The Dark Blood of Poppies (55 page)

Feeling calm, Charlotte saw them as if through a lens. How distant they looked, like figures in a play. The ghastliness of her plan infused her like cold madness. Perhaps she had gone mad; there was no better explanation.

Karl had said, “Be gentle with them.” She tried to speak kindly, but her tone could not shield them from her stark words.

“I don’t want to stand in the way of Henry’s happiness,” she began. “And he said he wanted to see me in a coffin. Well, so be it.”

“What are you talking about?” said Anne.

“I’m thinking of Henry. His family are strict churchgoers. A divorce would be scandalous and messy, and might sour things between him and his fiancée. But if I were dead, everything would be simple, wouldn’t it?”

Henry stared at her, sweat beading on his flushed face. She thought,
I really should not have fed on him… but his blood was irresistible.

“You can’t just pretend to be dead,” said David.

“I’m not talking about pretending,” she said. “I’m talking of a legitimate death certificate and a real burial. Strictly speaking, I’m not really alive anyway. At least, no longer human.”

Henry sat down heavily on the sofa. David said hoarsely, “For God’s sake, Charli, what are you proposing?”

“The doctor pronounces me dead. You place me in a coffin and bury me. Henry’s free to remarry. Well, why not?”

They looked stricken, as if this were some black joke. She saw their faces as if through gauze. Mentally she was travelling away from them, cutting the chains.

“Stop this,” David said. Madeleine’s eyes were round with disbelief.

“It sounds a perfectly good idea to me,” Elizabeth said acidly.

“A few conditions: hold the funeral as quickly and quietly as possible. I’ll pay, of course. And don’t let the undertaker touch me. I wouldn’t appreciate being embalmed.”

“How – how –?” Henry stammered.

“Like this,” Charlotte said softly. She sat beside him and composed herself, arms at her sides, head tipped back. She made her slow heartbeat stop completely. She remained like that, not breathing, not blinking, until they began to edge nervously towards her.

“Charlotte?” said Anne. She shook her arm hesitantly, then gripped her wrist. “My God, there’s no pulse!” Anne shook her, but Charlotte was a glass-eyed rag doll in her hands. “Charlotte!”

Their horror was tangible. With a gasp, Madeleine backed away and ran out of the room.

Charlotte looked up at Henry’s white stare, Anne and David’s consternation. Only Elizabeth’s supercilious face was blank. Then she stirred and sat up. They all started violently.

“Do you see?” she said. “The doctor will be convinced I’m dead. Tell him I fell ill after the funeral. When you bury me, I won’t really stay in the coffin, of course. I’ll vanish.”

David stood frowning, battling to maintain his composure. Eventually he said quietly, “I’m going to see how Maddy is,” and he turned and walked out.

Anne ran after him. “David!”

“I refuse to have anything to do with this grotesque charade!” he called over his shoulder. Anne hesitated in the doorway, swore under her breath, then marched back to Charlotte.

“You can’t mean to go through with this!”

“Why not?”

“It’s too horrible! And the doctor will want an inquest on a young woman who dies for no reason.”

“Oh no, he won’t. I’ll see to that.”

“I think we should let her do it,” said Elizabeth. Her hard brown eyes met Charlotte’s. Although there was little affection between them, they’d long ago reached a truce. “For Henry’s sake. I’ll make the arrangements, if the rest of you can’t face it.”

Anne was shaking her head, her face a mask of dismay. “But you won’t really be dead, will you?”

Charlotte spoke gently. “No, but you can forget me then, or at least let go. Let yourselves
believe
I’m dead. Because actually I am. Undead.” She touched Anne’s cheek. “It’s for the best.”

Anne, for once, permitted the touch. Charlotte closed her eyes, feeling madness rushing around her, like a gale through a dark cathedral, like the earth walls of her father’s grave. And she thought,
I can’t make them accept me but at least they don’t hate me. That will have to be enough.

A
lone in the library, Robyn dreamed. She seemed to be in the nursery again, with figures whispering around her. Everything had the understated malevolence of a nightmare. The light was flat grey on heaped shadows, while the walls and ceiling tilted at terrifying angles. In the greyness were two ghosts. One was Rasmila, the other a slender man as pale as Rasmila was dark.

They whispered urgently to each other, their words nonsensical but unspeakably sinister.

“She is the one Lilith loves. If she comes here… jealousy… he will destroy her, he will break her wings…
He can do what Simon cannot.
”

Then she dreamed she was breaking glass cases, tearing birds off their perches, snapping their reed-like bones and shredding their feathers, weeping bitterly because she didn’t want to destroy their beauty, even if it was dead beauty.

“Robyn? Such groans!”

She started. Sebastian was there, holding her hand.

“Oh, I was having awful dreams,” she said, annoyed at her own imagination.

“Don’t dream in this house,” he said wryly. “It might come true.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.” She got up, shaking off the nightmare. In retrospect it seemed a waking dream, a bizarre train of thought into which she had drifted while waiting for Sebastian. “Where have you been? You told me to stay here because you had a surprise for me. That was four hours ago!”

Sebastian only smiled enigmatically. “Surprises like this can’t be prepared in ten minutes. Come along.”

He led her upstairs to a large bedchamber. Robyn remembered the room as being semi-derelict, nothing in there but a big packing case under a sheet. Now she found the place transformed. There was a fire in the marble grate; even the ancient wallpaper took on a bloom of luxury in the light. Bright Persian rugs lay on the floorboards.

The sight that stopped her breath, however, was a magnificent bed that had appeared from nowhere. A four-poster draped in lavish canopies, it looked pristine, too new for its surroundings.

Robyn held the fabric between her fingers, marvelling at the embroidery. A cream background, hand-sewn with flowers in jewel colours and gilt thread. And swathes of dark blue Chinese silk, sewn with dragons, deer, and storks. Months, if not years of work.

“Do you approve?” Sebastian enquired.

“Wonderful… but where did it come from? It looks old, yet brand new.”

His smile was one of unaffected pleasure. “You saw the packing case? The bed was delivered to the house in 1735, a wedding present that was never used. So it is old but perfect. I never had a reason to assemble it, until now.”

“The colours are so bright!” she said. “Silly, but I imagined antique furniture being as faded then as it is now.”

“Well, it wasn’t,” he said. Amazing to think that he remembered those times. That he could be so old, yet eternally young… “It ought to be christened, don’t you think?” Taking her hands, he pulled her on to the bed. “Or whatever the infernal opposite of christening is.”

“Wait,” Robyn said, laughing. “Fold back the covers first. It would be sacrilege to damage this beautiful embroidery.”

In their ecstasy, they allowed themselves to experience happiness. For once, they held nothing back. This was perhaps the first time they had loved each other without artifice.

Robyn was almost out of her mind with joy. She never wanted this to end; to stroke Sebastian’s beautiful body and his dark hair, to have those seductive eyes endlessly on her; to have him all around her and inside her, flesh soldered to flesh. And more, to know that his passion was as desperate, ravenous and blissful as hers. To inspire such fever in him…

She was grateful to Rasmila now. That experience had taught him, as nothing else could, that it was Robyn he really wanted.

Climaxing in lightning, in rains of fire, Robyn drew his head down to her shoulder. She wanted his mouth on her throat, wanted the pain. She would have given him anything. She had no virtue left to sacrifice, but she could give him this: the deeper sacrifice of her life-fluid.

When Sebastian lifted his head at last, he seemed overwhelmed that she’d given her blood willingly. And for that look of wonder, she could forgive him anything.

“Is it over, then?” she whispered as they lay together in tangled sheets. Her fatigue was so heavy she thought she might never move again.

“What?”

“The war between us.”

“If you want it to be.”

“Where was it getting us?” she asked. “Trying to ruin each other, break each other’s heart… what was the point?”

“To nourish our pride,” said Sebastian. He’d never looked more desirable; his hair disordered, his face coloured by her blood. “It seems pointless now. Dry, dead, unimportant.”

“Shall we call a truce, then?”

“Only a truce, my lady?” he said. “A peace treaty, at the very least.”

* * *

Sebastian stood watching Robyn as she slept. She was sleeping more as the days went by. Too pale. However careful he tried to be, each time they made love her languor deepened.

He was troubled. The emotions aroused by the mere sight of her face disturbed him.
Do I worship her, or only her human life-energy?

There may be other women prettier, younger, or sweeter in nature
, he thought,
but none of them is Robyn. No
,
I need Robyn for herself. With all the faults that make her so like me, in all her magnificent warmth, she is unique. No one else will suffice. Ever.

The knowledge made him feel agitated, terrified.
In loving her I’m acting completely against my instincts. How has she done this? She’s changed me, and in doing so she’s destroyed what I was.

She made me admit my feelings, but she has never once said, “I love you,” in return.

So she has won the game. All I can do in retaliation is to keep her here, and thus control her… but for how long? Until she grows old? Will I still love an old woman, out of her mind because a vampire has kept her prisoner for years?

Verging on horror, he reached down and stroked her hair. Robyn pushed her head against his hand, smiling in her sleep.

No bad dreams now.

* * *

After Charlotte left, Karl half-wished he’d gone with her. He had no fear of the Neville family’s wrath or their opinion of him.
For Charlotte’s sake
, he thought,
to prove she hasn’t deserted them for a fiend who tricked and ruined her, but for someone who truly loves her, I should have gone. And for the respect I owe Dr Neville, and the affection I once felt for them.

Yet here I am, putting Violette before her… again, for Charlotte’s sake.

Charlotte telephoned with the news of her father’s death. She would stay for the funeral… But when it was over, she called again to say she was staying a while longer.

“I can’t explain over the telephone,” she said, sounding too calm, not herself. “I’ll be a few days, that’s all. There’s something I have to sort out with my family.”

Dr Neville’s death saddened him. Karl had nothing but fond memories of his time in Cambridge and at Parkland Hall, until Kristian’s wiles had caused him to betray himself. Neville had been a kindly man, generous enough to welcome a foreigner, Karl, into his home.
For which I thanked him by stealing his daughter, drawing other vampires to the family
.

Still, Karl dwelled for a while on memories: their long philosophical discussions in which Dr Neville had treated no theory as too outlandish. Even speculation of the Crystal Ring’s existence.

Karl was in Violette’s apartment, aware of every human in the house and those who came and went. He could hear dancers in the studio, the pianist starting and stopping, Violette’s crisp voice giving instructions. And on lower floors, seamstresses, set designers, kitchen staff at their work… even the quick warmth of a cat, twining around the legs of a delivery boy. Normality…

Then Karl sensed shadows, presences poised on the threshold between Raqia and reality. He looked up as they coalesced before him.

Two angels, swathed in long hair: midnight and ice-white silk.

“Rasmila, Fyodor; this is unexpected.” Karl rose to greet them, startled but careful not to show it.

“Oh, I think you knew we’d come back,” said Rasmila. Her eyes were spheres of obsidian, lit by white comets and blue stars. Karl still found it difficult to look directly at her.

“Fyodor got his wish,” said Karl. “Lilith removed me from Simon’s presence, to the relief of all. Did that help your cause?”

Karl guessed, from the tightening of their faces, that they still hadn’t found favour with Simon.

“You’ve no cause to mock us,” Fyodor said sharply. “I can’t see you as an enemy, however hard I try. I asked Charlotte for help and she obliged. I’m grateful.”

“We are not Lilith’s enemies, whatever you think,” said Rasmila. “We want to help her.”