The Dark Blood of Poppies (73 page)

* * *

When Charlotte returned to the party, she said nothing of her meeting with Josef. Violette’s bite had given her detachment, at least. She could experience sorrow without being crushed; she could believe that all grief eases with time.

The party, in an opulent hotel near the theatre, was almost over. Violette must have dismissed all her human guests. Only vampires remained: Karl and Ilona, Pierre, Violette, Stefan and Niklas, a handful from Schloss Holdenstein. How elegant and lovely they looked in their evening clothes, their opalescent skin, lustrous hair and eyes gleaming in the diamond light of chandeliers. Charlotte felt a rush of dreadful excitement, knowing she belonged with them.

Then, to her shock, she saw Sebastian. He hadn’t been at the ballet – or had he? He might have been in the audience unseen, a shadow. And Charlotte thought,
Thank goodness Josef didn’t come after all!

As she crossed the room, Karl turned to her with the warmest look she’d ever seen. He’d missed her; her reappearance brought light to his eyes. To know she was so wanted made her weak with happiness.

The same feeling enlivened the whole room. She sensed unity between the vampires that she’d never felt before.

“Is this a truce?” Charlotte said as she reached Karl’s side.

Ilona gave a wry grin. “Us against the world, dear,” she said.

“It seems foolish to go on arguing amongst ourselves, if the world’s decided it will support no more of us,” said Stefan.

“A truce,” said Violette. She seemed gentler, less aloof yet more vivid; radiant, graceful and strong. “One that will last, I hope.”

“We should drink a toast,” Stefan remarked. There was a murmur of laughter, then a pause. A change of mood.

“Well, why not?” Ilona said. And she went to Stefan, put her arms round him, and bit into his neck. That initiated the chain, a languid, magical ritual that seemed to Charlotte like a dream. She and Karl exchanged sips of blood with passionate tenderness, kissed with the blood still on their tongues; then Stefan was pulling her away, Violette embracing Karl. And they all passed from one to another, giving and receiving sips of life-fluid as if in a slow-motion dance. It was the most extraordinary experience of Charlotte’s life. An unholy, absorbing, loving, utterly enchanted sacrament.

At the end, she found herself between Ilona and Violette. They clung to her and covered her with kisses; she almost died for joy.

That we can do such ghastly things…
she thought. She looked across the room to see Karl with Sebastian, two darkly handsome figures, fatally alluring to their prey.
Such appalling, unconscionable things, all of us, and yet still love each other so deeply. What can it mean, this miracle?

* * *

Karl and Sebastian were the last to meet. They exchanged a look of mutual reluctance to taste each other’s blood. Yet they did so anyway, and when it was over, the tension between them had vanished.

“So,” said Karl, “you chose not to follow Simon’s path?”

Sebastian shrugged. He was calm, but with a spectral quality, a lack of vitality. “Violette asked me not to. Who am I to argue?”

“She can be very persuasive.”

“So I heard,” Sebastian said dryly. “You must understand, there is nothing between us. Only our love for Robyn.”

“That is a stronger bond than many.”

Sebastian’s eyes held a brief look of abstraction. “Could you live, if you lost Charlotte?”

“I don’t know,” Karl replied honestly. The idea was something he couldn’t contemplate.

“You’d live for blood.” Sebastian’s voice sank harshly on the words. “There is nothing else.”

“Then why are you here?”

Sebastian made no reply. Karl looked at Charlotte, an enchanting tawny-haired sylph between Violette and Ilona. The affection between them as they hugged and caressed one another was spellbinding. And he had the strangest feeling that it should have been Robyn with Charlotte and Violette. They formed the goddess-trinity of his vision, and Robyn was the rightful third member. Instead, Ilona had taken her place. This was not wrong… yet Karl felt, all the same, that they’d lost something. Robyn had been taken, not only from Sebastian, but from them all.

Strange to realise that he no longer feared Violette. Not that she’d become safe, or predictable: no vampire was ever that. But for tonight, at least, there was peace.

Violette detached herself from her companions and spoke.

“Whatever the future holds, we can’t change it. Sebastian is right when he says that our purpose is a selfish one: to live for the blood-hunt, to bring pleasure and nightmares to mortals. Not to change the world. The Crystal Ring itself won’t let us do it. That’s why Cesare’s ambitions failed: to make way for something worse. I fear we have drunk to a very dark future.

“Everything men do is in denial of death. They wish to live forever. But no man can avoid his fate, no mortal can escape Lilith. That’s why they created God: to annihilate her. But a few, just a few take the risk of embracing Lilith and accepting her kiss.”

“And we become immortal?” said Pierre.

“We live a little longer,” said Violette. “That’s all.”

“But we will live,” Sebastian put in. Karl saw his gaze lock with Violette’s. Her lips curved as if he was taking the words out of her mouth. “Mankind turns his back on the great mother of all… but she will come anyway, dressed for battle like the Morrigan, and take her revenge for being rejected. Then we shall feast like vultures on their folly.”

As he spoke, a ghastly vision struck Karl: cold mist drifting over the mud and trenches of a battlefield. A memory of moving from one dying man to another, as if by taking the last drops of their blood, immersing himself in their suffering, he could somehow understand why it had happened. Bridge the chasm, be reconciled to his guilt.

But never again
, Karl thought.
I will never let human folly torment me like that again
.

“And when it’s over,” said Charlotte, “we will still be here.”

* * *

Karl meant to complete the last task alone, then decided he would prefer company. He had less of a taste for solitude of late.
So
, he thought,
even immortals can change – as if I didn’t already know that.

Besides, his friends would want to witness this purging act.

So one night he took Charlotte, Violette, Ilona, Pierre, Stefan and Niklas on their last visit to Schloss Holdenstein. In the stench-laden chamber where the young men’s corpses still lay, they made a funeral pyre with branches. They went through every room, dousing the walls and furniture with petrol. Six vampires who still huddled there, the remnants of Cesare’s flock, tried to stop them, but Karl and the others brushed them aside. Eventually the six acolytes fled.

And then came the glorious conflagration. Karl stood on the riverbank, his hand on Charlotte’s waist, their friends grouped around them. The Rhine flowed on, changeless. Above, on top of the ridge, the castle floated in plumes of apricot fire. Great bubbles of flame and smoke surged through the doors and windows, crackling and roaring towards heaven.

The walls were turning black. Heat cracked the stone. Balconies charred and crumbled, roofs collapsed with a whoosh like soft thunder. The smell of roasting meat filled the air, and was swallowed by smoke and heat.

In an uprush of scarlet flame, in columns of firefly sparks, Schloss Holdenstein shrank to a weightless black skeleton and died, taking its ghosts with it.

No one wept. Charlotte embraced Karl, transfixed; Violette leaned on Charlotte, and Ilona clung to Karl’s other arm.

After a while Charlotte said, “All the visions we saw, the lost secrets of the goddess – no one would believe us. Particularly not men of power. No church or no political body could afford to let it become common knowledge. There’s too much power at stake. How could they ever give up their authority by admitting it was based on lies? So the secrets will remain hidden, except to a few. Such a loss. They’ll stay hidden forever.”

“Always in the shadows,” said Violette. “Like us.”

* * *

Sebastian watched the fire from a distance, with no desire to join the others.
That should be Blackwater Hall aflame
, he thought.
But I’ve no will left to finish what I started before Simon first came. Let it rot. It’s not my house any more.

After a time he turned away and entered the Crystal Ring.

We will live
, he’d said to the others, but the words had tasted flat in his mouth. People all around him, vampire and human, teeming crowds of people to provide him with endless fountains of blood until the end of time… but none of them was Robyn, none of them would ever, ever be Robyn.

It’s not just the loss of her
, Sebastian thought as he rose through the cloudy mountains of Raqia.
It’s not knowing whether she ever truly loved me. That’s what I can’t bear. And now I’ll never know.

I am alive and you are dead, beautiful child, but you won. You spoiled my pleasure in being a vampire. You taught me to love and you tore it away. Oh yes, you won a victory so complete that you might as well have annihilated me and held victory celebrations on my grave.

But was it what you wanted? Robyn, does your soul look down on me now with pity or with heartless glee?

If only you had given me an answer. I cannot live forever without an answer.

Lilith, my sister, I’m sorry – but I cannot.

So he left it all behind. Sebastian passed from flame to ice, to the
Weisskalt’
s dazzling eternal winter; embraced the very extremity of the solitude that he had always held so dear.

A
s with
A Taste of Blood Wine
and
A Dance in Blood Velvet
, there are many friends old and new whom I’d like to thank for their help and support with this book and my writing in general over the years – too numerous to mention without the risk of leaving someone out!

Thank you in particular to my agent, John Berlyne, and to Natalie Laverick, Cath Trechman and all at Titan Books, not least their wonderful design team.

Special thanks are also due to many wonderful writers on female spirituality (as named in
A Dance in Blood Velvet
) for inspiring me with tales of Lilith… and opening my eyes to hidden worlds that we still rarely see. Eternal thanks also to Stevie Nicks and to Horslips, for the inspiration of their music. I hope I don’t need to point out that I wrote
The Dark Blood of Poppies
at least fifteen years before the film
Black Swan
appeared… but the slight similarities of theme are certainly interesting!

I’m very grateful indeed to all the readers who have emailed me longing to know when the Blood Wine books would come back into print. It’s been a long wait, so thank you for your patience!

F
reda Warrington
was born in Leicestershire, UK, where she now lives with her husband and mother. She has worked in medical illustration and graphic design, but her first love has always been writing. Her first novel
A Blackbird in Silver
was published in 1986, to be followed by many more, including
A Taste of Blood Wine
,
Dark Cathedral
,
The Amber Citadel
, and
The Court of the Midnight King
– a fantasy based on the life of the controversial King Richard III. As well as the
Blood Wine Sequence
for Titan Books, she writes the
Aetherial Tales
series for Tor. Her novel
Elfland
won a Romantic Times award for Best Fantasy Novel. She can be found at
www.fredawarrington.com

THE DARK ARTS OF BLOOD

Freda Warrington

In the turmoil and glamour of 1920s Europe, vampires Karl, Charlotte and Violette face threats to their very existence…

Fiery, handsome dancer Emil achieves his dream to partner the legendary ballerina Violette Lenoir – until his forbidden desire for her becomes an obsession. Rejected, spiralling towards madness, he seeks solace with a mysterious beauty, Leyla. But she too is a vampire, with a hidden agenda.