For a moment he thought Karl was going to revert to his old ways, and refuse. But to his joy, Karl responded, “I can do better; I can show you all the places we walked and talked together, everything that happened. There is so much to tell you.”
“Yes, yes,” Kristian said eagerly. “Take me there.”
“Some strange and frightening things happened to us,” Karl added, “which made no sense. If you could help me to understand—”
“Come, then. By God’s grace, I shall give you all the answers.”
It could happen that I begin to despise Karl for his surrender, eventually, Kristian thought. Ah, the luxury of despising him while he still adores me… but not for a very, very long time. In the glow of triumph Kristian would forgive Karl anything, go anywhere with him. In the light of Karl’s beauty Kristian’s heart had melted completely from stone to honey.
***
Hour after hour Charlotte lay on the icy floor of the cell, her thirst a constant scream within her. She prayed for oblivion but it would not come. No sleep, no reprieve from the black fire that was slowly stripping her veins from her muscles, her flesh from her bones. If she tried to move, the effort caused such pain that she had no choice but to remain stretched out and gasping like a speared fish.
She prayed unashamedly to God. She prayed for Kristian to return… But if he does I won’t give in. I will never say he’s right. I just want… want… Oh God, blood. Waking visions of blood, flooding down the walls of the cell, pouring over her in waves… but never, never a drop on her parched tongue.
Karl will come back and save me, she thought again and again. But the hours went by and he did not come.
Is this what Karl meant by hell? This is the sin, this is the punishment. My punishment for wanting it, even though he warned me and warned me… And for a few desperate moments she railed against Karl. Why did you do this to me, when you knew how terrible it would be? Why did you come back, why didn’t you leave me alone? Father and David were right. You were evil and you deceived me completely.
Charlotte curled around her anguish and let out a soundless groan that went on and on. It was not sleep she craved but death. Even death itself had betrayed her.
Time no longer went forward but spread out in all directions. She moved blindly through it, one way then another, but the walls were infinitely elastic and would not let her through. She had been there forever, when she was suddenly brought back to reality by five spots of acid eating through the flesh of her upper arm. Fingertips.
Her body was so desiccated that the touch was agony. Looking down at her was the most beautiful female face Charlotte had ever seen; dark eyes like Karl’s in a perfect oval. Although her hair was no longer scarlet but dark and cut short, Charlotte recognised Ilona.
“Oh dear. Poor Charlotte,” Ilona said mockingly. “What a state you are in.” Am I imagining this? Ilona seemed to be speaking with the voice of her thoughts. “I could have told you this would happen, that Karl would take you, use you and betray you. Do you still wonder why I detest him so much?”
If there was one thing that could deepen the nightmare it was this. Ilona’s eyes glittering with spite in the darkness. And then the sharp points of her teeth plunging into Charlotte’s blistered throat.
She lifted Charlotte off the floor, then withdrew her fangs and threw her down again with an exclamation of disgust. “There’s no blood left in you! Do you know there’s no torment worse than starvation to a vampire?”
Charlotte tried to speak and found that despite her physical distress, she could rally her thoughts and speak lucidly. “I suppose Kristian has sent you to torment me.”
“It’s nice to gloat,” said Ilona. Her Austrian accent was more marked than Karl’s, her voice light and crystal-sharp. “If you knew how many times Kristian has done this to me!”
Charlotte was shaken by the degree of anger than Ilona was rousing in her. She felt no fear of her, only ice-white rage. “You murdered my sister!” she cried, and she rose up and lashed out with a strength that came out of nowhere and subsided as fast.
Ilona evaded the blow easily and laughed. “Don’t be an idiot. You would kill your own sister if she came in now. You know how this thirst feels! It recognises no faces, it knows no names. It has no conscience!”
Charlotte stumbled back, but kept her feet by leaning against the wall. She used every shred of her will to push the thirst into the background. “Don’t you have a mind to control it?” she retorted. “I didn’t realise how much I love my family until this happened. You don’t feel anything but hatred!”
“All this talk about love and hate,” said Ilona, rolling her eyes. “You have been a vampire for all of five minutes. You are a child, you understand nothing of how I feel.”
“You did not need to murder Fleur. You did it out of sheer viciousness. Not all vampires are like you.”
“Aren’t they? Those that aren’t are hypocrites.” Ilona folded her bone-smooth arms. “Like my father.”
She moved closer, raised a hand and stroked Charlotte’s hair. It was like the cupboard love of a cat whose claws may be unsheathed on a whim. “Isn’t it a nice thought, Charlotte, that all those humans who hurt you, you can hurt in turn? You can make them love you desperately then turn and mock them, destroy them, kill them. You can take revenge on the human race, over and over again.”
“I think that is sick, Ilona. I think you are mad.”
“Yes. Isn’t there something romantic about a mad, sick woman who is also beautiful?” Ilona grinned in self-mockery. “Don’t you want that, Charlotte? Revenge?”
“No. I did not become a vampire for that.”
“That is very funny, considering you tried to kill me a few minutes ago. We are nearly all mad, dear. The awful thing for most of us if that we know it. Kristian is the only one who’s insane and doesn’t realise… and Karl, poor thing, is the only one who is sane. Or was, until he gave in to Kristian.”
“I don’t believe he’s forsaken me. He wouldn’t.”
“But he has!” And suddenly Ilona’s face was transformed with a flash of sheer pain. “You think he is so perfect. Let me give you a hint of what he is really like. I did not ask to become a vampire; he gave me no choice in the matter. He took me away from my husband, from everything I knew, and he expected me to love him for it!”
“I know,” Charlotte said quietly. “He told me. But I don’t believe you hate him for it, because you so obviously relish what you are!”
“I am a very good vampire, it’s true. He wanted me as a vampire, so that is exactly what I gave him, to the very limit! But I would like to have been asked!” Ilona shouted. A visible shudder passed through her, chilling because it was unaffected. “So you think you know everything about me. But did he ever tell you about the child I lost?”
“No,” Charlotte said, startled.
Ilona’s misery was artless, all arrogance gone. “When he took me away from my husband, I was expecting a child. The transformation killed it. That’s what I can’t forgive him for. That’s why I abhor him. None of the rest. Just that.”
A wave of purely mortal horror crested over Charlotte’s unhuman pain. “He—he never told me.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Ilona said shortly, “because he doesn’t know. I never told him and I never shall.”
“Why not?”
“I couldn’t! It was too terrible to share with the one who’d caused it. And of course he would have been grief-stricken, devastated, all the human things Karl can be—but it would not have been my secret any more. It was my grief, my anger—too great to be shared—too great to be diluted by telling him.”
She seemed about to go on, but stopped at the top of a breath. After a moment Charlotte asked, “Do you still feel grief for this now?”
“Not now.” Ilona was gazing at the floor, pensive, withdrawn. “But that was where it began. This tree of bitterness, rooted in that one sorrow; he made me immortal, but he took my child, my real immortality, aw
ay… ” She looked up and added softly, “You are the only person I have ever told.”
Against her will, Charlotte felt sympathy for Ilona. “Why? To make me hate Karl?”
“Just to make you realise you don’t know everything.” Ilona’s glass-splinter smile returned but with less conviction than before. “If it has the effect of making you see what Karl really is, so much the better. Selfish, arrogant, uncaring, guiltless—like father, like daughter.”
“He knows he made a mistake with you. And he’s suffered for it. He still loves you.”
“No, he doesn’t. He rejected me, Charlotte… because of your sister. All the things I have done and he’s never once turned away from me… until I did something that hurt you.” And Charlotte saw straight through Ilona’s mask; however much she claimed to loathe Karl, his rejection had devastated her. Just as it had devastated Charlotte.
“Where is he?” Charlotte asked.
“I don’t know. He and Kristian have gone away together. The moment Karl relented, Kristian forgot all about me and they both left you here to rot.”
“Gone away? I don’t believe it!”
“Believe it, darling.” Ilona’s expression was solemn, no mockery in it. She came to Charlotte, put a hand on her shoulder, then leaned her head there. “There is something about you, Charlotte. You defeat me. I want to be cruel to you but I can’t. What’s the point? I am not hurting Karl or annoying Kristian by it. They have abandoned us both.”
She’s speaking the truth, Charlotte thought. Karl isn’t coming back. I saw it in his eyes. Despite the feeling that Ilona was trying to snare her into some sort of bond that she did not want, Charlotte’s hand crept involuntarily onto the silky dark red hair, caressed it. And she stood frozen under Ilona’s ivory-delicate hands, the futility of everything unrolling before her. What was the use of taking revenge on Ilona, when she herself would go out and feed on the brothers and sisters of others, if she had the chance? She could not hate Karl’s daughter, however much she tried. Even as Ilona stood there with venom issuing from her blood-rose mouth, there was an awful charm about her. Something of Karl.
“We’ve both been betrayed,” said Ilona. Then, “I can’t watch you suffering, while my veins are overflowing.”
A barbed thrill of hunger. “Don’t mock me.”
“I mean it.” Ilona tipped her head a little to one side, curled one hand around Charlotte’s head. Charlotte stared at the pale sweep of her neck. “I am giving you back your strength. Only don’t drink me dry, darling.”
She drew Charlotte down and Charlotte fell, biting so savagely that Ilona stiffened and gasped. Vampire blood burst into her parched mouth, sharp and strange; less satisfying than human blood, yet filling her with a thin, glittering energy. And she was ravenous. She forgot where she was and on whom she was feasting, until Ilona—with very little effort—pulled her away and held her off. “Enough,” she said.
They looked at each other. Still a trace of bitterness and twisted humour in Ilona’s eyes; but more than that, tenderness. Charlotte hated her and loved her. She put her arms round Ilona’s neck and they held each other fiercely.
“Now, dearest,” Ilona said softly, “I am going to let you out.”
***
Karl had never expected to see this place again; the manor house in the silent woods, its stone walls dappled with age, the small leaded windows watchful. The sight of it arrested him with an unexpected surge of dread. Unreal, it looked, flickering a little as if on film; infinitely remote as a cinematic image, yet sinister, overdrawn and underlit in grainy monochrome.
The abandoned renovation work made it seem more desolate than if it had never been touched at all. A mistake, to interfere with its secrets. The cleared path was vanishing again under nettles and brambles, and ivy cleaved to the walls as if trying to pull them down into the embrace of the earth.
“What is this place?” said Kristian.
Karl ascended the steps to the iron-shod front door. It was padlocked but he opened it easily, breaking the lock like clay. “A derelict house,” he said. “I came here with Charlotte. We found something in the cellars that may interest you.”
A mass of cold air pushed against them as they entered the hall. Its cathedral chill enveloped them under the soaring, thickly shadowed vault of the ceiling. Karl found the stench of damp and ancient mortar shockingly familiar, redolent of so much. Trying to lull David’s suspicions while his blood-thirst burned. The luscious heat of Edward’s blood quenching his thirst… much to regret, but not those hours of quietness in Charlotte’s company. Then their descent into the cellar. A fathomless darkness beside which even the terrors of the Weisskalt paled… from which only Charlotte’s sweet blood had saved him.
Did Kristian sense the atmosphere? Karl watched him carefully, but his strong face was impassive, betraying no suspicion or unease.
“I am intrigued,” said Kristian. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t you know?” Karl looked up into the vault, let his gaze trail downwards over the stone walls, the landing, the dust-thick stairs.
“Tell me.”
“This is an ancient house,” said Karl. He spoke softly, but his voice echoed. “There is a tunnel far beneath that is even older. I believe a vampire lived there once.”
Kristian turned abruptly to face him, his eyes black pits in his white face. “A vampire?” he said sharply. “How do you know?”
“We found the bones of his victims in the tunnel. I could feel his presence, although he must have left here centuries ago. Do you know who it could have been, Father? Have you ever been here before?”
Kristian folded his arms. His expression was unreadable. There was a horrible suspense in waiting for his answer. Karl thought, If a powerful vampire lived here in Kristian’s lifetime he must have known, and may even have destroyed the creature himself. In which case he would know about the danger. Is he hiding his knowledge—or his ignorance?
Eventually Kristian said, “No, I have never been here. As to whether your supposed vampire was known to me, I may be able to tell you if we go down and look.”
Karl felt a grim thrill of reluctance and cruelty mixed; he subdued it, keeping his face calm, his eyes innocent.
“This way,” he said, leading Kristian into the ashen light of the kitchen. Here the builders’ debris lay untouched under a thick coating of dust. A big square sink, lengths of pipe, timber under layers of canvas. Lamps. He made to take one, but Kristian said contemptuously, “What do you want with that, when we can see better by night than humans can by day?”
Karl shrugged, and left the lamp where it was. Kristian was right. A beam of light might be deceptively comforting, but it was no more protection against the cold than a crucifix against a vampire.
As he opened the cellar door, the malodorous air reached up like clawed fingers. God, to face this again. It had not been so bad with Charlotte, when he had sensed the threat but not understood it. But now he knew what waited…
With Kristian behind him, he began to descend the stairs. The walls were slimy; the miasma of centuries flowed thickly around them. Even to his acute vision, the cellar was as gloomy as a crypt. No colour anywhere. Only shades of black and grey. Again, the aura of a film; larger than life, grainy, brooding. Stacks of barrels and chests stood under the arches, their outlines blurred and thick with dust, cobwebs roping them to the littered floor. Movement of rats in the shadows.
Rats, insects and darkness held no horrors for him, who could walk cheerfully through graveyards; it was the memory of the incinerating coldness that disquieted him. He could hear no ghost voices; but their silence was worse, as if they were holding their breath. Waiting.
Now and then Karl glanced at his companion, but Kristian’s face remained the same; unmoved, merely curious. The moment he perceives the danger, he will guess my intention. Why hasn’t he sensed it? Could it be that in his arrogance he is deaf to what dwells here—or worse, immune to it? Karl made his heart a sphere of met
al, dewed with ice. It was the only way he could do this, to harden his heart and seal away his doubts.
The big iron-bound chest that he had pulled across to conceal the trap was still in position. Evidently Charlotte had never told anyone how they’d escaped, and no one had explored closely enough to find out. He dragged the chest away, grimacing as it screeched on the stone flags.
He paused, looking down into the black stairwell. It seemed he could hear the faint piping of the wind across a vast subterranean distance. The darkness lapped like a millpond that had claimed a thousand lives.
Kristian said impatiently, “Will you go first, or shall I?”
“Wait,” said Karl. He let his anxiety creep into his tone. “It was very cold down there.”
Kristian sneered. “A little earthly coldness never hurt us. Only the Weisskalt can do that.”
“But this was an unearthly cold, Father.”
Kristian started down the stairs. “Not afraid, are you, Karl?”
“It was very disturbing. It made me so ill I thought I was going to die! It’s dangerous.”
“Fear, Karl.” Kristian’s lips thinned in a smile and he shook his head indulgently. “I am surprised at you. What use have we for fear, when God walks with us? Nothing can harm us. Hold on to me.”
Oh, I shall hold on to you, father, Karl thought grimly. It had worked; the truth and a child-like display of nerves—which really was no pretence—had deceived Kristian more effectively than any lie. But foreboding coiled around him, wintry as the sullen air. What if Kristian feels no danger because nothing here can harm him’? I may die—but there may be no hope of destroying him at all.
***
Ilona took Charlotte to a room high in Schloss Holdenstein, with small windows framing views of the river. Charlotte gazed out, finding it miraculous to see the outside world again after her imprisonment. She felt empty, squeezed dry of emotion, while the hunger for human blood lapped constantly through her.
There was no bed in the room, only wardrobes full of clothes, an enamel bath in front of a firegrate, and a full-length mirror.
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