The Dark Arts of Blood (43 page)

“No one stayed the night?”

Stefan shook his head. “In the past I’ve found stray guests unconscious in bedrooms but no, last night everyone went home.”

“What about Godric Reiniger and his group?”

Stefan began to tremble. Between them, they helped him to a couch and he sat on the edge with his head in his hands. “He and his friends disappeared. I think they went before midnight. I didn’t see them leave.”

“And then?” Karl asked gently. “You and Niklas were alone?”

“I took him into the Crystal Ring. Just to rest for a while. It was so peaceful… When we came back, it was still dark and we sat looking out at the lake, just the two of us…”

Stefan’s mouth formed an oblong of anguish and fresh tears dripped down his face. He went on, “And then… I felt something so strange… can’t describe it, except as needles of ice coming at us from all directions. A pressure in the air. I was puzzled, then concerned. I got up but I could hardly move. I walked a few steps, but I couldn’t reach the door. It felt as if someone had put an invisible wall all around us, or a wind so strong you can’t walk against it. I tried to enter the Ring, but that was blocked too. Felt as if we were trapped inside a cocoon that was squeezing tighter and tighter around us. I wasn’t even frightened, just confused, too startled to feel any fear. And then they arrived. Dawn was close – the darkness was more of a grey dusk when they came.”

“Who were they?”

“Godric Reiniger and his gang. There were more than twenty of them – I couldn’t count. They each had a bone-knife, like the one you left here. They were pointing the knife-tips at us. That’s where the power came from. A force that sucked all our strength away.”

“Like an electromagnetic field?” Charlotte put in.

“I don’t know. You’re the scientist. All I know is that they surrounded us and I couldn’t move. I’ve never felt powerless like that – no, that’s untrue. Only Kristian ever overpowered me like that before. I had no strength, as if they’d drained my blood and paralysed my nerves. It was vile. I fell to the floor. After that, it’s blurred.”

“Do your best,” said Karl, taking his icy hand.

“I remember being flat on my back with Niklas beside me. They tore our shirts and began cutting us. It seems unreal… as if I wasn’t properly conscious, but hallucinating. I don’t recall much pain. Do you remember, as a human, if you had a paper-cut? You wouldn’t feel it at all for a while, then it would begin to sting like the devil? Like that. All across my chest and abdomen. I was terrified, but I was in a kind of trance, nothing I could do to make it stop. The main thing I remember is the chanting.”

Charlotte went to a sideboard and came back with a cotton napkin that she’d dipped into a jug of water. She pressed the cold cloth to Stefan’s forehead. Gently she began to clean the blood from his body.

“What kind of chanting?” Karl prompted.

“I don’t know, I’m not an expert in chanting styles!” Stefan snapped. “A sort of drone, like monks murmuring a prayer.”

“A magic ritual?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in magic.”

“I don’t, but we already know that some humans can perceive and manipulate the Crystal Ring,” said Karl. “We know the bone-knives are harmful to us. I don’t find the term ‘magic’ helpful, because it explains nothing, but Reiniger evidently has a stash of these weapons with power over us. What else?”

Stefan dropped his head. He pushed Charlotte’s hand away. “I can clean myself. Please, wash Niklas.”

She obeyed, fetching the water jug and sponging Niklas’s bloodied torso with gentle care.

“I don’t know,” Stefan went on. “I must have lost consciousness – like Charlotte, the time she was stabbed in the street? Everything was a nightmare of pain and blood and the awful chanting. I don’t know if they meant to kill us both. They didn’t go so far as to decapitate us, obviously. At one point they seemed to be putting sheets over us, like tiny shrouds – perhaps I dreamed that part. I suddenly came back to myself. They were gone, and I was in this horrible mess, and Niklas – I crawled to his side but I already knew he was dead.”

“Were you calling for help?” Charlotte asked.

“Yes! Screaming!”

“We heard you in the Crystal Ring,” she said, distressed. “That’s what brought us here.”

“Too late,” Stefan moaned. “Not your fault – I couldn’t start shouting until the men had gone. Couldn’t make a sound.”

Charlotte sat back on her heels. The rag dripped watered blood on to her dress. “Karl? Look at this.”

He went to examine Niklas’s outstretched, alabaster body. His wounds were red lines on the white flesh from his neck to his groin. Each slash intersected with the next to form a pattern. Some kind of glyph, with an oval at the centre like a primitive face with closed eyes.

A ritual sigil, with a word carved roughly in Arabic across his heart: the same word as on the bone-knife handle.

Istilqa
.

“Dear God,” said Karl. “This is my fault.”

“What?” Stefan looked stunned. “Your fault, how in hell—?”

“Last night, Reiniger asked me to turn him into a vampire. I refused. This is his revenge.”

* * *

The men of the
Eidgenossen
sat in the kitchen drinking beer as dawn broke. They were subdued, shocked. Even Wolfgang barely said a word. Their exhilaration and gleeful bloodlust had faded into this dreary aftermath, as if they’d survived a battle and walked away from a field of corpses.

Godric left them to it.

First he went to the meeting chamber, carefully cleaned each
sikin
in turn and put it back in its correct pigeonhole. One was still missing. His own, he kept in his trouser pocket as usual. He locked the cabinet. Stifling, he threw off his jacket and worked in blood-spattered shirt-sleeves. He took the two pieces of blood-imprinted linen to a dais at the far end of the chamber and pegged each one to an art easel.

He moved the two easels until he was satisfied with their position: angled slightly inwards, flanking the place where he usually stood to address the
Eidgenossen
.

Godric felt nothing as he did this. He too was in shock. His own increasing power stunned him. The meeting chamber had no windows, and his nerves were not ready to endure bright electric light, so all he had was a candle. In the near-darkness, a white shape drifted in front of him. The woman made of mist again, his
Weisse Frau
.

Every hair stood up on his neck. She was from the hidden world, a goddess, and the fact he could see her meant that he was moving ever closer to his dream. He put out his hand and she drifted towards him. Her ectoplasmic form enveloped his forearm until he was reaching up to his wrist through her ribcage. It felt like plunging his hand into heavy rain.

He was horrified, but didn’t pull back. This was fascinating. There was no emotion in her face, but she fixed him with blank, beautiful eyes and he recognised her.

She looked exactly like Karl’s companion from the party. Charlotte.

Wolfgang had whispered urgently in his ear that she was the
strigoi
who had nearly killed him, who’d been stabbed by the unlamented Bruno. Godric had done nothing at the time, apart from telling Wolfgang to ignore her. What was there to do?

He already knew things about her, from Fadiya and others: her name, and that she was the stranger who’d helped Amy home, that she was friendly with Violette Lenoir, and apparently Karl’s lover – possibly married to him, if vampires bothered with such human conventions. But Godric had never spoken to her, so why was she here?

Has she come for revenge?
he thought.

At the party she’d appeared golden, warm and talkative. Close to Karl, and close to Madame Lenoir… Did Violette know what her friends were? Should he warn her? He hadn’t spoken to the ballerina about filming the ballet after all. With all that happened afterwards, it no longer seemed to matter.

Now this Charlotte was more like… what? A spectre? Perhaps she really was from the faerie folk: she could well be both elf and vampire. The very word
Alp
was used for such a demon. Did she mean to harm him? How could you defend yourself against an apparition made of mist? Even his
sikin
would not harm her…

Or would it? She’d been solid when Bruno attacked her. Perhaps she’d even kept the missing knife? Godric was puzzled, terrified, excited.

“Can you speak?” he said, drawing his hand free.

The
Weisse Frau
only stood looking at him, frozen like a single frame of film. His fingers were numb, but he moved closer and cautiously touched her again. His fingertips found her palm. He twisted his hand around, sliding it into the same space as hers, so that her chilly flesh enfolded his like a glove…

Then he understood.

Of course it was not Charlotte. It was an
Alp
that had taken on her likeness. Or – the goddess herself, Frau Perchta, had chosen this disguise. But why?
Unless, unless
… his nervous excitement grew.
I willed her into being with my new powers. I called her to me! This is Perchta herself, submitting entirely to my will!

Then she vanished.

Godric started, glaring at the empty space where she’d been. His heightened senses told him that she’d disappeared because Fadiya had entered the room, and was standing behind him.

Slowly, calmly he turned to face her.

“Did you see that?” he asked.

“What?”

“Some kind of spectre,” he said with a small hint of humour. “Apparently I can see into the otherworld.”

“I’m happy for you,” she said in her soft, sardonic tone. “You can expect to see all sorts of strange beings.”

“You do not seem very interested.” Privately he was glad that Fadiya hadn’t seen the
Weisse Frau
. The less she knew of his business, the better. He felt the invigorating buzz of the twins’ blood sacrifice inside him and thought,
Fadiya is going to tell me nothing but it doesn’t matter, I can work all this out for myself now.

“I don’t have time to be interested,” she said. “I’m leaving.”

He asked why but she gave no answer. Her glance took in his pallid face and blood-spotted shirt, the glyph-patterned linens drying on easels. Her nostrils flared a little, as if she’d noticed the scent of the twins’ blood.

Then she raised both hands to his face, placing her fingers lightly on his cheeks. Godric endured her touch, cool against his tingling-hot skin.

“What are you?” she asked. Her eyes paled from brown to green. A small frown dented her serene expression. “I’m seeing… something not human, but not vampire either. What have you done to yourself?”

He looked down at the backs of his own hands, spreading his fingers. They looked translucent. Like a vampire’s hands, but with no blood in the veins, only pure energy. No longer could he ask Dr Ochsner,
Are you sure this is not some illness?
All he had left was his own judgement.

“I don’t know,” he said. “That is what I wish to find out.”

She let her arms fall to her sides and stepped back. “I told you the
sakakin
are powerful.”

“You did,” Godric said, and smiled.

“Be respectful in how you use them. Call on the name—”

“Of Zruvan, Lord of Immortals. Yes. We always do. I have the utmost reverence for them, Frau Fadiya, but perhaps…” He thought better of continuing,
We won’t need the knives much longer
, in case she demanded them back immediately.

“If you’ve something more to tell me, please be brief. I have to go.”

“I did something foolish last night.” He confessed on impulse because there was no one else he could tell. “I asked Karl to transform me into a vampire.”

Her black eyebrows rose. “Why?”

“A moment of weakness. It made sense at the time. I thought that if Karl transformed me, I’d learn the truth, but I don’t think he
knows
the truth. That’s why he refused. He’s afraid. I think I’m already a creature beyond his knowledge, a new being. Does this change mean power or death?”

“You never asked me to transform you,” said Fadiya, mock-hurt.

“Would you have done it?”

“No, but that’s not the point. Why him and not me?”

“Because Karl is… exceptional. Also, he is male. A female
strigoi’s
power might only be a feeble echo. Not good enough.”

Fadiya gave him a long, glassy-cold stare. Her irises went nearly white, making her look demonic. She laughed.

“Well, I am sorry I was not good enough for you, Godric. What is it between you and Karl, really? Are you in love with him?”

“No! I hate him!”

The raw words spilled out of him by reflex. He began shaking with rage.

Fadiya only shrugged. “You can hate someone with all your heart and yet still want to bed them.”

He drew the
sikin
from its sheath in his pocket and threw it straight at her throat. Didn’t stop to think, simply hurled the weapon, lightning-fast and accurate, like a knife-thrower…

Not accurate. Fadiya slipped to one side and the
sikin
hissed through the air, clattered and skidded along the marble floor. They stood wordless. His breath was quick and shallow, her eyes wide.

“Did you just try to kill me?” she said softly. “Is that how you react to truths you don’t want to hear? Do not damage the
sakakin
. I still want them back, in time.”

“You don’t understand.” Godric tried to master the shaky growl of his voice. “If Karl transformed me, that would make me his equal. Then the connection between us would enable me to
use
him. To absorb his energy. Ultimately to make him my servant, my abject slave. I grow stronger as he grows weaker, you see. I want him in my power, and powerless. He’d never even know what I planned until it was too late. I would suck all his strength, blood and life force out of him and make it my own, leaving him a corpse, a husk…”

“You’ve made things very clear,” she said, putting up her palms to stop him.

“Good.”

“And that is really what you want?”

“Yes,” he said thinly. He’d told her too much, but was past caring. “I’ll have to find a different way, but my revenge on Karl is also the key to unlocking my plans. A simple equation.”