The Dark Arts of Blood (49 page)

I should not be here
, he thought as graceful, pitiless demons bore him away.

He was stuffed into the back of a truck with a canvas roof. His legs and wrists were bound with rope, and a rag tied around his mouth – when had they done that to him? He felt the truck’s grumbling vibration, breathed in a nauseating combination of fuel and hot metal and a ripe farmyard smell, as if the vehicle’s usual cargo was goats.

“And you know where to wait?” Fadiya was speaking in French to someone outside the truck. “We should have over a day’s head start. And make sure you explain fast, Nabil; it’s said she is quicker to kill than to talk.”

* * *

Reiniger brought Karl to his private cinema again. The room was bright, illuminated by modern chandeliers made of black struts. Black velvet curtains hung closed across the screen. Karl hoped there were to be no more movies, but Godric only sat on the arm of the nearest back-row seat. It occurred to Karl that this was somewhere Reiniger felt comfortable, safe. Like the meeting chamber, there were no windows.

He sensed men guarding the doors, but no one came in with them. The energy that radiated from the bone-knives still tingled painfully on his skin. Immunity might develop eventually, but he guessed the process would take more time than he had.

Part of the reason he’d cut himself was to see if exposure would lessen the dagger’s effect. He had a brief flashback to the musty cellar where Charlotte’s father had his laboratory. Karl had endured considerable pain as he sought chemicals to destroy vampire flesh. He’d never been afraid to experiment on himself.

“Well, now,” said Godric, drawing on a cigarette. “If anything happens to Amy, you’ve seen what I’m capable of in return. None of your friends are safe from me. Especially not your lady friend – your wife? – Charlotte. Doesn’t that merciless streak make me a perfect vampire candidate? I’m giving you a chance to reconsider.”

Karl suppressed his reaction. He couldn’t let fear distract him.

“Why would you wish to be a vampire, when you have all this? Weapons to paralyse us, followers who share your dreams – what more do you need?”

“Because…” Reiniger took a deep drag and blew out an acrid cloud. He sat with his legs crossed at the knee, all poised arrogance except for the raised foot tapping at the air. “It’s all external, isn’t it? The
sakakin
, the bone-knives, aren’t part of me. Any of my followers could betray me. It’s the difference between being a mouse with a matchstick sword and being a lion.”

“There’s probably a fairy tale about that,” said Karl. “The mouse always wins.”

“And by using its wits, of course, not fangs and claws.” Godric drew back his chin in a subtle sneer. “But your kind has intelligence as well as strength. Why can’t the two coexist? I need to become more than I am. I know I have the potential. Why should you keep this gift to yourself? Jealousy?”

“Believe me, it is not jealousy. I told you before that this existence is not what you think.”

Reiniger gave a soundless laugh. “How do you know what I think?”

“Actually, I’m interested in what everyone thinks,” Karl said softly. “That is why I spend too much time listening to the ramblings of an egomaniac, rather than breaking your spine. I learn a lot. I cannot resist waiting to hear what comes out of your mouth next.”

“What?”

“You strike me as a man who loves to talk but never listens. You are so wrapped up in your own ideas and plans, you close your ears to other voices except those that agree with you. It must have stung to hear the audience laughing at your film. You think that if you become an immortal predator, you can force people to recognise your genius. If your group seizes power, you could pass a law.”

Reiniger’s cigarette broke between his teeth. He spat out the stub.

“Amusing, Karl. And partly true. All great men are obsessive. Yes, I have an appetite for power. Mainly for the good of my country, but also to open people’s eyes.”

“To make them pay attention to you?”

“I seem to have
your
attention. And you’re correct: I don’t care for your opinion. However, I still believe we could be comrades, Karl. And there’s a vacancy in my circle. I’m missing a knife and I suspect you can locate it. Bring it to me, and join us.”

Karl half-smiled in surprise at this offer.

“But I killed your father.”

“You did. But I was standing there, and I failed to save him.
There
, probably, is the reason that I loathe feeling powerless.”

“That would make sense. You were only ten years old, yet you think you should have saved him.” Karl moved away and down the steps, looking at framed artwork on the walls. Each was a piece of stretched white linen showing a similar rune roughly drawn in brown paint.

Not paint. Dried blood.

“Don’t open their eyes too wide,” said Karl.

“What do you mean?”

“Let us say you got into government. You don’t want the populace knowing about
this
, do you? Your occult activities. Carving patterns on to the bodies of living people and taking a print, as if their blood is ink. Do such symbols have actual power?”

“Oh, yes.” Reiniger came slowly down the steps after him, lighting a fresh cigarette. “Blood is life, and intention is energy. Everyone who joins my circle undergoes this initiation. It isn’t fatal – unless we cut too deep – but the ritual adds power to the group, and brands each member as one of us. These are not mere abstract paintings, but records of sacrifice, pain and blood initiation. A seal of each man’s dedication. When we’re ready to make our move, the Swiss government will not withstand us. Alliances and federations make the nation weak: I intend to make us strong. We’ll all possess your gifts: charisma, persuasion, hypnotic power, physical invulnerability. Karl, I hope you’re beginning to see that you’d be wiser to join us than oppose us.”

“I’m seeing something,” Karl murmured. He wondered just how much power Reiniger’s group had drained from Stefan and Niklas. Although he believed that “magic” meant no more than “lack of explanation”, he knew the universe could behave in enigmatic ways. He touched the textured surface of a canvas with blobs and smears of blood so fresh they still gave off an odour. He saw a name written small in one corner.
Bruno Glor
.

He suspected that Bruno had not survived.

“I don’t oppose you,” he added. “Your politics don’t concern me, but your attack on my friends does, very much. Where did you get the bone-knives?”

“From my father,” said Reiniger.

“And how did he acquire them?” Karl didn’t expect a straight answer, but he suspected that Reiniger was talking openly in order to win him over, or at least to impress him.

Godric needs my approval
, Karl thought, puzzled.
Everything he’s done has been to seize my attention: an unpalatable mixture of ruthless brutality and mysticism. Is he really prepared to forgive me, just because I might be useful to him?

“He was an archaeologist,” said Godric. “He unearthed them on the northern edge of the Sahara Desert, along with scrolls he estimated to be at least four hundred years old.”

“From a grave?”

“He didn’t believe so. They were simply buried, like hidden treasure. His painstaking translation revealed what seemed to be description of creatures that lived on blood and never died. As for the rune ritual, he derived that from what he read. Each knife is a channel that takes energy from the victim to the attacker.”

“Ah,” Karl said softly. “So if humans stab a vampire, it creates a kind of vampirism in reverse?”

Godric gave a snakelike smile. “We’ve had precious few vampires to experiment on. It works on humans, too.” He rolled up his shirt-sleeve and gave Karl a glimpse of silver-pink scars along his arms. “Self-inflicted cuts draw power from the
sikin
. Cutting others invokes a surge of energy that everyone present can absorb. But I suspect vampires yield the best results of all.”

“Have you tried this on Fadiya?”

“No, not her.”

“Tell me about her,” said Karl. “How did you meet?”

Reiniger hissed smoke through his teeth. “A few weeks ago, she appeared inside the house and yes, I knew at once what she was. We had an argument, a stand-off, you might say. She had fangs, I had my
sikin
: fighting was pointless. She claimed that my hoard of
sakakin
were originally hers. However, she couldn’t take them by force. Nor could I make her leave.”

“How did she know they were here?”

Godric shrugged.

“They’re artefacts of power. They give off a powerful emanation which she claimed to sense from a distance. I’ve experienced such phenomena, so I’ve no reason to doubt her.”

“Yet she let you keep them?”

“She had no choice. It was rather as if she tried to demand a gun from me while I was pointing it at her.”

Godric’s gaze fixed on Karl, cool and unwavering through his spectacle lenses. The look was unnerving. Not hostile, but knowing, yearning… infuriatingly enigmatic.

“Do you know anything else about her?”

“Almost nothing,” he said abruptly. “I’m not interested, to be frank. I asked her to leave, but she refused. In the end we reached a sort of truce: she would let me keep the
sakakin
if I let her stay. To be fair, she’s kept her word not to feed on anyone, and she gave me advice that made our rituals stronger.”

“Advice?”

“Yes, to call on the name of Zruvan, some long-forgotten deity. I was reluctant, but I can’t deny that it works.”

“Why would Fadiya want to help you?”

“H’m, that’s the question. She seems to approve of our using the
sakakin
to evoke power. When I asked about this Zruvan, she replied, ‘He’s more than a god. He is a force beyond your comprehension. Honour him, and he’ll open his secrets to you.’ I was sceptical. I’m not a religious man in the conventional sense, but… this ‘incomprehensible force’ speaks to my soul. It is beyond good and evil.”

Godric nodded to himself.

“What did she want in return?” Karl asked.

“That I employ her, giving her a reason to stay in Lucerne.”

“I’m sure she could have done that without help,” Karl said thoughtfully. “Unless she wasn’t here for her sacred knives, but for another reason. Looking for someone? Perhaps what she actually wanted was to meet Emil.”

“I don’t care,” Godric said, irritated. Karl sensed a wall going up. “Her business is her own. We had a simple agreement: to help each other without asking questions. In any case, she’s gone. No longer relevant.”

“That must be a relief,” said Karl. “Her presence must have been frustrating for a man who likes to control everything.”

“You’re wrong about me,” Reiniger said brusquely. “I don’t gather followers by controlling them. They’re men who share my vision.” He waved at the blood prints. “I can’t create these glyphs without the participants’ consent. It takes courage to tolerate blades slicing into your skin. I need men of courage around me, not weaklings.”

“Charlotte did not consent, when she was stabbed in the street.”

“That was a mistake. The perpetrator was punished.”

“Bruno?” No reply. “Stefan and Niklas most certainly did not consent.”

“That was a warning,” Reiniger said acidly.

“Incidentally, did you know that your father tried the ritual on me?”

His words threw Godric. “My father’s been dead for thirty years.”

“And it happened thirty years ago.” Karl turned to him. Godric, who was standing close behind, took a step back.

“My father?”

“And four of his friends. They had me on my back, in the dark, just as you had Niklas.”

“Show me the scars!”

“There are none. They fade, albeit more slowly than normal wounds. I don’t know what they gained from the experiment, but I do know that when I came round, I was underwater, weighed down in the bottom of a deep lake.”

Reiniger looked stunned. “I know he invented the ritual, of course – I learned it from him, or rather from the papers he left. I refined it. But I had no idea that he’d tried it upon you.”

“He did. He used the
sakakin
to overpower me, he dragged me back to his house, and afterwards tried to conceal what he thought was my corpse. And that is why I went back to his house and killed him.”

Godric Reiniger’s jaw worked. A grey pallor added years to his face. “Revenge?”

“No. I wasn’t even angry. However, I was extremely disturbed. I intended to stop whatever he was doing, to me or to anyone else. That’s all. I would have taken the bone-knives and his papers, too, if I’d had the chance, but you interrupted me.”

“You fled from a ten-year-old?”

“A child in the doorway, staring while his father’s life ended at my hands? Yes, I was horrified, and I left. And then I forgot those events entirely, because of the narcotic effect of the blades.”

“But this means you and I are more deeply connected than I dreamed.” Godric’s breathing quickened. He moved restlessly down the steps, paced in front of the curtained screen. Waves of agitation, distress and excitement pulsed from him. “This means something – if I can put aside my father’s death, and you put aside your friend’s – if we can rise above weak human emotion – isn’t this what being the highest form of predator means? We’re like gods. Tell me, do you know what the
sakakin
are?”

“Too dangerous for human hands,” Karl replied. “They should be destroyed.”

“I thought you, of all people, would see the beauty of creating art from pain and blood! The sword, the gun, the mortar shell should also be destroyed – but never will be, because they’re too useful. I won’t give up a cache of weapons that protects us from vampires – particularly when there’s one standing in front of me. But when I become immortal, I won’t need them any more. I may still amuse myself with them, but I won’t
need
them.”

Karl was on the lowest step, a few feet from the screen and as far as he could be from the doors. He saw no side exits. Against the black curtains, Godric’s aura shone like a halo of cold flame, a fierce white fire radiating from him. Karl felt its chill from a distance. As he walked carefully towards Godric the power grew, pushing against him like a snowstorm. He felt his own strength fading.