The Dark Arts of Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

snow-figure, with no strength to move.
    “Charlotte.” Stefan was gathering her in his arms, Niklas helping.
    “I’m all right,” she murmured, aware she was slurring.
    “Clearly you aren’t. Stop arguing with me!”
    Charlotte let Stefan help her upstairs into the large bedroom. Although vampires did not sleep in the conventional sense, beds had other uses. He wrapped a blanket around her, propped her on pillows, and offered her his wrist.
    “I don’t want it.”
    Stefan paused, let his hand fall. “It’s human blood you need.”
    “I can hardly move, let alone hunt. What’s happening to me? Am I dying?”
    Stefan’s blue eyes penetrated her. “No talk of dying. Charlotte, I don’t know how to help you, but I love you like a sister, with all my heart and soul. I will not allow you to die.”
    He straightened up, graceful in the candlelight, and stepped away from the bedside. “You’ll be all right alone for a while?”
    “Of course. Where are you going?”
    “To find Karl. Rest. Niklas and I will return as swiftly as we can.”
    * * *
    Some called the house ugly. Even his niece Amy had barely hidden her dismay when she first arrived. In her sweet, shy way, she’d ventured that the rooms were awfully big and cold, the ceilings too high. The pure white marble walls put her in mind of a tomb, she said.
    Godric Reiniger indulged her reaction. Bergwerkstatt, which he’d designed himself in the modern geometric style, was not to everyone’s taste, but it suited him perfectly. A house for the future, containing a workshop, film studio, a screening room big enough to be called a cinema, everything he needed.
    His headquarters.
    There were plenty of bedrooms to house his film crew – both his inner circle, and his general employees – and big reception rooms where he’d allowed Gudrun to add homely Swiss touches. Although they clashed with the stark minimal decor, he let them stay because they made him nostalgic.
    Now he walked slowly through the rooms touching each object with a fingertip as if to claim all it represented. Local embroidery, decorative pails and other items carved of wood, even a cuckoo clock; Godric liked these reminders of tradition around him. Past met future here.
    In his office there was nothing cosy. The windows were tall narrow oblongs of blackness. He had no curtains, and as little furniture as possible: one desk, one large bookshelf, and four chairs with tall straight backs that recalled prison bars. They were as uncomfortable to sit on as they looked. Two electric chandeliers, like black metal cages, filled the room with light.
    Godric prowled around his desk, an island of chaos in its pristine surroundings. He had so many projects in hand that he could barely keep them in order. Manic creative energy kept him from sleep. Sketches, photographs, scribbled ideas for film scripts, books of Swiss folklore and philosophy… he pushed them around with his left hand as if stirring soup. In his right he gripped a cigarette. No one else would make sense of the mess, but he knew where everything was and what it meant.
    He glanced at the clock. Past midnight. A touch of concern nagged him: had Amy gone out for dinner with the others, and if so, had she come home?
    He stubbed out the cigarette, went out into the grand hall and climbed the stairs. The house was quiet: his crew were either asleep, or out carousing. Insomnia gave him time alone to think, but he sometimes wished he could turn off the flood of ideas.
    Branching out from local newsreels into feature films was ambitious, and meant he’d had to take on a throng of new people, not least actors and actresses. Enthusiastic amateurs. Although they shared his goals, he didn’t know them well enough to trust them and his priority was to protect his niece. Just nineteen, she was highly impressionable.
    Light shone under the door of Amy’s bedroom. He could hear the murmur of Gudrun’s voice and the scratchy sound of jazz music, which set