Genevieve Undead Part 4

An animal mind expanded inside his own.

There was such pleasure in evil. Such ease and comfort. Such freedom. The s.p.a.ce between desire and fulfilment was an instant. There was a fiery simplicity to the savage.

At last, Detlef understood.

'Detlef Sierck,' said a voice, cutting through his thoughts, 'I am Viktor Ra.s.selas, steward and advisor to Mornan Tybalt, Chancellor of the Empire, patron of the Imperial bank of Altdorf.'

Detlef looked up at the man, eyes coming into focus.

He was a reedy character, dressed in smart grey, and he had a scroll in his gloved hands. The seal of the Imperial counting house was his cap-badge.

'I am here to present to you this pet.i.tion,' droned Ra.s.selas, 'demanding that you cease performance of The Strange History of Dr. Zhiekhill and Mr. Chaida. It has been signed by over one hundred of the foremost citizens of the Empire. We allege that your drama inflames the violent tendencies of the audiences and, in these b.l.o.o.d.y times, such an inflammation is'

Ra.s.selas gulped as Detlef's hand closed on his throat.

He looked at the man's fearstruck face and gripped tighter, relishing the squirming feel of the neck muscles trapped under his fingers. Ra.s.selas' face changed colour several times.

Detlef rammed the steward's head against the wall. That felt good. He did it again.

'What are you doing?'

He barely heard the voice. He slipped his thumb under Ra.s.selas' ear, and pressed hard on the pulsing vein there, his nail digging into the skin.

A few seconds more pressure, and the pulse would be stilled.

'Detlef!'

Hands pulled his shoulder. It was Genevieve.

The darkness in his mind fogged, and was whipped apart. He found he was in pain, teeth locked together, an ache in his head, bones grinding in his hand. He dropped the choking steward, and staggered into Genevieve's arms. She supported his weight with ease, and slipped him into a chair.

Ra.s.selas scrambled to his feet and loosened his collar, angry red marks on his skin. He fled, leaving his pet.i.tion behind.

'What were you thinking of?' Genevieve asked.

He didn't know.

VIII.

The pupil was learning faster than the Trapdoor Daemon had expected. She was like a flirtatious vampire, delicately sucking him dry of all his experience, all his skill. She took rapid little sips at him.

Soon, he'd be empty. All gone.

In her room beyond the gla.s.s, Eva sobbed uncontrollably, her face a cameo of grief. Then, as one might snuff out a candle, she dropped the emotion completely.

'Good,' he said.

She accepted his approval modestly. The exercises were over.

'You have refused Lutze's offer?' he asked.

'Of course.'

'It was the right thing to do. Later, there will be more offers. You will take one, eventually. The right one.'

Eva was pensive, briefly. He could not read her mood.

'What troubles you, child?'

'When I accept an offer, I shall have to go to another theatre.'

'Naturally.'

'Will you come with me?'

He said nothing.

'Spirit?'

'Child, you will not need me forever.'

'No,' she stamped her feet. 'I shall never leave you. You have done so much for me. These flowers, these notices. They are as much yours as mine.'

Eva wasn't being sincere. It was ironic; off the stage, she was a poor dissembler. Truly, she thought she'd outgrown him already, but she wasn't sure whether she was strong enough to proceed the next few steps without her familiar crutch. And, at the back of her mind, she feared compet.i.tion, and a.s.sumed he would find another pupil.

'I am just a conscientious gardener, child. I have cultivated your bloom, but that does no credit to me.'

Eva didn't know, but she was the first he had instructed. She'd be the last.

Eva Savinien came along only once in a lifetime, even a life as extended as the Trapdoor Daemon's.

The girl sat at her mirror again, looking at her reflection. Was she trying to see beyond, to see him? The thought gave him a spasm of horror. His hide crawled, and he heard the drip of his thick secretion.

'Spirit, why can I never see you?'

She'd asked that before. He had no answer.

'Have you no body to see?'

He almost laughed but his throat couldn't make the sound anymore. He wished what she suggested were true.

'Who are you?'

'Just a Trapdoor Daemon. I was a playwright once, a director too. But that was long ago. Before you were born. Before your mother was born.'

'What is your name?'

'I have no name. Not anymore.'

'What was your name?'

'It wouldn't mean anything to you.'

'Your voice is so beautiful, I'm sure you are comely. A handsome ghost like the apparition in A Farce of the Fog.'

'No, child.'

The Trapdoor Daemon was uncomfortable. Since the play opened, Eva had been pressing him about himself. Before, all her questions had been about herself. About how she could improve herself. Now, uncharacteristically, she was being consumed by curiosity. It was something she'd discovered inside, and was letting grow.

She was wandering about her room now, back to him. A bouquet had arrived from the palace every day since the first night. Eva had made a conquest of Prince Luitpold. She took yesterday's stiff blossoms from their vase and piled them with the others.

'I love you, spirit,' she said, lying.

'No, child. But I shall teach you to show love.'

She whirled around, the heavy vase in her hand, and smashed the mirror. The noise of the shattering gla.s.s was like an explosion in the confined s.p.a.ce of the pa.s.sage. Light poured in, smiting his shrinking eyes like a rain of fire. Shards pattered against his chest, sticking to the damp patches.

Eva stepped back, gla.s.s tinkling under her feet.

She saw him. Unfeigned, unforced horror burst out of her in a screech, and her lovely face twisted with fear, disgust, loathing, instinctive hate.

It was no less than he had expected.

There was an urgent knocking at Eva's door. Shouts outside the dressing room.

He was gone through his own trapdoor before anyone could intervene, pulling himself through the catacombs on his tentacles, driving himself deeper into the heart of the theatre, determined to flee from the light, to hide himself from wounded eyes, to bury himself in the unexplored depths of the building. He knew his way in the dark, knew each turn and junction of the pa.s.sageways. At the heart of the labyrinth was the lagoon that had been his home since he first changed.

More than a mirror was broken.

She broke the lock and pulled the door open. Eva Savinien was having hysterics, tearing up her dressing room. At last, Genevieve thought rather cattily, a genuine emotion. It was the first time Eva had suggested offstage that she might have feelings. The mirror was smashed, the air full of petals from shredded bouquets.

The actress flinched as Genevieve stepped into the room, others crowding in behind her. Like a trapped animal, Eva backed into a corner, as far away as possible from the broken mirror.

There was an aperture behind the looking gla.s.s.

'What is it?' Illona asked the younger woman.

Eva shook her head, and tore at her hair.

'She's having a fit,' someone said.

'No,' said Genevieve. 'She's had a fright. She's just afraid.'

She held out her hands, and tried to make calming gestures. It was no good. Eva was as afraid of Genevieve as she was of whatever had thrown such a scare into her.

'There's a pa.s.sage here,' said Poppa Fritz from near the mirror. 'It goes back into the wall.'

'What happened?' asked Reinhardt.

Detlef shouldered his way into the room, and Eva threw herself at him, pressing her face to his shirt, her body racked with sobs. Detlef, astonished, looked at Genevieve as he patted Eva's back, trying to quiet her down. Being the director made him stand-in father for everyone in the company, but he was not used to this sort of behaviour. Especially not from Eva.

The actress broke away from Detlef suddenly and, darting between the people crowding the room, ran through the door, down the pa.s.sageway, out of the theatre. Detlef called after her. There was a performance tonight, and she could not run out.

Genevieve was examining the hole where the mirror had been. A cool breeze was coming from it. And a peculiar smell. She thought she heard something moving far away.

'Look, there's some sort of liquid,' Reinhardt said, dipping his finger into a slimy substance that clung to a jagged edge of gla.s.s. It was green and thick.

'What is going on here?' Detlef asked. 'What's got into Eva?'

Poppa Fritz leaned into the cavity and sucked a whiff into his nostrils.

'It's the Box Seven smell,' Reinhardt said.

Poppa Fritz nodded sagely. 'The Trapdoor Daemon,' he said, tapping his nose.

Detlef threw up his hands in exasperation.

Bernabe Scheydt had found the theatre easily. It was on Temple Street, one of the city's main thoroughfares. But, by the time he reached the place, Scheydt was not much more use to the Animus. Although he'd bound his stump as best he could with rags torn from his robes, he had lost a lot of blood. He was leaking badly through the hole in his back, and he still had the head of a crossbow quarrel lodged in his spine. This host was dying under the Animus, just as the horses that had brought him to Altdorf had died under Scheydt.

He managed to haul himself into the alley beside the Vargr Breughel Memorial Playhouse, and slumped across from the stage door. As he lurched into the recess a pa.s.sing woman pressed a coin into his hand, and gave him the blessing of Shallya.

Gripping the coin in his remaining fist, he let the wall support him. He was aware of the slow trickle of blood from his many wounds, but he felt little. Suddenly, the stage door clattered open, and a girl came running out. She must be from the company. She was young, with a stream of dark hair.

The Animus made Scheydt stand up on weary legs, and totter towards the girl, blocking her path. She dodged, but the alley was narrow. He collapsed against her, bearing her towards the wall, dragging her down. She struggled, but did not scream. Already in the grip of panic, she had no more fear.

As he fell on her, Scheydt's leg bent the wrong way and snapped, a sharp end of broken bone spearing through muscle and flesh below the knee. With his hand, he grabbed the girl's hair, and pulled himself up to her face.

The girl began screaming. The Animus guided its host forwards. Scheydt pressed his face close to the pretty girl's, and it peeled off, sliding down between them.

Suddenly, he was free, and pain poured into his body. He shrieked as the full agony of his wounds fell on him like a cloak of lightning.

Without the Animus, he was lost, abandoned.

The girl, calming, stood up, heaving him off.

He could not stop shaking, and liquid was spewing from his mouth. He curled into a ball of pain, his limbs ending in ragged edges of agony. Looking up, he saw the girl feeling her face. The mask was in place, but not joined to her yet. The white metal caught the moonlight, and glowed like a lantern.

She was not screaming anymore. But Scheydt was, letting out a tearing, dying, jagged howl from the depths of his disordered soul.

Detlef examined the hole, and was glad n.o.body suggested he explore the pa.s.sage. It would have been hard for him to get through the mirror-sized gap, and there was something about the dark beyond that reminded him of the corridors of Castle Drachenfels.