THE RAVEN BOUND
Freda Warrington
Freda Warrington began writing her first stories at the age of five. Inspired by such fantasy writers as C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Tanith Lee, Michael Moorcock, Joy Chant, Ursula LeGuin, Anne McCaffrey, and J. Sheridan Le Fanu, her first novel, A Blackbird in Silver, was published in 1986.
Since then she has published more than twenty more, including A Blackbird in Darkness, A Blackbird in Amber, A Blackbird in Twilight, A Taste of Blood Wine, A Dance in Blood Velvet, The Dark Blood of Poppies, The Dark Arts of Blood, Dark Cathedral, Pagan Moon, Dracula the Undead (winner of the Dracula Society Award for Best Gothic Novel), The Court of the Midnight King, Elfland (the Romantic Times 2009 Award for Best Fantasy Novel), Midsummer Night, and Grail of the Summer Stars. Her latest book is a short story collection, Nights of Blood Wine.
“I love the paradox of vampires,” reveals Warrington. “They personify things we dread, such as death or (horrors!) the dead coming back from the grave; yet also attributes we may covet, such as eternal youth, power over others, guilt-free sensuality. The possibilities offered by vampire characters are endless. Away with cardboard heroes chasing cardboard monsters! In A Taste of Blood Wine and its sequels, my characters Karl, Charlotte, Violette, and their friends took me down many fascinating dark labyrinths exploring themes of love, pain, jealousy, psychology, philosophy, religion, sex … I found no limit.
“‘The Raven Bound’ came about when a French editor, Lea Silhol, asked me to write a story for her vampire anthology, De Sang et d’Encre. She hinted strongly that she would like to see an appearance of her favorite characters from the books, Karl and Charlotte. I had an idea all worked out—until I actually put pen to paper, when something entirely unplanned came out instead! I don’t know where Antoine came from, but I think he would smile at a quote in my desk diary by the writer Susan Ertz, which turned up in apposite fashion shortly after I’d written his story: ‘Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon …’”
I WALK A tightrope above an abyss. The silver line of wire is all that keeps me from a thousand feet of darkness yet I feel no fear. I flit across the rooftops of London like a cat, I lie flat on top of underground trains as they roar through sooty tunnels. I climb the ironwork of the Eiffel Tower and I dance upon the girders at its pinnacle, daring gravity to take me. And all of this is so dull.
Dull, because I can do it.
I move with the lightness and balance of a bird. I never fall, unless I throw myself wantonly at the ground. Then I may break bones, but my bones heal fast. It is not difficult. It will not kill me. All of these wild feats bore me for they hold no challenge, no excitement.
What is a vampire to do?
I see him in a nightclub. He could be my twin—a brooding young man with a lean and handsome face, dark hair hanging in his eyes, his eyes lovely miserable pools of shadow. How alone he looks, sitting there oblivious to the crush of bodies, the women glittering with beads and pearls. He is hunched over a glass of whiskey and he raises a long, gaunt hand to his mouth, sucking hard on a cigarette stub. Dragging out its last hot rush of poisons.
“May I join you?” I say.
“If you must.” His voice is a bored, English upper-class drawl. I love that.
“There is no free table.” I wave to emphasize the obvious; the club is crowded, a sepia scene in a fog of smoke. “My name is Antoine Matisse.”
“Rupert Wyndham-Hayes.” He shakes my hand half-heartedly. His cigarette is finished so I offer him another, a slim French one from a silver case. He accepts. I light it for him—an intimate gesture—and he sits back, blowing smoke in sulky pleasure. “Over from Paris, one assumes? First visit?”
“I have been here before,” I reply. “London always draws me back.”
He makes a sneering sound. “I should prefer to be in Paris. Funny how we always want what we haven’t got.”
“What is preventing you from going to Paris, Rupert?”
I look into his eyes. He doesn’t seem to notice that I am not smoking. He sees something special in me, a kindred soul, someone who will understand him.
He calls the waiter and orders drinks, although I tip mine into his while he isn’t looking. Presently his story comes tumbling out. A family seat in the country, a father who is proud and wealthy and mean. Mother long dead. Rupert the only son, the only child, with a vast freight of expectations on his shoulders. But he has disappointed his father in everything.
“All the things he wanted me to be—I can’t do it. I was to be a scholar, an officer, a cabinet minister. Worthy of him. Married to some earl’s daughter. That’s how he saw me. But I let him down. I tried and failed; gods, how I tried! Finally something snapped, and I refused to dance to his tune any longer. Now he hates me. Because what I truly am is an artist. The only thing I can do, the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do, is to paint!”
He takes a fierce drag on his cigarette. His eyes burn with resentment.
“Isn’t your father proud that you have this talent?”
“Proud?” he spits. “He despises me for it! Says I’ll end up in the gutter.”
“Why don’t you leave?” I speak softly, and I am paying more attention to the movement of his tender throat than to his words. “Go to Montmartre, be an artist. Prove the old man wrong.”
“It’s not that easy. There’s this girl, Meg …”
“Take her with you.”
“That’s just it. I can’t. She’s the gardener’s daughter. My father employs her as a maid. D’you see? Not content with being a failure at everything else, I go and fall in love with a common servant. So now the old man tells me that if I don’t give her up and toe the line, he’ll disinherit me! And Meg’s refusing to see me. Says she’s afraid of my father. Damn him!”
I have not been a vampire so very long. I still recall how hopeless such dilemmas seem to humans. “That’s terrible.”
“Vindictive old swine! I’ll lose her and I’ll be penniless! He can’t do this to me!”
“What will you do about it, Rupert?”
He glares down into his whiskey. How alluring he looks in his wretchedness. “I wish the old bastard would die tomorrow. That would solve all my problems. I’d like to kill him!”
“Will you?”
He sighs. “If only I had the guts! But I haven’t.”
So I smile. I rest my hand on his, and he is too numb with whiskey to feel the coldness of my fingertips. I have thought of something more interesting to do than just take him outside and drain him.
“I’ll do it for you.”
“What?” His eyes grow huge.
I should explain, I am poor. It seems so cheap to go through the pockets of my victims like a petty thief. I do it anyway, but it yields little reward. The wealth I crave, in order to live in the style a vampire deserves, is harder to come by.
“Give me a share of your inheritance and I’ll kill him for you. No one will ever link the crime to you. Natural causes, they’ll say.”
His breathing quickens. His hands shake. Does he know what I am? Yes and no. Look into our eyes and a veil lifts in your mind and you step into a dream where anything is possible. “My God,” he says, over and over. “My God.” And at last, with a wild light in his eyes, “Yes. Quickly, Antoine, before he has a chance to change his will. Do it!”
I am standing in the garden, looking up at the house.
It’s an impressive pile, but ugly. Gray-brown stone, stained and pitted by the weather, squatting in a large, bleak estate. A sweep of gravel leads to a crumbling portico. No flowerbeds to soften the walls, only prickly shrubs. It’s tidy enough but no love, no imagination and no money have been lavished upon it for many a cold year.
In the autumn twilight I traverse the lawns to the rear of the house. The gardens, too, are austere and formal, with clipped hedges standing like soldiers on flat stretches of grass. But there are chestnut and elm and beech trees
to add somber grandeur to the landscape. Brown leaves are scattered on the ground. The gardener has raked them into piles and I smell that English autumn scent of bonfires and wet grass.
Somewhere behind the windows of the house sits the father, the rat in his lair, Daniel Wyndham-Hayes.
It’s growing dark. Rooks are gathering in the treetops. I am taking my time, savoring the experience, when a figure in a long black overcoat steps out of the blue darkness and comes toward me.
“Antoine, what are you doing?”
It is another vampire. His name is Karl. Perhaps you know him, but if not I shall tell you that Karl is far older than me and thinks he knows everything. Imagine the face of an angel, one who felt as much bliss as guilt when he fell, and still does, every time he strikes. Amber eyes that eat you. Hair the color of burgundy, which fascinates me, the way it looks black in shadow then turns to crimson fire in the light. That’s Karl. He’s like a deadly ghost, always warning me not to make the same mistakes he made.
“I am thinking that this house and garden are the manifestation of the owner’s soul,” I reply archly. “Will they change, when he is dead?”
“Don’t do this,” Karl says, shaking his head. “If you single out humans and make something special of them, you’ll drive yourself mad.”
“Why should it matter to you, if I am driven mad?”
He puts his hand on my shoulder, and although I have always desired him, I am too irritated with him to respond. “Because you are young, and you’ll only find out for yourself when it is too late. Don’t become involved with humans. Keep yourself apart from them.”
“Why?”
“Otherwise they will break your heart,” says Karl.
They think they know it all, the older ones, but they will each tell you something different. You can’t listen to them. Give them no encouragement, or they will never shut up.
We stand like a pair of ravens on the grass. Then I am stepping away from him, turning lightly as a dancer to look back at him as I head for the house. “Go to hell, Karl. I’ll do what I like.”
—
I am inside the house. The corridors are draughty and need a coat of paint. Yet old masters hang on the walls and I finger the gilt frames with excitement. Riches. This seems ironic, that Daniel should collect these grimy old oils for their value and yet consider his own son’s potential work valueless.
Following Rupert’s instructions, I find the white paneled door of the bedroom, and I go in.
The father is not as I expect.
I stand beside the bed staring down at him. With one hand I press back the bed-curtain. I am as still as a snake; if he wakes he will think someone has played a dreadful joke on him, placed a mannequin with glittering eyes and waxen skin there to frighten him. But he sleeps on, alone in this big austere room. Dying embers in the grate give the walls a demonic glow. Like the rest of the house it is clean but threadbare. Daniel is hoarding his wealth. Perhaps he thinks that if he disinherits Rupert, he can take it with him.
Why did I assume he would be old? Rupert is only twenty-three and this man is barely fifty, if that. And he is handsome. He has a strong face like an actor, thick chestnut and silver hair flowing back from a high forehead. His arms are muscular, the hands well-shaped on the bedcover. Even in sleep his face is taut and intelligent. I stand here admiring the aquiline sweep of his nose and the long curves of his eyelids, each with a little fan of wrinkles at the corner.
He will not be easy to kill. I expected a frail old goat in a nightcap. Not this magnificent creature, who is so full of blood and strength, a lion.
I bend over the bed. I am salivating. I touch my tongue to his neck and taste the salt of his skin, the creamy remnant of shaving soap, such a masculine perfume … I am shaking with desire as I press him down with my hands, and bite.
He wakes up and roars.
I try to silence him with my hand in his mouth, and he bites me in return! His teeth are lodged there in the fleshy part of my hand but I endure the pain, I don’t care about it, all is swept away by the ecstasy of feeding. We lie there, biting each other. His body arches up under mine.
A scratching noise at the door.
We both freeze, like lovers caught in the act. I stop swallowing. Slowly I withdraw my fangs from the wounds. Daniel gives only a faint gasp, though the pain must be excruciating. We look at each other; the door opens; an apparition floats in.
She’s wearing a thick white nightgown and she carries a candle that reflects in her eyes. “Daniel?” she whispers. “It’s midnight …”
I can tell from her manner that she hasn’t come in response to his cry. I doubt she even heard it. No, she comes in like a thief and it’s obvious that she is here by appointment. I am partly hidden by the bed curtain so I have a good look at her before she sees me.
She is lovely. Dark brown hair flowing loose over the white gown. Ah, such colors in it, the lovely strands of bronze and red. She has the sweetest face. Dark eyes and brows, a red, surprised bud of a mouth.
She’s coming toward the bed. Daniel rasps, “Meg, no!” and then she sees us, sees the blood on his neck and on my mouth.
The candle falls to the carpet, her hands fly to her face. She is backing toward the door crying, “Oh God, no! Help! Murder!”
I have to stop her. I launch myself at her, pinning her to the door before she’s taken two steps. I’m in a frenzy now, I must have her, I can’t stop. I savor his blood still in my mouth as I bite down, and then he is swept away by the taste of Meg flooding over my tongue. Ripe and red and salty and …
Her head falls back. She clings to me. It is so exquisite that I slow down and draw delicately on her until she presses her body along the whole length of me and I feel her heart pounding and the breath coming out of her in little staccato cries of amazement.
For some reason I can’t kill her. My fangs slip out of the wounds they have made and I hold her close as she sighs. I haven’t the energy or will to finish it. No, I like her alive. I love the heavy warmth of her body slumping against mine, and her hair soft against my wet red mouth.
We stand like that for a few minutes. Then I feel Daniel touching my shoulder. He has staggered from his bed. “Who are you?” he whispers. His big hand wanders over my arm, my shoulder blade, my spine. It slides in between me and the woman and lies warm against my ribs. He’s resting against my back. The three of us, pressed together.
Well, this is cozy.
I am in the garden again when she finds me. I am pacing back and forth on the grass beneath the cold windows of the mansion with the moon staring down at me; and suddenly there is Charlotte. She steps from the shadow of a hedge to walk at my side.
“It’s difficult to leave, isn’t it?” she says, slipping her cool hand into mine. “What are they like, your family?”
“Interesting,” I say. “Rupert, the son, is in love with the delicious housemaid, Meg. How am I to tell him that Meg slips in regularly to service the father? No wonder Daniel has forbidden Rupert to see her.”
Charlotte utters a soft, sensuous laugh. “Oh, Antoine, hasn’t Karl told you what a mistake it is to ask their names, to become involved in their lives? You know you shouldn’t, yet you can’t stop. That’s always my downfall, too.”
Ah now, Charlotte. She is Karl’s lover and her presence is all it takes to reveal the folly of Karl’s advice. Don’t get involved with humans, he tells me? Hypocrite. For he took Charlotte when she was human, couldn’t stop himself, couldn’t leave her alone. And who could blame him? There is something of the ice-queen and something of the English rose about her. She is the perfect gold-and-porcelain doll with a heart of darkness. She’s like a princess who ran away with the gypsies, all tawny silk and bronze lace. But ask which of them is the more dangerous, the more truly a vampire—it is Charlotte.
She is the seducer. She is the lethal one. You will never see Karl coming; he takes you swiftly and is gone before you know what happened, no promises, no apologies. But Charlo
tte will worship you from afar, and bring you flowers, and run away from you and come back to you, until you are so mad with love for her that you don’t know which way to turn. Oh, and then she’ll turn on you and take you down, our lady viper, and soak your broken body with her tears.
Not that I was her victim, you understand. But I have watched her in complete admiration.
“Why must it be a downfall?” I ask, annoyed.
“Humans are so alluring, aren’t they? You can’t go only for one taste. You can’t be like Karl—just strike and never look back. You’re like me, Antoine. You want to play with them, to get to know them, to love them. Is the pleasure worth the pain? I never quite know. You have to do it again and again, to see if it will be different this time.”
“It’s only a game to me. I don’t care about them. I’m doing it for money, that’s all.”
“Really?” she says. “Then why couldn’t you kill them? Why are you still here?”
Charlotte stands on tiptoe and presses her rosy mouth to mine; and she’s gone, in a whisper of silk and lilac.
Behind this hedge I find a kitchen garden, where Meg’s father lovingly grows vegetables to feed the household. Ah, now I see. He is a man who despises flowers and prettiness, loves prosaic potatoes and beans—just like his employer. The air is thick with the rot of Brussels sprouts, the scent of wet churned soil and compost.
Through a gap I see the cold shine of the greenhouse, and—where the garden meets the servants’ area of the house—the tantalizing glint of glass in the kitchen door.
When Rupert discovers that I have not killed his father, he is volcanic with rage.
We meet beneath a line of elm trees. The rooks squawk and squabble in the bare branches above us.
“You liar!” Rupert screams. “You traitor!”
He flies at me, arms going like windmills, but I hold him off. He’s useless at fighting, as he is at everything. Perhaps he is a useless artist too, merely in love with the idea of brooding and suffering and being misunderstood.
“Why didn’t you finish the old devil off? You only wounded him!”
The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women Page 12
