A Dance in Blood Velvet (63 page)

Then there was a flurry of movement, rippling laughter. Her friends tried to escape, but the angels caught them effortlessly. She saw the golden one feeding on Katerina; saw Andreas attempt to flee, the heartless white daemon catching him. Benedict simply watched, but Karl...

The dark female and Karl had Stefan between them, drinking his blood, dragging him down the gallery... now they removed the dummy from under the tiger and strapped Stefan in its place, his head lodged in the tiger’s mouth so that its metal jaws would close on his neck. Niklas followed, watching passively like another automaton. The female angel was smiling, but Karl had no expression at all.

Charlotte saw the tiger’s tail swishing, heard the creak of its cogs and joints, its metallic growl. Its jaws began to close, engulfing Stefan’s head completely. She saw the huge steel teeth, saw points of blood appear on Stefan’s white throat. She cried out, “No!”

But she couldn’t reach him. The Crystal Ring was coming through the walls in glass waves, purple as thunder. Karl looked up and for a moment she caught his gaze, a fatal blow.
They did this to you!
she screamed in soundless anguish. His eyes were bruised pits, passionless, as if he’d become a
doppelgänger
of himself.

She had to stop him.

She flung out a hand, found cloth under her fingertips and gripped it in the hope of pulling herself to her feet. But it was attached to nothing and slid off the altar to land in a lilac cloud beside her. It dragged something with it as it fell. A heavy, oblong block landed with a thump, emanating cold misery...

The Book. She would use it as a weapon to disempower Karl and Lancelyn’s daemons.

Charlotte clutched the leathery weight to her chest, tried to stand, and collapsed. All that happened was that the Book weakened her instead. Unable to release it, she hugged it to herself, her tears turning to ice as the bitter truth of what she’d done to Violette stabbed her.

And the Book was telling her,
whatever you do will come back to haunt you
. It was the Ledger of Truth, pouring comfortless wisdom into her mind. The ancient hermit-vampire, its author, had lived his role to the full. He’d immersed himself in his victims’ suffering and death, knowing they’d come back to claim him, perhaps inviting his fate. He was an experimenter on a grotesque scale. A primitive scientist, of a kind...

He’d known the Crystal Ring was the outpouring of mankind’s dreams, that every human death caused a change in the Ring, however small. He knew that aware mortals could cause deliberate fluctuations that would enable them to control vampires...

Charlotte was fading, sliding away into darkness.

...that vampires were at the mercy of humans, at the end of all.

* * *

Lancelyn led his bride to the bridal-chamber.

The room seemed to Violette as precise and significant as the set of a ballet. It was all black marble, a dark glossiness reflecting specks of light and colour. Candles, censers on bronze tripods; the gorgeous smoke of frankincense, galbanum and sandalwood. In the centre was a huge bed with a sky-blue counterpane, embroidered with arcane silver symbols.

The angels had left them. She and Lancelyn were alone.

Fear gnawed at the edge of her composure.

“Sit down, beloved lady,” he said.

“I’m afraid,” she said. But she obeyed, sitting on the edge of the bed, her back straight and her knees pressed together.

Lancelyn stared at her. Then he came to her in a rush, went down on his knees, and put his arms around her waist.

“So am I,” he said, laying his heavy, bristly head on her lap. “We’re both afraid, my Sophia. But we’ll guide each other.”

Then, horribly, she caught the acrid scent of his sweat. He was hot and excited. And his excitement was sexual.

Sanctification had taken place in the chapel. This was to be the consummation.

She felt unreal, as if this was a nightmare of being on stage, with no idea which ballet they were performing or what her role was. But it was no dream. She took a breath. How raw and foreign the air felt, now that she no longer needed it. It stirred the thorn in her chest; the beast-like thirst that was slowly destroying her.

Lancelyn sat beside her and reverently lifted her veil. His crumpled face shone with love. Alarm went through her, like a match spurting and dying. His hands on her arms were clammy, shaking a little. She thought,
Don’t touch me!
but held back her protest.

“In the consummation of our marriage,” he said quietly, “all truth will be revealed. Lie down with me, Sophia Nigrans, bride of God.”

Violette glared at him. The air burned her eyes, but she didn’t blink. She discovered her voice. “It’s dangerous,” she said, not knowing where the words came from.

“I know the danger.” His hands tightened; she could smell his body. He smelled exactly like Janacek, when he used to paw her revoltingly in the dressing room; the stink of a goat to her sensitive nostrils. “Only the weak and unprepared die. The brave survive.”

“No one has ever survived me,” she said.

“Let me be the first, then. All my life has been a preparation for this moment. Let me come inside you, right through the veil of darkness, to the light on the other side.”

As he spoke, he stood up and began to undress. And there was power in the room, if only generated by his rapt excitement.

I’ve got to do this,
she told herself.
I am going to do it. He says, “Trust me.” It’s revolting but that’s only unfamiliarity, I must get used to it. I don’t want to but that’s the point, I’m meant to hate it because it’s my punishment...

He stood naked before her, hairy and stocky, his grotesque member already erect. It looked absurd and comical. He came to her, took her face between his hands and kissed her lips; if she’d been human, if she’d had anything in her stomach, she would have vomited.

Then he picked her up in his arms and placed her in the centre of the bed. He lay beside her, pulled her down. He did not command her to remove the layers of black silk, so she did not. She made no attempt to resist; she simply went with him, a straw carried on the wind.

He began to stroke her through the garments. She felt his damp heat through the delicate material. His hands were all over her; not rough, but hesitant in the most disgusting way, like a gloating schoolboy picking the icing off a cake. He touched her reverentially, but she found his awe vile.
He doesn’t see
me, she thought
. He only sees an image. He’s nothing to do with me... Why am I here, why am I letting this happen?

He kissed her again. She was so stiff under him that he drew back. “Don’t be nervous,” he said.

She remembered how kind he’d been in the chapel. He was the only one who understood her.
I’m being selfish,
she thought;
there’s something wrong with me. If I can bear this I’ll be healed. I must trust him...

Lancelyn shifted to lie half over her, one leg between hers, his weight crushing her pelvis. He was fumbling with her robes, pushing them up over her legs. The angels had left her naked under the black chiffon. She felt the hot scratchiness of his legs against hers.

Violette turned her head away. Nothing connected her emotions to her will.

“Don’t turn away,” he said. “Kiss me. You are my wife, Lilith-Sophia.”

“I don’t want to be evil,” she whispered.

“You’re not. You are dangerous only to those who approach you without understanding.”

“I’m not yours to judge.”

“I do not judge you. You are the judge, Sophia. Let me pass into you and through you into Raqia. We’ll taste each other’s blood and it will be holy transformative wine.”

His breath condensed with sour warmth on her neck. He slid his hand between her bare thighs. She whispered, “No, I don’t want your blood.”

He didn’t seem to hear. He went on probing with sightless, rough insistence.

His fingers hurt her. The intrusion was insufferable, and she couldn’t stand it. Her revulsion became drowning panic and she twisted under him, trying to escape. He stopped, face folding in puzzlement.

“What’s wrong?”

The first tenuous connection between her mind and reality became a torrent. “I can’t go through with this.”

“What are you saying?” His fingers went on moving.

“I thought I could but I can’t. Please stop. Please!”

Lancelyn’s expression darkened, as if he finally realised she was serious. His face expressed more than words; he couldn’t believe she wasn’t compliant, that she was about to sabotage his perfect plan.

He held her down easily because she had no strength to fight him. “You must!” His hard organ pushed at her leg. His sweat grew more pungent.

“No. I mean it. Get off me.”

“Don’t be silly. It will soon be over.”

“This is rape!” she cried. “You’ve no right, no one asked you -”

“Are you mad?” Lancelyn barked. How cold was his voice; how impersonal, his rutting heat. White-hot anger coursed through her and suddenly she felt centred within her own self again; deranged, perhaps, but no longer indifferent to her fate.

“No one’s ever done this to me and you won’t either. Get off me,
get off
!”

In fury, he forced her down and thrust his full weight onto her pelvis, splaying her legs. His head fell into the hollow of her shoulder; she felt his hot breath, stared at the sweat-slicked hairs bristling on his neck. How rough and disgusting the skin looked, in its endless variety of texture and tint, the tiny capillaries throbbing...

And then the tide burst over the sea wall. Some force sucked her mouth like a magnet onto his skin. She tasted acid salt. Her fangs slid from their sheaths, unstoppable, plunging through the skin into the fat artery until her mouth was filled with boiling fluid...

That moment changed everything.

How vile it tasted, yet how gorgeous. Like caviar, the compelling burst of salt on the tongue. Convulsively she sucked and swallowed... and as she did so she shivered with pure excitement, with the warmth that flowed through every cell... with the memory of Charlotte doing this to her, oh, the lovely tender warmth of it and the sweet-sharp fulfilment that went on and on...

Lancelyn went rigid. His hands gripped her shoulders, not to stop her but to control her. His seed spilled over her thigh but she didn’t care about that. He cried out, with pleasure at first, then with discomfort, escalating fast to outright pain and fear. He moaned and struggled uselessly. But all this was very distant from Violette, because the blood on her tongue was the universe.

Electricity, a flood of rose-red sunlight, the most poignant coda ever heard... The room was far away, all sounds echoing faintly, beautifully around her. The stream of red fluid was the centre of everything. Fulfilment...
Ah. Images... Charlotte’s hair, Charlotte’s lips... a red desert, clean as rubies. The ecstasy of dancing, but nothing, nothing as complete as this, nothing so dark and so incandescent...

And now Lancelyn was quivering in her arms, shrivelling like a salted slug. And the bliss had been all hers, not his.

Violette dropped him and pushed him away. She didn’t want him near her. She was off the bed and in the doorway before she even realised she’d moved.

She stood and watched Lancelyn twitching on the azure cover, trying feebly to lift his head, staring at her with pleading eyes. She felt no pity, only a sickening fascination. Horrible, the colour of his face; dead white with blotches of red and bruise-purple. She saw the streaks of blood on his throat, and she shuddered as realisation broke slowly, cruelly over her.

He made me give in to the thirst.

“Damn you for what you’ve done to me!” she shouted.

Lancelyn shook his head helplessly, reaching out to her. “Did nothing,” he slurred. “You wouldn’t let me.”

“You made me drink blood! You let me become Lilith and now I can’t go back!”

In the quiet after she spoke, another layer of confusion peeled away and she perceived that some of the madness had left her. The agonising emptiness and hallucinations had gone. The blood made her feel solid and real. She was not Lilith. She was herself again... but that was worse. While she’d been crazed with thirst, she had placed all the horrors outside herself, but now, with the tang of stolen blood in her mouth, she had to absorb and confront them.

Lilith is a madness that will come upon me every time I need to feed and it won’t leave me until I satisfy this evil lust... Again, and again...

“Damn you, Charlotte,” she whispered.

“No, I see it now,” said Lancelyn. He uttered a sound that was part giggle and part hiss. Violette watched in vague horror, caring nothing for him, only disgusted by the state of him. Then a tendril of regret came through. He’d been kind. He’d tried in some way to help her, to offer a future, which in the end she had refused. She’d never meant him any harm, but she seemed to poison them all: Janacek, her father, now this wretched man...

“Damn you for making me hurt him.” She clutched the thin silk of her dress between her hands. “If I kill Charlotte and the others who did this to me, will that cure me? I have to purge this blood-lust. I cannot be Lilith!”

Lancelyn rose up on the bed.

“I couldn’t do what the angels told me,” she cried in despair, tearing at the garment. “They lied! I won’t obey him, now or ever! Damn their God; they lied to me in His name!”

Lancelyn seemed not to hear her. He swayed, lost his balance and rolled onto the floor. She thought he’d fainted, but he reappeared around the corner of the bed, wriggling on his stomach across the marble flags, hands outstretched towards her.

“I found the light through you,” he said. “I am become the Serpent of Wisdom.”

And he came writhing towards her, undulating from side to side like some bloated, mottled worm. His eyes rolled back in his head and his tongue flickered between his wet lips.

Then Violette knew that he had met, at last, one of the threatened fates of those who dared to unveil the Black Goddess.