The Dark Blood of Poppies (31 page)

She got up, found her robe and slipped into it as she went to the dressing table. Dizzy. No strength.

Her face in the mirror looked drained, with blue crescents under her eyes. On the right of her neck was a bruise, jewelled by two faint, pinkish moons.

Is that all?
she thought, probing the place with her fingertips. It felt sore. Nothing serious. Almost healed.

She sat for a long time, staring at her reflection, fingers moving lightly over the wound. Just below was a slight crusting of dried blood, another on her cheek like the imprint of lips.
Did he kiss me after he fed on me?
she thought.

She rubbed away the dried blood. Soon all physical evidence would vanish.

The real damage is inside me.

Why didn’t he kill me? I’m sure he meant to. I don’t know why he stopped.

I don’t think he’ll come back.

She leaned on the dressing table, dropping her head onto her forearms with a huge sigh. She no longer felt afraid, only betrayed, humiliated to the centre of her being.

Mary came in with tea, plainly shocked by Robyn’s face. “Oh, ma’am, you don’t look well at all. I think you should get yourself back into bed.”

“I think so, too.” Robyn smiled. Speaking was an immense effort. “Run me a bath and change the sheets, there’s a dear, then I’ll have a lie-in.”

* * *

Robyn’s lie-in lasted four days.

Alice and Mary were continually at her side. They insisted on calling the doctor, who was brisk and unsympathetic. He concluded that Robyn was anaemic.
Tell me something I don’t know
, she thought.

Yet Robyn couldn’t describe precisely what was wrong. Lassitude, a dream-state in which life had no point. Nightmares of blood and betrayal; in her febrile slumber, every friend was revealed as a vampire. Alice and Mary, Josef, Harold… Violette.

She dreamed in glaring, fiery colours that she was copulating with priests who turned into demons. She would wake up suffocating, then lie awake, too languid for tears or anger. Simply brooding on Sebastian. Remembering his dark, deceptive beauty. His hands on her body. The soaring fire he’d awakened… she could never forgive him for that, either.

On the third day, she began to feel better, albeit still strange, as if half-drunk. Perhaps that was why she spoke candidly to Alice.

Alice removed her lunch tray with an approving look at the empty plates. She fussed with Robyn’s pillows, then sat beside her. The room was full of flowers from Harold and a couple of would-be admirers, but from Sebastian there was no word.

“The night you were taken ill,” Alice said, “did your gentleman friend stay the night?”

“Part of it,” Robyn sighed. “I told you his name.”

“Well, Mr Pierse hasn’t called since.”

“I know.”

“I wondered… did he hurt you in some way?” Robyn didn’t answer. “Only I noticed a little mark on your neck, and you’ve been so…”

“Out of my mind,” Robyn said softly.

“Don’t tell me to mind my own business. I’m here to protect you, as much as wait on you hand and foot.”

“I wasn’t going to, you sarcastic beast. Yes, he hurt me.”

Without emotion, Robyn told Alice everything.

The housekeeper turned her face away, looking sideways at her mistress with narrow, chiding eyes.

“You know, I don’t care if you don’t believe me,” said Robyn. “I hardly believe it, either. I was attacked by a vampire who knew everything about me… and I’ll tell you what it was: unfair!”

Alice blinked. “That’s quite an understatement.”

Robyn felt a flare of anger, a sign she was still alive. “No, I mean it.
I’m
the one who takes revenge. How dare he usurp that privilege? Did he think he’d leave me too scared ever to approach a man again? He’s wrong. I won’t give him the victory!”

“Madam…”

Robyn subsided, smiling grimly. “So, you think I’ve lost my mind?”

“I think,” said Alice, unmoved, “that maybe you should see the doctor again.”

“You don’t believe me,” Robyn said, with perverse satisfaction. “No doctor can help. But that’s all right. I feel better; I’ll get up tomorrow. And to think I expected to be bored when Violette and her friends left town…”

* * *

Karl reflected that he and Charlotte had experienced some of their most exquisitely happy moments during the Ballet Janacek’s tour.

As the tour took them from Richmond, New Orleans, Houston and Dallas to San Francisco and other cities en route, Violette seemed completely fulfilled. Endless travelling, rehearsing and performing filled her days; she forgot her conflicts with Lilith and other immortals for a time. Karl was glad to see her at peace.

Meanwhile, he and Charlotte walked in deserts, ascended purple- and white-veiled mountains, watched great waterfalls cascading under the moon. They trod the length of the Grand Canyon between its soaring red walls, made love in a glorious wilderness of rivers and giant redwoods. They captivated strangers and sipped their blood without guilt, feeding together as if all inhibition had magically lifted.

Their truce held. Karl and Charlotte rarely quarrelled for long. Now they were able to discuss Ilona and Violette without ill feeling, but sometimes he thought,
If only it were possible not to speak of them at all. No outside force should have the power to tear us apart, not even if that force happens to be Charlotte’s friend and my own daughter.

“I don’t want to go home,” said Charlotte as they walked along a cliff-edge by the Pacific Ocean. The world was burnt-gold and azure.

“Don’t say that. Wishes may come true in most unfortunate ways.” Karl took her hand, and led her into the Crystal Ring.

As they made the transition, their pale flesh turned darkly iridescent, like black opal or colours swirling on oil. The change still amazed him.

They ran together, almost flew, until they found a bluish, rippling path to the higher levels. It was as if they’d shed their earthly forms to reveal their true natures: slim, inky demons, their hair and clothes turned into glittering webs. Vampire beauty, pared to its feral essence.

Karl led Charlotte higher until coldness pricked their skin. He was searching for something. Wherever they were in the world, Raqia was still the firmament he knew: a wild skyscape of unearthly colours, threaded with ribbons of magnetism and shifting veils of light like an aurora. Overwhelming, terrifying… with an atmosphere of menace that grew stronger by the day.

Bronze hills rolled beneath them, as wild as ocean waves. The electric blues of the void darkened to bruised shades of violet.

“Raqia used to seem tranquil when you first brought me here.” Charlotte clung to his arms as air currents tried to tear them apart. “Now it’s always stormy. What’s happening?”

“I wish I knew, beloved.”

They climbed a chasm wall that would have dwarfed the Grand Canyon. Nothing was solid here, but they were near weightless, like fish in water. Below, the Earth was hidden in purple shadow. Above, mist-veils diffused the fierce distant light of the
Weisskalt
. Between the upper and lower layers hung vast shining mountains of cloud.

Karl folded one arm around her shoulders and pointed upwards. “There,” he said. “Tell me what you see.”

“I know,” Charlotte whispered. “It’s everywhere we go.”

In the restless cloudscape, a great raven mass appeared to hang in one place while ghost-mountains rolled around it. The sight filled him with dread.

“Describe it,” he insisted.

“Every time I’m here, wherever I am, that huge black shadow follows me – as if it can be seen from anywhere, like the Moon from Earth.”

“Yes,” Karl said. “Everyone has seen it, but no one mentions it. Why not?”

Charlotte stared, alarm in her eyes. “Because we’re afraid.”

“And do we think that if we don’t speak of it, the shadow will vanish? It won’t. It’s growing.”

“But what is it?”

“I’ve no idea. I only know it’s dangerous.”

“And so cold,” breathed Charlotte. “But you’re right. We should explore, not run away. Isn’t that why we’re here?”

The structure reared above them like a fortress of obsidian. Such a thing had no place in the Crystal Ring. Karl, despite his unease, was fascinated. Even as he watched, it increased in size, drawing mass from wispy arms of ether that spiralled inwards towards its bulk.

They climbed. Judging distance was difficult in Raqia, but the structure was closer than it seemed. Charlotte drew ahead of Karl, her scientific curiosity overcoming her sense of self-preservation; a tendency that Karl both loved and regretted. “Be careful,” he said.

“But I must know what it is.”

The object became a black wall across the sky in front of them. Charlotte stretched out a hand…

“Don’t!” Karl cried, too late. She touched the wall.

Seizing her free hand, he felt the impact like a glacier crashing into them. The shockwave flung them apart. Charlotte was spiralling towards Earth like a winged seed.

Karl caught her, slowed their descent until they landed feet-first on a lower layer. Charlotte seemed unconcerned that she’d fallen. She was staring at her fingers.

“It was solid,” she gasped. “Solid. How can it be? If the entire Ring turned to black rock it would be dead to us… Gods, would we cease to exist?”

“Charlotte, don’t,” Karl said softly. The same questions were in his mind too.
Is the Crystal Ring dying, or turning against us? No, unthinkable!

He guided her downwards until the world snapped into reality around them. They were in human form again, on a cliff with the Pacific Ocean glimmering cobalt blue below them.

“Hush,” he said, clasping her hands. “Beloved, don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not, I’m all right.” He held her, pressing her hands to his chest. Her fingers were frozen.

“But what’s causing this change? How can something solid exist in Raqia?”

“I wish I knew,” he said.

“It means something. Some event must have precipitated this.”

“Kristian’s death?” Karl said thoughtfully. “The creation of Lilith? Or her breaking of the angels’ power over her, or my placing a dangerous book in the
Weisskalt
for safekeeping, or our scorn for God?”

“Karl!” she exclaimed. “Why is it our fault?”

“It probably is not.”

“Then don’t take everything onto yourself.” She ran her hand over his cheek and through his hair. Her eyes of violet crystal were alight with curiosity, fear, courage; all the qualities that had drawn him to her. She added, “But what are we going to do?”

“I doubt there’s anything we
can
do. The truth will reveal itself eventually… before it’s too late, I hope.”

“But everything’s connected,” she said, eyes widening. “And if this is because of Lilith – then it’s my fault, because I made her. How can I live with knowing I caused this darkness?”

“
I
shall get up tomorrow,” Robyn had said, but first there was the night to endure.

She lay half-asleep, delirious. The moon shone through the curtains, a white coin dappling the room with lace patterns. Her bed was a snowy plain, frozen under a moon in another world. She thought the floor was a river that she must cross or die…

A thin dark figure appeared against the moonlit lace. Her blood began to pulse through her head, slow and heavy.

“Alice?”

No reply. She lay there for an aeon with the faceless silhouette gazing down at her.

In a spurt of panic she cried, “Alice!” – or dreamed she did. There was no answer. She knew that no one was coming to help her.

The figure came closer. Robyn was confused. For a moment the creature was a hovering bird of prey, Odile in black feathers, the death crone in her most beguiling livery.
Violette
, she mouthed, but her voice failed.

When the shape moved again, it changed. Not Violette: too tall and masculine. Still no light on its face, but she recognised the shape of the hair and shoulders.

“What do you want?” she hissed.

Alice’s chair was by the bed. The intruder pulled it back and sat down. His nonchalance was infuriating and unnerving. For an instant, as he sat, she saw his profile in the moonlight; the sharp beauty of nose and jaw, one dark soft eye turned obliquely towards her.

He crossed his ankles, rested his left elbow on the chair arm with his chin on his hand, and sat gazing at her.

“What the hell do you want?” She was angry now, breathing fast.

“To see you again,” Sebastian replied.

Robyn groped to turn on her bedside lamp. The bulb burned, flickered, and failed with a
tink
. For one second, captured as if by a photographer’s flash, she’d seen his face, his long, pale wrists and hands, the candid, heartless eyes. He wasn’t smiling. The serious set of his lips alarmed her.

“Well, now you’ve seen me,” she snapped.
Oh, God
, she thought,
hold on. Don’t let him know how scared you are.

“I can see you quite clearly without the light,” said the soft voice.

“Who let you in?”

“No one. I let myself in. Vampires do that, you know.”