“Why did you come to us?”
“In search of enlightenment. We are thinking creatures, Charlotte, not mindless ones. Even your father admits that there is more in nature than science can explain. I wanted to learn everything I could, in the hopes I might discover something that would explain how such a being as a vampire can exist, and how the Crystal Ring—” he broke off, shaking his head, then held out one hand in the firelight. “This is not human flesh. What is it? How is it that we remain changeless?”
Charlotte’s eyes widened. “And have you found the answer?”
“Not yet. Now, perhaps, I never will.”
“Were you—were you ever human?”
“Yes, long ago… at the beginning of the last century.”
More than a hundred and twenty years… She could not grasp it. “But you can’t be more than thirty at the most.”
“I was twenty-seven when I was taken. It is not a story I would relish telling. But before you ask, no, my victims do not become vampires themselves. There is far more to the transformation than that.”
“Thank God. I was thinking that Edward—”
“Well, don’t,” he said firmly. “It’s quite impossible. But we were talking of your father. I had heard of him before I came to England, of course. By chance I saw a photograph of your sister Fleur in a society paper and I… ” he half-smiled. “I invited myself to her party in the hope of meeting him. All so easy, really. I wanted to approach him only because of his reputation as a great scientist; I had no interest in his family. But humans can be as enchanting to vampires as we are to them, and I was captivated by all of you—yet I was able to enjoy your company without harbouring any sinister intent towards you. Other vampires might not have remained so disinterested, but as I said, I do not generally feed on people to whom I have been introduced.”
He said it with acid self-mockery. She didn’t know how to respond. “But you still needed to feed.”
“Yes, but I fed elsewhere,” he said dismissively. “There was no need for me to harm you. I must admit that the continuing charm and compliance of one such as Madeleine can make it torture to resist my nature. Nevertheless, I am very well-practised in doing so.”
A vision hit Charlotte, of Karl moving through different places, different times, with women—and men—sighing after him wherever he went; and he simply passing by with the friendly insouciance that he had shown to Madeleine and Elizabeth. The image shook her.
“Then I think you must have an absolutely unbelievable degree of willpower,” Charlotte said sceptically.
He smiled. “No. It is simply that avoidance of pain becomes an ingrained habit. Too easy to look at a beautiful woman and think of what might have been; but there is no point in desiring her companionship, and if I desire her blood it may destroy her… Do you see, it is the pointlessness of it that makes it no trouble at all to be detached?”
“It sounds lonely,” she said.
“Yes. It can be. It is very rare that I am emotionally drawn to a mortal. I don’t allow it to happen. But when I met you, Charlotte, I saw something within you that went straight through those defences like light. I can’t define it, and you are obviously unaware that you have this power.”
“But why me?” She still only half-believe him. “Madeleine’s prettier than me, she’s confident, she—”
“Charlotte, I have never known anyone who undeservedly has so little self-regard. Do you think I cannot see beneath the surface? She and Elizabeth are like streams, sparkling but without depth. They were trying very hard to hold my attention, but I have seen that bright and transient charm so often; it’s enchanting and forgotten in an instant. Yet you held my attention without trying. If I try to analyse why… You were all nervous, unselfconscious beauty, like a gazelle. Your demeanour said, ‘I am nothing, please pass me by’—and that may be all some people see in you—but your eyes were telling me something quite different. There was such intelligence there, restlessness, this strange mixture of cynicism and passion. Most humans are as transparent as day to me—but you were a mystery, and still are.”
“It sounds as if you couldn’t resist a challenge,” she said.
Karl laughed softly. “I was right about the cynicism, at least. But you are unjust. God, if you could only see yourself with my eyes! You are as enthralling to me as a vampire can be to a mortal; glowing with life like a golden light, filled with love, fear, hope—every precious human emotion. I saw in you someone who could have been a soulmate—if only circumstances had been different.”
Her throat closed up. She could hardly breathe. He went on, “Yet I did manage to control my feelings and be only a friend to you—until you sang that song of the Doppelgänger. A song of appalling loneliness, of searching endlessly for someone who is no longer there… and it made the gulf between what you are and what I am, mortal and immortal, unbearable. I wanted to pretend it did not exist. To close the gulf, just for a little time… ” His voice became quieter and quieter as he spoke.
“I was always aware of that distance between us, but I didn’t know what it was,” she said.
“Don’t think I am blaming you; I should still have controlled my feelings, but I let passion and delusion take over—even knowing the effect it would have on you. I did not mean to act cruelly. I simply discovered that it is possible to live for years and years thinking that you are in control and that nothing can hurt you because nothing matters. And then something happens to make you realise that for all that time you were completely desperate… and the desperation will not be denied.”
“But that’s exactly what happened to me!”
“I know. That’s what makes this even more cruel. I am capable of love, Charlotte, though of unhuman and ungentle intensity.”
“But you said you didn’t love me.”
“No, I didn’t say it. I tried to make you think it. There is a difference. Can you remember the nights we spent together, and still doubt what I feel for you?”
Tears stung her eyes, but she would not let them fall. “I didn’t doubt it at the time. Now I don’t know what to think.”
“What I told you so harshly about vampire instinct is true. It may be hard for you to understand that it can also be an expression of love, yet it is; and I had to resist it, for your sake. Every desire I have felt or shown for you, Charlotte, has been born of tenderness.”
Her hand was on her throat, involuntarily fingering the skin. Her emotions were in complete confusion.
“But every time I was alone with you I was in danger of being your… your… “
“Victim,” he finished for her. The word had a chilling edge to it. “Yes, the danger was there. But if I had taken advantage, how would it have availed? One moment of fulfilment that would have destroyed you… How could I have borne that? It was wrong of me ever to have placed you in such danger, but I averted it time and time again, because your life means everything to me.”
She looked up, stunned by the strength of feeling in his voice. His eyes were fixed unwaveringly on her; glowing, predatory. She felt strangled. What sort of passion was it that would leave her not dishonoured, nor regretful, nor with secret joyful memories—but dead? As she stared at him, another waking vision struck her: Karl wandering from one room to another in a great house like Parkland, desperately searching for her, finding all deserted. And he was weeping as he searched and she was a ghost watching him, calling his name but unable to make him see or hear her… He spoke. The vision ended. “I can’t blame you for looking on me with horror. You see me now as I am, just as my victims realise what I am in that split-second before I strike. I can never hope for you to look on me with love again; nor have I any right to.”
The despair in his voice wrenched her heart. “If—if you had fed on me, I would have died—or gone mad?”
“A careful vampire does not kill; but I wish it were only blood that we take, Charlotte. Our victims suffer mental derangement, which may take the form of irrational terrors, delusions
or mania. Depending on the victim, the madness may last only a few days or it may be permanent. Sometimes I think that outright killing would be preferable.”
“But why does it happen?”
“There are different theories. One is that having glimpsed the pit of darkness beneath the skin of normal life, the victim never feels safe again. Perhaps you realise now that Madeleine was ill because Pierre had attacked her.”
Although she had suspected, hearing him say it still horrified her. “You knew all the time? But who is Pierre, why did he come to you?”
“It’s a long story. He came to deliver a message from another of our kind… the one I fought with last night. But Pierre is indiscreet and cruel; I had to stop him posing any more danger to your family and that was why David saw me feeding upon him. I weakened him, took him away. But as for Madeleine, I was distressed to see how she was suffering when I was the last person who could help. The way her attraction to me became an obsession was a symptom of it. I cannot guess what tortured thoughts were in her mind.”
“Will she get better?” Charlotte asked desperately.
“She has a strong spirit. It is the imaginative ones who suffer the most. You realise, of course, that there is no way to explain this that makes it seem anything other than what it is: evil.”
It was several moments before she could speak, then her voice almost failed her. “When you said that people fall in love with you for the wrong reasons, is this what you meant?”
He was no longer looking at her. His long, dark lashes were curved against his pale cheeks. ”Yes, this is precisely what I meant. They become infatuated with evil, and so meet destruction.”
“And—and what I felt for you, was it the same infatuation? Not real love at all?”
“Ask yourself that, Charlotte!” His voice was sharp with pain. “How do I know? I have no right to expect genuine love of anyone. If either of us had hopes, it is all the same hopeless… I thought I had hardened myself against such feelings long ago, but now I find I was wrong. I would do anything to keep you with me but it’s impossible. I can offer you nothing—not marriage, not children, not a normal life; nothing.”
“Those things have never had any meaning for me,” she said. “I didn’t ask anything of you except to be with you. The man I—I thought I loved; was he any different from this creature you say you are? I can’t separate them. You sound the same and you look the same, and you say you really love me… “
“I was always myself with you, liebchen. I was not acting, if that’s what you think. There was just an unfortunate fact about me that you did not know.”
She put her face in her hands. She had been tempted by the Devil and she had fallen; she felt ruined, her heart was shattered. Was it worse to know that he loved her after all? Yes. Yes, it is worse.
Karl’s love for her made it impossible for her own feelings to die; and as long as she felt the smallest degree of sympathy for him or belief in him, that surely made her as evil as he was. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. Then she felt the light touch of his hand on her arm, and he drew her out of her chair and gathered her onto his knee. Her limbs felt weightless. She put her arms round his neck and they held each other, auburn and russet hair mingling together.
“Dear God,” he said. “I haven’t the heart to keep you prisoner, beloved. Your brother is outside; I will come down with you and unlock the door, and deliver you safely to him.”
She raised her head. “Then they’ll try to arrest you, and you might kill some of them.”
“I will not touch anyone.”
“Then they might kill you.”
“Perhaps. I rather thought you might wish me dead by now.”
“Well, I don’t!” she said fiercely. She knew the decision she was making was wrong, but she let the knowledge settle cold and dark within her. “Don’t send me away, Karl. I won’t go.”
“I set you free, and you choose to stay?”
“Even if I left here this minute I would still be a prisoner! How can anyone understand? It’s taken over my life completely, there is nothing else! You can’t put it right, Karl, by pretending it never happened.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Do you regret it?”
“No.” She looked at the shiny blackness of the window, listened to the nightwind moaning around the house. She thought of David waiting grimly in the dark; she thought of Anne, Madeleine, her father, but they seemed to be on the far side of a night that would never end. “You can’t show me a glimpse of another world and then shut the door,” she said. “I want to know everything.”
* * *
Chapter Eleven
Whispered Secrets
Kid, I cannot believe you did something so rash!” George Neville’s voice trailed off into a cough and he leaned heavily on the marble mantelpiece, thumping his breastbone. They were in the main drawing room with Elizabeth and Inspector Ash. It was approaching midnight and they were all red-eyed with strain. David was concerned to see how his father was suffering; it had taken a bare few hours outside the manor, earlier in the day, to affect his weak chest.
“It wasn’t rash,” David replied, calm but grim. “Von Wultendorf was on his own, outside the house, standing on the step as if he were actually trying to make himself a target. Damn it, he had fair warning! And he was so infernally arrogant—all he could say was, ‘The more difficult you make this for me, the more difficult you make it for Charlotte.’ I had to shoot. He was going to go back in the house and do God-knows-what to her. It was my only chance to stop him.”
“But you didn’t stop him.”
“The bullet went straight into his chest, I swear. He fell back against the door, then straightened up as if nothing had happened.”
Neville scratched at his head, smoothed back the thinning hair. “I wish to God you had killed him, David.”
The inspector said, “If you had succeeded in killing him, you may well have found yourself facing a criminal charge.”
“I tell you, I’d happily hang if it meant getting Charlotte out of there!” David said furiously.
“Unfortunately, as you only seemed to have given him a flesh wound, you may have made things worse for Miss Neville,” said Ash.
My aim’s not that bad, David thought angrily. The fact that a bullet through the chest didn’t floor him only proves that he’s not human! He bit down on his frustration. He couldn’t say it out loud.
Ash went on, “Under the circumstances, sir, no action will be taken against you. But I warn you, unless you agree not to take matters into your own hands again, I shall have to insist that you stay away from the manor.”
“The hell I will,” David said under his breath. “Very well, Inspector, you have my word; but don’t ask me to keep away. I’m going back there now.”
“Oh, David, you really should get some sleep,” said Elizabeth. “You’ll be no use to your sister if you collapse with exhaustion.”
“If you’d spent a few weeks in the trenches, you would really know the meaning of the word ‘exhaustion’,” David said quietly. “This is nothing.”
“How disrupting this all is,” Elizabeth sighed, turning away.
David resisted making an angry response. Underneath her brittle surface, he knew his aunt was as upset as anyone. “Just keep the supplies of hot food and drink coming, Auntie.”
“I’m coming up there with you,” said his father.
“Oh, no, you’re not!” said David. “Two hours in the cold air this afternoon and you sound like a consumptive. Maddy needs you here.”
His father shook his head, pushing his hands into his shapeless pockets. “Damn my blasted lungs! Here, David.” He produced a bulky envelope and held it out, speaking gruffly as he did when he felt awkward. “I’ve written Charlotte a letter. Will you take it for her? I put your mother’s cross in there; Charlotte needs it more than I do, just now.” He brusquely wiped moisture out of his eyes. “I didn’t mean to be so harsh on her the other d
ay. I was so bothered about losing Henry, I never gave her happiness a thought. This might—this might be the only chance I have to tell her I’m sorry.”
***
In response to another knock at the door, Karl went down and retrieved—more cautiously this time—a second parcel of food for Charlotte. When he returned to the solar he looked at her sitting by the fire, waif-like, her woollen sweater barely softening the tense angle of her shoulders. In candlelight the chamber had the clear mellow quality of a painting by Vermeer; a moment frozen in time, telling a story that ran far deeper than the surface. Charlotte seemed stretched thin by what was happening, like glass held up to the light. And her eyes were shimmering circles of violet, thirsty for knowledge; for understanding. They made him feel oddly helpless. Their light burned him, made demands that he could not answer.
He wanted to tell her everything, yet he couldn’t bring himself to begin. He hardly dared to touch her. So much passed between them, unspoken, every time they looked at each other, but the veil of danger kept them apart.
More and more he was aware of her as a mortal; the blood running like quicksilver just beneath the delicate skin, the enticing warmth of her. Beauty that took away his detachment to a dangerous degree. But he sublimated these feelings and would do so again and again for as long as he must.
“Charlotte,” he said, walking across to her, “here is a letter for you.”
She looked at the envelope in his hand with astonishment, but made no move to take it. “Where did that come from?”
“They brought some more food for you. It was in the parcel, with a message from David imploring me to release you.”
“Oh God,” she breathed.
“Aren’t you going to open it? I wonder if they expected me to tear it up without showing it to you.”
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