A Dance in Blood Velvet (70 page)

“Let me explain.” Charlotte felt tranquil now. “I never loved Violette as I love you. How could I? But she was everything I wasn’t - I think that’s what drew me to her. I was brought up to be a good girl.” She shrugged, smiling. “So much for that. But until I met you I was passive, obedient, frightened of offending anyone. And I’m still the same in a way; afraid of upsetting you, in case I lost your love. But Violette - Lilith - was everything that I was not; headstrong, contrary, independent. That’s why I needed her. Dark and light. Something floods us that makes us vampires, both from inside ourselves, and from the Crystal Ring. There was something more inside Violette that made her Lilith.”

“And if that something is God?” Karl said darkly. “You find it easy to accept that Violette can become a figure from a creation myth, that vampires can appear to be angels. But it’s a hard concept to grasp... unless Kristian was right and his God is real.”

He turned away. His anxiety shocked her. “But Karl, it’s perfectly simple,” she said. “If the Crystal Ring is the human psyche - what are Lilith and her pursuing angels but extracts from it? What if there are certain humans, like Lancelyn and Violette, who aren’t merely ‘passengers’ of the Crystal Ring, but can actually shape it?”

“In that case, if anything can exist in the Crystal Ring - so can God.”

“Or a hundred gods! Does it matter?”

“Yes, if He is going to interfere. Here’s another definition of our heightened existence: it is the tearing away of the layers between us and the divine.”

“Don’t,” Charlotte said with feeling. “You sound like Kristian.”

“God forbid,” he said drily. She moved close to him and he put his arm around her. “Did you think our existence would be simple? That we’d be together and nothing would ever part us?”

“Yes, I fondly imagined it,” she said. “And that’s why, every time we’re apart, I suffer this crucifying fear that I’ll never see you again.”

“Charlotte,” he said softly, kissing her. “Our love burns because it never feels safe. But which do we prefer: the pain and the love, or nothing?”

“Oh, the pain,” she said. “Always.”

Karl kissed her hair and put her away from him, hands resting lightly on her shoulders. His eyes were grave. “Well, I must cause you a little more. There is something I must do.”

“What is it?”

He shook his head, and for some reason she was chilled by thoughts of Kristian. “I won’t be long, beloved. Don’t worry.”

But she was worried. “Don’t go, Karl!”

“I must. Wait for me.” He kissed her lips, and faded like a ghost, leaving empty air in her embrace. She hugged herself, bereft. And she knew he’d come back, knew it; but until then, she had this cruel emptiness to bear, an inner voice murmuring,
“But what if he doesn’t come back? What if...”

Karl once told me that in our immortality, the sin and the punishment are concurrent. That’s why we still need love, to shield us from hell. In entering the Crystal Ring, a layer is torn away; we belong to no race, no family, no nation. This chalet isn’t home; my only home is where Karl is, and until we’re together I freeze quietly in hell.

One bite from Lilith,
she thought,
and this pain would be over. I simply would not care. Is that what I want?

Charlotte looked out of the window and saw a huge white owl rise up out of the forest and flap slowly towards the moon.

T
here is no point in time,
Karl thought,
no single action, no revelation that can make life perfect forever after. Destroy Kristian and there will be nothing to fear. Is that what I believed? Take Charlotte with me, and she will never love anyone else. Bring Katti back to life, and she will never die again.

No.

There is always something else, and something else. It never ends.

He sped through the Crystal Ring, his form a slender black whip against the firmament. He sometimes thought of it as Raqia now. Lovely as a clouded sky at sunset, the realm was full of melting colours, more vivid than the sky of Earth. Almost fluid, almost solid. Always changing, like the flow of the mass psyche from which, perhaps, it emanated.

At this moment, Karl was certain of nothing.

He wanted an answer. But even if he found what he sought, it would be no answer at all.

When he arrived at Grey Crags, the house was deserted. The interior felt colder than winter; even the coloured glass in the windows was flatly gelid. A thin rime of dust lay over everything. Karl descended into the gloom of the gallery.

Nothing had been touched since the confrontation with the angels and Lilith. The automata were motionless, glassy-eyed and empty. The braziers were cold; the air stank of ash and metal. One censer lay askew where Karl had hurled it at Simon - and in the scattered cinders, undamaged by fire, barely even singed, rested the Book.
What would it actually take
, he wondered,
to destroy it?

In grave contemplation, Karl bent down and picked up the tome, brushing ash from its leathery surface. Grey dust had sunk into the pores.

He was used to its greedy chill now, and could tolerate it. Perhaps he, like Charlotte, was not yet guilty enough to owe the Ledger of Death his life. He pressed his fingers to the cover and murmured, “Rasmila. Semangelof.”

He felt the Crystal Ring whisper around him, as it had done when Ben had manipulated its fabric against Katti and the others.
Once the Crystal Ring has touched a place,
he thought,
perhaps it remains bonded there forever, absorbed into the walls... like the tunnel where we buried Kristian...

He had a flash of memory: digging in darkness with Katerina anxiously watching, of finding bones and clothes but no skull...

Embracing the volume, Karl re-entered Raqia. Immediately, the Book’s weight increased, dragging like an anchor. He’d wondered if the capricious Ring would accept the Book at all, yet it did. As he forged his way up the cloudy paths, it remained in his arms, a great layered slab of granite and lead.

Struggling, he climbed higher, letting the currents draw him upwards. The magnetic field of Earth was constant against the ever-swelling mountains, arching in auroral lines against the roiling violet slopes and the deep blue of infinity.

Chill breezes blew through his sable demon-form. He saw the layers of crystal cloud above him growing thinner as they rose towards the
Weisskalt
. It was rash to do this; it might be lethal. The absolute cold turned vampires to stone.

But it was a compulsion he must obey. A pilgrimage.

As he rose through snowy sheets of cloud, a winged form appeared beside him; a flow of deep colour, not quite black but a mingling of umber and ultramarine.

“Where are you going?” said the angel, Rasmila-Semangelof.

Strangely, Karl did not feel surprised to see her. It felt inevitable. “Why do you wish to know?”

“You summoned us, did you not?” Her voice was soothing. “You need our help.”

“But where have you been?”

“Existing in the dusk, as vampires do.”

Karl studied her. In her serenity and strength, she seemed a Hindu goddess. “Can I make you into an angel again, just by wishing it?”

“Almost anyone can - if they know how,” she said, smiling. “We knew you would need us eventually.”

“No doubt you know what I intend to do, then,” he said aridly.

“Are you so afraid of it? Why not just -” she mimed shredding the Book.

“I’m not sure it can be destroyed, or even that it should be. It is subtle, but dangerous, as Lancelyn said, and I don’t want it to fall into the wrong hands. The
Weisskalt
is the appropriate place for it. No one can reach it there. No human, at least.”

“Let me take it, then,” said the angel. “It can’t hurt me.” Her dark, cool fingers brushed his, but he didn’t relinquish the volume.

“No. I’ll carry it.”

“Don’t you trust us?” she said, amused.

Karl answered her with a candid lift of his eyebrows. “Is there any reason why I should?”

“You shouldn’t go into the
Weisskalt
alone, you know; it is extremely dangerous,”

“I know. I’ve been there before, and survived.”

“You may not be so lucky this time. But I’m coming with you to keep you warm.”

“I don’t want your blood.”

“I’m not offering it.”

As they ascended, he noticed the Ledger of Death growing lighter in his arms, and no colder now than the frost-clouds around them.

They broke through to the
Weisskalt,
a dazzling polar crust under the heatless platinum furnace of the sun. Semangelof brushed him with her filigreed wings, and he felt a shell of coolness fold round him; not warmth, but enough to protect him from the excoriating cold.

Then Karl saw the other two angels waiting; Fyodor-Sansenoy, shadowy white on whiteness, and Simon-Senoy, a blaze of ruby and gold flame. Rasmila-Semangelof was dark, edged with burning silver, an eclipsed sun.

Magnificent, like the ineffable visions of Michelangelo. Karl wanted to weep with awe at their beauty - but he would not worship them. He wouldn’t beg them for forgiveness or mercy. Never.

He still had a lingering suspicion that Kristian was not quite dead, and that these envoys were some terrifying emanation of his labyrinthine mind. He had not found the skull. The manor house tunnel had disgorged the rest of Kristian’s remains, yes - but not his head, the throne of the intellect, the one part that could be revivified.

He said, “I had a feeling that I hadn’t seen the last of you.”

Senoy inclined his expressionless, beaten-gold face. “We have not finished our business with you, my friend.”

“Why didn’t you finish it before? And why desert Lancelyn? I thought you would have done your utmost to protect your protégé against Lilith.”

“You misunderstand our nature,” Senoy replied. “We did not
want
to abandon him, but we had no choice. Our only power was that which Lilith gave us; once she refused to submit, our hold on her was lost.”

Karl smiled bitterly. “So, with Lancelyn and Lilith you made another mistake. You are not infallible.”

“Only God is infallible,” said Semangelof.

“Yet you still want to punish me for Kristian’s death - even while admitting that you’ve made mistakes? Isn’t it petty, to want revenge?”

“Not revenge; justice,” said the white angel, Sansenoy. “If we peel the skin of warmth from around you, you will petrify in this waste. You will feel nothing as we tear you apart...”

And Karl tried not to care, tried to stare death impartially in the face as he had before... but inside, he was in despair.
I will come back
, he’d told Charlotte. He could not break that promise.

“But we won’t,” said Semangelof.

A moment of silence, pierced by the eerie moan of the ice-gale.

“Something worse, then?” Karl said quietly. “You could have devised no crueller punishment than turning me against my own friends. The God or Devil who rules you is an evil genius. But I warn you, if you try that again I will find a way to kill myself first.” He gripped the Book to himself, as Charlotte had, like a shield. “I’d destroy you if I could; but at what cost? When I slew Kristian, you three came; I dread to think what would come to avenge
you
.”

Senoy shook his head, like a patient priest. “My friend, there’s no call for these bitter words. The punishment is over. You’re right, we can’t take revenge for Kristian, because his time is past. Something else is coming... and we have no power over it. None of us has.”

“Not even God?” Karl said.

“Answer that question yourself.”

“I suggest that God has only the power that men give him.”

“But the Goddess, Karl,” said Semangelof. “No one can control her.”

“Do you mean Violette? Lilith?”

Senoy replied, “We can only command her if she will permit it, and she will not. We did our best, but we can do no more. We are not your enemies, Karl; we change according to what is required, and we’re here now simply to warn you. We are no threat to your loved ones - but Lilith is.”

“Have you nothing better to do than invent ways to frighten me?”

“This is a sincere warning. She is dangerous, Karl; she will take Charlotte away from you, and she will destroy your daughter if she can.”

“Ilona?” Karl said, appalled. “What has she to do with this?”

“Violette believes Ilona was responsible for her father’s insanity and death; thus, indirectly responsible for her fate in becoming Lilith. We tried to tame her through Lancelyn and failed. For as long as she roams free, Lilith will cause untold harm and sorrow.”

“My God, are you telling me to stop her?”

“You have made it quite obvious that no one tells you what to do, Karl.” Senoy gave a sardonic smile. “But one day you will
have
to stop her.”

“And if I do, will it restore your power?”

“On the contrary, without Lilith we may cease to exist at all in this form. Don’t you understand, we are above the lust for power?” He pointed at the Book. “Why do you clasp it like an instrument of suicide?”

“Because I can do so without dying,” Karl said in a low voice. “Because I can stand in the
Weisskalt
and defy death.”

And suddenly, quietly, he knew himself to be Simon’s equal. The knowledge came without excitement or triumph. It didn’t seem to matter greatly.

“But dare you read the Book?” said Simon. “Open it.”

Karl tried, only to find that the Book had become a solid, seamless entity - curiously light in the
Weisskalt
, as if made of porous stone. “I cannot,” he said thinly. “The Crystal Ring has transmuted it, as it changes us. It’s only a concrete symbol of itself. Its words have no power here, nor do its ghosts.”

Simon’s mouth flickered with surprise. “But it can still reveal the Truth.”

“Or a version of it.” His tone was rational, but the same pangs of uncertainty kept clawing at him.
Is Kristian dead?

“So remember where you leave it,” said Fyodor-Sansenoy with a mocking edge. “You may need it again.”