The Dark Blood of Poppies (42 page)

One night, three weeks later, she dreamed of the dancer.

She came to Robyn, lily-pale in the moonlight, black hair loose around her shoulders. She wore a floating garment and walked
en pointe
out of nowhere. She stood looking down at Robyn, then extended her long slender hand to stroke Robyn’s cheekbone.

“Don’t be afraid,” Violette said in the dream. “I want you and your blood so much that I could die… What would you say? Would you die for me too?”

Robyn couldn’t speak. When their eyes met, Violette looked straight into her and saw all her secrets.

“You love someone else, is that it? But they’ve left you in pain.” A spasm crossed her face. “Not in a million years could they love you as I do. When I left I thought the feeling would pass, but it hasn’t. Why didn’t I seize the chance? I can’t bear to see you suffer at the hands of a callous lover… and I could end it, dearest. Make you forget everyone and be mine forever.”

“Do it,” Robyn tried to say, unsure whether she’d actually spoken. “Take away the pain.”

* * *

Nothing ever changes
, thought Violette, looking at Robyn’s beloved face, her lustrous brown hair spread on the pillow, the lace collar of her nightdress cupping her chin.
I still love her. She’s like the only house in a wilderness, the only fire in winter.

But I can’t do it. I want her to stay as she is, whole and warm, not broken by Lilith’s savage caress.

Violette trembled, wishing she hadn’t come after all.

I love you but I can never have you.

Any more than Charlotte could have me, or Karl could have Charlotte, without turning us into monsters. If Robyn became a vampire she’d no longer be herself, but as my human lover she’d go mad and die… So I must leave her. Even if some dastard breaks her heart, she must heal in her own way, live her natural life…

But love and desire drew her to Robyn’s drowsy, sweet warmth. Lilith’s fingertips touched the lace collar, and Lilith whispered,
Why hesitate? Just take her. She needs it.

* * *

The night Sebastian finally surrendered and went to Robyn, he found someone there before him.

From the darkness of the bathroom, with the door ajar, he saw Violette by Robyn’s bed. He watched from a dark lake of disbelief. Knowing, now, that he should have taken Robyn’s warning seriously.

The dancer wore a smoky lavender dress with ragged points falling to her ankles, long wide sleeves, a design of poppies sewn in darkly shining plum beads. She looked exquisite. Sebastian desired her, hated her.

She appeared not to sense his presence. He saw subtle power coiled inside her: an unpredictable, chaotic power like that of a snake, a storm, a scorpion.

Something familiar.

“Forget everyone and be mine forever,” she was saying. Seeing her rapt face, her seashell hand gliding over Robyn, Sebastian was overwhelmed by jealousy. Not since his human wife Mary betrayed him had he experienced such profound emotion.

And Robyn, although her eyes were glazed with sleep, whispered, “Do it. Take away the pain.”

Violette’s hand hovered on Robyn’s throat. Any moment now she would pull down the collar and see the pin-prick scars of another vampire’s fangs.

She’s mine
, Sebastian thought grimly.

He was poised to seize Violette and drag her away, when she looked up, eyes wide, all hair-trigger alertness like a bird. Not staring at him, though, but at an alcove to the right of the bathroom. He felt the flicker of a presence there.

Another vampire?

Anger transformed Violette’s face. She turned, vanished in a dusting of mauve stars. The other presence also dissipated, leaving Sebastian to wonder if it had been real.
But
, he thought,
something scared her off, and it was not me.

Sebastian crossed the bedroom to Robyn, who only sighed and turned over. She was asleep. She’d seen nothing.

Then he sprang into the Crystal Ring after Violette.

In a labyrinth of tilted walls and weird perspectives, he couldn’t see her at first. Again he glimpsed another vampire above him, but it was faint, a mirage. As he climbed to a higher level, he caught sight of her: a black thread against the flank of a cloud-hill. She was fast! Sebastian ran like a cheetah to catch up, clawed feet slipping in the strange substance of the Ring as if in liquid ice. Growing closer, he saw how beautiful she was, even in her altered form. Serpentine yet feminine, gloved in black leather and jewels that threw sparks of red, purple, silver.

And there
was
someone else following her, a greyish figure some distance ahead of him.

Intent on Violette, Sebastian experienced a shift of perception and thought suddenly,
I know her!

Samael and Lilith… the Devil and his bride. Deep in his subconscious, inky sediment stirred and took on amorphous shapes against a swirling bank of smoke and fire. Serpents dancing to a drumbeat.

His memories were impossible: unclear and nebulous, funnelling backwards long before his birth as if his life had no definite beginning.

I’ve always been here. And so has she.

I know her
.

Robyn forgotten, he soared after her. Violette didn’t look back at him, nor at the greyish figure between them. Eventually, though, she appeared to tire. She dropped out of the Crystal Ring over Canada, and Sebastian followed to find himself in a pine forest. Snow lay thick on the ground and trees. The world was luminous and bitterly cold.

He’d lost her again. Pulled by her aura, he ran, stumbling in thigh-deep snow. Then he reached a clearing and stopped dead at the edge of the trees.

She was on the far side. In the centre of the clearing stood a human, a big bearded man in thick furs, hat and boots. There was a rifle in his hand, a hound the size of a pony beside him. A few yards away, firelight shone in the windows of a log cabin. No one inside, Sebastian noted. This was a hunter who worked alone.

The man stared at Violette as if his eyes would spring from his head. Where had she come from, in the depths of winter, a delicate, snow-skinned woman in thin layers of silk?

Everything was stark, silvery, pure black on pure white.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” said the hunter. He clasped the gun, as if he’d seen such apparitions before, and had to shoot them. “You’d better come in –”

Violette was already on her way towards him, running lightly over the snow as if on stage. The dog barked, jumped into the air from all fours, and fled. The rifle fell from the man’s hands. She leapt onto him like a cat, burrowing between his furs and beard to feed savagely. The giant could do nothing to stop this slender female from clinging around his neck and draining his life.

Sebastian watched, enraptured. The hound was barking frantically from a safe distance behind him. As the victim sank to his knees – Violette sinking with him, still feeding – Sebastian noticed a third vampire half-hidden among the pines, observing.

Violette dropped the corpse and rose as if dazed, her eyes blank, lips blood-red. As she stood there, the other vampire emerged from the forest.

A cherubic young man in a drab robe; physically unprepossessing, yet charismatic with self-assurance. Someone Sebastian hadn’t seen for seventy years. Cesare.

The dog came back and snuffled at its master’s corpse, whining. Violette ignored the animal. Glaring at Cesare, she asked icily, “What is this? Why are you following me?”

Her eyes were demented. Did Cesare know she was lethal? She must have seen Sebastian by now, but gave no sign of acknowledgement. He wasn’t afraid of her. He felt they were equals. He was furious that she’d dared to near Robyn – but for the present, he was willing to be entertained by Cesare’s imminent humiliation.

* * *

The witch waited in the snow, purple as dead blood, pale as the
Weisskalt
, black as oblivion. The dark trees framed her.

Cesare felt as if he were climbing a mountain. She seemed so far away. He felt like a mortal confronting Satan, a tiny child battling a monstrous mother.

He was so terrified that he felt elated. He knew God would protect him.

Cesare had vowed to confront Lilith before he asked his followers to do the same. This was a test he’d set himself: to find and follow her, even when her caprice led her across the Atlantic Ocean. Impossible journey, but he’d done it: proved himself Simon’s equal.

Now all that remained was to confront the Enemy. If he survived, he would claim the right to ask anything of his flock.
If
he survived.

The presence of the dark vampire puzzled him. A friend of Lilith’s? The face was familiar, but he wasted no time searching his memory because the dark one meant nothing. Only Lilith mattered. She filled Cesare’s world with the wings and claws and writhing hair of his nightmares.

Although Cesare saw Lilith’s beauty, he felt no desire for her. His nature was celibate, like Kristian’s. The human weakness for sex, he believed, had no place in immortal lives.

However, Cesare decided that one day, he would rape her. Not in lust, but as a token of his victory over darkness. That would make the act acceptable in God’s eyes.

“Madame, my name is Cesare,” he said politely. “No doubt you have heard of me.”

“Cesare, the great leader,” she said in a flat tone. He hadn’t expected her to be impressed, and she certainly was not.

“The leader of the holy fight against you,” he said. “Your existence is an affront to vampire-kind. You have harmed my friends. Your acts cannot be forgiven. I come to give you notice that my purpose under God’s will is to rid the Earth of you and your demons.”

I’ve done it
, Cesare thought in jubilation.
Faced her in the flesh. Now no one can label me a coward! And her friend, whoever he is, shall serve as a witness.

Lilith frowned as if irritated. Shadows encircled her eyes, and her fangs were at full length.

“Who do you think you are?” she said, like a teacher to a naughty child. “Isn’t it a little pathetic to gather a castle full of crusaders against one woman? I don’t want to hurt you, but I will, if you and your friend don’t leave me alone.”

Cesare was in a turmoil of fear and triumph. She was trying to entrance him with her searchlight eyes, but he thanked God for creating him pure and strong. He kept his voice steady.

“Any threat you make, you will regret. Your dominion over the Earth will soon be over.”

“My dominion,” she said frostily, “is over one quite small company of dancers. And you are out of your mind.”

Cesare heard the stranger laugh.

“Don’t take my warning,” he said. “Take the warning you will find at home.”

With a brief glance of contempt, Violette leapt into the Ring, her form elongating as she vanished. Euphoric with power, Cesare followed. He must have the last word…

Then unseen hands clasped his arms.

* * *

Sebastian saw Violette melt into the snow-light, saw Cesare follow. Swooping after them, Sebastian seized the priest-vampire and dragged him back to Earth like a netted bird.

“What in God’s name –” Cesare grunted as they landed in deep snow. “How dare you lay your hands on me?”

“I’m saving your life,” said Sebastian. “She would have torn your head off. I’ve heard she does that.” He rose, shaking snow crystals off his coat. Nearby, the dog still snuffed at the dead hunter, crying.

“Who are you?” Cesare said indignantly. “One of Lilith’s minions?”

“I’m no one’s minion. She must have thought I was with you. You have a bad memory.”

Climbing to his feet, Cesare studied him until light dawned. “Sebastian.”

“Correct.”

“You were Kristian’s enemy! So, are you friend or enemy of Lilith?”

Sebastian remembered Cesare as being doggedly submissive, unremarkable. The vampire who now stood before him now was a different creature.

“I heard how you rejected Simon,” Cesare went on with fervour. “You’re a fool, refusing to help us. Don’t you know she will slaughter all those who don’t turn to God under my guidance? You must come to us!”

Sebastian was taken aback by Cesare’s apparent concern for his soul. But his thoughts had taken a darker turn.

“You were there in the bedroom. What brought Lilith to America, do you think?” Sebastian asked, putting an arm round Cesare’s shoulder.

Cesare looked displeased by this overfamiliarity. “I assume that particular human has some meaning for her. I can’t conceive of it myself, but I know there are vampires who develop affection for their prey, unnatural as it is.”

“So would you consider disposing of the woman in order to distress Violette?”

“I’d consider anything, but there are mortals closer to her, easier to reach. This human is probably irrelevant… but why were you there?”

“Following Violette, like you,” Sebastian answered. “I hunt in Boston; I don’t care for competition. I’ll extinguish that female anyway, just to be sure.”

“So you have no love for Lilith?” Cesare’s eyes shone.

“None,” Sebastian said emphatically.

“Then come with me, join us!”

“One day, perhaps.” Sebastian had no such intention, but he couldn’t face an argument with Cesare.
If I have to destroy Violette
, he thought,
it will be over Robyn, nothing else.
And all that concerned him now was Robyn’s safety. “You’d better go home and hope Lilith isn’t lying in wait for you.”

Cesare moved away, shrugging off Sebastian’s arm. “Come to us soon,” he said ominously.

“Cesare,” Sebastian said with a chilly smile, “I’ve a message for Simon. Just one word. Samael.”

“I’ll tell him,” said Cesare, frowning.

He was gone. Alone, Sebastian sighed and stared up at the heavy sky. He was full of quiet rage at both Cesare and Violette. How
dare
they trespass on Robyn’s domain?

As he took a last look at the hunter’s corpse, the hound swung up its large head and snarled, as if deciding,
Here is my master’s killer!
It came racing towards him, muscular body bunched and wolf-teeth dripping saliva.

With a single punch to its skull, Sebastian killed it.