A Dance in Blood Velvet

by Freda Warrington

  “Perhaps it would make you stronger.”

  “Would it stop me loving Karl?”

  “If that love makes you his prisoner - yes, it might.”

  Charlotte pulled away. “No. I don’t want it to change.”

  “Do you enjoy the fear of losing him, the pain? Wouldn’t you like to look at him and not care? All the pain, gone.”

  “No, never. The pleasure’s worth the pain, Violette. It’s all I live for.”

  “That is pathetic! It’s woman’s downfall, this idiocy! Why do you let him have this power over you, just because he has a beautiful face?”

  “You don’t understand! You’ve never known what passion is. I have the same hold over him! It’s called love, Violette.”

  “Then you are both fools. I won’t be a slave to anyone. To be free of such feelings is true freedom. How can you know unless you experience it?” More gently she went on, “I want to do this for you, Charlotte. How strong is your love, if it can’t survive my bite?”

  “I’d rather not put it to the test.”

  Violette’s face became cool, unreadable. “Well you’d better be careful, then. I’ll come back for you and Karl.”

  “For heaven’s sake, stop.” Charlotte was scared now, trying not to show it. “I don’t know you when you’re like this. Why are you threatening us? Are you jealous?”

  “Not at all. This torture you call passion isn’t necessary.”

  “Ah. For my own good, is it?” Charlotte turned away, wanting to close herself away from Violette. “My family, friends, even Karl tried to do what they thought was ‘best’ for me, never understanding that what I needed was the worst.”

  “Lilith isn’t good or kind,” said Violette. “I might do it anyway, simply because your stubbornness infuriates me.”

  “The only advantage I ever had over you was that you were mortal and I was a vampire,” Charlotte said, impassioned. “Now that’s gone. You’ve become a goddess and I’m still just me. I want to say, ‘Don’t talk nonsense.’ I want to hold you and tell you I love you; but all you would say is, ‘You cannot patronise Lilith.’ And you’d be right.”

  Without warning, Violette put her arms around Charlotte’s neck. Charlotte felt her lips on her neck, shiveringly delicate; she waited for the eyeteeth to pierce her skin. I won’t pull away or let her see I’m afraid.

  “I will come back, Charlotte, because I love you. I’ll take you away from Karl and you won’t care, because you won’t need him. One day. And you’ll never see me coming.”

  The feel of Violette’s lips remained on Charlotte’s throat, metal-cool and sweet; but the dancer had gone.

  She leaned on the balcony rail and dropped her head onto her arms.

  Some time later - perhaps half an hour - Charlotte sensed Karl’s presence in the house. She opened the doors and went in to him.

  He read her expression. “Liebling, what’s wrong?”

  “Violette was here. She was so strange.” She recounted their conversation. Karl listened gravely, stroking her face, his hand warm with his victim’s blood.

  When she finished, he said, “It probably pleases her to leave you in dread of some vague threat that means nothing. I refuse to live in fear of her, or anyone. Let her be; it’s all we can do.”

  She sighed, releasing all her tension, leaning into his slender, familiar body. “Your tranquillity drives me mad sometimes, but I’m glad of it now. You’ve been so philosophical about Violette and Katerina. Your strength amazes me every time.”

  “I’m not that strong, beloved.”

  “You are. You seem calm, but I know how much it hurt you, Karl. Don’t ever think I don’t know.”

  “I lost Katerina before. It is harder the second time, because I thought it couldn’t happen again. But what can I say? Katerina tried to kill you. Violette killed Katti, but she saved you. How can I hate Violette for that? Katti caused me the greatest grief, because I thought she had the grace to accept you - and she hadn’t.”

  “But if I’d been in the Weisskalt for forty years, and come back to find you with someone else, I’d be tempted to kill them too.”

  “It’s not the same. Katti and I were never lovers as you and I are.”

  “But still lovers,” said Charlotte. “And this is the love of vampires, isn’t it? Fierce, intolerant and possessive.”

  “When it should be the opposite,” Karl said sadly. “Are you defending her now?”

  “She can’t defend herself.”

  He smiled at that. “You are more tolerant than ever she was.”

  “I can afford to be, now. Will you ever forgive me?”

  “For what?”

  “Violette.”

  “Dear heart. Do you need me to say yes, before you can forgive yourself? You were never unforgiven. I never dreamed you would meet someone like her, just as you never foresaw Katti’s return... But there’s no law to govern your behaviour as a vampire. Every transformation is different. I couldn’t expect you to stay placidly at my side, a pliant hausfrau in an earthly marriage. I wouldn’t want you to. No, our union was the exact opposite of a Christian wedding, was it not? So I hardly have any right to complain.”

  “But I wish you would!” Charlotte exclaimed. “I want you to be possessive; I’d die if you weren’t! How badly must I behave before you say ‘enough’?”

  Karl slid his hand around the back of her neck, his fingertips hard. “I still think what you did to Violette was wrong. But why should I reject you for doing wrong? Liebe Gott, we do worse every day! If Katti’s death taught me anything, it is that your life means more to me than the world. Charlotte, you feel far worse about Violette than I do. That is why I tell you to forgive yourself.”

  She bowed her head under the pressure of his fingers. Neither spoke for a time. The light glimmered on her dress; the colours she loved, plum and bronze and dull rose. She looked into Karl’s face, luminous with the otherworld glow that had first drawn her to him. And the feeling between them changed subtly. The thorns of distrust were stripped away and only the rose remained.

  “One thing we have both learned,” he said, “and that’s never to fear that other loves can destroy ours. They cannot.”

  “Let me explain.” Charlotte felt tranquil now. “I never loved Violette as I love you. How could I? But she was everything I wasn’t - I think that’s what drew me to her. I was brought up to be a good girl.” She shrugged, smiling. “So much for that. But until I met you I was passive, obedient, frightened of offending anyone. And I’m still the same in a way; afraid of upsetting you, in case I lost your love. But Violette - Lilith - was everything that I was not; headstrong, contrary, independent. That’s why I needed her. Dark and light. Something floods us that makes us vampires, both from inside ourselves, and from the Crystal Ring. There was something more inside Violette that made her Lilith.”

  “And if that something is God?” Karl said darkly. “You find it easy to accept that Violette can become a figure from a creation myth, that vampires can appear to be angels. But it’s a hard concept to grasp... unless Kristian was right and his God is real.”

  He turned away. His anxiety shocked her. “But Karl, it’s perfectly simple,” she said. “If the Crystal Ring is the human psyche - what are Lilith and her pursuing angels but extracts from it? What if there are certain humans, like Lancelyn and Violette, who aren’t merely ‘passengers’ of the Crystal Ring, but can actually shape it?”

  “In that case, if anything can exist in the Crystal Ring - so can God.”

  “Or a hundred gods! Does it matter?”

  “Yes, if He is going to interfere. Here’s another definition of our heightened existence: it is the tearing away of the layers between us and the divine.”

  “Don’t,” Charlotte said with feeling. “You sound like Kristian.”

  “God forbid,” he said drily. She moved close to him and he put his arm around her. “Did you think our existence would be simple? That we’d be together and nothing would e
ver part us?”

  “Yes, I fondly imagined it,” she said. “And that’s why, every time we’re apart, I suffer this crucifying fear that I’ll never see you again.”

  “Charlotte,” he said softly, kissing her. “Our love burns because it never feels safe. But which do we prefer: the pain and the love, or nothing?”

  “Oh, the pain,” she said. “Always.”

  Karl kissed her hair and put her away from him, hands resting lightly on her shoulders. His eyes were grave. “Well, I must cause you a little more. There is something I must do.”

  “What is it?”

  He shook his head, and for some reason she was chilled by thoughts of Kristian. “I won’t be long, beloved. Don’t worry.”

  But she was worried. “Don’t go, Karl!”

  “I must. Wait for me.” He kissed her lips, and faded like a ghost, leaving empty air in her embrace. She hugged herself, bereft. And she knew he’d come back, knew it; but until then, she had this cruel emptiness to bear, an inner voice murmuring, “But what if he doesn’t come back? What if...”

  Karl once told me that in our immortality, the sin and the punishment are concurrent. That’s why we still need love, to shield us from hell. In entering the Crystal Ring, a layer is torn away; we belong to no race, no family, no nation. This chalet isn’t home; my only home is where Karl is, and until we’re together I freeze quietly in hell.

  One bite from Lilith, she thought, and this pain would be over. I simply would not care. Is that what I want?

  Charlotte looked out of the window and saw a huge white owl rise up out of the forest and flap slowly towards the moon.

  ENVOI

  THE WHITE CRYSTAL MIRROR

  There is no point in time, Karl thought, no single action, no revelation that can make life perfect forever after. Destroy Kristian and there will be nothing to fear. Is that what I believed? Take Charlotte with me, and she will never love anyone else. Bring Katti back to life, and she will never die again.

  No.

  There is always something else, and something else. It never ends.

  He sped through the Crystal Ring, his form a slender black whip against the firmament. He sometimes thought of it as Raqia now. Lovely as a clouded sky at sunset, the realm was full of melting colours, more vivid than the sky of Earth. Almost fluid, almost solid. Always changing, like the flow of the mass psyche from which, perhaps, it emanated.

  At this moment, Karl was certain of nothing.

  He wanted an answer. But even if he found what he sought, it would be no answer at all.

  When he arrived at Grey Crags, the house was deserted. The interior felt colder than winter; even the coloured glass in the windows was flatly gelid. A thin rime of dust lay over everything. Karl descended into the gloom of the gallery.

  Nothing had been touched since the confrontation with the angels and Lilith. The automata were motionless, glassy-eyed and empty. The braziers were cold; the air stank of ash and metal. One censer lay askew where Karl had hurled it at Simon - and in the scattered cinders, undamaged by fire, barely even singed, rested the Book. What would it actually take, he wondered, to destroy it?

  In grave contemplation, Karl bent down and picked up the tome, brushing ash from its leathery surface. Grey dust had sunk into the pores.

  He was used to its greedy chill now, and could tolerate it. Perhaps he, like Charlotte, was not yet guilty enough to owe the Ledger of Death his life. He pressed his fingers to the cover and murmured, “Rasmila. Semangelof.”

  He felt the Crystal Ring whisper around him, as it had done when Ben had manipulated its fabric against Katti and the others. Once the Crystal Ring has touched a place, he thought, perhaps it remains bonded there forever, absorbed into the walls... like the tunnel where we buried Kristian...

  He had a flash of memory: digging in darkness with Katerina anxiously watching, of finding bones and clothes but no skull...

  Embracing the volume, Karl re-entered Raqia. Immediately, the Book’s weight increased, dragging like an anchor. He’d wondered if the capricious Ring would accept the Book at all, yet it did. As he forged his way up the cloudy paths, it remained in his arms, a great layered slab of granite and lead.

  Struggling, he climbed higher, letting the currents draw him upwards. The magnetic field of Earth was constant against the ever-swelling mountains, arching in auroral lines against the roiling violet slopes and the deep blue of infinity.

  Chill breezes blew through his sable demon-form. He saw the layers of crystal cloud above him growing thinner as they rose towards the Weisskalt. It was rash to do this; it might be lethal. The absolute cold turned vampires to stone.

  But it was a compulsion he must obey. A pilgrimage.

  As he rose through snowy sheets of cloud, a winged form appeared beside him; a flow of deep colour, not quite black but a mingling of umber and ultramarine.

  “Where are you going?” said the angel, Rasmila-Semangelof.

  Strangely, Karl did not feel surprised to see her. It felt inevitable. “Why do you wish to know?”

  “You summoned us, did you not?” Her voice was soothing. “You need our help.”

  “But where have you been?”

  “Existing in the dusk, as vampires do.”

  Karl studied her. In her serenity and strength, she seemed a Hindu goddess. “Can I make you into an angel again, just by wishing it?”

  “Almost anyone can - if they know how,” she said, smiling. “We knew you would need us eventually.”

  “No doubt you know what I intend to do, then,” he said aridly.

  “Are you so afraid of it? Why not just -” she mimed shredding the Book.

  “I’m not sure it can be destroyed, or even that it should be. It is subtle, but dangerous, as Lancelyn said, and I don’t want it to fall into the wrong hands. The Weisskalt is the appropriate place for it. No one can reach it there. No human, at least.”

  “Let me take it, then,” said the angel. “It can’t hurt me.” Her dark, cool fingers brushed his, but he didn’t relinquish the volume.

  “No. I’ll carry it.”

  “Don’t you trust us?” she said, amused.

  Karl answered her with a candid lift of his eyebrows. “Is there any reason why I should?”

  “You shouldn’t go into the Weisskalt alone, you know; it is extremely dangerous,”

  “I know. I’ve been there before, and survived.”

  “You may not be so lucky this time. But I’m coming with you to keep you warm.”

  “I don’t want your blood.”

  “I’m not offering it.”

  As they ascended, he noticed the Ledger of Death growing lighter in his arms, and no colder now than the frost-clouds around them.

  They broke through to the Weisskalt, a dazzling polar crust under the heatless platinum furnace of the sun. Semangelof brushed him with her filigreed wings, and he felt a shell of coolness fold round him; not warmth, but enough to protect him from the excoriating cold.

  Then Karl saw the other two angels waiting; Fyodor-Sansenoy, shadowy white on whiteness, and Simon-Senoy, a blaze of ruby and gold flame. Rasmila-Semangelof was dark, edged with burning silver, an eclipsed sun.

  Magnificent, like the ineffable visions of Michelangelo. Karl wanted to weep with awe at their beauty - but he would not worship them. He wouldn’t beg them for forgiveness or mercy. Never.

  He still had a lingering suspicion that Kristian was not quite dead, and that these envoys were some terrifying emanation of his labyrinthine mind. He had not found the skull. The manor house tunnel had disgorged the rest of Kristian’s remains, yes - but not his head, the throne of the intellect, the one part that could be revivified.

  He said, “I had a feeling that I hadn’t seen the last of you.”

  Senoy inclined his expressionless, beaten-gold face. “We have not finished our business with you, my friend.”

  “Why didn’t you finish it before? And why desert Lancelyn? I thought you would have done your utm
ost to protect your protégé against Lilith.”

  “You misunderstand our nature,” Senoy replied. “We did not want to abandon him, but we had no choice. Our only power was that which Lilith gave us; once she refused to submit, our hold on her was lost.”

  Karl smiled bitterly. “So, with Lancelyn and Lilith you made another mistake. You are not infallible.”

  “Only God is infallible,” said Semangelof.

  “Yet you still want to punish me for Kristian’s death - even while admitting that you’ve made mistakes? Isn’t it petty, to want revenge?”

  “Not revenge; justice,” said the white angel, Sansenoy. “If we peel the skin of warmth from around you, you will petrify in this waste. You will feel nothing as we tear you apart...”

  And Karl tried not to care, tried to stare death impartially in the face as he had before... but inside, he was in despair. I will come back, he’d told Charlotte. He could not break that promise.

  “But we won’t,” said Semangelof.

  A moment of silence, pierced by the eerie moan of the ice-gale.

  “Something worse, then?” Karl said quietly. “You could have devised no crueller punishment than turning me against my own friends. The God or Devil who rules you is an evil genius. But I warn you, if you try that again I will find a way to kill myself first.” He gripped the Book to himself, as Charlotte had, like a shield. “I’d destroy you if I could; but at what cost? When I slew Kristian, you three came; I dread to think what would come to avenge you.”

  Senoy shook his head, like a patient priest. “My friend, there’s no call for these bitter words. The punishment is over. You’re right, we can’t take revenge for Kristian, because his time is past. Something else is coming... and we have no power over it. None of us has.”

  “Not even God?” Karl said.

  “Answer that question yourself.”

  “I suggest that God has only the power that men give him.”

  “But the Goddess, Karl,” said Semangelof. “No one can control her.”

  “Do you mean Violette? Lilith?”

  Senoy replied, “We can only command her if she will permit it, and she will not. We did our best, but we can do no more. We are not your enemies, Karl; we change according to what is required, and we’re here now simply to warn you. We are no threat to your loved ones - but Lilith is.”