“Good God, yes, of course,” he said too enthusiastically, sitting forward. “I should say so. It’s so good of you to -”
He broke off, because of the way she was gazing at him. Challenging him with wide, clear eyes.
“Well, it isn’t why I asked you here,” she said. “And it’s not really why you came, is it?”
He gulped a mouthful of whisky and nearly choked as it burned its way down.
“What do you mean?”
“There is something on your mind, but it isn’t music, or art, or anything in which you professed to share our interest when Karl and I met you last week. You are too friendly, then, when you think no one’s watching, your face changes and your eyes go cold. Taking everything in, like a policeman.”
Her words were so close to the truth that he couldn’t gloss over them. The scene he’d envisaged was falling apart. She saw through him, and his desire for her was clouding his judgment. A story, quick, think of a story. Then, maybe... well, why did she invite me here, alone?
He cleared his throat. “Can you read my mind?” he said lightly.
“No, or I wouldn’t be asking.” Her voice was low and serious.
His imagination, never powerful, deserted him. The way Charlotte’s large, deep-lidded eyes bore into him made him feel guilty, as if he were trying to deceive a child whose perception and intelligence were greater than his own.
And she was armed with a red-hot poker. There was nothing for it but the truth.
“Is your name Charlotte Millward?”
She stiffened visibly as he spoke. “No. I never use that name.”
“Then do you use the name Neville, or von Wultendorf?”
The look in her eyes showed he was not mistaken. How was it possible for her sweet face to fill him with such unease?
“You had better tell me who in hell you are,” she said.
John Milner reached into his pocket and took out the letter. He hadn’t sealed the envelope because he’d intended to write more after this encounter. With a resigned sigh he passed her the top page. Still kneeling, she replaced the poker in its stand and read aloud, her voice soft and puzzled,
Dear David,
Wonderful news at last! I am ninety-nine per cent certain that I’ve found your sister. Can’t claim brilliant detective work, just hard slog. I located her through a mixture of educated guesswork and luck.
No joy in Vienna; as we thought, the chap wouldn’t be so obvious as to go back to his hometown. Still, I had a feeling he wouldn’t stray far. I tried Prague, Budapesth, Rome. You said he claimed to have been a cellist, and that they both liked music, so I’ve been to concerts until the damned stuff is coming out of my ears. Finally, in Switzerland, eureka! Concert in Berne last week, I saw a girl in the foyer who was the image of the photograph you gave me. Your description of her companion clinched it; striking fellow, had all the ladies turning their heads. It was remarkably easy to get talking to them. No apparent attempt at hiding their identities; they gave no surname, very little personal information -hence the tiny doubt - but they openly called each other Karl and Charlotte and gave the impression they lived in the locality.
So, to answer your first question, yes, they are still together. Your sister is charming. So is the man, though I confess he’s also oddly unnerving. Difficult to explain, but I now understand why you warned me to be careful. However, your sister showed no fear of him. Seemed quite the perfect couple. That might not be what you hoped to hear, but it may at least set your mind at rest.
I dared not appear too pushy in case they grew suspicious, but as we parted, I invited them to an opera this coming Saturday. Charlotte expressed interest. Karl said he’d be otherwise occupied, yet seemed happy for Charlotte to be escorted by me - a man they’d only just met! Odd. Still, fingers crossed she’ll turn up and I’ll have more to share with you.
While I know you didn’t intend to tell -
Charlotte stopped. She’d reached the bottom of the page. “Where is the rest?”
Milner waved the second page uneasily. “I was going to finish after I’d spoken to you.”
She looked stunned, and he was desperately sorry he’d distressed her so much. God, if only things were different and I could draw her down onto the Persian carpet... But her face was like ice.
“I can’t believe it. I thought David had accepted this and let me go. Why - why would he hire a stranger to look for me?”
“I’m not a stranger. I’ve known your brother for years. I was with his regiment in the War. Afterwards, through a set of circumstances I won’t bore you with, I became a private detective; nothing glamorous, just finding errant spouses, hanging around boarding houses in Brighton for evidence in adultery cases - you know the sort of thing?”
“No, I don’t,” Charlotte said thinly. “What in God’s name did David tell you about me?”
“He got in touch out of the blue last year. He said that you’d left your husband - well, it would be eighteen months ago by now - and run off with another man whom he didn’t seem to think at all suitable. He wanted me to find you.”
“Why? To bring me back? He knows that’s impossible.” She leaned anxiously towards him, making his heart leap. “Is there news of my family? Bad news?”
“None that I know of. Your father isn’t well, but I gather you knew that when you left. David didn’t tell me much at all, to be honest. One shouldn’t make assumptions, but it may be that your husband wants to initiate divorce proceedings...”
She sat back on her heels, staring at the fire. “That’s in the past. I have no husband except Karl.”
He continued gently, “Or it may be that David was simply worried and wanted to know you were safe.”
Charlotte fell silent. He studied her neat profile, the enticing pink sheen of her mouth. Then she said, “He doesn’t need to know. As far as he’s concerned, I’m dead.”
She rose fluidly to her feet, walked to the doors and went out onto the balcony.
Milner drained his whisky glass and set it down. It wasn’t drink that made him light-headed. He was unreasonably glad that her “husband” wasn’t here. For no rational reason, he dreaded meeting Karl again. At least his absence gave Milner a chance to mend things with Charlotte.
He followed her and stood in the doorway. “I’m sorry you’ve taken this so badly. You must be furious at me.”
A gorgeous smell of pine filled the spring air. Light from inside outlined her form; the Alps and forest were iron-blue behind her. Charlotte was an indistinct yet perfect, elegant figure of the modern age. Thin straps on creamy shoulders, long pearls, her beaded dress sashed low across her hips, the casual drape of silk emphasising the allure of her breasts. Her long hair was gathered loosely at the nape of her neck.
Milner loved long hair. He hated the fashion for cropping it short. And Charlotte’s hair was so beautiful, the glossy russet waves sprinkled with gold. Under a sequinned bandeau, her forehead was broad and pale, her eyes sea-grey.
“Why should I be angry with you?” she said.
“For deceiving you.”
“You didn’t deceive me. You aren’t good enough at it. I like you, actually; I can see why David trusts you.”
Her expression captivated him. She looked solemn, her deep-rose mouth turned down at the corners, her glorious eyes smouldering like those of an actress on film.
“I wish I could have bluffed it out,” he said. “You don’t want to be found, do you?”
“How perceptive,” she murmured. Milner smiled. He felt a growing rapport between them, warmth swelling into magnetism. “And I won’t be found. Come here.”
She turned towards him, one hand on the balcony; open, receptive. So she had married one man, run off with another, and now while her lover was out she was trying to buy his silence with seduction! So what? She was lovely.
He went to her, drawn by the curve of her arms. More amethyst than grey, her eyes were expanding to fill his vision. Glittering. Was she crying?<
br />
“John,” she said.
He put his arms around her. Christ, she was cold! “You don’t have to do this,” he said.
“But I want to.”
“Come inside. You’re freezing.”
“Then warm me.” Suddenly her voice trembled. “Warm me.”
He bent to kiss her but she drew back, avoiding his lips. She opened her mouth as if in pain, and he saw how long and sharp her canine teeth were, seeming to lengthen as he watched. Even then he was too slow to understand.
“This is why he mustn’t find me,” she whispered. She dropped her face onto his shoulder and he felt her lips move against his neck. “This is why!” She was shuddering. The faintest groan came from her throat. “Ohh...”
And she bit him. Not playfully, not even in anger, but with an awful, hungry determination. Her teeth broke through the skin, piercing flesh and muscle and blood vessels. The pain was vicious, frightening, nightmarishly weird. Her mouth was a steel trap on his throat... A sick feeling spread from his stomach to fill his whole body with pins and needles. He was floating and the sensation was unbearable. He was dying.
Lights spun around him, dazzling and blinding. There was a deep, throaty roar all around him, the roar of the Devil as it came to claim his soul. The whole world slopped around him like floodwater. Only one thing remained clear and steady: the woman’s face.
As lovely as the moon, her lips red with his blood, she looked sadly down at him. He clutched at her, but she pushed his hand away.
“I’ll die...” he rasped.
“No, you won’t,” she said calmly.
“I’ll die if I don’t see you again.”
She blinked, her eyes briefly shaded by her smoky lids and luxurious eyelashes. Then she whispered, “You will never see me again. You have never seen me at all. Forget me. Because if you ever tell David, or if you ever cross my path again, I’ll kill you. I promise.”
Who’s David?
He couldn’t even remember the woman’s name. Who was she? She couldn’t abandon him to the Devil who was storming through the night to take him.
“No. Don’t go!” he cried, terrified.
She touched a luminous hand to his hair and said, “I’m sorry.”
She drew away, watching him with sad affection. Then, like the moon passing behind a cloud, she vanished.
* * *
Sometimes Karl would drift through the Crystal Ring at ground level, lost in fascination that another dimension, fitting the Earth like a glove, could exist. A dream-realm that only vampires could enter. To vanish from mortal eyes, and walk unseen through their dwellings... Irresistible, even though reality became a warped ghost of itself, and the only light was a sinister, luminous twilight.
Houses, trees, every barrier gave like cobwebs to Karl’s unearthly body. Even the mountains above the quiet town were like a crust of ash over a dead fire. Nothing was solid here. Nothing could be trusted. At times Karl loathed the Crystal Ring, because it was terrifying, impossible to understand, and yet part of him. Part of the incomprehensible, twisted darkness that had made him a vampire.
For all the freedom the Ring gives us, he thought, it exacts payment. No certainty, no comfort, no rest. I resent it because it demands love; and I love its wildness, its refusal to conform to any theory. Perhaps it is God. Perhaps the Devil. Or, as Charlotte asserts, the human subconscious made tangible.
Karl, an eternal cynic, was more inclined to believe Charlotte than anyone.
It was painful to think too deeply, and unwise to keep asking, after all this time, why he’d been chosen to become undead: a creature who stood apart from humanity but needed them to feed his dark appetite. Pointless to worry what the same metamorphosis had done to Charlotte. They’d both known the cost of staying together.
Karl smiled, thinking of her. Hadn’t their glorious, destructive love made any sacrifice worthwhile? Even the sacrifice of the victims Charlotte now needed? In truth, any vampire claiming a conscience was a hypocrite.
The strangest thing, he thought, is that she hardly seems changed at all. She insists she’s always been the same inside: amoral. It took only the vampire’s kiss to bring her home. Yet I know she has changed, is still changing... how could it be otherwise? The look in her eyes, the way she is with her victims...
Charlotte had wanted to meet the stranger, John Milner, again. Karl had not. Was I wrong to let her go alone? To find out what he really wanted, she said. Only that.
Karl moved slowly, thinking of Charlotte and taking little notice of his surroundings. He saw a human walking towards him through the real world; not solid, but a bright corona against the dim folds of the Ring. A signature of life written in crackling energy.
A second later, Karl knew he was being followed.
Held still by a rush of life-or-death peril, he was aware of some thing that seemed distant, but at the same time close and threatening. He felt presences, an impression of tall shadows watching him. Their gaze struck through his defences to stir a primeval fear that he thought had died with his humanity.
Instinct took over. Karl stepped out of the Ring, felt the world snap into solidity. He found himself in a narrow medieval street. A human cannoned into him and reeled away with a cry of shock.
A young man with spectacles, oiled hair, the dull look of a clerk about him, stood gaping at Karl, frozen.
Karl’s fear dissipated as he cursed his own carelessness. Normally he would never step from the Ring in clear view of a mortal. It was unlike him to be alarmed by his own imagination, but the wretched man had a worse fright as he took in the vampire’s gleaming skin and uncanny stillness with flat panic in his eyes. Karl regretted the situation, while still finding it faintly, horribly amusing.
The young clerk was backing up, angry now. Also embarrassed, as if caught slipping away from a guilty tryst. He said in Swiss German, “Good God, sir, you frightened the life out of me!”
Karl did not reply. He simply watched the man without emotion, as if watching a bird in a cage. He saw him as a core of frantic life, smelled his salty heat, heard the blood pulsing through his heart.
Karl’s hands shot out and seized the clerk’s shoulders. His coat felt rough, releasing scents of camphor and dust. He struggled ineffectually, without sound, like a comic actor in a film. At the same time, Karl was aware of lighted windows in the old houses, the babble of voices, the banal struggle of life continuing everywhere. Drizzle fell from a strip of wet, slaty sky. But through the soft rain of impressions, the only reality was the ruthless, throbbing heat of his thirst.
* * *
Charlotte spent an hour helping Mr Milner down the forest path and into his car, then driving him to a quiet street near his hotel in Interlaken. Returning to the chalet took minutes. She simply stepped into the Crystal Ring and arrowed back as if winged.
The drawing room coalesced around her. The fire still crackled and lights burned under their Tiffany shades. The man’s smell lingered; a trace of tobacco, hair oil, whisky. And blood. Red stains dotted the carpet by the balcony doors.
She stared at the spots as if in a trance. Although his delicious blood-heat filled her, she couldn’t bear to recall the way he’d looked at her afterwards: with a mixture of terror and obsession, as if she’d become his entire world.
Charlotte wondered how long his madness would last. She had liked him - almost loved him, as she took long exquisite sips of his blood. Although her bite had unhinged his mind, as a vampire’s bite usually did, this didn’t seem to matter. How was it possible to feel both tenderness and indifference, at the same time?
She went to the chair where he’d sat, and picked up both pages of the letter. Kneeling by the fire again, she read the rest.
While I know you didn’t intend to tell your family of your search attempt, I’ve a feeling you might change your mind once I reassure you that she is (to all appearances) well and happy. Even if Dr Neville won’t relent his decision to disown her, it may still have a beneficial effec
t on his health to know. Even if - from what you tell me of your father! - he won’t admit it.
Anyway, my friend, it’s your decision. I feel I’m very close to bringing you the good news you want to hear.
The letter ended there, halfway down the page.
Charlotte’s hands fell to her lap with the letter held tight. She bowed her head and wept.
In heaven’s name, David, why did you do this? You know what Karl is, and what he made me. You know I can never go back.
Her family had adored Karl, until they discovered the unholy truth of his nature. And for continuing to love him, for consenting to become like him, Charlotte had earned their rejection. She couldn’t blame them, but it was against her will that she’d had to reject them in turn. Now to learn that David was trying to find her, that he still couldn’t bear to give up, caused her anguish. News of her father’s ill health was worse. She was partly, if not wholly, responsible. How would it help him recover, she thought, to hear that I’m still with Karl?
The price of being with Karl was to leave my human life behind. Oh, David, what good could come of you or Anne or Father seeing me again? Gods, why can’t you let go... and why can’t I?
But I can. I must.
She crumpled the letter and pushed it into the fire. Flames leapt. With the poker she worried at the paper until it was ash, black flakes spiralling up the chimney. Searing away another link with her family, as she must destroy every link until they were all gone.
Tears blurred the gleam of the red garnet on her wedding finger; the ring Karl had given her. “For eternity,” he’d said. The blood-crystal ring that held her.
A year and a half they’d been together, though their mutual obsession had yet to fade into comfortable familiarity. How could it? The first time she had truly seen him, seen the incandescent beauty of danger - that moment sang in her mind forever. And she’d nearly lost him so many times. Now, whenever they were apart, there was always a tug of fear whispering, you may never see him again.
Then, blessedly, she realised she was not alone.
A Dance in Blood Velvet Page 2