“But Karl, the point is that I’ve learned what needs to be done with you,” said Reiniger. “Obsession is a form of weakness. Anything that wakes lust or infatuation must be crushed. It’s nothing but a distraction, an obstacle to enlightenment. Therefore desire can only be used as a pathway to domination. The object must be used, violated, destroyed. Like a tumour, it must be cut out.”
On the last word, he seized the dagger and plunged it at Karl’s throat.
By reflex, Karl caught Reiniger’s wrist with the blade-tip just grazing his throat. The next Karl knew, they were in the Crystal Ring together – Reiniger following as Karl tried to slip free. Gripping each other’s arms with hands like vulture claws they struggled, fighting as he and Kristian had fought in the old days.
Karl propelled himself upwards, through the cobwebby ceilings until he soared above the house and into the higher layers. Cobalt-blue light shone between storm clouds edged with white fire. As always, he became a dark, lacy demon, but Reiniger changed too.
The change was subtle at first. Godric glowed. He became a manic waxwork replica of himself.
At least he did not look like Charlotte.
He had dropped the knife. Instead he fought and moved with all the agile power of a vampire, his hands like shackles on Karl’s arms. He showed no sign of fear. Clearly he was already an adept in this realm. Terrifyingly strong, even without the ability to drink Karl’s blood.
“I will have your power, Karl,” Godric rasped in his ear. “I’ll feast on you in every possible way.”
Karl grew cold as they rose. His attacker was stealing power, not from his veins, but directly from the aura of his life force. Reiniger’s body began to increase in size: muscles thickening, marble-white head lengthening.
“I have become the first perfect, superior human,” he had said. “A springboard to something immense.”
“What are you?” Karl whispered.
A huge hand closed on his neck and began to squeeze. The face staring into his was now twice its human size. Tangled white hair emerged from Godric’s skull and began to writhe and tumble towards his shoulders.
“I am Berchtold, Lord of the Wild Hunt,” came the voice, a distorted roar. “I am Woden, god of the mountains. I am here to protect and save my land, destroy all our enemies. I am the land, and no demonic strigoi feet shall tread here.”
“You are insane,” Karl tried to say; he couldn’t force out the words. The only hope left to him was his greater knowledge of the Crystal Ring.
They rose towards the higher layers of ether. Karl moved into the stream of a powerful current that carried both him and Reiniger upwards like a pair of life-sized dolls. Chasm walls rose high above them, then swiftly dwindled away below. Karl saw the curve of the Earth and the glittering ceiling that was the Weisskalt above him. Cold vapours poured down. Reiniger began to shiver, but didn’t loosen his grip.
He was still changing. Nubs of bone appeared on his forehead and began to push outwards, becoming two devil-horns. Karl heard the ghastly creaking sound as they continued to grow.
He felt tiny in the grasp of Berchtold-Woden, but he hung on tenaciously, like a small but ruthless scorpion.
The god that had been Reiniger made incomprehensible growling noises, more animal than human. Was he trying to speak? Karl was past caring what he had to say. There was only one chance, and that was to carry him up to the Weisskalt where the sub-zero temperature would claim them both.
I’ve already defeated him in the mortal world, Karl thought. His public humiliation was the end for him. This – this is revenge. But I did not anticipate it and I should have done.
A bitter, glacial wind full of ice needles showered down from the blinding white light above. Leaving his enemy to hibernate in the Weisskalt made him no better than Kristian.
Karl, however, was beyond caring whether he was more moral than Kristian.
For all the harm Godric’s done, he thought, for his malevolent plans, and to avenge Niklas and Stefan, he has to die.
“And especially to spare us any more of your appalling films.” Forming the words was a struggle, but the Woden-Godric entity heard him and emitted a blood-chilling moan.
As they gained altitude, their speed slowed. Karl struggled to make progress, but the giant in his arms was a dead weight. The closer they drew to the Weisskalt, the heavier Reiniger became, until Karl could go no higher. They hung together in the upper atmosphere with the exosphere still some miles above: stranded there, as if treading water on the surface of the Antarctic Ocean.
Stalemate.
And still Reiniger went on changing horribly, the horns thickening and spiralling into a corkscrew shape. His visage narrowed, cheeks becoming gaunt as the face pushed forward. A beard sprouted from the chin like matted grey horse hair. His eyes were entirely blood-red. There was nothing human left of him. Karl glanced from his hideous aspect to the infinite void below them and his heart stopped.
Options raced through his mind without words.
Until this moment, Karl had never let himself admit that Reiniger might win.
* * *
Godric’s flight through the Crystal Ring was ecstatic. Although his transformation was painful and horrific, it was also the most wondrous thing any human had ever experienced. Sublime exhilaration.
His dream was complete.
“I have become Berchtold, Lord of the Wild Hunt. I have become Woden, god of the mountains.”
He had stolen Karl’s energy and used it to complete his metamorphosis.
I am Woden, he tried to say. He could no longer form clear words. I am the sleeping hero, William Tell, reincarnated to save his land. I am the god of the mountains, the god to whom all others bow down…
Unintelligible sounds rumbled from his throat as he tried to voice his triumph.
The chill at this height was excruciating, but he was stoical enough to bear it. He would have to be, for long enough to suck out the dregs of Karl’s energy. The vampire was already an empty husk but still clinging on, like a dead spider entangled in Woden’s great fur cloak.
But something was amiss. The metamorphosis should have stopped when it reached perfection. Instead it continued.
Pain racked his huge body. He heard his own bones cracking as his skull changed shape. He felt that the weight of his new, spiralling horns would pull him downwards, out of this fantastical realm before he was ready.
Clenching his jaw – his teeth felt enormous, with lightning-bolts of pain shooting through them from the ice-cold air – he made a determined effort to end Karl’s life. His fist tightened, muscular enough to compress the spine and rip off the head as if the vampire were made of clay. To kill that which he had desired. Strong enough to fling the remains into the void…
Instead, Karl remained in one piece and stubbornly alive.
“Sometimes the Crystal Ring gives you what you need,” said Karl. His voice was raw with agony but the words were clear. “And sometimes it gives you what you deserve.”
* * *
Suspended in the void, Karl watched Godric changing. Grotesque ever-growing horns, sunken face, horrible staring eyes and all that thick, tangled, filthy grey hair.
He had become more goat than god.
He looked exactly like the demon whose face had loomed out of the screen in The Lion Arises. A gargoyle in shades of silver-grey.
A man in costume at last year’s Fasnacht festival.
“Krampus,” Karl whispered.
Godric grunted, as if asking, “What?”
“Schmutzli,” said Karl. “That’s all you are, Godric Reiniger. You’re not a god. You’re nothing but a fiend to frighten naughty children. A man in costume with a goat’s head.”
With speed that Reiniger couldn’t match, Karl wrenched the strangling hand off his throat. He broke the hold so abruptly that he felt the wrist fracture, heard it like a gunshot. Then he lunged for Reiniger’s throat.
One thing his enemy could not do was drink blood.
Locked together, they began to fall. The intense cold was too much for them both. Something else, too: because Godric was not a true vampire, perhaps the Crystal Ring had decided to expel him by force.
Reiniger screamed.
All though their long, long fall towards Earth, Reiniger screamed.
His form shrank until he was the same size as Karl again, but he stayed in his grotesque Schmutzli shape and would not die. Perhaps he’d truly made himself indestructible. He didn’t need to be Woden. A grisly, unkillable, vengeful Alp would cause chaos enough.
I can’t let him back to Earth like this, thought Karl, but how to deal with him?
Karl ached all over from frostbite, exertion and the sour venom of Godric’s veins. He felt suddenly that it would be easiest just to fall asleep and let all this go…
“I will be the master of my own fate,” Reiniger’s words were distorted but intelligible. His voice shook Karl back to alertness. “Torment me all you like. You cannot control me, Karl, short of killing me. You may have won this time, but – I had you all dancing like rats on a hotplate, and I shall again.”
“I don’t think so,” Karl said under his breath.
He thought of Niklas lying dead and Stefan howling in pain. Emil bruised and sobbing in an alleyway, and Charlotte pushing him away with dread in her eyes because a cold knife had cut her in two.
Karl turned Godric around and clamped his arms behind his back. He changed direction, arcing downwards, leaving behind the fierce currents and curving towards the south… out across the Mediterranean, down towards the North African coast and the bleak otherworldly beauty of the Sahara.
Coast, towns, mountain ranges and wilderness flashed beneath. Gripping his enemy, he dropped out of Raqia and hit the ground.
Blessed warmth enveloped him, and turned all too swiftly to roasting heat. Godric writhed in his arms, groaning with pain like a human.
Karl dumped him on the edge of the desert where rocks jutted from the sandy hills. Still in gargoyle form, Godric crouched on the ground, cradling his broken wrist, hardly able to raise his head for the weight of the immense twisted horns.
Karl felt a small pang of pity. The thing that had been Godric was unlikely to force its way back into Raqia. Without the metabolism to live on blood, how would he get his strength back?
Then the horns tipped back and Godric glared up at him with such blazing hatred that the pang of sympathy died.
“You can’t leave me here!” Godric rasped.
The sun scorched the blue sky, and there was nothing but sand and rock all the way to the perfect circle of the horizon. Was this more cruel than the Weisskalt? Perhaps, but Karl was not in a merciful mood.
“We’re on the northern edge of the Sahara. You told me that this is where your father found the Istilqa knives.”
Reiniger stared at him. Some hint of his human self flickered inside the scarlet eyes. He stood up unaided, swaying, so deep in trauma and rage that, Karl guessed, he would either perish or transform into something worse.
But their fight was over. Karl saw no way to end his life, and didn’t want to. His desire to kill was entirely gone. All he could hope was that Godric Reiniger would wander into the desert and lose himself forever.
“Don’t come back to Switzerland,” Karl said, catching a breath. Now he was in human shape again the hot air hurt his lungs. He felt a shadow stir in the back of his mind, a presence that might be close or a hundred miles away. “I do not ever want to see you again.”
“Not over,” said Reiniger, pointing a clawed hand at him.
“Perhaps you should see what else you can unearth. Follow your father’s lead and search for more ancient mysteries.”
“Don’t mock me.” The voice was thick and hoarse. “My father will guide me to secrets, and you will regret this day bitterly. Not over.”
Godric turned and began to walk into the wilderness, staggering as he went. He was in shock, but that didn’t make him less dangerous. Karl thought, He might yet be capable of recovery and heaven alone knows what else.
Karl pushed a hand through his hair and folded his arms. He watched the gargoyle figure with its ridiculous horns for a minute, feeling strangely helpless. I don’t want to follow him but how can I let him wander off in this state? What if I cannot go back into Raqia? Curse the day I ever met his damned father!
Again he sensed someone else nearby. The feeling was more insistent this time. Someone was coming towards him… someone he knew? They were walking towards him, and straight towards Reiniger, too.
Karl started forward and saw Godric making his unsteady way along a sandy path between two low ridges of rock. Sunlight dazzled him and the distant sand rippled like water, a mirage. Against the glare two figures appeared, hand in hand.
Violette?
His shock passed quickly. Of course it was Violette. Her signature was subtle but unmistakable: a unique black-white-violet aura scented with lilies. She was the reason he’d landed in exactly this place. He’d been drawn to her without even knowing.
She walked proudly upright, barefoot, her hair and clothes a ragged mess. At her side was a slender stranger: male or female, Karl could not tell. Brown skin, silky black hair, also barefoot beneath the striped robe. The aura he projected was faint and rust-red. Definitely not human. Karl made a brief scan of the stranger, then focused his attention on Violette.
She’s alive. Thank all that’s sacred. He started towards her.
Seeing the bizarre figure of Godric approaching her, Violette and her companion stopped. Did she recognise him? He looked very different, but her higher senses were sharp. She might well see straight through his distorted appearance. Karl saw her eyes widen…
Godric Reiniger put back his head, went into attack posture like a stalking cat. He swung his head side to side, and Karl could see his mouth opening to reveal huge, dripping teeth and a red tongue.
Karl began to run after him.
Reiniger uttered a dreadful noise, a tearing roar full of squealing harmonics that tortured the ears, as if he were venting all his accumulated fury at the world. White light crackled around him.
His power was returning, as if from nowhere.
No, thought Karl in dismay. He’s drawing it straight from the Crystal Ring.
Then he sprang at Violette and her companion. Claws and teeth and blazing, mindless rage.
Karl caught him, one second before he reached his target.
In a single, fluid strike, he grabbed the neck from behind and jerked the grotesque creature backwards off his feet. Its entire body went limp, as if every bone had shattered.
What lay on the ochre sand at his feet was… fur and horns. A costume. Nothing inside. A demonic-looking Krampus or Schmutzli costume, empty.
A lizard skittered from under Karl’s heel as he took a step back.
Stunned, he pushed at the ashen fur heap with his shoe. It appeared the Crystal Ring itself had transformed Godric’s clothing into a kind of disguise that he’d shed like a skin. But real fur, leather and bone? Had Reiniger discarded a layer of himself?
He’d never seen anything like it before. Godric was simply… gone.
“Karl?” Violette ran to his side. “What was that? What in hell was that?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
HOUSE OF FLOWERS
Two days later, Karl and Violette and Kurgara found their way to Bayt-al-Zuhur.
Too exhausted to enter the Crystal Ring – and too wary of using the bone-knives to rest – they’d simply walked.
Violette told him that she and her companion had travelled all the way from the Bone Well on foot. She said very little about wha
t had happened there, and Kurgara had barely spoken at all. In turn, Karl had no energy to explain about Godric Reiniger. They simply trekked in weary, comfortable silence until they reached their destination.
He came to love the mesmeric allure of the mountainous desert with its ever-changing palette of light and colour. Crimson and amber melted to plum and violet. There was not another soul for miles… Even his blood-thirst subsided, at least for this dream-like journey.
The house of vampires, Bayt-al-Zuhur, broke his trance-state with a burst of colour and light.
The high featureless walls that surrounded the riad gave nothing away. A small side-gate swung open to admit them and Karl found himself in another world, a glorious courtyard garden with foliage veiling the galleries and shuttered rooms beyond. Everything seemed veiled and secret. Fountains cooled the air.
Violette greeted a robed man, addressing him as Nabil, and a mild argument ensued. Karl gathered that Nabil had gone ahead through the Crystal Ring and offered to drive back in a truck to collect them. He was unhappy that she and Kurgara had turned down the offer.
They had actually wanted to make the slow journey alone and on foot. It was the start of Kurgara’s healing, Violette insisted.
Later, Karl came to understand what she meant, but now he barely registered their exchange. As soon as he stepped inside, the presence of at least thirty vampires shivered through the ether. Some were bright and vivid, others muted. What was the mood here?
He sensed passion, jealousy, blood-hunger, satiation, calm content… all those emotions leapt out at him, a shocking cacophony after hours of silence. The collective mood was a different matter. It was subdued. Soporific, calm… drugged, almost, as if they were humans dreaming in an opium den.
So many vampires, all living in secret here? They pierced themselves with Istilqa knives to evade the torment of being always awake… but how would they react if the blades lost their potency? That might not happen for many years, but eventually it would.
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