The horror of it was clotted in her throat like blood, there was nothing she could say or do to release it. Edward kept on about vampires—no, it can’t be. Karl was always so tender, so kind… but the way he looked sometimes, strange things he said. She remembered his lips on her throat and shivered. Those times when he… No, no, it’s unthinkable… but could he, would he have done that to me?
Maddy had given them a perfunctory hand with Edward, then run back inside the house. She had seemed more angry than anything, muttering that it was, “A mistake, a misunderstanding.” She closed her eyes when it happened, Charlotte thought. She refused to see it!
“Some blasted use Maddy was!” Anne grumbled. She struggled with the starting-handle, swore, finally brought the car to life and jumped into the driving seat. “Get in, Charli. We’ll go down to the doctor in the village.”
Charlotte felt her duty was to go with Anne. But if anything happens to Maddy or David—dear Lord, don’t let them be hurt. And Karl—whatever he had done, she was afraid for him too. No choice. “Go without me,” she called through the car window.
Anne, thankfully, realised there was no time to waste arguing. “Right!” she shouted, already pulling away. Charlotte ran back into the house and up the stairs, almost choked by the thrust of her heartbeat.
She reached the landing too late.
Shaking so violently she could barely stand, Charlotte stared through the doorway and saw Maddy in Karl’s grasp, abject with disillusionment and terror. And Karl, ignoring her fear, was speaking quiet, understated threats of death.
Like a serrated knife the truth drove through Charlotte. What was he, to have killed Edward—yet to be standing here afterwards as if nothing had happened, unmoved and sublimely beautiful—just as he had looked when he had kissed her, declared love with the same mouth that now uttered callous threats against her own brother and sister?
The Devil. Only the Devil himself could possess such twisted glamour, look so calmly on his own crimes.
How else could he disregard Maddy’s pitiful pleas for help? He must listen—he can’t be so cruel—yet Karl remained untouched, glacial.
“Let her go, damn you!” David said fiercely. “Good God, Karl, to think we trusted you! If you’ve a human bone in your body—”
“But I have not. I am sorry, David, but I have stated my conditions and if your men will carry them out, your sister will not be harmed.” Karl’s presence was powerful, a charismatic will that could not be resisted. His very calmness and the eerie, commanding quietness of his voice were part of that power.
Charlotte had never seen David look so much at a loss. “For God’s sake, man, she’s just a girl. Be reasonable. You can’t do this!”
“If you want to help her, I suggest you all leave. Now.”
Charlotte stared at Karl, and all at once she felt that she had lost her mind. Reality had shifted, entered another dimension. Driven not by bravery but by some rash, internal compulsion, she found herself running into the room. One of the workmen tried to catch her round the waist but she pulled free, gasping, “For pity’s sake, don’t take Madeleine. Take me instead. Please, Karl, take me.”
There was a moment of absolute silence. She couldn’t see properly; everything was spinning, blurred. The only clear figure was Karl, and from him flowed danger as bright and sharp as lead-crystal. Glass stained with blood.
Then Karl said, “Very well.”
He let go of Madeleine, who flew to David’s arms; and in the same instant he took hold of Charlotte, very gently, by the wrist. Softly he said, “Now you will all leave. You may bring Charlotte food and clothes and leave them by the front door; but if there is any attempt to enter the manor again, she will suffer. Now, if you value her life, go.”
David’s face turned bleak with defeat. He began to back out of the door, taking Maddy with him, followed by the disconsolate workmen. That was the worst shock of all, the moment when they gave up and abandoned her. Grey stars rolled across Charlotte’s eyes, blotting out the last sight of them and the fading echo of their footsteps.
I love Maddy, I couldn’t let her suffer, I had to save her… She drew the half-truth around her for warmth, but it dissolved like snow in rain. Hopeless to deceive herself. Would I have been so noble if it hadn’t been Karl? I don’t know. I’m not selfless, not brave… just a despicable hypocrite. Her real motive was far more complex, painfully selfish; despair had overridden her fear. She felt her disgrace was complete, making her an expendable member of the family… a scapegoat to take away their pain. But deepest of all ran the need to know the truth about Karl, however unbearable that truth might be.
Expensive, such selfishness.
Karl’s grip felt hard and delicate as bone; the horrible impression of a skeleton holding her. She looked up at him, desperate for a word, a glance to ease her anguish. But as he turned his face towards her, all she saw was an exquisitely beautiful mask; eyes fashioned from jewels that mimicked human emotions to perfection. Love, sorrow, pain; how clever, how utterly hollow and cold.
Then a devastating wave of terror broke over her and she thought, I don’t know this creature, I don’t know him at all! God help me, what have I done?
She tried to cry out, “David, don’t leave me!” but the blood was spinning out of her head and she could not speak. All the life had bled out of the house and she was alone, sinking through a black and grey netherworld where nothing mattered.
* * *
PART TWO
Like an angel crying mercy to a storm
You call from shadows where you don’t belong
And the candle that I carry in my dark
Was once a torch to burn that I held back
When I tried to comfort you, I lied
Now I speak with effort, my tongue forever tied
When you walked across the meadow towards the moon
You made the midnight stranger welcome much too soon…
—Horslips
Ring-a-Rosey
* * *
Chapter Ten
About the Fire
When Charlotte awoke, she was convinced that she lay in her own bed. She felt that she had slept for days, and her only recent memory was of what seemed a vivid, recurring dream. Karl in a doorway, lightning candles on a candelabra. Slowly he turned to face her, his face glowing eerily white, the flames turning his hair to a blood-red halo; and he seemed utterly alien, supernatural, no longer the man she had loved. He was staring at her as he approached, his eyes as brilliant and compelling as fire scintillating through garnets.
She knew then that this was no mortal being. She was aware only of the white face, the burning, chilling eyes, and the roaring grey cataract of terror…
And then of waking in her own bed…
But if it was her own bed, why was the canopy so old and faded, like a medieval tapestry? There was a vaulted ceiling, stone and plaster walls, and everything was in the wrong place… it was a nightmare she had sometimes had as a child, that she had awoken in a different place and was a prisoner…
“Father,” she whispered. “Are you there? Father… “
But it was no dream, and the shadowy, unfamiliar room was real. A fire glowed in a cavernous grate.
A voice said, “Don’t be afraid, Charlotte. Don’t you remember where you are?”
Then the memories drenched her. She sat up, sweat branching coldly down her back. Her whole body felt twisted up like wire with tension.
“Where’s David? Where’s Anne?”
“They’ve gone. You fainted, don’t you remember?”
She looked round and saw Karl sitting in a chair next to the bed, in waistcoat and shirt-sleeves, his collar undone.
“When?” she gasped.
“Ten minutes ago, no more.” His face was sublime, impassive, his voice polite. Detached from her distress.
“But I feel as if I’ve been asleep—unconscious—for days!”
“You have not, I assure you,” he said. “The min
d can play tricks when you are in a state of shock. Here, you will feel better if you drink this.” He placed a cup in her hands. She stared at it as if it were poison.
“It’s whisky and hot water,” he said. “One of the workmen was good enough to leave a hipflask in the kitchen.”
She sipped cautiously at the drink and felt the fierce heat spreading through her, returning her fully to her senses. She realised that they were in the solar, which in the Middle Ages had been the family’s private apartment about the hall. Now her prison. She put the cup aside and stared at Karl, hardly believing he was the same person. With her own eyes she had seen him kill Edward, fling both him and David down the stairs, seize Madeleine…
She wanted to die.
She could see the unhuman quality of him now, so powerfully that she could not understand why she had not realised it before. As he spoke, she watched his mouth, the glint of light on his canine teeth. They seemed normal again, but the vision tormented her; his savagely open mouth and the thorn-cruel fangs… Impossible to grasp. Vampire.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” she said. “The things Edward said about you. We didn’t believe him but he knew, didn’t he? Is that why you killed him?”
Karl sat back in the chair, crossing his right knee over the left. “Is he dead? I don’t know,” he said, with the detached, kindly interest of a doctor.
“You—” She clenched her hands, waited for the spasm of emotion to pass. “Just tell me the truth. You can’t make things better by lying, and you certainly can’t make them worse.”
He did not reply for a moment. He folded his hands. “Very well. Yes, Charlotte, I am a vampire. Does it help you at all to know this?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“No, because it is only a word. I don’t know what associations it has for you, but I doubt they are the same as mine.”
She drew her knees up to her chin and hugged them, as if by holding herself very still she would be safe. Not looking at him, she said, “When we were children, Fleur used to frighten Madeleine and me by reading ghost stories to us. There was one about a vampire, called Carmilla, that haunted me for weeks; but it was a long time ago. I don’t know how to answer. Everyone’s heard folklore, but I’ve never given it any thought.”
“That is strange, for someone who takes a scientific interested in ghosts.”
“People do see ghosts, but I never thought vampires were real!” she said angrily.
Karl shook his head and said in a clinical tone, “So anything you think you know is based on fiction and hearsay.”
“I know what I saw today! That was worse than any book!”
He did not react. “Well, Carmilla and the other stories are the culmination of myths which may have some basis in reality.” He leaned towards her. “So, how do I look to you now? Like a fiend? Or the same as before, the same man to whom you have declared and shown such affection?”
She shrank away. “Don’t! Don’t torment me.”
“I have no wish to torment you, Charlotte.” He went over to the grate and cast fresh logs onto the fire. They hissed and popped, showering sparks up the chimney. As he turned round, she huddled back against the carved headboard and his lips thinned, very slightly. “However, it seems that I am unable to avoid doing so.”
So cold, he seemed. The tenderness he’d shown her, all a sham; just a brittle shell over a blood-black pit of ice.
“And you don’t care,” she whispered. “It wouldn’t be so bad if you cared, but—God, I can’t speak. How could you do this?”
“But this is what vampires are like, don’t you see? Utterly selfish. Capable of any lie that will achieve what they want. Capable of any pretence.”
“Vampires don’t exist! This is some awful delusion you’re under,” she said helplessly.
“As I said, it’s just a word. I do not sleep in a coffin, nor turn to dust in sunlight. But the fact is I am not human, and I need human blood to sustain me. I want to explain what happened to Edward; not to excuse myself, because it is quite irredeemable, but so that you may understand what I am.”
” ‘O wonderful, when devils tell the truth!’ ” Charlotte whispered bitterly.
Karl sat down on the corner of the bed, one pale hand curled round the post. ” ‘More wonderful, when angels are so angry’,” he replied. She bowed her head on to her knees, unable to look at him. “And you have every right to be angry, of course. But if you will let me continue; I also have an extreme instinct for self-preservation. I came here with David simply to set his mind at rest about last night—not to harm him. Can you believe that?”
“Hardly, but I’ll take your word for it.”
“But I made a mistake. In normal circumstances I can control the appetite for blood without conscious effort, but last night I’d had a fight with someone and it left me very weak.” He paused, as if unsure whether to elaborate. “Another vampire had drawn all the blood out of me.”
She was shocked. Suddenly there were hidden layers of events she had not suspected. “Another? Was it Pierre?”
“He is a vampire, but it wasn’t him. It’s irrelevant. The point is that when I met David, my thirst was growing almost unbearable… This is disturbing for you.”
“You must tell me. I can bear it, as long as it’s the truth.”
“Impossible to understand the thirst unless you’ve experienced it; but it can become a delirium beyond which nothing else matters. I knew I had to leave David before it overrode my will. I was leaving, when Edward came to the door. If he had not attacked me, if he’d stood aside—or if I had not been in that trance of extreme thirst—all would have been well. No vampire deliberately betrays himself by feeding in front of mortals; it was my own fault, for underestimating my state of starvation. So the moment he set upon me, my control vanished. Self-preservation, you see; he attacked me, I needed his blood. He did not stand a chance.”
A moan escaped her lips. What reply can I make to this horror?
He went on, “I would not have harmed him for anything—but I am a vampire, Charlotte. If human values and morals had a hold on us, we would not survive. I never, if I can help it, prey upon people I know; but don’t mistake me. I am not sentimental, nor merciful. If your family persist against me, they may die for it.”
“That’s vile.” She pressed her forehead so hard against her knees that the bones ached. “How can someone so callous have mimicked such tenderness? You must have hypnotised me. Is that what vampires do?”
He paused. “I can’t deny that I have betrayed you.”
“You only pretended to love me.”
She wanted him to deny it. With all her soul she wanted him to deny it. Eventually he said, “Now you see the full extent to which I have deceived you, all under the guise of honesty. You thought I was being honest, admitting I could not marry you?”
“Yes.”
“But that was a less-than-white lie to hide a truth far more hideous; I could not marry you because I am not human. I must drink blood to live.”
The image hit her like nausea; the passionless yet bestial intensity of his face as he’d lunged down and torn into Edwards’ throat… “But you never drank mine.”
He looked at her over his shoulder, his profile shimmering against the fire. “No. But I wanted to.” She stared at him. “I longed to. You never knew what danger you were in, alone with me. It is stronger than lust and far harder to control. I might have killed you.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said, but she did. Now she knew why he had always seemed to struggle against a deeper need than passion. The way he had sometimes kissed her throat, shuddered, turned his face away… God in heaven.
His gaze shifted away from hers. In the same impersonal voice he said, “Then I had better tell you the very worst of it, which will certainly make you hate me—if you do not already. Vampires do not reproduce, neither with humans nor with each other. Therefore we rarely feel physical desire; but when we do, it is for a very specific purpose. D
o you want me to go on?”
She gave a convulsive nod. “I don’t follow.”
“When a vampire is in continual proximity to a potential victim but resisting the instinct to prey upon them—as I was with you—then sexual desire can develop as a way to break down the intellectual resistance to our instinct to feed. The loss of control in love-making leads almost inevitably to the fulfilment of the real need, which is for blood. Do you see?”
She hunched over the sick ache in her stomach. She felt utterly betrayed, destroyed. “Dear God. To think I was worried I might have a child!”
“I knew there was no danger of that.”
“You knew—” Bitterness welled up. “Why did you go to all that trouble? It would have been easier just to—just to do to me what you did to Edward. Why didn’t you?”
“I came to your father to gain knowledge, not his family’s blood; I do not need to go to such elaborate lengths of finding nourishment.” There was a touch of contempt in his tone. “I never wished you harm. In seducing you my instinct was trying to override a conscious decision. I should have resisted, I should have left you alone—but I did not. I was playing with your life. You don’t know how close I came to it, Charlotte; one more night, and I doubt that I could have resisted any longer.”
“And I would have died?”
“Our bite is not invariably fatal—but it can cause madness, which perhaps is worse.”
“And that’s the only reason—not because you loved me—” she choked, unable to go on.
“I was drawn to you, I don’t deny it. It was so easy to take advantage of your feelings for me.”
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