A Dance in Blood Velvet (8 page)

Instantly he stopped fighting, held her to him with both arms, even while his power bled away and his vision turned white.

Charlotte and Ilona pulled them both from the Crystal Ring and into the mortal world. He felt Charlotte’s energy tingling into him through her hands, the only warm spots on his body. She’d lent her strength to bring him back. And so had Ilona; why had she helped?

As they tumbled to Earth, the creature’s fangs came out of Karl’s neck and she slumped in his arms. She was no longer stone-rigid but pliable flesh. In human guise again, all four collapsed exhausted on the ground. Karl blinked, and saw the faces of his lover and his daughter glowing ghostlike against darkness.

They were lying on grass, on a roadside. Dawn glimmered on steep alpine meadows.

“Karl?” Charlotte’s arms went around him. Her clothes were torn, her hair tousled. “Are you all right?”

He hugged her, sat up, gently set her aside. “Yes, beloved. Thank you.” He looked at Ilona’s sharp oval face, pallid under her hair, the same near-black auburn as his own. Just a glance. She would only throw his thanks back at him.

Between them lay the naked, piteous form of the sick vampire. She tried to claw at Karl, who held her down easily. Her form had changed with the transition to Earth, but she scarcely looked human. Her body was dead white and skeletal. Skin and muscle were pasted on her bones like papyrus. Mummified. A thing that should have been dead; instead she was writhing, sounds of agony rattling from her throat.

Karl bowed his head. He was beyond weeping.

The three immortals knelt around her, silent - not with revulsion, but with the knowledge that they could each be looking at their own fate. To suffer like this, unable to die...

Karl pulled back his sleeve, and put his wrist to the vampire’s mouth.

“What are you doing?” Charlotte cried.

The white creature, closing her eyes, sucked hungrily.

“Feeding her.”

“Hasn’t she already taken enough from you? Why?”

“It’s Katerina,” said Karl.

Charlotte and Ilona both gaped. Karl felt weakness weighing him down. He knew he should stop while he could still move, but he was transfixed by Katerina’s ruined face, by the way her pain lessened as his increased. Pinkness crept into her cheeks. Then Ilona swore in German, and began to laugh.

“Christ!” she said. “I might have known! She always led a charmed life, didn’t she? I wonder how she pulled this trick?”

Charlotte closed her hand on Ilona’s arm. “Don’t,” she said. Her voice was quiet, but her subduing effect on Ilona was - to Karl - unique and astonishing. “Karl, please stop feeding her. She’ll kill you.”

“How?” asked Karl. “If only it were that easy for us to die.” He pulled his wrist from Katerina’s lips and pressed his thumb to the wound until it began to heal. Then he took off his coat and covered Katerina’s pathetic form. She uttered faint moans. There was no intelligence in her eyes.

“It is Katerina, without doubt,” said Ilona, bending closer. “What happened? Where did she come from?”

“We found her drifting as if dead,” said Karl. “I didn’t know her at first. When I touched her, she attacked me. But, Ilona, why were you there?”

She glanced at him with her large dark eyes, looked away. “I am often near you, Father. I dislike entering the Ring, but every time I’m there I feel something... not right. I considered asking if you’d noticed the same, but I’d hate you to think I have such fancies.”

“You should have told us,” said Karl. “You know I would take you seriously. What was it you felt?”

Ilona’s lips thinned; she loathed admitting to feelings that weren’t flippant or callous. “Other vampires around me. Too many. And what was Katerina doing, floating like a dead fish in a tank, when we thought she was in the
Weisskalt?”

“I don’t know whether to be relieved or disturbed that my own visions were real,” said Karl. “I wish I had an answer, Ilona.”

“What are you going to do,” said Charlotte, “about Katerina?”

“Cut off her head,” said Ilona. “Put her out of her misery. She can’t survive.”

“Why not?” Karl said sharply. “I brought you out of the
Weisskalt,
and you survived.”

“Yes, but I’d been there only a few days. She was there for forty years! Look at her!”

“I will not destroy her.” Karl said evenly.

“God,” Ilona muttered, raising her eyes at the sky.

“Are you going to help me or not?” said Karl.

Even Charlotte looked reluctant. Drawing back, she said, “What can we possibly do?”

“She needs human blood. She’s drawn so much from me that I’ve no strength left to enter the Crystal Ring at present. Even if I could, Katerina’s far too weak to go back in. So, first we must find out where we are.”

“Somewhere in Austria or Switzerland,” said Ilona. “Isn’t that specific enough?”

Karl ignored her. “We’ll arrange a place to meet. Charlotte, you can go through the Crystal Ring and bring a motor car; go home and bring ours, or hire one; whatever is quickest. Meanwhile Ilona and I will feed Katerina. Then we’ll take her home.”

* * *

“Can you enter the Crystal Ring for long enough to take her through a wall?” Ilona asked.

“I doubt it,” said Karl. They stood in a valley with mountains rising around them, dawn lightening the shadows to steel-mauve. A spring thaw patched the snow with green. He held Katerina against him, wrapped in his coat; she was like a wax mannequin, her head drooping against his shoulder, her hair cobwebby like an old man’s.

“We’ll do it the easy way, then.” Ilona pointed to a farmhouse sitting snugly in the valley. “I’ll enter first and let you in. The inhabitants won’t put up a fight. Can you sense them?”

Karl felt little discs of warmth touching him. He was drowsy, and didn’t want to harm them. But for Katerina’s sake...

They went down through the twilight, unobserved. At the house wall, Ilona vanished; moments later, a door of cracked wood swung open, and Karl took Katerina inside. He felt sickly cold, almost too weak to think. He scented blood in the gloom, deep under the stench of animals, of sour milk and cheese, washing, woodsmoke, human illness.

There was no one healthy in this house. The fit members of the family must be out in the meadows, for only two hot, quick-breathing entities pulled at him. Thirst ravaged him.

“Here,” Ilona whispered, pushing open a door.

There were two beds in the little room. In one lay a thin boy, his breathing laboured in his sleep. On the other sat a grossly fat wreck of a man, with an adult’s face and the eyes of a child. He watched the sick boy as if he’d sat there all night.

Seeing the vampires, the big man leapt up and screamed. Ilona sprang forward, felled him with a jab of her fingers. She tore into his throat, then recoiled and sat him upright, offering him to Karl.

“God!” she said disgustedly. “I don’t think he’s washed in his life! Let her take him, quickly.”

Karl had only to help Katerina a little. Smelling the blood, she writhed like a baby seeking its mother’s breast. She fell onto the child-man, began to lap from the wound Ilona had made as if demented. She absorbed his blood, his life-aura, everything.

The boy woke and sat up, staring with huge, feverish eyes at the apparitions in his room. His breathing was noisy, threaded with whimpers of fear.

Katerina will need him too,
Karl thought.
God knows how much blood it will take...
but he, too, was starving.

He moved to the boy and sat down on his bed. The child stared at Karl in dumb terror. He was dying; tuberculosis, polio, some awful affliction. Karl pitied him; but sparing him was impossible. He could only clasp the narrow shoulders and look into his eyes.

Karl held back until the boy’s expression changed from fear to tranquillity... even love. And then, sealing the deception, he bent and bit into the clammy throat.

He was famished and the blood was more delicious for being hot with fever. No human disease could affect him. His own unnatural body would destroy any trace, leaving only the rich crimson essence he needed. When the craving was strong enough to override conscience and compassion, he let it; accepting his nature without pride, without shame.

His thirst partly slaked, Karl forced himself to stop and leave the rest for Katerina - although, God knew, the child had little enough to give.

Two pitiful corpses, they left. Shells. Karl seemed to be looking at them from a great distance, unmoved. The river of life had caught them, carried them for a while, then washed them up like drowned dogs on the bank. So it did to everyone. But the gorgeous, glittering, crimson river flowed on forever.

* * *

Policemen came and asked questions.

Yes, said Benedict, Deirdre was grief-stricken over James’s death. No, we’ve no idea why he killed himself. We didn’t know him well. A suicide pact? I don’t think so. She was on her way back to Ireland. Yes, they attended meetings of my brother’s literary group, but this occult stuff has been greatly exaggerated. What we do wouldn’t shock your maiden aunt. Come along sometime.

Holly sat listening to this, weeping.

She’d known about Deirdre’s death long before the police called. One of her psychic flashes, like a punch to the stomach. That must have been the moment Deirdre went under the train.

Deirdre had been waiting to change trains at Leicester, the policeman told them, standing quietly on the platform with no sign of agitation. When the train came she jumped in front without warning. Witnesses said she held up her arms as if to stop it, but the driver couldn’t brake in time...

She must have jumped on impulse, said Ben.

Eventually the police went away, satisfied there were no suspicious circumstances.

Ben and Holly comforted each other. Later, as she began to recover, Holly said, “I’ve had an awful notion, ever since Deirdre came to say goodbye. I thought, ‘If anything happens to her, it will prove her right.’”

“About what?” Ben said thornily.

“Being persecuted by Lancelyn.”

He shot to his feet. “Don’t be ridiculous! She was upset, not in her right mind!”

“I don’t want to believe it either,” Holly said in a low voice. “But we have to consider the possibility, at least.”

“I’m going to work,” Ben growled.

Numb, Holly watched him walk out; tall, long-limbed, fair-haired. Always full of energy; a strange mixture of kindness and single-minded ambition. She worshipped him. That was why he could hurt her so easily.

When he’d gone, she went into the kitchen and made a cup of tea to calm herself.
Two of your friends die,
she thought.
You suspect that your own beloved father - father-figure, at least -as good as murdered them. What in the name of God are you supposed to do?

Another image. A white envelope in a gloved hand. A letter on its way...

She pushed away the vision. Her psychic ability was a burden, not a gift. The random images were capricious, unreliable. They never presaged anything good.

Lancelyn and Benedict might possess higher powers to touch the astral world, but she had a simple clairvoyance that they lacked. As a medium, she was invaluable to them. The process made her uncomfortable, but she submitted out of a desperate need to be useful. Her own parents had regarded her weird gifts as unacceptable. So to be accepted and
needed
by the men she loved meant everything to her.

It was through her visions that they’d found the ancient Book. Why she’d had that particular vision, she’d no idea, unless Lancelyn had projected his complex desires onto her. “We need an earthly key to the astral realm, a link,” he had said. Then he had hypnotised Holly, and she had seen the heavy volume on a table in a tiny cell that was thick with mildew, candlewax, soot and cobwebs. The cell was in a tunnel, deep underground, where no human had passed for centuries.

Further hypnotism and research helped them locate the tunnel. It was on a private estate in Hertfordshire, which meant, strictly speaking, they were trespassing. But, Lancelyn reasoned, if the owners were unaware of the tunnel’s existence, how could taking the Book count as theft?

Holly hadn’t gone with them, but on their return they described the place exactly as she’d pictured it. They’d broken into the cellar of a derelict house to find the entrance. A cold, subterranean place, full of death and ghosts. The lair of a mad hermit, long since dead.

She was profoundly shocked to hear that her vision was so accurate.
Why do I see such things?
she asked herself.
Why can I never control or understand them?

She hated the Book at first sight. Something deeply malevolent lingered within it.

No sooner had Ben brought the tome into the house than he’d summoned that ghastly, groaning corpse. Holly hadn’t felt safe since. And now Deirdre. Impossible to be objective, when her deeper instincts screamed,
This is evil. You are right to be afraid.

She went into the parlour and forced herself to open the Book. Cramped writing on yellowing pages. Paper, ink, leather. Nothing to be afraid of...

A terrible resonance flowed out and she slammed it shut, feeling ill. As she stood glaring at the slate-black cover, Sam snaked around her legs, mewing for attention. She gathered him in her arms, absorbing comfort from his warm, hairy weight. He seemed imperturbable.

“The Book doesn’t trouble you, does it?” she said. “The evil’s not directed at
you,
Sammy. But it’s searching for...
someone.”

A knock at the door made her jump. Holly put Sam on the rug and forced herself to answer. The woman on the doorstep was Maud Walker, their bookshop assistant. Sighing inwardly, Holly asked her in.

“Mr Grey sent me to make sure you were well,” Maud said with her characteristic nervous giggle. “He said you were upset earlier.”

“He needn’t have done,” said Holly. “I’m perfectly all right.”

“I’m so sorry about your friends,” said Maud, as if James and Deirdre had merely encountered inclement weather at the seaside.

“Would you like tea?” said Holly, showing her into the parlour. “There’s some in the pot.”