A Taste of Blood Wine

by Freda Warrington

  Her attempts to reassure herself could not douse a sudden surge of fear. A conviction was crawling over her that there was someone outside… Elizabeth shut her eyes, all at once terrified that if she looked at the terrace she might see something she did not want to.

  What's wrong with me tonight? Don't look at the window! No, stop being a fool. Look! Prove to yourself there's nothing there!

  With her breath lodged in her throat, she looked. And there was the vampire, staring in at her through the window; suddenly there, like an actor appearing when a stage light is flicked on.

  The shock was like lightning, white-hot, paralysing. Elizabeth was on her feet but she couldn't make a sound.

  I'm seeing things. Inner strength or death-wish; something compelled her to move towards the window. Confront it and it will go away, she told herself frantically, but the man remained, three-dimensional, real.

  She was shaking so hard it was almost a convulsion. His form was indistinct, drab clothes blending with the darkness, but the face seemed to shine with its own light. Sculpted features, haunting eyes, the glossy hair catching red lights. His expression blank but for a slight unconscious smile… and the golden clarity of his gaze, fixed straight on her. Karl's face. Karl.

  Once Elizabeth managed to start screaming, she could not stop.

  * * *

  Chapter Eighteen

  Come in out of the Darkness

  The apparition was still there when Newland and the two footmen responded to Elizabeth's screams. Then, at last, she experienced a strange sort of relief in thinking, It's real. I'm not imagining it. He's real, real!

  David and Anne ran in a few seconds later. David took one glance and held onto Elizabeth as if to shield her.

  "God almighty," he said. Anne simply stared; then slowly she moved close to Elizabeth and the three of them clung together, like infants, for comfort.

  Newland—like all good butlers, a master at controlling his reactions—said calmly, "Shall I send some men outside to apprehend the intruder, ma'am?"

  "No," David answered promptly. "No one is to go outside. Make sure all the doors and windows are locked. Go on, Newland, it's all right. I'll look after things in here."

  The butler left, followed by the other two men. The creature that looked exactly like Karl remained there, staring in at them, radiant in the light of the chandeliers. Suddenly the room seemed too bright. Elizabeth forced herself to look at him and he gazed back with no recognition, no emotion whatever on his exquisite face. Worms of horror pushed through her as her mind tried to unmake the evidence of her eyes. People don't come back from the dead, they don't!

  "Oh, God," said David. He broke away and sat down in an armchair, head in his hands. "Oh, God. I killed him. Killed him. For heaven's sake, you saw, didn't you, Annie? His head was clean off."

  "David, for heaven's sake," said Elizabeth, her stomach turning.

  "But I didn't dream it, did I?"

  "No," said Anne. Her face was white, her mouth turned down at the corners with sour denial. "No, you killed him."

  Elizabeth said sharply, "So what the hell is he doing standing on my terrace? I'm frightened. I've never admitted that in my life before, but now I don't care who hears it. I don't like it and I want him to go away!"

  "Christ," David muttered. He stood up, walked slowly across the room and back again. He watched Karl; Karl watched him with that dreadful, mindless regard. "Do vampires have ghosts?"

  "He looks solid enough," said Anne. "His body vanished, don't you remember?"

  David turned to her, wild-eyed. "Are you trying to tell me that after they put him in the morgue, his head stuck itself back to his neck and he walked out?"

  "God knows, but he's standing there now, large as life!" said Anne. "How else could it have happened? This is horrible." Neither she nor Elizabeth were people who usually needed physical reassurance, but now they clung to each other unselfconsciously.

  "If that's the case, why did he wait so long to come back? Why's he just staring at us?" said David. "What's he planning to do, break in, what?"

  Elizabeth swallowed hard and took several deep breaths. Now I've got myself under control again. Good. She said, "Perhaps we had better ask him, dear."

  "What?"

  "There was a time when he seemed a perfectly intelligent and reasonable young man. If he's trying to frighten us, don't let's show it; let's try to reason with him."

  "Right," said David. "Yes, you're right." He started to move towards the window but Anne stopped him.

  "Let me," she said. "I wasn't the one who cut off his head, was I?" With David hovering nervously behind her, Anne went up to the glass and called out, "Karl? You've succeeded in giving us all a fright; now won't you tell us why you're here?"

  Karl showed no sign of having heard. His eyes were beguiling and soulless as a portrait. Anne suddenly lost her nerve and backed away.

  "Oh God, the way he stares through you. Is he doing it on purpose or… "

  David moved round her to the window. "Karl!" he shouted. "Now listen—"

  Glass shattered and burst into the room; the vampire seized David's hand and began trying to drag his arm through the pane, towards the jagged edges. David cried out and Elizabeth's throat contracted as she saw his forearm turn deadly white.

  Anne reacted instantly. She grabbed a letter-opener from a side-table and stabbed it into the vampire's hand.

  Karl vanished. There was nothing outside but darkness, the tangles of wisteria stirring softly along the terrace balustrade. One broken pane in the window, glass on the carpet, and David—white as plaster—rubbing at his bruised wrist.

  "Are you hurt?" Anne said anxiously.

  "Just a graze. Thank God you acted so fast… but where the hell's he gone?"

  "Disappearing was a talent Karl kept to himself before," Anne said drily.

  "At least he's gone," said Elizabeth. She rubbed her forehead; tension pains were shooting through her skull.

  "But what if he comes back? I suppose it's revenge he wants." David shook his head and heaved a huge sigh. "If beheading him didn't work, what else can I do?"

  "Don't let's imagine the worst," Elizabeth said briskly. "I'm wondering what to tell Newland; I don't want to upset the servants, but I should never forgive myself if anyone was hurt."

  "If he does come back, I think it's me he's after," said David.

  Elizabeth's fear returned in a sick wave. Annoyed at herself, she said, "The three of us are all sensible and not easily unnerved; I can see no reason for us to start behaving like the three little piggies in the house of sticks."

  But that was exactly how she felt. She loathed nothing more than feeling out of control, either of her emotions or her situation. Although the apparition didn't appear again that night, none of them had any sleep.

  ***

  Karl left Kristian without any clear aim in mind. Kristian's revelation was swelling into a mass of hideous implications; Karl's disbelief at the manner of his resurrection had become horror.

  He wanted to escape but the amorphous cloud of evil flowed with him.

  Karl stretched out to touch the Crystal Ring; ah yes, he could reach it again, despite his hunger. But he chose not to enter it. It was enough to know that the dark wings of flight were no longer broken. I want only to walk, he thought bleakly, as if connection with the physical world can somehow shield me from this despair.

  It did not, of course. Haunted by the enormity of it he went on walking through darkness and light, unconscious of time; following the course of the Rhine through lush vineyards, steep tangles of rocks and trees, pine forests where sightseers admired the view from hilltop restaurants. He let the thirst gather and gather until he was almost delirious with it, drifting slightly outside his body, but still he did not sate it. When he saw humans they looked to him like children; defenceless, wide open to life and to danger. I can't touch them, he thought, amazed at himself. I have no right to be alive… Some immutable law has been broken, the la
w of God or of the universe. Abomination. My existence is an abomination against nature herself…

  The thought was as clear and vast as the evening sky. Karl had never experienced such hopeless depression. Charlotte's pain. Ilona's pain. That everything I touch is damned… that I drag it into damnation with me… One clean blow, and I should have died! I cannot feed, because to feed would be to accept it. Immortality. Damnation. Kristian's law… and I can't accept it! Everything that had happened rolled over him like a purple-black cloud gravid with thunder.

  He climbed slowly along the peat-brown paths of a forest, letting his sight dim so that he saw no more colour than would a human. A clear deep violet sky, the pines soaring black against it; this simplicity was all he could bear.

  The slow, obscene healing, bought with the blood of God-knows-how-many mortals… Kristian's obsession, to put such a thing in motion without a qualm. Such a sin, such a violation of nature, must be rep aid… an equal and opposite reaction… or will it recoil with three-fold violence, like a curse? No one would speak so longingly of immortality if they knew what it means!

  A log lay across his path, near the summit of the hill; he stopped as if lacking even the will to step over it, turned and sat down. Even through his pain, he was arrested by the vista that spread away below him. The soft soot-blackness of the trees and hills; the river reflecting in long loops the violet and silver sheen of the sky. In this beauty I can live… but what if it were gone?

  Then Karl, who had been alone for decades, experienced the most devastating sense of loneliness. It attacked him with such fierceness that it hurt; and it went through him like wind-driven rain, as if he had no substance left at all, only the loneliness and the thirst. If only Charlotte were here, that would make it bearable. Sitting beside him, absorbing his words, her own thoughts moving behind her dark-rimmed eyes that were the colour of the sky. He imagined the soft weight of her hair on his hands, gold frost glinting on brown… Simply not to be alone with this despair.

  I don't know if she's alive or dead… but if alive, surely she will have found a way to forget me. She had the strength to do that. How could I go back to her? Nothing has changed. I could only say again, "I cannot take you with me but neither can I leave you in peace." Why? To destroy her life a second time?

  "Don't torment yourself with that," Kristian's voice seemed to tell him. "Come back to me." No, loneliness was preferable to that!

  Yet do I really want to be free of Kristian? Perhaps I'm like Ilona. Without him to fight, I'd have no purpose. He is always there—like a father to a child who hasn't yet learned about death. He is to be rebelled against, but he is safe. He holds the promise of answers even if he can't give any except God, God, God. Then should I give in to him? Try to make myself believe what he believes, that God is on our side? That He takes revenge on mankind through us… We are His flood, plague, famine. We are part of Him—therefore no need to fear or to be alone.

  But Karl looked at the sky and felt no God there. Power, certainly—but a blank, disinterested power. The majesty of nature, beautiful, pitiless, impersonal. Impersonal. Not requiring the services of dark messengers. Of course Kristian needs God, to keep him from the abyss. And I haven't the imagination—or lack of it—to believe in deities; but Kristian is real so I need him instead…

  Immortality had always been an abstract idea—still was—but Karl had always assumed he had the choice of death. But now the visions crept over him of what it meant actually to be unable to die. They were stark. Hellish. His power to detach himself, to accept, was gone and the images marched past relentlessly.

  Everything noble, the music and art and science that made life precious, familiar, lost forever. Earth a desert of ashes and cracked mud, caused by some inconceivable holocaust or the slow death of the sun; then the earth itself gone, nothing left but the black void between stars… To go on and on, through that nothingness, without escape.

  The fear was simply that. To be unable to sleep. Never any respite from this curving line of consciousness that stretched on and on through everything. A flame of clear white horror inside him. I am dead and this is the afterlife. This is hell. This is the evil and the punishment; they are one and the same!

  It hit him as a revelation, dazzling white as the Weisskalt, heartless, inimical; a sword of glass stuck through him so that he could not move, or breathe, or think. And as he sat aghast at the knowledge, he saw the silhouette climbing up towards him; a headless hulking shape that dipped from side to side as it came. Karl was unable to make sense of it through the delirium, but his thirst leapt towards it like a flame.

  As it approached he saw that it was a walker with a large knapsack bulging above his shoulders. A middle-aged man with grey hair, a strong bearded face, legs thin and tough in shorts and hiking boots. Karl's need was so intense it could hardly worsen, but it sharpened and focussed on the moving vessel… Speak to me, Karl thought. Then you will become a person, not just prey, and you will be safe. You are safe, because I cannot move, I am simply incapable of being a vampire any more…

  The hiker saw Karl and almost jumped out of his skin. He recovered himself quickly and said, slightly breathless, "Guten Abend, mein Herr."

  "Guten Abend. Schones Wetter," Karl replied without intonation. He willed the man to go by, but he stopped.

  "Sprechen Sie Englisch?"

  "Bin wenig," said Karl. "Yes."

  "Oh, splendid. My German is only ein wenig too, I'm afraid." The man's voice was deep, rather soothing. Karl liked him instantly; even through the despair and the hunger. "That's quite a hill. Mind if I sit down?"

  "Of course not." Karl moved along to make room. "Admire the view."

  "I'm on a walking holiday. Nothing like it." The man took a huge breath and blew it out with a satisfied, Ahhhh. "As Browning put it, 'God's in his heaven, all's right with the world.'"

  "Browning is always misinterpreted!" Karl said. Amazing he could speak at all, with the horror still inside him; with the human heat so close, the heartbeat pulsing like moist kisses through the arteries… "Pippa's words are overheard by an adulterous couple who have murdered the wife's husband. The irony is lost."

  The Englishman gave him a curious look, taken aback. "I only teach geography, not English literature, I'm afraid. However naive the sentiment, I still agree with it."

  "I did not mean to offend you. Then, of course, Pippa's innocence forces the couple to face their crimes… " Karl was beyond caring what he said, saw no point in pretence any more; the intensity came through in his voice. "I only wish I felt as you do, but I can see no God and nothing in the world but evil."

  The hiker leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. "Tell me to mind my own business if you like, but you sound very troubled. It might help you to talk to a stranger. I know what it's like to feel as you do, believe me; it was a long struggle to be at peace with myself."

  "Had you killed someone?" Karl said sharply.

  "Yes, in the War."

  "In the War, as a soldier, under orders? You cannot truly blame yourself for that. But how can a murderer be at peace with himself? Worse than a murderer, a fiend who brings madness and misery even to those he most loves, whether he wants to or not, because his soul is damned?"

  The Englishman was quiet, as if long-practised in not reacting to shocking statements. He must be a good teacher, Karl thought. One who commands not just respect but love from his pupils. Then the man said, "Whatever you have done can't be so bad."

  "No?" Karl was incredulous. "Why do you say that?"

  "In my experience, people who've most cause to feel guilt don't feel it. They find ways to justify their actions. The ones who torment themselves have often done nothing to deserve it. But if they have, at least they recognise it and know their need to make their peace with God; it's a step in the right direction. It was walking that helped me, being alone with nature."

  "I don't believe in God and I don't believe in the Devil," Karl said. "There is no way to justify what I a
m!"

  The man breathed out softly. "No one's perfect. Whatever it is you've done—and you needn't tell me, because it's not my position to pass judgement on you—you will only find peace if you accept what you are."

  The man had done nothing to hurt Karl, nothing even to offend him; yet suddenly he wanted to thrust through his unshakeable calmness. Part of his mind was saying, He's made sense of life, let him alone—but a deeper instinct was looming cold and white and pitiless through him. Nature gives no quarter. Nor shall I.

  "You think I should accept this?' He gripped the man's shoulder, making him start and stare into Karl's face until he saw. All the order and logic of his life was turning upside down, his wise grey eyes whitening with horror. Then Karl let his fangs slide out to their full length, cruelly sharp. "Now do you understand? You speak of Nature, but it's Nature herself who has damned me and abandoned me! What should I do except pay her back?"

  "No! Let me go!" The Englishman struggled to pull away.

  "Yes, go," said Karl. "Run."

  He released the man, watched him stumbling away through the trees, wasting half his energy in panic. He dwindled until he would have been lost to human sight and hearing; but Karl could still see his flailing form, hear his stressed breathing and the faint tap of his heart. He watched in absolute stillness like a cat watching a tiny spider on a lengthening filament of silk. His thoughts were more shapes than words inside him. Why not accept what I am? The pain, all the pain comes from denying it. This moral code I tried to keep, self-deception. If nature allows me to exist, forces me to exist, let her bear the consequences.

  He stood up. Unhurriedly and without sound he loped through the trees until he caught up with the hiker, seized the strap of his pack and swung him round and off his feet. Karl cast no glamour on the man to soothe his fear; he saw the face haggard with shock and terror and he felt no pity. "I accept it," said Karl, and drove his fangs through the salty damp skin of the neck.