The Spider Dance

by Nick Setchfield

  He was dead, for the moment.

  Winter stood above the remains. The shadow scythe quivered, lodged between Gallard’s ribs. The shard was impenetrably dark but Winter saw that darkness glint and coruscate. He called it back into his veins, receiving it with a soft, exhausted sigh.

  He could hear rain on the stonework, infiltrating the slabs.

  Winter lit a Woodbine and walked to the open door. He looked out across the countryside, the oaks and the kilns and the stillness of the harvest fields. The sudden shower had made the moonlight gauzy. A cobweb hung in the arch of the doorway, beaded by raindrops. Winter watched them run on the spider’s silk as he savoured the bitter rush of the cigarette. If his hand trembled he paid it no mind.

  When the Woodbine was finished he took a hammer and chisel from the wall and prepared to extract the heart of Auberon Gallard.

  29

  Libby hated the light at first.

  She hated the way it woke her; the way it stung, hot and sharp, the instant she opened her eyes. Even on her eyelids the weight of it hurt. Confronted by mornings she would push her face into the pillow and try to dream again. Her dreams felt like protection, even the ones where she was cold and quiet and churchyard soil engulfed her bones.

  She tried to dream of better things than being six foot under. Kissing smashing girls, usually, in secret corners of Chelsea clubs. But the soil would find her, filling her mouth, an inescapable reminder that she was stealing mornings never meant for her.

  At least the grave didn’t hurt her eyes. That was something.

  During those first weeks at Villa Tramonto heavy wooden shutters had sealed away the light, preserving the room in a cool, insulating gloom. Day and night became a dim mulch of hours, broken only by simple meals and glasses of sharp, sweet apple juice, her favourite. And then one morning she woke to find the shutters had been opened an inch, and an inch again the next morning. Each day the slice of light widened across the floorboards until finally it reached the great white bed, with the ivory sheets that drowned her.

  Soon the light didn’t hurt quite so much anymore.

  One day a maid had entered and placed a tall silver clock on the dressing table. It changed everything. Now the days had a shape, and the hours moved just that little bit faster.

  Libby would lie there, alone in the sparse, pristine room, exploring how different she felt. The chill of her skin was weird, and that unsettled her. She would trace her fingers along her arm, across the curve of her shoulder blades, into the incline of her throat. The pulse in her neck would beat against the tips, the steady Morse that told her she was alive. But her skin was so cold, and that made no sense, because her blood was raw as fire inside.

  Sometimes she felt like a fountain beneath a whisper.

  All of it was odd. The world – and this room was the world, for now – seemed almost too real. She could see strokes of paint on the far wall, hear the movement of the clock’s gears in between sweeps of the second hand. Sometimes she was convinced she could taste iron on her tongue, enough to start her salivating. They had warned her about the thirst, how keen it would feel, as keen as the world.

  She had barely noticed the loss of her shadow, at least to begin with. Only when she crossed the room with her own strength did she realise how incomplete she felt. It was as if a fine layer of self had been amputated. One day she thought about it altogether too much and her balance went, leaving her clinging to the rim of the marble sink, fighting tears. She missed the reassurance of that other Libby, the silent imprint of existence she had taken for granted her entire life.

  The mirror was even harder, of course. It waited for her now, as it did every morning, daring her to approach. Libby let it wait there.

  A new maid brought her breakfast today. The girl was pale in spite of her Mediterranean looks, with sleek black hair that fell to her waist. Libby watched her place the tray on the bedside table, hearing ice bob and crack in a glass.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you before, have I?’

  The maid shook her head, handing over the apple juice. Libby noticed that her nails were badly chipped, though she had coated them with varnish as best she could.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  A smile. ‘Benedetta.’

  ‘I’m Libby.’

  The girl repeated the name like a puzzle. ‘Libby…’

  ‘Have you just started today?’

  Benedetta frowned at the words. ‘Mi dispiace. Non ho capito.’ She leaned in to lift the lid of the butter dish. As she did so she pushed a tumble of hair from her face, draping it across her shoulder.

  Libby stared at the puncture wounds on the girl’s throat. The skin seemed to be healing but the incisions were so deep the marks looked as though they might never fade, not entirely. She wondered how vicious her own wounds looked, beneath the gauze and cotton.

  ‘How long?’ she asked, nodding to the bite marks. ‘Da quanto?’

  ‘Mi dispiace. Non ho capito.’

  Libby could sense the cool, still-water aura of Benedetta’s body, close to hers. There were no shadows from that body on the white sheets, no glimmer of its reflection in the porcelain dish on the breakfast tray. The girl was breathing, her heart was obviously beating, and yet her presence seemed to make no impression on the room, as if she was barely more than a memory of someone.

  God, thought Libby, was this how people would see her now? Halfway to a bloody ghost?

  There were so many questions she wanted to ask this girl.

  Benedetta placed a foil packet beside the bruschetta. It contained two caplets of a crimson liquid that caught the waking light in the room. Scarlatto, they called it. Libby would take the pills later. They eased the thirst but the queasy, salt-milk taste of them was proving to be a daily challenge.

  The new maid left with an awkward curtsy. Libby savoured the apple juice for a while, watching the sunlight stretch across the floorboards. Then she threw back the ocean of sheets and walked to the waiting mirror.

  The surface had been shrouded in muslin during her first weeks at the villa. Don Zerbinati himself had held her by the arms the day the drape was removed. And he had steadied her as she recoiled.

  The thought of it still made her sick, that first, searing glimpse of nothingness. It had felt like a punch, a fist to the face, to the soul. To see an empty room in the sun-struck glass and not a trace of yourself. It was an obliteration of everything that had defined her; the wayward fringe, the freckled nose, the gap in her teeth she had hated as a kid.

  Some days she was convinced she could still catch a hint of herself. A vague, transparent outline, subtly altering the way the light fell on the mirror. But if she looked again the blur in the glass was gone. She was afraid it was only her imagination.

  Libby picked up a Mary Quant lipstick from the dressing table. This was the one without the hidden blade, the one she wondered how she would ever apply again, now that she could never look back at herself.

  She pressed her left hand against the mirror, noting how the glass didn’t mist beneath her touch. And then she took the lipstick and drew around the contours of her hand, carefully tracing the dips and peaks of her fingers, the curve of her palm.

  Libby took her hand away and stared at its clumsy rouge afterimage. Almost a reflection, she told herself. Almost a shadow.

  Then she slashed the lipstick against the mirror in quick, determined strokes. A line for the nose, a dash for the mouth. Two round guesses where the eyes would be. Thick, smudgy dots for freckles. Every mark she made gave her strength. It felt like she was reclaiming herself in the glass, stating her face all over again.

  Taking a step back she gazed at the crude, bright likeness.

  She should have been dead. But she was here, and she existed.

  Would London want her back? It was all that she knew, all that she had driven herself to be. Part of her needed that continuity, the certainty of Queen and country, orders and expectations, the chance to prove herself again a
nd again. And yet she had worked for Gallard – and who knew if the SIS could forgive that. Maybe she should follow Winter’s lead and slip that world, find a new future, take the time to make sense of what she had become. But London, she knew, so rarely let you go.

  Libby heard a sound from outside. The echo of feet, moving in a fast, violent rhythm. Curious, she moved to the window, peering through the shutters, her eyes flinching at the direct light.

  The maid, Benedetta, was in the private part of the courtyard directly below the room. She had kicked her heels away. And she was dancing in a strip of sunlight, her hair a black cascade as she flung and whirled her limbs, so sure that no one was watching.

  It was a dance that Libby recognised. It was called the Tarantella, the spider dance.

  30

  In early October Winter returned to Naples with the heart of Auberon Gallard in his hand luggage. He parcelled the stolen organ in crisp brown paper and informed the lady on the customs desk it was a gift of English ham. She smiled and assured him that Neapolitan salami was altogether superior.

  Two of Zerbinati’s men escorted him from the terminal at Capodichino to a waiting Lancia Flaminia. There was no conversation as the car climbed to the rocky swell of Posillipo. Winter watched the clear light play across the coves and breakwaters that clung beneath the coastal road, marvelling at how the same sun, at the same time, could be watching over a damp, leaf-cluttered London with such disdain.

  Villa Tramonto awaited, like a great white bird on the edge of the headland. The gates opened, allowing the Lancia to slide past the shining sports cars hoarded in the drive. Winter was walked to the rear of the villa, where Don Zerbinati sat at a table, poolside, picking at a plate of mussels and olives, a glass of white wine casting spirals of light on his suit. His men positioned themselves at a discreet but watchful distance.

  ‘Please, sit down,’ the vampire said, dabbing a square of satin to his lips. He regarded the parcel that had just been placed on the table. ‘The heart, I take it?’

  Winter gave a dry smile. ‘Another relic for your collection.’

  ‘Hardly the heart of a saint.’

  ‘I removed it as soon as I could. It wasn’t the easiest job in the world.’

  Zerbinati frowned at the crumpled, string-bound package. ‘You were wise to separate it from the body. But as a high born of the undead I confess I find your lack of reverence distasteful. This was the heart of a king. Remember that.’

  ‘You told me to bring it to you.’

  ‘I anticipated a little more respect.’

  ‘You had no idea Gallard was one of your own?’ asked Winter. ‘All that time you were dealing with Paragon?’

  Zerbinati shook his head. ‘The man was unknown to me, but then he may have worn many names over the centuries. At the time of Paragon he was embedded in London. I was embedded in Naples. We never met. I only dealt with his proxies.’

  ‘Like me.’

  ‘You are not the man you were in the war. That’s clear to me now. Something has changed in you.’

  ‘For the better, I trust?’

  Zerbinati paused, the glass at his lips. ‘I miss your fire.’

  Winter squinted against the hard, clean light. He could hear the slap of pool water, stirred by a listless noon breeze. ‘Of course now you have an interesting choice to make.’

  The vampire took a sip of wine then skimmed his tongue across his lips. ‘Tell me what you mean.’

  ‘Two royal hearts, Don Zerbinati. One belongs to Auberon Gallard. One belongs to your son. And you only have a single sacred thorn between them. Now assuming you didn’t leave Cesare’s remains in the Mortal Sepulchre, which heart will you place it in? Who gets to truly stay dead?’

  For a moment Zerbinati revolved the glass between his fingers, watching as it mirrored the Mediterranean sun. And then he moved his gaze to the city and the bright crush of houses piled on the hills above the bay. Vesuvius loomed like a bruising mood on the horizon.

  ‘Naples worships the dead. I may be its king but I will never truly be part of it. Its people call us I Senz’Ombr, the Shadowless, because death is the shadow denied to my kind. Tear away the trinkets and superstition and what remains is one simple, absolute truth – death is the shadow that tells these people they have lived. Now my son has a shadow.’

  Winter studied the other man’s face. It was unreadable in the sunlight. ‘So you’ve made your choice, then?’

  Zerbinati drained the last of the wine. ‘The girl is ready to meet you now.’

  He rose from the chair, leaving his plate to the mosquitoes that had been circling the table, attracted by the briny tang of the mussels. Winter followed him across the white sun-struck marble that bordered the walls of the villa.

  ‘How’s she coping?’

  ‘The first weeks weren’t easy. But she’s strong. Resilient. I’ve been impressed by her spirit. She will need time to find her place in this world.’

  ‘What should I know?’

  Zerbinati kept walking but took a moment to choose his words. ‘You should know that she wanted this.’

  ‘I was there. I remember.’

  ‘Yes, you were. But you must go on remembering. She will doubt herself in the years ahead.’

  Libby Cracknell waited by the main door in a lemon-yellow sundress, her eyes shielded by a pair of round amber-tinted glasses. Her skin looked snow-pale in the sharp light and she was thinner than Winter remembered. Only as he approached did she break into a smile.

  ‘Alright, you wanker?’

  They embraced in an awkward, English way, exchanging equally awkward pleasantries. Winter was startled by the chill of her body but said nothing.

  Stepping back he glanced at the maid who hovered at Libby’s side. He placed her at once, though there was no sign that she remembered him. It was the dancer from the street, the one they had found in that grim house in the Spanish quarter. The name came to him a second later. Benedetta. Don Zerbinati must have taken her on after Cesare’s death. There was kindness in the man, it seemed. What was it he had said, back in the Mortal Sepulchre? ‘We are far from monsters.’ Winter began to suspect that might be true.

  Zerbinati also embraced Libby. His hug was more robust. He leaned in and told her something that Winter couldn’t quite catch, words that clearly belonged to the undead alone.

  Libby nodded, understanding whatever private truth had passed between them.

  She said her goodbyes to the maid, who passed her a small suitcase. Then she crossed the drive to a gleaming, smoke-grey Maserati Berlinetta that was parked between a pair of vintage Ferraris. Don Zerbinati flung her a set of car keys. She caught them with ease.

  ‘You’re driving?’ asked Winter, as she stowed the suitcase in the boot.

  ‘Of course I’m driving.’

  They settled into the hot leather seats, the gates of Villa Tramonto breaking open before them.

  ‘Where are you heading?’

  Libby twisted the key in the ignition, relishing the snarl of the waking engine. ‘Home. Eventually. How about you?’

  Winter realised he had no idea, not anymore. ‘Pretty sure somewhere will occur to me along the way.’

  The Maserati swung onto the coastal road, gathering speed as if ready to outrace the sea itself. The needle rose and the asphalt began to blur. With the engine roaring they shot past the azure glitter of the Tyrrhenian. As the car carved into the hills a flash of gold filled the rear-view mirror, catching Winter’s gaze. No doubt it was just the sun hitting the glass but he wanted it to be Alessandra’s eyes, watching as they tore into the day, and all the days beyond.

  He looked across at Libby. She was smiling as she gripped the wheel, the heat and the wind in her face.

  If the sunlight hurt her she didn’t let it show.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Louise Blain, who discussed the finer points of undead lore with me on a bench by Bath Abbey; Ella Bowman and the Great Unknown Neapolitan Waiter; Bob Erskine for a little lo
cal knowledge.

  Cat Camacho and Joanna Harwood, my insightful and meticulous editors at Titan Books; Natasha MacKenzie for another magical cover.

  Julie Crisp, my fabulous, not-so-secret agent. Dana Spector at CAA, for championing Mr Winter.

  Dad, my family and all my friends. You keep the vampires from my door.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Nick Setchfield is a contributing editor to SFX, Britain’s best-selling magazine of genre entertainment in film, TV and books. A regular writer to Total Film, he’s also been a movie reviewer for the BBC and a scriptwriter for ITV’s Spitting Image. He lives in Bath.

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