A Taste of Blood Wine

by Freda Warrington

  "No, he must!" Charlotte said, stricken.

  David leaned forward and patted her entwined hands. "Charli, what is this? I couldn't believe there was anything in this rumour about you and Karl, but I'm beginning to think I was wrong. No one's going to be angry with you, but you must tell us the truth."

  "What do you want me to say? I love him."

  "Does Karl know?"

  She nodded. "He feels the same for me."

  David sat back with a sigh. "Oh, Lord," he murmured. "So that's why you gave Henry the elbow. It's got to stop, old girl, you see that, don't you? Perhaps this is all a massive misunderstanding, but the point is that we don't know for certain. We know nothing about him at all, really, do we? Father took him on trust. God knows what risks you were taking, spending time alone with him."

  "But I've known him for ages. We work together. He's always been so kind… He would never do anything to hurt me!" Charlotte's voice was fierce, but there were tears in her eyes.

  Anne looked at David and said, "Would you be a good sport and clear off for a while? I want to talk to Charli alone."

  "Of course." He stood up, straightening his dinner jacket, looking solemnly at them. "You're the best one to sort this out. I'm going to have a word with Maddy, see if she recognised Pierre. And then I'm going to keep a look-out for von Wultendorf. If he dares to come back after this, I'm going to make sure I sort this out, man to man."

  "Do be careful," said Anne.

  "I shan't do anything rash. The thing is to behave as normally as possible, pretend nothing's happened, and worm the truth out of him by diplomacy. If that fails, there's always the gun room."

  "David!"

  "Only joking. Look after my sister."

  He kissed Anne's cheek and walked away to the stone steps that led up into the Blue room. When he had gone, Anne drew her chair close to Charlotte's and put an arm round her shoulders.

  "Goodness, you're shaking. I didn't realise quite how much this had upset you."

  "Those terrible things you and David said… I don't believe them."

  "It's not a matter of believing, we saw it with our own eyes. Karl isn't what he seems; there's something dangerous about him."

  Charlotte let out a single sob. Anne held her tighter. "I think I should get you a brandy. Oh, my dear, this must be awful for you. But look, if he isn't quite the gentleman he appeared to be, isn't it lucky you found out before it's too late?"

  Charlotte's head drooped. Her hair fell forward in a frosted-gold curve, hiding her face. "It is too late."

  "You don't mean… "

  "I love him so desperately. I couldn't help myself."

  "Oh my God," said Anne. She was utterly shocked, and couldn't hide it. She prided herself on her modern outlook, and heaven knew, her relationship with David was not as virtuous as it should have been—but that was different, they were at least engaged. The truth was, she simply couldn't believe it of Charlotte. Not shy, naive Charlotte. Anne released a breath. Perhaps her naïveté was her downfall. "When did this happen?"

  "After the musical evening," Charlotte said wretchedly. "And both nights since. Swear you won't tell anyone, it would be the end of everything."

  "I wouldn't dream of it. I assume there's no prospect of marriage or you wouldn't be in such a state… " Anne remembered the coldness in Karl's eyes, and shuddered. "Oh, Charli, how could you be so foolish? I never realised just how dishonourable his intentions were!"

  "It wasn't foolish! You don't know anything about it!"

  "I know," Anne said more gently. She drew Charlotte's head on to her shoulder, stroked her hair as the tears came. "Didn't I say, he's the sort of man who breaks everyone's heart?"

  ***

  Charlotte sat alone in her room, watching the trees swaying against a sky of gleaming slate. She was so cold that she had stopped shivering and sat completely numb, leaning against the pane without the energy or inclination to warm herself. Rain drummed the glass like thousands of tiny fingernails.

  Karl had not come back.

  One moment she would think, But he's bound to come to me, why shouldn't he? As far as he's concerned things are no different, he can't know what David saw—can he? He'll come back soon—then, oh Lord, what am I going to say to him? Do I ask him straight out what it all meant, do I pretend nothing happened? Should I be afraid? Oh no, I can't bear to start being frightened of him again after all this, but I can't help it, it's happening…

  The next moment, He won't come back. I know he won't. And the nervous leaping of her heart would swell and dissolve into the most overwhelming despair.

  She felt alienated from everyone. She was in disgrace with her father and aunt; Madeleine was in some dark world where Charlotte could not reach her. Only Anne knew the worst of it, and although she had been sympathetic, she made no secret of her disapproval. David had already turned against Karl; how much worse it would be if he found out that his spotless, guileless sister had willingly let herself be seduced…

  But what does it matter what they think? They could never understand, not in a thousand years…

  It was like the time she had been feverish with flu and dreading meeting Karl, trying to avoid him… she laughed without mirth. Do I wish I'd never met him? No, oh no. She felt swamped by the same heavy, nightmarish atmosphere that she could not shake off, almost didn't want to. And again, she had that fevered illusion of mountains in the sky, made of some purplish viscous substance that rolled over and over on itself. The clouds became tattered angels, ephemeral jet-black beings released from some netherworld to chase each other along the wind.

  I'm going mad, thought Charlotte, choked by a terrible breathless awe. If Karl doesn't come to me, I shall go mad…

  But the hands of night swept on until she fell asleep where she sat, and Karl still did not return.

  ***

  Once he had disposed of Pierre in a remote stretch of countryside, Karl drove half-way back to Parkland Hall, left the car in the edge of a wood, and entered the Crystal Ring.

  The trees around him warped and melted to crystal spines that rustled against him like dry grass. A spiral of wind solidified, becoming a deep blue pathway that he could follow, leading above the trees to vast banks of bron2e cloud. He felt the same, yet everything looked different; even his own body had become a dark, attenuated thing, cloaked with lacy webs that were too delicate, too tattered to be wings. He stretched the thin hard limbs and ran on all fours, like a wolf.

  The one thing Kristian would not expect him to do was to go to the Weisskalt on his own. He had never attempted it before. Only Kristian had the power to go there without succumbing to frozen sleep; only he could return, or bring other vampires back with him. So Kristian says… But Karl had no choice. He would not give in to Kristian, and he could not leave Ilona near death. The only answer was to rescue her himself.

  The stolen warmth of Pierre's blood filled him with fire, an energy that felt like flying. It could not last, but he prayed it would be enough to sustain him. He felt no apprehension, only single-minded intent, like the flight of an arrow.

  The hillside beneath him steepened. He was in a gully, with the walls rising ever higher around him, like tidal waves of ink. He felt as if he were falling. The Crystal Ring was in constant movement, and sometimes it was necessary literally to run simply to remain in the same place. There were no maps of a region that was never still… except the map in a vampire's mind, and the gleaming lines of magnetism.

  The Crystal Ring was vast, each layer greater than the last, like the rings of an onion. Where, on the outermost skin that kissed the stars, did Ilona lie?

  A thermal caught him, bore him like a magic carpet to a higher level. Glints of gold broke through the darkness. It seemed almost that he had become a wolf, running silent and alone through a pine forest. The first breath of cold touched him. And as he ran, he had time to think.

  He had left Pierre seriously weakened, unable to enter the Crystal Ring until he had recovered his strengt
h. In that state, he would be starving, dangerous; wherever Karl left him, Pierre would feed. But that was not Karl's concern. Pierre could do whatever he liked—as long as the Nevilles were not harmed.

  But Karl could not forget Pierre's vicious words as he had bundled him out of the car.

  "You think you can live two lives, human and vampire? You think you can live among them and not bring any harm to them?"

  "I can. I have," Karl had replied, soft as snow.

  "You are not fooling anyone except yourself, my friend." The Frenchman's face had been stretched taut, his eyes huge and burning with starvation. "As soon as I am strong again I shall come back. I want them now." His face had receded like a lamp bobbing on water as Karl drove away, but the words followed, thin and piercing with hunger. "I want them."

  Karl had wanted nothing from Dr Neville except knowledge. Why prey upon and destroy the source of that knowledge when he could feed elsewhere, upon strangers in distant towns? It had seemed simple. It would have remained so, if not for Pierre's interference…

  But no, he could not blame Pierre or even Kristian himself. By entering the Nevilles' household, by letting himself be captivated by them, Karl was the one who had put them in danger. He had drawn Pierre to them. Madeleine was suffering already. Perhaps he would draw Kristian too…

  And then there was Charlotte…

  Dear God, what am I doing to her? The tenderness he felt for her was genuine, but it was also self-deceiving. All he had done was to draw her into the vampiric circle of fascination, when the kind thing would have been to leave her alone. But there was something about her that obsessed him as no other human ever had. That was no excuse; it was selfishness. He had known exactly what would happen if they came to love each other, yet he had let it happen anyway.

  Every time he made love to her, the craving to feed on her blood—to possess her completely—grew harder to resist. Yet the more he resisted, the stronger his need for her became. She was in greater danger every time and she didn't even know… And the tension between his desire, and the knowledge that consummation of it would destroy her, was agony to him.

  What kind of love is it, that can only destroy? He should leave, while the damage could be limited to a broken heart. She would forget me, eventually… and I should miss her forever. Everything Pierre said is true. If I stay, my nature will win. Yet now he could not leave. He had to remain with the Nevilles to protect them from Pierre.

  He laughed noiselessly as he ran, without humour. And the laugh died into a silent howl. Charlotte dying in Pierre's embrace; or in his own. And if he resisted, went on and on resisting… Charlotte dying of old age, leaving only a memory to haunt Karl. An unseen hand on his arm; when he turned round, no one there. Heine's words and her clear voice… " 'This house she dwelt in, she I lov'd dear… ' " Only the ice-wind of an existence that went on forever.

  Karl arrowed upwards on a thin, bitter stream of energy. Mountains of violet quartz, glittering as they rolled slowly through the firmament, bore him upwards to their summit, and on to the pale blue-green pathways to the next layer.

  Ilona… Where are you? He stretched his senses wide, searching for the black-diamond coolness of another vampire, which was so easy to miss. He felt nothing, but a thought came to him.

  Germany.

  Would not Kristian have taken the shortest route, climbing directly from Schloss Holdenstein into the Ring? Karl let the magnetic field draw him southwards, keeping his bearings like a bird. The lines were like ribbons of the aurora, rippling from blue to green to gold.

  A long way… but he did not think of the distance. Paler and paler grew the light. The mountains gave way to mare's-tail wisps. Coldness drenched him. He closed his mind to everything except sensation; the clear aching beauty, the lucent surfaces on which he struggled to gain height. Once or twice he lost his footing and fell; a slow-motion fall through an atmosphere hardly less viscid than the cloud-slopes. No harm done, except the insidious leeching of his strength.

  He broke through a paper-thin layer of mist and saw the plateau rising before him under the blue-black vault of space. He was unprepared for the ineffable beauty of it; a vast ice-cap gliding on a silent ocean of cloud. The stars were like flowers and under their light the plateau shone a luminous and eerie blue-white.

  The temperature, though, was far below freezing, and it entombed his limbs in stone as he crawled on to the blinding-bright surface. The fabric of the Weisskalt seemed more stable than the rest of the Crystal Ring. Though it felt fragile as a snow-crust, it did not flow or dissolve beneath him.

  Karl's body burned and ached with the cold. He felt leaden, but the shifting light filled his mind with brilliance, with unheard music. The wonder of it, and the pain… Is this God's joke on us?

  He sensed them now. They pricked his mind, like pieces of coal thrown into the snow, like a field of stars in negative. The sleeping vampires.

  In the eerie whiteness he walked among them. Liebe Gott. They were dead, weren't they? So small, crumpled in on themselves like folded black sails. A wave of grief washed over him. Were they aware of anything? Pasted on the edge of eternity, did they still hunger for blood and life, and endure the slow passing of time?

  God, if this is all we can hope for…

  They all looked the same, but he knew which of them was llona. She lay on the end of one of the neat rows, a little apart. He would know her anywhere, in any guise. Hers was a deceptive presence, like a sliver of glass; invisible until light caught a blood-red flash from its edge. That was how her spirit felt to him, unseen but sharply embedded within him.

  But the others… There were others, here, too, who had been his friends, Andreas and Katerina not least among them. He would not look for them. He could not bear it. But he thought, if I can do this for Ilona, could I not have saved you, Katti, Andrei? But it was not that simple, had never been that simple. And now he was not sure he even had the strength for llona.

  Her skin crackled with ice as he knelt beside her and lifted her weightless form in his arms. She felt brittle, as if the pressure of his finger and thumb would be enough to crush her. False wings folded around her. Dark eyelids closed in a face that was neither human not that of any earthly animal. Diabolically lovely. What are we?

  He wept.

  "Ilona," he said through his tears. He did not know how to revive her, except to give her warmth. But he felt his own joints stiffening and fatigue clouding his mind… and he stumbled and fell, and felt the whiteness begin to cover him forever.

  A surge of will forced him awake. Ilona… and Charlotte. He fought the paralysis and crawled towards the path that led down to the lower, warmer layers, Ilona clasped in one arm. As he went he bit his own wrist and sucked at it until the blood began to flow.

  He held the wound to her lips. After a few moments he felt her mouth tighten and her tongue working roughly against his skin.

  She seemed to grow heavier in her arms. Was that her life returning, or his own strength fading as she drew on him? There was a strange throbbing in his head and he had to pull his hand free, but it was enough, she was alive.

  The cloud-ocean below, which had chilled him on his way up, now warmed him like a tropical lagoon.

  "Kristian?" murmured Ilona, like a child half-asleep. "Kristian… you came back. I knew you would."

  "Ilona," Karl said softly.

  She opened her eyes and stared up at him. "You!"

  It cut right through him, her hatred, as it always did. Every time like the first. Even here, even though he had rescued her and she was barely out of the coma, the loathing surfaced as if it, alone, had not slept. And she began to struggle, though she was pitifully easy to hold.

  "What the hell are you doing here?" she said furiously. "Why couldn't you leave me alone?"

  "Look around you," Karl said impassively. "Where do you think you are?"

  "In the Crystal Ring. I know where I am!"

  "And you wanted to stay here? You preferred to remain near
death than to be saved by me?"

  "That's exactly right!" she hissed. "Damn you. Kristian would have come back for me, I know he would."

  Fierce currents tugged at them. Below the upper layers it grew dark swiftly, and the landscape through which he had ascended had already rolled away and reformed itself. Against the dark swollen hills, a black shape was flitting up towards them.

  "But he imprisoned you," Karl said calmly, watching the shape. "That is how much he cares for you. Don't tell me you still love him, after he has done this to you."

  Ilona laughed harshly. "And am I expected to love you, for rescuing me? You can't win my love by putting me in debt to you."

  There was real venom in her tone. It still hurt; even though he was an immortal, even after all this time. He didn't reply. He gazed down at the being that was now swooping straight towards them, a nightmare creature that might be created from a child's fears and a swirl of leaves in the night.

  He knew it was Kristian. He waited, holding Ilona to him.

  Kristian seemed surprised that Karl did not try to escape. On a billow of iron-grey cloud they faced each other, and Kristian said in German, "I should destroy you for this, Karl."

  "For saving someone we both love?" said Karl.

  "You always think you can outwit me." Kristian's voice was low, but it shook with fury. "How dare you take her out of the Weisskalt? Did you not realise that you were likely to freeze there before ever you could escape?"

  "God must have favoured me," Karl said sarcastically.

  Kristian's anger deepened. "You almost killed yourself, and for nothing! I can take her from you and put her there again in a moment!"

  "What would be the point?" Karl felt unspeakably weary. "We could go on like that forever."

  "So what do you suggest?"

  "That you leave us both alone. Why is that so hard? You have power and you have God, so you say; why do you need us?"

  "It's you who need me, if you would only acknowledge it!" said Kristian. "Why should you escape retribution? Give her back to me."