Written in the Blood Read online

  It hadn’t helped on the two previous occasions. Frida Kun and Zsófia Vida still bled to death in here. They just did it more publicly, more agonisingly, in full view of their stunned and grieving hosszú élet family.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Flóra whispered. ‘I did it. I had a child. One more of us. Look after him, won’t you?’

  ‘You’re going to look after him yourself.’

  ‘Promise me.’

  The blood no longer dripped onto the floor. It poured, like water overflowing from a bath.

  Hannah squeezed her friend’s hand, but she couldn’t bring herself to make that promise yet. It would feel like she was passing a death sentence.

  Perhaps that’s exactly what this is. Exactly what you’ve brought about.

  No. She wouldn’t listen to that voice, not here. Later, when this was over, she’d allow herself to face that particular torture.

  So you’ve already accepted it, then. Accepted that you’ve killed her.

  Tanja’s voice again, rising over the hard smell of the blood. ‘OK, I want everyone to watch their step. It’s slippery in here and we can’t afford any accidents. Rose, help me get her legs into the stirrups. Gabe, I may need you to hold her down. We can’t do this with anaesthetic. She needs to feel what I’m doing. Max, in here please. And I want three others. Form a wider circle. I don’t need you yet, so keep out of the way until I do. Careful now.’

  ‘Hannah, promise me.’

  ‘Hush. Listen to what Tanja has to say.’

  She heard the room beginning to fill with people and tried to map their positions around her: Gabriel to her left, ready to brace Flóra’s shoulders should the need arise; Tanja at the foot of the bed; Rose on the far side, attaching Flóra to the monitoring equipment.

  Behind Hannah, Max Zabek and one other, waiting to lay on hands; a further two volunteers behind Rose, ready to do the same. None of them was Leah. Hannah wondered where her daughter was, wondered whether the girl was on her way.

  An electronic bing announced the monitor stirring to life, followed by a metronomic chime as it began to measure Flóra’s heartbeat.

  ‘BPM is two-fifteen,’ Rose said. ‘Two-two-five and rising.’

  ‘Pressure?’

  ‘Fifty-five over thirty.’

  ‘OK, it’s time. Donors, I need you to step forward. Careful where you tread. Let Rose and I work around you. Hands on Flóra, please. She’s losing blood fast, and we’ve got to raise that pressure right now. I don’t want anyone being a hero – we won’t be able to look after you. If you feel faint, let us know and stand back. Someone will take your place. We have plenty of cover. Flóra? Flóra, listen to me. In a moment I’m going to put my fingers inside you. Understand?’

  A moan of protest.

  ‘I’m sorry, kedves, but I have to. We need to find out where this blood is coming from. Only you can stop this. If you can’t feel where the problem is yourself, I’m going to have to guide you. Gabriel, hold her shoulders. She’s going to thrash.’

  Hannah smelled a sourness to the air now: fear on everyone’s breath. She heard Gabriel manoeuvre himself into position. Then, the scream. The worst sound in the world. So piercingly loud it seemed to cleave the air in two, curling around Hannah’s teeth and wrenching them in their sockets.

  ‘Hold her!’

  Another scream. Agony, pure and white. Flóra’s arm thrashed and Hannah lost her grip. She reached out to catch the woman’s hand and Flóra’s fist struck her cheek, knocking her backwards.

  ‘Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh.’

  Blood cascading onto the floor like milk from a jug. The hot, sharp stench of urine.

  Somehow Hannah caught the flailing hand. Pressed it down against the mattress. Bit her lip. Tried not to cry out from frustration, from the brutal, visceral horror of what she was witnessing.

  The noise erupting from Flóra’s throat was no longer a scream. It sounded guttural, primal, as if an animal was being eviscerated on the bed.

  ‘That’s it!’ Tanja shouted. ‘Feel that, Flóra. Just where I had my finger. I can’t get . . . there it is!’

  Flóra shrieked. Writhed, snake-like.

  ‘Talk to me. Can you feel that? Can you?’

  ‘. . . yes . . .’

  Beside her Hannah heard Max hiss with exhaustion. He staggered backwards. Instantly someone took his place.

  ‘Good. That’s great. I can’t do this myself. I can just about touch it. I need you to focus there. Close it up. Think scar tissue. I want a hard tight scar. Go, Flóra. Now.’

  ‘Oh . . . my God, my God, my God . . .’

  ‘Keep focusing. Scar tissue. Knot it up. Seal it off. Come on.’

  ‘I . . . I . . .’

  ‘You know how. You’ve always known. Don’t you give up. Don’t you stop.’

  ‘BP’s rising.’ Rose’s voice. ‘Seventy-five over forty.’

  ‘You’re doing it! Keep going. For your son, do you hear me? For your son.’

  ‘Ninety over fifty now. Heart’s one-seventy.’

  ‘Beautiful. I’m going to remove my fingers. You know where to focus now. Keep your mind on it. Don’t let the pain distract you.’

  Hannah could tell when Tanja removed her hand because Flóra jerked up in the bed, then slammed her head back against the pillows.

  No one spoke for a few minutes, listening to the slowly decelerating bleep of the monitor.

  Hannah felt the prick of tears on her cheeks. When spontaneous applause broke out from the mass of people in the corridor, she sobbed with relief; a cathartic expunging, saturated with emotion.

  ‘Thank you, everyone,’ Tanja said. ‘You’re amazing, all of you. And if I could have you out of the room now – this girl needs rest.’

  Gabriel moved to Hannah’s side, sliding his arm around her waist. ‘We’ll come back later,’ he said. ‘See how she’s getting on.’

  She nodded, allowing herself to be steered from the bed. Out in the corridor, they passed the fertility centre’s kitchen, where many of the volunteers were now gathering, and arrived at the building’s glass-fronted rear exit. Gabriel waited as Hannah slipped her feet into the moccasins she had left there. Together they crossed the courtyard to the nearest of the site’s five private chalets.

  The moment Hannah opened the door, Ibsen nosed his way through the gap and licked her hand. She bent to the dog, hugging him tightly, greedy for his closeness. ‘There you are, boy. Have you been bored cooped up in here? I’m sorry, Ibsen. But guess what? Flóra had a baby. Yes, a baby, that’s right. You’ll get to meet him soon, don’t worry. We can’t have a dog in the delivery suite though, I’m afraid, not even one as soppy as you. So you’ll just have to wait until Flóra’s well enough to visit. Which won’t be long, I’m sure.’

  Ibsen was one of the last puppies Moses had fathered before the grand old Vizsla had died seven years earlier. They’d trained him as Hannah’s guide dog, and he’d been her companion ever since.

  She stepped into the foyer, following the dog into the kitchenette. ‘Leah?’ When her call went unanswered, Hannah said, ‘Gabe. Have you seen her?’

  ‘Not today.’

  ‘Unlike her to miss a birth.’ Strange, too, that the girl had ignored the alarm.

  ‘Perhaps she went riding. I’ll call Matthias.’

  ‘No, don’t bother him. She’ll turn up when she’s ready. I’m opening some wine. Do you want a glass?’

  ‘Sure. Back in a sec.’

  ‘Gabe . . .’

  ‘It won’t take long.’

  Hannah pulled a bottle of Chablis from the fridge. She heard Gabriel talking on the telephone in the next room.

  He came back into the kitchenette. ‘They’ve lost contact with her. Matthias said he’s been trying to call you.’

  ‘I left my phone here last night. What did he say?’

  ‘He thinks Leah deliberately gave his guys the slip. Hasn’t checked in since.’

  She felt the hairs on her forearms lift. A sudden lightness in her
stomach. ‘How long?’

  ‘Over twenty-four hours since they last saw her.’

  ‘My phone.’

  He passed it to her. Hannah called up her voicemail.

  Beeeep

  ‘Hannah, this is Matt. Don’t freak, but Leah upped and left this afternoon without letting any of us know. Just wanted to check in with you. Call me back.’

  Beeeep

  ‘Matt again. I still can’t reach Leah on her phone. Call me straight back when you get this.’

  Beeeep

  ‘Mum, it’s me.’

  Hannah stiffened at her daughter’s tone. The girl paused, as if she considered something difficult, trying to find the right words.

  You know what’s coming.

  ‘You’re not going to like this,’ Leah continued. ‘I know you think we still have options. But I’m not sure we do. I think time is running out. We have to explore every possibility now.’ Another pause. ‘I’ve made contact with them. Please don’t worry. I love you. I’ll call you soon.’

  Life, turning on a pin.

  Hannah had been about to pour a glass of wine, and now she felt hollow, sick, a vacuum sucking at the heart of her, in the place she usually carried Leah.

  Gabriel’s voice was thick with foreboding. ‘She’s gone to meet the kirekesztett.’

  Since defeating the man who called himself Jakab at Le Moulin Bellerose all those years ago, Hannah had given little thought to the criminal castoffs of hosszú élet society who moved, largely unseen, through the world. She thought about them now. The direct translation of kirekesztett was outcast; it referred both to the sentence of banishment itself, and to the exiled individuals the rulings created. Over time, Hannah knew, the kirekesztett had formed a secretive network of convenience led by the most ruthless of their number. Revenge killings of hosszú életek had become one of the more visible elements of the group’s activities.

  ‘They’ll tear her apart,’ she whispered.

  CHAPTER 3

  Interlaken, Switzerland

  When the mortices engaged, sealing the door behind her, Leah felt a spike of apprehension twisting deep inside her gut.

  It was the sound of a bank vault closing, the sound of motor-driven rods slamming home, a fortress locking down. Her lungs grew tight. She wanted to open her mouth and suck in a breath, but she knew she could not allow her kirekesztett driver to see how the building’s security features affected her. Aware she was being watched, and perhaps not solely by him, she moved further into the hall – get out! get out! get out! – and turned around.

  At a glowing wall panel, he keyed in a code and pressed his face to a lens. The device scanned his iris, and then it chimed.

  ‘You get many unwelcome visitors?’ Leah asked, struggling to keep the fear from her voice.

  ‘We’ve had a few,’ he replied. ‘They don’t tend to come back.’

  Nodding, Leah glanced about her. The entrance hall was shaped like the inverted interior of a ship’s wooden hull, a cavernous yet womblike space. The floor shone golden with varnish, illuminated by spotlights recessed into the ceiling and by flickering candles nestled in wall sconces and alcoves.

  Masks hung from the left-hand wall: hundreds of them. Through the research she had conducted while investigating the history of the végzet – the series of masked balls that, in times past, had symbolised the entrance of the hosszú életek youth into adulthood, and the restricted opportunities of formalised courtship – Leah knew their names and many of the forms.

  She saw blank-faced yet curiously expressive Japanese noh masks side by side with bulge-eyed Balinese topengs. Chinese Shigong dance masks hung next to long-faced African tribal masks carved from wood or constructed from stiffened hide. She saw a Native American collection: leather examples from the Navajo and Apache; Iroquois false faces of wood and cornhusk; Cherokee gourd masks used for storytelling.

  Another section of wall held a mass of Venetian carnival masks, some fashioned from leather but most from porcelain or glass, augmented with gesso or gold leaf, hand-painted and decorated with gems and the feathers of ostrich, peacock or duck. She recognised square-jawed Bauta, Columbina half-masks, pure-white Volto masks and the freakishly beaked Medico della Peste face coverings worn by seventeenth-century physicians while treating plague victims.

  Finally, towards the end of the hall, raised above the rest, she saw them. So many hanging there: the polished pewter masks worn by young hosszú élet men to the first végzet of the season; the delicate bronze-leaf designs of the second végzet; the jewelled magnificence of the masks used for the penultimate végzet and the simple lacquered sculpts of the season’s finale. In total, perhaps three hundred masks gazed down from the wall. Leah felt the dead stare of six hundred eyes.

  Perhaps it was inevitable that a tradition of such ritualised courtship should have evolved. The hosszú életek did not produce offspring easily, and even then for only a short period in their lives. The low birth count, along with the extreme nature of their longevity, meant that the entire community had an interest in the successful courtships of its youth. Inevitable, too, for a people defined by an ability to govern the contours of their flesh, that a symbol of concealment should play a part in those rituals.

  The wall opposite the masks was festooned with clocks: ornate French rococo cartel clocks in gilt bronze or gold; English tavern clocks; metal pendulum clocks with exposed weights and chains. A walnut display cabinet contained row upon row of gold pocket watches. At the far end of the hall, a pair of longcase Comtoise clocks guarded two sets of carpeted stairs.

  The air hissed and snickered with the movements of cogs, oscillators and gears. It sounded to Leah like the masks were conversing.

  To her left, a short flight of steps descended to a narrow corridor. To her right, the polished brass door of an elevator. Above it, a rack of antlers from a red deer stag.

  ‘Before you meet him,’ said her driver, ‘a few formalities.’ Gesturing towards a panelled door, he shepherded her into a cloakroom. At the far end she saw a rack of skis, poles and snowboards. Beneath it, a bench piled with gloves, helmets and goggles. Coats and hats hung along one wall, opposite three steel gun cabinets.

  Leah removed the fur and handed it to him.

  ‘I’m going to need your gun,’ he said, draping the coat on a hook.

  She tensed. ‘Gun?’

  He turned to face her. ‘Let’s not make this awkward. I’m sure you understand I can’t let you roam the house with a loaded weapon, and I’m guessing you didn’t arrive without one. It’s either in your purse or somewhere under that dress, although quite where you could have stashed it . . .’

  He stared, waiting.

  Leah’s spike of apprehension had escalated, now, into a gnawing sense of dread. She did not like the way he seemed to mock her with his eyes. Knowing that she had little choice, she thrust her clutch purse at him. ‘I want it back when I leave.’

  He unzipped the purse and removed her Ruger. At another electronic panel he keyed in a code and two of the gun case doors rolled open. One case held a rack of hunting rifles above a shelf of handguns; the other contained boxes of ammunition. He stashed her Ruger inside the first. ‘I’d better take those chopsticks too. Smart thinking to bring your own cutlery, but I don’t believe sushi is on the menu.’

  His eyes pinioned her. Reaching up, Leah pulled the accessories free. She handed them over and shook her hair loose. Naked now, or might as well be.

  And no one knows you’re here.

  He turned the chopsticks over in his hands, fingering the points. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I might have to ask you to step out of that dress.’

  Her skin prickled. ‘You’ve exactly zero chance of that.’

  They continued to stare at each other.

  Finally, he tossed the chopsticks into the second cabinet and keyed the entry panel. The doors slid closed. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Let’s find out.’

  Ba
ck in the hall of masks, the air was alive with clockwork whispers. Raising his hand to indicate the main stairs, he told her, ‘These lead to the first floor. He’s waiting for you up there.’

  She swallowed. ‘Any tips?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Any advice on how best to handle him? I mean, looking around, he seems . . .’ She indicated the masks, then the clocks. ‘A little odd.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he replied, eyes narrowing, ‘you’d better keep that to yourself.’

  With nausea coiling in her stomach, unsettled by his shifting demeanour, hoping it wasn’t indicative of the man who awaited her, she walked up the carpeted stairs to the floor above.

  It was a room like no other. Its subdued grandeur wicked the air from Leah’s lungs as she stepped inside. Floor-to-ceiling windows curved the entire hundred-foot length of one wall, offering views of the floodlit lawn and the moon-frosted summits of the mountains known locally as the Monk, the Maiden and the Ogre, nesting in a spiked mass of lesser peaks. A curtain of stars glittered above them.

  An open fire pit dominated the centre of the room. On it a pile of logs burned brightly, smoke rising into a flared metal flue suspended from the ceiling. To the right of the fire lay a vast living space dotted with sofas and armchairs. Antique side tables held marble busts, stained-glass lamps, bronze sculptures of the Greek gods.

  By the windows, the twin halves of an enormous amethyst geode rose nearly six feet in height. Their purple crusts of quartz crystals sparkled like the insides of a dragon’s egg.

  The floor was scattered with animal skins. Zebra lay beside reindeer beside bear. She saw a lion skin complete with preserved and snarling head. Its canines shone in the firelight and its glass eyes raised Leah’s skin into goosebumps. Next to it lay a tiger skin, the animal’s jaws wide in a dead gape.

  Moving her eyes away, Leah turned towards a Regency dining table of polished mahogany. Twenty seats, upholstered in maroon velvet, stood around it. Two place settings had been laid; in front of one of them sat an old man.