The Dark Blood of Poppies (71 page)

The acolyte who’d spoken out – the male vampire with yellow hair and black eyes, who’d wept bitterly over his human comrade – said, “We don’t want revenge. Today I lost a human friend whom I loved. Cesare let us down; he led us on with false promises and broke them. We conclude that those who try to rule us have had their day. They demand sacrifice and reward us with betrayal! We’ve had enough. Lilith – I don’t know how to address you – Lady Lilith, no one wants to avenge Cesare – but we do not want you in his place!”

“Good,” Violette said fervently. “I’m not setting myself up as queen of vampires. I’m not your enemy, whatever Cesare said. I’ve acted harshly at times, but I’ve done nothing that was undeserved. If you approach me in friendship, I won’t harm you. But the truth hurts – and some find me too honest.”

She sounded cold, and knew she looked like an ice-witch; ebony, snow and blood. But she could force no warmth into her manner.

It was Charlotte who redeemed her, bringing light and compassion, as she had when they’d entwined with Karl. Resting a hand on Violette’s shoulder, she said, “You don’t understand who Lilith is. She will to teach us to face the darkness without fear. Don’t drive her out. That’s the mistake men made for thousands of years and will go on making. But we don’t have to be like them. Let her in, welcome her. Listen to her.”

Another vampire said, “Is this a new theology to replace Kristian’s?”

“No, it’s not doctrine.” Charlotte was fervent. Violette sensed them thawing, perceiving her as sincere. “We’ve seen something of the future. Raqia, which isn’t God’s mind but the subconscious of mankind, won’t let us create more vampires. Not for now, at least, because their minds are turning to a future that will bring more horrors than ever we could. The disturbances in the Ring are caused by thought-movements on Earth. Not by Lilith. It’s a wave that can’t be stopped.”

A hush fell, electric.

“My God,” said Pierre, “does this mean we’ll die?”

“No, I believe we’ll live. But there’ll be fewer of us. So we must face this darkness together, not at each other’s throats! The Crystal Ring lends us power to be angels, gods, monsters, anything. But be careful. The transforming energy is born of mankind’s fears and desires. Raqia is a sentience without conscience; it can use and consume us. And if we go too far…” She paused, smiling a little. “Lilith is the power that says, ‘Enough.’

“Let me say something else. We’re not human. We don’t need leaders, we can each rule ourselves. Clinging to the past is hopeless. You must leave this castle. It’s destroying you. The pain of your victims soaks into the walls, and one day it will come back to claim you. It’s an illusion that humans are at our mercy, because in reality, we are at theirs. But in recompense we have these wonderful abilities! Don’t squander them on false prophets. Don’t waste these gifts. That’s all.”

Silence. Charlotte looked at Violette and shrugged, as if to say,
Has that made any difference?

Then the black-eyed vampire came forward. He kissed Charlotte’s hand and bowed to her, paid the same respect to Violette, then inclined his head to Karl. After him, one by one, all the others followed suit. Even Ilona, though she did so with a cynical edge. All except Pierre, who remained obstinately apart, staring at Violette with hollow eyes.

Nearly last came Maria, handmaiden first to Kristian, then to Cesare. Instead of bowing she threw back her hood and offered her throat to Violette. She looked like a saint in scarlet.

And Violette-Lilith took her; a sharp embrace, a few passionate mouthfuls, just as she’d taken Ute not long ago. “Now you know,” Lilith whispered, putting Maria away from her, “that you need never be a slave again.”

Maria walked away without speaking and followed the others leaving the chamber. She was dazed, Violette knew, but she would recover.

Now only Pierre and Ilona remained. Charlotte put a hand to her forehead and released an astonished laugh. “They listened to me!”

“Yes,” said Karl, kissing her. “They listened.”

Then Pierre came forward at last. With reluctance he approached and stopped a stride from Violette.

“Well?” she said.

“You will be the death of me!” Pierre exclaimed. “After all you’ve done to me, Violette, I fear I’m still hopelessly in love with you. Humiliating, is it not? But I don’t want to stop being terrified of you, ever. It’s heaven within hell. And I’m nothing, if not a colossal masochist.”

* * *

Alone, Karl searched for Simon. He’d slipped away unseen and left no sense of his presence in the Schloss, yet Karl was driven to know what had become of him.

Exploring the upper levels of the castle, Karl reached the highest balcony overlooking the Rhine. The stars were bright. By their evanescent light he saw the body: blood-red satin contouring a magnificent form, the sinewy neck reduced to a crude stump.

Karl saw the scythe wedged across a gap in the wall, the blade smeared with blood. He knew then that Simon had taken his own life. Not easy for a vampire to decapitate himself… but not impossible. Karl groaned.

Some could cope with the truth revealed by Lilith; some could not. Despite the hostility between him and Simon, Karl felt sorrow.
Given time
, he thought,
perhaps we could have become friends… perhaps not. The most elevated fall the hardest.

Karl took a step towards the body, halted. Two translucent figures were twined around Simon, sobbing out their grief; one dark, like ultramarine and umber, one albino. His breath caught.
Do vampires leave ghosts? Or can these “angels” never truly die?

He moved, and the figures vanished. A trick of the starlight.

He looked over the balcony, down into the tangle of trees and bushes and rocks. He sensed movement down there. And he thought,
Dear God, the head!

Karl launched himself over the balcony and jumped.

Plunging downwards, he entered Raqia so that branches and rocks would not tear him to pieces. He landed in undergrowth with the hillside rearing above him, trees like spiderwebs of frost. A sprinkling of snow covered everything, but the Rhine was a black sword. Karl searched urgently through the bushes for Simon’s head.

Again, he saw the two shadows.

They were drifting towards him between great snow-silvered rocks. Then Karl saw, lying in his path, a rock unlike the others. A rough cube, tied up with rope…

Karl dashed towards it, determined to reach it before the phantoms. He followed the snake of rope with his gaze, saw the head like flawless pale gold marble, lying in a frosty drift of leaves.

Karl lifted the big square stone and dropped it onto Simon’s perfect visage. The skull crunched like an egg. He pushed the stone aside with his foot and saw the crushed mass of white, gold and crimson; a ghastly mosaic. Karl sighed, horrified, relieved, and drained.

When he looked up, there were no grief-stricken shades of Fyodor and Rasmila watching in recrimination. There was only a human. A youth, Ilona’s protégé, the only survivor. His face was colourless and he gaped at Karl as if immersed in a nightmare.

“It’s essential to destroy the skull,” Karl said, feeling he must reassure the youth by explaining. “Otherwise we can come back to life.”

The young man only went on staring as if Karl were insane; which, in that moment, Karl felt that he was.

* * *

Werner could not take his eyes off the vampire or the crushed head of Simon. He was dizzy and there were weird gaps in his memory. He couldn’t believe he was alive; more likely he was in some hellish afterlife, a rippling world of spun silver where madmen thought severed heads could come back to life.

The vampire, tall and mahogany-haired, shook his head as if mortally tired. Then he vanished into thin air.

Werner was alone.
I am ill
, he thought, shivering.
Must get help
. But he was lost and couldn’t seem to gain any distance from the castle…

Then they came. A train of women, children and men, down the steep path he’d taken from the Schloss. Not strong golden youths, these, but dark-skinned gypsies, the kind of imperfect lowly mortals that Cesare had taught his flock to revile.

Werner could no longer despise them. Their piteous state floored him with empathy and anger. Rage filled his chest, stopped his breath.
Who could do this to these poor souls?

The answer came.
I could
.

I’m going home
, he thought, wiping his eyes, feeling sick revulsion at the memory of Cesare.
I was spared! On my mother’s life, I swear I’ll never fall under the spell of such a dictator again. I shall fight tyrants, with all that’s left of my soul.

* * *

Violette had had no chance to say goodbye to Robyn. So, after they left Schloss Holdenstein, she slipped away from her friends and returned to Ireland alone.

In Raqia, the inky fortress still seethed. It would grow worse, she knew, before it began to dissipate. But here was Blackwater Hall, the house of sorrow, cupped in lovely green hills. A mansion of ghosts, discoloured like old bone.

The bedroom lay in darkness. Violette’s preternatural vision filtered out the rich bed-curtains. The only colour she saw was Robyn’s hair, richest brown, like wood from the tree of life. The face, though, was no longer Robyn’s. It was sunken and discoloured and the jaw had dropped. Her hands, folded on her chest, seemed to have shrunk.

But I am the funerary priestess
, Violette thought.
I see the dying through death and beyond. This holds no horror for me. Robyn’s body will nourish the earth and the wheel of life turns.

She walked around the bed, taking in every detail, forcing herself to accept it. She was trembling. Her emotions were so extreme that she couldn’t define them as mere grief.

Rasmila’s body by the fireplace had gone. She took this in without interest.

“Could we have been true lovers, dear?” she whispered. “Or was I just dreaming, torturing myself?”

She found a pair of scissors in the bedside cabinet and cut off a lock of Robyn’s hair. As she put the skein in a pocket, she became aware of another vampire in the room.

Sebastian. She turned to see him in the doorway, an immaculate dark figure, like a clergyman who’d never lifted a finger in rage.

“What are you doing here?” he asked quietly.

He was the last person she’d wanted to see. But now he was here, she lacked the energy for another fight.

“I’ll tell her Uncle Josef where she is,” Violette said tonelessly. “Then he can come and take her home.”

She expected Sebastian to object, but he said, “That’s only right. It’s a shell, after all. It isn’t Robyn.”

“I expect he’ll have to notify the police, but that’s nothing to do with us.”

“I buried what was left of Fyodor and Rasmila,” said Sebastian. “No one will be looking for them.”

“No,” Violette said indifferently.

She meant to say a final goodbye to Robyn, and leave. But as she stood there, a great weight seemed to crush her ribs. Unable to help herself, she sank onto her knees, clawing at the side of the bed, and began to sob uncontrollably.

A few minutes passed, though time lost clarity. Then Sebastian slid down behind her. Folding his arms around her, he held her tight, his forehead resting on her shoulder blade. And she didn’t mind. She was glad.

They remained like that for a long time, weeping together.

“Simon is dead, too,” Violette said eventually. “He killed himself. I didn’t shed a single tear for him.”

“He was one of my creators,” said Sebastian. “It should be like losing a father, but I don’t feel a thing. Why did he do it?”

“I showed him the truth. He didn’t like it.”

“Truth?”

“That he needed his God in order to deny death. That older beliefs were diabolised, in order to destroy them. All out of fear.”

“Oh, Violette.” She felt his breath on her neck, as warm and consoling as his arms. “I could have told you that. We didn’t all lose the old religion. I am part of this country, after all. Last century the supposedly Christian folk of County Waterford worshipped at a well with a figure described as looking ‘like the pictures of Callee, the Black Goddess of Hindostan’. They can’t erase our memories of the Dark Mother so easily. But I murdered Rasmila and Fyodor in my rage. My own creators. What have I done? Destroyed two treacherous vampires, or slaughtered gods? Surely I’ll be punished.”

“I think,” said Violette, “that we’re being punished enough. Rasmila was part of me; an aspect of Lilith in some way. But she didn’t know me, because she couldn’t see past Simon’s illusions. I wish I’d had the chance to make her
see
. She could have borne the knowledge.”

“Can you bear this?” he said softly, looking at Robyn.

“Sometimes I can,” she said, “and sometimes I cannot.”

“Well, I can’t,” he murmured.

“Do you still blame me?”

“No,” Sebastian said heavily. “Not you, not Cesare. Only myself. And now there’s nothing left but to place myself in the
Weisskalt
.”

His words shocked her. She hadn’t realised – or been able to admit – the sincerity of his grief. “Why?”

“I blame Robyn a little, too. She changed me. I was as evil as it’s possible to be, I was the Devil incarnate, and I was perfectly content. Then along came Robyn and I fell for her like an idiot. Oh, Lilith, I don’t need you to be my mirror; she’s done a fine job of wrecking all my self-delusions. How can I live with myself now? How can I live without
her
?”

Violette folded her hands over his. “Don’t.”

“How did Simon destroy himself, by the way? We can come back from the
Weisskalt
. I’d like something final.”

“Stop this!” She turned her head to look at him. “Don’t think of it.”

“Why not?” he said dully.

“Too many of us have gone. If I can live, so can you.”

And she felt him yield to her. “As you wish, madame.” They were quiet for a time. She exhaled, leaning back into him.

Sebastian said, “Rasmila once told me you hated men. Couldn’t stand them touching you.”

“I don’t mind this. It feels comforting. It was another sort of fear, the opposite of Cesare’s, I suppose. I had to overcome it.”