The Dark Blood of Poppies Read online

  ALSO BY FREDA WARRINGTON

  and available from Titan Books

  A Taste of Blood Wine

  A Dance in Blood Velvet

  COMING SOON

  The Dark Arts of Blood

  The Dark Blood of Poppies

  Print edition ISBN: 9781781167076

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781781167274

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: May 2014

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Freda Warrington asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. Copyright © 1995, 2014 Freda Warrington. All Rights Reserved.

  “Sword of Light” copyright Horslips. Used by permission.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  This book is dedicated to our friends,

  the Warringtons in the USA:

  Freda and Ralph, Danny and Alisa and their families,

  with love and thanks.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also by Freda Warrington

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prelude Ireland, 1704

  PART ONE

  1. 1926: Cruel Angel

  2. Friends and Strangers

  3. The Claws of the Owl

  4. Moon in Velvet

  5. Angels Falling

  6. Appeasement

  7. House of Thorned Vines

  8. Prayers and Confessions

  9. Red Like the Rose

  PART TWO

  10. Sword of Light

  11. Silver, Close as Gold

  12. Shadow Dance

  13. The Claret-coloured Veil

  14. Firebird

  15. Avatar

  16. A Ghost Among Ghosts

  PART THREE

  17. Vampire in Black

  18. Swallowed in the Mist

  19. Death and the Maiden

  20. Hieros Gamos

  21. The Chalice of Crystal Tears

  22. White to Contagion, Prescient to Fire

  Envoi Flame to Ice

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Coming Soon from Titan Books

  PRELUDE

  IRELAND, 1704

  On the night the vampires came, Sebastian Pierse was thinking of vengeance, grief and fire. Perhaps it was his anguish that drew the vampires to him. He gripped his injured right arm but hardly felt the pain, or the hot blood running from the gash to mingle with rain on the cobblestones. With sweat and rain running into his eyes, he put back his head and uttered a raw scream of desolation.

  His cry rang off the walls and was swallowed in the downpour. The courtyard was the heart of the magnificent house he had built for his wife, Mary, but in darkness it was forbidding: a roofless prison.

  Eight years he had worked to create the mansion beside the River Blackwater: the grandest house County Waterford had ever seen. He’d dreamed of taking Mary from their draughty tower house to the residence she deserved. The house was days from completion. And now he was going to burn it to the ground.

  He’d planned to name it Mary Hall after her. Not now. They would never live here now.

  Nothing left but to reduce the dream to literal ash.

  Sebastian stared at rows of lightless windows above him. His overwrought mind played tricks; he saw shapes moving across the panes. Who’s inside? Those damned shadows again!

  What will it take, he wondered savagely, to set this place afire? An English army, Cromwell’s or William’s, adepts at gutting tower houses and castles – where are they when they’re needed? Can one man do this alone, with only peat and firewood to set the blaze?

  Yes, he told himself. I’ll burn the place, whatever it takes.

  But he could barely move his arm. He was shivering. His shirt clung to him, linen and lace soaked with watered blood.

  When Mary had told him the truth in the old house, that primitive stone pile, he felt no urge to punish her physically. Nor even to seek out her lover and take revenge with a sword-thrust. No, his first thought was the house, symbol of their future. But in a few words his wife had turned the future to winter.

  The child isn’t yours, Sebastian.

  The sight of her haunted him: her long, wheaten skeins of hair, the curve of her belly under a white chemise, her face blanching as she confessed. Her hand had groped for a pair of scissors, as if to defend herself, even though he’d never once shown her violence. Instead he’d run out into the night, across the fields and woods of his estate, as if running could purge the grief of betrayal.

  Shadows followed him, like shapes cut from the night. All his life he’d been self-contained, unemotional – until tonight. Tonight he’d gone insane.

  He had tripped on a rock, gashing his forearm. The cut went to the bone but he didn’t care.

  After all we did, he thought, to keep our property out of English hands! His ancestors were Anglo-Normans: Catholics who’d come to Ireland in the twelfth century and intermarried with the locals until their English overlords saw them as indistinguishable from the native Irish. Yet Sebastian’s family had resisted all attempts to confiscate their lands.

  My forefathers bested Elizabeth and Cromwell, he thought. God forgive me, I even turned Protestant to outwit William of Orange. So much effort and sacrifice – for nothing! But if I have no descendents to inherit this house, I’m damned if anyone else shall have it. Not Mary, not my brothers, not some accursed English nobleman.

  He swayed, his vision blurring. Now the shadows were moving around the courtyard walls.

  They’d haunted him for years. In the corners of the tower house, flitting between trees when he rode to see his tenant farmers, even writhing on the freshly plastered walls inside the mansion after the artisans had gone home.

  Sebastian planted his feet wide apart to keep his balance. His heart pounded. The eternal presence of the shadows had shaped him into a brooding introvert who showed his wife too little affection.

  “You are never here!” Mary had cried. “Always on your farms, or cloistered with your architects and builders. No wonder I couldn’t get with child. I never see you!”

  What defence was that against the sin of adultery?

  Set the fire, he thought. Quickly, while I can still stand.

  The black sky split open and the rain became a deluge. Cursing, he ran, his boots slipping on cobblestones, to a cellar door behind the kitchen. There were logs and kindling
in the cellar, he knew. Wait until the rain stops, he thought, lifting a latch and stumbling down the steps. Then I’ll do it. And with luck I’ll die in the blaze.

  Inside the darkness was absolute, but he knew the cellar’s shape: a chamber like a long, curved tunnel with recesses for storage. Racks were set ready for beer barrels and wine. Just a store-room… yet it held an atmosphere of intense menace, like an ancient torture chamber. Sebastian sank against a wall, cradling his right arm. All he could see was a patch of stormy sky outside.

  Then someone shut the door.

  Hinges creaked. The strip of grey gloom narrowed and vanished.

  Sebastian scrambled to his feet. “Who’s there?” He spoke in English and again in Gaelic. No reply. He started forward, then heard a footstep.

  He was trembling as much with rage as fear. How dare anyone interrupt his plan? And why had he been foolish enough to rush out without a sword or pistol?

  His arm was very bad now. He’d lost feeling in his hand.

  “Sebastian,” the intruder whispered. A woman’s voice, with an unknown accent.

  “Who is it? Show yourself!”

  He saw eyes in the dark, a faint gold aura… Then came a wash of candlelight, painting the walls ochre and throwing lurid shadows from the feet of three overwhelming figures.

  Sebastian couldn’t breathe. In that annihilating moment, all human concerns fell away.

  Standing before him was a magnificent golden man with extraordinary yellow eyes, like a cat. He shone.

  “Sebastian.” His voice was beautiful yet metallic. “I am Simon. Don’t be afraid. We have come only for your blood and your being.”

  In blinding terror, he knew. This was a fallen angel, Lucifer robed in glory. And for his sins, they were about to dispatch him to hell.

  He crossed himself with his good hand. The golden man laughed. His gaze fastened on Sebastian’s bloodstained sleeve.

  “What have you done to your arm?”

  In panic Sebastian looked around and saw the other two behind him, trapping him in the centre of a triangle. One was an attenuated man with snow-white skin and hair. The third, who held a candle, was female. He’d never seen anyone like her, even in Dublin or London. Her skin was dark brown like a nut, her hair a long fall of blue-black silk.

  They wore satin robes, heavy with embroidered symbols, befitting their unearthly nature. They were too perfect, frozen in beauty like painted statues. Yet, paradoxically, they appeared so vital and full of fire that humans were flabby sleepwalkers by comparison.

  Sebastian’s mind evaporated.

  “Is this punishment for what I did?” he breathed.

  “What did you do?” said the golden one, Simon, amused.

  “Renounced my religion. Became a Protestant. A sin, I know, but the only way to keep our estate out of English hands!”

  “We have nothing to do with that,” said Simon. He came closer. “God recognises no sects. No, Sebastian, we are not here to punish you. We have watched you for a long time.”

  Simon placed his hands on Sebastian’s shoulders. His eyes were new-minted sovereigns, spellbinding. He lifted the injured arm, peeled back the wet sleeve and began to lick the wound. Sebastian, horrified, could do nothing to stop him.

  “Why?” he whispered. “What are you?” But as he spoke, he knew. Not angels or devils but the faerie folk, the old Irish gods who existed for thousands of years before Christianity drove them out. Children of the goddess Danu…

  “Vampires,” said the woman. From behind, she put her arms around his lean waist. “Immortals. Others. My name is Rasmila and our friend is Fyodor. Don’t be afraid. Why are you here alone, in such pain?”

  Hypnotized, Sebastian answered. “Tell me, how better could I love my wife than by building her this house? But she says I never loved her. Ten years we’ve longed for a child. When she gave me good news, I was so happy, I wanted her to live like a duchess as she deserved… until I found out the babe isn’t mine. A servant told me she has a lover in Dublin, that she took him because I couldn’t give her children. So I asked, and she confessed. She says I’m at fault, that I’m never with her, that she had to prove she isn’t barren. But I was working for her while she acted the brood mare with another man! And now she loves him and I have no wife, no child, nothing. I built the house for nothing. Now it must be destroyed.”

  “Poor Sebastian,” Rasmila said into his shoulder.

  “But what are you thinking?” said Fyodor, stroking his neck. His eyes were silver, pitiless. Their hands felt hot like the sun, cold like porcelain. “Destroying this house is not revenge. Bloodshed is revenge!”

  Simon lowered the arm from his lips. Sebastian looked at the torn, discoloured skin as if it did not belong to him.

  “Fyodor is right. The house is innocent. If you burn it, you only hurt yourself. But if you desire true revenge – we’ll give you that.”

  “How?” Sebastian shivered with awe and fearful excitement.

  “Give yourself to us, and receive all the power you desire,” said Rasmila.

  “What’s the price? My soul?”

  “You think you possess a soul?” said Fyodor contemptuously. “You are only a thought in God’s head.”

  “But His thoughts can live forever.” Simon’s large hand, with fingers like gold rods, hovered over his chest. Sebastian felt his life caught in a metal-cold balance.

  “You were my choice,” said Rasmila. “Mine. You are beautiful and perfect. We love you, Sebastian. Whom do you love? Mary?”

  “I love…” His knees buckled. “This house.”

  Fyodor grinned. “Then sweep your enemies from your path, and you’ll be free!”

  “Free?”

  “To follow another path,” said Simon.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Give us your body and your blood. In return we shall grant life eternal.”

  “No,” he said weakly. “No.”

  He knew they would have their way. Yet he sank into their embrace still half-resisting, thinking, God help me! Save me!

  God remained mute.

  “We are the wings of heaven,” whispered Rasmila. Her kohl-lined eyes ensorcelled him; her warm mouth met his, igniting all his nerves. As she began to make love to him, he couldn’t resist, even with Simon and Fyodor watching. He let her unlace his shirt and breeches, barely aware of his injured arm. He felt her fingers slide against his bare skin; he kissed the silky flesh of her neck and breasts. Astonishment and desire took him in a flash flood, extinguishing all the frustration of his poisoned love for Mary. In an unholy dream he pushed her down onto the flagstones, running his hand along the firm thigh beneath her robe. Underneath she was softly, sweetly naked.

  Oh, she was human. Oh God, she was.

  He entered her urgently, oblivious to the fact that two deities, like gold and silver flames, bore witness. Perhaps he was failing some test, giving in to temptation, but he didn’t care. The fire was everything. She clutched him, kissing his throat, laughing and gasping encouragement. He could not hold back.

  The fire peaked, so complete and perfect that he sobbed. But it was over too soon. Then his whole body ached with cold, and terror reclaimed him. His only impulse was to haul himself out of her arms, out of this madness.

  Rasmila held him fast, seeming angry. Such strength, for a woman! He hadn’t satisfied her but he didn’t care, only wanted to escape the eerily dispassionate ferocity with which she gripped him, her arms around his back, her legs locked with his. Then – she bit his throat.

  The attack came from two directions. Rasmila’s teeth sent pain plunging so deep that it pierced his heart. And the pale one, Fyodor, closed his mouth on Sebastian’s arm. He did not lick the wound as Simon had done, but savagely re-opened it and sucked hard until blood flowed again.

  Sebastian began to choke for breath. He knew this faintness was the beginning of death. He tried to fight, but couldn’t. He was fading. Dying.

  “Yes, you will die.” Simo
n’s voice echoed down a great tunnel. “But you will live again. You will be like us.”

  A god, he thought, as he was jerked out of his body and into a burning, gold and purple firmament. A milk-skinned betrayer with the jewelled eyes of a saint.

  * * *

  When Sebastian returned to the old house, he found Mary fully dressed in her room, throwing clothes into a trunk. Her lover was there: a thin-faced, overdressed milksop of a man he’d never seen before. He’d come to take Mary away. Cheek of the Devil!

  Seeing him, they both shrank in terror, clutching each other. How cold and bare was this stone chamber, but Mary had forfeited the luxury of the new house. He wondered how he looked; demonic, he imagined, his clothes ragged and bloody, his face luminous with the light of undeath.

  “There’s nothing to fear,” Mary told her lover. “My husband can’t stop us. Tell him I’m going with you!”

  Sebastian killed the man before he opened his mouth. Simply tore out his throat with his fingernails, stating, “I’d rather she’d had some peasant under a hedgerow than you.”

  Mary screamed. She tried to escape but he held her easily with one hand, even though she was a tall, strong woman. Even though his hand had been useless a few hours earlier. Now there was no sign of injury on the flawless skin.

  Sebastian felt completely calm. Unmoved by her terror, or even her infidelity. Such human concerns no longer mattered. Only her beauty moved him; she was still magnificent with her luxuriant hair and the sweet rosy glow of her skin…

  “All I wanted was to give you a son!” she cried.

  “I would rather have had you, and no son.”

  “I loved you, but you never wanted me!”

  “You are mistaken,” he said quietly. “Let me show you how I wanted you.” And he bit her throat. Tore her abdomen, until his whole world was a scarlet sea.

  Then he wept. His tears flowed out with her blood; and all the passion he hadn’t realised he felt, all the passion he’d neglected to show her, was distilled in the crimson heart of that moment.

  His need sated, he let her lifeless body slip to the floor. Servants came running in, screaming, but he walked past them as if nothing had happened. Walked into the darkness and vanished.