A Dance in Blood Velvet

by Freda Warrington

  Silence. Even Katerina looked startled, and asked lightly, “Why didn’t you tell her what, Karl?”

  “No point in worrying her, when we have no proof,” he said.

  Katerina blinked. “Proof of what?”

  “That Kristian may have survived.”

  “Ah.” Katerina flopped back in the chair and began to unpin her luxuriant hair. She looked majestic and seductive.

  “I don’t care,” Charlotte said fiercely. “You should have told me.”

  Katerina stood and went to Karl’s side in a single flowing movement. Both dark, she only half a head shorter than him, they seemed as close as twins.

  “She’s right, Karl,” she said, looking down at Charlotte. “We should have told you, dear. But what can you do about it?” Again the honeyed condescension, calculated to make Charlotte feel an outsider. She was beyond tolerating it.

  Staring hard at Katerina, she said, “I don’t know. But I would like to help you find Andreas.”

  Unexpectedly, Katerina came and sat beside her. She put a hand on Charlotte’s arm. “I appreciate it, but that’s not a good idea.”

  “Why not?” Charlotte spoke thinly, glancing at Karl’s half-shadowed face.

  “I’m worried about how Andreas might be when we find him. He could be out of his mind; Lord knows how he might react, seeing a strange face.” As Katerina spoke, her smooth tone frayed. She was speaking the truth, and couldn’t hide the pain that gleamed through her facade. Charlotte felt brief but genuine sympathy. “You’re a fledgling, Charlotte; how could you defend yourself, if Andreas attacked you?”

  “I can look after myself,” she retorted.

  Katerina appealed to Karl. “You wouldn’t put her in such danger, would you?”

  “Of course not,” he said.

  “So you’re saying you don’t want or need my help, either of you?” said Charlotte.

  “We’re thinking of you,” Katerina began, but Karl interrupted.

  “I’ve told Charlotte that I want her help. Whatever the danger, I cannot tell her what to do. It’s her choice.”

  “Natürlich!” said Katerina, as if astonished it should be otherwise. She stared hard at Charlotte, her face regal, full of dark strength. The contempt radiating from her chestnut eyes crushed Charlotte to ash. “Your decision; but ask yourself: suppose he was put in danger by having to protect you, do you really want to put Karl’s safety at risk?” And the unspoken coda: “When you know you aren’t wanted, and you appreciate how miserable I can make your life?”

  * * *

  Benedict walked through dark lanes with a vampire at his side, and more questions in his mind than he’d ever dreamed.

  Lancelyn might create illusions or mind tricks to terrify people, Ben thought, but has he the power to call a supernatural creature in physical form? I doubt it. Surely, if he’d ever achieved such a feat, he’d never have been able to keep quiet!

  Andreas was silent, incredibly light and graceful under the voluminous greatcoat. A thin figure: just a glimpse of dead-white skin between hat-brim and scarf.

  Ben took him to the canal a few miles away, where water lay turgidly brown under the shadow of warehouse walls. There the vampire took a victim, an old man lying asleep on a narrowboat.

  Ben tried to watch - not to shy away - but it was dark. He heard more than he saw. The man starting awake, a muffled cry, the long thin form bending over him; the crunch of teeth through flesh and cartilage, a brief struggle, stillness. Then only a faint groan from Andreas. He lay down right along the old man’s form, convulsing as if with sexual pleasure.

  At that point, Ben could stand no more. He left the boat and waited on the towpath, feeling sick, shivery and depressed. Christ, how often will he want to do this?

  He closed his eyes, opened them again to find Andreas beside him, silent and composed. His face looked polished, luminous. A great chilling wave of awe went over Benedict. He’d been so wrapped up in practicalities that the truth hurtled through and struck him like a spear. This is a vampire. An evil spirit that should be dead and is not.

  Ben shook himself. He guided Andreas into the cover of trees, one hand hovering near the vampire’s shoulder - not actually daring to touch him. They walked for a minute. Then Ben said, “Did you kill him?”

  “Probably,” said Andreas. His German accent was very pronounced yet musical; soft, dreamy. “Ah, but I feel better.”

  “Listen to me. You don’t have to kill them, do you?”

  The vampire didn’t answer for a while. Eventually he said, “I don’t have to, no.”

  “Then don’t!”

  “What does it matter?”

  “This isn’t London!” Ben said sourly. “We can’t support a rash of unexplained deaths. People will talk, there’ll be police and journalists everywhere...”

  Another pause. “While I need the blood so desperately, I can’t help draining them. I can’t stop. But if I could, it still leaves them... unwell.” Rough anger edged his voice. “What do you want of me? If you don’t like this, Benedict, why in the name of hell did you bring me here?”

  They did not speak again until they reached home.

  Ben switched on a light, and watched Andreas remove his coat. The change made him gasp. Although the vampire was still pallid and skeletal, he was recognisably human; skin smooth, his limbs straight, his movements easy.

  Ben said, “We have a lot to talk about.”

  “Have we?” Andreas said bitterly. His sunken face with its cobweb hair was unsightly - but what a change from his first appearance!

  “I need to know what you remember of the astral world, and why you were trapped there. If you’re a vampire, why weren’t you free to roam the world? Were you dead? Were you ever human, or -”

  “Liebe Gott, stop this!” the vampire said hoarsely. “I can’t remember anything! Only flashes, which vanish when you ask these stupid questions. My head aches and I want to sleep, but I can’t. Leave me alone!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Ben. “You need to rest. Is there anything... particular that you require?”

  “A coffin?” said Andreas, mocking his tone. “No. I do not need to lie in a coffin, nor to avoid daylight or running water. None of the folklore nonsense. But protect me from bad musicians and bad poets, please. And the cold. I can’t stand to be cold.”

  Sighing, Benedict took him to the guest bedroom. Andreas lay down and seemed to enter a state of catalepsy. Not breathing. Ben shut the door and left him.

  He had a few hours fitful sleep, continually disturbed by the cottage cracking and murmuring around him. Bad dreams. Mice running about between the floorboards. The taste and smell of blood...

  He woke to daylight, barely in time to dress before the housekeeper arrived. He checked Andreas, found him lying as before, staring at the ceiling. Ben locked him in.

  When Mrs Potter came, he let her make his breakfast, then gave her the day off. She was surprised, but didn’t argue. Ben would have to find excuses to keep her out of Andreas’ way... Hmm, awkward having a vampire guest, but I’ll sort it out.

  He telephoned Holly and told her all was fine. She sounded unconvinced.

  He meant to spend the day in his study, reading all he could find about vampires and their connection to the astral world. He’d just settled to the task when Maud arrived on the doorstep, indignant.

  “Mr Grey, aren’t you in the shop today?”

  “No - I’m sorry, Maud, I should have telephoned. I’ve had a lot on my mind. Do you mind coping on your own for a couple of days? I’ll pay you extra.”

  “It’s no trouble,” she said with a touch of petulance. “I don’t mind if I know.”

  “Thank you.”

  She turned to leave, then pulled an envelope from her pocket. “This letter came to the shop yesterday, or the day before... I’d have brought it sooner, if I’d known you weren’t coming in.”

  He took it from her. “My fault, but I wish you had.”

  She gave a martyred,
ingratiating smile, as if to say, I’m terribly put upon, but I suffer in silence.

  “Strange girl,” Ben said to himself, closing the door. He sat down and stared at the envelope in shock. Deirdre’s handwriting.

  Dear Benedict,

  I’ll send this to the shop so you needn’t explain to Holly if you’d rather not. I’m writing before I catch my train. There’s more to tell that I couldn’t say to your face. Too difficult. Call me a coward, but I couldn’t have borne your questions and distress. I just wanted to leave.

  I’m breaking an oath to tell you this. The story is that Lancelyn goes fishing once a month. He doesn’t. He goes - went, rather - to James’s country house and held meetings of a secret order he called the Hidden Temple. James and I were the only members from the NMT. The others were the usual: members of parliament, judges, aristocrats and the like - men seeking more extreme versions of the occult to stimulate their jaded appetites. Lancelyn supplied the need. Opium, hashish, cocaine, women, boys, seances and sex rituals - whatever they wanted.

  I’m not coming over moral about this. I was all for free love and free will. I enjoyed it to start with; there was some plausible talk about communion with the Goddess through sexual union, which Lancelyn may have half-believed. It was money that ruined it. Once someone’s initiated, he has them forever. He held enough scandal, over every one of them, to have destroyed their careers and lives - and he milked it. If you don’t believe me, where do you think all his money comes from?

  Well, James got sick of it. I told him, “Refuse to let Lancelyn use your house any more!” but when he tried, Lancelyn got furious and tried to blackmail him. James said he had enough evidence, of procuring, drug-dealing and the like, to do worse back. Lancelyn was incandescent. That’s why he killed James and that’s why I’m leaving.

  You can go to James’s house if you like, but you’ll find nothing. His relatives are in possession and Lancelyn will have removed the evidence. What he’ll do about the Hidden Temple now, I don’t know and I don’t care.

  Ben, I know you love your brother. If you knew about this all along, I’ve made myself look a fool, which doesn’t matter. But if not - and knowing you, so decent and good, I’m sure you didn’t - I’m sorry.

  Please burn this. Your friend, D.

  Ben dropped the letter and put his head in his hands. “Oh, God,” he said.

  * * *

  That night, when Andreas needed to feed, Ben took him to a small hospital and said, “Find someone who would die anyway.”

  Whether Andreas obeyed, Ben did not ask. The only way to cope with the horror and hypocrisy was to shut his mind and harden his heart.

  “Good and decent,” Deirdre had called him. Christ.

  When they returned to the house, Benedict saw lights burning that he hadn’t left on.

  He opened the front door, saw nothing unusual in the hall. The air felt taut and frosty, vibrating with the vestigial energy of his ritual. The place felt cold, heavy, frightening. He heard a faint scrabbling of mouse paws.

  A strip of light under the drawing-room door filled him with unreasoning terror.

  He glanced at Andreas, but the scoured face was devoid of fellow-feeling. Shuddering, he pushed open the door to the parlour.

  Holly was sitting on the sofa, her feet tucked underneath her, her face deathly. Still in her coat, she held Deirdre’s letter crumpled in one hand. For a heart-stopping moment he thought she was dead; murdered and posed there as some ghastly joke.

  She looked up. Relief. But why was her face so white, why did this feel as alien as a nightmare? Holly could be volatile, courageous, bad-tempered, but he’d never seen her so pale and motionless, as if so terrified she could endure it only by sitting absolutely still.

  Seeing Andreas, she stared.

  Benedict said in dismay, “Darling, why are you home? I wasn’t expecting you for at least a week.” He glanced darkly at the vampire and added under his breath, “She is not to be touched.”

  Andreas only smiled and blinked. His eyes were long black crescents in his burnished skin.

  “I had to come back; I knew you were in danger.” Her voice was raw with tiredness. “How could you pretend everything is ‘fine’ when it obviously isn’t? I’m not a fool!”

  “Holly -”

  She went on staring at the vampire. “What is that - thing with you?”

  “A friend,” said Ben.

  “He has no aura,” she whispered. “He’s not human, is he?”

  “Holly, this is rather difficult -”

  “Not human.” Her eyes were bird-bright in her ashen face. “Like the others.”

  “Others?”

  She glanced at the ceiling. “In the attic and on the landing. White creatures like him. The house is full of them. In the name of God, Ben, what have you done?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  DANCER OF DREAMS

  The search would begin when Katerina regained her power to enter the Crystal Ring. That could take days or weeks; Charlotte had breathing space. The minute she could escape without it seeming Katerina had frightened her away, she flew to her refuge, Giselle.

  The truth was, Katerina disturbed her at the most primeval level. The gleam of her eyes, warm and wise and yet so sinister, as she softly crushed Charlotte’s offer of help: Ask yourself, do you really want to put Karl’s safety at risk?

  No, Charlotte thought. No, I don’t. But I won’t let you win!

  If not for Katerina, perhaps Charlotte would have forgotten Violette Lenoir. As it was, the ballerina remained the only creature who could soothe her. In the next few weeks she saw the Ballet Janacek in cities all over Europe.

  Sometimes she lingered at the stage door until Violette emerged; at others, she left the theatre the moment the performance ended, found and took a victim with urgent fervour that left her shocked at herself.

  Anger at Katerina? Frustrated desire for Violette’s swan-pale throat? Charlotte’s own feelings alarmed her. In the glorious freedom of being with Karl, she’d felt happy and in control. Then Katerina intruded, and a rope came untethered within her. She felt as if the first storm would carry her away.

  The latest performance was in Vienna - Karl’s home city, and he wasn’t with her. A double sadness; the run of Giselle was almost over. Tonight, and tomorrow; then, Charlotte wondered, where else will I find refuge?

  After the curtain calls, Charlotte left swiftly but didn’t go home. She walked all night, feeding on three or four victims as she went. Easy for a pretty young woman to catch a man’s attention; they were so pleased, so trusting, that she felt no guilt. The purple-red intoxicating juice of their veins swept away all pain; theirs, and hers. She took only a little blood from each but drank languorously, her mind as dark and dispassionate as the night itself.

  Wind, rain, spring flowers nodding under a glaze of light. In the Vienna Woods she watched the sun rise like a pearl through a red ocean. Then she walked back into the city to lose herself in crowds whose rational, busy minds were oblivious to the supernatural. She floated on their oblivion like a feather.

  Ugly, the workers’ flats being built on the outskirts. Who could be so dull-minded as to defile this beautiful city with cold modern ideals? This was where Karl had lived, long before she knew him. As she walked past palaces and theatres, she imagined him everywhere; a ghost in nineteenth-century clothing, a musician in the time of Beethoven and Schubert. The sun came out and the wet cobblestones shone.

  She entered an opulent hotel and sat in the lobby, stirring a cup of coffee that she would not drink. Gauze veils of sunlight gleamed on the dark panelled walls and brocade upholstery. All brown and faded gold, hushed as a library. She watched guests coming and going. Diamonds and fur. Lives untouched by the currents of change.

  Last night had been given over to mindless sensation, but now she must think.

  Karl has never given me cause to be suspicious of any human female, though God knows, he has enough temptation. Katerina’s differ
ent. Immortal, powerful and confident. I can’t challenge the link between them, their hold on each other; I don’t know how.

  Karl still loves me, I’m sure, but all his reassurances turn to dust in the face of one fact: he loves Katerina too.

  Her brown eyes haunted Charlotte. Such withering contempt; How, she thought, how can she make me feel so impotent? And her teeth... a shiver of revelation. God, she showed me the tips of her fangs!

  A clear threat; the ultimate way one vampire claimed power over another was to feed on them. Loss of blood meant weakness, while the dominant one’s strength increased. That was how Kristian had made himself their leader, by being physically undefeatable. And Katerina’s older and stronger than me...

  Would she dare? Will Karl protect me?

  I have to decide. Do I run away and let her win, or do I tag along and let her humiliate me? I’m so afraid, if I force Karl to choose between us, that he might not choose me. And he’d resent me for forcing him, I know he would.

  Well, it’s clear what I’m doing at this moment. Running away.

  Sensing movement, Charlotte looked up and saw a couple coming in through the lobby doors. With tingling shock, she saw that the young woman was Violette, her companion the ballet’s director.

  While Janacek went to the desk, the dancer came and sat on a sofa opposite Charlotte. She was wearing a black fur-trimmed coat, a cloche hat half-shielding her face.

  Violette took a newspaper from a coffee table, unfolded it and began to read. Charlotte covertly watched her. Was she really so interested in the news, or trying to avoid being recognised?

  She willed the dancer to put down the paper, but she didn’t. Why do I want her to notice me? Charlotte thought. What can I possibly offer her, except danger?

  She leaned forward and said, “Excuse me, madame, would you like some coffee while you’re waiting? There is plenty in this pot; I can ask the Fraülein to bring a fresh cup.”

  Violette lowered the newspaper. Her eyes were startling: dark sapphires. Her expression was supercilious. “No, thank you,” she said, and returned to reading.

  Her accent - despite her name - was upper-class English, clipped. She clearly didn’t want to enter conversation with a stranger, and saw nothing in Charlotte to interest her. Charlotte felt disappointed but unsurprised; it was exactly the response she’d expected. Violette’s mere proximity was weirdly electrifying. She tried to shut out her awareness of the dancer’s blood-heat and the smooth skin beneath her clothes; tried not to see her as a desirable victim. Impossible. Violette was as self-contained as a vampire, which only made her more intriguing.