And he saw.
She was the same as Violette and Charlotte and Karl. She had the same hypnotically seductive, evil glow. They were vampires, demons… and so was Fadiya. How had she concealed it? And he knew she’d done this before, but his memory had blurred the event so that he rationalised it and then forgot…
“I love you, Emil,” she hissed, with blood still trickling from her lips and her eyes glowing a ghastly jade-green in the darkness. “You’re mine forever. No going back.”
He groaned. Horror suffocated him and he had no breath left to cry for help. He lay paralysed beneath her. He went on falling backwards through the dark waves. Down and down, until sleep or unconsciousness claimed him… a black, watery, smothering world full of writhing serpents.
* * *
Stefan’s grief was unbearable to witness. When he went quiet, though – that was when Charlotte became gravely concerned.
She took him upstairs and told him to undress and bathe. He did as she asked, to her relief: she had no intention of manhandling him as if he were a recalcitrant child. The old Stefan would have teased her and made off-colour jokes about the situation. The new one was as blank as Niklas. He gazed into the middle distance without blinking.
While he lay silent, up to his chin in warm water, she tore up a sheet to make bandages. In a way she was treating him as she would a distraught, injured human. She had no idea what else to do.
Searching in the wardrobe for a fresh suit, she couldn’t tell which clothes were his and which were Niklas’s. There was two of everything, identical. She chose a plain outfit: dark-grey suit and waistcoat, white shirt, navy-blue tie.
He didn’t stir from the bath until she called him, ten minutes later, and averted her eyes as she held a towel for him. How pointless it seemed to worry about embarrassment at a time like this. She did so anyway, from ingrained instinct.
As the towel touched his flesh, he winced.
Charlotte led him into the nearby bedroom and made him sit on the bed while she looked at the cuts Reiniger’s gang had made in his flesh. She flinched to see the horrible pattern of slashed lines, each one made with apparent careless anger, yet forming a symbol. A mark of occult significance, she was certain, or at least a coded message. If nothing else, the rune conveyed utter contempt and menace.
Like the stab wound she’d suffered, his cuts were not healing.
“Darling, sit still. I’m going to bandage you to protect the injuries until they start to knit.”
“Do as you wish,” he muttered. “I don’t care.”
“Well, I do.”
Carefully she wrapped the cotton strips around his torso. Stefan was like an image of male perfection from a painting: slim, with just enough muscle not to appear boyish. I’d cheerfully strangle whoever wantonly disfigured such angelic beauty.
“Who could do such a thing?” she said under her breath. “Someone jealous, perhaps. Or hell-bent on destroying a vampire. But if Reiniger wants to become one of us, that doesn’t fit. So, he was taking revenge, as Karl said. Or – by means we don’t understand – he was intent on stealing your strength.”
“That’s four perfectly good reasons.” Stefan gave a humourless laugh. “How have I survived this long?”
She knotted the bandage and slipped a clean shirt over his shoulders. “Get dressed,” she said.
“What’s the point?” His eyes lost focus again. She controlled an urge to shake him.
“The point is…” She sighed. “Stefan, if we were human I would have brought you a cup of tea or some brandy, I would have called the police and the doctor, but I can’t do any of that. This is the next best thing. Putting on clean clothes may not help, but neither will staggering around covered in blood!”
“You’re right. Nothing will help.”
“Just do as I say.”
Stefan gave a weak grimace and obeyed. In shirt and trousers, he picked up the tie, only to fling it across the room. He threw it so hard that it caught a candlestick, which fell to the floor with a thud. The tie slithered after it like a snake.
“What—?”
“That’s Niklas’s tie!” he rasped. “How could you? I cannot wear that, it’s his! I can’t…”
He sat rigid, head bowed, fists pressed to his knees.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Everything looked the same, I couldn’t tell the difference.”
“Well, I can.”
At a loss, Charlotte stood blotting hot tears from her eyes. She groped for the right words, the right gesture to help him… but there was nothing she could say, nothing at all.
She’d thought she knew Stefan. Seeing him now, she realised she did not know him at all.
“I need to be with Niklas,” he said dully.
“Come on, then.” She held out her hand. “Let’s go back down. Stefan, I know what Karl said, but please don’t hold him to blame for this.”
“Charlotte, I don’t blame Karl. But the bastard who killed Niklas – the Devil had better be making a place ready for him in hell.”
* * *
In the lake room, Karl had covered the body with a white quilt and placed a lit candle on the carpet above the crown of his head. He knelt beside Niklas as if keeping vigil.
Stefan went in slowly and knelt on the other side. He looked stricken.
“I hoped I’d find this had all been a dream,” he murmured. “Or a practical joke.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Karl.
Stefan felt under the quilt and took his brother’s hand. “He feels like frozen wax. I think he’d shatter if I struck him. Was he ever truly alive?”
“That’s hard to answer,” Karl said gently. “I still maintain that what Kristian did was evil, and that the doppelgängers he made were a crime against nature. Mine was certainly dangerous. Stefan, I had no choice but to destroy it. But one thing I learned, which you already know, is that because they have no intelligence, they are fragile. Our strength and life force emanates from the mind, not the body. How many times have you fled from danger, in order to protect Niklas?”
Stefan nodded, dropped his head. “Every time.”
“He couldn’t even feed without your help,” Karl went on, his voice kind but firm. “I believe that’s why the attack killed him, while you survived. Reiniger probably intended to slaughter you both. I doubt he had any idea that you were so tough and Niklas so delicate. And I suspect that, even if we immersed Niklas in blood for a year, if hundreds of humans perished in that enterprise, it still would not bring him back. Because he is only a copy. He is not you.”
Stefan collapsed again, clinging to his twin. Charlotte put her arms around his shoulders, kissing his hair – as if that could make the slightest difference. It was all she could offer.
Karl added, “Of course, if you decide to take his body somewhere secret and do exactly that, I can’t stop you. But I won’t help you.”
Very slowly, Stefan extracted himself from Charlotte’s embrace and sat cross-legged beside her. He rubbed his tears away, heaved a soul-wrenching sigh.
“I’m not going to do that, Karl. I know you’re right. It wouldn’t work. Not because you’ve told me, but because I simply know inside that this is the end. Niklas has no life force we can revive, because he had no soul in the first place. Why am I crying? It’s as ridiculous as weeping over my reflection in a mirror.”
Stefan put his head in his hands. Charlotte watched his shoulders shaking, tears dripping between his fingers, and her heart broke.
“We’ll stay with you,” said Karl.
“For how long?” Stefan said, his voice savage but muffled. “How do we plan a funeral for a vampire? A vampire who never even existed?”
“We’ll stay for as long as it takes,” Karl replied.
Charlotte felt a raging thirst for fresh air. The heavy atmosphere of grief and blood was hard to endure. She got up, opened the doors to the veranda and went outside. There she stood gazing across the lake, breathing the sweet air that swept down off t
he Alpine tundra. Let air into the chalet, until all stale traces of the party were blown away. The bright blue sky and water seemed to mock her.
Nothing would cleanse the scent of Niklas’s blood.
Behind her, she heard the occasional muffled moan from Stefan. The noises he emitted were quiet but full of anguish, like an injury so painful he could barely move.
What now?
Neither Karl nor Stefan would rest until Godric Reiniger paid for this. For that matter, neither would she.
And yet… Karl was right. Godric had a power over vampires that they didn’t understand. And he had a very particular grudge against Karl. Was it really worth risking their lives to challenge him, when the safest option was simply to vanish?
The air stirred. Violette made a startling appearance on the balcony beside her, as if taking shape from a swirl of frost.
Her long fur-lined coat swung about her like a cloak. Beneath it she was in her practice clothes and her pinned-up hair was coming adrift into a tangle. She swung round to Charlotte and gripped her arms.
“Here you are! Thank goodness – why didn’t you come home? Not that it matters, you can go where you like, but I wish I’d found you sooner. Something appalling has happened… Charlotte?”
She stared at Violette, not comprehending why she was so agitated – unless she, too, had heard Stefan’s cry of anguish through the ether.
“Yes,” Charlotte said faintly, nodding towards the open doorway. “In there.”
“Emil is in there?”
Violette’s nails dug in, hurting. Charlotte recoiled from her wild expression.
“What? No. It’s Niklas… What about Emil?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE LEMON GARDEN
Emil and Fadiya disembarked from the ship in Algiers. The city looked vast, with salt-white buildings curving around the bay and mounting the hills beyond. Boats crowded the harbour. The streets were hectic with tourists, folk in local dress, French soldiers. Motor cars, buses, cranes loading and unloading ships – naively, he hadn’t expected the city to be so modern, so frantically busy. Emil shaded his eyes, looking up at huge government buildings, law courts, mosques and hotels, monuments, even a casino.
The air was hot, sunlight turning the streets to a misty golden otherworld. In childhood Emil had enjoyed the hot sun on his back, but years working in France and Switzerland had made him used to a temperate climate. The heat was a physical assault.
He felt weak, confused, as if succumbing to sunstroke. Aware that his mind wasn’t functioning normally, he couldn’t break out of the hot, dusty fog. His recollection of the voyage was patchy. The little he remembered filled him with dread.
Hallucinations of the ship capsizing, being dragged under the waves. All mixed up with images of entwining with Fadiya, delirious with lust even as he suffocated beneath her. Fangs stabbing into his throat and all his strength leeching away…
She had sucked blood from his veins. Not for the first time. And there was nothing he could do to stop her. He hadn’t even tried, as if she’d injected him with some intoxicating, deadly narcotic. Fadiya was the drug. Now he was completely in her power – and worse, he knew it.
She’d stolen his strength and his willpower, left him in a dizzy trance like an opium haze, with no hope of escape. A far part of his mind was screaming for help, but no one could hear. Fadiya was his only anchor in this alien world.
“Please don’t pass out,” she said sharply. “We mustn’t attract attention.”
“It’s so hot.”
“This isn’t hot.” She laughed. “The desert is hot. This is a lovely spring day.”
“Where are we going?” he asked as they climbed a tree-lined avenue of French-colonial architecture. She carried his bag. His mouth was so parched, he could barely speak.
“Towards Al Qasbah,” she said, smiling benignly. “The old citadel. To my friends. It’s not far.”
“I need water.”
“Just a few minutes more. Their house is cool and they’ll give us local clothing so that we blend in. Don’t worry, dearest Emil. I know you’re tired, but this is our new beginning.”
“You drank my blood.”
“My dear, you gave it willingly, out of love,” she replied warmly. “Don’t you remember?”
“You drank my blood!” he rasped. The effort of speaking made his head reel. She caught his arm to steady him.
“I couldn’t help it. It’s a gesture of love, and you are so beautiful.” Her face glowed. The light behind her shone like a bright halo.
“I’m ill. I want to go home.”
“You are home, my love,” she replied. “Your home is where I am. You’re mine and I’m yours. Just a little further and then you can rest.”
She led him past mosques and cafés, churches and noisy markets, into labyrinthine lanes where the newer town gave way to the old. A few minutes, she said, but the walk seemed to take hours. As they climbed steep flights of steps, his sight turned black and he resigned himself to collapsing, perhaps dying in the street. He didn’t even care…
Eventually she knocked on a door in a blank, high wall that seemed to extend for miles, like a prison wall. The small carved door swung open.
Soft voices murmured around him in a language he didn’t understand. A handful of men and women were welcoming Fadiya and Emil inside. He caught an impression of loose garments in shades of blue, green, rose pink. Smiling faces… all as lovely and as sinister as Fadiya herself. There were men and women, some dark-skinned and others pale. He heard a mixture of languages and accents. Snatches of French, Arabic, Italian, German…
They led him through a shaded ante-room into a courtyard with a fountain at the centre. On all four sides there were walkways lined with pillars and elegant arches shaped to recall minarets, upper galleries with doors to inner rooms, only half-seen through masses of foliage. He glimpsed screens of dark wood pierced with intricate patterns, large filigree lamps in the Moroccan style set with jewel colours, striped cushions and rugs. Every surface was tiled in white and blue, heavy with geometric decoration. Plants spilled from containers, filling the space with greenery and fragrant flowers. The cool air rising from the fountain misted their leaves and petals.
Around this area drifted figures in flowing djellabas.
Someone sat him down on a tiled bench and began to fan him. A glass of liquid was held to his lips: sweet mint tea. He drank it so fast he barely tasted it. A woman in red refilled the glass from an elaborate teapot. A black man, dressed in vibrant sky blue, gave him a tray of fruit, cheese and olives.
Sweet, salty, juicy… the tastes of his childhood home.
Where was Fadiya? After a moment his eyes focused and he saw her, kissing all the strangers in turn as if greeting long-lost relatives. They bowed their heads to her. The interplay of grace and colour was hypnotic. He breathed the scent of jasmine.
Emil had never seen a place so peaceful and beautiful. It was like a small palace built inside out: featureless from the outside, with all the rooms facing inwards around an exquisite garden. A riad in the most luxurious Moroccan style. There were lemon trees, fig trees, bushes spilling flowers of white, yellow and pale apricot. Figures moved along the galleries above. He saw a passageway leading through to another courtyard. The filtered golden light was enticing, promising a hidden paradise.
“So this is the creature in question?” the black man said in English.
“This is him, Nabil.” Fadiya spoke with pride in her voice. She knelt at Emil’s feet, her hands on his knees. “What do you think? Isn’t he beautiful?”
“Absolutely magnificent,” Nabil replied with a smile. His ebony skin had its own glow, as if brushed with blue iridescence. His eyes shone with powerful serenity, like a painting of a saint looking up to heaven. Like Karl’s eyes. And yet… all Emil felt from the inhabitants was menace.
The contrast of tranquil beauty and peril overwhelmed him. He couldn’t move. Even if he tried to escape, he knew these p
eople would kill him before he reached the outer doors.
They were all vampires.
“He’s famous in the outer world,” she said. “He’s a great dancer.”
“Famous?” Nabil echoed. “Is that not a risk?”
“Yes, but that is the point. Who would care that he’s gone, if he were not valuable?”
Valuable?
“Fadiya…” He tried to speak, couldn’t form a coherent question. You brought me here as your lover. Why are you discussing value? Talking as if I were a stranger?
She ignored his plea. Addressing Nabil, she asked, “Is everything ready?”
“As soon as you are, Fadiya.” He gave a small bow. His eyes, when he looked at Emil, gleamed with hunger, or lust. Both. Emil nearly stopped breathing.
“Good. We need to make haste. I posted a letter to her before we left port. When she receives it, she will find us within a day or so. You must delay her. Don’t underestimate her: she’s clever, fast and lethal. She is a goddess.”
“Fadiya?” Emil forced the words out, his voice dry as sand. “What the hell is happening? Where are we going?”
“Rest, darling,” she murmured as if to a child. “Sleep in the shade while you can. We have another journey to make, but there’s nothing to worry about. Rest.”
* * *
Violette looked down at Niklas’s body, dry-eyed. Although she didn’t weep, her shock was palpable. As Charlotte repeated Stefan’s story, she stood motionless, a figure carved from quartz.
“This must be connected with Emil,” Violette said eventually. She’d given a short account of his disappearance, shown Karl and Charlotte the letter he’d left. “Fadiya worked for Reiniger. According to Karl, he knew she was a vampire, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t explain why she was with him. Something to do with the Istilqa knives? I don’t know.”
“Your precious Emil!” Stefan, seated beside Niklas, sprang to his feet. “He’s run away with his lady friend, that’s all. Niklas is the one who’s dead! Why try to tangle this with your problems? You think my brother is less important than Emil?”
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