A Taste of Blood Wine

by Freda Warrington

  "Do you wish me to escort the gentleman off the premises, madam?" he said.

  "No, it's all right, Newland," said Elizabeth. "Everything's under control now. But I think the rest of us need a drink, after all that. Whisky, anyone?"

  Trembling, Charlotte sat down by Maddy, who was quiet now but listless, her eyes dull. "Are you all right?" Charlotte asked.

  "Yes… yes," Maddy replied, but she spoke without conviction and she seemed miles away, unreachable.

  David and her father were discussing the intruder, verging on an argument about it. Charlotte looked round for Anne and realised that her friend was no longer in the room. "I didn't see Anne go out, did you?"

  "Don't go after her," Madeleine said in the same flat tone. "Stay with me, Charli."

  ***

  Anne had slipped out of the french window a few moments after Karl and Pierre had left, while the other had been too busy talking to notice. She went along the terrace until she reached a grainy lozenge of light falling from the library windows and there she stopped, peering through a tangle of wisteria tendrils to the lighted interior. Their voices drifted through an open vent.

  She intended to eavesdrop and she felt absolutely no conscience about it. She had Charlotte's interests at heart.

  Pierre was browsing idly along the bookshelves, all languid animation. Karl sat on the arm of a chair, motionless as a cat watching a bird. His face was serene, a china mask, but his very lack of expression held a menacing quality.

  "Why are you here, Pierre?" Karl's voice was calm, almost conversational, but with a paper-thin blade of ice hidden within it.

  "That's an unfriendly way to greet an old friend, especially after all these years," said the Frenchman. "Show me a little warmth, at least."

  "After the way you announced your presence? I knew it was you, when we found Madeleine."

  Anne thought, What the hell does he mean?

  Pierre put back his head and laughed. "Don't look so grim; I did her no lasting harm. You know it was only a joke."

  "Your sense of humour and mine are a world apart," said Karl.

  "I know. That makes it even more amusing. It would be no fun to torment you if you only laughed."

  Karl paused, suddenly looking towards the window. Nothing in everyday life frightened Anne, but now gooseflesh stood up on her back. He can't know I'm here!

  But Karl whispered something she could not hear. Pierre laughed and exclaimed loudly, "So what if anyone is listening? Do you have something to hide? Let them listen!"

  Anne drew back, shocked. Then a thread of angry determination went through her. Right, if you don't care, I'm staying here!

  "He sent you, I suppose," said Karl.

  Pierre selected a volume and reclined on the couch as if he owned the place. "Come now, did you expect to escape forever? He's given you years already; all good things must come to an end. And this, I must say, is a very good thing. How did you find this beautiful family? All under the pretext of studying science, too! Mon Dieu, Karl, I have to hand it to you; you certainly have style."

  Karl's eyes turned a little colder. "You're wrong, Pierre. Quite wrong."

  Pierre dropped the book aside. "Oh no, don't give me that! They are too beautiful. Isn't it thrilling to know that with one look, one word from you they'd all forget each other and fall in your embrace? I wish I had half your charm."

  "And I, half your imagination. I do not touch those I know."

  "Hypocrite."

  "It may well be hypocritical, but it's the rule I live by."

  Pierre sneered. "Then you must get some perverted pleasure from tormenting yourself."

  "No, but neither do I relish tormenting others."

  "Unlike myself, I suppose. But I say you are lying, Karl. Not to me, perhaps, but to yourself."

  "Meaning?"

  Pierre paced around the room. His tone was taunting. "I saw you with your arms around Charlotte, having such a very interesting conversation—when you could keep your lips from hers. My God, how long do you think you can hold out? Is this a scientific experiment to test the limits of your will-power? If you start feeling other desires for her, she had really better beware, but who's going to warn her?" He laughed.

  Karl's eyelids swept up; the light caught his irises like tiny flames igniting. "You know nothing about it," he said softly. For the first time Anne saw something truly dangerous in Karl; behind his beauty and gentility, a cold and menacing darkness that was far more chilling than Pierre's surface spite. She was horrified, but not for her own sake. Oh, Charlotte, do you know anything about this man?

  "If you were sincere, you would not have gone anywhere near her," said Pierre. "If she means so much to you, it proves you enjoy playing with fire, so don't pretend otherwise."

  "You had better stop this, Pierre."

  "Why? I like embarrassing you." The Frenchman stared at the window. "So what if they hear too much? They can always be silenced."

  Anne drew back, and found herself retreating along the terrace almost at a run. I won't let them frighten me, she told herself fiercely. What I've overheard doesn't prove anything.

  But she was going to tell David, before it was too late.

  ***

  Karl sensed the human presence moving away. It had been Anne, he knew; God knew what she had made of their conversation. But he couldn't concern himself with that until he had dealt with Pierre. No witnesses now.

  "Ah, mon cher, what difference does it make whether you know them or not?" Pierre went on. "You cannot imagine yourself to be ruled by human sentiment. For God's sake, Karl, accept your nature!"

  "I'm sure that God would be the last to appreciate the effort," said Karl with a brief and sardonic smile.

  "Spare me the theological arguments, will you? I have enough of that from Kristian."

  "I suppose he sent you to fetch me."

  "Not exactly." Pierre sat down again, leaning on the rolled leather arm of the couch. "He knows you won't come just for the asking."

  "And he's right. How did you find me?"

  "Sheer persistence, but I have something rather funny to tell you. The one person who always knows where you are is Ilona. She has shadowed you on and off for years!"

  Karl was caught off-guard; disbelief and other emotions flamed through him. "That's impossible. I would have known."

  "Why should you? She can creep up right behind me and I don't know she's there; even Kristian can't always sense her presence easily. We may be sensitive, but we are not psychic, more's the pity."

  Karl paused, brooding. Then he said, "I suppose Kristian sent her. Of course, it would be foolish to think she sought me of her own free will. But where is she now?"

  "Ah well, that brings me to Kristian's message. All this talk of, 'Karl must come back of his own accord' and then he resorts to the basest form of emotional blackmail… "

  "What do you mean?"

  Pierre held up his hands, as if to say, "Don't blame me!"

  "Kristian took her into the Crystal Ring. Up into the Weisskalt. He said she will remain there until you go back and talk to him… I think he has come to the end of his tether, as the English say… as I think you are about to do also."

  Pain so great Karl could not speak. Ilona, frozen in death-like sleep… alone. He could have torn the bearer of his message apart with fangs and bare hands, but that would solve nothing. He waited until the feeling had pooled itself into deadly silence inside him. Eventually he was able to say calmly, "I should not be surprised by this. I shouldn't ask, 'How could he?' but, Why has he waited so long?' Kristian has never had a principle to his name."

  "But what have principles to do with us?" Pierre said with sudden passion. "What use have the wolves for principles—or the angels, for that matter? If you dropped your stupid ideas of morality, Kristian would not be able to use them against you!"

  "Since when have love and morality been the same thing? So I should just leave her there? How good of you to give me this advice, having come he
re as Kristian's errand boy."

  Pierre's mobile face became vindictive. "What am I? One of the arms of the octopus, as we all are. Even you."

  "But wouldn't you prefer to be free?" Karl said. He thought he had escaped the weariness and desperation that Kristian's possessiveness induced in him, but now they crept over him again. I knew this would come… I should have been ready.

  "My dear, I am free. I worship Kristian's strength of my own free will, as I'd worship the perfection of a Michelangelo sculpture. It's a work of art."

  "You talk nonsense, Pierre. You drift with every wind that blows, and then you try to justify it to yourself."

  "I do his will because it pleases me, but I don't obey slavishly in every detail," said Pierre, his lips drawing back in an unpleasant smile. "For example, Kristian ordered me not to touch this luscious family but I chose to disobey and I intend to do so again. How is he going to know, unless you tell him? Better run to him and beg for his help, Karl. He is the only one who can stop me. Not you."

  Enough. Pierre had taken one step too far. Karl had hoped to send him away unharmed, but in the space of a breath he saw that it was impossible. Without hesitation, without anger, he moved like light to seize Pierre and pull him to his feet. "We'll see, shall we?" Karl said, very softly. For a few seconds they struggled, not violently but in stasis like arm-wrestlers. Karl slid his hand up into Pierre's hair and slowly dragged back his head. His mouth opened, his blue eyes seemed to plead silently with the ceiling. Then Karl closed his mouth on the cool smooth skin of Pierre's neck.

  Karl had not fed this evening and suddenly he was ravenous. Vampire blood was not rich like that of humans, but there was a different compulsion in this, a thinner, fiercer fire blazing through his body and mind… and that was why he did not sense that another human was nearby until the red veil subsided, and it was too late.

  * * *

  Chapter Eight

  Crystal Visions

  When David reached the library window he stopped, transfixed by what he could see within, Karl, with his back to the window, was embracing Pierre, face buried in his neck. Not kissing; something worse. In that horrible attitude they stood motionless, except for the twitching of Pierre's stiffly outstretched arms. Presently a trickle of blood appeared from his sleeve, made a red rivulet over his hand, and dripped on to the floor.

  What the devil are they up to? David thought. Anne said there was something strange going on, but this?

  Eventually, slowly, Karl raised his head. His grip slackened; Pierre's knees buckled suddenly and Karl let him down gently on to the couch, where he lay with his long limbs in disarray and hair tousled around his slack face. There was a crimson stain on the collar of his shirt.

  Anne had also warned David that they might know he was there, but they showed no awareness of him. Pierre uttered an obscenity in French. Then he said, "I hate you," as if he were actually saying, "I love you."

  Karl turned, so that his profile was towards the window. His expression was cool, there was no blood on his mouth, but David thought he looked different; glowing, intangibly in control. "I will not have you laying a finger on any of the Nevilles," he said softly. "Is that clear?"

  Pierre lifted his head. His blue eyes looked sleepy, out of focus. "Miserable bastard," he said. "Dog in the manger, I think that's the phrase."

  "I am not expecting promises," said Karl. "I am simply telling you. You will not touch them."

  Touch us? For God's sake, what does he mean?

  Pierre said, "You do this to me, then expect me to starve to death?"

  "I don't care what you do, once you are out of this house."

  "How do you expect me to leave?" Pierre exclaimed. "I can't move from this seat, let alone do anything else."

  "Don't be an idiot," Karl said coldly. "You can walk to the door. I will drive you somewhere. I just want you as far away from this house as fast as possible." He clasped his hand round Pierre's upper arm and pulled him up like a rag doll.

  Pierre stood swaying in his grip. "Your charming hosts will think me terribly rude."

  Karl laughed, a soft, mellifluous sound that chilled David. As they walked to the door, Pierre said, "What about Ilona?"

  David did not hear Karl's reply. They were gone. The library had a frozen look, like an empty stage, but the plum-red drops of blood on the carpet seemed full of significance.

  Karl sounded as if he was trying to protect us from Pierre in some way—but Karl's own behaviour was inexplicable. "Dog in the manger," Pierre called him—as if Karl had some vested interest in us… Christ. David's first instinct was to stop them and demand to know what was going on. He sprinted down the terrace steps, round to the side of the Hall and past the kitchens, but he had to scale a gate to reach the front drive and he was too late. Karl's Hispano-Suiza had gone from the open garages and there was the swiftly receding growl of an engine.

  David swore. There was no point in chasing them. Better to go back and see if Anne could shed any light. He was thinking of Edward's warnings. What I saw and heard might make sense if they literally were—no, it's too preposterous!

  ***

  "And they knew I was there," she said. "I made sure I kept out of sight, but they knew."

  Charlotte listened with her head bowed. Eventually she said, "You shouldn't have been spying on them, Anne."

  "Maybe not, but I do think there were extenuating circumstances. If there's something bad to be found out, it's best we know."

  Charlotte looked up, her face frozen with suppressed shock. "Remember I told you I saw a man outside Corpus Christi who vanished, and I thought I was seeing things? It was that man, Karl's friend."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Positive."

  Before Anne could pursue the matter, David came running down the steps and flung himself down in a chair opposite the two women, out of breath.

  "What happened, did you see anything?" said Anne. "Why have you been running?"

  "I'll tell you when I get my breath back. Yes, I saw a damn sight more than I wanted to," David said grimly. "Look, Charli, I really think it would be better if I spoke to Anne alone."

  "No," Anne said firmly. "She has a right to hear this, however difficult it is. It's about time you started treating Charlotte as an adult."

  David pushed his hair back, sighed. "I thought I did. Actually, I was trying to spare my own blushes, but—all right, then—I saw, er—" he cleared his throat. "I saw Karl in some sort of embrace with Pierre. Arms round him, his face down in Pierre's neck. Don't know how to describe it, really."

  "Are you saying you think they're homosexual?" said Anne. "Oh, don't look like that, I do know about these things!"

  He frowned at her, then his expression cleared and he shook his head. "I'm not that prudish. I just feel I ought to pretend to be, sometimes. Father's influence. Yes, it's a possibility, but it didn't look like affection, Anne. It's more usual for chaps to sock each other on the jaw in a fight, but what Karl was doing to Pierre looked positively nasty. Pierre just stood there like this—" David held out his arms stiffly—"and when Karl stopped, he'd drawn blood."

  While David was outside, Anne took Charlotte away on her own, down into the orangery. The only light shone down through the glass doors from the Blue room and the gleaming twilight was eerie, full of the pattering echoes of fountains. They sat in wicker chairs under the orange trees and exotic plants, foliage massed across the glass roof in shades of grey.

  There Anne told Charlotte what she had overheard; that the Frenchman claimed to have seen her with Karl in the garden. That everything Anne had witnessed had made her deeply suspicious of Karl.

  "What, out of Pierre's neck?" said Anne. "That's how it looked. He practically had to carry Pierre out of the room afterwards."

  "It's impossible!" cried Charlotte. "You must be mistaken, both of you!"

  "There's no need to get worked up about it, Sis," said David, apparently surprised at her reaction.

  "Oh, David," said Anne,
thinking, Hasn't he guessed why she's upset? "Let me tell you what I heard, and then we'll all try to be calm and rational about it, shall we?"

  Again she related the conversation, tactfully leaving out any reference to Charlotte. Then David added what he had heard.

  "None of this makes sense," he said. "But it sounds as if Pierre had some ill intention towards us and so, by implication, does Karl. The question is, what? God, it doesn't bear thinking about. Suppose Maddy was attacked, and it was Pierre who attacked her… "

  "There must be an explanation," Charlotte said helplessly. "Karl was trying to protect us against Pierre."

  "And from the way it sounded, protect us so that he could do something unspeakable to us himself!" David stared at his fists, clenching and unclenching them. "Don't forget, Karl claims this madman as his friend. I don't pretend to understand what was going on, but until I do, I don't want any member of my family going anywhere near Karl. God, I wish I'd taken Edward seriously!"

  "I hope no one's going to say the word 'vampire'," Anne said drily. "Edward must have come up with that as a metaphor of some kind for whatever he saw in Karl, but… "

  Charlotte broke in, "But when he made that scene at Maddy's party, you said it was because he was ill!"

  "So I thought," said David. "But since then he's kept on warning me about Karl, and he is a very perceptive judge of people."

  "But you're sitting there trying to prove Karl is some sort of perverted maniac! I don't believe it. He would never hurt anyone."

  David was looking gravely at Charlotte, as if wondering why she was defending Karl so vehemently. Has the penny dropped at last? Anne thought. He said, "Anyway, they've both gone now."

  "Gone?" Charlotte looked horrified. "Where?"

  "I've no idea, old thing. I went after them but they disappeared over the horizon in Karl's motor car. Anybody's guess if Karl even intends to come back."