“Nothing’s changed, then. You’re still the leader.”

“Someone has to lead; to be first through the gateway and take the risks. You will follow. In our new state, hierarchy will be irrelevant.”

Benedict saw Lancelyn in conflicting lights; one as hero-brother, the other as cynical manipulator. He could hardly voice the question. “Do you mean we shall become vampires?”

“Immortals, please. Yes, but by entering Raqia through the ecstasy of union with Meter Theon, we shall be immeasurably greater than any other immortal, even my angels.”

He opened the chapel door. Ben’s scepticism lingered until that moment - then vanished in a downpour of brilliance.

Light flowed around the crucifix above the altar, bounced off brasswork, pooled on the marble floor and the polished oak pews. The source of radiance was a magnificent trinity of seraphim that seemed to fill the whole chapel. Rasmila’s beauty was a dark, shimmering veil; Fyodor, a white magnesium fire; and Simon, the lion, was a rippling fall of gold between them. Where their auras blended, arcs of glorious colour sprang out. The air shimmered with eldritch music.

Ben cried out in awe, all doubts annihilated.

Lancelyn said, “Bring Lady Sophia into view. I want my brother to see her.”

Rasmila obeyed, somehow human-sized yet infinite at the same time. Ben blinked, his vision confounded as she guided a slight, black-clad figure into the aisle. The veiled woman moved in a dream. She was like a frail, graceful widow, tiny in comparison to her guardians. Yet she captured his attention like a single star in the vault of heaven.

Then she lifted her veil.

Down the length of the aisle, Ben glimpsed beauty that felled him like a shaft of sacred light. Her face was a creamy cloud, with huge dark eyes, her black hair a wreath of thorns. The veil fell. Ben couldn’t speak.

He forgot Holly entirely.

“She is the future,” Lancelyn said reverently. “Wouldn’t you forsake your earthly wife for such a bride?”

As Lancelyn’s letters used to lift him out of the misery of the Somme, so the words lifted him now. Truth blazed in glory. Lancelyn-as-hero regained his mystique. “Oh God, yes,” said Ben. “Yes, I’d do anything.”

“Today your role is to act as guardian, an utterly vital role to prevent any interruption to my wedding - but believe me, Ben, your time will come.” Lancelyn turned Ben to face him, his smile one of blissful contentment. They clasped each other in a heartfelt embrace, and Ben felt a wonderful surge of faith and optimism. Holly, Karl, everyone else was forgotten.

“Welcome to the Inner Sanctum, brother,” Lancelyn said with tears in his eyes. “Welcome home.”

C
harlotte and Katerina found the village in a chill grey dawn. In London, a spellbound gentleman had offered them a lift in his Bentley. He had driven them much further, and given them far more, than he’d ever intended.

They abandoned him when his motor ran out of fuel and he passed out from blood loss, and walked the last few miles. There were cottages along a curving street, houses built high on tree-covered hills. Autumn fog clouded the landscape, dripping from red and bronze leaves. Charlotte asked a startled milkman for directions. He sent them past the railway station, up a narrow lane alongside a stream.

Beyond the village, the trees thinned and houses were few. There were barren sweeping hills crowned by rock. Where the lane petered out, a high-roofed black Morris stood crookedly as if left there in a hurry.

“That is Benedict’s car,” said Katerina.

“It’s cold,” said Charlotte, touching the bonnet as they passed.

In the neck of the valley, there was no human habitation, only high, bare hills steeped in fog. A stream cascaded towards the village, sheep bleated on the peaks.

Charlotte saw the house rearing out of the greyness. She reached out with her mind for the presence of vampires, felt nothing. Too far away. The scents of earth, rock and wet grass invaded her, muffling her senses.

Despite the blood she’d taken, she was still weak from the attack of Violette’s “angels”, and not fully herself. “I can’t find anyone...”

“They must be here. Come on,” Katerina said firmly. Arm-inarm, they climbed a footpath that was little more than a sheep track.

As they climbed, three figures came rushing towards them. The angels again? Charlotte clutched Katerina’s arm in warning - then the forms resolved themselves into friendlier shapes. Andreas, Stefan and Niklas!

“Oh, Charlotte, thank heaven,” Stefan exclaimed, hugging her tightly. Startled, relieved, she clung to him, her calm centre of safety. Katerina took Andreas in her arms and they held each other, hard. “We found the message at Benedict’s house,” said Stefan. “We came as fast as we could and found Andreas; he’s told us all he knows, which isn’t much. Violette’s inside, I can sense her.”

Charlotte received the news more with dread than relief. “I thought she might be. And Karl - is he here?”

“Yes.” Stefan looked gravely at her, as if to break bad news. “But his presence is very weak. He may be in danger. Does anyone know what happened?”

Charlotte and Katerina each told their stories of the vampire-angels who’d abducted Karl and Violette; Andreas added his account of Benedict entering the house.

Charlotte said, “So, you haven’t been inside?”

“Not yet,” Stefan replied. “We’ve only been here a short time, talking.”

“I’ve warned Stefan it would be suicidal to go in,” said Andreas, “but I suppose we must.”

“Of course we must!” said Charlotte. “That, or stand here agonising until it’s too late!”

“Well, we have a choice,” said Katerina. “We can all go in together, or enter separately to cause confusion.”

“Then what?” Andreas broke in. “This is madness. We’ve all seen those three daemons and we know we can’t defeat them! We have no weapons against them, nothing.”

Charlotte turned on him. “But what choice have we? To leave Karl and Violette here and save our own skins, not even knowing what the three want with them? How long before they come after us?” She began to climb briskly the path towards the forbidding edifice. “I’m not running away.”

Without hesitation, the others followed. Stefan caught up and took her arm. “Charlotte,” he said firmly, “we’ll all go in together.”

* * *

Violette had overcome the thirst. She placed it outside herself, like a huge pane of glass between her and the world, or a gauzy shroud, clinging to her, webbing her down. She distanced herself, but couldn’t escape entirely.

She was alone in the chapel. The angels had left. She had no thoughts of running away: the self she wanted to flee would only come with her. The slightest movement made her feel ill, as if fever waited to flash up and consume her. She must simply hold still against fear, the pain of memory, the constant dry burning of her veins. Sit very still.

“Lady Sophia,” said a voice behind her. The self-styled magus.

She heard his footsteps in the aisle as he approached and sat beside her on the pew. No ostentatious reverence or tears this time, and she was glad. His first display had repelled her.

“My dear lady,” he said, “are you afraid?”

With an effort, she turned to look at him. She could not focus properly - or rather, she focused too well. His face was too large, too full of colour and detail; she saw every pore in the florid skin, every whisker. Even the sight of him invaded her, like a violation. Light poured onto him from the tall windows above the altar. Her vision pulsed like a heart, expanding, contracting. Nothing made sense.

“The angels said I must obey you in all things,” said Violette. Her voice was small, without emotion.

“Will you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

His question penetrated the glass wall and shook her. He rested his fingers lightly on her hand. His touch disgusted her. He was Janacek, and the too-handsome Adam who’d tried to subjugate her in Eden, and her own father. He was every male who’d ever asserted dominance over wives, sisters, daughters...

“Why do you need to ask
why?”

“Lilith does no one’s will except her own,” said Lancelyn. He spoke as gently as a priest. “Who tells the Black Goddess what to do? I am asking you not to obey me, but to join me. To let me in.”

Violette could not speak for a time. There was nothing to say. At last she said, “I have nothing to offer you.”

The words felt hollow. She’d thought the same about Janacek, and all the men and women who approached her with feverish eyes and bouquets in their clammy hands. She’d even thought the same of Charlotte. “What do they want? I give them my whole self on stage, there’s nothing else - yet they seem to want more, something I don’t understand. Embraces, kisses, sex? Why? It means so little.”

She didn’t realise she had spoken aloud, until Lancelyn said, “But it moves the stars.”

“That’s sentiment,” she said. “No, it’s about possession. They want to control me and I don’t know why.”

“When you dance, you control them.” Again the intrusive fingers touched hers. Sickening pain gripped her heart. “Yes, I know who you were,” he said. “But through each other we’ll both become different. It’s alchemy, transformation.”

“But I’m afraid. I don’t want to change.” She added, her voice knife-edged, “I resent the intrusion.”

Lancelyn leaned back, unconsciously giving her more space. His voice was like velvet, or the plush fur on an old toy, comforting. “When I was young, I kept seeing three dark angels. Others would have been scared to death. But I knew, even as a child, that their darkness was to protect my eyes from their brilliance. You are like that, Sophia.”

Another shiver that made her whole body hurt. “You saw them too? I dreaded them!”

“Why?”

“Because I knew they’d come from God to punish me.”

“A different interpretation, that’s all! Don’t you see that we are linked? God’s envoys have guarded us both, waiting for the right time to unite us. Me, a seeker of wisdom, and you, Wisdom herself.”

Violette felt something break through the glass shroud; a tendril of hope. “You really saw them? I thought I was alone, and mad.”

“No,” he said. How tender he sounded. “Of course you were frightened; only a fool would feel no awe. But they are our guides, not our foes.”

Violette swallowed, her throat thick and bitter. “My pain won’t end until they have their way.”

“Think of it as a change, not defeat.”

“No, it must be defeat, a surrender to the forces I loathe. It’s the only way to atone for all my sins...”
Tearing my mother apart,
she thought,
which drove Father away and made him prey to a lamia who destroyed us all; my original sin, my black hair, my depravity
...
the prophecy fulfilled when I gave in to Charlotte.

“Then we both capitulate,” he said. “We give up our egos and throw ourselves into the Abyss. No magus reaches enlightenment unless he surrenders himself. You are prey to darkness, by which I mean superstitious ignorance; that’s why you are confused. You don’t know yourself. We’ll find the light together!”