The Dark Arts of Blood (58 page)

“Only if you’ve never used one before, or if the wound goes too deep. You need to build a tolerance. That’s why I suggest a small cut.”

But Charlotte stared at the blade, hesitating. Tempted. Just a nick, and she would sink into a beautiful deep sleep… Almost the only human pleasure she missed. What bliss, to escape the pain of thirst and anxiety, to stop thinking, just to rest in the lovely soft blackness for a while.

And only once?
she thought.
If it’s as blissful as I imagine, shall I want to do the same every day?

Charlotte gently pushed away Fadiya’s hand.

“No. Thank you. I prefer to stay awake.”

“As you will.”

Fadiya drew back the sleeve of her own robe and brought the
sikin
towards her skin.

“Wait,” said Charlotte. “You’re not going to sleep now, are you, while we’re in the middle of nowhere? Shouldn’t we stay alert, at least for Emil’s sake?”

Fadiya shrugged, rearranged her sleeve and put the knife away in a pouch in the folds of her robe. “I suppose you’re right, although this cave is well hidden and there’s no one for miles around us.” She held Charlotte’s gaze and added, “You look at me as if I’m nothing, or an object of pity, but what do you know about me?”

“That’s not fair.” She frowned, but knew Fadiya had a point. “You kidnapped Emil. And I
don’t
know you at all. But if you think I’m judging you, I apologise.”

“Think what you like,” Fadiya said coolly, looking away.

One thing was clear: the nervous Fadiya who’d fled from her and Violette on the night of Stefan’s party was not the real Fadiya.

“I don’t understand why you would damage yourself with such dangerous weapons.”

“But they’re not dangerous unless they’re misused. They bring pleasant oblivion, that’s all. They’re made from the ivory of the Bone Well, where Zruvan lives. You won’t understand. You come from a different civilisation, where all the old mysteries have been lost.”

“Not all of them.” Charlotte lowered her voice, as Emil seemed to be asleep. “In England, I once found a place – a subterranean lair – where a vampire had hoarded his victims. The very walls were soaked with their agony. The emptiness they left, the bitter cold, was so intense that it almost killed us. The bone-knives are the same, aren’t they? I do understand. Too much exposure brings us the suffering we’ve dealt to humans, madness, weakness, even death. But a tiny dose makes you unconscious for a while. Am I right?”

“I had not seen it like that, but yes.”

“I think each
sikin
holds the power of all the bones,” said Charlotte. “The macrocosm within the microcosm. That was one of my father’s favourite sayings.”

“What?” Fadiya frowned.

“Does your Lord Zruvan make the knives?”

“He invented them. He is older than time. Before him there was no one and nothing.”

Charlotte mouthed a silent
Oh
of surprise. She wondered how to respond. “So you are married to a god? Does he mind you taking human lovers?”

“No one can explain or describe Zruvan,” said Fadiya. She rose on her haunches and whispered, “Come with me.”

Bent nearly double, they went to a narrow, odd-shaped cavern behind the main one. The light here was dim red, the floor a churned-up mess of rock and sand, the air thick and hot. On a smooth curve of wall, at eye-level as they crouched, Charlotte saw handprints on the rock. No, not prints, but negatives: shapes outlined by a blackish mist, as if several folk had placed their hands on the rock like stencils and blown pigment over them.

There were drawings of animals, too, depicted in simple rust-red brushstrokes, crude but full of life and movement.

“People lived here,” she murmured, knowing with a flash of insight that these marks were ancient.

“Who knows how many thousands of years ago?” said Fadiya. “Zruvan says the desert was a green plain, long ago. I didn’t believe him, but how else could such animals have lived here? Look…” she bent to the floor and swirled her hand through the loose stones. “This is where I buried a sack of
Istilqa
knives, four hundred years ago. I’ve buried others in many places, for safekeeping. They are for vampires who are travelling, or stranded. I even wrote an explanation, for those who did not understand. And if anything happened to our supply, or to Zruvan, we would always have these in reserve.”

Like someone hiding weapons, or treasure… or opium
, thought Charlotte.

“You really can’t live without them?”

“We could, but it’s our way,” said Fadiya. “Your disapproval won’t change our traditions.”

“I’m not trying to. I’m curious, that’s all.”

“One day, nearly forty years ago, I came here to find the ground dug up and the
sakakin
gone. Some cursed archaeologist from Europe! He didn’t even know what he’d found.”

“Is that why you went to Godric Reiniger, to get them back?”

Fadiya sat back on her heels and gave a chilling smile. “No. I was in Lucerne looking for Violette. I happened to discover that Herr Reiniger had the knives. We argued a little, but I let him keep them in the end because, by using them, he was honouring Zruvan without even realising it. Rather, I tried to
tell
him, even knowing he didn’t care or understand. I want them back, of course, but I didn’t make too great an issue of it because Violette was my priority.”

“Zruvan sent you to find her?”

“Yes. I’m his agent in the world. I do what he cannot.”

“But you dared not approach her directly,” said Charlotte.

“Of course not. It would have been impossibly dangerous. I’m not a fool.”

“No, you aren’t. To take Emil instead was a master-stroke.”

Fadiya sat back against the cave wall with a sigh. Her eyes were brown again, not the jade green of danger. “I never meant him any harm. I was entirely focused upon what Zruvan commanded, because… you can’t understand.”

“He’s your master, so you do what he says?”

“No.” She spoke with fervour. “Because he sacrifices every moment of his existence to keep me safe, to keep all our loved ones safe. To keep safe every single vampire who comes to us. That’s why.”

“You say he’s your husband?” Charlotte said after a few moments. “It can’t be easy, being married to a god who never shows his face.”

Fadiya said nothing.

“What happened to your other husband?”

“My…?”

“I heard you were a widow. You were married to a French soldier who died.”

“Oh.” Fadiya laughed. “I made that up. The tale elicits sympathy, and it is a reason for me to be in Europe, all alone.”

“I see. And are you going to explain
that
to Emil?”

“As if it matters. You’re so human, Charlotte.”

“You must be too, a little, or you wouldn’t have agreed to help him escape.”

She thought Fadiya was ignoring the remark, but after a while she said very softly, “It was nice to be with him. To see his face and touch his skin… I have only once seen Zruvan’s face – to be truthful, I didn’t see it clearly, but I did feel his mouth… I cannot talk about him.”

“Never mind him. I’m more interested in you. What is your story, Fadiya?”

Charlotte expected more stubborn silence, but Fadiya began to speak, her voice tranquil and languid, like honey.

Six hundred years before, her father and brothers dead in a tribal battle, Fadiya and her mother had taken precarious refuge in a cave, hiding from enemy tribes and foreign invaders. But her mother was ill and someone had to fetch water so Fadiya went alone, barefoot across the sand, walking tall and straight so that the jug would not spill its contents. The wind made her robes flutter around her ankles and perhaps that was why the bandit decided to attack – to throw her down, to violate and strangle her before she knew what was happening. The jar fell, the water surged out in a dark stain, wasted. She only saw a silhouette as he rose and staggered backwards, gasping. His clothing was alien; he was a warrior from a hostile tribe. Some brute who didn’t care that she was ruined, her honour destroyed.

She lay and stared up at the new moon. The white sliver kept fading to blackness with her vision and she knew she was dying… but that was for the best. Then the stink of his body would be gone, along with the inner contamination that would never wash away. The only balm for dishonour was death. She thought of her mother, and wondered who would fetch the water instead and who would warn them of the danger before…

But someone else was there. A shadow – silent and odourless, unlike the sweating, heavy-breathing stranger. This shadow seized her attacker from behind and snapped his neck between hands and mouth. He fell like a rock. Then the demon bent over her and she felt two sharp pains pierce her throbbing, bruised throat. Her last impression was of blood everywhere, blood flowing from the dead rapist to pool around him… her own blood on the demon’s mouth as it raised its head. She could see no detail, only its eyes in the darkness and her blood shining on its lips, dripping on to her face.

She closed her eyes and prayed to the new moon.

“I woke beneath a lemon tree,” she told Charlotte. “I knew… The lemon tree is sacred, you see. It was a sign that I was safe.”

Charlotte nodded to show she understood that this was important.

“I was in a blue, dusky place, a courtyard. The light was beautiful and I could smell jasmine.” Fadiya gave a half-smile. “I thought I was in Paradise and couldn’t understand how I deserved to be there. But I felt a very long time had passed, so perhaps I’d been forgiven.”

“The attack wasn’t your fault!” said Charlotte. “Ask Violette: she’ll tell you exactly the same. No man has the power to dishonour you.”

Fadiya only smiled. “I know that now. The point is that I knew I had
died
. I was strangled and left for dead. The shadow that came was a vampire who killed my attacker as a boy kills a fly. Then she fed on me. She saw I could not live, and she could simply have finished what she started – yet she saved me. I woke in a world where everything was different: light and colour and sound. Tiled mosaics like a palace, a fountain in a courtyard, strange beautiful creatures around me like none I’d ever seen before. I thought they were
djenoun
. Demons.”

“And it was Zruvan who saved you?” Charlotte was confused. Fadiya had always called Zruvan “he” before. But he had companions, of course.

“Saved me and damned me. I cast aside all my old beliefs and gave myself to him instead.”

“You called the vampire ‘she’.”

“Did I? In the darkness I thought the vampire was female. The mouth and skin were so soft… but I never again saw Zruvan without his priestly garments. No one ever sees his face.”

She sounded sad. Emil stirred, coughed.

“Even though he became your husband?”

“I cannot explain the feeling – that I felt my heart would explode with love for him. Not for his looks or wealth, which did not exist, but for his gentleness. Everything is different, outside the human world. I am his devoted wife, but more – I’m his representative in the world. While he exists in seclusion, I have to be.”

Charlotte wondered what strange kind of marriage they had. She thought of a nun, “married” to Christ… but that comparison did not fit, either.

“Without him, the safe house of Bayt-al-Zuhur would not exist,” Fadiya went on. “His eternal sacrifice gives us our freedom. Of course we all do his bidding – do you think he’s a monster? He loves us, and we love him. One day he took my hand and declared me the best beloved of all, his wife in the eyes of the cosmos. That was in the days before…”

“What?”

“He used to emerge from the Bone Well and come to us, once or twice a year. Gradually he came less and less. Now he stays there always.”

“Is he afraid to come out?”

She expected indignant denial, but Fadiya paused. “He is afraid that if he ceases his eternal vigilance, evil will befall us. It’s a sacred calling. He is more than a god and we do all we can to serve him. If it means spying for him, finding enemies such as Lilith, using Emil to lure her to him – I am sorry for the suffering caused. But to aid Zruvan, I will do anything.”

“Only now you’ve disobeyed him and run off with Emil,” said Charlotte.

Fadiya didn’t answer. She got up and wound her way across the cavern where Emil and the mares dozed, and through the hidden archway to the outside. Charlotte followed and stood beside her, watching until the sun dropped at last, turning the sky into a glorious ocean and flooding the desert with blood-red flame.

“We can go on now,” said Fadiya. “Make Emil eat and drink, while I saddle the mares.”

* * *

Karl watched Amy wandering around the living room, unable to settle. Another day had passed and nothing had happened: there had been no sign of Godric or the lamia, no word from Charlotte. Geli reported that the girl was barely eating.

She was growing agitated, and Karl didn’t blame her. With no news of Reiniger’s whereabouts – or what he’d become – the atmosphere grew tense and oppressive. Ballet rehearsals continued, but the mood was changing. Everyone knew that Violette and Emil were absent without explanation: questions were being asked that no one could answer. Unease filled the whole building, like spectral fog.

He’d brought Amy to his rooms again for company, and because he dared not leave her alone. Stefan stood leaning in the doorway to the bedroom, also watching her without expression.

She was unaware that Niklas’s corpse lay on the bed inside, decaying.

If Stefan had some mad plan to show her the remains – to share his suffering, and turn her polite smile to horror – Karl was ready to stop him.

“I don’t think my uncle’s coming,” she said. “Either he thinks I’m somewhere else entirely, or he just doesn’t care. He’s arranged a private showing of his new movie in a few days’ time. Getting ready for that is obviously more important to him than looking for me.”

“I can only apologise, again, for this situation,” said Karl. “I still believe he hasn’t finished with me, and I don’t know where to send you that’s safe.”

“I don’t know what to think, Karl. Truly, if nothing’s happened by tomorrow, I am going to go back to Bergwerkstatt and pretend all innocence.”