The Dark Blood of Poppies (64 page)

“I suppose this is what I wanted,” she murmured, “to be out of harm’s way… but where did all this hatred come from – mine, and theirs?”

“I wish I had an answer,” said Karl.

“If Josef’s right and Lilith exists only in my own mind – why do others see me as Lilith too? They believe I am Death. The Black Goddess. So now they think they’ve banished Death… but that is impossible. It’s a ludicrous notion, but they need to believe it because they hate me simply for existing… and I don’t know why.”

Her words sent a chill through him. Irrational, but nothing here held logic.

“Nevertheless, we can’t give up yet,” he said firmly. “Let’s search for a way out.”

He moved away from her, seeking the outside wall, but Violette remained where she was. Karl looked back. “We should stay together. It’s too easy to lose each other in this darkness.”

“No, wait,” she said. Her face floated like an opal on a dark mirror. “Not that way. We must go further in.”

Turning, she walked directly away from him. Karl had to follow, or lose sight of her. In doing so, he felt a subtle shift as if he’d surrendered his fate to hers: as if he’d willingly become the servant of the dark goddess who possessed Violette.

* * *

Although Karl couldn’t see the walls around them, he sensed them by the subtle movement of the air. He felt they were in a cold, haunted room, with a high ceiling and corridors leading from every corner. Then his outstretched hand made contact with an object at waist height. An edge, a flat surface, rough and dusty under his fingertips. A table, an altar?

Violette moved ahead of him, and he almost lost sight of her. Hurrying after her – relieved to see the glimmer of her arms again – he felt the walls closing in. They were in a tunnel. The air stank of damp stone and mildew, like a deserted house.

He touched a wall. How strange it felt, rubbery and gelid yet brick-solid, all at once. He searched for a door, found none.

The tunnel gave way to a square void in which a cold draught sank from above. Violette began very slowly to climb unseen stairs.

Karl groped for a handrail in the blackness, and found one. The treads felt solid beneath his feet.

“Whenever anyone tries to pin Lilith down,” Violette said, “she flees. Gilgamesh drove her out of the willow tree. Adam drove her out of the garden and she fled to a desolate place… This is desolate enough, isn’t it? But it isn’t the desert.”

“What desert?” Karl asked.

“When Charlotte transformed me, I found myself in the most beautiful wilderness. Sand like dried blood, rocks like rubies. I imagined the place, I suppose, but I belonged there. It was as pure as fire. That is Lilith’s home, a wasteland among wolves and owls…”

The stairs bent at a right angle and ran up to a landing. There Violette stopped, touching something in the darkness. Karl went to her side and felt panelling under his hands.

“A door,” she said. She found the handle, and the door swung open without a sound.

A huge chamber lay beyond. The blackness was no longer absolute; Karl made out faint shapes sketched in dust. Chairs and sofas, the hint of a fireplace at the far end, framed paintings on the walls.

Violette caught her breath.

“I’ve been here before,” she said.

They walked onward. The darkness weighed on Karl like fear. There were strange objects everywhere, tauntingly hard to see. Angular silhouettes: furniture, cabinets? Demon heads, with curling animal horns?

In this surreal place, he became convinced that the unseen faces in the portraits were those of all his victims, staring at him in blank accusation. And he was trapped with them, for eternity.

You’ll go to hell with Lilith.

In rising panic, Karl went to the wall on his right. He found an alcove, felt some cobwebbed fabric like a curtain. Behind was a smooth surface. A window?

He struck the surface with his fist as if to break the glass and touch the outside world. The blow jarred his arm, re-igniting pain. No glass, no window. Only the nightmare stuff of their prison.

“What are you doing?” Violette sounded anxious.

“Just exploring.” Swallowing dread, he went back to her.

“I know this place,” she repeated. “I’ve made this journey before.”

“So, where are we?”

She led him across the chamber to another door. Beyond was a further cavernous room, more strange shadows on the inky air. He touched carved chair backs, traced the shapes of candlesticks on a sideboard. Everything he touched seemed to radiate sighing evil… like the ancient tunnel where Kristian had met his death.

“It’s where Robyn…” Her voice faltered. “It’s like the house where I found Robyn.”

“But it isn’t,” said Karl. “It can’t be, can it?”

More rooms. Doors everywhere, but none to the outside. A long, bare corridor. He could see Violette’s face and arms, her hair a raven shadow against the white flesh, but their surroundings remained obscure.

More stairs. Violette ascended like a sleepwalker, slow but sure of her purpose. Karl said, “You seem to know where you’re going.”

She stopped and glanced back at him. “This is my journey, Karl. You don’t have to come.”

“But I will, if you’ve no objection.”

“Only you could sound sardonic in this place.”

“But where is this journey leading you?”

“I’ve no idea,” Violette said with a shiver.

Night lay all around them. The house was labyrinthine, infinite.
We can never escape
, Karl realised,
because we are walking through Lilith’s mind.

At the top of the stairs were more corridors, endless bare rooms. They opened a door and saw a rocking horse formed of dust in the darkness, glaring at them from black wooden orbs. Doll’s houses, toys, prams, the debris of a hundred lost childhoods lay heaped like ashes.

The nursery, for no clear reason, filled Karl with terror. Violette’s face mirrored his fear. Her hand hovered near his arm, as if she were on the point of seeking physical reassurance.

She caught a sharp breath; he thought she was going to weep. Such grief hung in this room. Ghosts crying soundlessly for lost children.

But she only said, “We must go on. This is the way through.”

Another door led from the nursery to a narrow passageway. Violette guided him like a candle-flame until they reached a small lobby. The air seemed warmer here, but it was the warmth of airlessness, suffocation.

Over Violette’s shoulder Karl saw an arched doorway leading to a room so immense he could sense neither walls nor ceiling. But there was a hint of light. A pewter glow sifted down from above as if through a high cupola, like dusty blades of moonlight illuminating nothing.

Another mystery. He felt they were moving towards the heart of the maze, where some fearful revelation waited to unleash itself.

Violette stopped in the archway.

“Karl,” she said, “I have to go on.”

Was she asking him to stay behind? Her eyes were black with fear, the pupils huge in rings of lapis. “Alone?”

“It’s your choice. But if you come with me… you can’t go back.” Her breath quickened, as if a tiny lightning fork had stabbed her. “I want you to come with me.”

“As you wish.” He spoke impersonally, but the midnight air echoed with warnings. This threshold was a point of no return, like a cliff-edge. If he crossed the boundary, something would happen that could never be undone.

Violette took his hand. The act was out of character, a voluntary touch of reassurance, not conflict. Karl was so startled, so transfixed by this web of mystery, that he went with her.

They walked to the centre of the chamber, into the pool of coppery phantom light. The doorway vanished in darkness behind them. Facing each other in the heart of nothingness, Karl and Violette were the only creatures who existed in the universe.

“It’s here,” she said faintly. “Here is the place where it ends. There is nowhere else to go… except into each other.”

The eerie look on her face unnerved him. He tried to remain impartial.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t speak to me like Josef.” Her voice shook a little. “I mean that where we go is irrelevant. It’s what we do that matters.” He said nothing, unable to believe what she was implying. “Karl, do I have to spell it out?”

Karl froze. An inner chill seized his heart and crawled along his limbs. Denial. She moved as if to touch him, but he caught her wrists and stopped her. “You are not yourself. You don’t mean it.”

“I do,” she said. “We must.”

“Why?”

She stared at him like a wild creature, Lilith rising to obliterate Violette. “To open the gates. So I can become my true self. This is what the goddess demands, that I face my fears and dive through the veil. If I don’t, I will
never
see or understand the truth.”

“But… you have no desire for men.”

“That’s irrelevant. This is symbolism, energy, magic. Lilith’s mystery.”

“But I saw how you were when Simon and Lancelyn tried to violate you. Your revulsion. It almost killed you! I can’t – you cannot ask me to inflict such misery upon you.”

He hoped to deter her, but she persisted. “That’s why it must be you, Karl. There’s no one else I trust not to use me.”

“My God.” He released her wrists and turned away, at a loss. She moved round to face him again. He thought she had lost her mind.

“Am I so disgusting to you?” she said.

“You know you are beautiful. You don’t need flattery to convince you.”

“Beauty? What has that to do with desire? You’ve always been so cold to me, Karl, so indifferent. No lustful looks behind Charlotte’s back.”

“I hardly think you would have appreciated it,” he said coolly. “You should know by now that a vampire’s desires are never simplistic or random.”

“Again, that’s why it must be you. No man forces himself upon Lilith.
She
chooses.”

The burning force of her will alarmed him. Whatever he did now, he could not win. His only defence was reason.

Even as a human, Karl had hated the tawdry heartlessness of coupling without love. That sensibility drew women to him, unaware they were offering him the temptation of blood, not sex. But Charlotte, who woke every possible desire in him, was his soul’s companion. He wanted no one else.

“What would Charlotte say to this?” he said. “She is your friend. Don’t ask me to betray her.”

“I am not asking for betrayal, but
transformation
. Charlotte would understand.”

“I doubt it.”

“Then you don’t know her. This is what Lancelyn tried to do, but he couldn’t, because he was the wrong one. This is not a prosaic act, Karl, but sacred magic, the alchemical wedding,
hieros gamos.
”

Violette shed her clothes as she spoke. Her dress, shoes, silk stockings and undergarments of ivory satin. She stood naked before him, long velvet-black hair slipping over her shoulders. Her body was white, slim, long-limbed, the perfectly-honed dancer’s body in which she’d entered reluctant immortality. Despite himself, Karl could not take his eyes from her. Heart-stopping, the lines of her neck and shoulders and her small, rounded breasts tipped with coral. The curve of her hips outlined an alluring symmetry; the dark jewel of her navel and the shadowy triangle between her thighs.

Perfectly artless, she seemed, with her flower-pale skin, innocent violet eyes and the rippling fall of her hair. Karl forgot that he’d ever thought her too perfect to be desirable. This was wrong… but they stood outside reality; the dark goddess possessing him in a dream, like a succubus. He tried to steady his breath but his heart was burning, his whole body liquefying.
Oh God…

She slid her hands over his chest, and began to unbutton his shirt. He stood absolutely still, although the feel of her flesh against his clothed body was unbearably arousing.

He said, “I cannot do this if you hate it.”

“Vanity, Karl.” She slid off his shirt and cast it away, outside the pool of light. And she bit his chest, not enough to draw blood, just hard enough to hurt. His hands came up to enfold her back. Her skin felt smooth over the firm muscles. “It would hurt your ego not to please me, that’s all.”

“Violette.” His control became precarious. Heat prickled a path from his heart to the bitter-sweet pressure at his loins. Unable to look at her, he lowered his head and felt his hair brush hers. “Stop now, or I will not be able to stop.”

“Good. This journey is all we have.” Her fingers, slim and warm, plucked at his trouser buttons. “Will you please help me?”

He met her eyes, and was shocked by the depth of fear there. For all her insistence, the human part of her dreaded this. His arms went around her and he held her against him, pressing his lips to her neck. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered.

She stiffened and pulled back. “Listen to me with your conscience; this is nothing to do with your love for Charlotte, or with infidelity. It’s completely separate. Now I’m going to lie down. You wouldn’t walk away and leave me there in humiliation, would you?”

He could have done that. His only chance to escape was the moment she lay down in the lake of blood-red light. But she looked so vulnerable, stretched out like a lily on obsidian. Like a sacrifice. The black void thrummed with the pressure of its unvoiced designs. He was caught in a dream, a sacred rite.

Quickly he finished undressing and lay beside her. The floor was cold but Violette felt warm. The heat of her flank against him was delicious. He recalled Josef’s description of Lilith as a seductive witch whose embrace brought disaster. It was Lilith who lay before him now, offering an act of magical transfiguration – or threatening the death of love between him and Charlotte.

No one attacked by Lilith was ever the same again. She’d turned on Lancelyn before he could consummate the act, drained him and left him insane. Karl knew she would take his blood, too. She was leading him into the very act he’d dreaded.

Then he knew. Simon had stopped short of raping her, because he had been afraid.

Unknowable darkness waited, yet Karl could not hold back.

His hand travelled over her from neck to thigh, gentle as feathers. Her wide eyes held his; her tongue was poised between her parted lips. He cared passionately that she should not find the act odious. But as he rose over her and kissed her, Violette went rigid.