A Dance in Blood Velvet by Freda Warrington Read Free Book Online

infatuation. Intoxicating and fragile.
    Karl and Charlotte often travelled through the Crystal Ring to theatres all over Europe, to mingle with humanity and find victims in the dark backstreets afterwards, vanishing home by dawn. Although daylight held no danger for them, they both loved the velvet magic of night.
    There was an added edge tonight, since David’s friend had found them. Every time Charlotte heard an English voice among the flow of Italian, she shivered.
    As they moved down the aisle, Karl was pensive. His gaze wandered over the baroque fancies of the ceiling, the gilded plaster and brass chandeliers. “I last came here with Andreas and Katerina. Ach, du liebe Zeit...”
    “How long ago?” said Charlotte, startled. Karl rarely mentioned the friends whom his enemy, Kristian, had left to freeze in the highest circle of the Crystal Ring. Sometimes she wished he would say more.
    “Forty years, at least. Yes, in the 1880s... It was almost the last time I saw them. This place has hardly changed, except for the electric lights in the chandeliers.”
    “What did you see?”
    A faint smile touched his mouth. “It was a ballet then, too. We saw La Sylphide. A tale of a supernatural being falling in love with a mortal.”
    “Do you still miss them?”
    “Less than I used to,” he said, but she saw pain flicker in his eyes. “And it’s no use to keep asking myself why I couldn’t save them. They belong to the past, beloved.”
    “And so does Kristian,” Charlotte murmured. “Thank God... or whatever gave us the power to destroy him.”
    In a cavern of crimson velvet, they waited for the overture to begin.
    Charlotte’s deepest pleasure lay in the pure joy of being at Karl’s side. Horrible, the things she’d done to stay with him, not least the heartbreak she’d caused her family and her dearest friend, Anne. But given a second chance, she would do the same again because, if she’d remained human, Karl would either have left or destroyed her with his blood thirst. She’d commit any crime to keep him... And now she too was a crime against nature, a bearer of madness and death.
    Incalculably expensive, their love.
    Her personality hadn’t changed, but continued to deepen in strange ways. As a mortal, she’d wanted to hide from the world. Now she was entirely detached from it, but the wounds of isolation she’d suffered as a girl lingered. In time she would rise above them; for the present, she had years of painful shyness to exorcise. Irresistible, to walk among people and think, I’m not afraid of you any longer. Your judgment of me means nothing. To know that with a look she could inspire fear or desire; or let them see she was not the demure young woman she appeared but something other . To turn their safe world upside down!
    A sweet revenge; harmless, if self-indulgent. As a mortal, she’d craved affection, even while she hid from it. As a vampire, rather to her shock, she found the craving even more intense.
    When strangers noticed them, she sensed their curiosity as strongly as she scented their blood-heat. Often she and Karl would strike up a conversation, forming superficial friendships that could never become intimate. That was how they’d met John Milner. Sometimes it happened that another couple would fasten onto them for the evening. The wife would flirt shamelessly with Karl - her poise torn to shreds by his allure - while Charlotte would brave her dagger-glances and charm the husband. This had led to many entertaining evenings. But here was a difference between them: Charlotte would sometimes feed on the husband, if she could get him alone. Karl, though, never touched the wife. Charlotte didn’t fully understand why, yet - in a prosaically human way - she was glad.
    Taking a victim was not infidelity. The notion was irrational, though it could seem perilously close, for blood was more than nourishment. Passion, conflict, excitement, pleasure and pain... everything. Never could blood