The Dark Arts of Blood (42 page)

Raqia was the interference pattern of all those millions of waves. Only vampires perceived it, for they were the manifestation of mortal desires and fears.

Charlotte believed that the recent storms and apparitions were forewarnings of some kind; but the future, all the potential futures, changed constantly and could not be predicted. One of the hardest lessons she’d learned was that vampires were not designed to interfere with human events. They could try, but the Crystal Ring itself would slap them down.

She came abruptly out of her trance, disturbed by a shudder in the air. Although she’d never fully lost consciousness, she felt that several hours had passed between one breath and the next. Karl gripped her hand.

“Time to go back,” he said. “It’s almost dawn.”

“Yes… that’s odd, I thought I heard someone calling me.”

“Raqia plays tricks on us,” said Karl. They met each other’s gaze. “I noticed a shockwave, but this realm is always restless. It could have been anything.”

“I felt it too,” she said. “It was strong, like an icy current in a warm sea. I’m cold.”

The healed scar in her abdomen ached.

Like divers they descended towards the ground, ethereal bodies arched, lacy tendrils flowing around them. Gloom swallowed them. They emerged into reality above the ground and fell the last few feet on to grass near the lake – shaken, but suddenly warm again, human-shaped. They’d changed out of their party clothing last night: Karl wore a plain dark suit, Charlotte a simple russet dress. The sky was a wash of pale lemon and lilac behind luminous mountain peaks.

“That was elegant,” Charlotte said, laughing. Karl caught her arms and they stood up together. For a few moments they pressed together, his body lithe and hard against hers; and she thought,
Last night I felt the lamia vanish. Perhaps it’s gone, perhaps I’m well again and it wouldn’t do any harm if we lay down here in this flower meadow by the lake…

It was Karl who ended the embrace, gently putting a forearm’s distance between them. She sighed, looking down at the grass full of white and pink flowers. She couldn’t look into his eyes.

“At least we didn’t land in the water,” he said. “We should go home, beloved.”

“Look, there’s Stefan’s chalet,” she said. “We’re hardly half a mile away, which means we’re ten miles from town.”

“We can go back into the Ring and take a short cut,” said Karl.

“Actually, I’d rather walk. I love walking through the dawn, don’t you?”

“Very much. Are you still cold?”

“No.” She put her hand through his arm, tipped back her head to breathe the fresh air. “There’s still something nagging, like a sound I can’t quite hear… Violette was with us in Raqia for a while. I’ve no idea when she left. Do you think it’s her calling us?”

“If so, she’ll have to wait,” Karl said firmly. “Sunrise and your company are blessings I intend to savour,
liebling
.”

These times were her favourite, when she and Karl had nowhere to be and all the time in the world. They walked close together, basking in nature. Imagining there was no cold poison inside her, no spectre haunting her, no wild storms in Raqia. For now, everything was perfect.

“Let’s stop and wish Stefan good morning as we pass,” Karl said with a smile. “I wonder what time his party finished?”

“It’s a good thing he’s not human, or he’d be moaning from the after effects of drink, as most of his guests will be,” said Charlotte. “Not to mention all the other mischief I’m sure they got up to. I love him, but his idea of entertainment…”

“Actually, I believe he loves to observe how far humans will go with very little encouragement,” said Karl. “Perverse, but understandable. Mortals become so very fascinating to us.”

“Mm. Don’t they,” Charlotte murmured. “Well, he swears his gatherings are very rarely fatal to his visitors, so…” She trailed off, remembering her older sister, Fleur. She pushed the thought away.
Her death was not Stefan’s fault.

“Charlotte?” Karl said softly, as if he knew what she was thinking.

“I want to disapprove, I really
should
disapprove, but I can’t.” She kept her tone light. “He charms his way around everyone, as if an orgy of blood and debauchery is as proper as a vicarage tea party.”

They reached the corner of the chalet. The row of windows in the lake room glinted red as the sun rose. Charlotte felt the cold current again. It hit her chest like a kick from a horse.

Inside the house, someone was shouting. A pair of bloodied palms hit the inside of a glass door then slid downwards, leaving trails of gore. Karl was already running up the wooden steps to the veranda, Charlotte a pace behind him, as the door burst open and Stefan fell through, screaming.

He was covered in blood, his clothes torn, his hair matted and his eyes shining white with terror in his blood-spattered face. He stretched out crimson hands towards them.

“Help me,” he cried. His voice was hoarse: a desperate, ghastly sound. “Karl, help me. Niklas is dead.”

T
he smell hit Karl like a wall: the dregs of the party, stale smoke and alcohol, the fading mingled body odours of the departed guests. And blood… Vampire blood, subtly different to that of humans, like cognac compared to rich red wine.

Niklas lay on his back in the centre of the wide room. He was naked from the waist up, his chest and torso a red glistening mass of wounds. All around him, the rug was spattered and streaked with blood.

Stefan was wounded too, red flesh showing through the torn remains of his shirt. At least he was alive. Niklas lay like marble. Dropping to his knees beside him, Karl touched his hand, his face. The skin felt like chilled pastry. There was no heartbeat, no breath… and although a vampire could fake death, Niklas had no reason or will to do so. Something more fundamental was missing. Karl sensed no hint of any life force left in him at all.

Meanwhile Stefan’s raw voice spilled an incomprehensible stream of panic, misery and grief. Charlotte was trying to soothe him, but he would not be comforted. When she put her arm around his shoulders, he threw her halfway across the room.

“Stefan!” Karl leapt up and tried to hold him still. “For pity’s sake, calm down.”

“I’m all right,” said Charlotte. She rose to a crouch and stared at Niklas. “What happened?”

Stefan didn’t answer. He slid out of Karl’s grip and collapsed. His moans faded to a ghastly background noise as he lay on the carpet like a broken doll, hands clawing towards his twin.

Niklas lay with his eyes open: pale yellow glass orbs staring at the ceiling. Karl knelt over him, examining each bloody slash like a policeman with a murder victim. Red gashes disfigured his throat, chest, abdomen – deep cuts that would have killed a human, but should not have killed a vampire.

Charlotte moved to kneel beside Karl at Niklas’s side, tears flowing down her face. Karl remained as calm and businesslike as a doctor. Moisture flooded his eyes but he ignored it, only sweeping it away when his vision began to blur.

“Is he really… gone?” Charlotte whispered.

“I think so,” Karl replied. His voice was soft and hoarse. “It is so hard to tell with us. We can stop our own hearts. We can enter hibernation in the
Weisskalt
, effectively mummified by the cold, and still recover… but I sense nothing from Niklas, not the merest spark of life.”

A muffled noise came from Stefan.

“What did you say?” Charlotte asked gently.

“I said he’s gone.” Stefan pushed himself up on both hands. His face was ghastly, bloodless, his eyes wild. “He’s dead. I feel it here.” He struck his breastbone. “Don’t you realise we were one being? I was always in his head, and he in mine. He was my other-self. Why is he dead and not me? Why?”

“Because…” Karl tailed off and thought better of attempting to explain. “Stefan, I know this is hard…”

“You have no idea!” He pointed a white, trembling hand at Karl. “You destroyed your own
doppelgänger
with no trace of pity in your heart! How can you understand? Niklas – I loved him, I devoted my life to him even though he never realised, any more than a cat comprehends that his owner would give his life for him – but I did so anyway and I’m sure he knew,
somewhere
deep inside. But you, why would
you
care that Niklas is dead?”

He launched himself at Karl with a roar, wrenched him backwards and pinned him down, hands around his throat, fangs extended – as mindless as Niklas had been. Karl held him away with braced arms, but Stefan was crazed.

“Stefan!” Charlotte seized his shoulders, battling to stop him. With strength Karl didn’t know she possessed, she managed to wrench him loose. Stefan crumpled suddenly and rolled into her legs, taking her down with him. They lay tangled on the floor, until Charlotte sat up with Stefan resting his head like a dead weight in her lap.

He shook with sobs. His blood stained her dress. She stroked his blond hair, whispering nonsense to calm him, as if he were an infant. Her tears dripped on to his face.

Never in his life had Karl seen him like this. He’d often seen people grief-stricken, but no one as demented as Stefan at the loss of his twin.

“You’re wounded too,” said Charlotte. “Will you let me look?”

Stefan shook his head. “I’ll heal. He – he’s all that matters.”

“Karl?” she said, meeting his eyes. She was ashen-faced. “Is there nothing we can do for Niklas?”

Karl knelt over the corpse again. He pushed a hand through his hair, unconsciously smearing Niklas’s blood on to his forehead. “Sometimes lifeless vampires can be brought back by bathing them in fresh blood for days or weeks. We all know that. But the cost! Scores of human lives. Kristian was ruthless enough to do it, but I am not.”

“Not even for Niklas?” she asked. Then she flinched, as if she regretted asking.

“It would be for Stefan’s sake, not for Niklas himself,” Karl answered with a heavy heart. “But no, not even for him.”

At that, Stefan lifted his head. “If not for Kristian’s ruthlessness, neither you nor I would even be alive now.”

“So?” Karl said grimly. “We would have died at our appointed time, as do millions of others. I’m glad to be alive, of course. We’re lucky indeed to have experienced all the pleasure and pain and love that we’ve found during our stolen time. But that doesn’t make Kristian’s actions any less monstrous.”

“But you’d do it for Charlotte.”

Karl didn’t answer.

Charlotte stroked Stefan’s shoulder, as if willing him to stay calm. He went on shuddering, his breath ragged, while she seemed to have stopped breathing altogether.

Karl had learned the macabre truth about Niklas only a few years ago. He remembered sitting with the twins at a mountainside café, like a trio of tourists, while Stefan explained. A beheaded vampire might regrow their body, if their head were bathed in blood; but the body, too, could also regrow a head.

Later, in different circumstances, Karl had survived a similar horror.

The difference was that Karl had regarded his mindless twin as an abomination to be destroyed. The replica’s head, regrown from the body, had no mind: only some remnant of instinct. It was like a moving statue of the original, a revenant. Karl had had no hesitation in destroying his own ghastly double.

Stefan, by contrast, loved Niklas like a true twin. Whether that indicated a generous soul or sheer vanity, Karl was unsure. Both, he suspected. Whatever the case, such love was real and deep enough to tear out Stefan’s soul.

“Stop,” said Charlotte, jolting him from his thoughts. “Don’t start arguing, it’s the last thing we need! Please. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“But we were all thinking it,” said Karl. “Stefan, we’ll talk of this later, when you’re calmer.”

“I am never going to be calmer!” His voice was a near-scream.

Karl turned to him and lifted him out of Charlotte’s embrace, gripping his shoulders. “Try, at least for as long as it takes to tell us what happened.”

A few more groans, then Stefan caught his breath and went still.

“Last night,” he said. “The party went on until… three in the morning, I believe. The jazz band and waiters were long gone by then and the rest of us came down into this room. We had a nice time. Some people were wide awake and giggly, others half-comatose. There was some kissing… and yes, Niklas and I indulged our thirst upon a handful of willing souls. Nothing especially outrageous. But by three or so, the last of them had left.”