A Dance in Blood Velvet (14 page)

Katerina, usually imperturbable, looked alarmed. “What’s wrong with you? Beheading kills us!”

“Not always. Not if there is another vampire to save the head and feed it fresh blood. The body grows anew.” He fell quiet, flooded by hellish memories.

She said quietly, “Do you know someone to whom that happened?”

“Stefan. A human beheaded him and Kristian saved him... And it also happened to me.”

“My God. This is too much, Karl.”

“It’s the truth.” He opened his hands. “Charlotte’s brother cut off my head; Kristian wouldn’t let me die that easily.”

“Charming relatives she has! So, you killed Kristian, even though he saved your life?”

“I wasn’t sure I wanted to live again. Now I’m glad to be alive and with Charlotte, but at the time... You cannot imagine the horror of what Kristian did.”

“Tell me.”

“Later. There’s so much to explain. But knowing there was a possibility, however remote, that someone might revivify Kristian, we cut him into pieces. Severed his head, split the skull, cut up his torso and limbs.”

Katerina was shuddering. Tears stood bright in her eyes.

“Are you weeping for him?” Karl asked.

“No.”

“I did.”

“It’s the shock, Karl. Kristian was so strong! He was everywhere and everything. I can’t imagine him brought so low. Did he cry out for help?”

“Yes. He said his only sin was to love us too much. And at the end, when I brought down the axe, he asked, ‘This is how you love me?’ And he said those words after we’d cut off his head.
After.
That was most hideous of all, though it did ensure that we destroyed his skull... But what if he came back, what if he simply
cannot
be destroyed?”

Katerina ran gentle fingers along his forearm. “What would you do if he had survived?”

“God knows.”

“Well, we must find out if he has. And what of Andreas? If I’m alive, he might also be in the Crystal Ring, lost and starving. Help me find him! I need you, Karl; didn’t we help you, all those years ago?”

Karl folded his arms around her and held her to him. She was taller than Charlotte, her face almost on a level with his. He’d never stopped loving Katerina, her calm strength and voluptuous warmth; he had only trained himself to survive the loss.

She kissed him on the mouth. He responded. So natural, so miraculous to feel her lips on his after all this time... but conscience stopped him. He drew back and turned his face aside.

“I see,” she sighed, her arms slackening. “Forgive me. I forgot you were spoken for.”

Karl thought,
Why didn’t I foresee how difficult this might be? Dear God, but I did. I simply could not admit it.

He kissed her forehead, determined to be brotherly. “Of course I’ll help you. Anything.”

Katerina smiled. “Then we’d better set about regaining our strength. I am so thirsty, aren’t you?”

She strode off down the forest path and Karl matched her pace; vampires in their element, danger now to anyone they encountered. However, he didn’t want to feed too near home.

“We keep a motor car in an old stable at the bottom of the hill.”

“A what?”

“Horseless carriage,” Karl said, smiling. “We brought you here in it, don’t you remember? An elegant thing, really.”

“I have some vague recollection of a dreadful noise, a stink of leather and oil.” Katerina laughed. “Oh, let’s walk, drive, fly; I don’t care! How good it feels to move, to be alive again. I want a human in my hands, a sweet young boy, and his blood flowing over my tongue... Do you still insist on hunting alone?”

“I prefer to.”

She stroked his shoulder, her voice honey-seductive. “Just for tonight, hunt with me.”

* * *

After the ballet, Charlotte stood outside the stage door with Violette Lenoir’s worshippers. She felt like an alabaster statue in the midst of their whispering excitement. There were young girls, aspiring dancers with their parents; folk of all ages, more women than men, each carrying a bouquet for Violette. To look inconspicuous, Charlotte also held an armful of flowers. A sweet fragrance swam up from the petals and she breathed deeply, trying to distract herself from the temptation of so much human blood.

Violette’s performance had been as entrancing as the first. While watching her, Charlotte had not once thought of Karl or Katerina.

She had no intention of speaking to Violette; only wanted to see her close at hand. Why, she wasn’t sure. Perhaps to draw out for as long as possible the magic that kept her from thinking.

After half an hour, a tall man with a mop of grey hair came out, and the girls greeted him with cries of delight. Charlotte realised he must be Roman Janacek, the director and choreographer; Lenoir’s mentor, the newspapers called him, as if he’d created her like the puppet in
Coppélia.
He laughed and talked with the little crowd, but Charlotte stood apart, watching. His face was handsome in a ravaged way, his loose frame energetic, his movements extravagant.

As he signed their programmes, he kept glancing over the girls’ heads, straight at Charlotte. She met his eyes without expression or invitation.

After a few minutes he went back inside. They waited again. Then a long black Mercedes glided to a halt in front of the stage door, ready to receive the star.

The crowd’s excitement swelled. First came an assistant with armfuls of flowers that she arranged in the back of the car; then two women and a man emerged and took seats in the vehicle. Charlotte had no idea who they were, but one of the girls said, “Her friends, the ballet patrons, they’re taking her to supper.”

“I’d do anything to go with them!” another sighed.

Finally, Violette emerged. She was dressed in black, more petite than she appeared on stage, her face barely visible between a huge fur collar and her deep-crowned hat. The gleam of an eye, the tip of her nose, lips curved in an aloof smile. The flower-givers pressed forward, too shy actually to crowd her. Charlotte made no attempt to present her own bouquet. She simply observed.

Even in everyday clothing, Violette shone: an angel masquerading as human. Without stage make-up her features were softer, much prettier. She looked a little like Ilona; pale, with expressive eyes and dark lips. But her skin had a human radiance, and there were light freckles on her nose and cheeks. Her mouth smiled, but her eyes had the self-absorbed gloss Charlotte had seen in the eyes of film stars and royalty; cool, egotistical, gracious.

She accepted the tributes without a word, giving only a regal nod. An assistant spoke for her,
“Danke schön. Sie sind sehr freundlich. Vielen dank,”
then relieved her of the bouquets and held open the car door.

As she turned to step inside, Violette met Charlotte’s gaze. For a fractured instant the dancer’s regard held, then flicked away with apparent indifference.

I am just another stranger to her,
Charlotte thought. And her detached yet fierce curiosity about the ballerina made her feel more alien, more like a vampire, than ever before.

With flowers filling the windows, the car slid away into the night; a perfumed, candlelit shrine. The fledgling dancers hugged each other, exclaimed and sighed and waved. Violette waved back with queenly grace until the Mercedes swept out of sight.

It would have been easy for Charlotte to follow, travelling invisibly through the Crystal Ring, but she did not. Somehow Violette was as remote from her as from her human devotees. As they dispersed, Charlotte slipped in through the stage door.

Backstage activity was fading as the dancers called goodnights to each other, their faces shiny with cold cream. Charlotte passed unseen into the Crystal Ring, walked through the wall of Violette’s dressing room, and re-entered the corporeal world.

The small room was a den of lace and tulle, satin and net. There were headdresses starred with gypsophila; a silk dressing gown hanging over the corner of a screen; hampers and racks of costumes half-filling the room. The floor had been swept, make-up neatly ordered on the dressing table. The ballerina was gone but her presence lingered; a fading warmth, the sweat of her exertion mingling enticingly with the scents of greasepaint and perfume.

Charlotte walked slowly around the confined space, looking, touching the costumes in which Violette enchanted her audience.
Why am I doing this, what do I want?
asked the voice inside her; but the only answer was a dull ache.

She placed her flowers on a couch. In the morning, someone would wonder how they had got there. On impulse, she took a lipstick and wrote, “From Charlotte” on the ribbon; a small, enigmatic tribute to Violette’s genius.

She sensed someone approaching. A key turned in the lock, and as the door opened she quickly stepped into the Crystal Ring. The room became a warped, smoky jewel around her - but the human was visible by the glowing spines of his aura.

She wanted to see him properly. Moving behind the screen and back to solidity, she recognised the man who’d come out to commune with the masses; the choreographer, Janacek. He locked the door behind him, then - like Charlotte - moved pensively around the room, running his fingers over the chair-back. A lock of grey hair hung down over his lined face; he was in his fifties, she thought, with the easy charisma of the gifted.

Then, to her shock, he drew a costume from the rack - the one in which the spirit Giselle had danced back from the grave - and embraced it convulsively. Charlotte watched dumbstruck. The way he clutched the pearly satin bodice to his chest, rubbed his face into it as if to drink the scent, sent a shiver of distaste through her.

She had no wish to witness an act so intimate. Passing into the Ring again, she noted the colours of his aura; bright raspberry-red, mingled with spines of pewter that looked like bayonets. Oppressive, manipulative.

With that image in her mind she left the theatre, meaning to go home. Instead she walked for miles, lost in thought; hunted and fed; walked again under the clear black arch of night. And a long time passed before she went back to Karl and Katerina.

* * *

Violette sat in the car, a shrine of flowers, her mind wandering while she made polite responses to the small talk of her associates. They demanded nothing more of her; she was the goddess who’d given a great performance. She was not required to talk, only to
be
.

In truth, she would rather have dined alone. All she wanted now was the quiet of her hotel room, her maid Geli to ice her aching knees.

This darkness always fell on her after a performance. Ecstatic energy had burned out, the orgasm of applause was over; now there was only the flat silence of the night to face, and everything to do again tomorrow.

She knew her three tormentors would come to her tonight.

They never appeared in her dreams, only in the gap between waking and sleeping; tall shadows who said nothing but filled her with indefinable, ghastly yearnings. It was a childhood haunting that had never left her; the same primal neurosis that creates monsters from innocuous shadows. Violette had not grown out of her fear, but at least - so she believed - she’d learned to live with it.

Tonight, for no clear reason, the face of an unknown woman in the crowd had induced the dark feeling. Violette had no idea why. She could not even recapture the woman’s face; only her unblinking, crystal-grey eyes.

B
enedict was dying. The monster clamped to him was like no living predator; a mantrap of rope and stone. Immoveable, mindless. His limbs tingled and his ears filled with a rushing sea. Pain, grinding pain from shoulder to head... the insatiable mouth like a giant leech on him...

Benedict refused to die.

He sucked lungfuls of air, opened his eyes wide, fought to stay conscious. Desperation lent him strength, brief and white-hot, born of the pure will to live.

His hands grappled the vampire’s arms. Projecting the full power of his mind, he whispered, “I entered your realm, I summoned you. You cannot destroy me. You are subject to me, you must obey me. Let me go.”

As he whispered, his hands tightened on the thin hard arms, trying to loosen their grip. Harder, harder. He shook with the effort. But slowly, inch by inch, he prised the creature’s stone limbs from around him...

It wouldn’t take its fangs out of his neck. He felt defeat rushing up to claim him.
No, God, don’t let me faint, not yet -

“There is a chain around your neck,” he said. “If you don’t release me, the chain will tighten until it strangles you. Feel it tightening. Now let me go!”

The vampire loosed him so suddenly that he fell. He landed on the floor in a heap of broken glass. Blood everywhere. Yet through black dizziness he kept his wits, breathing deeply until his head cleared. The creature was lying against the shattered panel of the temple wall, white as a candle flame against the darkness. It was lapping at a pool of blood on the floor, its tongue rasping like a cat’s. Was it less gaunt than before? Ben watched the faintest rosy tinge creep into its skin.

Benedict stood up, feet planted apart to keep his balance. He felt sick and ragged. But the whole aim of his occult training had been self-discipline, and now he called on all his reserves.

He must be calm, impartial, authoritative.

How shall I address it?
As
a god? No. I made it obey me, therefore it is vulnerable. I must establish my superiority while I have the advantage.

Ben’s confidence returned. Something in his subconscious had snaked out and twined with the vampire’s mind - the terrible power of a human who could touch the hidden realms.

He said, “Can you speak?”

The vampire ceased licking and stared up, mouth hanging open. “Ah,” it groaned, like a baby imitating speech. Then, slurred,
“Ja.”

“You will never attack me again, do you understand? You must not feed on me.”

“Ich verstehe.
I will not. I cannot.” Then, agonised,
“Hilfe. Hilfe!”

Benedict was speechless for a moment. He’d never expected a creature from the spirit world to speak German.