She left Illona in the foyer, and went in search of Detlef. The Animus could taste the nearness of its purpose.

XVI.

The vampire had invaded his world. The Trapdoor Daemon didn't yet know how he felt about that. He'd been alone so long. Alone except for Eva. And she was now lost to him.

From the ceiling, where he could cling to the holds he'd carved, he angled his eyes down, and watched Genevieve as she carefully made her way down the main pa.s.sage.

The Trapdoor Daemon understood Genevieve Dieudonne had been an actress. Once. He admired her courage, and her caution. The labyrinth had its dangers, but she evaded them with skill. She was used to prowling corridors in the dark. Eventually, the red glints of her eyes would find him.

His heart pulsated inside his shroud of darkness.

Once, Bruno Malvoisin had loved an actress, Salli Spaak. No, not an actress, but a courtesan who used the stage to give her respectability. She had rejoiced in her celebrity, as the crowds came to gawp at her rather than see the play. Salli had been the mistress of the then-emperor's youngest brother, Prince Nikol. The fortunes of the theatre had ebbed and flowed with her patron's feelings for his lady.

Genevieve reminded the Trapdoor Daemon of the long-dead temptress. So did Eva, although Salli had never been as gifted on the stage as Malvoisin's recent protegee.

When Salli and the Imperial Brother quarreled, laws were pa.s.sed against the theatre and halberdiers came to bar the house's doors. And when she pleased Nikol, gifts and favours were showered upon the whole company.

Salli had made a conquest of Bruno Malvoisin as she had made conquests of many others. She enjoyed the fear that spread whenever she bestowed her favours on another. It was not a good idea to sleep with the mistress of Nikol of the House of the Second Wilhelm. The prince had publicly duelled and dispatched several of Salli's admirers, and Malvoisin knew a man who won a duel with Prince Nikol wouldn't escape with his life.

Genevieve looked up, and the Trapdoor Daemon retreated a little in his cloud of artificial shadow. She didn't seem to see him. He didn't know if he was disappointed, whether he wanted to be found or not.

Behind Salli's beautiful face, there had been a terrible corruption. And Malvoisin had caught it. Like Genevievelike Eva, evenshe had not been entirely human. Prince Nikol had ultimately committed suicide after being lured into taking part in an unholy rite of the Proscribed Cult of Tzeentch, and Salli had been driven out of Altdorf by a mob. By then, Malvoisin was shambling through backstreets in a heavy cloak, trying in vain to disguise his increasingly obvious deformities. By night, he'd written reams, pouring out words as if he knew he had to discharge the entire rest of his life's worth of work within weeks. The day his swelling head shrugged off his nose, he'd gone underground.

Shaking her head, Genevieve continued down the pa.s.sage. Eventually, she'd solve all the puzzles of the labyrinth. Then the Trapdoor Daemon would have to consider her as a problem.

Salli had believed in warpstone the way a weirdroot addict believes in dreamjuice. At great expense, she acquired the deadly material and added it to her food, to the food of her lovers. Malvoisin had not been the only one to change. The marks had been on the prince when he was found hanging from Three Toll Bridge.

He was, however, the only one to survive.

Salli had been a secret worshipper of Tzeentch, had enjoyed spreading corruption around her. She'd been the chosen instrument of the Chaos G.o.d, and had struck him down. In Seduced by Slaaneshi, he had dared to present on the stage things never intended for human audiences. His sins had been registered in the darkness, stirring into action powers from which there was no escape.

When Genevieve had pa.s.sed, the Trapdoor Daemon let himself down from the roof, and settled on the flagstones. He pushed tentacles against two tiltstones in the walls.p.a.ced far enough apart that no one ordinary man could reach them bothand dropped soundlessly into the slide that appeared in the floor.

He descended several levels, and slid into the comforting cold of the black waters beneath the theatre.

Detlef sat on the stage, in Dr. Zhiekhill's chair, alone with himself in the auditorium. There was a lantern on the set, amid the doctor's retorts and cauldrons, but otherwise the huge s.p.a.ce was dark. He looked out into the empty black, knowing in his mind the precise dimensions of the hall. Dimly, he could see the velvet of the expensive seats. In his island of light, he might have been alone in the entire building, the entire universe.

Still drained from last night, he wasn't sure whether he'd have the energy for tonight's performance. It always came at the last moment. At least, it always had so far. The bite on his neck was irritating him, and he wondered if it might have become infected. Perhaps, he and Gene should stay away from each other for a while.

Their last time together, after the first night, had been bloodier than usual. The red thirst had been strong in her. Occasionally, through the years, he'd had cause to fear that he might not survive their love-making. In the heat, neither man nor vampire really had any self-control. That, he supposed, was the whole point of the heat. If she wounded him too deeply, he supposed she would feel obliged to let him suckle her blood, to become her son-in-darkness, to cheat death and become a vampire himself.

The prospect, always between them but never discussed, excited and frightened him. Vampire couples had a bad reputation, even among other vampires.

At this time in the afternoon, the theatre was asleep, the actors and the audience hours away. Like Genevieve, the Vargr Breughel was only really alive after nightfall.

Genevieve had been made a vampire almost as a child, before she'd settled on her personality; if it came to it, Detlef would change while a fully-formed human being. 'Vampires can't have children,' his lover had once told him, 'not in the natural way. And we don't write plays.' It was true: Detlef could not think of a single great contribution to the artsor to much else, besides bloodshedthat had been made by one of the undead. To live possibly forever was an attractive, intriguing prospect, but the coldness that came with it frightened him.

The coldness that could make a Kattarin.

Vampire couples were the worst, becoming more dependent upon each other with the pa.s.sing centuries, more contemptuous of the rest of the world, more callous, more murderous. Each became the only real thing in the other's world. Eventually, Genevieve told him, they became one creature in two bodies, a berserk feeding beast that had to be stopped with silver and hawthorn.

A hand touched his neck and slipped around his throat with catlike ease. His heart stuttered, thinking the Trapdoor Daemon, angered by Gene's intrusion into his lair, had come to lay a death-squeezing tentacle on him.

He turned and, in the light of the lantern, saw Eva's face, a masklike oval in repose, Worn and expressionless like the bas-relief on a much-used coin.

Her touch was odd, neither warm nor chill.

She smiled, and her face came alive. After all, she was on stage. Detlef wondered what scene Eva was playing.

Lifting her hand and his head with it, she made him stand up. Eva was tall enough to look him in the eye. Tall enoughlike Illona and very few others, and unlike Genevieveto play love scenes with him that looked good from the most remote box in the house.

He expected the kiss, but it was a long time coming.

Genevieve had been working her way up a peculiar network of stairs and ladders which, she realized, must exist inside the thick walls of the Vargr Breughel. Complicated joists and beams provided support for the thinnest sh.e.l.l of stone. By her reckoning, she was heading for an egress somewhere on the roof of the theatre, between the huge comic and tragic masks carved in stone on the eaves.

Perhaps the laughing or crying mouths and eyes were doorways.

She came to a trapdoor that was thick with dried slime, suggesting repeated use. As she touched the latch, she had one of her rare flashes of precognition. With the dark kiss, Chandagnac had given her a touch of the scrying ability. Now, she knew opening this door would solve mysteries, but that she wouldn't like the solutions. Her hand stayed, fingers on the latch, and she knew that if she left the door closed, her life would continue as it was now. If she pushed, everything would change. Again.

She made a fist of her hand, and held it to her chest. In the close s.p.a.ce, 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? s.e.x 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 gla.s.s, 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 sc.r.a.ps 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.