The Secrets of Life and Death

by Rebecca Alexander

  Angela stood. ‘I want to go home now.’ She was shaking, her hands trembling on the cheap leather of the bag. ‘Let me out.’

  ‘We need you to save Sadie.’

  The words floated around Angela, binding her with their impossible conundrum. Finally, she managed to spit out a few words.

  ‘My daughter is dead, she was burned up.’

  ‘No. That wasn’t Sadie. That was a woman called Elizabeth Bachmeier.’

  Hope flared in Angela’s eyes, and her body shook as if she had taken a blow. ‘You said she died.’

  ‘Not quite. I said Sadie couldn’t be saved by medicine. She was helped by something else.’ She paused, watched hope and fear battle across Angela’s face. ‘Sadie is hovering between life and death. We can’t save her without your help.’

  Angela stumbled back in the room, towards the garden doors. ‘You’re insane.’

  ‘She’s upstairs. Sadie is in the back bedroom upstairs.’ Jack watched Angela heave a breath as if she was in a race.

  Maggie stretched out a hand. ‘Please, Angela. We’re so sorry to frighten you, and this must all sound insane. But your daughter is upstairs and you are the only hope she has.’

  No one was close enough to catch Angela as she folded onto the floor.

  Chapter 66

  The deep night was a time Jack had always enjoyed. Needing less sleep than a normal person, she had often walked through the local woods with Ches or wandered over the heath until a summer dawn. Now, with more energy, she took the night shift in nursing Sadie, turning her, checking on her. It became a simple ritual, and as her hands smoothed the hair away from the girl’s face she wished she could infuse Sadie with some of her own new vitality. It had been more than a month since the fire.

  The cat had made the bed a dog-free zone, and stretched out under Jack’s hand. A noise on the landing made her look up, to see Felix, in T-shirt and pyjama trousers looking in the door.

  ‘I thought I heard something …’ he mumbled, his voice still rough with sleep. ‘Are you OK?’

  She turned back to Sadie, and straightened the sheet folded under her chin. No sleeping person lies this still.

  She felt, rather than heard, the movement of air as Felix came in and settled in the chair behind her.

  ‘Do you need anything?’ He yawned, making the cat stop rumbling for a moment.

  Jack opened her mouth, but then shut it again. What do you say? Where are we, you and I? Instead, she leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest as if to keep the feelings in.

  ‘Jack …’ His voice was soft.

  ‘What did Marianne want? When she came, last month?’

  ‘The decree nisi. The last bit of the divorce. She just wanted to give me the paperwork.’

  ‘She was crying when she left.’ Jack’s words echoed in the room, clear and hard.

  ‘She was. I was. It’s a sad thing, when love goes. She will always be an old friend, and my first love.’ The word hung in the air.

  Sadie sighed, a small breath that didn’t change her face. She breathed so slowly now it was easy to think her cooling body was already dead.

  ‘Has there been any more change since they gave her Angela’s blood?’ asked Felix.

  ‘She moves in her sleep, sometimes. But she seems to be slipping back again, getting weaker.’

  ‘Jack … we need time to—’

  She cut him short with a slash of her hand. ‘Go back to bed.’

  ‘Jack.’ There was a note of yearning in his voice that made her turn towards him. His face, in the glow of the nightlight, looked twisted with all the things he needed to say. ‘I know things have been difficult with Sadie.’

  ‘I may not even be human, do you know that?’ She looked at him, his uneven features, his bright eyes. ‘You saw what Báthory became. I drank your blood, Felix, and I liked it. It’s the most alive I’ve ever felt. That blood pouring into me, the feeling of it – I want that, all the time. I crave it.’

  He moved closer. ‘Then take it. Take me.’

  His eyes trailed down her face to her lips, and to the open neck of her shirt. She leaned forward.

  Kissing him was like drinking after a dry day. She leaned into him, hungry for the contact, his warmth. His hands pulled her towards him and out of the chair until they were locked together.

  ‘Jack …’ His voice made her shiver. This was what she wanted, this is what she craved. She kissed him again.

  Another sigh whispered through the room, from the sleeping girl. She turned her head to listen, and now she could feel something underneath her body’s need. Blood. His skin so close, so warm, smelling of soap and sleep and filled with warm, salty energy … she bared her teeth.

  He stepped back, his hand pushing her away. ‘Jack, I spoke to Stephen McNamara. He thinks blood is like an addiction, like a drug.’ His breathing was ragged, and the roaring in her ears half drowned him out. ‘You can fight it.’

  She couldn’t speak for the need to rip open a vein: his, Sadie’s, anyone’s.

  She shook her head, trying to clear it. ‘He’s right,’ she managed to whisper. ‘It is an addiction. You’re like heroin to me. I need to stay away from you.’

  ‘Over time, it will get easier.’

  ‘Go. Go away, now.’ She turned back to the sleeping girl, and heard his footsteps across the hall. Damn it.

  She could smell something sour, and lifted the covers. One consequence of her mother’s blood, transfused into Sadie’s veins a week ago, was that her kidneys had started to operate again. She put on the nearest lamp, and started to pull the sheet and quilt down the bed. Sadie exhaled, and opened her eyes.

  Jack froze, looking at her, meeting her gaze. ‘Well, there you are.’

  Sadie’s blue eyes wavered around the room, and she licked her lips with a dry-looking tongue. ‘D … drink?’ she rasped.

  Jack poured a little water, and lifted her up. Sadie’s weak hand wobbled to the cup and tipped it back.

  ‘More.’

  Jack obliged, giving her as much as she wanted. When the hand fell back, she lowered the teenager onto the pillows.

  ‘The countess?’

  ‘Dead.’

  Sadie nodded, her eyelids drooping as if exhausted. Then she opened her eyes wide. ‘I dreamt my mum was here. With Felix and you.’

  Jack lifted her hand and held it. It was warmer now, as if waking had revived her body as well. ‘You were very ill. You remember what happened with the countess?’

  Sadie didn’t answer, but the horror in her eyes said that she did. She pulled her fingers from Jack’s, and touched one of the bandages on her own arm.

  Jack was filling up with emotion that somehow brought tears along with a smile. ‘McNamara did some research. He found out that you needed a transfusion from the person who gave you life.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘No, your mother. She’s been here for the last few days. She’s asleep downstairs. I’ll go and get her.’

  ‘Wait.’ Sadie’s face was tight, Jack couldn’t read her. She struggled to sit up. ‘Does she know what I am … what we are?’

  ‘I’m not sure she entirely understands, but, yes, I think she does.’

  ‘But I can’t go home. My nan, my friends …’ Her face was anguished.

  Jack reached out her hands, and Sadie hugged her with trembling arms. ‘We’ll work something out. I promise,’ Jack whispered into her ear, cradling the girl, feeling the weak sobs. ‘I won’t let you lose your family again.’

  Chapter 67

  Jack drove up the long hill, her heart hammering in her chest with unfamiliar energy, and a degree of nerves. The house was at the top, grey stone, four windows and a central door like an archetypal kid’s drawing. It even had a chimney. It was smaller than the house Jack had grown up in, but had a good-sized garden around it, and a small red hatchback in the drive.

  She pulled up opposite the sign for furzehill, and wound the window down a few inches. She didn’t see the wo
man at first. She was kneeling on the ground, dressed in jeans and a pink sweatshirt, her short hair flicked back behind her ears. She was weeding, her concentration on the small patch of ground between the path and the lawn, lost in her task.

  Jack drank the sight in. Her hair was more grey than chestnut now, quite white at the front. She was trim, lighter than she remembered her as a mother, ready to hug after school and fuss over her daughter’s hair before a gymkhana. She looked shorter too, though that could be because Jack was taller. Jack felt sick, her muscles froze, she couldn’t breathe.

  The woman suddenly noticed the stranger sitting in the car. She stood, as if to come over, but her feet stalled and she stared at Jack.

  ‘Can I help … ?’ Her voice drifted away as the air squeezed out of her. She stared at Jack, the colour fading from her face, starting to frown.

  Jack put the car into gear, and drove up the hill. She looked back in the mirror, but the view was obscured by tears.

  Epilogue

  ‘The countess let us go, and Konrad, in his mercy, said we were worth more to the battle against evil alive than dead, and escorted us most of the way to Krakow. Upon the journey, he and Doctor Dee conferred frequently about the nature of the revenant we had created, and how Konrad could undo the sorcery.

  Mistress Dee welcomed us with embraces and kisses that filled me with shame, so sisterly was her love. My stepchildren were also much relieved to see me, and I was pleased to see little Eliza presenting me with her first writings in Latin. Dee was taken with a sickness, but is now recovered, and already researching the mystery of the revenant. To our great surprise, money arrived at the house, not the many thousands we had been promised, but enough to support our future studies for a year or so.

  I, though physically hearty, am jumping at shadows and racked with nightmares. I scan every court circular and handbill, lest the creature and her consort follow us to Poland.

  The Countess Erzsébet Báthory, I hear, is fat with child, and her husband is back at the Turkish front. Of Zsófia, there are just rumours. Her body was left in the forest, covered in bites, drained of blood. Or she lives as a pale shadow, opening her veins for her mistress to suckle.’

  Edward Kelley

  20 April 1586

  Krakow

  Private Archives of Professor Felix Guichard

  Historical note

  Writing a story rooted in the past is always a balancing act between being as grounded in the evidence as we can be, and telling an engaging and believable fiction. Dr John Dee and Edward Kelley were extraordinary thinkers and travellers, and were in central Europe in the autumn of 1585. They did meet King Istvan Báthory (at least once, in April 1585) and his niece was really Elizabeth Báthory, the infamous murderer of young girls.

  After she was found guilty of multiple murders her closest servants were executed. As a noblewoman and a Báthory, she was condemned to be imprisoned at Csejte (also called Cachtice, now in Slovakia) in 1611, where she was found dead in 1614. Her body, after local protests, was removed from the crypt of the church and has never been found. Her real story is more extraordinary than I could have imagined, and as much of the historical documents were suppressed, there is room for speculation.

  With all this uncertainty about such interesting and sometimes infamous characters, I have stretched history to suit the story. If this causes any offence, I apologise.

  Acknowledgements

  I have many reasons to be grateful, because without the help of the people below, this book would never have been published.

  Gerry Ryan of the Open College of the Arts, who taught me to trust my storytelling but to work on the craft of writing.

  Diana Gittins and Morgaine Merch Lleuad were both inspiring and encouraging Open University tutors. They taught me to concentrate on the good, not the bad.

  Carole Burns and my other lecturers at the University of Winchester, with special thanks to Judith Heneghan, who showed me the joy of writing fantasy.

  My patient beta readers: Gilly Goldsworthy, Jenny Kline and Rachel Carter from the Open University, and Bethany Coombs and Downith Monaghan from my MA, who have been confident enough to tell me what doesn’t work, as well as what does!

  Debbie Taylor and the team at Mslexia, for running the novel writing competition that got the book noticed.

  Charlotte Robertson, my agent, has been amazing, making the scary world of publishing seem easier. She showed the book to Michael Rowley, who polished it up with his team at Ebury and Del Rey UK. Charlotte and Michael have pushed the book into a better shape than I could have imagined.

  My family, who have cajoled, read, argued and encouraged, especially my eldest son, Carey. Without his enthusiasm and ideas this book might never have been written.

  Finally, my husband Russell, who has spent endless hours in the car listening to plot twists, characters, ideas. He has never, even once, told me to shut up. Another reason to say in public, he is the love of my life.

  I thank you all.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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  First published in the UK in 2013 by Del Rey, an imprint of Ebury Publishing

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  Copyright © 2013 by Rebecca Alexander

  Rebecca Alexander has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

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