A Dance in Blood Velvet

by Freda Warrington

  “But you have that, Violette!” said Charlotte. “Thousands worship you for your art, adore you with never an impure thought; men and women, young and old. You had that unconditional love! What did you do but scorn it?”

  Violette looked away. “Love for my art, not for me.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “There is a difference. You’re right, I should be glad they love my art, at least. Anything more personal, I don’t need.” Charlotte watched her, wordless. Violette added briskly, “But this is selfpity.” She smiled, her face diamond-hard. “Lilith is the killer of pity! I don’t feel it for others and I’ll kill it in myself.”

  To Charlotte’s horror she began to bite herself, making swift savage gashes in hands, forearms, shoulders. The blood oozed slowly, unlike human blood. And the wounds were healing even as she made them, leaving only silvery marks under gore drying on her skin.

  “Stop it!” Charlotte cried. She seized Violette’s wrists and shook her. “Don’t!”

  Violette let her arms drop. The tension went out of her.

  “But the pain doesn’t go away,” she whispered. “It never goes away.”

  She was fading as Charlotte watched, becoming a figure of smoky quartz with the dark woodland gleaming clear through her body. “Wait! You can’t just leave!”

  But Violette went on fading until the Crystal Ring swallowed her. Empty air blew through the space where she had stood.

  And Karl said, “Let her go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ROSARY OF THORNS

  Benedict sat exhausted on the doorstep between the stone lions. He hung his head, arms resting loosely on his knees. He was waiting for the police and the doctor to come and take Lancelyn away.

  The last thing he’d wanted was to involve the authorities, but there was no choice. Lancelyn was violent and would let no one near him; he no longer even recognised Ben. Left alone in a locked room for much longer, he might injure or even kill himself.

  Ben knew they’d have to take him to an asylum. Better if Lilith - whatever she was - had killed him, he thought. Even if they’d had me up for the murder, that would have been better than this.

  The mist thinned, revealing the beautiful wild valley, but it was one of those dull days that never really got light. Inside the house, Lancelyn still writhed and muttered. Ben couldn’t hear him through layers of stone, yet he would never get those ghastly sights and sounds out of his mind. Lancelyn’s madness hung in the air all around him, driving him to tears.

  We’ve lost everything, Ben thought. All our dreams folded into a cocoon that will never metamorphose into the glory we envisioned... I think I’m losing my own mind, if I haven’t already. I’ll never sleep at night, after this. I’ll always be looking over my shoulder for Lilith.

  Suicidal craziness, trying to deal with vampires. Who the hell were we, to think we could meddle with the astral realm - and worse, to control it? It was bound to recoil on us like this. Bound to.

  “That’s it,” he said under his breath. “I don’t wish to see another supernatural creature again in my life. I want nothing to do with the occult. Oh, let me live in the sunlight, the mundane surface world where nothing’s ever questioned and nothing leaps out at you from the dark. I never want to see a vampire again.”

  A shadow slid soundlessly in front of him. Ben glanced up, caught his breath, sighed; Andreas was standing over him, pale with thirst, his eyes like gleaming bloodstones. Yet he also looked oddly fragile, distressed. He flopped down next to Ben, mimicking his despondent posture.

  “So, the Devil answers my prayers with the opposite of what I prayed for,” he said. Although he was startled to see Andreas, he felt strangely glad.

  “Better stop praying to the Devil,” Andreas said flatly. “How is your brother?”

  “No better,” Ben said bleakly. “All I can think about is how he used to be. A kind, shrewd soul who could be expansive, generous, deceitful, challenging, aggravating... simply human. And this is what he’s been brought to. I can’t stand it.”

  Andreas looked sideways from under his dishevelled black hair. “Isn’t it what you wanted? You’ve won. Lancelyn’s finished. You intended to frighten him off the occult for life, no?”

  “Stop!” said Ben. “If he’s finished, so am I. I never wanted it to end like this!”

  “But it was certain to!” Andreas spat the words. “Wisdom, madness or death, he said; well, he’s got one of those. At least he’s still alive. Luckier than Katerina.”

  Ben was too absorbed in his own misery to take in Andreas’s words. Then the meaning sank in. “What did you say? What about Katerina?”

  Andreas told him. His expression was bitter, his eyes too bright.

  “I’m sorry,” Ben said awkwardly. “I know you loved her.”

  “I don’t know how to live without her.”

  “Can vampires truly die?”

  “I hope so,” Andreas whispered. “Yes, we can really love, and really die... the difference is, sometimes we are brought back to life.”

  A wave of mixed horror and hope. “Could she be -”

  Andreas gave a savage shake of his head. “No. Karl decided to leave her in peace.”

  “Karl decided?” Ben didn’t know why he cared, but Andreas’s suffering woke a spark of emotion. “Don’t you have a say? Couldn’t you do it yourself?”

  “It isn’t easy.” There was searing self-hatred in his voice. “And I don’t want to make the effort. I would rather sit and feel sorry for myself.”

  Ben didn’t know what to say. “Good God, you’re strange. I don’t understand you at all.”

  “Would you like to try?” said Andreas.

  In the distance, Ben saw vehicles nosing their way up the valley; an ambulance, police car and the doctor’s car, he guessed. Christ, what am I going to say? Oh, anything. What does it matter? Just that I came to visit my brother and found him like this, I’ve no idea what’s wrong. Bloody lies. Damn all this to hell!

  The vehicles stopped, unable to negotiate the rough ground. Men climbed out, tiny in the distance, and began to toil up the path. Ben felt he should go down and meet them, but could not bring himself to move.

  He asked Andreas quietly, “What do you mean, would I like to try?”

  “Has either of us anything better to do? No, Karl’s right. Katti’s at rest. It’s time we let her go.” Andreas put his hand on Ben’s collarbone, leaned across him, kissed his neck - and bit him. Ben almost leapt out of his skin. Never had he thought Andreas could or would do this to him... yet the aching pain was seductive, the china-cold hands on his shoulders consoling... and the sucking kiss of heat at once unpleasant and peculiarly exciting.

  The world lurched and he thought he would faint. Andreas drew back, smiling, red berries of blood on his lips.

  “We must stay together, Ben.”

  “I don’t control you any more,” Ben said. He gasped for breath, as if he’d run up a hill. Shock, fear. “I’ve lost control; no, I’ve relinquished it, and I’m glad. You’re free.”

  “Free to stay with you,” said Andreas.

  “I have to go back to Holly,” Ben said, standing up. His hands and feet felt like ice. Weird panic spiralled inside him. His words were an incantation against it. “Once we’ve got Lancelyn into hospital, I’m going back to Holly.”

  * * *

  Holly sat in the parlour by the telephone, raw and exhausted, the mouthpiece still in her hand. Ben had called to tell her what had happened.

  His words remained vivid in her mind after he’d rung off, yet she could not grasp their enormity. Lancelyn, insane. They’d had to incarcerate him for his own safety. Ben would talk to the asylum doctors about moving him to a private home.

  The image of Lancelyn locked in a cell, writhing in a strait-jacket, recognising nothing and no one, appalled her. But the tone of Ben’s voice had almost been worse. He’d sounded wretched, hollow, as if life had ceased to matter. Holly was lost in confusion.<
br />
  He turns against Lancelyn, she thought - and even I finally saw why - and then goes back to him, as if they had some secret pact I knew nothing about! What am I supposed to believe?

  Numbly she replaced the mouthpiece, and wiped her eyes for the twentieth time. She gathered Sam on her lap and caressed his long, silken flanks. Her one friend.

  The nightmare of the hypnotism still haunted her. She’d been possessed for a time, Lancelyn punishing her for breaking faith. He could have killed her, but finally he’d let her go, and she had slid through a long, dark tunnel into dreamless sleep.

  When she had woken up, it was to find Mrs Potter beside her, and Benedict missing. She’d allowed Mrs Potter to fuss, make tea and toast, and to repeat the fatuous excuses Ben had left to explain his absence. Then she’d sent the housekeeper away, insisting in the face of her protests that she was fully recovered.

  Even before Ben telephoned, her sixth sense warned her that something monstrous had happened. She raged against him inwardly. He hypnotised me when I wasn’t ready, forced me into it until I almost died to give him the information - and then I wake to find he’s deserted me!

  She rested her head between the cat’s sleek ears, talking half to him and half to herself. “It isn’t only that he deserted me, Sam. It’s that he excluded me. I should have gone to Lancelyn with him, helped him in any way possible. Instead he leaves me behind! But when he comes home, I know he’ll explain and he knows I’ll forgive him.” Tears burned her throat. “He loved me once... or has he always treated me like this, and I didn’t see it? I don’t know why I feel so angry, so helpless. I don’t know why I’m sitting here waiting for him to come home!”

  Sam tensed and gave a questioning, mrreow? He was not attending to Holly, but to the window.

  The curtains were half-drawn, winter light gleaming in the gap. Holly sensed something wrong, an unpredictable yet familiar psychic shiver. Her head jerked up and she saw a figure against the light. Velvet darkness, no aura.

  Holly scrambled to her feet in terror. Enough, cried a voice in her mind. I’ve had enough of being frightened!

  The figure came towards her: a woman, birch-slim and as graceful as a dancer. She wore a black robe, not drab but as rich as raven feathers. Her hair, too, was a flowing black wing. Holly, despite her poor sight, saw every detail. A face like milky pearl, her eyes the violet of dusk lit by tiny stars.

  And she looked curiously familiar... like a film actress. A veiled woman at the centre of a storm...

  “Are you Holly Grey, Benedict’s wife?” said the woman.

  “Who are you?” Holly backed away.

  “Lilith, though I have other names. I was with your husband and his brother a few hours ago.”

  “Oh God,” said Holly. “No. You’re the one who -”

  “Who what?” Her voice was a razor cut.

  “Who drove Lancelyn mad,” Holly whispered. “The Dark Bride, the Black Goddess.”

  “Evil news travels fast, doesn’t it?”

  “He telephoned me.” Holly wasn’t obliged to explain anything to this apparition, but she couldn’t help herself.

  “I can only tell you that Lancelyn got what he deserved, because he drove me mad. Are you afraid of me?”

  “Of course I am!” said Holly. “What do you want?” She backed up to the sofa, while Lilith moved around the room, looking at paintings, photographs, ornaments. She frightened Holly more than all other vampires together. She seemed a truly alien creature, the Devil’s own. Sam merely watched, flicking the tip of his tail.

  At the window she paused, looking outside. “What a lovely garden,” she said. “It must be a picture in the summer, all those vigorous lush flowers and herbs climbing all over each other, all those insects and worms... I suppose you expend a great deal of loving care on your garden, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Holly said faintly, not understanding.

  “But it’s dead now, Holly. Look at the stalks, all dry and brown. Frost on the bare twigs. Your garden is cold and dead. I like it better that way.”

  Lilith turned, and the absolute certainty of death filled Holly. I don’t want to die! Tears rose, but she gulped them down and said shakily, “I don’t know how Ben and Lancelyn have upset you but I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Didn’t you?” A meaningful pause. Then she said, “Your menfolk failed to impress me. I don’t know why they imagined they could use me in their schemes. They’ve used you, too, haven’t they?”

  Holly was so taken aback by the question that she sat down before she collapsed. “What do you mean?”

  “Think back.” Lilith came towards her, her eyes huge like talismanic wheels. She seemed to know everything about Holly. “Didn’t they exploit your talent to their own ends? They used you as secretary, housekeeper and medium, and you complied to keep a roof over your head. First Lancelyn, then Ben. Time and again they bled your mind of knowledge, then pushed you into the background. They excluded you from every affair that mattered! Didn’t they?”

  “Yes!” Holly cried. “How do you know?”

  “You were no more than an appendage to them. You saw them as heroes but they were not. You still can’t bear to accept it.”

  Lilith was unfurling, with painful clarity, all the truths Holly dared not admit. She held her breath until it hurt. At last she let go and said wretchedly, “What use is my being ‘psychic’? I never foresaw this! I thought my visions were sharper than my eyesight, but they’re not. I might as well be blind.”

  Lilith hissed, “Then why do you sit here crying for them?”

  “Ben still loves me. So does Lancelyn!”

  “Men like that only love themselves,” Lilith said dismissively. “Shall I tell you how much Benedict loves you? Just before Lancelyn tried to rape me - to consummate a so-called ‘marriage’ to which I couldn’t consent because I wasn’t in my right mind - he promised Ben a bride of his own. Whether he meant to share me out like a temple whore, or find some other mystical creature, I dread to think, but Ben leapt at the idea. He didn’t spare you a thought.”

  Her heart threw itself onto barbed wire. She cried, “You’re lying!”

  “No. He was seduced by Lancelyn’s promises. Lancelyn said, ‘Wouldn’t you forsake your earthly wife for a bride like her?’ and your husband answered, ‘Oh God, yes, I’d do anything.’ He was eager to discard you - and still you wail for him!”

  “You’re insane!” Holly cried, unable to stop her tears now.

  “Perhaps - but I’m right. I can’t stand to see your weakness! Hasn’t he broken your heart? Hasn’t he ruined your life with his ambition?”

  “I need him, I have no one else.”

  “You have yourself!” Lilith said furiously. “That is all anyone has. Of all people, I should know!”

  “It isn’t enough for me!” Holly retorted.

  “God, you make me angry.” Lilith turned in a swirl of shadow. Her white hands came lashing out and seized Holly. Two ivory prongs rammed deep and vicious into her neck. In agony, Holly tried to fight free, but the woman squeezed her in snake coils. The cat leapt clear, making no attempt to protect her this time. They fell together onto the sofa-cushions. She felt the pressure of Lilith’s body covering hers, rigid with unholy pleasure. A sensation of sick whiteness rolled through her and she began to choke.

  Suddenly Lilith let her go and flung herself to the opposite end of the sofa. Holly, heaving frantically for breath, could only stare.

  The vampire did not look sated or relaxed. Instead she sat stiffly, arms braced, eyes stretched wide as if in horror. And as Holly watched, a bead of blood appeared between her lips and travelled down her chin.

  Lilith’s lips closed on the reflux and she swallowed hard, eyes closing briefly. As the crimson bubble broke free, it did not so much fall as drift downwards, swelling as it went, its livid colour paling to vermilion. The bubble rolled over Lilith’s knees and fell to the carpet, where it went on expanding, now the size of a kitten, a baby, a sma
ll child. Smoky shapes writhed inside the translucent sphere. It undulated, trying to put out limbs and a head. And at last it resolved into a human shape; a little girl, arms reaching out to Lilith, craving love and approval -

  Holly recognised the child of blood and mist, but she had no breath to scream. The phantom child was herself.

  The apparition went wobbling towards Lilith, at once nightmarish and pathetic. The vampire reached out and received it - not gently, but with clawed hands, her face death-white and ghastly. She slashed its throat, and as her fingernails penetrated its surface, the blood-child disintegrated without a sound. Nothing remained but a few blood-drops glistening on the carpet.

  As the child vanished, Holly felt pain tearing her whole body - more grief than pain - then, in a flame of release, it was gone.

  She looked up and saw the expression on Lilith’s face. No cool, mocking beauty now. Lips parted, eyes stretched wide, she looked stricken. Holly thought, She’s as terrified as me! Why?

  A few seconds passed. Then the vampire reached out and grabbed Holly’s hand as if for support. The hard grip made Holly wince.

  “What was it?” Holly said, her voice failing. “What have you done to me?”

  A gradual change came over the vampire. Her grip softened, and a faint pink blush coloured her face. She no longer seemed so demonic. And her face was lovely. A ballerina’s face, perfectly shaped with infinitely expressive eyes. I’d kill to be that beautiful, Holly thought abstractedly...

  And in that moment she noticed that she felt different. Calm, rising weightlessly above all her distress.

  “Did you see a - a vision of a child?” Lilith asked softly. She touched the tip of her tongue to her lips, licking away red drops.

  Holly nodded, and choked out a reply. “It was me.”

  Lilith looked closely at her, seemingly preoccupied with her own thoughts. “When I took your blood, I drew out the infant that you used to be... and I killed it.”