Tanith Lee - Blood Opera 02 - Personal Darkness

PERSONAL

DARKNESS

SECOND IN THE BLOOD OPERA SEQUENCE

A DELL BOOK

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll

CHAPTER 1

THE GIRL IN THE RAIN:

He had been watching her for about twenty minutes.

Timothy's plan had been to clean his car, but the rain had beaten him to it. He had gone to the window of

the room his mother called the Living Room, and his father, obstinately, the Lounge, and was looking out

at the water sluicing the street. He did not wonder if it was raining at the country hotel where his parents

were spending the weekend. The only second thought he gave them was one of pleasure in their absence.

The Mini Metro shone like blue tinfoil in the downpour. And across the road, between the green

cascades of the raining trees, was this girl.

She looked tall, though he thought actually she was not, very, it was her slimness which created the

impression. She had a marvelous figure, in her tight-belted raincoat. And plastered all over her was a

thick, soaked spillage of jet-black hair. Her face was pale; her eyes were black with makeup, and her

lips scarlet. She was just amazing. And wet, she was certainly that, simply standing there under the

gushing tap of the rain, staring across at the house.

Timothy assumed she could not see him through the net curtain. And yet he had the notion she was

waiting for him to make some signal.

Finally, after twenty-five minutes, he made it.

He lifted the curtain and waved at her.

He might have been a ghost. She did not react.

"Fucking blind," said Timothy. It was nice to say something like this in the lounge-living room, without his

mother going up the wall. He had to be careful at work, too, where Mr. Cummings would come scuttling

along the rows of computers like a poisonous woodlouse. "Got those figures yet, Timothy? Mr. Andrews

is waiting." And, breathing his halitosis briskly over Timothy's shoulder, "You should wash your mouth

out. I don't want that kind of language."

Timothy forgot his mother and Mr. Cummings. The terrific girl was crossing over the street, toward him.

She was past his car, up on the pavement, coming through the gateposts. She had great legs, and weird

shoes. Then she was on the steps.

Timothy turned around and stood in the big room with its pallid mother-chosen, satin-finish walls and

parent-selected furniture and objects. He, now, waited.

The doorbell buzzed.

Timothy had one curious moment. He felt faintly affronted, assailed. Threatened? Then that went, it was

childish, and he told himself that maybe he could be on to something good here.

When he opened the door, he grinned at once, to let her see he liked the look of her. She was

sensational, even though her eye makeup was running in the wet, which he wished it had not been. Her

clothes were pretty odd, too. The raincoat looked as if it had come out of a dustbin. His grin sagged a

little.

"Hi," said Timothy, defensively.

The girl said, "Mrs. Watt?"

"No, sorry." Was he relieved?

"Yes," said the girl. Her voice was clear and quite flat, like a soft musical chime wrongly played. "Mrs.

Watt lives here."

"She doesn't. Never heard of her."

"This is the house," said the girl. She paused. She said, "She lives with her daughter. Liz. Liz and Brian."

Something plucked at Timothy's memory. Had the people Dad bought the house from last year been

called Liz and Brian? Everyone had got quite matey when the deal was struck.

"I think—they've moved. The people before us."

The girl stared into his face. Her eyes were not only made up black, they were black. Black as black

paint. He had never seen a white woman with eyes as dark as that, maybe not a black woman either.

"She's gone," said the girl. There was a note of something after all. Was it regret?

"I'm afraid so." It was fairly obvious no possessive, well-heeled mother had packed the girl off on such a

journey. Frankly, she looked as if she had been living rough. Her ankle boots, a glance had told him,

were broken, and newspaper protruded soggily from the cracks. She had a split plastic shoulder bag.

"What'll you do?" asked Timothy.

The girl stood and looked at him, and behind her the rain poured as if forever.

And behind him was the pale yellow house, with all its rooms at his disposal, open as a hand to Saturday

afternoon and Saturday night and all Sunday until ten in the evening, when they would be back.

"Why don't you come in a minute," said Timothy. "You must be wet."

She did not hesitate, neither did she thank him. She walked straight into the hall, where the big mirror

reflected her darkly above the wilting flowers his fussy, weekending mother had forgotten to throw out.

He thought of things in horror movies that had to be invited over the threshold. But only for a second. At

once she took off her raincoat. She wore a scruffy, skimpy black skirt into which was tucked a gray

T-shirt with holes. The rain had got through the topcoat easily and she was damp. Everything clung. She

was slender as a bone, with big perfect breasts that had little wicked points. Her hair hung to her bottom

in black stripes and waterdrops ran off it. The presage of excitement was fulfilled. He was aroused.

"You'd better have a towel," said Timothy.

He left her in the hall and started up the stairs. At the linen cupboard, out of her sight, he made a joyful

gesture to himself. Then hurried back with the big fluffy towel.

Better not leave her alone too long, just in case.

First of all he made tea in the fitted kitchen. As he was doing this she said she was hungry. So he

grudgingly put some bread in the toaster. She sat on one of the stools at the breakfast bar, with her hair

up in the towel. The eye makeup was in unwiped trickles down her face, but her red lips were pristine,

even after she ate the toast, very quickly, as if she were starving. So he had to offer to make some more.

She accepted.

He had realized, if she had been living rough, she was probably dirty. She did not smell. The rain must

have cleaned her somewhat, but it would not be enough.

"Would you like a bath? You must be cold."

"All right," she said.

He ran the hot water for her into the avocado bath, and put in some of his mother's expensive bath foam.

He had always liked the scent of this, although recently not on his mother. She was too old for that sort

of perfume, though he still felt he had to give it to her at Christmas.

The girl went into the bathroom with a T-shirt of his own Timothy had sportingly offered her. He hoped

she had clean underclothes in her nasty plastic bag. He could hardly give her his mother's, that would be

going too far.

He wanted to see his protegee improved. Know she was cleaned up. If she looked all right, he might

take her out to dinner at the Italian.

When she came back, she looked wonderful. She had washed her hair and dried it, bathed, and redone

her makeup. Her hair, dry, was like frayed black silk, and the new black T-shirt, though it clung rather

less, still emphasized her breasts. God knew what he would do about shoes, though. She was now

barefoot. Her feet were good, not ugly like so many girls' feet. She must have trimmed her toenails, as

she had trimmed the long nails on her fingers, and both sets were now bloodred.

"That's great," said Timothy. "You did look a bit— well… What happened? You ran away from home?"

"Yes," said the girl, without faltering.

"You'll have to go back," he said. At twenty-two he was more responsible than she. Besides, he would

have to unload her before Sunday night.

"I can't," said the girl. She had not told him her name, although he had revealed his as Tim.

"Of course you can. Parents are bloody awful, I know, but they do have their uses."

She regarded him carefully. Her eyes were even more fascinating now the shadow and mascara had been

realigned. She looked like a singer. He wished Rob could get a look at her. For a moment he basked in

the future enjoyment of telling Rob all about her. Then he and she went into the lounge-living room and

had gin and tonics.

"No, you're going to have to go back. You can phone them, if you like. Tell them you're with a girlfriend,

or something. You can stay here tonight. Plenty of room." He thought of rolling with her in his narrow

bed, squeezed together. Thank God he had kept stocked up. Like Rob said, you never knew your luck.

The girl sat on the sofa, her long legs—even though she was not tall, she had the right

proportions—visible almost to the tops of her thighs. No unwanted hair. No tights. Perhaps no pants?

"I can't go back," she said again.

"Come on. Don't be dramatic. Why not?"

"My father," she said. She drank her gin slowly and steadily, like lemonade on a hot afternoon. "My

father abused me."

Timothy put down his glass. He was shocked.

"You mean he—you mean he—what do you mean?"

"I mean he slept with me."

"Jesus," said Timothy. "That's fucking disgusting."

"Yes."

Timothy took both their glasses and poured generous gin and tonics. He would have to remember to get

replacements from Viney's.

When he handed the girl her drink she was demure and still, as if she had told him nothing very much.

"Does your mother know?" he asked. Under the shock was a dim prurience, curiosity. She had been

broken into, and in unacceptable circumstances. This made her less attractive. And more.

"Yes, my mother knew. And my grandmother."

"Didn't they try to stop it?"

"Oh no."

She was matter-of-fact. Suddenly she said, as if awarding him a favor, "My name's Ruth."

"Yeah," said Timothy, and drank his gin.

Could he still chance her in the Italian? He would have to. He was not going to cook, and already she

had had two rounds of toast, a packet of biscuits, and three apples from the fruit stand. Her legs… He

would have to loan her some jeans. And she could wear his old trainers, the ones he had had when he

was thirteen. He had small feet for a man.

Maybe she was lying about her dad.

She was only seventeen. Girls had fantasies. Remember Jean, who said she had slept with David Bowie?

Later, two or three gins later, when he was wondering if perhaps he need not wait until after the Italian

dinner, she sidetracked him. She asked, politely, if she could see the house. The drink had seemed to

make no impression on her.

Showing her the house bored him. He was not proud of it, none of it was his, not even his own room,

really.

But then, this Mrs. Watt person, who had presumably been her only friend, and not much of one at that,

had lived here.

Ruth had already seen the fitted kitchen with its dishwasher, computerized washing machine, ranks of

polished knives and utensils, fanged juicers, and endless other gadgets. And the lounge-living room, with

china in cupboards, fat TV, Homes and Gardens on the coffee table, and the music center. Ruth had

actually investigated that. But his mother's seldom-played highlights from Swan Lake, Beethoven and

Dvorak had not held her interest.

The dining room was small, and superfluously glistened from the cleaner's superfluous attentions.

Upstairs, Timothy showed Ruth bedrooms, and his father's study, quickly. The house had been extended

at some time, and there were rooms of various sizes, some now lying fallow. Timothy's was the big room

with the inclusive bathroom. Here Ruth paused, looking around at his posters briefly, showing even less

interest than before in his music center and discs of Level 42. This room too had been recently

decorated, but it was not Timothy's taste. He had let his mother choose, not really knowing what his taste

in rooms was.

Ruth did look down from here onto the garden, and she remarked, nearly incongruously, "There's the

cedar tree."

Apparently Mrs. Watt had mentioned this tree.

Nothing else was said.

They descended again, and Timothy wondered if Ruth would like to see his car, but she would be seeing

it anyway when they went out. That should be soon. He was anxious by now with desire, but also

hungry. An early dinner, and they could make a long night of it. Bring back some wine. And a video.

Something she would like.

Somehow, she struck him after all as slightly childish.

He lent her the jeans and trainers, and offered her a spray of the scent that went with the bath foam. In

his parents' bedroom he felt a touch savage, and also put upon Ruth's milk white ears a pair of large gold

earrings. But Ruth, with a peculiar expression, removed these.

Another instant of unease then. She had come to him as a gypsy, but what had she been before? Had the

possibly fantasized abusing father been very rich and cultured, hanging on the ears of his courtesan

daughter orient jade and priceless pearl?

The blue-for-a-boy car took them neatly down to the Monte Doro, which happily opened at six on

Saturdays.

The tables were robed in russet and apple green, and from the ceiling hung a chandelier of ice-green

Per-rier bottles. It was not crowded yet, and the manager came rustling out and lit their candle hastily.

Timothy was glad he had brought his Visa card. Ruth had a starter of tomato salad with mozzarella and

mushrooms, and went on to chicken wrapped in ham, with a cream and brandy sauce, new potatoes,

broccoli and carrots. She wanted dessert too, a trifle topped by nuts and cherries, and then some goat's

cheese and biscuits. Timothy was used to girls who had to watch their weight. Obviously Ruth did not, or

else she was making up for the time lost in the wilds.

They had a bottle of frascati with their meal, and Timothy bought another bottle, with the help of his card,

to take away with them.

He drove back carefully. He knew he was over the limit but it was not very far, and he reckoned he was

a good driver; the drink had not affected him. Besides, he had had only one glass of wine in the

restaurant.

The video he had picked up was Dragonslayer. He thought Ruth would like this, although he supposed

it was fairly absurd. The photography, landscapes, and animation had not pleased him, but he believed

the love scene might do something for Ruth. She was young, and female.

To his surprise, the dragon seemed to concern her most.

He had slipped his arm around her as they watched on the sofa before the big screen of the TV.

She grew tense. She did not like it when the hero attacked the dragon. She said, low and harsh, "He's

hurt it," and then, "Shake him off. Kill him." She did not mean the dragon should die.

And when it did she was hard, like iron, under Timothy's supporting, barely caressive arm.

He had attempted to kiss her before, at the moment of the kiss in the film, and she had resisted. He did

not press her.

When the film was over, he said, "You liked the dragon best."

"It was beautiful," she said.

"How'd you like to be sacrificed to it? Burned up?"

Ruth said primly, "I'd have talked to it. The magician knew how, but he didn't. All the people were

stupid. Horrible."

Timothy opened the new bottle of frascati. To his dismay, Ruth asked if she could eat an orange. He was

afraid she had an alcohol hunger and might be sick. But she ate the orange, and another, and nothing else

happened.

"You know," said Timothy, settling beside her again, "you're gorgeous. You are. And your hair…"

She let him stroke her hair, and next her shoulder, but when he brought his lips near hers again, she said,

"No, thank you."

Timothy sat up.

"I'm not your father. You have to get over that."

"No I don't."

"Oh, Ruth—"

A car growled, out in the street, a lion returning to its lair. He knew its voice, but this was not feasible.

No. He heard the car draw to a standstill behind the Mini Metro.

They could not— They had meant to be gone all weekend. No.

Intuitively, Timothy's eyes darted about the room. The strewn gin glasses, the wine, the orange peel not

quite on the plate, the video box—and Ruth. Smelling of his mother's perfume, barefoot, red in lip and

nail. Black as night of eye.

"Oh, Christ. Oh, fucking shit—"

Feet on the steps.

A rumble of voices.

The key in the lock.

"Timothy?" c

HAPTER

KNEELING IN CRIMSON ARMOR BEFORE his shield was a knight. Beside him ran a blue glass

stream, at his back lay an emerald wood where a tower burned. The window was more like a tarot card

than anything. It reflected all over the polished, deeply scratched round table that stood below. The

scratches spelled out a word, but not in English.

The house was quiet and full of heat. And if she closed her eyes, the effect of shuttered hot silence and

colored light, the smell of dust and powders, beeswax, cobwebs, damp, evoked the first house.

And yet everything was changed.

Changed—and duplicated. Perhaps not too much. Perhaps only so far as was bearable, or necessary.

She had watched what they would do. She had been borne along by it. But she could not really say she

had participated. She was still a spectator. That was her role. Witness to the Scarabae.

Rachaela stood in the dark room under the blue, red and green window, and listened.

The sound came, just discernible, the firm summer breeze tossing the tall pines and oaks of the common.

Almost, but not quite, like the sound of the sea…

Then a car noised dimly by, passing along the road two hundred feet below the house, where the

common ended. There was not much traffic. Sometimes, people went that way, and usually stared at the

house between the trees. It was quite large, with curious balancing architecture, turrets, and all the stabs

of the stained-glass windows. Every one of the windows was of stained glass. All the outer doors were

doubled, like air locks. There was a conservatory, and a walled garden. Like the first house. On three

sides, the common spread away.

But down beyond the road there was a scatter of big houses, and then clusters of smaller ones, and next

one of those villages of London, with its pubs and shops, library, and civic buildings. The steeples of

churches sprang from the landscape. On Sundays the bells rang in the distance and an ice-cream van was

just audible, playing "The Thieving Magpie."

Michael and Cheta did their shopping in the London village stores, perhaps classed as an eccentric

foreign couple.

Books were brought from the library, and punctually returned. Also tapes and discs for Eric's machine.

Tapes too were carried from Bonanza Videos. They liked the videos, particularly horror films and

thrillers. These they watched with straight moral faces, reminding her of gray hamsters thinking.

Such things were very different from before. There had been no television in the first house. But here

there were several. The greater one crouched in the drawing room. Eric, Sasha, and Miranda had each a

set in their bedroom. A set had been presented to Michael and Cheta, and one installed in Rachaela's

room. They had given her a music center too, and her own video, which she never used. She seldom

watched her TV either. But one or all of the other sets were always on the go.

There were electric lights now.

In the kitchen, with its cream and black tiles and the collector's piece, an old, rusted, green mangle,

standing by the wall, were now the mod cons: a washing machine, a dishwasher, an electric cooker, food

processors, fridge. In the pantry stood a huge chest freezer where the servants inserted enormous joints

of meat and the frozen swords of vast fish.

The house was not so large as the first house.

There were more bathrooms, adjoining all the bedchambers and sitting ready on each floor. The

bathrooms were white and collectible, like the mangle, having claw-foot baths and brass Edwardian

showers. They had green tarot glass windows. Rachaela had found that her bathroom window would

open, and also the window in her room. This must have been especially arranged for her. She had a view

out across the common. The undulating, heavily treed slopes, like a wilderness, a glade; where only

occasionally some solitary walker might go by (staring up). At night, sometimes, an owl called.

The scarred table was in the drawing room.

Rachaela sat down at it. She did not touch the scratches.

Was she trying to understand them at last, the Scarabae, or only herself?

Rachaela, seated on the ground, her back against a tree, had watched the surviving Scarabae, as the

house burned to the earth. They stood in a little loose group, at a safe, silent distance. Their clothes were

scorched half-off. Bare, skinny witch arms, old, hard, naked legs, holes that showed antique sooty

camisoles, withered lace.

In the house, burned, all the rest: Livia, Anita, Unice, Jack, George, Teresa, Stephan, Carlo and Maria.

And with them, the already dead, Anna, Alice, Dorian and Peter, stunned by Ruth's hammer and impaled

through the heart by hammered knitting needles. The staking of vampires. And, of course, Adamus,

Ruth's father, and grandfather.

Beautiful, black-haired Adamus, cold as ice, now warmed through by fire. Hanged from a rope. Suicide.

And Ruth, murderess and arsonist, leaving the house ablaze from her handy candle, had fled across the

heath. She had had the mark of Cain on her too. The bruise on her face where Adamus had struck her.

It was hard to dismiss this image of the fleeing Ruth. As it was hard to curtail the other image of her in the

blood-colored dress, when the Scarabae betrothed her to Adamus, father, grandfather, and their names

were written in the book.

But Ruth was not ready, not old enough, only eleven. She would have to wait for consummation. And

Adamus had lost interest in her, vanished back into his dark tower to play the piano alone. And that was

when Ruth, disappointed, turned on them with her needles.

The Scarabae were vampires. Or they thought they were. She killed them the proper way. And when she

saw Adamus on the rope, she burned the house.

Ruth was a demon. Rachaela had always known. The black and white ugly beauty. The powers of

silence.

Probably Rachaela was only too glad to see Ruth disappear into the darkness beyond the fire.

When the fire finished, there was only the darkness. And the Scarabae, all that were left of them, Eric,

Sasha, Miranda and Miriam, Michael and Cheta, they stood there in it.

The Scarabae never went out in the daylight. Only Michael and Cheta, that was, muffled up and masked

in sunglasses.

And darkness was on the land like mourning, but after that the sun would rise. What then?

The sun rose.

They gazed up into the lightening sky, not fearfully but with a bitter sadness. They had seen it all before,

through their two hundred or three hundred years of life. Violence and destitution. Exile. The tyranny of

the sun.

She heard Miranda say firmly, "We must go to the village."

Then Michael came over to Rachaela, and his black dusty eyes seemed diluted by the light.

"Miss Rachaela. We must go to the village."

She rose, wearily. There were tiny burns all over her, she could have screamed as if viciously nipped by a

hundred miniature beasts.

"All right. How will they—"

But he had turned away.

Like survivors of a plane crash in the desert, they moved out over the heath.

They went the habitual way. The way Ruth had gone?

Skirting the stone like a lightning, going through the gorse and flowers, the dragon places, inland. Stands

of pine. Gulls wheeling overhead. Birds loud in thickets, flying off at their approach.

It seemed to take hours before they reached the road. The Scarabae moved out onto it, as onto some

desert trail. Rachaela recalled the cars which employed the road, now, but there were no cars.

On the road, she began to see them better.

They moved gaunt and upright. Their faces had been blackened and through the grime, like their bodies

through the burned clothes, gaped pale old spaces of flesh. None of them seemed to have received actual

burns. Yet material and even hair was singed away. They looked impossible, comic, and this was

somehow dreadful. Rachaela felt vaguely frightened. She did not really know why. Was she the child and

they the adults, and at their faltering she too lost her grip? That was absurd. She had been away from

them twelve years. With Ruth.

She was in her forties. She did not look it. She looked twenty-eight or twenty-nine. Adamus—young,

beautiful—had supposedly been in his seventies. No, that too, ridiculous.

Once she stumbled and tumbled on her knees. They did not wait for her, but they were progressing so

slowly she caught them up with ease.

Miranda perhaps cried. If so, she did this very quietly, smoothing her face now and then with a piece of

burned stuff. Eric did not cry. He marched in slow motion forward, like a soldier in a dream. Sasha

merely moved. Michael and Cheta were possibly more resilient. It was difficult to be sure. They

appeared—but it was hopeless to describe them, even to herself. They were beyond all things, fitted

nothing. They must all of them be doomed.

But it was Miriam who suddenly fell straight down on the road.

The Scarabae, Miranda and Eric and Sasha, gathered around her. They did not lean to her. Eric said,

"Miriam."

Miriam did not stir.

"Michael," said Eric.

And Michael came up at once and raised Miriam in his arms. She seemed like an old valuable doll. She

had been wearing a plum dress with beads, and the remaining beads took the sun and flashed cheerfully,

as though Miriam might after all be on fire.

They went on, Michael carrying Miriam, Cheta stolidly walking, Eric marching, Miranda and Sasha

gliding haltingly as if detached, asleep. Rachaela stumbling behind.

Not a single car. Would a car have been helpful? More likely the driver would have put his foot down.

The hedges, in treacly summer leaf, barricaded off the fields.

They passed the spot where the farm had been pulled down. Two or three black crows picked at the

ground.

Every moment Rachaela expected Eric, Sasha, and Miranda to collapse.

The sun had not, seemingly, burned their flesh, just as fire had not. But in some way, the sun made them

transparent, like phantoms, although that, of course, was only a trick of the eyes. Fantasy. Rachaela was

herself unwell, shocked. Obviously she must be.

In the end, they were on the hilltop and below was the village, the new village, as it had become over the

twelve years.

Everything was shut, naturally. It was very early.

They went down past the estate of brown houses, like lepers past the doors of the feast.

Ignoring the dwellings and the shops, the Scarabae moved without consultation, or hesitation, to the

newly built pub, The Carpenters.

It was bright and fresh in the early sun, geraniums in window boxes, bay trees by the door. Above, the

rainbow sign of jolly men hammering. Hammering.

Michael put Miriam down, among the others.

They waited in the noiseless sunny street and Michael went to a side door. He rang the bell.

Rachaela recollected coming to this village long ago, early, knocking up the publican of the other, shabby

pub. He had not been friendly.

Michael only rang once.

Tanith Lee - Blood Opera 02 - Personal Darkness

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