A Dance in Blood Velvet (68 page)

“Ben still loves me. So does Lancelyn!”

“Men like that only love themselves,” Lilith said dismissively. “Shall I tell you how much Benedict loves you? Just before Lancelyn tried to rape me - to consummate a so-called ‘marriage’ to which I couldn’t consent because I wasn’t in my right mind - he promised Ben a bride of his own. Whether he meant to share me out like a temple whore, or find some other mystical creature, I dread to think, but Ben leapt at the idea. He didn’t spare you a thought.”

Her heart threw itself onto barbed wire. She cried, “You’re lying!”

“No. He was seduced by Lancelyn’s promises. Lancelyn said, ‘Wouldn’t you forsake your earthly wife for a bride like her?’ and your husband answered, ‘Oh God, yes, I’d do anything.’ He was eager to discard you - and still you wail for him!”

“You’re insane!” Holly cried, unable to stop her tears now.

“Perhaps - but I’m right. I can’t stand to see your weakness! Hasn’t he broken your heart? Hasn’t he ruined your life with his ambition?”

“I need him, I have no one else.”

“You have yourself!” Lilith said furiously. “That is all anyone has. Of all people, I should know!”

“It isn’t enough for me!” Holly retorted.

“God, you make me angry.” Lilith turned in a swirl of shadow. Her white hands came lashing out and seized Holly. Two ivory prongs rammed deep and vicious into her neck. In agony, Holly tried to fight free, but the woman squeezed her in snake coils. The cat leapt clear, making no attempt to protect her this time. They fell together onto the sofa-cushions. She felt the pressure of Lilith’s body covering hers, rigid with unholy pleasure. A sensation of sick whiteness rolled through her and she began to choke.

Suddenly Lilith let her go and flung herself to the opposite end of the sofa. Holly, heaving frantically for breath, could only stare.

The vampire did not look sated or relaxed. Instead she sat stiffly, arms braced, eyes stretched wide as if in horror. And as Holly watched, a bead of blood appeared between her lips and travelled down her chin.

Lilith’s lips closed on the reflux and she swallowed hard, eyes closing briefly. As the crimson bubble broke free, it did not so much fall as drift downwards, swelling as it went, its livid colour paling to vermilion. The bubble rolled over Lilith’s knees and fell to the carpet, where it went on expanding, now the size of a kitten, a baby, a small child. Smoky shapes writhed inside the translucent sphere. It undulated, trying to put out limbs and a head. And at last it resolved into a human shape; a little girl, arms reaching out to Lilith, craving love and approval -

Holly recognised the child of blood and mist, but she had no breath to scream. The phantom child was
herself.

The apparition went wobbling towards Lilith, at once nightmarish and pathetic. The vampire reached out and received it - not gently, but with clawed hands, her face death-white and ghastly. She slashed its throat, and as her fingernails penetrated its surface, the blood-child disintegrated without a sound. Nothing remained but a few blood-drops glistening on the carpet.

As the child vanished, Holly felt pain tearing her whole body - more grief than pain - then, in a flame of release, it was gone.

She looked up and saw the expression on Lilith’s face. No cool, mocking beauty now. Lips parted, eyes stretched wide, she looked stricken. Holly thought,
She’s as terrified as me! Why?

A few seconds passed. Then the vampire reached out and grabbed Holly’s hand as if for support. The hard grip made Holly wince.

“What was it?” Holly said, her voice failing. “What have you done to me?”

A gradual change came over the vampire. Her grip softened, and a faint pink blush coloured her face. She no longer seemed so demonic. And her face was lovely. A ballerina’s face, perfectly shaped with infinitely expressive eyes.
I’d kill to be that beautiful,
Holly thought abstractedly...

And in that moment she noticed that she felt different. Calm, rising weightlessly above all her distress.

“Did you see a - a vision of a child?” Lilith asked softly. She touched the tip of her tongue to her lips, licking away red drops.

Holly nodded, and choked out a reply. “It was me.”

Lilith looked closely at her, seemingly preoccupied with her own thoughts. “When I took your blood, I drew out the infant that you used to be... and I killed it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I. It didn’t happen with Lancelyn, and you’re only the second.”

“You killed a frightened little girl!”

“Yes,” Lilith said with intensity. “I killed her, Holly, but she had to die!” In a quieter voice she asked, “Has it driven you insane?”

“I don’t think so. I feel different, that’s all.”

“This was different. Everything is new, I never know what to expect next...” Lilith was drawing away, mentally and physically. Lost in thought she stood up, becoming the dark goddess again. Holly knew she was leaving, and suddenly could not bear it.

“Don’t go!” she exclaimed, jumping up.

“Why not? A few minutes ago, you were petrified of me.”

“I’m not now. I - I want to know who you are.”

Lilith’s deep eyelids fell, making her eyes two black, feathery curves. She’d become distant in every sense. It seemed to Holly that although she was immortal, she was newborn; not yet in communion with her own nature.

“If you don’t know, who does?” said Lilith. “You bemoan the limitations of your second sight, but you can’t see because you won’t let yourself. You’ve been hiding behind Ben and Lancelyn, as if you need their approval to exist, but you can’t do so any longer. I won’t let you. Don’t you realise you helped to create me? Should I thank you or destroy you?”

Holly couldn’t reply. She could only think of the Book, and her visions of the Dark Bride, of poor Maud, of Andreas pressing his cold lips to her face as he thanked her for the gift of Karl and Katerina. And of vampires coming to her through the dusk as if approaching an oracle...

It was true. Everything Ben and Lancelyn had done, her visions had been the catalyst. Good or evil? Both - but it didn’t matter. The point was to take responsibility for her own visions from now on.

Lilith said more gently, “If I find out what I am, I’ll come back and tell you.” She took Holly’s elbow. “Sit down. Rest. You won’t die, and I don’t think you’ll go mad. But have I given you wisdom?”

Then she leaned forward and kissed Holly on the mouth. Startlingly warm and human, sending a flame of sensation through Holly - but as their lips touched, Lilith dissipated into the air. Holly was alone, staring at a strip of ashen light between the curtains.

Yet all her fear and anguish had gone.

A wonderful drowsiness overcame her, and she curled up on the sofa. The cat jumped up beside her. With one arm over him, his little rough tongue rasping her chin, she slept.

When she woke, it was to dazzling light and loud, excited voices. Sam had fled.

“Holly! Oh my God, look at the blood! Christ, is she alive?”

She shook herself awake, heart pounding. The electric lights were on and Ben was leaning over her, alarmed. Her shock passed and she sat up, easing her stiff limbs. Andreas was beside him but she only felt surprised to see him, not afraid. The drowsy calmness was still inside her and it felt delicious.

“Darling, thank goodness you’re all right! I thought -”

“Your Black Goddess paid me a visit,” Holly said languidly.

Benedict was aghast. “What?”

“She told me all about you, Ben. How eager you were to forsake me for a more thrilling companion?”

He looked stunned. He pushed his hair back from his creased brow, glanced at Andreas and back to her. “That’s a lie!”

“Is it? I think she was telling the truth.”

“Is this still about Maud?”

“No,” Holly said, exasperated. “Maud was nothing. All she did was make me see I had good reason to doubt you! It’s nothing to do with her, it’s the way you’ve always treated me. You and Lancelyn both used me to get the knowledge you wanted, then pushed me aside, patronising me. You never took my warnings seriously -but it was all right to hypnotise me when I was distressed, to leave me half-mad with fear while you dealt with more important business. You only love me when it suits you. You and Lancelyn have used me for years, and I suffered it like the child I was. But I’m not a child any more.”

From his expression, she knew that she’d hit the truth. He would never accept it; how many men dared view themselves in such a light? Ben was not deliberately wicked, but something demeaning that lacked all glamour: negligent and selfish.

“God Almighty,” said Ben. “Don’t go crazy on me, Holly. I’ve had all I can take.”

“I am not crazy. I’ve never felt more reasonable. Lilith didn’t hurt me. Quite the opposite.”

“But the blood! And the marks on your neck! The state she left Lancelyn in - She could have killed you, anything!”

Holly retorted, “But you left me here at her mercy.”

He gaped; she rose and pushed past him. In the mirror over the fireplace she looked at her sallow face, untidy hair, the faint crescent-bruises on her neck; she looked awful, but she’d never felt more clear-headed.

“I’m sorry,” said Ben with genuine contrition. “I wasn’t thinking straight. I had to go to Lancelyn, I had to...”

“There seem to be many things you’ve had to do at my expense.”

Andreas looked over her shoulder; she met his lovely jade-green eyes in the mirror. “But we’re back, Holly. Don’t be angry,
mein Schatz
.”

“What do you mean, ‘we’?”

“Don’t you want me to stay?” There was of note of surprise in the soft, seductive voice. “I have nowhere else to go... and I love you both.”

Turning cold, she laughed in amazement. She saw Andreas exactly as he was: an alluring pearlescent shell whose charm masked a self-obsessed ego. A vampire in every sense, who would feed not only on their blood but on their minds, their relationship, their very selves.

“You can’t possibly stay. Your kind of love would kill us.”

She felt cool-headed as she spoke, untouched by Andreas’s dismay. And for Ben, for the first time, she felt nothing. It was the most exhilarating sense of freedom she’d ever had. No, more than that. Her
first
sense of freedom!

His approval, Lancelyn’s and even her parents’ approval, no longer mattered.

“So,” she said, turning to Ben, “after everything, you go meekly back to Lancelyn as if it were all a mistake? What did he offer, to make you cave in so easily? Some vague promise of bedding Lilith, and you were ready to abandon me?”

“It wasn’t like that!”

“But you’d already deserted me, hadn’t you, for something more important. You only came back because it went wrong! Well, you needn’t go to the trouble of leaving me, dear. I’m leaving you.”

His face dropped. Suddenly he was the child, and that woke her sympathy. “Don’t say that. Holly, I’m sorry. I’ve been a total fool. I love you.”

“We loved each other once,” she said. “We almost had perfection. Until you staked it through the heart.”

When Ben came to her and hugged her, she broke down. They both wept, because they knew there was no going back, and no reason to argue any more. Eventually Holly pulled away from him and walked blindly out of the room.

His voice followed her, distraught. “When will you come back?”

She paused. “Not before we’re ready to stop acting like children,” she said softly, “and live as grown-ups.”

Later, she closed the front door behind her and stood on the step with her suitcase in one hand and Sam in a cat basket in the other. How sweet the air smelt, how vividly the frosted leaves and rooftiles glistened along the street. She had no idea where she was going. All she knew was that she was free.

* * *

Benedict stood disconsolate in the centre of the parlour as if rooted there. He couldn’t believe she’d gone. Not Holly, who’d always been there for him.

That’s the point, though, isn’t it,
he told himself grimly.
Because she was always there, I thought there was no limit to how badly I could behave. And she was right, our love has died... and I was too busy chasing Lancelyn even to notice.

Holly, sketching in the Mediterranean sunlight... lying naked on the crystalline honey sand... “I
never want us to be apart, Holly. Never.”

He would have changed everything to have her back.

He wanted to scream, to lash out at the cruel powers who’d taken his brother and his wife away. All he did was lean on the mantelpiece, put his head on his hands, and sob until his heart broke.

Andreas stood watching, saying nothing. How broodingly pale he looked... There seemed nothing angelic or inspiring about vampires now, only a shadowy-silver, thirsty darkness.

“That’s it, then,” Ben said eventually. “I really am alone. One minute I have everyone around me, everything happening. The next, deserted. Hard not to feel sorry for oneself.”

Andreas unstoppered a decanter and poured a glass of whisky. “Sit down and drink this,” he said. “I remember how comforting human remedies can be.”

“I don’t want a drink. It won’t help.”

But he let Andreas push him down and give him the glass. “You’re not alone,” Andreas said, sitting beside Ben, crowding him. “You need me now. We need each other. A sip... and a sip.”

He pushed his fingers under Ben’s collar, leaned in and nipped his flesh, taking only a sultry swallow or two of blood.
How horrible this is,
Ben thought, unable to stop him.
How lovely and how horrible.

“Oh, God,” Ben groaned, and closed his eyes.

* * *

There was a hard frost on top of the snow, and the world glittered.

Charlotte stood leaning on the balcony rail, aware of the cold as a pleasant needling as frost dissolved under her bare forearms, melted by the heat of stolen blood in her veins. It was so sweet to be home again... or should have been, but all pleasure was tempered by loss. Relief that Katerina was gone; then guilt, because of Karl’s sorrow. And jealousy, regret, and relief again...

This was not an end. It was only a change.