The Dark Blood of Poppies (14 page)

A thin hope.
Dear God, if you’d offer me a mandate to seize power, I’d do it! But I can’t. I’m only a messenger. I need someone like Lancelyn or Kristian. A ruthless, efficient brute to carry out my will.

Alone, I am nothing. Lord, have mercy.

God, however, was mute. Simon’s God was not the merciful deity in which humans put their faith, but a demanding, punishing God. He had no pity, not even for his angel Senoy.

Two figures dropped softly onto the snow-crusted ice before him. He started. One pale, the other near black. Fyodor and Rasmila.

He glared at them, ice stinging his eyes. They’d let him down, yet they kept following him with their pleading eyes.

“Simon!” Rasmila cried, falling to her knees in the snow. “What are you doing here? You look so unhappy.”

“Leave,” said Simon.

“No,” Fyodor said fiercely. “Not after it took so long to find you.”

They were dressed in thin clothes in which a human would freeze, Fyodor in a modern shirt and trousers, Rasmila in a midnight-blue sari. The garments were ragged with wear. Their long hair was wild and they looked mad, demonic, and incredibly beautiful.

“How many times have I commanded you to stop pursuing me?” Simon asked thinly.

“We’ll follow until you give in,” Rasmila said, grasping at his hands despite his efforts to shake her off. “Simon, please! You can’t abandon us after we were together all those years.”

“But I can and I have.” Her pleading made him furious.

“Do you have someone else now? Is it Karl?”

“I love only God.”

“What God?” Fyodor exclaimed. “Imagining we were angels – delusion!”

“No, never,” said Simon.

Fyodor gripped Simon’s shoulder and shook him. “Give up this idea of being God’s envoy! It’s over. Come with us and revel simply in being vampires. To drink human blood, to glory in your savage power – isn’t that enough?”

Rasmila argued, “No, Fyodor, it’s not over! If we join again, our power will return.”

“No,” Simon said grimly. “It won’t.”

“What can we do to prove our love?”

“Nothing. I don’t care.”

“You must care!” Rasmila clung to him, but he endured her embrace like a rock. “Remember how we first became angels?” Her voice dropped, becoming softly melodic. “Fifteen hundred years ago we were lost souls, wandering the world feeding on humans, with no memory of how this curse fell upon us. And then we met, the three of us, and fell so deeply in love we could never bear to be apart.”

“I never loved you,” Simon said callously.

Rasmila would not be stopped. “You don’t mean it. I left my own gods and culture for you. For a thousand years it was always we three, no one else… and then the light spoke to you! God spoke through you, Simon, and told us to guide other immortals, to choose humans worthy to join us. The light and power were so beautiful! We were together, three in one. Waiting for the Enemy, Lilith, to reappear so we could fulfil our purpose and chain her before God. We haven’t finished, Simon. You are still Senoy. I am still Semangelof and Fyodor is Sansenoy.”

“No, you’re not,” Simon said woodenly. “You let me down! You weren’t strong enough to hold Lilith. You were vessels for the light but too fragile. You broke and the light spilled out, gone.”

“Past repair?” Fyodor said bitterly. “Was it God who drove us to create other vampires – or vanity and boredom? Immortality, love, power; nothing was ever enough for you. You had to metamorphose into something more important, and you need others to feed your great importance.”

“Stop. I’ve heard enough.”

“And then you grew bored with us!” Fyodor cried. “Well, forgive us for being constant in our love! But you despise your own imperfections, and blame us. Yet, damn you, we still need you.”

Ice speared Simon’s heart. “All that matters is destroying Lilith. Don’t you see? Unless we defeat her, we won’t be
here
to love or hate each other! You can’t help, so leave me alone.”

“I wish we’d stayed in the
Weisskalt
forever,” Fyodor murmured.

“We can help. We’ll prove it,” said Rasmila. “Only don’t send us away again.”

They grasped him and hung on his neck, weeping. Infuriated, Simon tried to prise them off. And then he did something he’d never done before. He attacked them. Tore Rasmila off him, struck her so hard she spun away across the ice. He bit a great hole in Fyodor’s neck and flung him aside.

Yet they went on reaching out like wounded children, weeping bitter tears of rejection. And still Simon felt nothing, nothing to the frigid core of his soul.

* * *

Pierre was a realist. He hadn’t expected anyone to look for him, so it was a shock when Ilona arrived at Schloss Holdenstein. She was dressed in the height – or depth – of fashion, in a coat of maroon velvet and black fur, a scarlet dress dripping with beads, rubies and red gold flashing on her wrists and encircling her hair. An affront to the sombre memory of Kristian – but Cesare, fortunately, was not there to chastise her.

Pierre greeted her with world-weary flippancy, but his acting was lamentable. Fear had gnawed holes in his sanity. As she looked around his dank, rushlit chamber, he suffered an unravelling sensation that felt suspiciously like an urge to embrace Ilona and cry his eyes out.

“It’s taken me an age to find you,” she snapped. “What the devil are you doing here?”

“Exactly what there is to do here,” he retorted. “Nothing.”

“What’s wrong with you, Pierre?” She moved closer, studying him shrewdly. “You weren’t in your usual haunts. I can’t believe you’re here, but I had an intuition… Have you lost your mind? You hate this place.”

“What do you want?” He was fractious now. Since Violette’s attack, everything irritated him.

“There have been rumours,” she said, “about you and a certain ballerina.”

“Rumours? The bitch tried to kill me!”

“Shame she didn’t do a better job,” Ilona said crisply. “So you ran to Cesare?”

“Not to Cesare.” He almost enjoyed the familiar joust. Anger was easier to manage than fear. “He doesn’t own this place. I had to go somewhere.”

“To hide?”

“You didn’t see her! She was crazed!”

“I’ve met her. She
is
crazy, but really, Pierre, she’s only a slip of a thing. How did she reduce you to this state? You don’t look fit to scare the birds out of the fields.”

Pierre lacked the strength to answer. He sank down onto a bench, where he’d been trying to read some rambling religious tract left behind by Kristian. Ilona stared at him with contempt.

“Where is Cesare, by the way?” she said. Her tone softened, as if she were genuinely shocked by Pierre’s appearance.

“He went to look for Violette. He’s been gone for days, so perhaps she’s slaughtered him too.”

“You told him about her?”

He shrugged. “Yes, everything. Why not?”

“Well, he won’t find her. She’s in America. Karl and Charlotte went too, to keep her out of mischief.”

“Good luck to them,” Pierre whispered. “She should be kept out of trouble. Permanently.”

She sat beside him, her velvet-brown gaze fastening on his. “Do you really think so?”

“Do you?”

She didn’t answer. He wondered if Ilona, cavalier as she was with human life, had it in her to kill another vampire… then he remembered Kristian.
We are all capable
, he thought.
But not acting alone
.

“What does Cesare say?” asked Ilona.

“He’s been quite agitated. John got here before me.”

“I know. I saw him on my way in.” Ilona pulled a face. “What has he done to himself? He could star in
Nosferatu
.”

“He’s sick. They’re all sick here. Cesare wants to launch a crusade against Lilith.”

“He wouldn’t dare set himself against the supposed Mother of Vampires, would he?”

“Oh, he has an answer for that,” said Pierre. “Lilith is the demon mother who will devour her children at the end of time, unless the sons of God defeat her, or something.”

“Aha. Of course. Matricide. I can see Cesare as someone who hated his mother.”

At her words, Pierre wilted. He remembered a conversation with Karl.
“I was not like you, Karl, wanting to stay human for love. I was greedy for what Kristian offered… My first victim was my mother, and I fed on her without a qualm. The silly witch had already made herself a martyr for me, so what better way to go than to give me her last drop of blood?”

Oh, how flippantly he’d uttered those sentiments! Now they haunted him. What he felt was long-delayed guilt, a horrible, twisting pain imposed on him by Violette-Lilith.

“Are you listening?” said Ilona.

“Yes,” he said savagely. “Could you feast on your own mother?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a thin tone. “I never knew her. Kristian had her murdered when I was a few months old, so that he could take Karl away. So I have no feelings about mothers, though I have often felt like strangling my father. I once thought I’d like to become a mother, but what’s the use, when your children turn on you?”

“You sound like Violette.” Her words filled him with creeping dread. “Stop.”

“My God, she’s really got to you, hasn’t she?” Ilona touched his shoulder. “Poor Pierre. You so badly wanted to be heartless and gloriously wicked like Sebastian, but it’s not in you.”

“Oh, yes, him,” Pierre said, stung. “I should like to see how Sebastian gets on with her. She’d tear him to shreds.”

“Why didn’t you come to me, instead of baring your sorry soul to Cesare?”

“Thrown myself on your sweet sympathy? I think not. Why the hell does it matter?”

“Because Cesare’s deranged, and so is John. Couldn’t you leave this band of halfwits to fester in their ignorance? Why stir them up? We have enough troubles without them blundering into our world.”

“Cesare’s harmless. He’s actually been quite nice to me.”

“Well, I can’t see him joining forces with Stefan; they loathe each other,” said Ilona. “The opposition to Lilith seems to have collapsed. Everyone she touches falls apart. Matthew’s dead, Rachel’s vanished, and here are you, cowering in this pit.”

“Don’t be kind, Ilona. Gloat a little.”

“You used to like being teased.”

“I’ve lost my sense of humour.”

“I’m not surprised, in this place.” She stroked his cheek. “Good God, you’re freezing! Come with me and hunt.”

“No, Ilona…”

“You need blood.”

Pierre shrank back, shaking his head. “I can’t leave the castle.”

“Why not? Do you need a note from Cesare? I see no shackles or locked doors.”

“I can’t, because I’m frightened.” His words crackled like dry leaves.

Ilona stood, looking at him in disgust. “I thought you were like me, Pierre, but you’re a coward. I know she’s dangerous, but we can’t let her win! She humiliated you, that’s all. That’s what you can’t face. Ooh, bruised pride.”

When he didn’t reply, her face darkened.

“This is my plan,” she said. “I’ll follow her to America, on a later sailing so Karl and the others won’t know I’m there. And I’ll prove, to myself and everyone, that she’s no one to fear. Talk of destroying her is exactly the same as hiding from her. It gives Madame Lenoir power and status she doesn’t deserve.”

“Be careful,” he said, with a touch of his old mockery. “Stefan says she has a grudge against you.”

“Oh, that. She claims I attacked and mutilated her father, years ago, which drove him out of his mind. So I am responsible for all the family problems that sent her mad. Have you ever heard such nonsense? She has no proof that I ever met her damned father, but if I did, he should have been grateful I didn’t kill him. Men,” Ilona spat. “Boys!”

She vanished abruptly into the other-realm, but not before Pierre had seen the look in her eyes. For all her brave words, Ilona, too, was terrified of Violette. And that made him want to huddle around his own fear and beg her not to leave him alone.

* * *

As the ship surged across the Atlantic, Charlotte found relief in being among strangers, journeying to a new land. No other vampires – apart from Violette – were here to come between her and Karl. Kristian, Katerina, Andreas, Ilona, Pierre, even Stefan and Niklas, had all tried to weaken the bond between Karl and Charlotte. How good it was to leave those struggles behind.

Neither she nor Karl had been to America before. Karl had said that travelling through the Crystal Ring was impractical. A long, exhausting journey through the firmament would put them at risk of starvation and becoming too weak to return to Earth. Charlotte had broken impatiently into his explanation.

“It doesn’t matter. We’re going to another continent! I want to experience the journey in earthly time and reality, otherwise it won’t seem… real.”

All the same, she’d nearly swallowed her words. Charlotte was used to skimming from one place to another through the unearthly Ring. She was aghast to discover how unbearably slow the liner’s progress seemed. At first she was agitated, impatient to dive into the sky and fly ahead.

After a few days she attuned to the gentle pace. She began to relish the ship’s steady progress, the daily rhythm of life in this elegant, self-contained community. Her anticipation of America heightened to an exquisite degree.

She delayed telling Karl that Josef was on board. It was a delicate subject. The liner was so large she could probably avoid Josef for the whole voyage – but she wanted to be honest with Karl.
I’ll tell him soon
, she kept promising herself.

She and Karl fed discreetly and sparingly on the other passengers, leaving members of the ballet company strictly alone. There was a minor outbreak of “illness” causing lassitude and fever, but no deaths.

Violette, meanwhile, was barely seen throughout the voyage. She remained in her suite, attended only by her maid, Geli, who was used to her odd behaviour. Presumably she attributed it to Madame’s artistic temperament.

Violette appeared twice a day to supervise a ballet class – essential to keep her dancers in peak form – then retired again. Even Charlotte barely spoke to her. She knew that Violette’s turmoil over taking blood was worse in the confines of the ship, and that she was starving herself. Nothing Charlotte said made any difference. Eventually Violette lost patience and refused to see her.