"No, give me your wrist," he said. "Then it will be easier for me to stop."
Easier… A trace of shock, to realise that from the neck it would be too intimate. Compelling as the physical act of love. Suddenly the thorns were between them, the tension between the desire and the danger… And she was afraid but she wanted it, wanted to give this to him with sensual eagerness.
She gave him her left hand. She felt his bone-cold grip round her palm, not gentle but hungry, startling. The speed with which he pulled her wrist to his mouth shocked her so much that she tried to struggle, to say, "Wait!" But it was too late. She felt two stabs of pain and the word came out as a cry.
She did not know what she had expected. Nothing so painful; a deep, paralysing ache that numbed her whole arm. Nothing so intense. It was horrible, this pain. She tried to pull away but he held her as if in a vice, his mouth tautening on her skin, locking her to him while her energy flowed away with her blood. And he shuddered as if with a wave of exquisite, overpowering relief.
Then she stopped trying to fight and gave in to it, gave herself completely to his need. One thing turned the horror back on itself and that was seeing, feeling, understanding, what the blood meant to Karl. She leaned down until her head rested on his—strange the contrast between the softness of their hair, the hard pull of his teeth in her wrist—and curled her free arm round his shoulders. Cradling him. Yes. Take this warmth from me.
She felt the fragmenting sensation of faintness begin and she knew this could be the beginning of death, that if he could not stop she would simply slide down into unconsciousness and never wake again.
God, such a sacrifice. She hadn't understood.
Was this what Madeleine had felt, when Pierre fed from her? This cold dark fall from a cliff, no comfort to be found. To be alone forever. She saw clearly now how some could never gather in the threads of sanity and reweave the veil of beliefs that shielded them from death.
But if the blood is given out of love…
This was no violation. She knew the blood meant so much to Karl because he understood how great the sacrifice was. A dark jewel beyond price. To be able to give him this was a pleasure as intense as the repletion he drew from her veins. She held him as he drank, her lips against his hair… falling slowly through a silver cloud of bliss…
She was walking between rows and rows of beds and in each one was the deadly white face of a gassed soldier, tormented with the effort of drawing the next breath, and the next… and the next. "I would breathe for you if I could!" she cried, and stretched out her arms towards them—but she could only move her right hand, her left was pinioned. The pain brought her back to herself.
It seemed a century had passed but they were still in the darkness, Karl's mouth on her wrist, the faintest groan of relief or ecstasy issuing from his throat. The ghost-voices mourned in the far distance. Charlotte lifted her hand from his shoulder to stroke his silky hair and, without knowing why, she began to weep.
* * *
Chapter Thirteen
In the Still of the Night
Charlotte felt the darkness tipping and dropping away beneath her. Through the tingling vertigo she realised that Karl was carrying her, while the voices of the empty souls blew away along an endless corridor… and after a time, she felt him setting her down with utmost gentleness. There was a dimly luminous rectangle before her and warmth flowing on to her; the lukewarm sweetness of the night air, which felt warm after the unnatural cold of the tunnel.
Slowly she became aware that they were in a small stone chamber with a low doorway, open to the night. Beyond, the night sky gleamed like pewter through layers of leaves, and the whispering she could hear now was only the soft rustle of leaves. She began to shiver.
"Charlotte," Karl said softly. "Can you hear me?"
"Yes. Where are we?"
"I think we are in the ice house that you spoke of. Is it down in the belt of trees that runs along from the hundred steps?"
"Yes. Hidden," she said, trying to orient herself. It was hard to fight the faintness. Karl held her until the shivering ceased, keeping her wounded left wrist loosely against her chest. She felt only a dull ache in her forearm; worse was her overwhelming lassitude.
"I needed more than you could give," he said. "I almost did not stop in time."
She shifted a little so that she could look up at him. His lids were half-lowered, the long lashes shading the gleam of his eyes. And he was looking at her with such affection that she almost began to weep again. "But you have your strength again?" she said.
"Yes. At the expense of yours, beloved. This is one thing I can never ask you to forgive." She tried to sit up and he helped her, watching her closely. "How do you feel?"
"I saw strange things, but I wasn't afraid. I don't think I have gone mad, if that's what worries you. I feel rather weak. It doesn't matter." She probed her left wrist, felt only two tender scars. "My God, it's healed!"
"The bite does heal swiftly, as a rule," said Karl. "It helps us avoid suspicion. Ah, Liebe Gott, I would not have done this for the world… "
"I'm glad," she said. She leaned in towards him and their mouths met; and she tasted her own blood on his tongue, and did not care. "There was nothing to be so very frightened of, after all."
He held her, his face against her hair. She felt his hand slide into her coat pocket, then he drew back with something in his hand. She smelled the strong sweet fragrance of an orange. He said, "You must eat to recover your strength."
He peeled it for her and she accepted the segments from him. The burst of liquid sweetness in her dry mouth seemed the most heavenly thing she had ever tasted. As she ate, memories of the cellar and tunnel sleeted across her mind, so vivid and distorted that she wondered if the gift of her blood had unhinged her after all. She said, "Karl, did I imagine what happened down there?"
"No, unless we both did," he said. "Believe me, I was more afraid than you."
"But what happened? Why did you collapse?"
He shook his head. "We cannot talk about it now. You must rest for a while, but as soon as you feel well enough we must go."
"I feel better already. I shall be all right."
"I know," said Karl, "because you are going back to Parkland Hall."
Charlotte thought she must have misunderstood him. "What are you talking about?"
"I am sending you back to your family. I have my chance to escape now, and I can ask no more of you."
His words cut her heart like a whip. The prospect of him leaving her was devastating, to be denied with all her strength. "But the moment I go back, they'll know you're free and they'll come after you! I know what David's like. He won't give up."
"He won't find me."
"What if he does? Suppose he actually caught you up, tried to stop you—you'd kill him, wouldn't you?"
"I would hope not."
"But there is that danger, so nothing's changed! I have to stay with you, to protect you both. Wherever you go, I'm coming with you."
"Charlotte—" he began, then stopped and looked at the doorway. His sudden alertness was like that of a cat, distracted by an intangible call that no human could hear.
"What is it?" she whispered.
"There's another vampire in the garden," he said, "somewhere near the Hall. I think it's Pierre. Stay here."
Before she could say anything he stepped under the lintel and was gone. She stood up and went to the doorway after him but he had already vanished, leaving no movement of foliage to betray his path. Another vampire… Pierre? What if he's stronger than Karl this time?
Charlotte felt herself turning faint again, while the birches and conifers seemed monstrously overdrawn against the night sky, grasping and threatening. If this was the beginning of madness, she could not fight it with reason; she was too tired, too afraid. She felt completely alone, while the garden—once her sanctuary—seemed threaded with malevolence.
***
Karl ran lightly up through the belt of tr
ees, through paths twisting between great banks of rhododendron, and across the side lawns until he reached the stone balustrade that edged the upper lawn. As he ran he was thinking, Pierre is going to sense me… how can I reach him before he does?
Karl leapt the balustrade, paused in the darkness between the shrubs and roses. The plane tree under which they had found Madeleine loomed over him. Although it was two or three hours before dawn, the Hall was lit up as if the entire household had stayed awake all night. He sensed them, suspended in cubes of light, illusions of safety; he sensed their helplessness and anxiety. And on the terrace, silhouetted against the tall yellow windows of the drawing room, he saw the motionless figure of a vampire.
Pierre seemed to be watching, listening. He is going to attack them again, thought Karl. And if I rush him he'll be through that window like a storm… It will all be lost, for them and for us.
Pierre looked round, down into the garden; straight at Karl. There was a slight stiffening of his shoulders, controlled anger, then Pierre began to move towards the windows.
Karl had no choice. Swift as sound he crossed the lawn, ran—all but flew, too fast for humans to see—up the steps and on to the terrace. And at the very windowsill he caught Pierre, seized his shoulders and thrust him down on to the flags.
Pierre fought, struggling and cursing so viciously that Karl feared the humans would hear him. A shadow moved into the light; he heard Elizabeth's voice say, "Did you see something on the terrace?"
Karl held Pierre close in against the wall. From deeper in the room came Dr Neville's voice, thick with sleep. "What? What is it?"
"Get off me!" Pierre spat. "I'll give her something to see!"
"It's nothing," said Elizabeth. "Go back to sleep, George. God, my nerves are in rags. How long is this absurd situation going to last?"
The oblong of light narrowed to a pencil-strip as Elizabeth closed the curtains.
Karl held Pierre down, looking up to make sure no one could see them. All I have to do is send Charlotte back to them and take Pierre away. Then it will all be over. As he thought it, Pierre twisted beneath him and bit into Karl's arm. Karl broke free but the pain brought sudden anger; a tingling energy that moved softly into his limbs and his eyes.
"You can't keep me from them," Pierre said furiously. "You think you can treat me with such contempt, tell me what I can and can't do, half-kill me—"
"Be quiet," said Karl. He spoke very softly but the sheer commanding force of his voice—welling with anger and frost-cold determination—reached Pierre. It was the same power that Kristian possessed, that all vampires had in one degree or another. And the hypnotic clarity of Karl's will was stronger that Pierre's, always had been, although Pierre was older. "How dare you come back, when I told you to stay away?"
Pierre would not be cowed. His eyes were half-closed, steel-hard with hatred. "You are not my master. I said I'd come back for them and there's nothing you can do to stop me. You have to learn this lesson; you made this mess, my friend, and you cannot put it right by threatening me. Such interesting things I learned. Aren't you meant to be shut up in some derelict house with poor Charlotte as your hostage and the police outside? How did you get out? You could do this trick in the music hall. Now let me up!"
"But think of this first," said Karl. "Which would be the most rewarding—to sate yourself on this family, about whom I don't care so very much—or to present me to Kristian?"
Pierre was disarmed by this. The glitter of anger vanished and he said idiotically, "What?"
"Come with me now, give me your word you will never go near the Nevilles again, and I will come back to Kristian with you. Well?"
He pulled Pierre to his feet, drew him sideways into the ivy that veiled the wall. "I don't understand you," Pierre said suspiciously. "Nothing in the universe would force you to go back before, yet you'd go back to save these people? Don't tell me they mean nothing to you!"
"The truth is, I'm sick of this," said Karl. "These wretched games Kristian plays with you and me and Ilona. Why don't I just go back and confront him?"
"And you'd let me have the credit for persuading you?"
"Just so," said Karl, smiling. He smoothed Pierre's dishevelled curls and led him off the terrace, down into the garden. "Pierre, I wish you'd decide whose side you are on. You have no more love for Kristian than I do, so why treat me like an enemy?"
"I don't. This is how I treat my friends," Pierre replied sarcastically.
The trees and the tattered leaves of autumn folded over them. To Karl's eyes the darkness shone as if jewelled with deepest emerald, umber and bronze. He and Pierre walked slowly, a peculiar kind of razor-edged empathy between them. "I wish I understood why you behave as you do," said Karl.
He expected a sharp-tongued response, but instead Pierre answered in a pensive tone, "What do you expect of a vampire? I'm not an angel, and I'm not a devil. Unlike you, I went with Kristian willingly. You know that, don't you? My mother and I, we lived in the utmost poverty in Paris but I had this dream of being an artist and she, poor fool, encouraged me. She worked her hands to the bone to support me. Then I met this glorious gentleman; imagine, Satan and the Pope in a single figure, who looked like a hangman and scattered money about like holy water. "Why not leave this struggle and come with me?' he says. He could give me anything. Riches, immortality. Oh, I was not like you, Karl, wanting to stay human for love. I was greedy for what he offered me. After he'd transformed me and I was desperate with the thirst, he took me to his coach—remember that magnificent black and gold four-in-hand he used to have?—and he said, 'Inside you will find something that will fulfil every hunger, every desire you've ever felt.' And there inside was my mother. My first victim, my mother."
Karl gazed up at the stars glittering icily through a web of branches. "Didn't you hate him for that?"
"Hate him, for proving to me that I had made the right choice? I fed on her without a qualm. The silly witch had already made herself a martyr for me, so what better way to go than to give me her last drop of blood too? I expect she got her reward in heaven. It was my goodbye to the old life. Not au revoir. Never."
"But you don't share Kristian's beliefs. You never have."
"Of course not. I think he's insane. But that's part of his charm, isn't it? I believe in him. He is the centre, isn't he? Magnifique."
"And you can't cross him, can you? You can't go back to him and tell him you've failed to bring me with you."
Pierre's gaze darkened, fixing on Karl. "What are you getting at? You know, I am getting sick of being the one who has to pay and pay for your stupidity. It can put a strain on friendship, you know."
"Nothing, Pierre." Karl touched his shoulder. "Our agreement stands. As long as you remember it includes Charlotte."
"Oh, she is untouchable," Pierre said, lifting his hands. "A virgin in every sense, I'm sure."
***
Karl was away for such a long time. Charlotte could not get warm; she barely had the energy to shiver as she huddled in the doorway of the ice house. The suspicion crept on her slowly. He's not coming back. He lied to me, he's abandoned me so I'll be forced to go home.
And suddenly she saw the gleam of their eyes in the darkness and almost leapt out of her skin. They seemed to materialise out of nowhere, these two pale creatures who were suddenly so clearly not human.
"Charlotte, don't be afraid," said Karl. He bent down to her, lifted her up and hugged her. "Pierre is coming with us—with me. We have had a talk and he will hurt no one now."
Over Karl's shoulder she looked at Pierre with suspicion. Her head throbbed with every heavy beat of her heart and she was shaking with weakness. Yet she could see so clearly. Too clearly; everything looked magnified, tremulous with meaning. She could even see the brilliant blue of Pierre's irises, as if they contained their own light. He looked right into her eyes and smiled.
"Looking a little pale, isn't she, Karl? So much for your impeccable self-control. Oh, how I love your wonderful san
ctimony. 'Don't touch them, don't hurt them.' What can I do to them that's worse than what you have done already? Some friend of the family, was it, you finished off? And now your untouchable china doll on the path to damnation… "
His words stung Charlotte to anger. "It's nothing to do with you!"
Pierre stared at her with exaggerated amazement. "Bless me. Has he deceived you with his talk of love, Ophelia? You're defending the indefensible."
Karl held Charlotte protectively as he faced Pierre. "Leave her alone. Whether your opinion of me is justified or not, there's nothing amusing in it. This is not a game, Pierre."
"No? To me, that's exactly what it is, and if I did not treat it as such I'd go mad. The rest of you are mad, which only goes to prove my point."
Charlotte disliked Pierre as much as she feared him. He had an intriguing aura in common with Karl, yet she could never have felt attracted to him in the same way; there was a hardness to his sharp-boned features, a sly cynicism in his overlarge, heavy-lidded eyes that repulsed her. His character showed in his face. Yet Karl's did not… was that any better?
"We must decide how we are going to leave here," said Karl, disregarding Pierre's remarks. "I assume you still cannot enter the Crystal Ring?"
"Thanks to you," Pierre said resentfully.
"And neither can I, but I will explain that later if there's time. So we shall have to travel to Dover and take the ferry."
"Tedious." Pierre scuffed up some leaves with his foot. "Are you bringing Ophelia?"
"Don't call me that!" said Charlotte.
"Why not? If you are not completely insane, chérie, you are obviously on the way."
Karl spoke to Charlotte, ignoring Pierre. "It would be best if you went back to the Hall now." He turned in towards her, one arm round her, her hands held against his chest.
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