It took every
ounce of his self-discipline to pull back from her, and when he did,
still dizzy from that richness, she presented a gorgeous sight, with
her eyes closed, her straw-colored hair tousled about her face,
causing it to appear all the more delicate in contrast to this unruly
frame; there was a seepage of blood from the incisions his fangs had
made, filming over the upper slope of her right breast, and this
excited him again. But he resisted the temptation to lick her clean
and instead concentrated on the disturbing elements of what had
happened. The hallucinatory effect of the blood; the image of the
blond children. He recalled what Vlad had said: “I can give you
blood that will—”
That will what?
Drive you mad?
Intoxicate you as would the blood of the Golden?
It occurred to
Beheim that he had never inquired of Agenor where the breeding stock
that produced the Golden lived. He had assumed that those involved in
the breeding program inhabited the surrounding villages, but now it
seemed apparent that the most logical of dwelling places was the
castle itself. And Paulina. The product of twenty generations of life
within the castle walls. Might she not be a vintage off from
perfection by a degree, not quite subtle enough a flavor to serve as
centerpiece for the Decanting? The Golden’s cousin, perhaps, or
her sister? He believed this must be the case, for he had never drunk
such blood before, never experienced such an overpowering response.
Even if so, however, he doubted it would have any bearing on his
investigation. It only furthered his comprehension of Castle Banat,
of its intricate environment, and reminded him of how ill-equipped he
was to deal with those intricacies.
He pushed open
the door and looked about the room, his eyes resting on the mutilated
dead and the defiled living; on the bloody, bulging-eyed Vlad
whimpering and twitching in some dream of finality; on the hideous
murals depicting Beheim’s peers, and the chaotic painting of
red streaks and puddles he had made on the stones; and lastly on the
moribund Giselle, whom he had loved, whom perhaps he still loved,
though now he was not confident of his capacities in that regard.
Despite the air of perversion and brutality, he saw a tragic grandeur
in the particulars of the scene, and he had the notion that no matter
what the future held, no matter how long that future would last, he
would always think of this room as the place where he had taken a
final step away from his old life. He was different, he believed,
from the man he had been prior to entering it. Larger and wiser. More
dangerous. Different, too, in ways that beggared categorization, ways
that he could not separate out from the welter of his new experiences
and comprehensions. But some great dark thing in him, that entity
newly wakened during his sojourn in the depths of Castle Banat,
seemed to be raising its head and taking a first long look around,
gathering information that would fuel its preliminary conclusions. He
did not know whether to be happy or dismayed by any of this. That, at
least—his essential confusion—remained unaffected.
However, he doubted that he would remain confused for long.
Chapter
Sixteen
F
elipe’s apartments were as Beheim had left them, and though he
suspected this good fortune, though he wondered where Alexandra might
be and to what end she might be occupying herself, he concluded that
the deaths of Felipe and Dolores must thus far have gone
undiscovered. The black portal that had swallowed them remained
floating at the center of the living room, but it appeared to be
decaying, its dark substance eroding, losing cohesion. If Felipe and
Dolores still burned within, Beheim could not make out their
particular fire from among the myriad lights that swarmed in its
strange depths. He stood a moment before the portal, not in memorial
for the dead, but rather in obeisance to its Mystery; he put his palm
close to it, felt again that cold pressure, felt also the alternation
of revulsion and allure it bred in him. It was not so frightening,
this little patch of death, when one could choose to enter it or not.
Indeed, the choice seemed much more problematic, a decision between
an endless journey into madness and another journey whose most
frightening landfall would be the porches of oblivion.
As soon as he
was certain that the apartment was empty, he released the outcasts,
first allowing them to scavenge for valuables, then charging them to
return to their habitations and say nothing of his business; but
Paulina he kept with him, directing her to stand watch over Giselle,
who lay unconscious at the foot of the stair leading to Felipe’s
secret study. Once she was settled, he sat at Felipe’s desk and
began poring over his journals, trying to gain some understanding of
the dosages required to protect one against the light of day.
Apparently Felipe had not ascertained the precise dosages necessary
to protect for specific periods of time—though he had noted
that he believed continued consumption would result in a permanent
immunity—and Beheim was forced to make educated guesses. After
he had copied the formula and gathered all other available knowledge,
he opened the cabinet where Felipe stored the drug and set about
diluting his supply with water, working feverishly, fearful of being
discovered—according to what Felipe had written regarding
Agenor’s insistence on a test, it seemed unlikely that
Alexandra or anyone else would possess a supply of the drug; thus
they would be forced to invade his sanctum in order to obtain it. If
that occurred, Beheim planned a surprise for them. The image of
Alexandra burning into charcoal beneath that grotesque sun did not
delight him; but this was, he told himself, a game of her design—at
the very least, of her choosing—and she had persuaded him to
join in it. As troubling as was the idea of her death, the idea of
his own troubled him still more.
When he had
finished, he tucked three flasks of the undiluted drug into an inner
pocket, a sufficient supply, he estimated, for months of protection
against the light—it might be that he would have a chance to
run if things did not go well, and he did not want to be limited to
night travel. He also took a dagger from the drawer of the desk. Then
he hurried to the stairs, caught up Giselle in his arms, and—preceded
by Paulina—made his way along dark and untraveled passages
toward the heart of the castle. As he went he tried to unravel the
skeins of rivalry and coercion that had led him to this pass. It was
an inconceivable task. But he believed that whatever personal whims
and political machinations were in play, they were all somehow
subordinate to the debate currently engaging the Family. For the
first time he wondered if, when standing with Agenor and Dolores in
the great hall on the night of the murder, he had only been parroting
his mentor. Now, cut off from Agenor’s influence, he was not
quite so firm in his opinions. Who knew what bewildering
eventualities the East might hold? Perhaps there were unknown dangers
there more inimical to the Family than those known ones they faced in
Europe. Perhaps they could undertake a change in Europe, become more
devious and circumspect in their actions, and that alone would ensure
survival. But then it might be that immersion in the East was the
only tactic that would allow them the time necessary to adapt to such
a change. In the end, he realized, the whole question would most
likely be decided by the requisites of a design or game that none of
them completely understood, with the possible exception of the
amazing creature whom he was seeking to interview. It might be no
more than the inevitable result of some operation of fate, like the
one whose presence he had sensed just prior to meeting Vlad, on
hearing the song of his blood, the weaving of an unimaginably large
tapestry reaching its conclusion, a thready signature writing itself
in the bottom corner. Alexandra had been right: he was a pawn. But
so, for all her guile, was she. The most that they might hope to
learn was whether they were of a color, moving together across the
board toward the possibility of higher rank, or if they had been set
one against the other, a minor engagement that would have some
peripheral significance as to the ultimate outcome.
The entrance to
the Patriarch’s chambers was an adit that led to a hidden door.
Beheim laid Giselle down at the mouth of the adit and knelt at her
side, trying to detect some change in her that would signal her
imminent recovery. Though the flickering of Paulina’s torch
lent her false color, her pulse remained erratic and the corners of
her mouth were downturned, as if she were in terrible pain.
“What in
Hell’s name can he have given her?” Beheim said, smacking
the flat of his hand against the wall.
“Laudanum,
perhaps.” Paulina shook her head glumly. “Vlad had many
drugs, many poisons.”
Beheim could not
make up his mind whether to risk judging Giselle, to take the chance
that she would survive judgment, or to do nothing and hope she would
recover on her own. At last his indecisiveness persuaded him that the
time was not right for judgment. He would see how things stood once
he returned from his audience with the Patriarch.
If he returned.
There was no
point in dwelling on that.
“Wait with
her,” he told Paulina. “Be patient. I don’t know
how long this will take.”
She made no
reply, but he needed none to confirm her fidelity. He remembered how
it had been immediately after he had succumbed to Agenor. He had not
been able to take his eyes off the man; he had cataloged his every
twitch and habit: how Agenor’s laugh descended into a hoarse,
broken chuckle; how he sometimes would throw back his head in an
almost feminine gesture before speaking; how he would fold his right
arm across his chest when in a deep study, bracing his left elbow on
the right hand, his left hand held open as if to catch the substance
of his thought that was due at any moment to be spat forth from his
forehead. Paulina was, as Beheim himself once had been, utterly
captivated, enraptured, staring at him with unmodulated adoration.
From his waist
he removed the dagger he had taken from the study and handed it to
Paulina. “Should anyone of the Family find you here, you must
kill Giselle and then yourself. I realize this is a harsh command.
But, believe me, you will both suffer less that way.”
She gazed at him
through strands of blond hair, as mutely adoring as a hound. He was
disaffected by her single-mindedness, and this disaffection was not
related to who she was, he realized, but to the character of the
relationship, the same relationship he had with Giselle. It struck
him as unchallenging now, devoid of intrigue. The pleasure he had
once taken from such dominance seemed childish, and looking at the
two of them, he understood that though they were useful to him,
neither of them, not even Giselle, was as dear as he might have
thought. It was Alexandra, a woman for whom at times he could
manufacture a substantial hatred, and whom he was probably going to
try to kill, who challenged and intrigued him. Alexandra who fired
his imagination. Alexandra whose mysterious and doubtless
pathological obsessions stimulated his own obsessions. As far as
Giselle and Paulina were concerned, he had reached a point of
development from which there was no returning; all his declarations
of love and responsibility for Giselle had, he saw, been a means of
holding on to the familiar, the known, a hedge against the
uncertainties of his new life. He refused to admit to this
completely, telling himself that by thinking this way, he was
attempting to cushion his sensibilities against the likelihood of
Giselle’s death; yet as he prepared to enter the Patriarch’s
chambers, he felt that this would be a final parting and was dismayed
by his relative lack of emotion, the watered-down quality of his
guilt and affection. It seemed he was more engaged by the prospect of
facing a perilous future than he was of clinging to the security of
his past.
“Be
watchful,” he said to Paulina. “You mustn’t fall
asleep.”
He thought there
should be something else to tell her, something that would give her
faith in his eventual return; but it was not in him. Nor could he
bring himself to look at Giselle, humiliated by her steadfastness and
her sacrifice. He only wanted to leave them, to put them from mind
for a while at least. He took a quick step away, but as he started
along the adit Paulina caught up his hand and kissed it, and would
not release him until he had kissed her in return and comforted her
with lies.
Chapter
Seventeen
O
n passing through the hidden door, Beheim stepped out onto a stone
pier extending from the bottom of an enormous chamber—some
three hundred feet in height, he reckoned; perhaps half that at its
widest—and was met with a sight that, as its particulars came
clear, spiked his backbone with cold and prickled the hairs on the
back of his neck. There was no light source, at least none he could
detect. Yet there was light. The chamber was filled with an eerie,
grainy, blue radiance; it seemed something akin to the humming
silence and the cold and an ozonelike stink, as if light had been
transformed into a liquid with these same properties. The radiance
was sufficient to cast vague shadows, yet was so dim that it took
several minutes before he could make out much of the detail of the
place: bats making looping flights in the cobalt reaches;
pornographic bas-reliefs on the walls, many having a melted look,
like stalactites, giving the impression that they were natural
productions of the rock that had not yet finished taking shape; the
various piers and the passageways opening here and there above him,
some with massive iron-bound doors, others mere cracks; more of the
ubiquitous statuary—none of the figures he could see had faces,
just blank ovals resting atop torsos both bestial and human. The most
curious of these conceits, however, covered the floor of the chamber,
which lay some twenty feet below and had been sculpted into a
representation of thousands upon thousands of bleached, twisted,
undernourished bodies with agonized features. The sculpture had been
rendered with such a remarkable kinetic feeling, Beheim imagined that
the bodies were inching along, slithering one over the other, all
moving in the same direction, all trying to reach the same
unguessable goal. And then, to his horror, he saw that, indeed, they
were in motion, they were not stone but flesh, alive in some measure,
enlivened, perhaps, by a tendril of the Patriarch’s will.