Part 1 (2/2)
My choices were few: I could persist in attacking V. as I was-clearly unskilled in the ways of the undead and most likely to be the loser in another struggle. I could surrender and allow myself to be destroyed- yielding to Evil and pa.s.sing the curse on to my poor unwitting son, just as all my forefathers had pa.s.sed it on to me.
Or I could try to find my little son, and Mary- Mary, my darling! My last glimpse of her is emblazoned forever in my mind: she standing in the caleche, golden hair dishevelled, the blue ocean of her constant eyes filled with such infinite love, such infinite pain above the pistol clutched in her white trembling hand. ... I return to the moment of my death and recall the sounds: the screams of horses, the thunder of hoof-beats, the rumble of the caleche wheels. And I am haunted by the image of Mary, white-lipped and stricken while the frightened horses bolt and run wild with her. Her heart is the strongest I have ever known; but her body was weak, drained of blood after a difficult birth. Is it possible she has survived?
But in finding them, I risked leading V. to them. That I could never allow. I determined that I would first have to teach myself how to best use my newfound powers, so that I might become a better match for V. But to do so, I needed safety.
So it was I left my native Transylvania for Vienna -a place with which I was familiar-in hopes of losing myself in that populous city and thus buying time to ponder my strategy. It was there I first learnt of the Scholomance, and the truth V. had withheld.
The night I learned of the Scholomance was also the night of my greatest depravity, the night I learned how far I had fallen from human grace; by no coincidence, it was the night my sister came to me. So recent, so shamefully fresh in my memory; shall I write it down?
Bear witness to my own capacity for evil?
Forgive me, Stefan . . .
It began with hunger waking me. I rose and paced restlessly from room to room in the small house I had procured, fighting the need that gnawed my vitals like the Spartan boy's fox, knowing that sooner or later I would have to indulge it and go out into the glittering city to seek a victim. (Going out into the city is acutely painful, in a way; I loved Vienna when I was alive, for its food and music and shops. But I can enjoy none of those things now-except music, and then I must limit myself, for to sit hungering in a fragrant crowd-to smell the scent of blood on the air, to hear their soft, seductive heartbeats-without being able to hunt is too maddening, too distracting. I have tried and was never able to pay the performance a second's attention unless I had previously fed.) I would much prefer starvation . . . and indeed, there have been times when I have, out of pure self-loathing, come close to it. In the end, duty-until Vlad is destroyed, I must survive-and desire always win.
So I was again riven by that interior war, debating whether to forgo sustenance that night or to kill- knowing that I was close to losing all strength, all power-when a knock at the door interrupted.
I knew at once who it was; hunger hones the senses to exquisite sharpness. Standing next to the heavy wooden door that opened onto stone steps and the city streets, my fingertips resting on its carved panels, I sensed animal heat and heard breathing-the distinctive rasping breath of the man I knew only as Weiss.
With abrupt, furious abandon, I flung open the door. I had a score to settle with Herr Weiss, and the painful craving for nourishment served to fuel my anger, to give it a bitter, dangerous edge.
The door slammed against the interior wall. Huddled upon the top step, Weiss flinched- only slightly, and then only because he thought the darkness outside hid him from clear sight.
Not from mine. I could see him, of course, as though he stood in a shaft of daylight: a small, unimposing, and shabbily dressed man with thinning red-grey hair beneath a frayed cap, his upper spine so stooped from a life of physical labour that he seemed perpetually on the verge of bowing forward. Beyond him lay the glittering streets of the city, and a night ripe for hunting.
At my appearance, Weiss reflexively removed his cap, clutching it in two dirty hands in a lower-cla.s.s gesture of courtesy; but his expression remained hard, defiant in the face of my obvious anger. For a scant second, he squinted beyond me, trying to see inside my house- as he always did, I suppose to see whether anything worth nicking lay inside. As always, he failed, for its interior, lit by a single taper, was scarcely brighter than the night outside.
”I have come, Herr Rumler, to-” he began, but I cut him off with an imperious sweep of my hand. Normally I would have made him step just inside and held our sensitive conversation there; but at the moment, anger and hunger overwhelmed me, leaving me unconcerned about appearances.
It was a cold autumn night. Weiss' words hung as mist in the air; my own left no trace.
”Herr Weiss,” I hissed, my voice a soft, furious whisper, ”I do not suppose you are in the habit of reading the papers?”
In his look of illiterate confusion, I found my answer. ”Of course not,” I replied for him.
”Then let me tell you the latest news that has all Vienna astir. It seems there is a murderer afoot in the city-a most vicious lot. He decapitated a poor victim, then drove a stake through his heart. And then,” I continued, my pitch rising with anger, though still I spoke too softly for others to hear, ”the fool left the body lying in a cemetery, where the local authorities could easily find it!”
Weiss' eyes widened, then narrowed, at this revelation; the stubborn hardness returned to his features. ”Good Herr, I can explain-”
”I will not hear it!” I shouted, my hunger and temper and carelessness all rising. ”I pay you not for explanations but for performance! You have a good deal of impertinence, sir, if you have come here expecting payment!”
Light glinted off the fine sheen of oil covering Weiss' pockmarked cheeks as he lowered his head and kneaded his cap in his hands; not in a show of remorse, of which I believed him incapable, but in an effort to summon a suitable reb.u.t.tal.
In that instant of silence, a gust of wind wafted through the doorway-carrying with it Weiss' scent. It was the sweat-laden, pungent odour of an unwashed human, a smell from which I would have turned my head only months before. Yet now I could detect the muted, bittersweet smell of his blood, hear the soft, insistent drumming of his heart. His radiant warmth drew me like a frostbitten man to a fire.
I could have killed him in that moment-swiftly, brazenly, in the shadows of my own doorway, drinking until I felt that very last heartbeat.
But such indulgence would have led to other problems: disposal of the corpse, the very reason I had need of Weiss' services. For reasons unfathomable, I find myself unable to complete the necessary grisly ch.o.r.es to prevent my victims from becoming as I am. It had taken great effort and much discreet enquiry to find someone who would perform such a task without question. Weiss not only did so, he took unwholesome delight in it.
Yet could I trust him now, after this startling failure? And if I must choose a victim, would it not be better to rid the world of his likes than an innocent stranger?
In the fleeting second that Weiss stood silent and I contemplated this dilemma, the sound of hoofbeats against cobblestone stayed my hand. I watched as a beautifully appointed carriage, drawn by two black geldings, approached down the street. By that time, my hunger had become an all-consuming flame; I had made my decision to d.a.m.n the consequences and pull Weiss inside the doorway, where I could drink my fill. I had only to wait 'til the carriage rolled past- But as it neared, it also slowed. I watched in anguished frustration as the driver reined the horses to a stop in front of the house. The police? Had my hired idiot led them here?
But this was too fine a carriage for the local gendarmes. Herr Weiss turned, peering anxiously at the sight as the driver dismounted and opened the lacquered door. And then my accomplice released a whispered curse of awe at the vision that extended a gleaming white hand to the driver as she stepped out, with the graceful flash of a dainty slipper beneath long skirts.
I froze in the shadowed doorway, my hand on the doork.n.o.b, and a.s.sumed the interior stillness that usually rendered me invisible to mortals. For this vision was my own sister, Zsuzsanna.
My poor sweet Zsuzsa, born lame, with twisted leg and spine, doomed because of them to remain forever a spinster. I still recall with sad fondness the sound of her uneven footfall echoing through Father's house. She was a sickly, fragile creature with milk-pale skin, eyes the colour of night, and raven hair that conspired with her sharp features to evoke a severeness that could not even kindly be called beauty. How Father and I loved her, protected her, doted on her because of her frailty, her unloveliness, her innocent need for us. ... Her loneliness and desire had driven her to the brink of a sweet, harmless madness.
But the woman who stood before me-straight and whole and utterly comely, dressed in a flowing black cape-was Venus herself. Against the midnight velvet of her wrap, her skin shone like the splendid full moon against the backdrop of night. She paused in the street to gaze in our direction, then lowered her hood to reveal a face shaped like a heart beneath a dramatic widow's peak-a face of dazzling loveliness: eyes sparkling like stars, skin pale and glowing and possessed of that strange fiery opalescence I saw each night in my own flesh.
And lips red as blood. My attempt at invisibility failed. At the sight of me, those full, tender lips parted to curve upward in a crescent, revealing brittle, deadly white beneath.
I took an indecisive step backwards, wondering whether to flee for my immortal life, for I heard men's voices in the carriage. If Vlad accompanied her- She stepped forward and raised a hand in a beseeching gesture. ”Arkady!” she called, in a voice as innocent and true as the Zsuzsa I had once known- and as sweetly seductive as a siren's. ”Dear Kasha, you must trust me! I could no longer bear to be with him. And so I have searched for you. . . .”
I remained motionless, my hand still on the doork.n.o.b as she approached, reducing Weiss to speechless, slavering ecstasy as his narrow dark eyes with their jaundiced whites caught sight of her.
”Kasha-” At his frankly lecherous gaze, Zsuzsa shyly lowered hers and adopted a confidential tone. ”Dear brother, I must speak to you alone.”
I turned towards him, amazed to find that my protective brotherly instincts were undimmed despite our transformations, despite the fact that he was in far worse peril from my sister than she from him. ”Leave us.”
He did so with supreme reluctance, despite my mental efforts to compel him; Zsuzsa's beauty, it seemed, was more mesmerising.
And then I warily faced my sister, permitting myself no reaction, no familial response as she reached out to clasp my hand. The flesh of mortals is warm, so warm; but her gloved grip was cool as my own.
For an instant, then, her glamour wavered, and I caught a glimpse of the sister I had known. She looked up at me with brown eyes burnished with magnificent immortal gold, but in them I saw the gentle, loving gaze of my Zsuzsa. The sight tugged at my pulseless heart.
”You must believe me,” she said in a tone both humbled and anguished, too soft for human ears to perceive. ”He is not with me; I would never lead him to you, never endanger you, no matter what I have become. Did I not tell you all I knew about the covenant? Did I not warn you to flee with the child?”
”Yes,” I said softly. It was the truth; Zsuzsanna had warned me when I was still blessedly mortal, had done all she could to spare me and my family pain-but at the same time, she could not endure the thought of Vlad, her benefactor and seducer, her murderer, destroyed.
”But if you come to me, you must know-”
Her features slackened with soft simple pain. ”I know,” she whispered. ”You live to destroy him. And I”-she glanced away, and when she looked back and began to speak, her voice rose with sudden pa.s.sion-”I can bear him no longer. Kasha, I can never raise a hand to slay him, but I cannot stay with him and be witness to the cruelty!”
”Is he unkind to you?” I asked swiftly, before I could repress a renewed surge of fraternal protectiveness.
She shook her head; a jet ringlet agleam with indigo highlights fell across a forehead that caught the moonlight and glinted pale blue, rose, silvery white, like the finest mother of pearl. ”To the visitors. To me he is only . . . mocking of my innocence, my unwillingness to torment others.” She paused, then with renewed desperation, cried, ”Let me stay with you!
Please -I cannot go back to him!”
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