Genevieve 02 - Genevieve Undead Read online

  She made a fist of her hand, and held it to her chest. In the close space, her breathing was loud. Unlike the Truly Dead vampires, she still breathed. That made her nearly human. And so did her curiosity, her need to know.

  Working the latch and pushing through the trapdoor, she wondered briefly if she'd have been happier in herself if her father-in-darkness had killed her before making a vampire of her. Then, she would have been completely apart from the living. Free from the tangles that wound around her heart.

  The Box Seven smell was stronger here than anywhere else she'd been in the labyrinth. And no wonder, for this was Box Seven.

  Beyond the curtains of the box, there was a light. It must be down on the stage. She stood up, stretching herself to work the cramps out of her arms and legs. Then, she parted the curtains.

  On the stage, Detlef was rehearsing with Eva.

  This must be the Act Three curtain, where Nita appeals to Zhiekhill for help, not knowing that the kindly man who has offered her protection is actually her monstrous tormentor. The poor girl tries to persuade Zhiekhill to give her money by making pathetic advances, and, in his arousal, he transforms into Chaida, battering her back onto the divan in Zhiekhill's study for a tableau highly suggestive of the action which must come between acts in the minds of the audience.

  Watching them kiss, Genevieve waited for the transformation. One came, but not the one she was expecting.

  XVII

  The Animus was pressed against Detlef Sierck's face, and picked up his confusion, his desire, his pain. Also the growing cancer of darkness. It was the darkness the Animus needed to touch. It would be a simple matter to have Eva seduce him carnally, as she had Reinhardt Jessner. But what would be the point? Sex was not the thing that would break Detlef away from Genevieve. It was the darkness, the Chaida inside Detlef's Zhiekhill, the suppressed impulse to brute degradation.

  Eva gripped Detlef's throat hard, exerting pressure as they kissed, almost choking him.

  'Hurt me,' she whispered.

  Detlef froze in her embrace.

  'No,' she said. 'It's what I need, what I want'

  She was almost, but not quite, quoting from The Strange History of Dr. Zhiekhill and Mr. Chaida. Nita had been hurt so much, the text implied, that she had developed a perverse taste for pain. And Nita came as much from the pen and mind of Detlef Sierck as from the performance of Eva Savinien. He had written about the thrill of hurting and being hurt, and the Animus knew he'd found those feelings, like so much, inside himself, and spread them out on the stage. That experiment would be the destruction of him, just as Zhiekhill's dabbling eventually led to his own obliteration.

  Eva's grip grew stronger, her thumb-knuckles digging into the soft pouch of flesh beneath Detlef's beardline.

  'Hurt me,' she repeated, darting kisses at his face, 'badly.'

  His eyes caught the light, and the Animus saw in them that it had reached inside him to dredge up the wish to inflict pain that had always been a part of the genius. It had been one of the things that gave him the surprising strength he needed to help best the Great Enchanter. It was one of the things that made him attracted to the vampire girl.

  A part of Detlef Sierck was obsessed with pain, with blood, with evil. And obsession was so close to love as to be sometimes indistinguishable.

  Eva took one of her hands from Detlef's throat, and made a claw of her nails, angling to rake the playwright's face.

  He struck her hand aside.

  His face was a mask of anger, his features conforming exactly to the actors' textbook image of rage, projecting an emotion he couldn't fully feel.

  Detlef gripped the hand at his throat, and broke it away. He hit her, hard knuckles colliding with her cheek, raising an instant bruise.

  The Animus was pleased.

  Eva taunted Detlef, cajoling and insulting, pleading and prodding. She invited punishment, tempted him to become Chaida.

  She slapped his face, and he punched her chest. Thanks to the Animus she felt no pain, but was enough of an actress to present a counterfeit that was better than the real thing.

  In the struggle, their clothes were loosened, torn. Between blows, they exchanged hungry caresses.

  Eva took a prop retort from the stage table, and smashed it against her face. It was sugar glass, but the sticky shards stuck to her, grinding between them as they kissed, grazing their faces. They scratched each other, drawing lines of blood.

  Detlef punched her in the stomach, hard. She doubled over, and he threw her down onto Zhiekhill's divan.

  This was the Third Act Curtain.

  Eva experienced a surge of doubt, but the Animus washed it away. Everything was fine. Detlef tore at her clothes, rendering her smart dress as ragged as Nita's costume.

  Detlef fell on Eva, and the curtains did not close.

  Genevieve was horrorstruck, her blood on fire. Her canine teeth slid from their gumsheaths. And her fingernails were talon-shaped diamonds. What she saw on the stage made her want blood.

  She didn't understand the unnatural love scene being played out below, but she hated herself for being aroused to the red thirst by it. What was coming out of Detlef had always been inside him, she realized. Perhaps this was no more perverse than their own love-making, a blend of human and vampire embrace that always involved the spilling of blood if not the giving of pain. But here Eva was leading Detlef, tugging at him as Mr. Chaida tugged in the finale at Sonja Zhiekhill, trying to awake the monster inside her leading man.

  She stood in Box Seven, the sea-stench all around her, and looked down, frozen. She was a typical vampire, she thought. Unable to do anything, but watching all the time, waiting for the scraps to fall from the table.

  Then, with a dizzying lurch inside her mind, she had another flash of precognition, a scryer's insight that changed everything.

  This was not a private moment she'd happened to oversee. This was a puppet show. Somewhere, somehow, something was working the strings, jerking Eva and Detlef to an obscene dance that was at least partly for her benefit. What her lover and the actress were doing on the stage looked more convincing than it should. They were acting, exaggerating so their violent love-making would register all over the house.

  Frightened, Genevieve looked around. There was a playwright, a director. A drama was being played out, and she was a part of it too.

  She was in the audience now, but she knew she would be called soon to play a part.

  Again, everything was beyond her control.

  In the Temple Street gymnasium, Reinhardt Jessner pushed his body up and down, spine a rigid bar, thick arms like pump handles. His nose touched the hardwood floor again and again. His mind was racing so fast he needed to tire his body to catch up.

  Arne the Body, his instructor, advised him to slow down, but he could not. Throughout his career, he had taken care of his body, his instrument. If the script were thrown away, Reinhardt could, outfight Detlef Sierck in the finale of Dr. Zhiekhill and Mr. Chaida and hardly bring a sweat to his brow.

  Now, he swung a heavy weight about, feeling the burn in his forearms and shoulders.

  Eva. It was all her fault.

  He stood to lose everything. His family, his career, his self-respect. And all for Eva, who was already preparing to throw him away, her eye set on Detlef.

  He hoisted the weight repeatedly, muscles thick in his arms and neck, teeth grit together. His back and chest were damp with perspiration, and he felt trickles in his close-cropped hair and beard.

  Good luck to Eva and Detlef, he thought.

  If it weren't for Detlef, Reinhardt would be a leading man himself. He was certainly drawing more attention as the actor-manager grew flabbier and crankier. Especially if a production afforded him a chance to take his shirt off. Perhaps he should take Illona and found his own company. A touring troupe maybe. Away from the stink of the city, there'd be less glamour, less acclaim, less money. But maybe there'd be a life worth living.

  Eva.

  He had
to end it now. For Illona, for the twins. For himself.

  He dropped the weight, and stood back. Arne grinned at him, and made his bicep inflate like a pig's bladder, the veins standing out on it like thick worms.

  He would go to the theatre, and end it with Eva.

  Then things would come together.

  XVIII

  'No,' said Detlef, quietly. Having touched something inside himself, he was now letting it go, leaving it well alone, pushing it back into the depths.

  Eva stilled, staying her hand from the blow.

  'What?'

  'No,' he said, firmer now. 'I won't.'

  He was ashamed of himself, and uneasy. He stood back, hands by his sides. He didn't want to touch her again.

  Eva looked real fury at him, and, leaping from the divan, went for his face. He grabbed her wrists, and held her fast, keeping her away from him, pushing her back.

  He felt his bruises, but also a strength inside him. He had resisted temptation. He had not become Mr. Chaida.

  'Hurt meee!' Eva screeched.

  There was something wrong with her face, as if there were a layer of thin steel over it. She had foam on her lips, and was fighting seriously now. Her attacks were not in the least playful.

  'What are you?' he asked.

  'Hurt me, wound me, bite me'

  He pushed her off, and backed away from her, shaking his head.

  From the darkness, a pair of hands clapped, the sound reverberating around the auditorium, turning into a thunder of applause.

  The Animus had lost. It knew the fact with a gem-bright certainty. The beast in Detlef Sierck hadn't been strong enough to take over his heart completely. He was as much Zhiekhill as Chaida. He could be tainted and taunted, but not destroyed that way. There was too much else in his spirit, too much light in the darkness.

  The host was shaking with the trauma of defeat. She was near the end of her usefulness. If the Animus couldn't destroy Detlef's soul, it would have to make do with ending his life.

  Eva pressed her hands to her face, trying to keep the loose mask from coming free. As the Animus faded from her mind, she felt her pain, her shame, her rage.

  Her hands were wet with tears. She huddled, sorry for herself, wrapping what was left of her clothes about her. Detlef was stern, uncomforting. She didn't understand what she'd found inside her.

  She had thought the Animus a blessing, but it turned out a curse.

  The Animus slowly withdrew its tendrils from Eva, detaching itself at every point from her mind and body, cutting off her feelings, relinquishing its degree of control over her.

  Only the purpose remained.

  Still applauding, Genevieve latched onto her pride in Detlef. He had defeated something as invisible and beastly as Mr. Chaida. She hoped she might have been able to do the same, but doubted herself.

  'It's me,' she shouted, 'Gene.'

  Detlef shaded his eyes and peered into the darkness. He could never see her like that. He did not have vampire eyes.

  He was suddenly self-conscious.

  'There's something wrong,' he tried to explain. 'We weren't responsible.'

  Eva was sobbing quietly, forgotten, abandoned.

  'I know. There's something here, something evil.'

  She tried to sense another presence, but her scrying was gone. It was only an occasional thing.

  'Gene,' he said. 'Where'

  'I'm in Box Seven. There's a secret passageway.'

  She turned to check the open trapdoor, and saw something huge and wet squeezing through it.

  The back of her hand covered her still-wide, still-sharp mouth, but she did not scream.

  She was beyond screaming.

  'It's all right,' the Trapdoor Daemon tried to say.

  He knew how he must look.

  The vampire dropped her hand, and her eyes shone red in the dark. She swallowed and straightened up. Trying not to be revulsed, she couldn't keep the pity out of her face.

  'Bruno Malvoisin?'

  'No,' he said, the word long and low from his flesh-concealed mouth. 'Not anymore.'

  She put out her sharp-nailed hand.

  'I'm Genevieve,' she said. 'Genevieve Dieudonne.'

  He nodded, his huge lump of a head wobbling. 'I know.'

  'What's going on?' Detlef shouted from the stage.

  'We have a visitor,' Genevieve said over her shoulder.

  It was over with and he was out in the open. The Trapdoor Daemon felt a strange relief. There would be pain, but he didn't have to hide anymore.

  Poppa Fritz was snoring in his cubby-hole when Reinhardt went in through the stage-door.

  His resolve was strong inside him.

  'Eva!' he shouted.

  He blundered through the backstage dark. In the afternoons, all the lights were down, as Guglielmo tried to save crowns on candle-wax and lanternwick. But there was a light somewhere. Out on the stage, perhaps.

  'Eva!'

  'Up here,' said a voice, not Eva's. It was Detlef.

  Reinhardt made an entrance, his heavy boots clumping on the stage. He recognized the tableau. It was Act Four, when the cossack found Chaida in Zhiekhill's study with the beaten and bruised Nita.

  Detlef was out of his make-up, but he had blood on his face and his clothes were a mess. Eva was on her knees in her spot, face in her hands. It was hard not to follow the script and take his own place, where the girl would throw herself into his embrace, and plead for him to rescue her from the monster.

  But this was not a rehearsal or a performance.

  'Reinhardt,' Detlef said, 'send Poppa Fritz for a doctor. Eva needs help.'

  'What happened?'

  Detlef shook his head.

  'Things are complicated just now.'

  Reinhardt looked about him.

  Eva was really distraught, which was outside his experience of her. Suddenly, her hands still to her face, she stood up, and ran to him. He held out his hands to ward her off, and she slipped between his arms, shoving her head close to his.

  'What is it?'

  He took her wrists, and prised her hands away from her face.

  Genevieve's attention was torn. She was beginning to be able to make out the Trapdoor Daemon properly. He carried his own darkness with him, she realized, like a shroud. His head projected up above a ring of thick tentacles, and had to angle back, huge eyes swivelling forwards, so he could speak through the beak-like mouth in the centre of what must be his chest. The marks of his alteration were unmistakable, giving him some of the aspects of Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways. His eyes were what she saw most, liquid and human.

  But the drama on the stage was not played out. The Trapdoor Daemon had slithered forwards, all his appendages in motion as he pulled himself to the balcony of the box. They both looked down at the tableau.

  Eva was with Reinhardt, and Detlef was looking at them, then out into the dark.

  Experimentally, she touched the Trapdoor Daemon's wet hide. He shrank away, but relaxed, and let her fingers press his skin.

  'Beautiful, huh?' he commented.

  'I've seen worse.'

  Suddenly, the tableau moved.

  XIX

  Reinhardt dropped Eva on the stage, and she sprawled at his feet like the stuffed dummies who stood in for corpses in the play. It was as if all the life had seeped out of her.

  'She was sick, I think,' Detlef explained.

  Reinhardt was just beyond the island of light, but Detlef could see there was something strange about his face. He was wearing a mask.

  'Reinhardt?'

  The actor stepped into the light, and Detlef felt a hand of dread fall on his shoulder. Reinhardt seemed taller, broader, his bunched muscles straining his clothes. And his face was a terrible, calm blank, silverwhite and dead. He moved like an automaton, but slowly his motion became easier, more fluid, as if the rust in his joints were being oiled away.

  'Play-actor,' Reinhardt said, his voice different.

  Reinhardt looked around, head moving
like a giant lizard's, and strode briefly into the dark. He returned with a background prop in his hand.

  A war-axe from Chaida's collection of weapons.

  'In the name of the Great Enchanter, Constant Drachenfels,' Reinhardt said, hefting the axe, 'you must'

  The axe jumped forwards, blade whistling.

  'die!'

  The axe-edge slammed against Detlef's forehead, all Reinhardt's strength behind it.

  He could hear Gene screaming.

  The screech died in her throat as Detlef staggered under the blow. Reinhardt's axe was a ruin, its painted wooden blade crushed against Detlef's hard head. With a snarl of rage, the young actor slammed the heavy handle of the prop against the playwright's neck, knocking him out of the circle of light.

  Genevieve was looking for a quick way out of Box Seven. The Trapdoor Daemon was thinking with her, and stretched out a tentacle to pull loose a curtain. There was a chandelier in the auditorium, fixed by a long chain that ran through strong eyehooks across the ceiling and down one wall so the chandelier could be lowered and lit. Malvoisin took hold of the chain, and twined the end of his tentacle around it.

  Reinhardt was gone beyond humanity, white face impassive as he stumped towards Detlef on heavy feet.

  The Trapdoor Daemon yanked the chandelier chain, and it came loose of its eyehooks. The chandelier was unsteady, dropping the stubs of last night's candles into the stalls as Malvoisin hauled on the chain. It was fixed to the ceiling by only the central hook, and plaster dust was powdering out from its mooring as the chandelier crowded up close, anchoring the chain.

  Reinhardt had his hands on Detlef, and had lifted him up, ready for a throw.

  'Quick,' the Trapdoor Daemon hissed, giving her the chain.

  She was over the side like a sailor, and hurtling through the air, booted feet first. There was a whistle in her ears as her hair streamed out, and she swayed unsteadily as she tried to aim for Reinhardt's expanse of chest.