By the opening night in Vienna, Violette had given Witch and Maiden a very different ending. The dark spirit Lila, rejected by Siegfried in favour of the pure Anna, curses them and abducts their children. As her curse unwinds, Siegfried repents and lies dying of love for Lila. In desperation, Anna goes to Lila and asks how to lift the curse. Lila replies that instead of rejecting her, she and Siegfried must invite her in. The two women – Violette and Ute – dance an exquisite duet; then, by a stunning special effect, the two become one: Lila-Anna, danced by Violette in a wonderful costume of black, white and gold. Siegfried comes back to life, the children are restored, the divided goddess becomes whole.
The ballet was magical: unsurpassed, Charlotte thought, even by Violette’s previous creations. The audience responded ecstatically. Witch and Maiden was a new classic.
Charlotte had invited Josef to the ballet, but he didn’t appear. Afterwards, Charlotte slipped away from the post-show party – leaving Violette to her rapturous well-wishers – and went to his apartment.
She found Josef sitting at his desk in shirt-sleeves. With a pen in his hand, a blank writing pad before him, he was gazing at nothing. Crumpled balls of paper lay around him. Seeing her, he started and almost smiled. Not quite. His face was calm but his eyes were dark, half-dead. He looked older.
“You didn’t come,” she said softly. “You missed a wonderful evening.”
“I was in no mood to enjoy anything.”
“Was I tactless to invite you? I didn’t know what to do for the best. I thought it might take your mind off…”
“Nothing can do that. Not even time.” Exhaling, he put down his pen. “I was trying to write to you. Hopeless.”
She went to his chair and knelt beside him. “Why?”
“To tell you what happened about Robyn. To say – ah God, I don’t know. I can’t find the words.”
“Tell me now.”
His strong face looked beautiful in the glow of his desk lamp, silver hair and eyebrows dewed with light. “It went as you’d expect. I informed the police that I’d been told – anonymously – where she might be. They found her. There was a post-mortem, then the body was returned to Boston for burial. Now the Irish and American police wish to question one Sebastian Pierse about her murder. And I should like to kill him with my bare hands –” He stopped, raw pain suffusing his face. “They’ll never find him.”
“Of course not.”
“And her death is my fault.”
“No!” She grasped his arms. “Don’t you dare say that! How could you possibly be responsible?”
“Because I befriended vampires, Charlotte.” He looked candidly at her. “I failed to protect her from them. This is the result, and it was bound to happen, and I should have prevented it – but I didn’t.”
“That’s nonsense,” she said vehemently. “She met Sebastian by coincidence. There was no dark plot. We didn’t know him, or even know he was in Boston. You couldn’t have prevented this.”
“But would she have succumbed, if she had not first been enchanted by you, Violette and Karl? You left her yearning… and, God, I know how she felt. Now I cannot help thinking that this is my punishment.”
“For what?”
“For my arrogance. Thinking that you and I could be friends. How can we be? It’s against nature, against God. There was bound to be retribution.”
“You don’t believe that,” she said, distressed.
“Intellectually, it is of course nonsense.” His tone was arid. “But I cannot persuade my heart. I’m too exhausted to try. I was writing also to suggest we should not see each other again.”
“I see.” She stood and walked slowly around the study. Rows of books. Silver-framed photographs of Robyn, in all her radiance. “Perhaps you’re right. I’ve caused you nothing but distress.”
Silence. He rested his head on his hands.
“But before I go,” she said, “I’ve something to tell you. Violette achieved the wholeness you said she needed…”
“Individuation.”
“But to find it involved taking apart everything we believed and looking at it from the inside. Do you remember telling me how the Adam and Eve story was based on misinterpretations of an earlier myth?”
“Charlotte, please. I haven’t the energy for theology.”
“I’m sorry.” She paused. “All that was leading to something important. A warning.”
He stirred tiredly. “What warning?”
“Within the next few years, I don’t know exactly when, Austria will become dangerous for you. You’ll have to leave.”
At that he straightened up, more indignant than alarmed. “Leave my home? Whatever for? Will vampires come to take revenge on me?”
“Not vampires. Men. Violette saw the future and it’s very ugly. I can’t tell you any more. But unless you leave and go somewhere safe like England or Switzerland, your life will be in danger.”
Josef’s only reaction was another sigh. “I don’t know why. I’ve offended no one.”
“But millions of people who have offended no one will be persecuted, all the same,” she said quietly. “It’s happened countless times in the past. It’s bound to happen again.”
“A tragedy for those others,” he said, his head bowed. “But a threat to my life fails to wake any trepidation in me. It doesn’t matter so much.”
“Josef!” She flew to him, dismayed. “I’m serious. You won’t feel this grief forever. You’ll want to live. I want you to live.”
He looked up and took her hand, smiling. “Well, I’m being selfish, thinking only of myself. I didn’t notice how sad you look. What is wrong, Charlotte? Not just pity for an old man?”
A touch of his usual spirit and humour lit his eyes. She leaned down and rested her head on his shoulder, her head touching his.
“My father’s dead,” she said. “My leaving made him ill. So I’ve been blaming myself as well.”
“Oh, God, poor Dr Neville,” Josef said into her hair. “I didn’t know. He was a good friend, many years ago. I am so sorry.”
His sympathy was unforced; he didn’t stop to wonder how a vampire could care about her mortal family. In that moment she felt hopelessly human.
“You’ve lost a niece who was your daughter in spirit,” she said, “and I’ve lost my father. I miss him.”
They held and comforted each other, off their guard. And the inevitable happened. Charlotte felt the soft, lined skin of Josef’s throat under her lips, and she bit down. It was an act of desperation, not thirst; a need to purge her feelings, to connect with another being. The luscious flow of blood was a lightning strike.
At once she realized what she was doing, and pulled away, horrified.
Josef fought her, straining to keep her teeth in the vein. He wanted her to carry on. But Charlotte won. Gasping, she fought free.
“No, I won’t! I said I want you to live and I meant it. If you want to die, it will not be my doing.”
“But there’s no other way I wish to die, Charlotte.” He spoke intensely, gripping her hands. “Don’t forget that. When my time comes, you had better be there. It would be kind, not cruel, can’t you see that?”
She nodded. “Yes. I know.”
He released her. His voice dropped. “To bring such love to me and then to take it away – that is the real cruelty.”
She kissed his forehead. “Forgive me,” she said, but he was like stone to her touch.
* * *
When Charlotte returned to the party, she said nothing of her meeting with Josef. Violette’s bite had given her detachment, at least. She could experience sorrow without being crushed; she could believe that all grief eases with time.
The party, in an opulent hotel near the theatre, was almost over. Violette must have dismissed all her human guests. Only vampires remained: Karl and Ilona, Pierre, Violette, Stefan and Niklas, a handful from Schloss Holdenstein. How elegant and lovely they looked in their evening clothes, their opalescent skin, lustrous hair and eyes gleaming in the diamond light of chandeliers. Charlotte felt a rush of dreadful excitement, knowing she belonged with them.
Then, to her shock, she saw Sebastian. He hadn’t been at the ballet – or had he? He might have been in the audience unseen, a shadow. And Charlotte thought, Thank goodness Josef didn’t come after all!
As she crossed the room, Karl turned to her with the warmest look she’d ever seen. He’d missed her; her reappearance brought light to his eyes. To know she was so wanted made her weak with happiness.
The same feeling enlivened the whole room. She sensed unity between the vampires that she’d never felt before.
“Is this a truce?” Charlotte said as she reached Karl’s side.
Ilona gave a wry grin. “Us against the world, dear,” she said.
“It seems foolish to go on arguing amongst ourselves, if the world’s decided it will support no more of us,” said Stefan.
“A truce,” said Violette. She seemed gentler, less aloof yet more vivid; radiant, graceful and strong. “One that will last, I hope.”
“We should drink a toast,” Stefan remarked. There was a murmur of laughter, then a pause. A change of mood.
“Well, why not?” Ilona said. And she went to Stefan, put her arms round him, and bit into his neck. That initiated the chain, a languid, magical ritual that seemed to Charlotte like a dream. She and Karl exchanged sips of blood with passionate tenderness, kissed with the blood still on their tongues; then Stefan was pulling her away, Violette embracing Karl. And they all passed from one to another, giving and receiving sips of life-fluid as if in a slow-motion dance. It was the most extraordinary experience of Charlotte’s life. An unholy, absorbing, loving, utterly enchanted sacrament.
At the end, she found herself between Ilona and Violette. They clung to her and covered her with kisses; she almost died for joy.
That we can do such ghastly things… she thought. She looked across the room to see Karl with Sebastian, two darkly handsome figures, fatally alluring to their prey. Such appalling, unconscionable things, all of us, and yet still love each other so deeply. What can it mean, this miracle?
* * *
Karl and Sebastian were the last to meet. They exchanged a look of mutual reluctance to taste each other’s blood. Yet they did so anyway, and when it was over, the tension between them had vanished.
“So,” said Karl, “you chose not to follow Simon’s path?”
Sebastian shrugged. He was calm, but with a spectral quality, a lack of vitality. “Violette asked me not to. Who am I to argue?”
“She can be very persuasive.”
“So I heard,” Sebastian said dryly. “You must understand, there is nothing between us. Only our love for Robyn.”
“That is a stronger bond than many.”
Sebastian’s eyes held a brief look of abstraction. “Could you live, if you lost Charlotte?”
“I don’t know,” Karl replied honestly. The idea was something he couldn’t contemplate.
“You’d live for blood.” Sebastian’s voice sank harshly on the words. “There is nothing else.”
“Then why are you here?”
Sebastian made no reply. Karl looked at Charlotte, an enchanting tawny-haired sylph between Violette and Ilona. The affection between them as they hugged and caressed one another was spellbinding. And he had the strangest feeling that it should have been Robyn with Charlotte and Violette. They formed the goddess-trinity of his vision, and Robyn was the rightful third member. Instead, Ilona had taken her place. This was not wrong… yet Karl felt, all the same, that they’d lost something. Robyn had been taken, not only from Sebastian, but from them all.
Strange to realise that he no longer feared Violette. Not that she’d become safe, or predictable: no vampire was ever that. But for tonight, at least, there was peace.
Violette detached herself from her companions and spoke.
“Whatever the future holds, we can’t change it. Sebastian is right when he says that our purpose is a selfish one: to live for the blood-hunt, to bring pleasure and nightmares to mortals. Not to change the world. The Crystal Ring itself won’t let us do it. That’s why Cesare’s ambitions failed: to make way for something worse. I fear we have drunk to a very dark future.
“Everything men do is in denial of death. They wish to live forever. But no man can avoid his fate, no mortal can escape Lilith. That’s why they created God: to annihilate her. But a few, just a few take the risk of embracing Lilith and accepting her kiss.”
“And we become immortal?” said Pierre.
“We live a little longer,” said Violette. “That’s all.”
“But we will live,” Sebastian put in. Karl saw his gaze lock with Violette’s. Her lips curved as if he was taking the words out of her mouth. “Mankind turns his back on the great mother of all… but she will come anyway, dressed for battle like the Morrigan, and take her revenge for being rejected. Then we shall feast like vultures on their folly.”
As he spoke, a ghastly vision struck Karl: cold mist drifting over the mud and trenches of a battlefield. A memory of moving from one dying man to another, as if by taking the last drops of their blood, immersing himself in their suffering, he could somehow understand why it had happened. Bridge the chasm, be reconciled to his guilt.
But never again, Karl thought. I will never let human folly torment me like that again.
“And when it’s over,” said Charlotte, “we will still be here.”
* * *
Karl meant to complete the last task alone, then decided he would prefer company. He had less of a taste for solitude of late. So, he thought, even immortals can change – as if I didn’t already know that.
Besides, his friends would want to witness this purging act.
So one night he took Charlotte, Violette, Ilona, Pierre, Stefan and Niklas on their last visit to Schloss Holdenstein. In the stench-laden chamber where the young men’s corpses still lay, they made a funeral pyre with branches. They went through every room, dousing the walls and furniture with petrol. Six vampires who still huddled there, the remnants of Cesare’s flock, tried to stop them, but Karl and the others brushed them aside. Eventually the six acolytes fled.
And then came the glorious conflagration. Karl stood on the riverbank, his hand on Charlotte’s waist, their friends grouped around them. The Rhine flowed on, changeless. Above, on top of the ridge, the castle floated in plumes of apricot fire. Great bubbles of flame and smoke surged through the doors and windows, crackling and roaring towards heaven.
The walls were turning black. Heat cracked the stone. Balconies charred and crumbled, roofs collapsed with a whoosh like soft thunder. The smell of roasting meat filled the air, and was swallowed by smoke and heat.
In an uprush of scarlet flame, in columns of firefly sparks, Schloss Holdenstein shrank to a weightless black skeleton and died, taking its ghosts with it.
No one wept. Charlotte embraced Karl, transfixed; Violette leaned on Charlotte, and Ilona clung to Karl’s other arm.
After a while Charlotte said, “All the visions we saw, the lost secrets of the goddess – no one would believe us. Particularly not men of power. No church or no political body could afford to let it become common knowledge. There’s too much power at stake. How could they ever give up their authority by admitting it was based on lies? So the secrets will remain hidden, except to a few. Such a loss. They’ll stay hidden forever.”
“Always in the shadows,” said Violette. “Like us.”
* * *
Sebastian watched the fire from a distance, with no desire to join the others. That should be Blackwater Hall aflame, he thought. But I’ve no will left to finish what I started before Simon first came. Let it rot. It’s not my house any more.
After a time he turned away and entered the Crystal Ring.
We will live, he’d said to the others, but the words had tasted flat in his mouth. People all around him, vampire and human, teeming crowds of people to provide him with endless fountains of blood until the end of time… but none of them was Robyn, none of them would ever, ever be Robyn.
It’s not just the loss of her, Sebastian thought as he rose through the cloudy mountains of Raqia. It’s not knowing whether she ever truly loved me. That’s what I can’t bear. And now I’ll never know.
I am alive and you are dead, beautiful child, but you won. You spoiled my pleasure in being a vampire. You taught me to love and you tore it away. Oh yes, you won a victory so complete that you might as well have annihilated me and held victory celebrations on my grave.
But was it what you wanted? Robyn, does your soul look down on me now with pity or with heartless glee?
If only you had given me an answer. I cannot live forever without an answer.
Lilith, my sister, I’m sorry – but I cannot.
So he left it all behind. Sebastian passed from flame to ice, to the Weisskalt’s dazzling eternal winter; embraced the very extremity of the solitude that he had always held so dear.