'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 pa.s.sageway.'

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 impa.s.sive 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.

She heard herself shouting.

The Animus was settled immediately.

The host had been in an excited state when the attachment was made. His confused feelings for Eva were easy to convert into feelings against Detlef.

Detlef had always been in the younger actor's way, keeping him from the leading roles. Years of losing fights and fair maidens and applause to Detlef Sierck had bitten deep into the good humour and big heart of Reinhardt Jessner.

The axe had come apart in his hands, a pretend weapon with no real use, but Detlef was stunned.

Feeling the host's muscles pumping, the Animus lifted Detlef high, preparing to toss him forever from the stage, to break his back on the rows of chairs in the stalls.