A Dance in Blood Velvet (25 page)

God, this desire was real, so strong. He couldn’t say no; it was like falling. He felt euphoric, as if she’d broken the curse, and by some wondrous holy magic made him mortal again.

Yvette welcomed him into her arms with joy. She was no innocent, but an experienced, passionate lover who’d been alone for longer than she could bear. She made Karl feel purely, blessedly human. He sank into her warmth with complete abandon.

No thought but to please her; no fear of harming her. His only emotion was this river of joy and heat... and so natural, then, in the delicious bliss of release, to lower his face to her neck, to kiss her skin through the damp tangled strands of hair...

There was no warning of the treachery. With a soft motion as gentle as a breath, Karl’s fangs were in her throat, her blood surging into his mouth, and he could not stop drinking. Could not stop.

At first she pulled him hard against her with a cry. Then she seemed to realise what was happening, started to struggle and push him away. But the compulsion was sovereign, a blind impulse he couldn’t fight. This was the treachery, that it felt too beautiful to be wrong; as if they were inside each other, every cell united in rolling red fire that pulsed on and on... slower and slower... into stillness.

Karl came back to himself as if drenched in ice. His lover’s mouth was open, her eyes staring upwards past his shoulder, her body limp and waxen...

He pulled away, dizzy and intoxicated. Yvette lay beneath him like a ravaged mannequin, her cheeks sunken. Her white skin was turning blue... and on her throat was a purple wound, across her shoulder a splash of crimson the colour of her discarded dress.

He staggered back, half-sliding off the bed, the floor a swaying deck beneath him. All his pleasure turned ash-cold with her death.
I never intended this,
he thought in blank self-loathing.
Dear God, this was the last thing, the last thing...

But even as he stared at the result of his desire, he understood.

This was inevitable. The uncomplicated lust he felt for her had been a posturing liar. Pursuing it could have no other end.
If I’d known,
he thought,
if I’d only known, I would never, ever have let it begin.

Now it was not Therese but another’s wife who lay murdered; and this time, he, not Kristian, was the killer.

Karl hardly remembered gathering his scattered clothes, dressing, fleeing into the Crystal Ring; despair and a red haze of tears blinded him.

He spent a long time alone, but coming to terms with what he’d done was impossible. Eventually, in complete despair, he went to the house of Katerina and Andreas.

Katerina was there on her own; uncannily similar to Yvette in the candlelit parlour. Creamy skin, long brown hair. But she was no lonely innocent in danger from him.

“Karl, what a wonderful surprise,” she said. “How lovely to see you.”

Unable to utter the most basic pleasantry in response, Karl began to pour out the story. He held nothing back; she was the only one he could talk to, and he was beyond caring what she might think. He paced the room until the candles died, and starlight fell silver through the darkness.

When he finished, Katerina rose and lit fresh candles, shaking her head. She looked both astonished and sad. Karl’s agitation had faded at last to leaden dullness.

“Even another vampire is disgusted,” he said. “Or are you amazed that I’m such a poor disciple of Kristian’s, not to delight in causing horror?”

“No, dear; it’s only that I’ve never known you so upset, or pacing about like a lunatic. This is the first time you’ve spoken to me so openly. I’m glad you felt you could tell me. Ah,
liebe Gott;
what you have been through...”

Katerina’s strong face was receptive and warm, but he felt she was making light of the matter. “Me? What about
her?”

“Well, at least she enjoyed herself. I trust you saw to that?” Katerina said acerbically.

“For God’s sake.”

“Of course you did; it’s not in your nature to be selfish. The irony, Karl, is that you don’t actually need to be an unselfish lover; with beauty like yours, one look would send any woman into raptures. There are worse ways to die.”

He sat down, his white hands stiffening on the chair arms. “You’re being ridiculous,” he said in a low voice. “Can’t you be serious about this?”

“But I am, dear.” He felt her hand on his arm and jumped; she approached so softly. “There would have been a worse way. Alone in that ghastly house, of some horrible disease passed on by her husband. Of consumption. In childbirth. Of old age, waiting in vain for children who’ve long since abandoned her... oh, there are many worse ways than with an angel sucking gently at your throat.”

Karl remembered Yvette’s dead eyes, and shuddered. “There’s no way you can soften this.”

“No.” Her whisper cut like diamond. “This is the hard truth; you cannot have contact with humans except to drink their blood. Don’t you see? You told yourself, ‘I won’t harm her,’ but your need for blood is cleverer; it took down your intellectual defences with sexual desire. That’s why we still feel these desires, my dear; didn’t you realise? Kristian never told you, but he wouldn’t. He deplores sex, just as he despises anything passionate or physical.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You never asked,” she said, “and you were so self-contained, it never occurred to me you didn’t know. I’m only amazed it took you so long to find out. Some vampires take their prey like that every time. The pleasure is... beyond compare.”

He suppressed a shudder. “Well, I never shall again.”

“Won’t you?”

Karl was silent for a long time. Katerina knelt by his chair and watched him, motionless as only a vampire can be. Then she asked, “But how did it feel, to make love again?”

“Wonderful. As sweet as taking blood.”

“I know,” she said. “Difficult to give up.”

“Not at such a price.”

“But it doesn’t have to be like that. Do you think Andreas and I just read poetry to each other?”

“Hardly my business to think anything,” said Karl, but emotions stirred amid his pain and guilt.

“Kristian would disapprove. His law is that we may love no one but him - and then only spiritually, of course. But I cannot give up my pleasures, whatever he says.”

“But if we feel desire only with the object of taking human blood, why should one immortal feel passion for another?”

“You forget, we can drink each other’s blood too. And you forget that we can love each other passionately. The secret is that with another vampire, it doesn’t matter if you lose control -” she bit at the air, and smiled - “because for us, it’s not fatal. Far from it, sharing blood is the most divine experience you can imagine. Think about it.”

“What for?” He was listening from a grey level of consciousness.

Unexpectedly, Katerina sat on his knee, put her arms around his neck and kissed him, long and passionately. He responded, despite himself.

“Don’t you feel anything for me?”

He shut his eyes, rested his head against hers. “Of course I do. But -”

“Because I love you, Karl.”

“But what about Andreas?”

“I love him too,” she said simply. “I have the most terrible weakness for beautiful men. So does he, I’m afraid. We both love you. Andreas won’t be jealous; he’s too in love with himself for that. We aren’t human, so why should we be constrained by their morals?”

“What makes you think humans are any more moral than we are?” Karl said drily.

“That’s better,” Katerina laughed. “Oh, stay with us, Karl.”

Too seductive, her arms, the promise of friendship, love, sex; everything for which he was starving. He held her tight, kissing her cheeks and neck. “I want to,” he sighed. “But what part does Kristian play in this arrangement?”

At that, she was sombre. “None. I think it’s understood that we share the same feelings about him. As a very young vampire, I adored him; I was disillusioned soon enough. Not my vocation to be a little Sister of the Grim Reaper. Still, it’s safer to play along than rebel openly, as you do. Don’t we fake it beautifully? I don’t know how you get away with being so disagreeable.”

“If I come to you, he’ll know that you’ve rejected him,” said Karl.

He thought Katerina would hesitate, but she replied, “It’s dangerous, but you, my darling, are worth the risk.” Suddenly she bit his throat, taking a single swallow of blood. “Do the same, Karl. It’s our bond.”

“I cannot,” said Karl, the image of Yvette haunting him. He stood up, planting her on her feet. “I cannot.”

He left her then; but the next night he went back, took the sacramental mouthful from her throat, and from Andreas’s; kissed their hands, embraced them. He was lost, but it was the most welcome surrender.

Some time passed before he and Katerina became lovers. He held back, feeling that in becoming a vampire he’d forfeited his right to companionship or pleasure. But it happened, inevitably; and while he took her blood in the last blissful convulsion, she also drank from his throat. Nothing was lost. “This is the Crystal Ring,” she whispered. “This is what it really means.” And she was right; once he fell, the rapture was impossible to give up.

Andreas didn’t take as easily to the arrangement as Katerina had predicted, and was often moody. Perhaps he had reason; it wasn’t sharing Katerina he minded, but knowing Karl favoured her. Karl had no homosexual inclinations, it was that simple. Or at least, he hadn’t as a man; their angel-demon status blurred the boundaries. He felt affection for Andreas. To embrace and exchange blood was an affirmation of love as deep as any. If Andreas wanted more, he was disappointed. However, Karl soon learned that Andreas was happiest when he had a grievance, and an audience to play to.

“You are like Kristian,” he would complain. “You’re cold.”

Katerina responded, “I assure you, Karl is anything but cold. You have as much of him as he wishes to give; and everything you want of me. Stop complaining!” And she would take Andreas away and console him. She was in her element with two lovers, yet Karl, strangely, never felt possessive. He loved them both; the arrangement felt warm and natural, free from mortal pain or jealousy... or true passion.

For a long time they were happy. There were dangerous periods spent hiding from Kristian or placating him, but they had many years before Kristian finally lost patience. He came while Karl wasn’t there, and took Katti and Andrei away into the
Weisskalt.

“If I didn’t have you,” Karl once told Katerina, “there would be no one.”

And that remained true for forty ice-cold years. He kept himself apart from other vampires, allowed himself no desire for humans except for their blood.

Until he met Charlotte.

Sweet, shy, enigmatic; unpredictable, cynical and self-willed. Without trying, she slid through all his defences as no other mortal ever could. In different ways, they seduced each other. Insanity, after what happened with Yvette, knowingly to put Charlotte in the same danger... yet that was the point: the desire and the danger together were irresistible. Even though he loved her too much to hurt her. Even though he averted the danger, forcing himself in the last dizzying moments to turn his face away from her throat... hard to admit, but the risk, the knife-tip struggle, was in itself an unholy pleasure. He could not stop being a vampire, for love of a human.

When Charlotte joined him beyond the veil, the transformation only magnified everything she had been in life. Shining hair, shimmering eyes. Her waywardness. The unnerving sense that she was searching for something intangible and would pursue it to the edge of destruction... Still mysterious, irresistible to him.

Karl came out of the trance, one step behind the present. Katti gone... Charlotte beside him instead. The Crystal Ring’s fantastical sky-scape tilted around him. The air was bitingly cold. Had he stayed too long and slipped into torpor?

As he began to glide down through the deep-blue air, his mind snapped into full alertness.
God, Katerina alive again... but Charlotte?

He heard voices murmuring on the wind. Shadows again, three presences rising up past him behind layers of cloud. Close yet distant. He felt ripples of cold magnetism tugging at him... heard monotonous chanting that filled him with irrational dread.

Karl dived through nothingness, rushing swiftly home. Weird terror filled him, expansive, fragile and crystalline as the Ring itself. This transcendent realm, perilous yet as constant as an ocean - how could it change?

With relief, he felt the house solidify around him. Grey dawn seeped into the room; the furniture, fireplace, paintings, familiar in cold shadow. He’d barely stepped out of the Ring when a figure rushed at him and threw her arms around his neck.

Katerina. He held her tight until she broke the embrace and looked at him, her eyes shining eerily bright in the gloom.

“Oh, Karl!” she said. “It’s happened, I can enter the Crystal Ring at last! Isn’t it wonderful?”

“I’m so glad,” he replied quietly. “Did you spend long there?”

She put back her head, like a cat stretching. “Long enough to rest. Such a relief. I took a gentle walk through the past... remembered conversations with Andrei and you. It helped put my thoughts in order.”

“Did you... hear anything?” he asked. “Voices?”

He expected her to dismiss the idea, but she frowned and said, “I think so... I felt odd vibrations, at least. A sort of pulling.”

“Did you see shapes that might have been other vampires?”

She shook her head. He saw her through visions of the past that hadn’t quite faded. Katti, friend and lover, always to be trusted.

“No, but what do you think they were?”

“I don’t know, but I’ve seen them before, and so has Ilona.” As he spoke, Karl loosed her and went towards the library. He paused in the archway, turned back. How empty the house felt. “Have you seen Charlotte?”

“No.” Katerina’s voice hardened. “Hasn’t she come back? She’s been away for days, Karl.”

He was silent, gazing into the dead fire grate.

Katerina said, “Well? Darling, tell me what’s in your mind.”