A Dance in Blood Velvet Read online

  ALSO BY FREDA WARRINGTON

  and available from Titan Books

  A Taste of Blood Wine

  COMING SOON

  The Dark Blood of Poppies

  The Dark Arts of Blood

  BOOK TWO

  of the

  BLOOD WINE SEQUENCE

  FREDA WARRINGTON

  TITAN BOOKS

  A Dance in Blood Velvet

  Print edition ISBN: 9781781167069

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781781167267

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  www.titanbooks.com

  First edition: October 2013

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Freda Warrington asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Copyright © 1994, 2013 Freda Warrington. All Rights Reserved.

  ‘Ring-a-Rosey’ Copyright Horslips. Used by permission.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  CONTENTS

  Prelude Carnival of Ice

  PART ONE

  1. The Blood-Crystal Ring

  2. A Deadly Call

  3. Into this Shadow

  4. The Ebony Gate

  5. The Eyes of a Nightbird

  6. Inviting Darkness

  7. Dancer of Dreams

  8. The Left-Hand Path

  9. Poppy Wine

  10. Violette

  11. The Twisted Blackthorn

  PART TWO

  12. Shadow Light

  13. In the Garden

  14. Midnight Angels

  15. A Dance in Black Velvet

  16. “Gazing Where the Lilies Blow”

  17. Nightshade

  18. The Kindness of Demons

  19. The Black Goddess

  20. Priest of Nothing

  21. “Does Anyone Know Her Name?”

  22. Rosary of Thorns

  Envoi The White Crystal Mirror

  This book is dedicated to all our friends in Canada, old and new, with love and thanks for wonderful times.

  PRELUDE

  CARNIVAL OF ICE

  A vampire woke, not knowing where or who he was.

  He was lying in a blazing white tomb. Yet the tomb seemed infinite... an endless drift of snow roofed by the heavens. A gale lifted ice crystals, sweeping them in shimmering ribbons towards the blurred fringes of the plain. Arms of white mist enfolded him. The cold was absolute, but the vampire barely felt it. He was sure he’d been there forever.

  Beneath a crust of ice, his body was a dark, papery husk, burned black not by fire, but by the cold itself.

  Why was he suddenly aware? What was this place?

  Panic. Something had disturbed him. A command, a voice in his mind. “Wake, wake.”

  Must obey... The vampire feared that if he moved, he would shatter into ash, but the demand was imperative. Someone was willing him awake with their last wisp of strength, their dying breath.

  And the voice said, “Wake. Take revenge. Don’t let them forget me. You are my children. I commanded you to sleep and now I command you to wake!”

  A shiver of terror went through the vampire. Against his own judgment, he flexed his arms. Excruciating pain cracked his limbs. He convulsed with shock, bringing more pain. His whole body was shattering...

  No. It was only the carapace of ice falling away. The vampire examined his naked body in disbelief. Dusty black, dragonfly-fragile, draped with false wings like torn cobwebs: he was a scrap of black lace on snow.

  The sun, a bleached coin, seared him with its frigid light. The sky was a blue-black shell, pricked by fire. He saw the whorls of countless galaxies, huge ringed planets. The vampire opened his mouth and cried with awe.

  How did I come to be here? Help help help...

  Crystals scratched his skin like grit as he began to crawl forwards. The pain of returning to life was unbearable. An image flashed in his mind... A dark-haired woman watched a man pacing around a room in agitation... the scene must have been significant but he couldn’t grasp its meaning. He sobbed and crawled on.

  No concept of time. His tortuous progress across the snow was eternal. Nightmare... Help... I’m dead and in hell... Then another memory-fragment.

  A book of poetry lay open in front of him. A large hand slammed down on the page and a portentous voice declaimed, “Human poetry? Worthless, Andreas. Look on the face of God!”

  Gone. But the vampire clung to the name. Andreas, I’m Andreas...

  Then the snow crust gave way and he fell.

  Beneath him was... nothingness. An infinite sky. He flailed in terror, but his torn-cobweb wings were useless.

  Tumbling through clouds of ice-flakes, Andreas had the impression of other vampires around him. Faint shadow-crosses on the mist, spiralling along their own paths. Illusion? Even if they were real, he couldn’t reach them. Each one was alone in this strange, dense ocean of air.

  This isn’t the world... but where am I? Heaven or hell, or...

  As he left the white plains far above, the light dimmed to rich blue, then to stormy violet brushed with red flame... Andreas gasped, distracted from fear. The sky was full of gorgeous colours. Cloud-mountains sailed through the air below him. His descent slowed. A current took his weightless body, and he floated face down above peaks that rolled like slow ocean-waves. Their valleys were bottomless, painted crimson by fire. Hell lay below him. His skin - fossil-cold for an eternity - began to prickle with unbearable heat.

  Silent scream. Help help help...

  Another fragment, without context.

  A parlour, all fine furniture and oriental rugs. The same two figures were dark against the firelight. Yet how pale was their skin, how radiant! Vampires. And he knew them, hated and loved them... if he could only remember who they were...

  “I can’t endure this!” said the man. “Kristian killed my wife and expects me to love him for it!”

  Andreas was present, part of the scene. He heard himself say, “Karl, take the easy way. Pretend you love him, as we do.”

  “You’re frightened of him,” Karl said darkly - that’s it, this was Karl, beloved Karl...

  “No,” lied Andreas. “I’m lazy.”

  Then the woman spoke. Dear God, what was her name, this chestnut-haired enchantress?

  “If you disobey Kristian, he’ll put you in the Weisskalt.”

  Weisskalt... a place of hideous winter and everlasting sleep.

  She went to Karl and touched his arm. “Karl, if Andrei and I defy Kristian and stay with you, he’s sure to find out.”

  “Well?” said Karl. “What will you do? You could reject me, as Ilona has. Make Kr
istian believe you hate me. I’d rather you and Andrei saved yourselves, Katti, than -”

  “Never.” The woman embraced Karl, holding him tight. “Never.”

  That was her name! Katerina. The vampire clutched at the scene but it vanished, leaving the merest shimmer of understanding.

  Kristian had found them out, and punished them. That was the last Andreas could recall... Kristian’s huge silhouette. Kristian, who gave me immortality then took it away - twice, because I wrote no more poetry after the transformation. Took me away and imprisoned me in the Weisskalt.

  He remembered Katti’s screams. Helpless despair.

  Strangely, the pain of the Weisskalt had not lasted long. Once the cold bit into his brain, Andreas felt nothing... only faintly aware as he lay beneath the pitiless Eye of God for years...

  Years. His teeth chattered with horror. He almost laughed.

  Kristian put me to sleep, so it follows that Kristian woke me... Again, the voice vibrated in Andreas’s head. “Wake! I send you as the envoys of Almighty God to avenge me!”

  Andreas drifted on through the firmament. Panic remained a dull whine within him. He wished to die, but his consciousness persisted.

  The call came like a butterfly-shiver of the ether. It wasn’t Kristian’s harsh tone but a different pull, tentative yet insistent. Andreas felt the vibration catch him and draw him downwards towards the ruby fires of hell. Although the summons was weak, he had no strength to resist.

  Cloud-mountains swallowed him. Grim twilight rushed up. He strained his tormented eyes, but all was as dense as soot. Then, with a wrench, he felt the very world turn inside out.

  Oh God, Katti, where are you? Help, help...

  He became aware of a ghastly change in his body. No longer weightless, he felt heavy, cumbersome, malformed inside his skin.

  Darts of memory pierced the chaos. Something pale twitched in the darkness. His own hands! No longer black and ethereal, they were corpse-white and heavy.

  God. Human hands!

  Andreas was lying on a hard surface in thick, hot darkness. His eyelids flickered as he strained to see, discovering that this place made no more sense than the realm from which he’d materialised. Corridors of mirrors stretched in every direction, endlessly reflecting a purple splash of light.

  Pungent smoke shocked his senses.

  But through the incense wove a richer scent that set his frozen form burning with need.... He had to reach the source of the aroma, had to seize and bite and drink...

  “It worked!” hissed a stupefied male voice. “Great God Almighty, I don’t believe it! Holly -”

  Two figures in hooded lavender robes stood before him. Their reflections stretched away through the limbo of mirrors. The smaller figure craned forwards, staring down at Andreas through the eyeholes of a mask.

  “It looks dead.” The woman’s voice was thick with revulsion. “Get rid of it, Ben.”

  “Not yet.” The man sounded both horrified and madly excited. “We did it! We brought something through.”

  “But this isn’t what we wanted!”

  Ignoring her, the man took a step towards Andreas. The blood-scent became unbearable. A thin dry groan filled the air... the vampire wished it would stop, not realising it came from his own throat.

  “Can you hear me?” said the man. “I am Benedict. Do you understand? Can you speak?”

  The vampire was confused. The man had an incredible aura of power... yet he was only a mortal, the source of the delicious salty heat. With effort, Andreas pushed himself up onto his hands. The man and woman both gasped, caught between fascination and fear.

  The vampire did not see them as people, full of passions and hopes; he saw them only as swollen vessels of blood. They drew him with an urgent promise of warmth, nourishment, everything he craved...

  “Banish it, Ben!” the woman cried. “Now!”

  Propelled by unnatural strength, the vampire leapt.

  The man raised his hands in self-defence - and vanished. Another realm rushed in, throwing Andreas through dizzying tunnels. At last he came to rest, paralysed, his mind blank within a screaming tornado of thirst.

  Dull shapes leaned over him like a nightmare forest. He was in the otherworld again, while the world of humans hovered a breath away, just out of his reach. That man Benedict did this to me, he thought. Tortured me with the scent of his blood, then pushed me back into this half-death! Katerina, Karl, help me...

  There was no one to hear him. No one to care if he lay on the edge of death forever. But now his fear had two companions. Burning thirst, and rage.

  PART ONE

  In my dreams I see a carnival of ice

  You’re wearing white and pirouette so nice

  When I stop to ask the nature of surprise

  A veil of contradiction is slipped before my eyes

  Death is a ring-a-ring-a-rosey

  You never reach the end

  Ring-a-ring-a-rosary

  I’ll pray for you, my friend

  HORSLIPS, “RING-A-ROSEY”

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE BLOOD-CRYSTAL RING

  He knew only her first name: Charlotte.

  When he’d first met her at the concert, she seemed an averagely pretty young woman; medium height, slim rather than fashionably thin, nothing extraordinary. Her hair colour was difficult to define; a warm brown in shadow, the slightest ray of light drew out gleams of pure gold. And then she’d smiled, and her subtle beauty had first begun to enchant, then to obsess him.

  Her name, the face in the photograph he carried: too much of a coincidence. Milner was convinced she was the woman he’d been sent to find.

  And now - one week since their first meeting - he was alone with her in the moonlight, walking up a long, steep forest path to her house. They’d had to leave his car at the bottom of the hill. Although he considered himself fit for a man in his thirties, he was perspiring long before they reached the top.

  “My goodness, you have this walk every time you go out?” he gasped, wiping his forehead.

  Charlotte looked cool and not at all breathless, despite her evening coat and fur stole. “It’s impossible to get a motor up here. We don’t mind; we like the solitude. I’m only sorry that it’s inconvenient for our guests... Not that we have many. Do you want to rest a moment?”

  Looking up, he saw a chalet through the pines, a shadowy-black structure with overhanging eaves, white window-frames and flowers along the balconies.

  “No, no, I’m fine,” he insisted.

  “Well, we’re almost there,” she said, striding on without effort.

  She led him inside, hung up his coat with hers and lit a lamp. Even in these simple actions she was magically graceful. Milner found it impossible not to appreciate the way her silky dress clung to her hips. The soft warm colours suited her; creamy-gold and clover shades, trimmed with old gold lace and tiny beads of bronze glass.

  The chalet’s dark-wood interior was full of unlit alcoves. No electric lights, only golden-dim lamps and candles that she lit as she went. She led him to a reception room, where he stood trying to recover his breath while she rekindled the fire.

  The house felt still and quiet. Fire-glow licked the dull-pink roses of the wallpaper - a cosy English touch - but failed to reach the rustic beamed ceiling. He noted French doors onto a balcony, and, near the fireplace, an archway to a darkened library. Milner found himself repeatedly glancing in there, like a child waiting for some monster to leap from behind the bookshelves.

  He had no idea why he was so jumpy, so feverishly excited.

  Charlotte was moving around the room, drawing curtains, winding up a gramophone. No servants? The mournful tones of Death and the Maiden wound softly around them as she came to him and placed a glass of whisky in his hand.

  “Would you like a cigarette?” she asked.

  He had noticed she didn’t smoke. He needed one to relax him, but was worried she mightn’t like the smell - why did that matter?

  “
No, no thank you.”

  “Won’t you sit down, Mr Milner?”

  He sat where she indicated, in a chair by the fire. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She looked girlish and innocent, but solemn, haunted.

  “This is too kind of you, Mrs - or should I say Frau -”

  “Just Charlotte,” she said with a brief smile. How her face lit up when she smiled.

  Ah, embarrassment over her marital status, he thought. She’s choosing to be discreet, rather than lie.

  “Well, then, you mustn’t call me ‘Mr’. It’s John,” he said, feeling awkward. “Isn’t your - er - the gentleman at home?”

  “Not at the moment. I don’t expect Karl back for quite some time.”

  The way she looked at him sent a rush of heat to his face. My God, would she really proposition me while her lover is off the scene? Though her morals appalled him, he turned dizzy with excitement.

  She knelt and prodded the fire. Sparks roared up, outlining her with liquid red-gold light. God, she is so lovely. He gripped the whisky glass hard on his thigh to stop his hand shaking.

  He said, “So, er, I trust you enjoyed the opera tonight?”

  “Very much. And it’s so kind of you to escort me while Karl is away. But I have a confession to make.”

  “Yes?” Milner swallowed.

  She turned with the poker in her hand. “I prefer the ballet.”

  At last, a safe topic of conversation; she left him damned near speechless. “You’ve seen the Ballets Russes? Pavlova?”

  “Yes, at every chance.” He found her manner strange, almost abrupt, as if she disliked making small talk for the sake of it.

  “And Ballet Janacek?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, you simply must. Their Giselle is on a par with anything of the Ballets Russes. Wonderful prima ballerina.”

  She didn’t respond. The silence purred like static. I never dreamed this would be so difficult! he thought. Must say something. “It’s most kind of you to invite me here, Frau - Charlotte, but -”

  “You expressed interest in seeing Karl’s Stradivarius cello,” she said. “Don’t you wish to see it?”