The Dark Arts of Blood

by Freda Warrington

  Was this even possible?

  Karl drew her away and she tasted the salt of her own tears.

  “Quickly,” he said.

  They formed the circle of transformation, all joining hands with Charlotte and Karl on either side of Stefan, Violette facing him. Together, the three shifted into the Crystal Ring, hauling Stefan with them.

  The world changed. They ascended through layers of purplish fog, upwards into sky until they floated on the rich blue ether. Sunset-golden hills rolled below them. Charlotte saw Karl and Violette altering in form, turning to ebony and lace. She saw her own body change, but Stefan remained the same, his hand skeleton-white in hers. He hung between them like a drowned, floating corpse.

  As hard as she pushed away her rising anxiety, it persisted in the back of her mind, pale and terrifying like her lamia. The process wasn’t working. How could it? The Crystal Ring itself wanted no new vampires… or only a tiny, select few.

  “No vampire has ever been reinitiated,” Karl had said. And Stefan himself did not want this. Like Robyn, Violette’s lost love, he preferred death.

  Energy danced around them, tangible like clouds of fireflies. Charlotte felt electricity flowing from Karl to Violette and then through her own hand to Stefan. There it stopped, where their palms joined, creating a burning build-up of force. Charlotte flinched with pain. The power threatened to push her hand and Stefan’s apart. Her instinct was to recoil and let go, to make the pain stop – but she held on.

  Then a storm hit them.

  A small tornado spun them round and round in space. They managed to hang on to each other, fingertips painfully interlaced. If they broke the circle, Stefan would die. Or worse… not die. Charlotte had a horrific vision of him floating helpless forever.

  As they whirled, a shape rose up into the middle of the circle, a grey comet made of smoke and ice…

  It resolved into a clearer form: Charlotte saw a large bony head with a bizarre face, like a medieval image of the devil staring back at her. A long grey face, with tangled white hair and huge spiralling horns. Eyes like bubbles of blood.

  The horns and head rose into the space between them and the red eyes burned into Charlotte’s.

  “It’s Reiniger.” Karl’s voice was faint and distorted by Raqia’s wild air currents.

  “I know,” said Violette. “Determined, isn’t he?”

  “Let’s gain height.” Charlotte’s hair – dark tendrils, not her natural hair – whipped across her eyes as she spoke. “Ignore him. Don’t let go.”

  She felt Violette’s hand working around hers until they got a firm hold on each other’s wrists. A cloud funnel spun around them, pulsing with red and silver lightning. The demon dropped away as they rose upwards, clear of the storm. Glancing down, Charlotte could no longer see him – but it was hard to see anything in the clouds that boiled beneath them. They rose into the blue void. The storm sank, taking Godric with it.

  All she saw, between skeins of hair, was a charcoal blur, as if Reiniger had torn a hole in the Ring as he escaped. Cold shivery dread went into her bones. Again she wondered if this was a mistake, if she should have let Karl grant Stefan his wish after all.

  Too late. They were suspended in a broth of crazed human dreams. Godric had not even touched them, but she couldn’t shake off the image of the devil head rising between them, staring, falling away again.

  Ever since the night she’d been stabbed, Godric Reiniger had been channelling the deadly power of the Bone Well into all of them.

  She tried to speak out loud, but the words were only in her mind. Stefan’s hand stayed dead and cold in hers. The indigo void spun slowly around them.

  “Charlotte,” said Karl. She met his serious, worried gaze. “This isn’t working.”

  “Keep trying,” she said. Then, “Stefan, let us in. We’re here with you.”

  Karl and Violette did as she asked – as much for her as for Stefan. They made sure the circle was firm. Then they tried again, letting their little remaining energy spill from one to another. Violette’s silver-white fire, Karl’s dark red strength and Charlotte’s autumnal golden glow twined like a plaited, rippling thread. When the current stopped at Stefan’s palm, Charlotte used her will like a needle to force it through the flesh barrier.

  A trickle of energy went into him. She felt and saw it: a strand of spider-silk covered in dew. And then a fine necklace of diamonds… swelling into a rush of fire. Like crackling electricity the current went surging around the four of them, building until she thought its sheer force would hurl them all apart and carry her away.

  Still she hung on, eyes squeezed shut against the pain. Stefan, come back…

  How long did the process last? Seconds, minutes.

  Without warning they fell. The world shuddered, and they were abruptly back in their living room again. They broke apart, all finding their feet except Stefan, who slumped on to his side on the carpet.

  Although the lights were on, they gave no more illumination than small dim moons seen through smog. Was it dark when we left? Charlotte thought. Even her sensitive sight could find no colour or detail in the shadows. Everything felt wrong. The room was like a poorly-shot film, grainy and ill-defined, full of flickering shadows.

  Godric Reiniger was sitting in an armchair, luminous in the gloom. He was still in his ridiculous but terrifying gargoyle form, all matted ash-grey fur and twisted horns.

  “I thought you’d killed him,” Violette whispered.

  “I couldn’t be sure,” said Karl. “He vanished back into Raqia. I told you, he’s changed.”

  “Into something that keeps shedding its skin and slithering away every time we attack it, then coming back?”

  “I have never seen this before,” Karl whispered.

  Violette faced the apparition and said, “Get out of my house.”

  Reiniger did not speak or move, but he wasn’t inactive. His presence was a weight on the atmosphere, like a mass deforming space itself. He seemed to be drawing all the worst energies of Raqia into the room, all the grim malevolence he’d absorbed from his bone-knife rituals.

  Trying to disregard him, Karl and Charlotte knelt down on either side of Stefan.

  He’d curled in a foetal position, eyes shut. Every now and then he drew a ragged breath. His wounds, Charlotte saw, had stopped bleeding. He was heavy, pliable and colourless, like a veal carcass. Dead flesh. Was he aware of anything?

  “Stefan,” she whispered. “Can you hear me?”

  No response. Her heart sank even lower. The whole room was flickering in black and white, as if they were trapped inside one of Godric’s films.

  “Your friend is beyond hope.” Reiniger’s goatish mouth did not move, but his voice echoed all around them. “You are all beyond hope.”

  Charlotte saw Karl start to get up and then freeze, like a jammed film.

  Time moved one frame at a time. Paralysed, Charlotte could do nothing but hold Stefan’s stone-cold hand. She sensed Reiniger generating a sort of bull-like anger, sucking all the energy from the room, projecting it back at them in shuddering waves. She felt the temperature drop. Her head buzzed.

  She felt as a human would when a vampire stole their blood. Shivery, faint. Consciousness slipping away.

  All she could hear was Godric Reiniger’s voice, crackling like a gramophone record but painfully clear and loud.

  “They all haunt you, don’t they, Karl? All your victims. All the loved ones you’ve lost. Everyone you have ever killed, friend or enemy. Well, count me among them. I am part of the Crystal Ring now, and what did you say to me? ‘Sometimes the Crystal Ring gives you what you need, and sometimes it gives you what you deserve.’ The rule applies equally to you. You have made me into this wretched creature, this demon – and what is a demon but the sheer torture of your own conscience?”

  Charlotte had one hand on Stefan, the other reaching out blindly for Karl, trying and failing to touch him before she blacked out altogether. It was like trying to move th
rough the densest of Raqia’s fogs, through clay or concrete.

  Her fingers found something – Violette’s hand. Charlotte began trying to push away the heavy grey fog and draw in brighter energies. Violette was helping her. Perhaps it was only happening in her imagination, but it was all they had left.

  “Who told you I had a conscience?” Karl said softly. “I hoped you had died in the desert.”

  “No, Karl. I died in my cinema. I died when you pulled that fatal trick on me in front of my audience.”

  And then the “film” jumped.

  Karl was gone. Charlotte thought he’d entered Raqia, but a second later he was back again – of course he was back, he would never flee and leave her – and he was moving in slow motion, carrying the meat cleaver he’d left in the bedroom. Holding the cleaver two-handed like an axe, he swung it straight at Reiniger’s neck.

  Charlotte heard the sickening noise of contact, blade severing bone. She saw the head part from the body. For a surreal moment, it floated. There was no blood.

  Instead, the thing that had been Godric Reiniger vanished – crumbled to ash and dust, swirled away as if through a portal into Raqia.

  The cleaver wedged deep in the chair back, still vibrating from the impact.

  “Now it’s over,” said Karl.

  * * *

  The lights came up at once. Colour returned to the scene and feeling crept into her limbs in a mass of tingling pain. Like floodwater receding, slow and thick with silt, Raqia melted away and the world returned to normal.

  If anything could ever be normal in their world. For now, this was enough.

  “Charlotte.” Karl’s voice was rough with exhaustion. “Stay with Stefan. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

  “Don’t go after him!” she cried. “He must be dead now. Reiniger, I mean.”

  “I am not going after him,” he answered. “Just stay here. Violette?”

  “Yes, I’m coming with you.”

  Charlotte was too dazed to understand what they were doing. Alone with Stefan, she could only gather her sanity and keep him in the living world. She kissed his cold cheeks and stroked the matted blond hair. She couldn’t find the emotion to weep. Ten, fifteen minutes crawled by…

  He opened his eyes and said, “Where have I been?”

  “Sweetheart, I’m here with you. Take a sip of blood from me. I haven’t much left, but it’s yours.”

  He closed his lips, silently refusing.

  Now we’ll know, Charlotte thought, watching every small movement, trying to read his state of mind. If Stefan means to die, he’ll refuse to feed. He might even tear off our heads, if he finds the strength and he’s still angry enough… unless we destroy him first to protect ourselves. Then all our efforts will have been for nothing.

  Presently she heard voices murmuring in the corridor outside. Karl and Violette ushered in three humans, one woman and two young men. Charlotte recognised them all. One was Leni, who’d helped revive her after the knife attack. It seemed so long ago. They were all friends of Stefan, who knew what he was and loved him enough to give their blood freely. An unhealthy love, perhaps, but at this moment – vital.

  Seeing Stefan, Leni made an inarticulate noise and began to weep.

  Karl and Charlotte helped him to sit up as Leni offered her wrist. Stefan groaned. He turned his head away, resisting. Then he released a long breath.

  Tenderly he took her slender pink arm, bit down, and began to drink.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE GHOST WHO LOOKS LIKE YOU

  “Here we are again,” said Charlotte. “How are you?”

  Amy Temple was at her favourite table overlooking the lake, absently stirring a cup of hot chocolate. She attempted a smile. “Hello. I’m well, thank you. Rather shaken up, but it will pass. Eventually.”

  “Your uncle…” Charlotte sat beside her, trying to open the subject as delicately as she could.

  Two nights ago, Karl had destroyed an entity that was determined to finish them: a vampire that fed on vampires. At least, they hoped he had. Reiniger had become so different, so elusive that no one knew whether anything could kill him.

  “When did you last see him?”

  “What do you mean?” Amy gasped.

  “We went up to Bergwerkstatt yesterday. Twice, in fact. There was no one there. I was worried about you.”

  “No, I… I was at the hospital, and then I stayed in a hotel with Gudrun.” Amy had turned white. “You know that he’s dead, don’t you? Perhaps the news didn’t reach you. My uncle’s dead.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Charlotte wasn’t exactly shocked, but she was startled and confused. Surely Amy would only believe him to be missing. She couldn’t know more than that.

  “Of course I’m sure. I found him.”

  “Found him, where?”

  “Lying in bed.” Amy shook her head, wide-eyed. “I didn’t even know he was home at the time – he’d vanished for hours and we didn’t hear him come back. I still can’t believe it. Whatever his faults, part of me loved him and I can’t simply stop.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, but what happened?”

  Karl’s attack in the desert didn’t kill him, she thought. Godric escaped into Raqia and went straight back to Bergwerkstatt. He must have been weak. She pictured him, materialising naked in his bedroom and crawling between the sheets. He couldn’t face his humiliation and killed himself?

  “I found him and called Gudrun. Everyone else had deserted him by then – we saw them all go.” She paled. “My poor uncle – he looked dreadful when we found him, so swollen and covered in a livid blood-red rash. The doctors believe it was septicaemia. Blood poisoning. They said that the infection can overwhelm the body and cause death within hours. They took him to hospital, but it was already too late.”

  “My God, that must have been terrible.” Charlotte hardly knew how to react.

  “There were little cuts all over his arms and chest, like patterns. Strange, I don’t know why he would do that. The freshest ones were very infected.” Amy indicated her own breastbone. “He’d cut a sort of symbol over his heart that was inflamed and weeping… horrible.” Her shoulders drooped. “But he didn’t tell us he was ill! Apparently he must have gone to bed with a fever, and he didn’t wake up.” Amy gave a single, choking sob. “I wanted him humiliated. Not dead.”

  “I’m so very sorry.” Charlotte meant it. She was sorry, not for Godric’s death, but for Amy’s grief.

  “The doctors think he had an underlying illness, possibly the onset of tuberculosis. If so, he hid it well. I thought he had a smoker’s cough… but he never looked properly well, and he had this feverish energy…”

  “All symptoms?” said Charlotte, thinking that the Istilqa knives’ power must have masked his illness.

  “I think his energy came from using something to keep going. Cocaine? I don’t know. But that useless Dr Ochsner kept telling him he was fine, when he wasn’t. So when the sepsis took hold, he wasn’t strong enough to fight it.”

  “Amy, when did this happen? Two nights ago?”

  “What? No, days ago. The morning after the debacle with the film.”

  Days ago, thought Charlotte. I’ve lost track of time. So that means he died at least three days before the crisis with Stefan.

  “Charlotte, are you all right? I feel so odd about the whole thing. Part of me wants to mourn, but then I keep thinking of the vile things he did, and how I betrayed him.”

  “For filming him in, er, a compromising situation?”

  “Partly that, but…” Amy flushed.

  “Don’t be embarrassed. Karl told me what happened.”

  “It was so bizarre.” Amy spoke in a rush, as if relieved to spill her feelings. “The apparition looked like you, which was bad enough, but when she, or he, turned into my uncle… I’m still having nightmares. I never expected to find myself filming some weird kind of pornography, but the real betrayal was that I processed the film and spliced it
all together and let Karl screen it, while I sat next to my uncle, pretending innocence, as all the important people in town sat there with their mouths open.”

  Charlotte grinned. “Oh, I would love to have seen their faces.”

  A giggle burst from Amy. She put her fingers to her mouth. “I shouldn’t laugh. It was ghastly. But it would have been hilarious, if it hadn’t been so… mortifying.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I never meant to do such a thing to my uncle, but…”

  “He did rather bring it on himself.”

  “I dread to think what he would have done if he’d found out that I helped, but he never even guessed. And now he’s gone, and I don’t know what to do. I miss Mariette and the others. I even miss Fadiya.”

  “What will happen to his house? His studio?”

  “I don’t know. It depends what’s in his will. He spoke of setting up something called ‘The Reiniger Foundation’ to continue his work in perpetuity.” Her voice went tight, sardonic. “Perhaps when the scandal’s died down, someone will take on Bergwerkstatt and make movies about what a wonderful, forgotten hero he was. But after I’ve packed my belongings, I shall never set foot there again. The place feels… haunted.”

  Charlotte touched her gloved hand. “Karl and I never wanted to involve you in this sordid matter. I can’t apologise enough, nor ask for forgiveness, but you were more helpful than you know. Can you go out into the world and pretend you never saw a thing, that you don’t know we exist?”

  Amy’s eyes glazed for a few seconds.

  “I’ll have to try, or everyone will think I’m mad. Oh, the things I’ve seen, Charlotte. I would think I needed locking up, if I didn’t know it was all real.” Her expression turned pensive. “I know Uncle Godric could be difficult, and cruel, but I miss him, in an odd way. Now I’ve no one to kick against! He could have been a good man…”

  “If only he hadn’t been a sadistic megalomaniac?” said Charlotte. “If he hadn’t carved people up for the thrill of it, sent you to a butcher for medical treatment, planned to marry you off as if sending a cow to a prize bull?” Amy didn’t reply. Her gaze fell.