The Dark Blood of Poppies (70 page)

“Ilona, shut up!” Pierre said savagely. “Violette didn’t change me. She’s a fraud, an evil fake like Kristian. Do me the courtesy of letting me hate her, without patronising me. What brought about your change of heart, Karl? Did she offer something more than her blood?” He glanced at Charlotte, sneered. “You should restrict your appetites to blood, my friends. Otherwise you start acting like sentimental humans.”

“Heaven forbid,” Karl said dryly.

“Don’t be miserable, Pierre,” said Charlotte. “You’re still alive. Just be thankful Lilith didn’t take revenge on you for helping Cesare.”

“I didn’t help him,” Pierre retorted. “And I hope she tears his eyes out.”

Ilona came to Karl and laid her hands on his chest, tilting her face up to his. “Father,” she said quietly, “I don’t want you to regret transforming me for the rest of your existence. Once it would have killed me to admit this, but I can say it now: I’m not sorry. Tormenting you was fun, but such amusements pall in the end. You don’t regret changing me… do you?”

Her need to know was almost childlike.

“No,” Karl said heavily. “Even knowing what would happen, I’d do it again tomorrow.”

Smiling, she bowed her head onto her chest. And Karl still didn’t know if her change of heart was genuine, or another manipulation. Unable to speak, he rested his head on Ilona’s hair. But his hands remained at his sides.

* * *

Cesare knelt in the inner sanctum, praying. All the doors were closed, candles lit. Although he was terrified, he was determined not to flee.

A sword lay before him. A heavy broadsword that had hung on the wall in one of Kristian’s rooms.

To see Simon lose his mind and surrender to Lilith had unhinged Cesare. He prayed.
She won’t take me. Dear God, have mercy on your servant, forgive my sins and failures, only lend me your strength against the Enemy! I kneel before you as the last bastion against the dark, and I swear to fight to my last breath…

He felt the air change. Felt a hand on his shoulder, a long slim claw.

It was her. Lilith.

“You’re mine,” she said, as dispassionate as a cobra. He couldn’t look at her. He knelt under her claw, dying of fear. “Let me kiss you, as I kissed Simon. Let me enter your soul and show you the truth.”

Cesare scrambled to his feet, grabbed the sword, and ran, flinging back the doors in his path. He stayed on Earth, because to face her in the Crystal Ring would have been worse.

Smiling, Lilith glided slowly after him, a snow-maiden in blood-spattered lavender silk; an owl gliding towards her frantic, earthbound prey.

* * *

Simon knew the truth before Violette pressed her icy lips to his flesh. That was why he hadn’t fled. Lilith’s lash of fire, as painfully revealing as it was, was almost a formality.

He’d known, the moment that the mass transformation had failed. Raqia itself had wrecked their ambitions. The veil of light had split to reveal, not heaven, but the dazzling face of the Death Crone, who did not discriminate between male and female, king and peasant, saved and damned.

Reality.

Live ten thousand years, Simon. The fantasies and ambitions of your tiny soul will still be no more and no less to me than the life of an ant.

Raqia had inspired him to believe he was an archangel with a calling to unite vampire-kind. Just as abruptly, it tore his status away. And Simon couldn’t bear it. The simple pleasures of Earth, of love, blood and flesh, weren’t enough for him. He needed the absolute, the eternal: the linear process of birth, life, elevation to heaven – not the cycle of death and decay.

Simon needed to be a god.

He’d come so close! To find it was all illusion… That was unbearable.

When Lilith had finished with him, and his soul hung tattered and raw, Simon left the chamber and climbed the twisting stairs towards the highest castle balcony.

He thought of the
Weisskalt
but it was not final enough. To him, oblivion in the
Weisskalt
would be no more than a light sleep.

On his way, he took a hand-scythe from a wall and tested its sharpness. He also found a length of rope.

Reaching the balcony, Simon loosened a block of stone with his bare hands. The mortar was old, his fingers as hard as steel chisels. At last he lifted the block out of the waist-high wall and secured one end of the rope around it, tightly parcelled so it wouldn’t slip free. Next he gouged channels on either side of the breach he’d made, working feverishly, his nails crumbling the stone like cheese. Then he placed the scythe across the gap, resting blade-upwards in the grooves.

With the loose block sitting atop the wall, he tied the other end of the rope into a noose, slid it over his head and tightened the knot beneath his chin. He worked single-mindedly, as he had at everything. He felt no fear.

Simon didn’t know that the weightless feeling in his chest was overwhelming grief. The spectres of Rasmila and Fyodor were beloved presences in his mind, calling him, but he ignored them. Too late.

Kneeling, Simon bent forward and rested his neck in the curve of the scythe. The edge nicked his skin but he welcomed the silver-sharp pain. Below, the wall dropped sheer into the steep hillside.

Simon pushed the block off the wall. He saw it fall with the rope rippling behind it. When the rope reached full stretch, the block jerked and dragged Simon’s head down onto the scythe. The blade crunched straight through the tissues and bone of his neck. The stone went on falling, tugging his severed head behind it like a child’s balloon.

Yet his consciousness persisted. He felt the stump of his neck as a circle of acid fire, saw trees rushing up to meet him. One second of annihilating horror…

Then, like a flame, he expired into the kindly oblivion of Lilith’s wings.

* * *

Cesare seemed more enraged than terrified as he fled Violette. She followed him along the tortuous corridors of the Schloss, kicked off her shoes and ran barefoot. Lighter and faster than him, she could have caught him at any time, but she let him stay just ahead. Teasing him.

He made no attempt to enter the Ring. Perhaps the castle gave him an illusion of security.

She ran him to ground in the meeting chamber. A crowd of vampires, with Karl and Charlotte among them, stared and gasped. Violette thought,
Cesare’s come back here thinking that his acolytes will protect him.

In the centre of the chamber, before Kristian’s throne – which had never truly been Cesare’s – he stopped and faced her, brandishing the sword.

“Mortal weapons against Lilith?” said Violette, sweetly poisonous, aiming all her grief and rage at Cesare. His power-hunger had disrupted the Crystal Ring, and that made him at least partly to blame for Robyn’s death.

She stepped towards him. The blade wavered at her throat. She gazed along its length to Cesare’s face; he had the look of a schoolboy, debauched by premature knowledge and power. Strangely innocent, though. His pale grey eyes were awash with tears. Only evil in that he was passionately deluded.

“But these delusions are infectious,” she said aloud. “They will oppress and slaughter millions.”

“You are filth, you don’t deserve to live!” Cesare exploded. “Whore, impure female, witch, hag –” A stream of insults washed over her and faded. The sword shook in his hands. He took a step back and cried, “If Kristian were still alive –”

“Oh, I should like to have met Kristian! He was worth a hundred of you. That’s what they say, although it isn’t saying much.”

Violette grasped the sword and wrenched it out of his hands. The blade cut her palms, but she barely noticed. She flung the weapon down behind her. Cesare let out a short scream. He seemed petrified by her eyes, racked with horror, knowing this was almost over.

“Let me alone,” he said, his voice trembling. “I’ll go away. I’ll live like a monk, anything you say, only don’t –”

“I’m not going to kill you – yet.”

“I know!” he cried in anguish. “But I’d rather die than be infected by your evil!”

“Poor Cesare,” she said softly. “How hideous to live without the comfort of your fond illusions. But I can’t spare you.”

She reached for him, quite languidly. The spell broke; he fled towards the side-wall of the chamber, arms outstretched as if to launch himself into Raqia.

Pursuing him, Violette saw a dark shape materialise between Cesare and the wall. She stopped. Then a great weight brought her down from behind.

Flattened by the impact, she couldn’t fight back at first. A hard, leathery body pressed her down, thin hands gripped her like talons. She smelled damp mustiness and stale blood. Then a dry mouth scraped over the back of her neck, fangs pricking the skin, sending a wave of cold revulsion over her.

She twisted furiously, and from the corner of her eye saw John above her. A sneering demon face, the veined bulb of his head, his eyes like hot embers pouring hatred over her. Soulless eyes, as rabid as the medieval, devil-obsessed age that he’d never left.

“You are dead, serpent-witch,” John whispered. His fangs sank into her neck. Pain froze her to the spot, as if the sheer force of his hatred equalled Lilith’s power. Her fingers clawed the flagstones, trying to pry her way into the Ring.

Pain leapt to a crescendo of agony, then the weight abruptly vanished. Through a crimson mosaic, Violette saw shapes moving around her. Someone had wrenched John off her, but his fangs had ripped holes in her flesh.

Her vision cleared, agility returned. With one hand pressed to the wound, she found her feet, crouched ready for another attack. She saw Karl, his eyes amber fire, the sword in his hands glistening with blood. And John lay at her feet, his head severed.

As she watched, Karl struck again. The head rolled into two grisly halves.

Violette straightened up. Karl dropped the sword and embraced her. No word was spoken. He turned her, with his arm round her shoulders, and Violette saw what was happening to Cesare.

She’d seen a shape appear, a split-second before John’s attack. That shape was Sebastian. Unable to stop, Cesare’s momentum had carried him straight into Sebastian’s arms.

And now the dark vampire was feeding on Cesare, the pair side-on to Violette and Karl. As they watched, Sebastian lifted his head, his lips peeling back from long wolf-teeth slicked with blood. Holding Cesare at arm’s length, he stretched out his free hand, fingers hooked like talons. He thrust straight through Cesare’s robe into his stomach, plunging deep into the internal organs.

Cesare hung there as if flattened against a sheet of glass. His silent agony throbbed in the air. Violette could only stare as Sebastian worked his hand deeper, up beneath the ribcage. Blood oozed around his wrist. Cesare’s eyes strained in their sockets and his mouth hung open, but no sound came out.

Sebastian grasped something, twisted and wrenched. There was a sucking, snapping noise. Sebastian held aloft a trophy: Cesare’s heart, glistening and pulsating.

Cesare hit the floor like a felled tree. Undying, he writhed, clutching the bloody pit of his abdomen. A whine rose from his throat, the worst noise Violette had ever heard. But Lilith, the dispassionate witness, held her motionless.

Sebastian crouched over Cesare, brandishing the heart. “This is what you’ve done to me,” he said in a low voice. “How does it feel?”

Cesare plainly had no idea what Sebastian meant. Feebly he shook his head.

“How long will it take you to die while I tear you apart, piece by piece? A long time, you bastard. Everything starts to heal and regenerate, ready for me to rip it out again and again. We could have quite a little family of your hearts here. It could take forever.”

Cesare’s whine rose in pitch. He began to sob, an animal sound.

“I wouldn’t waste my time.” Sebastian squeezed the heart, letting gelatinous drops fall onto the deposed leader’s face. Then he flung it away.

Cesare’s sobs became words, hoarse but vicious. “Fool, Sebastian. You have all eternity in front of you but you live in the past, thinking of nothing but yourself! At least I thought of the future. At least I acted for all vampire-kind, not just my own narrow life!”

Leaning down, Sebastian bit hard into Cesare’s trachea, gashing a deep wound to silence him.

Finding her voice, Violette said, “Leave him.”

Her tone was commanding but Sebastian ignored her. He seized Cesare’s head, snapped his neck. Then he went on biting through fibres and vessels until he reached the spinal column.

Leaving Karl, Violette ran forward and seized Sebastian’s arm. It was like clutching granite. She couldn’t stop him.

She heard the rasping crunch as his teeth closed through bone. The head came free and rolled aside. Cesare was dead. His eyes contemplated oblivion with the same impervious fanaticism they’d shown in life.

Violette dropped down to face Sebastian across the gore-soaked body. They crouched like two black-haired harpies squabbling over the kill.

“Why?” she said.

He met her gaze. His face was colourless, hag-ridden. “To avenge Robyn.”

“So you had to blame someone.”

“Yes! As did you!”

“Did you have to kill him?”

“Holy Mother of God, what’s made you go soft?”

“I haven’t,” she hissed. “Don’t you see what you’ve done? He died with his illusions intact! My punishment would have been far worse. His physical pain couldn’t compare with the horror of finding his whole life was a lie! And you’ve taken that from me.”

“Then you’re as bad as me,” he said. “So don’t lecture me, Madame. Go back to where you belong. Go to hell!”

Sebastian straightened up, glared at the others. “If anyone wishes to take issue over this,” he said thinly, “you are welcome.”

No one moved. Someone shouted, “We don’t want another Kristian. We won’t accept you!”

“I’m not offering,” Sebastian replied. “And all of you, too, can go to hell.”

Sebastian turned his back on them and vanished. An uprush of voices released the tension. Violette put her hands to her temples and pushed her fingers into her hair, not realising she had blood all over her: Cesare’s and her own.

The other vampires gathered to stare at the bodies of John and Cesare. And most of all, they stared at her. Charlotte came and stroked her arm, her eyes sombre.