They came at last to a clearing where ferns grew dense and lush, and from above came the faint glimmer of the sky, just enough to show Elizabeth that it was dusk, the nebulous time when worlds collided, night with day, dark with light.
The carriage came to a halt.
Elizabeth, who had been wanting the carriage to stop for miles, was now filled with a terrible sense of dread.
‘Drive on!’ she called in panic. ‘Don’t stop! Drive on!’
But the carriage did not move.
Chapter 13
Elizabeth looked wildly about her and there, in the hazy light in the centre of the clearing, she became aware of a figure, a man, who was standing still and silent. He was dressed in satin, wearing a green coat trimmed with gold lace and green breeches sewn with gold thread. On his head he wore a feathered hat and over his face he was wearing a mask. She had seen that mask before, at the ball in Venice and she had seen it again in her dream. It belonged to the man who had taken control of her and who had propelled her into the past.
She felt a sense of horror overwhelming her. The fear crawled up and down her spine and paralysed her will. She could not move; she could only watch as, with dreadful ceremony, he made her a low bow and then removed his mask.
She knew him now, not the Prince as she had feared, but the Prince’s guest. He had been with her in the library when she had found the book of engravings, when the walls had started to melt.
She stared at him with awe-filled dread. He was terrible in his beauty, his face shining with a dreadful radiance. His features were as smooth as if they had been carved from marble, rigid and full of cold perfection.
He lifted a hand and beckoned her and the door opened of its own accord. Like a dreamer she stepped out of the carriage and crossed the forest floor until she reached him. He took her hand and kissed it in a mockery of a courteous greeting.
Strains of unearthly music began to reach her ears and the forest began to dissolve. The trees were replaced by marble columns and the clearing gave way to a ballroom floor. He took her in his arms and whirled her round in a waltz, and then the ballroom dissolved and they were on the streets of Venice, with revellers laughing and running past them amidst torchlight and gondolas and canals. And then the streets of Venice winked out and they were in the forest again, just the two of them, with the carriage and the servants vanished.
‘Please allow me to introduce myself,’ he said, bowing low over her hand. ‘It is an honour to meet you, Mrs Darcy. But what is this? You do not return my greeting.’
‘I do not know your name,’ she said, finding that her mouth, at least, was her own.
‘Then I must tell it to you. I am called many things by many people, but you may call me husband.’
‘I already have a husband,’ she replied.
He gave an unnatural smile.
‘You have nothing. You have a man who is afraid to touch you. He has married you but he has not bedded you. He is no husband to you.’
‘What do you want with me?’ she asked.
‘I want nothing but to make you happy,’ he said in a whisper as he walked round her, trailing his hand across her shoulders. ‘I want to give you your heart’s desire. You are so beautiful,’ he said as he stopped in front of her, lifting his cold white hand and stroking her hair, then running his fingers down her cheek and across her lips, trailing rivers of ice down her spine.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, appalled.
‘I have already told you,’ he said, resting his hand on her shoulder and bending his head towards her throat.
‘What are you?’ she asked.
‘I am vampyre,’ he said. ‘Oldest of the old, most ancient of an ancient line. I am fear and dread.’
She began to tremble. She wanted to run but she could not move. She was held rigid by his will.
‘So beautiful,’ he said reverently, as his head moved ever nearer her throat. ‘So ripe, so rich, so full of life; so vital, so healthy, so bloody.’
He bent his head and his teeth grazed her skin…
…and a voice rang out threateningly across the clearing.
‘Step away from her.’
Elizabeth turned to see Darcy springing into the clearing with a look of fury on his face.
‘Let her go,’ Darcy snarled, ‘she is mine.’
The vampyre was amused.
‘Yours?’ he said mockingly. ‘She is not yours. You have not had the strength to take her. There is no smell of you in her blood, there are no signs of you on her body.’
‘Step away from her,’ said Darcy, threateningly.
The vampyre’s mockery left him, to be replaced an accursed and sinister manner.
‘Do not attempt to come between me and what is rightfully mine,’ he said.
His voice was full of menace and with the menace came the storm. Black clouds blew up from nowhere. They sped across the sky at a ghastly rate, boiling and rolling with hideous malevolence as they ate up the sky and consumed the stars and a terrible power was revealed. It roared around the clearing, unspeakable in its dreadfulness, an appalling, unnameable entity; something vile and grotesque and old.
Darcy recoiled from the tumult and the vampyre smiled.
‘Oh, yes, you know me now,’ he said, and his voice was as vile as the storm.
‘No. It can’t be,’ said Darcy in fear and loathing. ‘You’re dead! The mob ferreted you out of your ruin and destroyed you.’
‘A creature of my age does not die lightly, whatever your friends might think.’
‘But they came on you with torches when you were too weak even to feed—’
‘They came upon me in my helplessness and they laughed at me,’ he said. ‘They knew that my children had abandoned me and that I could not defend myself. They drew near me, fearful and wondering, and when they took no hurt they grew bold.
‘“Send him to the guillotine!” they cried. “Let him see that she too has fangs!”
‘And therein lay their mistake. They took me to a place of carnage and it fed me through the skin. When I grew strong I rose above them, borne aloft on mighty wings. They froze before me in horror, afraid at what they had done, and then I fell amongst them, drinking with greedy pleasure. Long I drank, slaking my thirst, and as I did so my skin revived and my bones returned to strength until I was restored to some semblance of youth and vigour.
‘At last I had done. I left that place of carnage and returned to life in all its glorious wonder. To Paris I went, and to my familiar haunts, partaking of all my familiar pleasures. And what did I find? That there had been a bride in our family, but she had been kept from me, instead of being sent to me, as was my right. You see, I still have some friends who will tell me of these things. My first thought was to take her; but I longed for the thrill of the chase. So I watched her and I followed her. My good friends, who are loyal to me, helped me in my endeavours. And now I am here to claim my rights. I am here for my droit de seigneur.’
‘No!’ said Darcy.
‘No? You say it as though there is a choice. Every vampyre bride must come to me. She must be mine before she can feel her husband’s touch.’
‘Never!’ said Darcy. ‘Let her go.’
‘Why? So that you can enjoy her?’ he said with a diabolical smile. ‘You do not know how. You are weak, Darcy. She was eager for you, wanting you, needing you, but your conscience forbade you to taste of her. Mine has no such qualms.’