Killing Eve: Bloodline (11)

The eleventh episode of a new Killing Eve adventure, published exclusively on Substack

            Valentin leads them into a drawing-room whose muted lighting is reflected by gold-lacquered Chinese screens. Long-legged young women in silky camisoles move like ghosts between the tables. None meets Eve's gaze; they seem lost in reflection, as if they're there to be seen, but not to see. Elegant young men lounge in silk-upholstered chairs, regarding each other with vast, almost existential, weariness. The air is heady with conflicting scents: tiger lilies, incense, expensively perfumed skin. Waitresses move from table to table, dispensing cocktails.

            Eve sips her Negroni. A couple whom she recognises from a reality TV dating show stumble into the room. They look awed and out of place, she with her pneumatic lips and implausible breasts, he with his tattooed neck and too-tight suit. They stand there for a moment, make a brief pretence of looking around for friends, and leave.

            This place is so, so weird. I'm not going to pretend it's not a massive treat to be here, because it is. But everyone looks so blasé, so bored, as if this is how they live every minute of every day, and perhaps some of them do. I'm grateful to Valentin for not doing that. Not pretending that this is the real world, and everything else just a simulation. Oxana's barely spoken since we've arrived. She's furious with me. Literally spitting with rage. Which is wholly unreasonable, of course. Valentin's sweet, and he may have the tiniest bit of a crush on me, but I don't feel anything except sympathy for him, living this gilded, loveless life. I'd love to set him free to paint his birds, but that's not going to happen any time soon, and all I can do is try and be nice to him.

            I'm not even going to try and explain any of this to Oxana. It would only make her more angry. The problem is that she's discovering emotions at twenty-seven that most people encounter in their early teens. The affectlessness that's shielded her for so long is melting like an iceberg, and she's panicking, poor angel. And I'm the catalyst that set this process in motion. How did I excite such fierce, devouring need? I've never thought of myself as anything other than ordinary. But she fixed on me. She waited, patient as a hawk, and made me hers.

            And here we are. And there Oxana is, scoping the place out with that flat, unblinking gaze of hers. A strand of hair has come free from her updo and is curling down her neck. I want to pin it back up, to tend to her, but I can't. People are sneaking glances at he, assessing their chances. She looks devastating in her St Laurent tuxedo. Fearsome.

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           Nate arrives. He's another of these tall, slender types, but paler than Valentin, with shadowy, ironic eyes. He's wearing a white silk shirt, and beneath it, on a black moiré ribbon, a German Iron Cross. Valentin introduces them, and Eve wishes him a happy birthday.

            'God, don't. I feel ancient.' He glances at her in mild curiosity, then appears to relax. It's as if his unspoken question has been answered. She's there because she's the sort of woman to drop four thousand pounds on a Dior mid-length evening dress. Of course she's at his birthday party. 'Val, why haven't we met your beautiful friends before?'

            'They're new friends.'

            'So where do you come from, new friends?'

            'Who comes from anywhere, these days?' Oxana speaks for the first time. She languidly stirs her Old Fashioned. Her cocktail stick has a cherry impaled on it, and is topped with a silver poodle. Eve makes up her mind to take one as a souvenir.

            Nate laughs. 'Women of mystery. Love it. Look after Val, I have to circulate.' He turns to go, and as an afterthought, dips a hand into his pocket and drops a fistful of yellow pills on the table.

            Valentin laughs. 'God, he's too much.'

            'What are those?' Eve asks.

            'Gonzadril. It's a love drug. Also known as gonad or gonzo.'

            'Like Viagra.'

            'Not quite, gonzos are more about getting you in the mood. You know how no one wants to have sex any more?'

            'Really?' Eve steels herself not to look at Villanelle.

            'You know how it's all got so complicated... Well, gonzos override the anxiety. They make sex nice. Not scary.'

            Villanelle reads from her phone. 'Gonzadril, the so-called 'romance drug', is a selective neurotransmitter developed by Scheubner-Richter Pharmaceuticals in Oakland, California. As a sex centre receptor agonist, its intended function is the stimulation of the libido, but in tests on rats it has been found to cause heart failure in more than ten percent of cases. In human trials, side-effects have included palpitations, restless genital syndrome, sudden vision loss, acute tinnitus, prolonged nausea, panic attacks and strokes.'

            'They don't sound like much fun,' Eve murmurs to Valentin.

            'Oh God, I wouldn't try them. I can't anyway, with my...'  He's interrupted by the entrance of several young women, all excitedly shrieking at once. 'I think they want us to follow them,' he mouths. Eve drains her glass and places it on the table. Oxana, she notices, has hardly touched her own cocktail.

            Along with the other guests, they make their way downstairs to the dancefloor, a dimly-lit area with a pink silk-tented ceiling. Billy Eilish's Lunch is thumping from the sound system, and the floor is half-full of dancers swaying, shimmying and mouthing the words. As the song segues into Rihanna's Birthday Cake, the lights come up, and a spotlight finds Nate Paget's expectant, ivory-pale face.

            Valentin cranes forward, and Eve follows the direction of his gaze. A birthday cake, covered in gold-leaf and stuck with burning gold candles, is moving into the room. It's standing on a rectangular tray, and carried, like the Arc of the Covenant, by four male dwarves in glittering loin-cloths. The dwarves manoeuvre the tray and the cake onto a waiting table, Rihanna's song dies away, and as Nate steps forward holding a microphone, everyone cheers.

            He raises a hand. 'Guys, what can I say? It's so fuckin' special to have you here, so thanks for...' He pauses, frowning, and Eve hears protesting cries and yelps from the back of the room. She feels someone shove her and almost falls, catching Valentin's arm as two heavy-set figures in black tracksuits barge past her onto the dancefloor. They turn to face the guests, and Eve, barely a metre away, registers the brutal tension contorting their features, and the fact that both are holding automatic pistols. They step back into the spotlight, and one of them, dark-haired with a rough beard, swipes the microphone from Nate's hand. 'Valentin Nikolayevich Dominik?' His voice is low and rasping.

            'No,' Nate whispers. He looks close to fainting.

            The dark-haired man looks around him, and his gaze fixes on Eve. He steps towards her, and grabs a fistful of her hair. It hurts. She forces herself to breathe. The smell of his sweat is thick in her nostrils. He presses the barrel of the automatic hard against her ear. 'You tell me which is Valentin, suka. I count to three.'

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