A Dance in Blood Velvet (17 page)

“Mr Grey, aren’t you in the shop today?”

“No - I’m sorry, Maud, I should have telephoned. I’ve had a lot on my mind. Do you mind coping on your own for a couple of days? I’ll pay you extra.”

“It’s no trouble,” she said with a touch of petulance. “I don’t mind if I
know
.”

“Thank you.”

She turned to leave, then pulled an envelope from her pocket. “This letter came to the shop yesterday, or the day before... I’d have brought it sooner, if I’d known you weren’t coming in.”

He took it from her. “My fault, but I wish you had.”

She gave a martyred, ingratiating smile, as if to say,
I’m terribly put upon, but I suffer in silence.

“Strange girl,” Ben said to himself, closing the door. He sat down and stared at the envelope in shock. Deirdre’s handwriting.

Dear Benedict,

I’ll send this to the shop so you needn’t explain to Holly if you’d rather not. I’m writing before I catch my train. There’s more to tell that I couldn’t say to your face. Too difficult. Call me a coward, but I couldn’t have borne your questions and distress. I just wanted to leave.

I’m breaking an oath to tell you this. The story is that Lancelyn goes fishing once a month. He doesn’t. He goes - went, rather - to James’s country house and held meetings of a secret order he called the Hidden Temple. James and I were the only members from the NMT. The others were the usual: members of parliament, judges, aristocrats and the like - men seeking more extreme versions of the occult to stimulate their jaded appetites. Lancelyn supplied the need. Opium, hashish, cocaine, women, boys, seances and sex rituals - whatever they wanted.

I’m not coming over moral about this. I was all for free love and free will. I enjoyed it to start with; there was some plausible talk about communion with the Goddess through sexual union, which Lancelyn may have half-believed. It was money that ruined it. Once someone’s initiated, he has them forever. He held enough scandal, over every one of them, to have destroyed their careers and lives - and he milked it. If you don’t believe me, where do you think all his money comes from?

Well, James got sick of it. I told him, “Refuse to let Lancelyn use your house any more!” but when he tried, Lancelyn got furious and tried to blackmail him. James said he had enough evidence, of procuring, drug-dealing and the like, to do worse back. Lancelyn was incandescent. That’s why he killed James and that’s why I’m leaving.

You can go to James’s house if you like, but you’ll find nothing. His relatives are in possession and Lancelyn will have removed the evidence. What he’ll do about the Hidden Temple now, I don’t know and I don’t care.

Ben, I know you love your brother. If you knew about this all along, I’ve made myself look a fool, which doesn’t matter. But if not - and knowing you, so decent and good, I’m sure you didn’t - I’m sorry.

Please burn this. Your friend, D.

Ben dropped the letter and put his head in his hands. “Oh, God,” he said.

* * *

That night, when Andreas needed to feed, Ben took him to a small hospital and said, “Find someone who would die anyway.”

Whether Andreas obeyed, Ben did not ask. The only way to cope with the horror and hypocrisy was to shut his mind and harden his heart.

“Good and decent,” Deirdre had called him.
Christ.

When they returned to the house, Benedict saw lights burning that he hadn’t left on.

He opened the front door, saw nothing unusual in the hall. The air felt taut and frosty, vibrating with the vestigial energy of his ritual. The place felt cold, heavy, frightening. He heard a faint scrabbling of mouse paws.

A strip of light under the drawing-room door filled him with unreasoning terror.

He glanced at Andreas, but the scoured face was devoid of fellow-feeling. Shuddering, he pushed open the door to the parlour.

Holly was sitting on the sofa, her feet tucked underneath her, her face deathly. Still in her coat, she held Deirdre’s letter crumpled in one hand. For a heart-stopping moment he thought she was dead; murdered and posed there as some ghastly joke.

She looked up. Relief. But why was her face so white, why did this feel as alien as a nightmare? Holly could be volatile, courageous, bad-tempered, but he’d never seen her so pale and motionless, as if so terrified she could endure it only by sitting absolutely still.

Seeing Andreas, she stared.

Benedict said in dismay, “Darling, why are you home? I wasn’t expecting you for at least a week.” He glanced darkly at the vampire and added under his breath, “She is not to be touched.”

Andreas only smiled and blinked. His eyes were long black crescents in his burnished skin.

“I had to come back; I knew you were in danger.” Her voice was raw with tiredness. “How could you pretend everything is ‘fine’ when it obviously isn’t? I’m not a fool!”

“Holly -”

She went on staring at the vampire. “What is that - thing with you?”

“A friend,” said Ben.

“He has no aura,” she whispered. “He’s not human, is he?”

“Holly, this is rather difficult -”

“Not human.” Her eyes were bird-bright in her ashen face. “Like the others.”

“Others?”

She glanced at the ceiling. “In the attic and on the landing. White creatures like him. The house is full of them. In the name of God, Ben, what have you done?”

T
he search would begin when Katerina regained her power to enter the Crystal Ring. That could take days or weeks; Charlotte had breathing space. The minute she could escape without it seeming Katerina had frightened her away, she flew to her refuge,
Giselle.

The truth was, Katerina disturbed her at the most primeval level. The gleam of her eyes, warm and wise and yet so sinister, as she softly crushed Charlotte’s offer of help:
Ask yourself, do you really want to put Karl’s safety at risk?

No,
Charlotte thought.
No, I don’t. But I won’t let you win!

If not for Katerina, perhaps Charlotte would have forgotten Violette Lenoir. As it was, the ballerina remained the only creature who could soothe her. In the next few weeks she saw the Ballet Janacek in cities all over Europe.

Sometimes she lingered at the stage door until Violette emerged; at others, she left the theatre the moment the performance ended, found and took a victim with urgent fervour that left her shocked at herself.

Anger at Katerina? Frustrated desire for Violette’s swan-pale throat? Charlotte’s own feelings alarmed her. In the glorious freedom of being with Karl, she’d felt happy and in control. Then Katerina intruded, and a rope came untethered within her. She felt as if the first storm would carry her away.

The latest performance was in Vienna - Karl’s home city, and he wasn’t with her. A double sadness; the run of
Giselle
was almost over.
Tonight, and tomorrow; then
, Charlotte wondered,
where else will I find refuge?

After the curtain calls, Charlotte left swiftly but didn’t go home. She walked all night, feeding on three or four victims as she went. Easy for a pretty young woman to catch a man’s attention; they were so pleased, so trusting, that she felt no guilt. The purple-red intoxicating juice of their veins swept away all pain; theirs, and hers. She took only a little blood from each but drank languorously, her mind as dark and dispassionate as the night itself.

Wind, rain, spring flowers nodding under a glaze of light. In the Vienna Woods she watched the sun rise like a pearl through a red ocean. Then she walked back into the city to lose herself in crowds whose rational, busy minds were oblivious to the supernatural. She floated on their oblivion like a feather.

Ugly, the workers’ flats being built on the outskirts. Who could be so dull-minded as to defile this beautiful city with cold modern ideals? This was where Karl had lived, long before she knew him. As she walked past palaces and theatres, she imagined him everywhere; a ghost in nineteenth-century clothing, a musician in the time of Beethoven and Schubert. The sun came out and the wet cobblestones shone.

She entered an opulent hotel and sat in the lobby, stirring a cup of coffee that she would not drink. Gauze veils of sunlight gleamed on the dark panelled walls and brocade upholstery. All brown and faded gold, hushed as a library. She watched guests coming and going. Diamonds and fur. Lives untouched by the currents of change.

Last night had been given over to mindless sensation, but now she must think.

Karl has never given me cause to be suspicious of any human female, though God knows, he has enough temptation. Katerina’s different. Immortal, powerful and confident. I can’t challenge the link between them, their hold on each other; I don’t know how.

Karl still loves me, I’m sure, but all his reassurances turn to dust in the face of one fact: he loves Katerina too.

Her brown eyes haunted Charlotte. Such withering contempt;
How,
she thought,
how can she make me feel so impotent? And her teeth...
a shiver of revelation.
God, she showed me the tips of her fangs!

A clear threat; the ultimate way one vampire claimed power over another was to feed on them. Loss of blood meant weakness, while the dominant one’s strength increased. That was how Kristian had made himself their leader, by being physically undefeatable.
And Katerina’s older and stronger than me...

Would she dare? Will Karl protect me?

I have to decide. Do I run away and let her win, or do I tag along and let her humiliate me? I’m so afraid, if I force Karl to choose between us, that he might not choose me. And he’d resent me for forcing him, I know he would.

Well, it’s clear what I’m doing at this moment. Running away.

Sensing movement, Charlotte looked up and saw a couple coming in through the lobby doors. With tingling shock, she saw that the young woman was Violette, her companion the ballet’s director.

While Janacek went to the desk, the dancer came and sat on a sofa opposite Charlotte. She was wearing a black fur-trimmed coat, a cloche hat half-shielding her face.

Violette took a newspaper from a coffee table, unfolded it and began to read. Charlotte covertly watched her. Was she really so interested in the news, or trying to avoid being recognised?

She willed the dancer to put down the paper, but she didn’t.
Why do I want her to notice me?
Charlotte thought.
What can I possibly offer her, except danger
?

She leaned forward and said, “Excuse me, madame, would you like some coffee while you’re waiting? There is plenty in this pot; I can ask the Fraülein to bring a fresh cup.”

Violette lowered the newspaper. Her eyes were startling: dark sapphires. Her expression was supercilious. “No, thank you,” she said, and returned to reading.

Her accent - despite her name - was upper-class English, clipped. She clearly didn’t want to enter conversation with a stranger, and saw nothing in Charlotte to interest her. Charlotte felt disappointed but unsurprised; it was exactly the response she’d expected. Violette’s mere proximity was weirdly electrifying. She tried to shut out her awareness of the dancer’s blood-heat and the smooth skin beneath her clothes; tried not to see her as a desirable victim. Impossible. Violette was as self-contained as a vampire, which only made her more intriguing.

Struck with an awful image of seizing Violette, here in the lobby in front of everyone... Charlotte thought she had better leave before she was tempted to do just that.

Janacek strode over from the desk, his footsteps heavy on the thick carpet. He gave Charlotte the briefest glance as he sat by his ballerina and began to speak quietly to her. Their voices were hardly above a whisper, but Charlotte could hear them easily. They were discussing a private party to be held in this hotel, after tonight’s final performance of
Giselle.

Charlotte rose to leave, but couldn’t go without saying something to Violette; just a word of appreciation. It might be her only chance. She looked straight at Violette as she spoke, not trying to conceal her vampire luminosity.

“Madame Lenoir, forgive me for interrupting, but I want to thank you for all the pleasure your dancing has given me. I’ve been to almost every performance of
Giselle.
Nothing else has helped me forget my troubles; only your dancing.”

Violette had no chance to respond before Janacek leaned forward, shielding her. “Madam, don’t you know it is extremely rude to interrupt a private conversation?” He spoke with a heavy Eastern European accent. “We appreciate the sentiment, but Madame Lenoir does not care for unsolicited approaches.”

Charlotte’s eyes flicked to him, widening, turning as frigid as Violette’s. “Well, forgive me, Herr Janacek. I won’t waste your time by praising your choreography. Good-day.”

She walked away slowly, her head high, not looking back. Her only feeling was one of hollowness.
I said it would break the magic; feet of clay, all these great people.

As she reached the glass-panelled oak door, she heard heavy footsteps behind her. She kept walking; Janacek caught her up as she stepped outside.

“Gnädige Frau,
allow me to apologise. I show bad manners. Madame Lenoir has many, many people who wish to speak with her; it is a great strain, and always I must protect her. I am sorry.”

Charlotte glanced behind him into the hotel, saw no sign of Violette. “It’s quite all right,” she said coolly. “I am very honoured to meet you, Herr Janacek.”

“And I am honoured to be recognised. Most people only know the dancers,” he said, nodding. His smile was warm and a lock of grey hair tumbled over his forehead. But she remembered the blood-and-metal spikes of his aura, and the way he had caressed Violette’s costumes. “May I know your name?”

“Charlotte Alexander.” That wasn’t her last name; it was actually Karl’s middle name, but it pleased her to use it.

“Charlotte?” He frowned suddenly. “You leave flowers once -?”