The Dark Arts of Blood Page 4

  Light shone under the door of Amy’s bedroom. He could hear the murmur of Gudrun’s voice and the scratchy sound of jazz music, which set his teeth on edge.

  Gudrun, solid, dour and loyal, had been his father’s housekeeper. After his parents’ early deaths, she had brought him up in her no-nonsense way. She was more housekeeper than foster-mother to him – always had been – but he valued her as the archetypal mother-figure that all women should aspire to be.

  His older sister, Amy’s mother, was already married and living in England when Godric was orphaned at the age of ten.

  He thought of himself as an only child.

  Now in his forties, he relied on Gudrun more than he dared admit. She was the sturdy heart of his world, but not his intellectual equal. His niece, though – despite the irritating caprices of her youth and gender – was a bright spark in his life, a willing audience for his flights of inspiration.

  “Amy?”

  Godric knocked, but Gudrun answered and blocked the doorway.

  “Why is her light still on? Is she ill?”

  “No, sir.” She’d always called him sir, even when he was a boy: an imperious, confused, bereaved boy. “A headache. She needs her sleep.”

  “Well, then, let her rest,” said Godric, irritated. “Don’t sit fussing over her all night. And make her turn off that damned gramophone!”

  “Yes, sir. Isn’t it time you retired to bed also?”

  Her tone, like that of a school matron, always awoke the child in him. He obeyed.

  He was in no hurry, however. On the way to his bedroom he entered the vast meeting chamber that dominated the upper storey: an impressive space that doubled as a film studio for interior scenes. Deserted, the large echoey space felt haunted. He glanced at the framed pictures hung in an austere row along one wall: stills from his movies, drawings he’d made and photographs he’d taken of the mountains, of Alpine farmers and milkmaids, of folk musicians and revellers dressed up in costume for Christmas, Fasnacht and other festivals.

  At the far end of the chamber, he unlocked a steel cabinet in an alcove. Inside were thirty numbered pigeonholes, twenty-nine of them containing a dagger resting on a velvet pad. The thirtieth, he carried with him at all times.

  His father had left him money, but this collection was the most intriguing part of his inheritance. The spoils of a long-ago archaeological dig near the edge of the Sahara.

  Godric intended to take out each sikin in turn, to polish it with a soft cloth and replace it in its padded pigeonhole. Before he could begin, he felt the air frosting the back of his neck, every hair standing up as if drawn by static electricity. He felt the presence before he turned and saw it.

  A column of shadow with glaring eyes. What the hell… What… Incoherent thoughts slithered through his mind, not even thoughts but currents of alarm.

  A woman. She wore plain modern clothes of a muddy colour, brown or olive, with a close-fitting hat, a single long strand of beads. Her skin was dark and her eyes were exotic, beautiful and terrifying, as if green fire glowed behind the brown irises.

  Godric saw at once what she was. Strigoi. A vampire.

  He used the Romanian term because there was no way to consider a vampire except as a foreign aberration: the undesirable alien.

  “These sakakin are mine,” she said. Her voice was low, accented, full of menace.

  “How the hell did you get in here?” he said through bone-dry lips. “Who are you?”

  “The rightful owner of those knives. I want them back.”

  For a few breathless seconds, Godric’s head whirled with confusion. Although he knew the strigoi were real, he hadn’t seen one for years, still less spoken to one. She is going to kill me, tear out my throat.

  Quick courage came to his defence.

  He turned, seized his personal sikin from its sheath in his pocket and slammed the cabinet shut behind him. He raised the dagger and pointed the tip at her breastbone.

  “Is this what you want, strigoi?” he said. “Take it if you can.”

  Her eyes widened. Then she lunged.

  He swept the blade at her. She leapt clear so fast he didn’t see her move: now she was standing ten feet away, glaring like a snake. Her mouth was open, fangs shining. Neither had broken the other’s flesh. He wielded the blade in a figure of eight, as if weaving a shield to protect himself. Trails of silver light hung in the air; he felt the force keeping her away.

  She pointed at the cabinet behind him, but he held it shut with the pressure of his back. Nothing would make him give up his father’s haul, his precious ritual weapons.

  “Get out, demon,” he hissed.

  Her face twisted with fury and she lunged again. With a cheetah’s speed her hands were on his shoulders, her mouth near his neck. Her grip paralysed him. He waved his knife hand feebly, could not get the blade to connect with her flesh. Her fingernails dug in like claws. She paused, uttered a noise of revulsion in her throat, and pushed him away – thrust him back so hard that his shoulders hit the cabinet, making it shudder.

  Again she stood feet from him, thwarted and furious. Her face was the most terrifying thing he’d ever seen, a carnival mask.

  “What are you?” He was breathing hard through his teeth. She was plainly repelled by the knife so he brandished it all the more, noticing how its light reflected silver from her eyes. She glared back, but made no attempt to get through his defence. “Who are you?”

  No answer.

  Instead she vanished. The air crackled. Like breath on a winter morning, she was gone.

  Godric became aware he was wheezing from pure fear. He regained control of his breathing, checked every shadow to make sure the chamber was empty. There was no one, nothing there.

  He relocked the cabinet, then stumbled in shock to his bedroom and bolted the door – as if that could keep her out. The air stayed motionless, lukewarm… ordinary. He stood guard for a long time before he dared let himself believe she was not coming back.

  Godric’s bedroom was another square, masculine room furnished only with necessities: bed, dressing table and a wardrobe of black wood. He took off his waistcoat, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, sat on the edge of the bed.

  A thousand questions crowded his brain but he put them all aside. The apparition had been some kind of warning, a call to battle. No time for fear. He needed power – more than ever, if the strigoi planned to come back.

  He drew out his knife and, biting a handkerchief between his teeth, set the blade to the soft flesh just above his elbow. He began to cut a small rune: three vertical lines. The symbol represented the three-fingered salute of the Eternal Alliance: the historic oath that had founded Switzerland.

  His hand shook, and the pain made him sweat. A familiar dizziness and tingling surged through him, filling his vision with white stars. Before he’d finished the first line, blood streamed out and he fumbled to press his handkerchief on the wound, cursing. He’d cut too deep again.

  Reiniger sank back on to the pillows, gasping. The energy rush was incredible, like a drug.

  There were blood drops spattered on the white bedcover and the floor. He was usually so careful not to make a mess. Running his thumb down the inside of his upper arm he felt the scars of older runes, and echoes of the addictive power they’d given him.

  With a trembling hand he pressed the blade to his skin and began the next cut.

  CHAPTER THREE

  LAMIA

  Karl forced his way through the tornado that blew up in the skull-creature’s wake. He was somewhere over Switzerland at last, but the ether was so wild he hardly knew which way was up or down. He was dangerously tired, and knew he must drop to Earth and feed, even if it took him the rest of the night to get home.

  Then he saw a faint gold coil of energy below: the trace of a vampire he knew.

  Two traces, in fact, nearly identical, wading up towards him through the foggy darkness of Raqia’s lower layers.

  They were struggling, he realised. Karl sw
ooped down to intercept them. Close to the ground, the world – seen through the distorting lens of the Ring – was a forest of dark, deformed shapes. Karl could not even see the land surface, but had to make a guess as he stepped into reality. The world snapped into three dimensions – timbered houses, lamplit windows – but he was in mid-air, falling, seeing not solid earth but an ink-black lake rushing up to receive him. He braced to hit the water…

  Someone seized him. Karl perceived a figure diving through the Crystal Ring, snatching him in mid-air and making an imperfect loop that landed them both in the shallows at the lake’s edge. The shock of hard rocks and the water’s chill rendered Karl helpless. Hands caught his jacket, then took a firm grip on his arms and dragged him on to the paved bank.

  He looked up to find two angelic male faces staring down at him, framed by spun-gold hair.

  “Karl?” said Stefan. “I hope I haven’t interrupted a midnight swim, but what the hell are you doing?”

  “Trying to reach you,” Karl answered. “That was less than graceful, but the Crystal Ring…”

  “Is in a hellish mood tonight,” Stefan finished. He looked uncharacteristically grim, almost panicky. “I know, I’ve been hunting you for over an hour. You must come home now.”

  * * *

  Charlotte stood before a full-length mirror, pulling apart the torn fabric of her dress to examine the wound. The bedroom lay in near-darkness, but moonlight revealed every detail to her sensitive eyes. The purple slash near her hipbone wasn’t healing. She could separate the edges and see her unnatural vampire flesh inside, glistening crimson. The wound stung, as if drenched in vinegar. A weak, chilly feeling lingered. She felt strange but calm, as though in a lucid dream.

  The attack would have killed a mortal, but vampires were more resilient. The knowledge gave her a thrill of awe, mixed with unease. “We are easy to hurt, very difficult to kill,” Karl had once told her. What kind of weapon could inflict such lasting harm? Nothing made by humans, surely.

  She was still a fledgling in vampire terms. Five years ago, while her lively sisters revelled in a social whirl of parties and debutante balls, she’d resigned herself to a future in her father’s physics laboratory. Thanks to crippling shyness and her reclusive nature, she’d had little to look forward to except work, and a reluctant marriage to their research assistant, Henry…

  And then she had met Karl.

  Her dark angel Karl, who was beyond beautiful, with his soft dark hair and serene eyes… From the first moment they met, he held her fascinated. At first she was terrified, then hopelessly enthralled. He had been her downfall. He still was.

  Staying together had proved costly. People had died: some of her own loved ones, and some of his. She had died – more than once, in different ways. She wasn’t a predator at heart, and yet she found being a vampire effortless. That couldn’t be right, she thought. Living on human blood should require a greater struggle, if only with her conscience.

  She and Karl tried to move lightly through the world, causing as little harm as possible: but the truth was, they were still vampires.

  Small wonder that someone might want to destroy them.

  But it was a chance encounter, she thought. Perhaps the knife wasn’t made to hurt vampires at all. A coincidence… but if that’s the case, what is it for?

  “Perhaps I’m dreaming,” she said out loud.

  Her own voice sounded like a distant echo.

  Looking at her reflection, she thought, At least the myths are untrue; we don’t need to avoid mirrors or sunlight or religious symbols. To approach a looking-glass and see only thin air – well, that would send anyone insane. But how odd… what she’d thought was a mirror was actually a shimmering white veil in the air. She barely recognised the pale creature on the other side as herself.

  The moon-white nymph with rippling bronze hair and a mesmeric gaze was separate: a spectre, a lamia floating in the mist…

  “Who are you?” she said softly. “If I saw you coming towards me, would I fall into your arms, or run for my life?”

  She touched the surface… and the pale creature on the other side copied her action, reaching up so they joined fingertips. When she dropped her hand, the ghost did the same, in blank mimicry, like Niklas.

  She stared and the doppelgänger stared back, like an accusing ghost that had floated out of its grave.

  Then she understood.

  She was human again – had been all along. Her twin self in the mirror was the vampire. The knife had split her in two.

  Her breathing quickened. Her vision blurred, making the lamia appear covered in white gossamer flowers. Beautiful, deadly. And Charlotte knew in utter terror that she must keep the lamia inside the mirror-veil, contain her so that she could no longer prey on innocent humans… but how?

  She no longer had any clear thoughts. She simply knew that the two halves of her had come adrift. But she had no idea how to be human again… the knowledge filled her with dumb horror, worse than that of becoming a vampire.

  I can’t go back. She tried to form words but no sound came out. Was I ever you, or have I dreamed it all? I cannot go back! Stop tormenting me! What must I do to destroy you?

  The pale mist-demon only stared back, empty-eyed, devoid of compassion.

  Karl appeared in the shadows behind her, making her start.

  You’re back, she tried to say.

  He spoke, but she could barely hear him through the rushing sound in her ears. She thought he asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Hallucinating,” she said, unsure if she’d spoken out loud. “She—” Charlotte pointed at the apparition behind the watery veil, who pointed back. “She is doing this. She’s pretending to be me. Or I thought I was her. This isn’t real, but I can’t make it stop. Give me a pen and paper. If I write this down…”

  She couldn’t see his face, only a dark figure. A crisp male voice said, “Gnädige Frau, entschuldigen Sie, bitte…”

  Not Karl.

  She stared straight ahead, confused yet deadly calm. She found her voice and answered in the same language, “Who is that?”

  A long pause. She caught a scent of human sweat. Something was very wrong, but she was paralysed by the nightmare and could not, dared not move.

  “Police, madam,” said the gruff voice. “Is your husband not at home?”

  “He is not,” said Charlotte.

  “Or your father, brother, any male friends?”

  What a strange thing to ask.

  She heard his laboured breath, a mixture of exertion and angry determination. Her nose twitched with distaste at his human stink of sweat and smoke and the earthy scent of the outdoors on his clothes. There was no way for him to have reached the chalet except by a steep climb on foot. His voice, smell and general aura recalled the drunk who’d attacked her… but this was not the same man. He carried himself with authority. He was taller, red-haired and sober.

  “No one but me,” she answered. The spectre’s lips moved with hers. “What do you want?”

  “If I might have a word… We can go downstairs.”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Madam?”

  “I can’t leave the mirror in case my ghost escapes.”

  Silence. He cleared his throat again, and this time his voice was harder.

  “Who are you? How long have you been living here?”

  “What is that to you?”

  “I know this area. This chalet is long-deserted – or is it? The owner can’t be traced. And yet lights are seen in the windows. A peasant woman comes up to clean the place, but won’t speak a word about the inhabitants. Music is heard. On occasion, people succumb to mysterious illnesses. When they recover, they speak of apparitions in the forest, a pale beautiful woman or a man… like the Weisse Frauen, the elven spirits of the Alps?”

  “What has this to do with me?”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out.”

  “At night, on your own?”

  Mo
re throat-clearing. “The police are never off-duty, madam. Ever vigilant.”

  “You are no policeman,” she said. “Who are you? Do you know the brute who stabbed me? How did you find me?”

  That made him pause. Then he said in a low voice. “All I want is for you to answer my questions and give me back the damned knife.”

  She heard his words with the weird feeling that her mind was cut in two; one half clear and rational, the other stranded in a dream.

  “If you want to question me, come closer. I can’t leave the mirror. Come.”

  She watched his reflection approaching until he stood just behind her doppelgänger’s shoulder. Handsome freckled face, serious expression. He, too, had the look of a soldier: an officer. Perhaps he really was a policeman, or used to be.

  “My comrade was a fool to attack you,” he said. “But the question is, how did you survive, sweetheart?”

  His pale blue eyes widened – mesmerised by the lovely mad-woman. She suspected that he was scared: bright, but out of his depth, pumped up with false courage. If his comrade had assaulted her and stabbed her in the gut, what might this man be capable of?

  “Who are you?” she asked. “And the knife, what is it?”

  He shook his head. “You don’t need to know.”

  “If she comes out of the mirror, you’ll die,” said Charlotte, pointing at the lamia.

  He hesitated, wetting his lips. He clearly thought she was insane.

  “That’s your reflection, you mad witch,” he hissed. “There’s something in this house that doesn’t belong to you. That’s all I’m here for.”

  “Who are you? I’m dreaming but I can’t wake up. Unless you can help me wake up, you’d better go.”

  “Not without that knife. Where is it?”

  “Until recently, buried in my stomach. Do you want it back so your friend can stab the next unfortunate being who crosses his path when he can’t hold his drink?”

  “Bruno made a mistake,” he said. “He’s a fool. But if you hadn’t bitten him—”