The Dark Blood of Poppies (5 page)

“No, but you might have been badly hurt. Our flesh can tear and our bones can break. We heal, but the pain is terrible.”

“I know.” She lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry. But there’s no harm done.”

He relented with a rueful smile. “You must forgive me, also, for being overprotective. Sometimes I think you are still human.”

“Well, I’m not.”

Karl shook his head, more amused than annoyed. Her beautiful demon lover.

“Shall we go home?” he said. “Now we’ve taken the shortcut.”

On a winding path though a pine forest, they walked arm-in-arm like an innocent couple out for a stroll. Charlotte loved these times when she could forget the blood thirst. Simply bask in the pleasure of being alone with Karl.

Both sensed the presence before they saw her: a peasant woman, heavily wrapped up against the cold, walking towards them. Charlotte smelled animal blood on her, and guessed she’d been up half the night helping cows to calf. Now she looked forward to her warm bed.

In the two years that Karl and Charlotte had been together, they preferred to hunt separately. Both felt that the drinking of blood was too personal to be witnessed. Perhaps it was a form of denial. To hunt together would have been conscious collusion, a step too far across the borderline of evil.

Normally they would have let the woman pass by. Nothing was different this evening…

Yet something happened.

Unbidden, mutual need flowed between them. No word was spoken. As the peasant woman reached them they stopped, blocking her path.

She appeared to be in her thirties, fresh-faced and charming in her headscarf, shawl and long skirts. A benevolent soul. But Charlotte, seeing her through a mist of hunger, perceived her as prey; as meaningful and precious as a sacrifice, but prey all the same. And Karl, his eyes like flames behind amber glass, no longer looked human at all.

The woman froze in shock. Gently they closed in, embracing her with tender hands. Charlotte fed first, then held her while Karl sank his wolf-teeth into the plump throat. Moving behind the victim, Charlotte fed again, breaking the virgin skin on the other side of her neck.

Her hands met Karl’s around the human’s hot body as they fed. They clasped each other with the victim between them. The moment was eternal, primal, throbbing with heat and blood. Transcendent.

It was the first time they’d fed together like this. More than lust, this was a blood-ritual, connecting them to the darkest side of their natures. Entwining them in wordless ecstasy… and damnation.

Afterwards, they carried the woman to the edge of a farm to be found, either to live or die. Then they went home without a word.

What was there to say? They were both shocked to the soul, swimming in the same shadowy lake of passion. Moved, excited, afraid.

Home was an isolated black chalet poised high in a pine forest beneath the Alps. The peaks of the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau floated on the horizon. Within, the rooms had a timeless, faded luxury. Dark pine walls and high ceilings supported by rafters. Persian rugs, panels of muted floral wallpaper, elegant furniture; a library lined from floor to ceiling with books; a music room; a kitchen used only by their housekeeper, who climbed the steep hill twice a week to clean the house. If she thought her employers strange, she was too well paid to ask questions.

Vampires had few material needs – only human blood was essential – so they could have lived naked in graveyards, if they wished. Charlotte did not know of anyone who did. They still preferred to live like humans. The trappings of ordinary life were a fascinating luxury to some; to others, a poignant connection to their lost humanity. In this, Charlotte and Karl were no different.

In the drawing room, Charlotte forced Karl to look at her. He seemed hardly able to do so. His exquisitely sculpted face, dark eyebrows giving bewitching intensity to his lovely eyes, his soft full hair of darkest mahogany – black in shadow, red where the fire caught garnet lights on the strands – still stopped her heart with their beauty. But sometimes he scared her to death. Tonight had added another irrevocable layer of darkness to their relationship.

“Now do you believe I’m not human?” she whispered.

* * *

Charlotte lit candles on a low table, each flame adding a new wash of light to her golden-pale skin. Fragrant incense smoke coiled through the glow.

Karl watched her. There was silent reverence between them, for what had gone before and what would surely follow.

The drawing room took on the feel of a church prepared for midnight mass. This was a kind of ritual; dream-like, unplanned, but inevitable. A celebration, or wake, for the death of delusion.

Karl, seated in an upright chair, felt the familiar curves of the cello between his knees. Scents of old, varnished wood mingled with the peppery incense. He set his bow to the strings and began to draw out deep, warm notes. He played a nocturne in a minor key, mournful and evocative. Charlotte, arrested, blew out her match and closed her eyes. He saw her body tauten, saw the tip of one fang indenting the rose-red curve of her lower lip.

The solitary line of music expressed all that had happened this evening. The mad leap from the mountain, the mutual bliss of killing.
How easy it was
, he thought,
when we hunted alone, to pretend we’re better than we really are. Until thirst comes in a primitive rush and we fall on our prey like animals… And, dear God, it was so like making love. Devouring each other while that poor woman faded between us…

As Karl played, Charlotte rose to her feet and began to dance. So hard, even now, not to see her as the sweet young mortal he had first met. So hard to believe she had shared the kill with him! In a dress of cream, rose and gold lace she was slender and graceful, her upright back and neat square shoulders swathed by waist-length hair. Her hair was a shimmering wreath of soft brown and gold, framing her lovely, ageless face. She smiled as she danced. She looked so carefree, so heartbreakingly pretty, no one would believe that blood had ever touched her lips.

Only her eyes had changed. The amethyst-grey irises were layered with experiences and sorrows that no mortal could imagine.

She was an elemental, a nymph, an enigma. Karl watched her rippling hair, the subtle roundness of her breasts, hips and thighs moving beneath the lace. He felt an intense longing to make love to her… but that could wait. They had all night.

The nocturne wound to its sombre end. Charlotte curtseyed, her arms stretched behind her like wings.

“I’m not Violette,” she said apologetically.

“Thank God for that,” said Karl.

She came to him and stroked his hair. “Do you still dislike her so much?”

“
Liebchen
, as I keep telling you, I don’t dislike her. I meant that I want to be with you, no one else. And I do not want to talk about Violette.”

“But we must.”

“Why?”

“Well, we can’t talk about…” She gestured at the window, meaning the outside world, the forest, the shared feast. “Can we?”

He folded his fingers around her hand. “Not yet.”

“I’m sure Violette will be all right. As long as she goes on dancing, there’s hope.”

“That she won’t destroy us?”

“That she’ll keep her sanity, and not be unhappy.”

“And not carry out her threats against us?” Karl said.

“Dear, she wasn’t herself.”

“Yet she said it. She threatened to take you from me, and change us both into people we would not recognise. I can’t afford to ignore that.”

Karl wished Charlotte would forget Violette, but it was Charlotte’s obsession that had made her into a vampire. Now she felt endlessly responsible for the dancer.

“However,” he went on, “I won’t live under the shadow of any threat. I had enough of that with Kristian. We’re free now. I refuse to fear Violette.”

“I’m not afraid of her. I made her.” Charlotte knelt beside him, her face shining in the candlelight. “She’s like my mother, daughter, sister –” Karl was glad she didn’t add
lover
“– and I won’t turn my back on her.”

“Of course not, but that doesn’t mean she’s not dangerous. The last time I saw the three supposed ‘angels’, they warned me against her. Although I don’t trust them, I think the warning was genuine.” Memory enveloped him. He felt the frost-burn of the
Weisskalt
and saw the three – angels or devils, they had been more than vampires – leaping like jets of fire into the black cauldron of space. Simon, Fyodor, Rasmila – who also called themselves by mythical names: Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof.

Karl wondered what had become of them.

“We should be cautious, that’s all.”

Her hand, rosy with stolen blood, rested on his thigh. “Yes, but we must remain friendly with her. If we avoid her, that may make her more dangerous.”

She looked anxious for his reaction, but for once he agreed with her. “You’re right, beloved. Safer to keep an eye on her, no?”

Charlotte relaxed. “It will be all right, Karl. Play for me again.”

This time she remained beside him, sitting on the carpet with her head resting on his thigh as he played. The strings were responsive under his fingers; he’d lost none of his once-human touch. The slow melody drew them deeper into the lake of sensuality. Sharing a victim had generated a richer desire that they could only sate on each other. Each felt the moment drawing nearer… the unutterable joy of fulfilment becoming deliciously, languorously inevitable.

Karl played the last note, and leaned down to kiss Charlotte. Her tongue touched his lips, parted his teeth; he tasted blood in the sweetness of her mouth.

“I always remember the first time you kissed me,” she whispered. “Do you?”

“In the garden at Parkland Hall, on the bridge. I had tried for so long not to give in.”

“And you said that you were bound to hurt me.”

“But that night you came to my room anyway,” he said, his words running into hers. “I knew that if we went any further I might be unable to control the blood thirst, but I couldn’t stop.”

“Nor could I. I didn’t care about the consequences, my reputation or anything. Even when you said you couldn’t marry me. The secrecy was terrible. It almost broke my heart, knowing it couldn’t last, but not knowing why.”

“I could hardly have told you I was a vampire.”

“I wish you had, instead of the way I did find out! But I can’t regret it. The secrecy was also delicious, knowing we shared a bond that no one around us guessed.”

“Your father would have wished to kill me,” Karl said, smiling.

“And I thought David
had
killed you. Gods, when I thought I’d never see you again – I’ve no idea why I didn’t die of a broken heart.”

“Because you’re strong.”

“No… because I couldn’t bear to believe you were gone forever. I thought if I hung on long enough, I could will you back into existence.”

“In a way, you did. Ah, but I would not have put you through what happened for anything.”

“But it was inevitable,” she said, “from that moment on the bridge…”

Their mouths touched. A faint, unwelcome sense of intrusion made Karl draw away from her. He sat back in the chair, sighing.

“What is it?” she asked, puzzled.

“You are not concentrating,” he said. “We have visitors.”

* * *

Not visitors, but a deputation, Charlotte observed, trying to be as effortlessly courteous as Karl. Ilona, Karl’s wayward daughter; blue-eyed, callous Pierre; Stefan and his mute twin, Niklas. With them came two immortals whom Charlotte had never met: Rachel, a white, rarefied creature with scarlet hair, and a small, monk-like man named John.

Charlotte was always pleased to see Stefan. She greeted him with a kiss. He smiled, but his bright, cornflower-blue gaze avoided hers.

“What brings you here?” she asked.

“This is a little awkward,” he said softly, moving to Niklas’s side. Both blond and china-skinned, their only physical difference was eye-colour. Niklas’s irises were pale gold. His movements echoed Stefan’s in mindless, silent reflection of his twin.

“Don’t be coy,” Ilona snapped. “We’re here to talk about Violette Lenoir.” As always she looked exquisite, a perfect fashion plate with her bobbed hair, a sleek unstructured dress of dusky red flowing to just below her knees, a black silk rose on one hip.

“What is there to say about her?” Charlotte was instantly defensive. Karl quietly took the visitors’ coats, betraying no reaction.

“You tell us,” said Ilona, “what there is to say about Violette.”

Without asking, Ilona wound up the gramophone and put on a record. The thin, cheerful lilt of a jazz band made an incongruous background as the vampires seated themselves around the drawing room. How awkward, Charlotte thought, that they had no social niceties to ease the atmosphere; she couldn’t even offer them a drink. Like birds of prey they settled and gazed unblinking from lovely, piercing eyes. All watching her.

Charlotte busied herself stoking the fire and lighting lamps. As she finished, Karl came to stand beside her near the fireplace. Rachel, too, remained on her feet. She seemed restless, repeatedly touching her neck with both hands.

“Do you really think it’s fair,” Charlotte said, “to discuss Violette when she’s not here to speak for herself?”

“You wouldn’t want her here,” said Rachel. “Believe me.”

“Why?” Charlotte glanced at Karl, chilled.

John, the hard-eyed stranger, said, “Tell them.”

Again Rachel scratched at her throat. “A vampire who places herself in the public eye is unnatural. We should exist as chameleons in the dusk. No human should know our faces or names. She’s breaking the laws.”

“There is no law,” Charlotte said impatiently. “What does it matter if she’s famous? No one will guess what she is.”

“Someone might, if she reaches seventy or eighty without a line on her face,” Pierre drawled. He didn’t appear to be taking this seriously. Rachel shot him a vicious glance.

“It’s not just that,” she went on. “There’s something wrong about her. It’s no secret that she believes herself to be Lilith, the progenitor of all vampires. She’s plainly mad and too powerful for her own good.”