Written in the Blood (17 page)

Katalin visited him at midnight on the third evening after János’s taking, as a crisp wind blew the rainclouds away towards the west. He heard her coded tap in the darkness, and sat up in bed as she slipped into his room, a heady cloud of lavender.

The moon picked out the crease in her brow. ‘Your door was unlocked,’ she said, padding across his floor in bare feet.

‘Trusov took our keys.’

‘He did what?’

‘The morning after János disappeared. We went down for breakfast, and when we came back after lessons they were gone.’

Her mouth dropped open. ‘I have to tell my father. If—’

‘
No
. You can’t, Katalin. He mustn’t hear anything from you about this. You’ll bring trouble on us all.’

‘You can’t sleep behind an unlocked door.’

‘What choice do I have?’

‘Izsák, please. You saw what happened.’

‘I saw something. I don’t understand it.’

‘All the more reason to take precautions. You have to find a way to block your door at night.’ She cast around the room, taking in the wardrobe, the washstand, the bed. ‘Budge up.’

‘What?’

‘Are you deaf? I’m not going to molest you.’

She stripped back the covers, revealing his pale legs. Flushing with embarrassment, Izsák pulled down his nightshirt and slid closer to the wall. Katalin climbed in beside him, the bedsprings creaking, and he felt the heat of her body against his own. The girl’s scent, so close, was dizzying.

‘It’s happened before. Hasn’t it?’ he asked, needing to break the silence that had formed between them.

‘How did you know that?’

‘Just a guess. Something Béni said once. That there’d been others here, and that they’d gone. He didn’t want to talk about it.’

‘It’s
végzet
in a few days, Izsák. I don’t know why, but when they come, it’s always at this time of year.’

‘They?’

‘Sometimes it’s just one, like a few nights ago. Other times, more of them.’

‘Who comes?’

‘You really don’t know?’

‘Are you going to tell me or not?’

She bit her lip. ‘Father calls them the
gyermekrablók
. But you might have heard them called something else.
Lélek tolvajok
.’

Izsák’s skin prickled. He
had
heard the term before, somewhere in his past. He didn’t know what it signified, exactly, but he remembered it was synonymous with loss. ‘Tell me,’ he whispered.

She told him.

Afterwards, they sat in silence, watching the moon trace a path across the sky. At some point during her story, Katalin’s hand had moved beneath the covers and taken his own. Now, she moved her thumb back and forth along his index finger, seemingly unaware of the effect her touch had upon him.

While he felt sickened at what she had revealed, a small part of him rejoiced at the intimacy the incident had sparked. And then he thought of Pig, rocking himself back and forth –
TOLL MAN NOT WANT!
– and that small measure of happiness decayed into guilt.

Beside him, Katalin snuggled down under the covers, her hair trailing across his pillow.

‘You can’t stay here,’ he said. ‘If we get caught—’

‘I won’t,’ she whispered. She let go of his hand, closing her eyes. ‘But just for a little while. Please, Izsák.’

How could he refuse her? Upright in the bed, he studied her face, listening as her breathing began to lengthen, thinking about all she had told him.

In later years he would never be able to explain why he did what followed. After what felt like hours, yet was perhaps only an interval of minutes, he leaned over her sleeping form and kissed her mouth.

The moment their lips touched, Katalin blinked. ‘I’d been wondering how long it would take you to do that,’ she said. Snaking out an arm, she slid her fingers around the back of his head. ‘I never thought I’d have to wait this long.’

Izsák stared into her eyes, at the reflections of moonlight that glimmered there. His chest rose and fell against her own.

Outside, in the hall, he heard a rustle of movement as Etienne passed his door. But whether she was coming or going from her nightly appointment with Trusov, Izsák could not say.

C
HAPTER
16

London, England

T
he sky was darkening to wet ashes as Leah steered her Mercedes hire car out of Heathrow, and by the time she arrived in Central London the beams of her headlights were sparkling in the puddles.

A week had passed since she’d said goodbye to Luca Sultés in Interlaken, and she cursed herself daily for the number of times he’d appeared in her thoughts since. She’d visited several European cities, and had met six
hosszú életek
women that the
tanács
, in their wisdom, had condemned as
kirekesztett
.

At the women’s request, she’d agreed to meet each in a public place. Five of them arrived alone; one brought along a partner. Of the six, two rose to their feet and walked away the instant Leah explained the reason for her visit. A third became so instantly abusive that on that occasion Leah was the one to retreat, alarmed at the attention they were drawing.

Of the remaining three
kirekesztett
, the woman who had brought her partner along agreed to Leah’s proposal on the spot, tears shining on her cheeks as she reflected on the possibilities she’d imagined had disappeared forever. The other two requested more time to consider, which Leah was happy to grant.

In a single week, she might have found more volunteers than their programme back in Calw had managed in eight months. And Luca’s list contained yet more names.

One of those she was on her way to meet now. Unlike the others, this woman had asked that Leah visit her at home; unfazed, it appeared, by the possibility that the contact was part of some
tanács
plot.

Half an hour after leaving the airport, Leah turned onto the stratospherically affluent Mayfair street programmed into the satnav and slowed down until she found the address. She parked in a reserved space and switched off the engine, listening to the rain finger-tap a rhythm against the sunroof.

The house was huge, a whitewashed Georgian terrace that rose a neck-craning five storeys in height. Its imposing front door, up a flight of stone steps and shielded behind cast-iron railings, was an impenetrable slab of wood – reinforced, Leah guessed, with a steel core that would deflect the attempts of all but the fiercest of assaults.

The black bubble of a security camera bolted to the building’s façade monitored her as she climbed out of the Mercedes. She tried the gate set into the railings and found it locked. Before she had a chance to press the button on its intercom, she heard a buzz of magnets as the enclosure unlocked.

Leah swung the gate open and walked up the steps. By the time she reached the top, the front door had opened, revealing a heavy-set man with a jaw that looked powerful enough to shatter bricks. He did not bother to conceal the fact that he was armed. Jerking his head to one side, he motioned for her to enter.

Breath catching in her throat, palms suddenly damp, Leah entered the marble-floored foyer and heard the door swing shut behind her. ‘I’m Leah Wilde,’ she said.

‘You’d better be,’ the man replied. ‘Are you carrying?’

‘No.’

‘I need to check.’

‘Go ahead.’

She lifted her arms and he patted her down, moving his hands along her arms, around her torso and down her legs with a briskness that demonstrated he cared only about discovering a hidden weapon.

He found none. The pat-down complete, he searched through her hair and when, finally, he satisfied himself that she carried no firearm, no knife, nor anything else she might use to endanger his employer, he pointed her towards a staircase that rose in a jagged square around each of the building’s five storeys.

‘Which floor?’ she asked.

‘Second.’

Leah counted a further four CCTV units on the way up. Their lenses, powered by silent motors, rotated as she passed.

When she reached the second floor, the man halted behind her. The lighting was softer here, illuminating pale-green walls. An enormous bay window, looking down into the street, curved around a collection of Chinese porcelain so ancient it might have dated back to the Han dynasty. Some of the pieces had been smashed and subsequently repaired.

‘First door on the left,’ he told her.

She nodded, feeling his eyes on her neck as she moved down the hall, sinking into carpet as dense and cushioned as the wool of a lamb’s fleece. Leah knocked on the door, then went inside.

The room she discovered could have been used to entertain royalty. Its walls were decorated with leaf-patterned silk, but no artworks hung from them, only mirrors. One was so enormous it stretched the entire width of the room. Marble-topped plinths bore bronze statues of fornicating couples. A huge Persian rug covered most of the parquet floor.

In one of two wingback chairs beside a fireplace bright with flames, sat the most formidably sensual creature Leah had ever seen.

The woman’s skin glowed as if lit from within. Her hair was as dark and rich as polished ebony, rolled into a simple twist fastened by a jewel-encrusted clasp. Her dress, a fluid black shimmer accentuated with sparse bursts of pink flowers, clung to her torso and trailed past her knees. She sat barefoot, one leg crossed over the other, toenails manicured but free of any adornment. Her face was as blank of expression as it was flawless, eyes a pale, frosty blue.

Leah, in jeans, boots and her old motorcycle jacket, felt her stomach sinking. She had wanted this woman to see her as an ally – perhaps even as an equal – but already a gulf seemed to stretch between them. She’d felt nervous enough meeting the six previous
kirekesztett
women, but standing here now she felt a trickle of sweat roll down her spine.

The woman continued to study her. She opened her mouth, revealing perfect white teeth and a small, crimson tongue. ‘Leah Wilde.’ Her voice was chocolate steeped in wine, the words a statement, not a question. Not an invitation.

Tread carefully
.

‘Yes. You’re Etienne?’

‘Indeed.’

Leah nodded. A feeling began to descend on her that she had entered not a home, here, but a lair. ‘Thank you for seeing me.’

The woman indicated the empty chair with a flick of her wrist. ‘No need to thank me. Anyone who can soften the heart of Luca Sultés as quickly as you appear to have managed is a woman worth meeting. Knowing how often that man can have a change of heart, I thought it prudent to meet you sooner rather than later.’ For the first time Etienne smiled, although it was an expression entirely lacking in warmth. ‘You’re not
hosszú élet
,’ she added, folding her hands in her lap.

Leah moved to the wingback chair and sat. The room was hot, but she did not remove her jacket. She sensed that without an invitation it would be deemed a breach of etiquette; she also sensed, with just as much conviction, that to flaunt any unwritten rule of conduct in front of this woman would bring their interview to an immediate close.

She found herself contemplating how far away she was from the people who loved her. And for the first time since leaving Calw, she felt dreadfully alone. She recalled the man downstairs searching her for weapons, and the cameras that zoomed in on her progress during her passage up to the second floor.

Although it had doubtless been the right decision to leave her Ruger under the Mercedes’ passenger seat, right now it felt a dangerous one. She did not know why her host had been branded a
kirekesztett
. But she did know, simply from reading the woman’s face, that she was outshone, outclassed, outgunned here, in every respect. Etienne’s eyes gleamed with the intensity of a wolf pup’s, but they measured Leah with the feigned indifference of a far more experienced predator.

How much to tell this woman, waiting for her to speak? Every decision she made in this room felt like a step taken along a precipice. ‘I am,’ she replied. ‘Of a sort.’

Etienne tilted her head. ‘You either are, or you aren’t.’

‘I have
hosszú élet
blood in my veins,’ she said. ‘But
simavér
, too.’

‘Impossible.’

Leah took a breath. It was pointless to argue. Instead, she focused her eyes and felt the familiar stirring –
tightening
– as she bade them to do her talking for her.

Etienne’s lips parted, ever so slightly, in the merest feather of a reaction, and then they closed. She blinked. ‘I think you’d better tell me the rest.’

Careful of every single word she uttered for the next twenty minutes, Leah did exactly that.

Halfway through her story, the
kirekesztett
woman went to a rosewood cabinet and opened its doors. She selected two crystal tumblers and from a decanter poured a measure of spirit into each. Her hands were shaking, Leah noticed. An artery flickered in her throat.

Returning to the fireplace, Etienne held out one of the glasses. This close, Leah recognised her perfume: Guerlain’s Jicky.

‘You’re perspiring,’ Etienne said. ‘Are you afraid of me?’

‘I’m hot.’

The woman raised a quill-like eyebrow. ‘Then why are you sitting there draped in leather like that?’

Feeling foolish, Leah shrugged out of her jacket and accepted the proffered glass. She raised it to her lips, took a sip. Calvados, warming her throat.

She continued her story, and when she finished it Etienne began to question her. Leah answered as best she could, but she did not reveal the location of the centre in Calw, nor the exact nature of her and her mother’s heritage.

Finally the questions ended and they sat, considering each other, in silence. The fire popped. Wind flung raindrops against the room’s huge bay windows. Somewhere, out in the night, the muted blare of a car horn carried through London’s streets.

‘I hope I haven’t wasted your time,’ Leah said, after neither of them had spoken for five minutes.

‘Time is not as precious to me as to some,’ Etienne replied. Her eyes were on the fire, watching the flames bob and dance.

‘I must ask. Now that you’ve heard what I have to say—’

The woman’s eyes hardened; two sharp gemstones, a fraction paler than topaz. ‘You require an answer? Tonight?’

‘No, I wouldn’t expect to receive—’

‘Nor shall you.’

Leah closed her mouth, refusing to let the woman’s manner antagonise her.

You’re not here to judge. You know nothing of her. Nothing of what she’s faced. Nothing of what she’s endured.

Before leaving her home in Calw for this undertaking, Leah had set herself two rules. One: she would not ask the women she met the details of their crimes unless they volunteered them. Two: she wouldn’t allow herself to become moral arbiter. No one in this world, she believed, possessed the right to judge whether a woman was worthy of carrying a child. Certainly not her. Etienne might have walked the earth a hundred years or more. The very notion that Leah, with her twenty-four years of life, was a worthy magister of the woman’s suitability for motherhood was laughable.

She offered a choice, that was all; a choice that would be available to every woman she was able to find.

Rousing herself from her thoughts, she discovered that Etienne’s eyes had moved from the flames to study her face. Leah shifted under their intensity.

‘You’re in London long?’

‘A few days,’ she replied. ‘I have others to see.’

‘You’ve set yourself an unenviable task.’

‘I don’t view it like that.’

‘I admire your devotion.’

‘I can’t sit back and watch us fade away, Etienne.’

‘No. I see that in you. But it doesn’t explain why you haven’t offered yourself more fully to this undertaking.’

‘Meaning?’

‘You’re of an appropriate age. If this means so much to you, why aren’t you a mother yourself by now?’

‘I think I’m more suited to this. To finding—’

‘That’s not an answer, nor the beginnings of one.’

‘No.’ Leah dropped her head. When next she spoke, her voice was faint. ‘I can’t.’

‘You can’t?’

‘I can’t conceive. And I can’t be a surrogate. My body . . .’ She shrugged, raising her eyes to Etienne’s face. ‘Who knows why these things come about?’

‘You’ve known it long?’

‘Long enough.’

‘It pains you still, doesn’t it?’

‘More than you could imagine.’

Etienne laughed. ‘Don’t be so sure of that.’ She stood, dress shimmering in the firelight. ‘Come back in two days. You’ll have your answer then.’

Out on the street, Leah clutched her jacket around her as she unlocked the Mercedes. Frost stubbled the windscreen. Night had fallen, and with it London was beginning to freeze.

Inside the house, the beautiful
kirekesztett
woman with the wolf pup eyes stood at the window and watched Leah’s car pull away from the kerb.

Despite the room’s heat, she shivered. How long since she had experienced emotions such as these? She examined her hands, watched the way her fingers trembled. Turning away, she took the stairs to the third floor, walked along the corridor to the unadorned room and descended the spiral staircase to the antechamber adjoining her Aviary.

At the dressing table, she retrieved the bundle of photographs. Then she retreated to her bedroom.

Closing the door, she caught sight of herself in the three floor-length mirrors. Her face was pale, the skin of her throat flushed red. But she was still beautiful. And that was what mattered. Beauty had mattered all her life. It defined her.

Her chest rose and fell. She climbed onto the bed and sat cross-legged, pulling the rubber band off the sheaf of photographs. Soon she had laid a row of five before her.

She stared at those images, unblinking. After a while, she picked up the fifth and final photograph: a girl, eight years old, sitting on a bicycle. A smile for the camera, from a child not used to smiling.

She examined the girl’s face, turned the photograph over in her hands.