Mozart’s Blood (17 page)

Hélène found a willing enough victim on the ferry, but the delay had made her ravenously thirsty, and out of control. She didn't know, when it was over, quite what she had done, but she feared the worst.

The next morning, at breakfast in the Palace dining room, she saw the
Chronicle
headline. A body had been found on the ferry, dead of mysterious causes. A bad photograph showed the very face she remembered, whiskered, thick-nosed, middle-aged. Lifeless.

Hélène abandoned the poached eggs and fresh biscuits set before her and blundered out of the hotel, her empty stomach roiling. She turned north, toward the bay, walking as fast as she could in her heeled boots. She paid no attention to where she was going, only following the soothing lure of the waves and the clanging of the warning bell from Alcatraz.

After a walk of thirty minutes or so, she found herself on Battery Street, skirting the foot of Telegraph Hill on her way to the shore. Thick gray fog roiled above the bay, hiding the roofs of Sausalito on the opposite shore. The tang of fish from the wharf reminded her of the salt taste of fresh blood. As she paced the grass above the beach, the hem of her skirt grew heavy with the damp.

She had meant not to kill him! She had tried to hold back, to stop before she went too far. It was the great danger in getting too thirsty, in letting too much time lapse between feedings. Her own reluctance made her inefficient, even after all these years. She resisted the thirst, and she resisted its satisfaction.

Somewhere above her, hidden by the fog, a seagull gave its tritone call, F–B, F–B. For a painful moment, she was Teresa Saporiti again, leaving her home in Limone sul Garda to begin her life as a singer. Sorrow filled her breast for lost innocence, and for the heartache of a life lived alone.

She turned to walk back toward the docks, where the fishing boats bobbed as they waited for the fog to lift. She wrapped her coat more tightly about her and pulled her scarf down over her forehead, retracing her steps along the shore. The fog swept up over the beach, and she walked into it, glad to be isolated with her misery and her guilt.

He seemed to coalesce out of the drifts of fog, first his flat cap, then the sweep of his gray worsted topcoat, the jut of white that was his stiff collar. His face was a blur of shadows against the gray, but Hélène recognized him instantly.

She swerved abruptly to her left to avoid him, but he moved easily, wolflike, and blocked her path. “I need to talk to you.”

“Leave me alone,” she said. “You've caused enough damage.”

His smile was as cool as the fog itself. “You have no idea,” he said lightly. “But I'm going to explain it.”

“Explain what? Why you made me kill some poor innocent man?”

He shrugged. His black eyes were as cold as the fog. “He wasn't innocent. I've seen him before. He haunts Jackson Street for whores. He doesn't always pay for what he takes.”

“I don't care. I didn't intend to kill him.”

He put out his hand and gripped her elbow. She tried to pull away, but his fingers were like steel. “Hélène. I've come to you as a friend.”

“A friend!” she spat. Her lip curled and she knew her teeth were showing, but she didn't care about that, either. “Are you going to expose me?”

He pressed a hand to his chest, and laughed. “Expose you!
Mon Dieu, ma chérie!
We are both creatures of secrecy. To expose you would be to expose myself. And besides, who would believe me?” He turned her toward the beach. “Come now, mademoiselle. Let's go down to the water's edge and make ourselves comfortable. I have a great deal to tell you.”

“I have a performance tonight.”

“Yes, I know.” He gave her a cool smile and urged her forward with a steady pressure under her arm. “
Carmen.
With the great Caruso. And Fremstad. I hear she's a bitch to work with.”

“How do you know that?”

“We've been watching you, Hélène.”

She missed a step, stumbling on the grass. “Watching me?”

He guided her to a long piece of driftwood, an ancient log with a single disintegrating branch pointing its silver-gray arm at the sky. It lay a few feet from where the water foamed over the sand, washing bits of sea wrack up onto the beach. He made an elegant gesture with his free hand, inviting her to sit.

Hélène, with a wary glance at him, sat down. The top of Nob Hill was just beginning to show through the mist. Everything else hid behind its shifting veils. The bay itself was invisible, present only in the faint slap of water against the shore. She felt as if she and this man, this stranger, were alone in the world. He frightened her, with his black eyes and dusky skin, his knowing, pitiless smile.

He sat down beside her, leaning negligently against the splintered branch.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I'm someone who cares what happens to you.”

“You've been watching me.”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

The turn of his wrist, the opening of his fingers as he gestured were as graceful as any dancer's. “We first began to wonder about you in New York.”

“We? Who else?” She stiffened. Her scarf had fallen back, and wisps of her hair, dampened by the mist, began to curl around her chin. She wanted to flee. She had been so careful and had convinced herself she was safe, but now a sense of hopelessness swept over her, more chilling than the fog from the San Francisco Bay. She had escaped detection for so long. Only Zdenka Milosch, she believed, knew of her existence, and she had not seen the Countess since Teresa Saporiti's last performance.

“The elders,” he said quietly. She brought her gaze back to his face and saw a flash of something there, a crinkle of the eyelids, a slight softening of the lips. It looked for a moment like sympathy, and it frightened her even more. She could trust no one. It was too dangerous. She had learned that from Countess Milosch.

She started to rise. He caught her back, but this time his hand was gentle. “I've heard you sing,” he said.

“What does that matter?” she demanded. The mist absorbed her voice, drank it as if she had no resonance at all.

“Yours is a great gift,” he said. “I don't want to lose it.”

She stared at him, confused. “Who are these elders? And what do you want?”

He took a breath, and released her arm. “I'm going to tell you.” She settled back onto the cold driftwood, watching him.

“The elders,” he began, “are like you, Hélène. Or may I say, Teresa?”

Her fingers flew to her mouth.

He smiled. “Please don't worry. The elders of La Società have known about you from the very beginning. About you and Mozart.”

“Gran Dio,”
she breathed.

At that he grinned, his teeth white against his dark face. “Indeed.”

“And are you—are you like me?”

He shook his head. “No. I am something quite different.”

“What?” she demanded. “What something?”

“That doesn't matter now. What is important is what the elders of La Società want you to do. Or more precisely, what they want you not to do.”

“Where are these—these elders? Why don't they come to me themselves?”

“Oh, they rarely leave their compound. They prefer privacy.”

“But if they're like me, they need…they need to…”

He nodded. “They do. But there are many who want to be what they are. What
you
are. An endless stream of them, really, who go in search of the bite. Who beg for it.”

Hélène stared at him, all thoughts of flight gone. “Beg for it? But don't they know what can happen? More than half of them die of it.”

“No one,” he said softly, “thinks that will happen to them.”

“And so…these elders…are they careful?”

“Absolutely not.”

“They—you can't mean that they kill them. All of them?”

“All.”

Her lips parted again, but she could find no words. She searched his face for some emotion, some regret or guilt or sadness, but she found only pragmatism.

He nodded, as if he understood what it was she was looking for, and as if he knew she had not found it. “They want me to talk to you about that. About being careful.”

She blurted, “I don't like them to die.”

“But they must. Otherwise, there are too many of them. La Società fears an epidemic, and the threat of exposure that would bring.”

“Some die even when I'm careful. When I hold back.”

“Not everyone can bear the weight of memory.”

She sighed, remembering Mozart. “I know.”

Then this strange man, this puzzling creature, stood up and put out his hand to lift her to her feet. “I'll walk you back to your hotel.”

The hand that had felt so hard a few moments ago now had a friendly warmth. His fingers were gentle under her arm as he walked beside her up over the strand, onto the grass and the road beyond.

As they walked, Hélène said, “What will they do if I refuse?”

His voice was level and uninflected. “Some do refuse. I know how to deal with them.”

“They die.”

He shrugged. “It is regrettable, but necessary.”

She stopped on a street corner and faced him. People walked by them, hardly glancing at the tall young woman and the slight man. She lifted her chin and gave him a challenging look. “You would kill me.”

He looked into her eyes, and she read in his a reflection of her own long loneliness. “I don't want to,” he said in a confiding tone. “This is a hard world. There are so few of my kind, and the ones I've met I don't care for. But when I heard you sing in New York, and again at rehearsals here in San Francisco—I felt more joy than I've known in half a century. It's not just your voice—which is spectacular—but your
music.
It touched even me. And I thought I was beyond touching.”

“You don't want to kill me,” she said flatly. “And I don't want to kill them.”

He took her hand in his. “Let me find another way,” he said.

Her laugh was short and bitter. “Another way? There is none.”

“There may be.”

She tore her hand from his and turned away. Her wet skirts swung heavily around her ankles. “I have to change and go to the Opera House.”

“Please, Hélène.” And more softly, “Teresa. Don't do anything until I—”

Over her shoulder, she said, “You can't help me. Leave me alone.” She stalked away toward her hotel, her back stiff with anger and fear.

She sensed his presence, dark and very still behind her. Watching.

Octavia came to herself, finding that her retreat into memory had kept her standing in the center of her suite, her scarf hanging limply from one hand, her coat half off her shoulders, trailing on the floor. The curtains were open and the city lights sparkled through the darkness.

She called, “Ugo?” There was only reproachful silence.

She started toward her bedroom, then paused. Ugo's case was in his room. He would be furious if she opened it, but—he had been gone so long. Surely he would understand if she—if she simply took the briefest look inside. There might be a vial there, something to tide her over, to sustain her until Ugo reappeared. He could hardly object to that. He didn't want her hunting in the streets.

She turned, stepping over her coat and scarf where she had dropped them. Seizing upon the slender chance, she hurried to Ugo's room and opened the door wide.

Something about the too-tidy bedroom made it seem cold. Though Ugo's clothes hung in the closet and his suitcases were stacked neatly beside the bureau, the room had an uninhabited feeling. Octavia turned on every lamp before she began opening drawers.

The case, a rather small rectangle of embossed brown leather, was in the bottom drawer of the bureau. She pulled it out and carried it to the bed. She dropped to her knees on the carpet and snapped open the locks.

The interior of the case was as orderly as Ugo himself. There were four syringes neatly Velcroed into place in the lid, with disposable needles in their sealed packages tucked into a pocket beside them. She lifted out the small square of absorbent toweling, bleached to a brilliant white, and found beneath it a package of alcohol wipes and one of tiny, clear bandages. There was a coil of tubing and a plastic box holding several clean, empty ampoules.

Feeling hopeless and helpless, Octavia lifted the packages out and searched the corners of the case. She sat back on her heels, holding the towel to her chest, and stared into its emptiness. Nothing. There was nothing in the case to help her.

Carefully, trying to put everything back exactly as she had found it, she repacked the case and replaced the folded towel. She snapped the case shut and stood.

She looked around Ugo's room, as neat and tidy as her own was perpetually messy. She didn't know, really, where he kept her supply, nor did she know how he stored the herb he used to stop his transformations. She sometimes imagined him running through the hills, breathing the wind, feeding in the wild. But she never asked if he missed it. He was adamant in refusing to speak of the other side of his nature.

It was possible, she supposed, that Ugo was weary at last of taking care of her. But surely, had that been the case, he would have given her some indication. He had simply vanished, without warning, without a trace.

She put the case back in its drawer and went to the closet. She pushed back the folding door and found that all of Ugo's things were there, his beautiful jackets and slacks, his two tuxedos, even his opera scarves hanging, smoothly folded, on a padded hanger. She touched them with her fingers and sniffed the faint scent of the sea that clung to his skin and hair.

He laughed at her when she told him she could smell it. “You have a dog's nose,” he had said once, reaching out with his slender fingers to tweak that feature. She had slapped at his hand and made some silly remark, and they'd laughed together, secure in their affection, in having found companionship at last.

But that was long after San Francisco.