The Golden (20 page)

“Nothing,
lord. At least not with my own eyes. But a man
was
seen
yesterday outside the castle while the sun was high. He was no
servant . . . or so I’m told. He was of the
Family.”

“How do
you know this?”

“That he
was of the Family? It is not something any of us would mistake,
lord.”

The girl’s
eyes were a brilliant, almost chemical blue. Her blood scent, also
reminiscent of the Golden’s, was remarkably complex. Beheim
found himself growing hungry. And more than a little aroused. She had
not, he recalled, been one of those outfitted with metal fangs. An
evidence in her favor. Until Giselle regained her strength, he would
need someone to serve him, and this girl, with her strong spirit and
her forthrightness, might just do.

“What is
your name, child?” he asked.

“Paulina.”

“Who told
you of this, Paulina?”

She pointed to
the corpse of the gangly man. “It was he, lord. And another who
is not here.”

“They told
you nothing more?”

“Only that
the man was very tall. And that he wore a wide-brimmed hat and
spectacles with tinted lenses. He was interested in the body.”

“A body?”

“Yes,
lord. An old woman fell from the heights of the castle just the other
morning.”

Morning, thought
Beheim. A term that, when used by one of the Family, might refer to
any time after midnight. But when used by a mortal, might it not
refer strictly to a period of daylight before noon?

“After
sunrise,” he said. “She fell after sunrise?”

“Yes,
lord.”

“Did
anyone else see this man?”

There was a
muttering negative consensus.

“My lord,”
said Vlad. “If you will permit me, I will send my agents
throughout the castle and inquire of—”

Beheim shifted
his grasp to Vlad’s neck, choked him into silence.

Spectacles with
tinted lenses. A wide-brimmed hat. Signs, Beheim thought, that
whoever it was had been practiced at walking in the daylight,
prepared for its terrors. Felipe, perhaps. Searching for the body of
the Golden’s servant, concerned lest it provide a clue that
would reveal his identity. And yet this explanation did not sit well
with him. If Felipe had murdered the Golden, he would have boasted of
it while tormenting Beheim. To maintain silence and secrecy, to deny
himself an opportunity for gloating, that would have been completely
out of character. No, it had not been Felipe.

For another
thing, Felipe would never be described as tall.

But Alexandra,
that creature of secrets, she was tall, she was capable of all this
misdirection and subtlety.

Her specific
motives were still a mystery to him, but given the rumors concerning
her ambition, her connections with Felipe and Dolores, given the
general furor concerning the Family’s possible migration to the
East, there was potential motive aplenty. In light of what he now
knew, Alexandra’s intervention in his investigation and in his
life was more suspect than ever, whether or not it had come as a
result of an alliance with Agenor.

Could she have
killed the Golden?

It would be
foolish to doubt it, Beheim decided. After all, who of the Family was
not capable of violence? From what little experience he had of
Alexandra, he would not have thought her prone to such an excessive
nature as was evidenced by the mutilated body of the Golden. But what
rule did logic have over the matter, anyway? He was dealing with
creatures whose hearts were mad, whose natures were governed by the
need for lavish brutality and wild failures of the spirit. Even the
most reasonable among them were infected with madness, and though he
could be certain of nothing, he was tempted to conclude that
Alexandra was the one he sought. Had she not more or less told him
that her intervention was purely self-serving? In retrospect, he saw
that her analysis of how he would be manipulated by the Family
members stopped just short of being a confession. And as for the rest
of their involvement, who could say what it had meant? Perhaps some
honest emotion had been involved, but essentially it had been part of
a game, perhaps a game that he had also wanted to play. The fact that
he had allowed himself to become involved with her at such a critical
time might be a symptom of his own madness, an expression of an
unconscious urge to flirt with death. The thing to do, he realized,
would be to test his hypothesis at once. If the deaths of Felipe and
Dolores had not been discovered—what the odds on that were, he
could not guess—he might be able to perform a valid test. If he
were proved right, there might yet be salvation for him. If wrong, he
would not have long to regret his error.

“Listen to
me,” he said to the little group of survivors. “For this
man’s recklessness”—he gave Vlad another
shake—“some of you have paid a dear price. If you think
you can resist me, then take the torches and come at me now. But if
you wish to live beyond this day, I urge you to enter my service.
After I have done what I must, I will set you free.”

He studied them
a moment, watching their reactions; once he had satisfied himself
that they were thoroughly cowed, he turned his attention to Vlad.

“Lord, I
have secrets!” Vlad said, squirming in his grasp. “Valuable
secrets. I can give you blood to drink that will—”

“The
torments of Hell,” said Beheim. “Do you remember?”

He took one of
Vlad’s metal fangs between thumb and forefinger, and snapped it
off, bringing with it a tooth and its bloody root.

Vlad howled, he
twisted and jerked. Crimson juice flowed down his chin, matting his
beard. Beheim held him aloft by the hood of his robe, and after a
short while Vlad hung limp and groaning. Then Beheim slammed him
against the wall, stunning him, and pulled back his head to expose
his throat. Most of the others were watching with what seemed renewed
interest. One bloodletting, Beheim thought, was doubtless as
desirable as another from their debased point of view.

“Think of
your soul,” he said to Vlad, and sank his fangs into the man’s
neck. The sinewy tissues were reluctant to part; Beheim had to worry
at the flesh in order to penetrate the vein. His mouth flooded with a
bitter taste, and when the blood spurted forth, it was too sweet, the
basic flavor fouled by a gamy undertone. He pulled away and spat a
red mouthful into Vlad’s face.

“Drink
that,” he said, “if you wish to imitate your betters.”

Still taken with
the rapture of the bite, Vlad stared foggily at the wall. To enliven
him, Beheim snapped off the second metal fang, and as Vlad writhed in
pain he spoke to the others, saying, “I must reach Felipe de
Valea’s apartments unobserved. And after that, the Patriarch’s
chamber. Is there a safe passage by which you may lead me? Answer
carefully. I will not tolerate betrayal.”

Several assured
him that there was such a passage. Paulina met his eyes and nodded.
She seemed less frightened of him now, her fear replaced by an
anxious curiosity.

“Very
well. Lead me there, and I will reward you. Otherwise”—he
closed a hand on Vlad’s face, his palm covering the mouth, the
thumb and fingers gripping the sides of the jaw—“otherwise
you have no hope at all and only this for a reward.”

He began to
squeeze Vlad’s head, gradually increasing the pressure, all the
while staring into his eyes, trying to probe to the center of the
man’s little rat soul, hoping to add a generous serving of
humiliation to his agony. Vlad attempted to fling himself away. He
kicked, clawed, his heels battered the stones, his squeals muted by
Beheim’s palm. His eyes widened, and soon thin crimson rims
began to show around the whites. His entire body was alive with
vibration.

“Does it
hurt?” Beheim asked in a tone of mock concern. “I imagine
that it must.”

Vlad’s
arms flailed. A shrill keening leaked out from the muffle of Beheim’s
hand. With a crack like a pistol shot, his jawbone fractured. His
eyelids slid down, and he appeared to lose consciousness. Beheim
continued to squeeze. First one eyelid began to bulge, then the
other. They were being slowly forced open by the protruding globes of
the eyes themselves. He gave Vlad a light slap to revive him and then
covered his mouth again. Vlad’s neck inflated with a
choked-back scream. A cheekbone shattered, his limbs shuddered.
Bulging crescents of white became visible beneath the lids. His face
felt like a sack of broken tiles, and when at last Beheim dropped him
to the floor, he sat there like a great baby with his legs spread,
his arms outstretched, his head rolling, and his breath making a
windy, shrieking noise in his throat.

“There,”
Beheim said, wiping spittle and blood from his hand. “I have
been merciful. Live if you can.”

Vlad toppled
onto his side, feebly groping for purchase on the stones. His eyes
were open now. Red-rimmed, leaking bloody tears, they bulged like
hard-boiled eggs from their sockets; his eyelids were stretched
across the upper portions of the globes. Judging by the way he probed
for the edges of the stones, Beheim believed that he must be blind.
He turned his gaze to the other survivors, who were cringing back
against the wall. Only Paulina had succeeded in maintaining her
poise.

“Take the
clothing of your dead,” he told them. “Tear them into
strips and make ropes. Lash yourselves together. I will hold the end
of the rope, and you will walk alongside me into the castle. When I
have won through to the Patriarch, I will reward you. Is that clear?”

They murmured
their assent and set about doing as he had instructed while he tended
to Giselle. She did not respond to his ministrations, and he became
worried that the abuse she had suffered and the drugs they had given
her might have a cumulatively mortal effect. He would wait a little
while longer, he decided. If she did not improve, then he would do
what he must.

“Paulina!”
He beckoned to the blond girl, led her toward the door and out into
the corridor, leaving the door ajar so he could keep watch on the
others. He stood Paulina against the wall and, keeping his distance,
studied her again. There was some quality about her, a clean
sensuality, and he thought that this was the thing that had initially
inspired his lust. That, and her blood, with its heady, pungent
bouquet. Not so compelling as the Golden’s blood. A less
refined vintage, but a prized one nonetheless.

“Have you
never served one of the Family?” he asked.

“No, my
lord.”

“Then how
did you come here?”

“I was
born in the castle, lord.”

“Here . . .
in this low place?”

“Yes,
lord. As were my mother and father. And their parents before them.
More than twenty generations of my family have lived in Castle
Banat.”

This fact
engaged Beheim’s curiosity, but he had neither the time nor the
inclination to question her about it further.

“I would
have you serve me, Paulina. Do you understand what this entails?”

“I do, my
lord.”

“And would
you enter my service?”

She gave no
reply. Tension showed in the set of her shoulders and her neck; some
of the color had drained from her cheeks.

“Are you
afraid?”

“I was,
lord. Very afraid. But now . . .” She lowered
her eyes. “Now I’m not so afraid as I was.”

He reached out
and lifted her chin, fixed her with a stare. The line of her mouth
lost its firmness, and her eyes widened; he saw reflected in them an
orange wash of torchlight centered by a darkness that he recognized
to be himself.

“Answer
me, Paulina,” he said. “Answer me now. I cannot permit
you a long deliberation.”

“I would
serve you,” she said in a faltering voice; she glanced at the
doorway, at Giselle, who lay as if sleeping. “But my lord
already has a servant.”

“Surely
two are permitted,” he said, amused. Yet in his heart he
understood how pragmatic an act this cursory seduction was. Should
Giselle fail to recover, should he submit her to judgment and she
fail at that as well, he would need to replace her. Another betrayal.
Not so bald a one as his infatuation with Alexandra, but a more
profound one, perhaps, in that he was trivializing Giselle’s
plight, preparing to do without her. More damning, too, in what it
told about the depth of his feelings for her.

With the tip of
a forefinger he traced the blue vein in the hollow of Paulina’s
neck. Her eyelids drooped, and she swayed ever so slightly, as if
weakened by his touch.

“Answer
me, Paulina,” he said.

Her answer, a
whispered affirmation, seemed to come from a place deep within her, a
place in which she was dazzled and dazed, liberated from all fear and
inhibition.

He stepped to
the doorway. The others looked up from their grisly work, faces
expectant. He did not speak, only urged them to caution with a stare.
At length he pulled the door shut, closing them in, and went back to
Paulina, who had not moved. He caressed her cheek, her hair, then
slipped her robe from her shoulders. Her breasts were tipped with
childish, rosy pink areola. They seemed improbably large, monstrously
beautiful. White animals with soft, nodding lives of their own. He
lifted one, testing its heft, and felt a surge of eagerness in his
groin. Yet his thoughts did not focus entirely on Paulina; they
drifted back to memories of Alexandra, her smaller, firmer breasts,
her almost feral ardor. That annoyed him. He did not want to dwell on
her except as a suspect, and to banish her from his thoughts, he bent
to Paulina, inhaling the musk of her white skin and the sweetness of
the river flowing through the thin blue channel in her neck. He
nuzzled a spot, moistening it with the chemicals of rapture. His
hands clamped her waist. When he drove his fangs into her, the flesh
giving way as readily as might a piece of cork to a steel needle, she
tensed and let out an aggrieved gasp; but then her head lolled to the
side, allowing him better access. Her blood rushed forth as if it
were eager to be drunk, and he was astounded by the complexity of its
flavor. It was easily the most wonderful blood he had ever tasted.
Rich with essence. Strange shapes came before his inner eye, shapes
that assumed color and proportion, and to his vast surprise, he began
to have an uncommon sense of Paulina’s history. He seemed to
see her in a poorly lit room of soot-covered stone with several other
blond children—her brothers and sisters, perhaps—and
someone was watching, always someone in the darkness, watching and
waiting for something. There were other images, a flood of them, all
passing too quickly to register, moments of love and fear and pensive
solitude, all weighted with that same oppressive feeling of being
watched, and at the heart of these impressions was an intimation of
her nature, her soul, stained by the violent, degrading culture of
Banat’s outcasts, yet somehow maintaining a core of innocence
and strength. Then this curious apprehension of her was swept away by
his absorption with the taste of the blood, a dark syrupy sweetness
with tart undertones and a body of wild, furious life that stimulated
a hunger of unparalleled urgency.