The Dark Arts of Blood Page 7

  Violette roared back. No – the gale itself sounded full of human voices. Kastchei twisted the staff, trying to throw her off balance. She dug in, her feet in a wide, stable stance, but he raised the staff higher and began to bend her backwards with such power that her body curved like a taut bow.

  “No!” Emil yelled, his voice carried away by the gale. “Take your hands off her!”

  Regaining his poise, he charged at them. As he ran, the liner tilted and plunged down a cliff-wall of water, flinging him towards the far rail. His momentum carried him at uncontrollable speed. No chance to save himself. The rail whacked hard across his stomach and he tipped straight over, beyond the point of no return. The ocean roiled below, a furious black chasm yawning to swallow him…

  Then a pair of small, strong hands caught him.

  One gloved hand grabbed his shirt, the other his arm. Helpless, he dangled – then felt himself being yanked back over the rail. He landed hard. Sprawling on the wet planks, he coughed and swore, shaking, nearly convulsing with shock. Then the same hands pulled him upright, hefted him to a bench, and sat him down.

  Violette.

  No one else was there. No mysterious skull figure, no sign that she’d been assaulted, nothing. Yet she was real enough. And she had rescued him.

  He couldn’t speak. Violette’s face was even paler than normal, glowing with its own fragile light. Her hat and coat were drenched. She sat beside him, staring hard into his eyes. She looked both furious and relieved – the look a mother might have for a child who’d hurt himself through disobedience.

  For long minutes they remained there, clinging to the bench as the liner ploughed on through the storm. He felt they were alone on a ghost-ship. Eventually Violette spoke.

  “Idiot. Emil, what on earth are you doing outside in this?”

  He thought, I could ask the same, but no words would come out.

  “I know some travellers prefer to be on deck, however rough the waves,” she said. “It eases sea-sickness, even at the risk of pneumonia or falling overboard. Is that why?”

  “I’m not sea-sick, madame,” he managed to say. “I… I was looking for you.”

  “Why? You must have known I was in my cabin, as you should have been.”

  “But clearly you were not. I saw…”

  “What?”

  “I thought I saw someone attacking you.”

  She went quiet for a few seconds. “Why would anyone attack me? I think the storm made you see things. The rational part of the brain no longer works in such conditions. It’s understandable.”

  “But that doesn’t answer what you are doing on deck in this weather, madame.”

  “Emil, I asked first.”

  He clenched his teeth, caught between the urge to pour out his emotions and the need to show her due respect.

  “I can’t explain. I felt you were in danger, not just from the storm but something else. Don’t ask me how, I simply knew, and look! I was right! I was trying to find your cabin but I got lost. Then I saw a figure, exactly like Kastchei. I thought I saw him attack you… you were fighting… I don’t know what I saw.”

  Violette reached out and took his hand. Her gloved hand was wet and cold, but Emil didn’t care. To feel her fingers around his palm was paradise. She was the most captivating, enigmatic creature he had ever known… and here he was, alone with her, their hands entwined.

  “My dear, you are brave and impulsive. Also a little crazy, I fear. And now you know my secret.”

  “Madame?”

  “That I sometimes wander at night because I cannot sleep. I like to sit in the fresh air, however wild the weather, and to contemplate the ocean. The infinite, terrible forces of nature. I’ve grown rather good at sneaking out past my assistants, who in any case have learned not to stop me.”

  “But the danger! The storm nearly swept me overboard. What if the same had happened to you? If you’d vanished at sea and no one ever knew what happened…”

  “Imagine the headlines!” Violette laughed. “Then I truly would be a legend forever.”

  “Don’t even joke about it.”

  “Emil, calm yourself. This bench is out of the wind, and perfectly safe if you keep still. I’ve sat here a dozen times… and in worse conditions than this, on other voyages. Give yourself up to the elements and it’s almost soothing. Oh, but don’t tell anyone.”

  “Of course not,” he said.

  He was rendered speechless by her admission, by the simple miracle of her presence. What a night. They sat together until the storm calmed at last and sunrise tinged the cloudy horizon with silver.

  “Well, we survived,” she said softly. “We shall not speak of this again.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AWAKE BY MOONLIGHT

  “You idiot.” Wolfgang Notz spoke softly, but his voice pierced like a needle. “Have you sobered up yet?”

  Bruno brought the motorcycle to a halt amid the parked vehicles in front of the house. The huge structure was luminous in the dawn. Bergwerkstatt, read the modest nameplate. Mountain workshop. As Bruno booted down the kickstand, Wolfgang dismounted behind him with a grunt of pain. Bruno was not the one who’d fallen from the chalet balcony, but he felt as if he had. He slumped forward, his forehead resting on the handlebars. Every sinew hurt, every bone felt bruised. His head pounded in time with the raw ache in his throat.

  It was a miracle Wolfgang had escaped with his life. Only the steep, peaty slope of the hillside had eased his fall. Then Bruno had been forced to take the motorcycle’s controls for their return journey, despite being in no fit state to do so. He’d nearly killed them again, skidding on the perilous mountain roads. They’d taken hours to reach home.

  “Get off,” snapped Wolfgang, glaring at him. “I risked my life to save your skin. I am the one with cracked ribs and my throat nearly torn out. And you – you have a mere hangover? Feeling sorry for yourself? Get off.”

  Bruno obeyed, cursing himself for drinking so much the previous night. One more beer always seemed a marvellous idea at the time… but his drunken stupidity had led him to proposition a strange girl in the street, and set in motion all that followed.

  “They bit me too,” he growled. “Her and the other strigoi.”

  He staggered. Suddenly his companion had him round the throat, pressing him into the canvas side of a truck.

  “Idiot,” Wolfgang repeated. “You must never carry your sikin around in public. You never take it from the cabinet, let alone from these premises. You know that – so what were you thinking? That you’d use it to intimidate someone in a drunken brawl? Or to impress a female with your… weapon? What?”

  Wolfgang released his grip. Rubbing his bruised voice box, Bruno choked on the words. “Maybe. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “Very little, it seems. Herr Reiniger must be able to trust his inner circle. Don’t you know how privileged we are? You’ve broken that trust.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “What punishment do you think you deserve? Expulsion?” Wolfgang’s voice was low and restrained, thick with exasperation, but Bruno didn’t fear him. Godric Reiniger was the only man he feared.

  “I don’t know. I came to you and confessed: I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “And I, fool that I am, did my damndest to help you. Rode fifty miles to the middle of nowhere, faced the mad vampire woman, almost died for my efforts.”

  “I offered to go into that chalet!” said Bruno.

  “You were falling-down drunk,” Wolfgang said with contempt. “Hadn’t you bungled enough? She would have killed you, you cretin. And I would have left you in the forest to rot.”

  Bruno’s anger welled up. “You do understand that I stabbed her only because I realised she was a vampire? I was defending myself. I don’t go around randomly attacking folk in the street!”

  “I believe you. Still, drink and weapons are a dangerous combination for any man.” Wolfgang’s manner eased. He was Reiniger’s deputy, but he h
ad a human touch that their leader lacked. Bruno and everyone ran to Wolfgang with their troubles. “This was your problem, and now you have made it mine. Thank you for that.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “We shall have to face Godric and tell him the truth.”

  “What will he do to us?”

  “That’s up to him.” Wolfgang’s cheeks lost colour. He pushed a hand over his cropped hair. “We need to frame this in a more positive light. Yes, we lost the knife, but think: we identified actual vampires. Is that not the most astounding aspect of this?”

  “If you say so.” Bruno went hot with delayed shock. Wolfgang was right.

  “It’s lucky the other two, the blond boys, weren’t in the chalet, since I never stopped to wonder how I’d fight three of them.”

  “Is this news going to please him?”

  “I hope so.” Wolfgang dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder. “God knows what we’ll do with you, Bruno. Keep off the beer. Come on, let’s clean up, have breakfast before we face the storm. We’ll have to hope Herr Reiniger’s feeling merciful.”

  The front door opened, and a slim young woman stood in silhouette against the light from inside. “Is someone out there? Wolfgang?”

  “Yes, it’s me, Fräulein Temple.”

  “Is something wrong? What’s happening?”

  “Nothing. Bruno got into a little fight, that’s all. We’re coming in now. Ask Gudrun to make some coffee, would you, please? Black and strong.”

  * * *

  Godric stood in the centre of his office with folded arms, listening as Bruno and Wolfgang stuttered out their story. Their muddled shock and sheer amazement at meeting an actual vampire irritated him. They were like naughty schoolboys, frightened by a ghost.

  His fury was cold and rigidly suppressed, but it ran as deep as mountain roots. Had there been a knife missing from the cabinet, apart from his own? I should have looked more carefully, he thought, but I did not think I needed to.

  After that, the female strigoi had distracted him.

  Bruno was quaking at Wolfgang’s side. He looked ready to pass out or fling himself through a window rather than face another moment of Reiniger’s arctic disapproval.

  “So you took the cabinet key from my office and stole the sikin?”

  “No, sir,” Bruno answered, sweating. “I’m sorry. I only pretended to put it back after the last Eidgenossen gathering.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” His chin rose with defiance. “It’s a beautiful weapon. And after all, it’s mine. I like the feeling of power when I carry it. I have no better excuse.”

  “It’s allocated for your use during meetings,” said Godric. “That does not make it yours, Bruno. You know that. Yet you took it on a boyish whim, and managed to lose it – how old are you, twenty-eight? An eight-year-old would have more common sense!”

  “He knows he made a mistake, sir,” put in Wolfgang.

  Godric Reiniger paused to light a thin black cigarette. The Eidgenossen was his hand-picked group of men: thirty, including himself. He’d named the group Eidgenossen, meaning “comrades in oath”, in tribute to the pact on which Switzerland was founded.

  Pacts, federations, compromises – all very fine in principal, but he cherished a higher vision: Switzerland with a single all-powerful leader, a hero of true vision, a god-like fusion of William Tell and Woden.

  Most of his men were ex-army – not that Swiss men ever really stopped being soldiers. They were now his employees, part of his film crew, but more than that: they shared his dreams of a powerful Swiss nation. They shared his secrets.

  “The sakakin are sacred, left to me by my father,” said Godric. “There were thirty. Now we have only twenty-nine. Will that make a difference to our rituals, do you think? It damages the symmetry.”

  “It was a mistake,” said Wolfgang. “Bruno acted stupidly and he’s prepared to be punished.”

  “Punishment won’t get our missing sikin back,” Reiniger said brusquely.

  “As I explained, we tried. We almost perished, trying.”

  “Oh, I believe you. You both look like death.”

  “But – Bruno’s actions aside – isn’t the most remarkable factor here that we encountered actual vampires? I hike in that area, I have cousins there. There have been rumours for nearly four years and I’ve proved them true. Isn’t that astonishing?”

  “Not really.” Reiniger sucked smoke between his teeth, regarding their mixture of fear and excitement with disdain. “I have told you for years that the strigoi are real. Elusive, but a true threat. Are you saying that you didn’t believe me?”

  Wolfgang’s freckles stood out like a rash on his blanched skin.

  “That’s not what I meant, sir.”

  “I always believed,” Bruno put in, but Godric was still glaring at Wolfgang.

  “What am I, some crazy old man to be humoured?”

  “No, sir.” Wolfgang’s voice hardened. “I wouldn’t be at your side if I thought that. I expressed myself badly – of course we believed you, but encountering the reality – the shock – and how close we both came to death…”

  “I appreciate your heroic efforts, Wolf, but the fact remains that you failed.”

  “What will you do with us?” Bruno blurted out.

  “What do you mean, us?” Wolfgang snapped, turning on him. “You’re the one who started this! I only tried to clear up your mess.”

  Reiniger breathed, looking at the smoke swirling above their heads. He was aware of them both shaking, as if awaiting a death sentence.

  How to deal with them?

  “This is so much more than just a film studio, just a political enterprise,” he said. “I can’t sustain our fellowship unless I can trust every single one of you.”

  “You can, sir,” Bruno said miserably, “but if you decide to expel me, I’ll go.”

  Reiniger stepped forward and clapped him on the shoulder. Bruno nearly collapsed. He reeked of sweat and stale alcohol. “No, I don’t want to lose you. As one of my inner thirty, it would be a shame to waste your training.”

  “Truly?”

  Godric regarded his pathetic relief without emotion. Bruno was a useful workhorse, but Wolfgang Notz was much more. Godric could not look at him without a sting of resentment at his popularity. Also, his family was wealthy. He needed to keep Wolfgang loyal and under control, if only for the generous financial contributions he made to the cause.

  “The strigoi are a real and present threat. I need young men of spirit around me, and it’s natural they’ll want to drink and get rowdy – but last night, it went too far. I rely on you to keep them under control, Wolf. Yes?” Godric kept his tone firm but uncritical. “I rely on you.”

  “And I won’t let you down, sir.” Wolfgang stood like a soldier, as pale as whey.

  The vampire fed from him, Godric thought with a shudder of revulsion and curiosity. Was it the same one who came here? No, they said she was fair-haired. I’ve not seen a strigoi for years… and then four are seen in one night? What does this mean? How will this affect us? I have to get the upper hand, but how?

  “Rest, get your strength back,” he said in a businesslike tone. “I’ll worry about the missing sikin later. We have films to make, messages to promote, people to influence. We cannot afford distractions. Get out, both of you. Go.”

  The pair saluted and made a grateful rush for the door. Godric drew on his cigarette one last time and stubbed it out.

  A few minutes later he was in the projection booth, screening a reel from the new film he was editing, Triumph in the Mountains. Soon it would be ready for release.

  His previous feature, The Lion Arises – showing the heroism of a Swiss soldier in foreign lands – had been well received by his private audience. The “lion” referred to Lucerne’s famous statue of a dying lion. Godric was proud of the title’s obvious symbolism, that heroic, fallen Swiss soldiers would one day spring back to life and victory. The local dignita
ries whose support he was cultivating had loved the film.

  The Lion Arises was the fourth full-length movie he’d made. Unfortunately, none of his efforts so far had been acclaimed by the public. He had to pay for screening time at cinemas for the films to be seen at all. Criticism stung. Audiences are used to trash from Hollywood or Germany, he thought bitterly. They need to be educated.

  This scene from Triumph showed Wolfgang in the role of self-sacrificing hero, vowing revenge on the villains who’d despoiled his bride. She was portrayed by his lead actress, Mariette, swooning beautifully in a blond wig. The Alps made a stunning background. Godric nodded in satisfaction. The drama was far ahead of its predecessor. Yes, the story was basically the same – a brave Swiss German defeating foreign invaders – but what other story was there? Godric would keep finding different ways to tell it until he achieved perfection.

  Next he would revive the tale of the ultimate Swiss hero, William Tell. Filming was already under way, even while he kept tinkering with the script. He would not let anyone forget the Three Tells of legend, the sleepers who would one day awaken to save his homeland. His stories would inform everyone that behind every folk story, every traditional carnival – such as the Fasnacht procession, with its raucous music and grotesque costumes – there lay a hidden purpose.

  To drive out demons.

  From the corner of his eye he noticed a woman beside him.

  His heart leapt with shock. Dark skin, a simple olive-green dress… she stood there, silent, watching the film with him. Could she hear his racing heartbeat, scent his fear?

  He wondered how many vampires he’d brushed past in the street and never even known. Perhaps dozens. You couldn’t be sure of anyone.

  His own sikin was still in his pocket. Recalling how she’d recoiled last time, he took out the knife and held it ready. Only then did he dare look round at her. She appeared real, solid, even though she’d come out of thin air.

  “Don’t try to use the sikin against me,” she said softly in French. “My name is Fadiya. Those knives are mine, Herr Reiniger.”