A Taste of Blood Wine

by Freda Warrington

  Charlotte, seeing it was hopeless to argue, fell silent. She felt oppressed by her father's concern, Henry's incomprehension. Nothing has changed, she thought. They still assume I'm too innocent to be anything but a victim of an evil influence. But I've colluded; I have spent all these months letting them believe it.

  They went into the dining room, where dusty sunlight sheened the dark panelling and the surface of the long mahogany table. And there was Karl, waiting for them, self-possessed and elegant in a dark suit.

  Nothing Charlotte imagined ever quite prepared her for seeing Karl in the flesh. His presence electrified the air. His beautiful eyes were on her at once, absorbing her, speaking without words. She wanted the others to vanish; she wanted to go to him, to feel his arms around her and… But her family walled her away from him, and the impossibility of touching him was the most exquisite ache.

  ***

  How sombre, how mistrustful they look, Karl thought as the Nevilles came in. Karl sat down at one side of the table and David sat facing him with Anne on his right, Dr Neville, Charlotte and Henry on his left. It was an unconscious arrangement, as if the table were a battle line between them. Karl found it hard to take notice of any of them except Charlotte. Her eyes were fixed on his, the deep grey irises jewelled with amethyst; perhaps Karl found it easier than she did to pretend they were alone.

  "How are you?" he said gently.

  "Very well," Charlotte replied. He saw the pearly tips of her teeth as she smiled. "Very well indeed." David turned and frowned at her. Her family's protectiveness would have amused Karl, had it not made him feel so sad.

  "I shall have to insist," David told Karl, "that you address yourself only to my father and myself."

  "I would rather leave it to Charlotte, Anne and Henry to decide whether they wish to speak to me or not," said Karl. He had respected David for his strong spirit, but at this moment it seemed an irrelevance. He could easily have dominated them all with vampiric power of will; only for Charlotte's sake was he reasoning with them instead. "I hope we can at least call a truce until the doppelgänger is destroyed. I should explain, David, that after you severed my head, another vampire healed me. His method and reasons are not important, but he created a new body from my head and a new head from the body… thus a replica of myself, with vampire instincts but no power to reason. Do you see?"

  "The whole bloody thing's unbelievable," said David.

  "So it seems," said Dr Neville, "but in the absence of a rational explanation we have to trust the evidence of our eyes." Henry was pressing a handkerchief to his forehead and looked incapable of saying anything. Of them all, he was suffering the most. Karl felt sorry for him.

  "I am not going into detail about it," Karl went on. "But perhaps it will help you to understand the difficulty of destroying my kind. Only beheading is effective and even that can be reversed. Disastrously so. I experimented on myself in your laboratory, Dr Neville, and found no substance that harmed me."

  Neville looked astonished, fascinated. "No? Radium, acid? Not even an electric current? Good God, the first time you came here; you picked up a beaker of boiling water and it didn't scald you. D'you remember, Henry?"

  Henry turned a shade whiter.

  "In fact, the only thing that seems to affect us at all is extreme cold."

  Dr Neville smoothed his moustache, looking thoughtful. This had become a scientific problem to him. "The coldest thing we have in the lab is liquid nitrogen. Minus one hundred and ninety-six degrees centigrade. How cold does it have to be?"

  "I am not sure." Karl spread his fingers on the glossy mahogany surface of the table. "I found that it paralysed my hand temporarily, nothing more."

  "You poured that stuff on your hand?" Neville looked stunned. "So much for my lectures about safety in the lab. Are you claiming that you are indestructible… immortal?"

  "So it seems," said Karl. "We can be wounded but we heal swiftly, even our brains… as if we were animated by something outside ourselves. We are defying the laws of nature, are we not?"

  "You're also defying the second law of thermodynamics," Dr Neville said gruffly. "Entropy always increases. You cannot live without changing. Deteriorating. But then, the behaviour of matter itself seems to come down to the study of probability rather than causation. Nature resists precise measurement. We don't really know what her laws are. If you were right, Karl, if creatures really existed that were immortal, it could turn all of science and philosophy on its head. Then again, if you exist outside nature—what we know of it, at least—perhaps you can only be destroyed by something outside it. It's a fascinating philosophical question."

  "I wish we could talk about it in greater depth," Karl said with genuine regret. But Dr Neville looked away, as if he had remembered why he had once liked Karl so much, and felt ashamed of it.

  "I'd like to see you survive a mortar attack," David said under his breath.

  "An explosion may fling a vampire into the air but it will not dismember him; shrapnel passes through his flesh as bullets do. Or mustard gas, or chlorine, David? No."

  "How the hell do you know?"

  Karl did not answer.

  Charlotte said questioningly, "But the Weisskalt… ?"

  "No," said Karl. Again they spoke with an intensity that excluded everyone else, made the uncomfortable. "Our friend has the power to save him. It would not be final enough."

  "He won't be happy if you do kill the double, will he?"

  "He is not God," Karl said, thinking, But Charlotte is right, of course. More fuel to Kristian's furnace.

  "Charlotte, please," David said severely, as if he couldn't bear to acknowledge this incomprehensible, private communication between Karl and Charlotte. "A stake through the heart, then. There must be something!"

  "We do not sleep in graves, and the other superstitions are also false. Beheading is effective—as long as the vampire is not deliberately healed. I want it destroyed so completely that it cannot come back."

  "Why?" David said suddenly. "Why do you want it dead so desperately? It's one of your own kind. Isn't it rather like… killing your own twin brother?"

  Karl felt a pang of obscure but wrenching pain. He hoped it did not show in his face. "Ask yourself, how would you feel if a perfect double of yourself were haunting you? Haunting Anne? Would you tolerate it?"

  Dr Neville said, "It's a presage of your death, isn't it, to see your doppelgänger? In German myth."

  "Perhaps that's what it is," Karl said, twisting his white fingers together, staring down at them. "We both live or we both die. I don't know."

  "Doesn't it worry you," said David, "that if we find an effective way to kill it, we might use the same method on you?"

  "There is that possibility," Karl said flatly. "I could be taking a very great risk."

  "Why would you put yourself in such danger for our sake?"

  "Because I know how much it would hurt Charlotte if anything happened to any of you."

  David's strong face coloured. "I don't know how you even dare speak her name, after what you did to her!"

  Karl glared at David, dark contempt in his eyes. "Has she ever said that I mistreated her?"

  "She did nothing but defend you, but for God's sake—you took her hostage, we saw the wounds on her wrist and neck. She's never been the same since. Don't you dare claim you didn't harm her!"

  "You assume I have no capacity for anything but evil. Perhaps you are right, but it doesn't mean I am incapable of love. However much it pains you to hear it, the truth is that I love Charlotte."

  Karl saw Dr Neville grip his daughter's arm, a talismanic gesture of denial. "You've got an infernal nerve," he growled.

  "And supposing we destroy this creature," said David. "What then? Will you leave us in peace?"

  "Of course."

  "Damn it, I want to know what your intentions are towards Charlotte! You seem incapable of leaving her alone, but I am warning you—"

  Karl raised his voice, just enough to cut a
cross David's anger. "I should not ask Charlotte to do anything against her will. Neither shall I embarrass her by asking her to make any comment on her own intentions." Charlotte, gazing at him, gave an almost imperceptible nod, as if to say, 'Thank you'."

  "This is intolerable!" Henry broke in. "She's my wife, damn you!"

  Mildly shocked, Karl looked at Charlotte. "You didn't tell me," he said.

  She lifted her shoulders apologetically. "I forgot."

  "Forgot?" Henry spluttered. He looked as if he were about to have a seizure, but he seemed far away, nothing to do with them.

  "It doesn't make any difference… does it?" said Charlotte.

  "No," said Karl. " Human conventions have no hold on us. I told you, don't you remember?"

  "I remember," said Charlotte. "I have never forgotten a single word you said to me."

  "Charli, will you stop this?" said David.

  "Absolutely preposterous," Dr Neville exclaimed. "If you're suggesting that my daughter would even for one second consider—"

  At the same time Henry was pushing his chair back, saying, "I've had quite enough of this! Charlotte, I'm taking you out of here. Come on."

  Ah, the rabbit has teeth after all, Karl thought, staring at Henry. What possessed her to marry him?

  But Charlotte remained in her seat, her expression set. "I am not going to be ordered about," she said. "None of you has any right to tell me I can't speak to Karl!"

  This confrontation was bound to break out eventually—but not now, it is too soon, thought Karl. I must calm them. The air was so thick with tension that it seemed to contract and shimmer, as if their conflict were drawing some outside force. Karl began to interrupt the argument but the words died on his lips; what he sensed in the atmosphere was more than emotion, it was something physical. He felt the air turn wintry and sensed a crisp concussion like a window shattering in a vacuum.

  And the doppelgänger appeared. It was inside the room, standing at Karl's shoulder.

  Everyone leapt to their feet, Karl included. Sunlight fell across the figure but the dusty-black old-fashioned clothing drank the light so that it seemed to be swathed in darkness. It stood so still that it hardly seemed alive. Even to Karl it was unspeakably menacing.

  "Your bayonet, David," Karl said levelly. "A meat cleaver, anything. But move slowly."

  "Bayonet's in the hall," David whispered. He began to back towards the door, but Henry turned in a panic, knocked over his chair and almost fell headlong across it.

  The doppelgänger's eyes widened and it came to life, starting towards Henry with a fixed, vacant smile. It seemed a reflex action, like a fox pouncing on a flapping hen. Karl seized its arms and held it back; it was like trying to resist the inertia of a toppling boulder. Shocked by its strength, he held grimly onto it and said, "Slowly, Henry!"

  But Henry fled the room and a door banged in the hall. David went out more circumspectly; Anne, Charlotte and Dr Neville drew together and stared at Karl and his false twin.

  Karl held the doppelgänger still and turned it to face him. Close at hand, he found the being infinitely more disturbing than he had anticipated. It was like seeing a reflection in a mirror; perfect in every detail, but lacking its own inner life. What does it actually feel behind those bleached-gold eyes? I don't think I can kill it… but I must! For if I don't… will it haunt me forever, as Niklas haunts Stefan? I could never love it. I would despise it. I would have to kill it sooner or later, whatever happened…

  And as the thoughts went through his mind, he was leaning towards its throat. Take its blood and weaken it… But the instant Karl's lips touched the skin, the creature dissipated in his grasp and he was left clutching empty air.

  It was a sensation like being thrust over a cliff; the blood thirst rising, the victim being snatched away at the last second. He knew his eyes were still filmed with it as he turned round; he saw the others draw away from him, even Charlotte. Anne's gaze was fixed on Karl, serious, dark, accusing. "Almighty God!" said Dr Neville, closing his eyes.

  David was in the doorway, bayonet in hand. Karl felt a trace of fear; memories of the last time he had seen David like that, ghosts of sickening pain and nightmare images. He pushed the fear away.

  "Where is it?" said David, wide-eyed.

  Karl could sense the creature in the house; he could sense another beat of human warmth, too. "In the laboratory," he said. "I think we will find that Henry ran down there and shut himself in. His heat must have drawn the double after him—and locked doors are no barrier to us, unfortunately."

  While the others ran out into the hall and David began struggling with the cellar door, Karl stepped into the Crystal Ring. He pressed through walls as if through curtains of water. When the door at the top of the stairs finally burst open and David came rushing down, followed by the others, Karl was already in the laboratory. Henry was cringing back against a wall, the false Karl clamping one hand on his shoulder, almost with the guilelessness of a baby reaching for a fascinating toy.

  And still that slight curve to its mouth, like a demon in a nightmare feigning kindness. Evil, mocking. Henry had lost his glasses and his face was contorted in a fight for breath.

  Karl seized the creature, hauled it away. As if realising that Karl was a threat, it side-stepped into the Crystal Ring again—but Karl was ready, and went with it, binding it in his arms. It tried to loop away but he drew it back into the space that contained the laboratory; a grey lozenge where all the angles were wrong and the humans invisible but for their auras.

  He held the creature tight and nipped the skin of its neck between his teeth; then let his fangs slide out to puncture the vein. The blood, thick at first, thinned suddenly and ran scorching into his mouth like ice-cold brandy. So delicate, too strong to drink fast—both repellent and addictive. Is this the taste of my own blood? he wondered, aghast. He drank with steady intensity, eyes wide open to keep his head clear as he fought the tide of pleasure. And as he drank he watched the auras glittering against the strange shadow-shapes of the Crystal Ring.

  David's aura was bright blue and gold; his father's indigo, complex and intense. Anne was a slender shape of green, red and brown. Earth colours. And Charlotte, unmistakable; needles of violet and golden-bronze, rose and black radiating from her, the corona of her soul. Henry's aura was barely visible, colourless. Like Kristian, Karl could drink auras instead of blood if he chose. He did not, because stealing the life-force itself seemed a worse betrayal than taking blood. It made death almost inevitable. It was like crushing an exquisite flower. And most of all, it left him feeling empty; the difference between standing by a fire and making love. Both were warming, yes… but it was the physical closeness and the lusciousness of blood he craved, as did all vampires. All except Kristian…

  Gradually, as the creature weakened, he drew it back with him into the corporeal world. The laboratory solidified around them, the strange perspectives resolving themselves into solid walls, wisps of colour becoming hard shiny objects. Clamp stands, glass tubes, a row of Dewar flasks on a side bench. Slightly intoxicated from feeding, Karl let the doppelgänger go. It took a moment to let his canine teeth retract, to recover his composure before he could turn to the others.

  The double stood impassively, as if nothing had happened, although the skin around its eyes was waxy and drawn. That look of glassy serenity… a walking corpse animated by nothing other than a need for blood and some distant instinct to pursue what Karl loved. The horror of it dumfounded him, yet at the same time he pitied it. It did not ask to exist like this, understanding nothing…

  "I have weakened it," Karl said. "It cannot escape now. We shall have to cut off its head, David, then cut the head into pieces. There is no other way."

  David came forward, the bayonet held two-handed. He hesitated, his mouth turned down with revulsion. "I can't do it," he said. "Not in cold blood like this."

  Karl saw the distress in his eyes, and understood. "Then give the blade to me!" He stretched out his
hand, but as he did so the doppelgänger turned its head and pinned David with its blank gaze. Karl caught the creature's arms. It pulled itself free and began to walk slowly and inexorably towards David. David backed away, holding the bayonet defensively, but the double—indifferent to the threat—persisted. The two of them began to make a gradual, bizarre circuit of the laboratory. Does it have some memory of what David did to me? Karl thought. Again he tried to impede it, again it pulled away. It was too weak to enter the Crystal Ring—but in compensation it had this desperate strength that could save vampires when they were starving. The mechanical nature of its actions seemed far more chilling than conscious evil. Although David was wielding a weapon, Karl could see he was incapable of using it.

  "David, throw me the bayonet!" Karl shouted. But David, encircled by the creature's malevolence, was not going to relinquish his only defence. He went on retreating before it, shaking his head in horror.

  Karl looked around for another weapon. Something that will behead it; wounding will only inflame it. He saw Charlotte moving away from her father, sidling towards the bench where the Dewar flasks were.

  "Charlotte, what are you doing?" said Karl. Her eyes crystalline with terror and determination, she ignored him. She picked up a flask and began to edge towards David, removing the stopper as she went.

  "Don't," said Karl. But he spoke softly, watching in helpless fascination as Charlotte placed herself between David and the doppelganger. Acting with swift grace and assurance she lifted the flask and flung the contents over the double's head.

  White smoke cascaded over its clothes, turning the material frost-grey. Liquid nitrogen. The vampire halted in its tracks, its auburn hair turning as white as its skin.

  David had backed up against a glass-fronted cabinet; Dr Neville was holding on to Anne, and Henry had fled. Charlotte was pale and trembling, but moving deftly she seized a second flask and tipped the steaming bitter-cold fluid down the double's neck. The third flask, she flung into its face.