"Charlotte." Karl's voice struck echoes from the stone. "Please come out of here. It's cold. I am not going to harm you."
She hugged herself, shivering. "What will happen to me?"
"Nothing," he said. "As soon as I can I shall let you go. You will return to your life in Cambridge and forget me."
She raised her head in amazement, straining her eyes to see him in the darkness. "Forget?'' she gasped. "What kind of a life have I to go back to? You think you can make me fall in love with you—then reveal yourself as some kind of fiend, and expect me just to forget about it?"
"Our relationship had to end, Charlotte." His voice, utterly emotionless, chilled her. "The truth is, I did not know how to end it. I never wanted this to happen. Given a choice, I would simply have gone away quietly."
"You would have left me, and I would never have known why?"
"Exactly so. And you would have been unhappy for a time, but at least you would not have gone through this misery. However, now it has happened, at least you will understand why we could not stay together. And, of course, you will not want to. Remember me with hatred, if you must—and I am sure you will—but go on living. It is the only way you will get over it."
The cold hit her then, and her teeth began to chatter. "You want me to get over it? But why should you care, why the hell should you care? Don't tell me you feel guilty! Of all the unbelievable things you have told me, that is one too many." The bitterness was a loathsome emotion. She added miserably, "I don't hate you, I haven't the spirit."
"You will, in time."
"No! How can I make you see? This is not something I can get over, Karl. It doesn't matter what you say or do, I shall never get over it! Don't you understand that?"
When he fell silent in the darkness, it was as if he wasn't there at all. The sudden emptiness wrenched her soul. Then she heard him take a slow, soft breath, and he said, "Oh, Charlotte, I can't go on with this."
There was pain in his voice. For the first time, real pain.
She froze. What could the change in him mean, except danger? She felt him move towards her but she was pinned against the wall, unable to move away. She closed her eyes, felt his hands on her shoulders and waited for the unimaginable stab of knives in her neck; but he simply put his arms around her, drew her away from the wall and hugged her.
She could not return the embrace. Her heart was breaking. "Don't touch me," she whispered.
He let her go; it was like being dropped in mid-air. Then she felt his hand, very light and impersonal, on her elbow. "Come back to the fire," he said. "We must talk." She let him lead her across the cellar and up towards the hazy smear of light from the kitchen. It was all she could do to walk. Once in the solar she suffered him to wrap his coat round her and sit her by the fire, but all the time she stared at the flames and did not look at him. He sat on the floor, one knee drawn up and his arms resting loosely on it, the other long slim leg stretched out.
"We will not be here for long," he said. "Until then I shall make sure you are warm and well looked after." He seemed different again; gentle, considerate, as he had used to be. But that, far more than his coldness, made her want to cry.
"Why are you being kind to me now?" she said thinly. "I don't know what you want."
"I don't want you to be in this pain." His voice was calm, but it had lost its impersonal edge. "It seemed the simplest thing to make you loathe me completely. I thought that if I was cruel enough, any remaining love you had for me would die. With Madeleine, it would have worked, but… " He paused. "With you, Charlotte, I can't keep up the pretence. I cannot bear to put you through such misery… not after we have been so much to each other."
She gazed fixedly at the network of logs, black against the scarlet embers. "Are you saying that I meant something to you after all?"
"Yes."
"So, those awful things you said to me earlier were also lies, were they? How shall I know when you start telling the truth?"
"They were harsh things to say, I know, and I chose not to contradict certain assumptions you made. But I was not lying. The truth is horrible, Charlotte, but it is also much more complicated that you know."
She rubbed her forehead. The skin was ridged with tension. True love turned out to be demonic deceit. After this she could never love, never trust again.
"It's vile," she whispered.
"I know," he said. "I can't ask you to forgive me. I rarely feel any need to explain my actions, and I have never before spoken about these things to a human. But I want to talk to you; not to excuse myself, only so that you may understand a little better—if you will listen to what I have to say."
She allowed herself to meet his eyes briefly, and for an unnerving moment she felt captivated by the jewelled amber irises, just as she had been the first time they were alone. She fought the feeling off.
"But the things you did! You terrified Maddy and you didn't care!"
"Charlotte, I took a hostage to keep them away from me, because I do not want to hurt them. It's as much to protect them as myself."
"I don't believe you."
"Liebling," he sighed, suddenly sounding weary, "do you really think I wish you harm?"
"I don't know."
"Well, I do not. But your family think otherwise, and it is what they believe that will preserve them—and me."
"You're happy to let them think I'm in danger of dying? That's cruel, too."
"I don't deny it."
"Why couldn't you have just run away?" she said savagely.
He half-smiled. "Or turned into a bat?"
She stared at him. "You can't… Do you think this is funny?"
"No, I cannot turn into a bat, nor a wolf, nor a cloud of mist," he said gravely. "Nothing so convenient. Yet vampires can vanish in a way that is perhaps even less believable. I could not, however, because I was too weak from the fight. If I had forced my way through David's men, I might have killed some of them or they might have overpowered me; neither prospect was desirable."
"But when you recover your strength, you will be able to—vanish?"
"I hope so. But it may take days, or weeks if I am unlucky."
"Don't you need to feed to get your strength back?"
"Yes."
"But there's only me… "
"You have no need to fear me, Charlotte," he sighed. "I am not going to touch you. The blood I took from your poor friend will sustain me for quite some time."
"What then?"
"I shall have to leave here, of course. And I shall have to take you with me, to prevent your valiant brother from following me. But once I know he cannot find me I shall release you."
"And until then, I am your prisoner," she said, staring at her hands.
"Would you rather it had been your sister?" The question flashed quick and sharp into the air and hung there, unanswered.
Eventually she said, "I remain your hostage while it suits you, then you discard me and I never see you again."
"Surely you would not want to see me again?"
"Don't twist my words! You're the most callous person I've ever met!"
"I am sorry you feel that," he said, so gently that his voice seemed to melt right through her. "However cruel I seem, I feel anything but callous towards you. But you didn't answer my question."
For a brief, shocking moment, all the passion she had felt for him rushed back and turned as swiftly to a wave of anguish. "Don't, Karl. You're confusing me. First you torment me, then you apologise, then you go on uttering threats against my family in the same gentle tone—What am I supposed to think?"
"You have every right to be angry." His composure made her more so.
"Angry is hardly the word for what I feel! After—after that first night we spent together, you said our love could only end in pain. Is this what you meant?"
"But you said, 'The feeling is worth the pain, whatever it is.' "
At that she tore herself out of the chair—away from his eyes—but there was nowhere to
go. She sat on the bed, confused and trembling.
"That was unfair of me," said Karl. "To answer your question, no, this is not what I meant, because I didn't know this was going to happen. What I did mean is something worse, which perhaps you will come to understand. But it is all a facet of the same thing—and it is as painful for me as it is for you."
"Oh, is it?" She sat up and glared at him. "Then why do you give the appearance of caring about nothing at all?"
"Vampires can detach themselves from emotion; we have to. But that doesn't mean we do not feel anything. It is something that takes time to explain."
"I don't want to hear any more explanations! Why did you have to come here? You've disrupted our lives, stolen our hearts then revealed yourself to be a—a—"
"What about you, Charlotte?" he said softly. "There must be reasons why you put yourself so selflessly in Madeleine's place. Am I the sole cause of your unhappiness?"
She did not answer him. She could not. She felt as if she had been shaken to pieces, and now none of her thoughts fitted and nothing made sense. Her family seemed so distant, like shadow puppets; she couldn't even conjure their faces in her mind. And in her wretchedness she longed for comfort, a few calm words to bring her back to reality, arms to hold her. Someone to say, This is not so terrible after all. There is a reason; look, this is what you have missed… And she would find some scrap of logic to cling to, and she would say, Yes, I see now. How foolish I've been. Now I understand what to do…
But the awful, impossible thing was that she wanted that comfort from Karl. How could the one who had betrayed her heal the wounds? It was obscene; it would be like asking her murderer to hold her hand as she died.
And yet, her body tautened and ached with the longing to feel his arms around her. I must be evil, to feel this, she thought, curling up on her side, squeezing her eyes shut.
"You need to rest, Charlotte," he said impassively. "Try to sleep."
She sensed him standing over her. Her back tingled with the cold anticipation of his touch but he remained quiet, as if he realised there was nothing else he could say to her in this state. At last she could bear it no longer. She pushed her hair out of her eyes, looked up, and received another disorienting shock.
Karl had departed soundlessly and she was alone in the room.
***
When darkness fell, Karl went down into the hall and opened the front door.
Charlotte was asleep. He was glad that she had succumbed to exhaustion at last, found escape from the suffering that he had unwillingly inflicted on her. She had slept all afternoon, not even stirring when he had returned to the bedchamber to pull the coverlet over her.
Some time earlier, there had been a knock on the door. But he had waited until night to retrieve the bundle of clothes and food that had been left on the doorstep for Charlotte.
He could sense eyes on him; he could feel the breathing of mortals in the darkness. Trees loomed against the sky, and in the undergrowth that massed between them crouched a number of policemen and estate staff, fondly imagining that they were hidden.
Karl could see them all quite clearly.
They had been watching the house all day, he knew, there was nothing he could do to prevent that. David was behind some brambles with a man in tweeds, whom Karl recognised as Elizabeth's head groom. He could hear them murmuring to each other.
"There he is!" David's voice. Then the clean sharp dick of a revolver's safety catch.
"You sure about this, sir?" The groom's voice was a gruff whisper. "You know what Inspector Ash said—"
"Hang what Ash said," David replied crisply. "Is he on his own? Damn, I can't see a deuced thing. Daren't risk it if my sister's there… "
Karl stood in the doorway a moment, staring straight at them. They had placed the bundle on the very edge of the step, so he would have to step out of the house to reach it. Suddenly the night seemed to be spinning very slowly around him, like a grey cone drawing him upwards out of his body. He felt weary. The blood he had taken from Edward sustained him, but their heat in the darkness reminded him that he would need to feed again before long… and it would not be hard to entice any one of them inside.
But he would not. Not while Charlotte was there, even though he couldn't recover his energy without blood.
He should let her go, take his chances with David's makeshift army. He should never have taken her; it achieved nothing, it was as cruel and wrong as falling in love with her in the first place. Yet he could not let her go; it was the same fascination, the inability to leave a wound to heal on its own.
Kristian would kill me for this; revealing vampire secrets to humans, he thought. But whether I escape or am destroyed, will he be so good as to protect them from Pierre? Ah, David, you think this situation is so simple. Would you believe me if I told you otherwise?
Karl bent to pick up the bundle, moving unhurriedly. As he straightened up, he heard the groom saying, "Looks as if he's on his own, sir. There's a bit of a glow from the doorway and no one else."
David's clear strong voice rang out. "Stay exactly where you are, von Wultendorf! There is a gun pointing at your heart and if you move I won't hesitate to use it."
Karl replied, "Don't be rash, David. The more difficult you make this for me, the more difficult you make it for Charlotte."
"You've been warned! Don't move!"
Karl ignored him. He had barely begun to turn away as a shot cracked the air. He actually saw the bullet winging towards him—a silver streak thrown out by a flower of fire—before it ripped into his shoulder. He staggered back against the door frame, swiftly recovered his balance. He had not thought David would actually shoot.
In a cold voice he called out, "This will do no good, David. You, also, have been warned."
There was a vehement curse in the darkness, then the sound of other voices whispering. Policemen were wading through the undergrowth, one of them hissing furiously, "Captain Neville, what the hell d'you think you're doing? If you want to put your sister's life in danger or end up on a murder charge, you're going the right way about it!"
Karl withdrew into the house and locked and barred the door.
***
There was a ghoul in Karl's form haunting the feverish twilight of sleep. Charlotte saw men seizing him, murdering him while he cried out her name; then she saw him tearing their throats out, flinging their bodies aside like dummies. Now he was embracing her, kissing her hair and whispering endearments; now mocking her, eyes shining like red glass and his mouth twisted in a cruel grin. The images rained onto her mind like hot coals until she tore herself up and out of sleep like an arrow from a wound.
Still the same alien room, heavy with age and shadows. But something had changed… the window was an oblong of blackness. Night had fallen, but the fire burned brightly and Karl sat in front of the grate with his back to her.
At the sight of him her heart lurched and all her misery came streaming back. Her head ached, her mouth was dry and sticky. Her stomach was churning so with hunger that she felt sick. In the traumas of the past few days she had eaten next to nothing, and even the previous day seemed a lifetime ago.
"How long have I been asleep?" she said, leaning up on her elbows.
"All day," he replied, looking round. "It is eight o'clock. You must have been exhausted."
She yawned deeply. "I still am. I feel terrible."
"You will feel better after something to eat and drink. Your family have brought some food for you." She followed his gaze and saw a plate of bread, ham and cheese on the table of carved black oak beside the bed. Her stomach turned over. "I don't think I could eat anything."
"Have some tea, at least." He came to the bed and placed a cup in her hands. She saw a kettle and teapot on the grate. "You must learn to look after yourself, Charlotte. You have no instinct for self-preservation."
As she sipped the tea, he sat on the edge of the bed and watched her. She could sense the radiance of his gaze and she knew if she
looked up, she would see the same warmth and tranquillity that had always captivated her… so she would not let it happen. He won't deceive me again. She kept her eyes lowered, feeling uneasy and closed in on herself, like those awful days when she had first known him. Yet her wretchedness and anger were stronger than her fear of him, and those old feelings could never regain a hold on her. Too much had happened.
When she had finished, he took the cup from her and placed the plate on her lap. "I insist that you try to eat," he said kindly, and went to pour her some more tea.
She nibbled at a piece of bread and butter, instantly felt her appetite return. "Aren't you going to have anything?" she said, then almost choked. "Oh God. I keep forgetting."
He did not reply, only sat down in the chair beside her with a wry twist to his lips.
Charlotte said, " I remember Sally complaining that you were always leaving cold cups of tea. Now I know why. It would almost be funny, if it wasn't… "
Still he did not speak. She saw the disturbing paleness and stillness of him—still beautiful, however eerie—and a splinter of dread went through her. She ate rapidly, letting the food blot out her thoughts. After a minute or two he stood up.
"I shall heat some water for you, so that you can bathe and change, if you wish."
"Yes… Thank you," she murmured.
While he was out of the room, she got up and began to shake out the assortment of clothes that Aunt Elizabeth—she presumed—had packed for her. God, what must they be thinking? She froze. I wonder what's happening at the Hall? Poor father…
When Karl came back, she asked anxiously, "Karl, is—is anyone watching the house?"
He raised his right hand to his left shoulder and absently fingered a tear in his shirt. "Yes," he said drily. "Your brother and half the police force are keeping a vigil. Did you think everyone had deserted you?"
She bit her lip. The question was too close to answer. "This is awful."
"It's worse than you think."
"What do you mean?"
He sighed. "I would like to explain. There is much I would like to tell you… if we could speak freely, without this barrier of rancour and fear between us. But I don't know whether it is possible."
A Taste of Blood Wine Page 23