A Dance in Blood Velvet (40 page)

Holly would not give her the satisfaction.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Her heart was lurching, but she spoke sternly to put Maud back in her place. “Do you like your job?”

“Yes, Mrs Grey.”

“Well, then, I suggest you get on with it. And if you’re thinking of crying to Lancelyn - remember that I know him far better than you. You might actually be in danger from him. Don’t you realise that?”

Maud had the grace to look scared then, and spent the rest of the day in sulky silence. Superficially, Holly had won.

The next day, Maud was bright and over-eager to please, as if nothing had happened.

But... she’d forced the toxic needle of doubt under Holly’s skin. Ludicrous, obscene, the idea that Ben would ever touch Maud. Holly trusted him. The trouble was that she could never be
entirely
certain... there would always be a tiny seed of suspicion, whispering
What if...?

And Maud knew it. Hence her breezy good cheer.

All I have to do is ask Ben for the truth,
Holly told herself.
But I can’t. I will not dignify Maud’s spiteful allegations by asking!

And he’d deny everything, of course. That was the point. Whatever he said, doubt would remain. So she kept silent, and if Ben noticed any change in her, he made no comment. But the secret spectre of infidelity fed on her. She remembered their love-making after the argument as the last time she’d felt absolutely sure of his integrity and love.

The loss felt like death.

Without hope of ever knowing the actual
truth
, she passed her days in slow-burning agony, dangling by a wire over a cold silver sea.

And Maud, after all, had won.

* * *

Lancelyn’s house was a double-fronted red-brick villa set behind a wall in a mature but neglected garden. Tall sycamores, ashes and Scots pines loomed around the dwelling. Karl went in first, entering the Crystal Ring to melt through a wall, then letting Benedict in by the back door. The darkness felt cold, stark, deserted.

Ben entered stealthily, the whites of his eyes gleaming.

“There’s no need to creep about,” Karl said at normal volume. “There’s no one here.”

Ben started. “Are you sure? He isn’t one for lots of staff, but he has a couple of servants.”

“I know when there are humans nearby,” said Karl. “If anyone challenges us, I’ll deal with them.”

Ben swallowed, as if suddenly aware he was alone with a vampire. “Well, we can’t risk putting lights on,” he said. “I’ll use the torch.”

“As you wish. I don’t need it.”

Ben glared, his lips thinning. “Of course you don’t.”

“Where do you wish to begin?”

“The study’s the obvious place, I suppose.” Ben directed a thin light-beam into the front hall.

Karl took a dislike to the house. It felt hollow and musty, unclean. The ceilings were too high, the floors bare. A faint leathery stink of damp hung about the place, which seemed not to have been decorated in fifty years. Dead animals stood frozen in glass cases.

A tunnel of bookshelves led into the study. As they emerged, Karl saw a grotesque face staring at him. He froze, thinking,
Why didn’t I sense this?
Then he saw that it was a torso resting on the desk. A dummy, he realised. God, what an ugly thing!

He glanced at Ben, who looked back with a grim expression -as if the dummy reminded him that Karl, too, was inhuman, and far more dangerous.

“Only a toy,” said Ben. “An automaton. Damned thing produces a cigar and lights it for you; sort of rubbish Lancelyn collects. Now, if he’s using the Book, it could be around here - or hidden anywhere.”

As Ben searched piles of books and papers on the desk, Karl looked along the shelves. All these ancient volumes; he wished he had time to study them. There were gaps where books leaned at angles, as if many had been removed. He said softly, “Ben, I don’t think the Book is here.”

“What?”

“I have no sense of its presence.”

Ben glared at him, dismayed. “Well, let’s have a damned good look, anyway. I’m not giving up! You know a lot about this Book, don’t you? Things you haven’t told me.”

“Not as much as I’d like.” Karl wondered why he felt compelled to answer this mortal’s questions. Perhaps he possessed more power than Karl would acknowledge. “The fabric of the tunnel where you found the Book was once a vampire’s lair which had absorbed the echo of a thousand deaths. The victims were long gone, but left their pain and emptiness behind. Eventually they turned on their killer and destroyed him. They still wait to take revenge on any vampire who sets foot there.”

“Revenge?”

“Too strong a word, perhaps. They steal back what was taken from them, as coldness steals warmth. It was as mechanical as that.”

“Were you afraid?”

“Terrified.” Karl gave a ghostly smile. “It was enough to bring down Kristian, the strongest vampire I’ve ever known. That’s why the Book repels us.”

“Could it kill you?” Ben asked quickly.

“Do you wish to brandish it against me like a gun?”

“No, no. I’m simply curious. Is the effect actual or psychological?”

“I wish I knew,” said Karl. “When we returned to the tunnel and found the Book missing, I felt the wellspring had been torn out. So perhaps the Book was the source. I would dearly love to know.”

Ben went on searching as they talked, eventually crying in exasperation. “The bloody thing’s not here!”

“I did tell you.”

Ben insisted on searching the whole house, and Karl helped with infinite patience. Interesting place, despite its hostile atmosphere: an academic’s lair, frozen in the last century. They explored the temple where, Ben explained, the Neophytes of Meter Theon had met: a grey room, with the windows blacked out, symbols painted on the floor and artefacts strewn on a wooden altar. It seemed paltry and unimpressive to Karl. There was no sense of power here - and no sign of the Book.

Finally they returned to the hall, where Ben sank onto the stairs with his head in his hands. “I’ve this horrible feeling he’s gone, and taken it with him.”

“Where would he go?”

“I’ve no ruddy idea!”

“How much does he know about your vampire guests?”

“For Christ’s sake, why all these questions?” Ben said furiously.

“I am trying to help you,” Karl said patiently.

Benedict sighed and stared at his hands, making fists, flexing his fingers. “Sorry. The extent of his skill is impossible to measure. Sometimes our workings are effective, sometimes they aren’t. Lancelyn and I are not psychic on an earthly level as Holly is; that’s why we’d hypnotise her to find things out. Didn’t always work, of course; sometimes worked too well. He was deadly jealous when I married her. He thought he could keep control of both of us, and he damned well couldn’t. Anyway, if he poked around my house when he took the Book, he may know everything.”

“The deaths you say he caused,” said Karl, “are you sure they were due to a supernatural attack, and not coincidence - or Lancelyn planting suggestions in vulnerable minds?”

“It’s the result that counts,” Ben said irritably. “Causing change in accordance with will. That
is
the magic.” He started to laugh.

“What do you find so funny?” Karl asked.

“That you can be cynical about the supernatural! For heaven’s sake, you can walk through walls! What sort of proof do you want?”

Karl smiled. Ben looked startled, disarmed. “Gods, you look human when you smile,” he muttered.

“Perhaps it is ridiculous for me to be cynical,” said Karl. “However, I can’t tell where the boundary lies between the tricks of clever men and the genuine occult - which is, by its nature, hidden from most mortals.”

“Like the existence of vampires and the Crystal Ring.”

“Quite.”

Ben stood, shaking creases out of his trousers. “Let’s try the study, just once more.”

They looked again, half-heartedly this time. Ben muttered expletives as he searched.

Eventually Karl said, “Benedict, enough. I’m certain the Book is not in this house.”

“Right. We’ll have to think again.”

As Ben spoke, Karl felt a thread of fiery coldness, like a sword-cut down his arm. Mortal heat, and something else. A door opening soundlessly.

He gripped Ben’s arm but it was too late to hide. Pointless, anyway. A stocky, bearded man emerged from the tunnel of books and stood regarding them shrewdly. The shadows behind him seemed to thicken.

“You can think until you’re purple in the face, dear boy,” said the man. You can’t outwit me with your -” he waved a hand at Karl “- friends.”

“If you took the Book from me, I can take it back,” Benedict said, remarkably composed.

“I was wondering when you’d try.”

“Where is it?”

“You don’t need it,” Lancelyn said softly.

He had an aura of strength, Karl observed; like a tree, rooted in the earth. Lines of thirst rose in his throat and burned in the tips of his fangs. Taking the blood of a strong man was a rare pleasure and all at once he craved it...

Faster than they could see him move, he grasped Lancelyn and was leaning over him. He heard Benedict gasp, “Karl, don’t hurt him!” For a moment he had the satisfaction of seeing terror on the magus’s face.

“Are you going to help your brother?” Karl whispered.

The shadows around Lancelyn solidified and lunged. Something seized Karl and flung him away so violently that he collided with the desk and almost fell. He saw three figures, solid and humanshaped, yet near impossible to see directly; black from head to foot, but surrounded by a corona of sizzling platinum light.

He’d seen them before in the Crystal Ring. They’d alarmed him then, and now they terrified him, sapping his will...

“What have you done?” Ben cried. “What are these things? Did the Book bring them?”

Lancelyn chuckled, folding his arms. “No, Ben, I brought them. I don’t need tools to enhance my powers. They’ve always been with me; but they’ve become more substantial of late. What the hell were you doing, summoning undead things against me? You fool. They’re useless against my three.”

“What are they?” Ben’s voice was hoarse with fear.

“Not demons but
daemons;
guardian spirits.”

“My vampires are stronger!”

“Really? Stand aside, I don’t want you hurt.”

A figure detached itself and rushed at Karl. Karl tried to escape into the Crystal Ring, couldn’t move. The room was spinning. He glimpsed an oval face, long nose, narrow shining eyes like two sabres. Slender hands clutched his wrists as he tried to fight it off.

It was so strong! Karl felt his own limbs turning to rope as it clung to him. What was this entity? Stronger than Kristian, it seemed... It might drink his blood, or worse... but
what was it
?

A human shout, sudden movement in the corner of his eye. Karl saw Ben moving to seize the Mexican dummy from the desk. Then he swung it hard at the daemon’s back.

Blue flame flowered in the darkness.

Karl heard Lancelyn curse. The shadow loosed him and vanished in a sudden flare of light.

The automaton was on the floor leaning drunkenly against the desk leg, its torso licked by flames. It still grinned as its painted face began to melt. Ben was backing away, staring at the light as if hypnotised.

“Christ,” Lancelyn shouted. “The bloody cigar lighter must’ve sparked off the fuel reservoir. Help me put it out!”

As he floundered, searching for something to smother the flames, the desk caught light. Papers spilled onto the floor and flared up with daylight brilliance. The dummy collapsed sideways and flames chased lines of spilled fuel all over the carpet. Fire roared towards the curtains, towards the priceless books. Bitter smoke billowed.

Lancelyn was beating at the blaze with his hands and feet, his face wild and lit from below by red fire. “Help me, damn you!”

Karl only stared at him through a veil of flame. “Where are your guardians now, Mr Grey?” he said softly.

Then Karl lifted Ben bodily, rushed towards the window and leapt through in an explosion of glass. He ran into the cool of the night, flung Ben down under the cover of bushes, turned to stare back at the furious orange light blazing in the windows. Black smoke surged out against the light.

A figure danced like a maddened demon. Lancelyn’s voice drifted after them. “Damn you, Ben, you’ll pay for this!”

“Christ. Christ,” Ben gibbered in disbelief. “We can’t leave him, we’ve got to get help.”

He scrabbled to get up. Karl held him down with the pressure of one finger and watched the fire, thinking in a remote vampiric way how beautiful it was... and then he said, “I don’t think so. It’s his own fault,
nicht wahr?
Let us go home, before the whole street wakes.”

* * *

After the fire, Lancelyn vanished.

There was half a column in the newspaper: fire had damaged the house of Mr Lancelyn Grey, renowned scholar, but the fire brigade had arrived in time and confined the blaze to the study. Many rare books had been lost but there were no casualties; his servants were on holiday and Mr Grey only just home from a trip. The fire was accidental, caused by a faulty cigar lighter...

“He didn’t implicate me,” Ben said, stunned. He sat in the parlour in the depths of gloom, couldn’t shake himself out of it.

“You wanted to help him. And he didn’t blame you for the fire,” said Karl. “Are you sure that you hate each other?”

“Habit,” Ben said bitterly.

Several days had passed since the fire. Lancelyn’s house was locked and silent, the brickwork smoke-darkened above the boarded-up study window. Lancelyn’s expected revenge never came; Ben heard not a word from him.

Ben contacted every member of the Order, convinced that someone must know of Lancelyn’s whereabouts - and intending to enlist their support. Now was the time to seize control over the Neophytes of Meter Theon.

To his dismay, everyone refused to speak to him. Most lived too far away to visit easily. There was one man only a few miles away, towards Nottingham, so Ben went to his house and put his foot in the door. Through the gap, the nervous acolyte told him that Lancelyn had suspended the Order until further notice and expelled Benedict. No one was to communicate with him... or they would suffer, as James and Deirdre had.