The Dark Blood of Poppies (8 page)

John lifted the sack and thrust his hand inside. Then he let the sack fall to the floor. Between his hands he cradled a severed head.

Cesare stared at the distorted features. Its mouth and eyes drooped with sour pain. The neck stump was horribly ragged. “What happened?”

Tears ran down John’s face. Finally he whispered, “It’s Matthew. Someone – she –” He shook his head, swallowed. “I heard that Kristian could bring vampires back to life if he had the head. Do you know how?”

Cesare pondered, his own misery forgotten. “Why should I help you? I loved Kristian, you despised him. We can’t be friends.”

“Please!” John was trembling.

Cesare thought,
How pleasing to have this creature at my mercy!
“Why did you reject Kristian? Tell me!”

“He was arrogant.” John hugged the repulsive head to his chest. “He wouldn’t see that vampires are the Devil’s possessions and must submit to God’s punishment. Kristian dared to invoke God as if we were blessed, not damned. Blasphemous arrogance!”

Cesare broke in impatiently, “Not blasphemy. God has a use for us. We are not the punished, but the
punishers
. Our purpose is to visit God’s wrath on mankind! This is a noble duty, not an evil one. John, we hold the same beliefs. The only difference is that Kristian’s followers take pride in what we are.”

“Pride is a sin.”

“Very well, believe you’re damned, if you must. But even the damned have a place in the Almighty’s plan.”

John’s face lengthened with desperate hope. “If I could only believe you.”

Then Cesare no longer felt hostile towards him. He felt fatherly. John’s fault was ignorance, which could be remedied. Cesare gripped his shoulder. “We can debate to our heart’s content. It’s too long since I had the chance of a theological argument!”

John stared, his eyes wild. “So you’ll help us?”

Cesare lifted the grotesque burden out of his arms, as tenderly as if it were a baby. “Come, let’s begin. The head must be immersed in blood every day. Fresh human blood.”

* * *

Vampires neither sleep nor dream, Violette had been told. So what were the nightmares that assailed her in the Crystal Ring?

Although Raqia terrified her, she couldn’t stay away. She tried to resist, but a masochistic urge would overcome her, like dark music enticing her mind and body. The sidestep she made into the vampire realm was as easy as breathing. The world faded. Her own cells seemed to melt and form a new shape as she found herself in a wind-blown forest of shadows, under a sky of purple flame.

The sky drew her. She climbed a coil of cloud that frayed into nothingness under her thin, taloned hands. Black, her hands, with skin like a lizard: each scale a flake of jet. She felt as thin and hard as a whip, weightless.

If my body is so changed
, she wondered,
is my face that of a demon, with eyes like red braziers? I can never see my own face here!

She let go of her thoughts as she climbed. She was all sensation, a dancer. Her hair writhed like Medusa snakes.

Raqia was not a true sky but a strange multi-layered dimension. Mountains sailed in the void, but they were insubstantial, dissolving and reforming like clouds. Tonight they were bruise-coloured, racing on a mad wind, crimson light pouring down them like blood.

Occasional lightning bleached the void from indigo to pale amethyst. She heard thunder.

How cold it was. Desolate, vertiginous. All this sweeping emptiness without a soul to be seen. So much beauty and energy wasted. The emptiness chilled her.

She struggled to climb above the storm, but wind currents flung her around like a twig on the ocean. She stretched out on a cushion of air and closed her eyes, giving herself up to the rise and fall of turbulence. She was frozen to the bone, but didn’t care.

In the Crystal Ring she could forget her thirst.

The trance came swiftly. Floating in Raqia gave immortals respite from perpetual consciousness. At least, that was how it should be – but Violette experienced a leering carnival of memories. She could remain alert and fight the blood thirst, or rest and face her visions. The choice crushed her between millstones and ground her flat. But she chose the trance.

At first she was on stage, dancing, carefree. The green cave of scenery was a self-contained world, while the audience, unseen beyond the spotlights, did not exist. This was her solace and her purpose. Her addiction. Dancing took away her pain.

But three shadows waited in the wings.

She danced harder and faster but could not drive them away. Her chest ached with exhaustion. She couldn’t breathe. There were hands on her throat, a distorted male face glaring into hers.

Her father’s face, his rasping voice. “This black hair is from the Devil, Vi. All women are bloodsuckers. All women belong to the Devil.”

She couldn’t answer this injustice. His belief infected her as his hands squeezed out her life… then suddenly he was torn away. She watched him borne into the distance by asylum attendants, but the horror stayed inside her.

He metamorphosed into someone else, another man whom she’d driven mad. Not intentionally, never that. It happened without her willing it. And this irascible and obsessive goat, a self-styled magus named Lancelyn, had called her Goddess.

Goddess, devil… no one knew who she really was.

Her father, Lancelyn, Janacek and others… they loomed over her, these men of power; covetous, possessive, lustful. She cowered and obeyed, hating them… until something inside her lashed out, a reptilian tongue of flame to scorch them and free herself.

Can’t I have freedom without destroying them? Why could they not love me without making me hate them? Yet it couldn’t be otherwise. They needed to control me but I am too strong. A demon.

The three shadows watched and smiled.

Violette stood by her mentor Janacek’s grave and saw a woman watching her from the trees… Charlotte was demure in mourning black, her eyes clear and steady under the brim of her hat.

Come to me, Violette
, said her eyes.
I’ll change you into what you are meant to be. I killed Janacek to free you!

Charlotte came out of the shadows to lure Violette into darkness… but Violette’s soul was already darker than a vampire’s. It was she who swallowed Charlotte whole.

She was dancing again, but struggling now. Her chest hurt. She couldn’t feel the stage beneath her toes, and with every step she stumbled. Looking down, she saw that her feet had become owl claws.

Violette shook herself out of the hallucination, trying to scream. She couldn’t make a sound. Even if she could, there was no one to hear.

Her panic subsided as swiftly as it had struck. She was used to this now. The visions were tormenting, but she’d learned not to fight them.

The Crystal Ring flung her down the rolling flank of a cloud. God, she was cold. And the pain was still there, a cruel hand squeezing her throat. Fire, from mouth to heart to abdomen.

The thirst.

It had shocked her awake with nightmares of strangulation, and now it forced her down towards the Earth.

Night closed over her. The Crystal Ring melted away, and the mortal world reappeared, warm and solid. Violette felt stone beneath her feet, looked down and saw ordinary feet in button-strap shoes. She was back in human form. She stared at her calves in silk stockings, the hem of her dark blue coat. Her cloche hat half-covered her eyes. She hoped no one would recognise her.

How tempting to imagine a miracle; that the Crystal Ring didn’t exist, that her bad dreams of being owl, serpent, Lilith, vampire, had never happened. But the thirst remained to mock the wish.

I must feed
, she thought.

She found herself near the Mirabell Palace, an iced cake of a building set in formal gardens. She heard the soft dance of fountains. All around her stood elegant square houses of the eighteenth century, and beyond, forested ridges rose against the midnight sky. A chamber orchestra played in a house nearby; there was always music in Salzburg. Violette pictured the musicians in the golden warmth of some salon, and her hunger leapt.

She walked towards the river.

Halfway across a bridge, she stopped and leaned on the parapet. People glanced at her as they passed. She needed their blood but she held herself rigid, staring at the river, thinking,
Soon, but not that one… not him… not her.

Reflected lights hung in the water. To her left, a hundred yards along the bank, stood the pale green mansion that housed the Ballet Janacek. Some windows in the top storey were still lit up. Not all the
corps de ballet
had gone to bed.
Bad girls
, she thought.
We’re soon to begin our American tour and you need your rest!

Amazing that she could think of anything beyond the hunger.

I won’t feed tonight
, she thought. Her lip stung, nipped between her teeth.
I won’t.

On her right lay the old town, sheltered by the Mönchsberg Ridge. She could see lovely colours, invisible to humans, in the darkness. All the scintillating roofs, domes and spires of endless churches… She’d sought solace in them once, but what had they done to save her? And what would their priests do now, but denounce and revile her?

Her eyes, as she gazed at the beautiful churches, were cold.

Footsteps approached. Something felt wrong… The steps were slow, soft, yet oddly emphatic. The presence came towards her, but no human heat came with it.

A vampire.

She looked round. A man in a dark, expensively tailored coat and a cashmere scarf stood regarding her brazenly. He was good-looking, she supposed, in an insolent way; his hair was brown and curly beneath his hat, his eyes very blue but a little too large and widely spaced. He had the look of a charming sadist.

He said in French, “Madame Lenoir? I have been looking for you.”

“Well, you’ve found me.” She answered in the same language, but he detected her accent and switched to English.

“Forgive me, I’d assumed you were a compatriot.”

“English names aren’t the fashion in the ballet world,” she said tartly, “but we can talk in English, French, German; whatever you wish, assuming we have anything to talk about, which I doubt.”

His eyebrows lifted with amusement. “Madame, I am Pierre Lescaut. No doubt you have heard of me.”

“Not that I can recall.” This wasn’t true. Karl often spoke of his wayward friend.

Removing his hat, he bowed extravagantly, then kissed her gloved hand before she could avoid him. “Well, now you have. I’m enchanted to meet you. I am a friend of Karl von Wultendorf. You know him, I understand?”

“Slightly.”

“I find it incredible that he has not mentioned me.”

“Perhaps you are of less importance to him than you realise.”

Pierre’s smile thinned. He leaned on the parapet beside her. He stood too close and she wanted to draw back, but pride would not let her give ground to him. “And you know Charlotte, Stefan, Niklas?” He sounded sarcastic. He must know that Charlotte and Stefan had initiated her.

“Of course,” she said thinly.

“They are all talking about you – except Niklas, of course, who has very little to say about anything.” He grinned, but his eyes were cruel. “That’s why I had to satisfy my curiosity about the new immortal who is creating such interest. You know, you have not many friends, Madame Violette.”

That made her look hard at him.

“Might we stroll together?” he added. “I think we should talk.”

She thought,
Why? I have nothing to say to you
. But she glanced back at her ballet premises and imagined an unscrupulous vampire such as Pierre preying on her darlings. The idea filled her with fury. So she slipped her hand through his proffered arm and led him in the opposite direction.

“Let’s climb to the Fortress,” she said. “There is such a lovely view of the Alps from the other side of the ridge.”

* * *

Rain began to fall as they walked. The pavements shone. The steep cobbled path that wound up between the trees towards the Fortress Hohensalzburg seemed to run with mercury.

Pierre held Violette’s satin-sheathed hand in the crook of his elbow, congratulating himself. What superstitious fools had Kristian left behind? How could they be afraid of this lily?

Pierre thought he was falling in love. He actually felt protective towards her, when in the past he’d never given a damn for anyone but himself.

She was stunning, a goddess among mortals and vampires alike. The combination of pale skin and black hair was irresistible, like an exotic Beardsley drawing. Her large eyes, enhanced by the velvety strokes of her brows and lashes, were truly violet; not amethyst-grey like Charlotte’s, but the luminous indigo of the Crystal Ring itself. She seemed both delicate and strong. Imperturbable – but hardly likely to perturb anyone else.

He said, “I believe you need to feed, Madame.”

“You’re observant.”

“It’s obvious from your pallor, your whole demeanour. I know this… tension. You should not wait too long.”

Her face transformed. Her serenity became rage, blazing from her eyes. He actually recoiled.

“Don’t tell me how to conduct myself,” she said.

One glimpse, then the shutters folded down once more. Pierre exhaled. Shocked at first, he felt a frisson of excitement.

“I pity the poor human who runs into you,
chérie
.”

“Don’t pity them,” she said tightly. “I can control the thirst, if you can’t.”

“Can you?”

“And I am not your
chérie
.”

“Forgive me, Madame. I did not mean my idle remarks to offend you.
Mon Dieu
, perhaps there’s something in what they say after all.”

“What do they say?”

They had reached the Fortress. The walls stood dark and impenetrable against the sky; trees rustled in the darkness, alive with the patter of raindrops. The air smelled deliciously earthy.

The gates were locked, but the Crystal Ring let them pass through barriers of wood and iron, and into a huge corridor that curved steeply upwards. Behind immense walls, the museum and staterooms lay in darkness. Tour guides and staff slumbered, a troupe of boy scouts slept in the old barrack rooms. A succulent treat for later, Pierre mused. The few sentries who kept watch were oblivious to the vampires’ presence.