A Taste of Blood Wine

by Freda Warrington

  Hours and hours went by and she spent them wandering in the garden of her thoughts, not noticing how time passed. Then suddenly she felt a presence approaching, and she looked up to see Karl entering the room. Relief and delight caught her full in the chest like a flood and she rushed to him, crying, "Oh, thank God! I thought I'd never see you again!"

  But there was no tenderness in Karl's face. He did not so much catch her in his arms as stop her, holding her away from him. "Charlotte, I'm so sorry," he said, putting her gently aside.

  Then she saw something in his eyes that unleashed streams of foreboding. Something's happened to him. He's changed.

  "No, I'm all right," she said. "Kristian hasn't hurt me. I don't know how he found me, he just appeared and—"

  "It doesn't matter."

  "Don't you want to hear what happened?"

  "It doesn't matter," he repeated leadenly. It was as if he had struck her.

  "Karl, what is it?" she said, beginning to panic now.

  She tried to see through the ice in his eyes to some hidden tenderness, some communication. It was like looking into granite. He said, "It was all a mistake, Charlotte. I thought I could find an answer in you but I was wrong. Transforming you has only made the emptiness worse. You cannot help me… and I cannot help you, either."

  "No! Karl!" She tried to catch his hands but he pushed her away.

  "You hate me for it now, but in time you will come to see that I was right," he went on. "I cannot fight Kristian any more; it has taken me all this time to see that he was right and I was wrong. I'm going with him."

  "You can't!" She stared at him, trying to draw some response to her distress; trying to see some hidden sign that he did not mean what he was saying. There was none. He was completely sealed against her as he had never, ever been before. "Is it because he threatened me?"

  "No. He said he would have let you live anyway."

  "Then why? You don't want to go with him, do you?" Her voice rose. "You don't, do you?"

  Karl let out an almost imperceptible sigh. His eyes filled with sadness, but they were far away, not really seeing her. She had not felt such devastating grief since she had wept over his decapitated body. It scythed the ground from under her, so that it was all she could do not to fall to her knees weeping. That it should end like this, that Kristian should have his victory after all. Yet Karl had warned her, One of us may change… He had warned her but that made it no less unbearable.

  Something intangible had happened to Karl, a change of heart she should have anticipated but had missed. Or was it simply that Kristian had worn him down over the years until finally he had to concede there was no answer except in Kristian? Whatever the reason, Charlotte knew that in some way she had been the catalyst.

  "It's my fault, isn't it? I was your last attempt to break away from Kristian. Was I such a disappointment to you?"

  He looked away from her. "Of course it is not your fault. It is all mine. I know I've treated you with unforgivable cruelty but I can only say that one day you will come to love Kristian too. And then you will understand why I have to do this."

  Karl seemed a stranger to her again, like the first time they had met; only this time his eyes were not glamorous windows to another world but blank, closed doors. He was so far away from her that she could find no way to reach him. Oh God, he does love Kristian, she thought, and she backed away from him as if she had been hit in the stomach.

  "Forgive me, Charlotte," said Karl.

  "I can't! I told you, if you were ever hostile to me again—"

  His face remained as dead-pan as his double's had been. "I should have foreseen this. If you must go back to your family, at least you are free to do so. You have them."

  She tried to say, "I have nothing," but no sound emerged. And before she could protest, do anything at all, Karl turned and walked to the open door. She stood still a moment, rooted, then ran after him, crying, "If you leave me, I have nothing!"

  He closed the door in her face and she heard his footsteps retreating. Like hammer blows on iron they sounded. Blows raining on her heart and head.

  "I have nothing," she repeated, closing her eyes. "Except myself." Then the bitter tears began to flow down her face and she hugged herself against the convulsive shudders, thinking, If vampires are meant to be heartless why does this hurt so much?

  She felt the air shiver and looked round eagerly, her tears ceasing abruptly. Karl-—he's changed his mind! But it was Kristian who stood there, his pale face glowing with benevolence. She loathed him passionately.

  "My dear child, it grieves me to see you in such torment," he said. "Sometimes the hardest thing in the world is to do God's will. You must forgive Karl. I did tell you he would renounce you, didn't I? So you have lost your love—but you will find a greater love to replace it."

  "Karl and I are only allowed to love you." Her throat was in a spasm with the ache of swallowing her grief. "Not each other. I understand."

  "Good. Immortals were not meant to couple like humans; we are meant for a much greater destiny. Our devotion is to God; we are His messengers, the bearers of His holy retribution."

  "I don't believe in your God," she said.

  "You will, my child."

  "No, I can't. I know He doesn't exist." She held his gaze, too wretched to be frightened of him any more. She had been afraid to tell Kristian the truth before, but now there was nothing else to say.

  "But I know He does."

  "You are wrong! There is no God in the Crystal Ring. It is a realm created by human thoughts. Human dreams."

  The atmosphere rang as if she had shouted an obscenity in church. Menacingly quiet, he said, "What do you mean by this blasphemy?"

  She didn't even know if he would understand her, but she pursued the argument relentlessly. "Everything consists of energy in one form or another; heat, light, matter. Even thinking creates electricity. The Crystal Ring is a dimension where the waves of thought become material, and vampires are creatures who can perceive that dimension and move through it as if through another world. It is that energy which animates us! Mankind's thoughts, not God's! Without man we would not—"

  Exist, she was going to say, when his fist lashed out and struck her. The blow lifted her off her feet and slammed her into the wall. She fell. Pain throbbed through her bones.

  "Sacrilege!"

  "But it's true! I had a revelation, Kristian! The Crystal Ring is the mind of man! Vampires exist because of man, not because of God or the Devil!"

  He seized her. The next she knew his long teeth were in her throat and her limbs were shrivelling with weakness. Nothing sensual in this violation. He was incapable of sensuality. He took all pleasure and pierced it to death with his puritan guilt, poisoned everything he touched with his self-loathing.

  The blood he had first taken had been only a little, she realised now in defenceless agony as he went on swallowing and swallowing. His tyranny, the cold weight of him on her body and mind, everything about him disgusted her. She wished she could faint to escape it; but her consciousness clung on tenaciously and she endured it with impotent fury. She felt every vein burning dry, gauntlets squeezing her stomach.

  Now Kristian was dragging her along an unlit corridor. Charlotte fought him with unhuman strength, demented, but he was vastly stronger than she. He picked her up and threw her; she went sprawling over damp flagstones and heard a door bang shut behind her.

  Kristian had locked her in a cell.

  She hauled herself off the floor and threw herself at the door, out of her mind with torment. Then she remembered the Crystal Ring. Yes—try that—be calm… But it was like throwing herself against a wall of another kind. Invisible, yet thicker than stone. She was trapped, starving.

  Kristian looked at her through a grille in the door. There was a glint of mania in his eyes; her words had plucked a very raw nerve. That, at least, gave her a small twinge of triumph. He shouted, "I have known many misguided immortals in my time—but no one has ever
dared to utter such evil lies before! You will pay for this, Charlotte. Let us see how many days of starvation you can bear before you beg for absolution."

  "Why are you frightened?" she cried, shaking the grille. "It's because it's true, isn't it? I received a revelation; you never did! You had to invent your vision of God for yourself to fill the emptiness, because the truth is you just don't know!"

  He brought his fists down on the door. The sound reverberated like a shell-burst. "Liar! I am the Truth! God has chosen me to be the holy scourge of mankind!"

  "How can you be that? There are millions of them and only a few of us. These are delusions of grandeur, megalomania."

  "But I have slain millions in my time."

  His words shocked her out of her rage. She must have misunderstood him. She stared at him, thinking, Does he believe that? "How could you have killed so many without being discovered?"

  "I do not kill, I send souls to face their judge!" His will weighed her down, as if she were a tree bending under a burden of snow. He sucked out her anger, left her stretched out in despair as his words thundered over her. "I am the wings of God! I take human life silently, never soiling myself with their sweat, their filth, their blood. I have sucked the life-force out of whole populations, all over the world. Plague, they call me. Typhoid, Cholera, Black Death. A thousand names they give me in their pitiful fear. But my true name is the Vengeance of God."

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  In a World that Never Ends

  Kristian stood with Karl on the castle balcony, overlooking the green folds of the gorge falling into the Rhine's eaten-silver surface. He was studying Karl carefully for signs that his conversion was not genuine. Karl's eyes, which had always been serene—or at worst, hostile—were now troubled; and for the first time, they seemed to be hiding nothing. They spoke to Kristian. Their look said, This is the hardest thing in the world for me, to swallow my pride and admit that you were right and I was wrong; but I am trying. Forgive my arrogance. Give me the guidance I need!

  "Charlotte has some strange ideas," said Kristian. "I am afraid I shall have to purge them out of her before she can truly serve God." And he watched for Karl's reaction; the slightest hint that Karl secretly still cared for her. He saw none.

  "You will deal with her as you think fit," Karl replied indifferently. "I know you will do what's best." And he looked at Kristian with a child-like love in his face that seemed to say, Save me. Lift me up, teach me. A wonderful feeling of contentment spread over Kristian and for a moment he could have wept.

  "Now I believe you," said Kristian, holding out his hand. In the past Karl would simply have stared back, rejecting him in silent contempt. But now he took Kristian's wrist, knelt down and bit into the vein. A single swallow of holy blood. Resting his other hand in blessing on Karl's head, Kristian felt a fierce, all-encompassing love. "Oh yes, now I believe. I knew you would come back one day."

  "Beloved Father," said Karl.

  "I never cared about the others, you know," Kristian said tenderly. "Only you."

  Karl looked up and smiled. "What others?" he said. Kristian lifted him to his feet and hugged him. Karl leaned his head against Kristian's shoulder, the compliance of surrender in every line of him. "It is a relief not to have to fight any more."

  "Of course. God brought you to me; now let me bring you back to God. Let us go away from here."

  "Where?"

  "Anywhere, as long as it is with you," said Kristian. "We shall walk and talk together for hours, days. Forever. All the time under heaven is ours."

  He led Karl into the Crystal Ring, and at nightfall they hunted together in Vienna.

  "I hope that your mistake with Charlotte has taught you that humans can offer us nothing spiritually," Kristian said. "In time you will stop taking their blood and take their life-force instead. Don't think of it as destroying them, but as dispatching them to receive divine judgement."

  Karl said nothing, but he accepted the words in humility.

  Later they walked through the wild white-blue grandeur of the Alps; perhaps the nearest thing to the Crystal Ring on Earth. And there Kristian closed his hand around Karl's arm and said gently, "I want you to tell me… tell me all about Charlotte."

  Karl sighed faintly, and did not reply.

  "I know it is difficult for you," Kristian continued, "but you must confess it to me; for the good of your soul, and hers." A strange excitement smouldered inside him as he spoke. "I want to know everything. The first time you drank from her. How it felt to take her life. You must confess to be absolved." And his voice shook a little with anticipation—No. Purest holy fervour.

  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."