The Dark Blood of Poppies Read online

  * * *

  Afterwards, he stood on a hill with Simon, Rasmila and Fyodor, looking up at the stars. Nets of light webbed a clear deep sky. Never before had he seen with such clarity, never dreamed that such crystalline beauty was hidden from mortal eyes. He could see for miles: northwards to the River Suir, the towers of Cahir Castle, the Golden Vale of Tipperary and Cashel of the Kings. Close at hand lay his own estate: the stump of the stone tower where Mary lay dead, and the unnamed Hall, a great, pristine mansion like a gold casket swathed in deep blue twilight. He saw the River Blackwater flowing on its dark way; the peaks of the Galtee and Knockmealdown mountains; and in between, a quilt of pasturelands and luxuriant woods, steeped in tints of green and violet and silver. Night-colours he’d never seen before. The air was sweet and icy, like wine.

  “And was your revenge satisfying?” Simon asked.

  “It was meaningless,” said Sebastian.

  Simon nodded as if he understood, but Fyodor said, “To milk your enemies of their blood – meaningless?”

  “I thought it would be a great, affecting tragedy, but it wasn’t. The only thing that mattered…” He struggled to explain, as much to himself as to them. “All that mattered was the blood. I realised as I drank my wife’s blood that no other affection, nothing can hold a candle to that red passion.”

  “Exactly.” Simon spoke intensely. “And now you’re free of your earthly bonds.”

  “Free?” He looked at Simon; awed by his beauty, yet no longer afraid. “What does that mean? I don’t care about Mary, I don’t care about the house or anything, not even the dead infant. If the price of revenge is to care for nothing but blood for eternity, I might as well be dead. You three have done this to me, and I don’t even know why!”

  “Don’t be angry.” Rasmila slipped her hand through his arm. “You’ll find other passions. What will you do now? Stay here, or leave?”

  “What?” Sebastian looked at her, amazed. “I thought you meant to take me with you.”

  “Ah, no,” said Simon. “We are immortals, not nursemaids. We’ve bestowed glorious powers on you, but to learn their use – you are alone.”

  “You can’t leave me like this!” Sebastian felt the absolute terror of abandonment. “Why have you done this to me?”

  “Once or twice in a century,” Rasmila replied, “we choose an individual worthy of our gifts: power over humans, eternal life, a glimpse of heaven. You were my choice, Sebastian. You will be a wonderful immortal. Don’t let me down.”

  Terror subsiding, he realised he was glad. He did not want these divine, malevolent creatures around him. More than ever, he wanted solitude.

  “You want me to prove myself? Or rather, prove to your comrades that you made a good choice?”

  “Of course,” she said stiffly, withdrawing her hands from his arm.

  “Well, you can go to hell, all of you,” he said. He became aware of his blood thirst as a sprawling, uncontrollable entity, his future a wasteland. He sensed nothing of paradise or the faerie realm. “Hell. That is surely where you’re from, is it not?”

  They looked at him with hard, cold eyes, displeased by his ingratitude. He thought, Perhaps they could kill me as easily as they changed me, but I don’t care. I’m not afraid of them anymore.

  “We did not transform you to win love or hate,” Simon said sternly. “Your feelings mean nothing. We are only God’s instruments. You’ll learn that this existence is both a blessing and a curse. The pleasures of immortality carry a severe price: to be alone forever.”

  “Good,” Sebastian said harshly. “You have it the wrong way round, my friends. Solitude is the blessing, blood-hunger the curse.”

  Simon and Rasmila looked at each other; exquisite demons with eyes of flame, disappointed yet amused by his insolence. Sebastian decided to leave before they abandoned him. A small act to show he was not their victim. He walked away through the long grass into the endless dark…

  No one came after him, not even Rasmila.

  He already knew he must leave Ireland. A new world was opening up to him; no longer the one he knew, but a dark twin of its daylight self. So before he left, he paid a last visit to his mansion.

  How often had he walked through these cavernous rooms? First, the entrance hall and kitchens; then up sweeping stairs to the great salon with a double row of long windows, then the library, drawing rooms and dining rooms, and up again to the bedchambers, the nursery… All silent, shadowy, empty. Scents of fresh paint and new timber infused the air. The workmen’s clutter was gone and the rooms were naked, aching to be filled by carpets and furniture, paintings, books and ornaments. To receive the imprint of a new family.

  He’d strolled these rooms with pride. He’d run through them in anguish, cursing as if Mary’s infidelity were their fault. Now he haunted them in a quiet reverie, saying goodbye.

  Someone will live here, he thought, but not me. Some other family will shape these spaces to their own design and it won’t meet with my approval, but…

  A revelation. He still cared about the house after all. The human urge to destroy it had passed. He didn’t even begrudge the place to strangers.

  Euphoria gripped him.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he whispered. “This house still belongs to me. It will always be mine in spirit. Whoever lives here will never be at ease. They will know they are only tenants of an unseen landlord.”

  Time to leave, he thought, but one day… I shall return.

  They’d seduced him with the Devil’s promises, the old gods, then flung him into purgatory. He brooded as he walked away from his house and lands… but in truth, he realised he had wanted this. He’d invited it, drawing the three to him with his love of solitude, the heat of despair and his yearning for fire and vengeance.

  Sebastian was new-born, but he felt ancient. The vampires had only given him what he needed.

  PART ONE

  Man’s daughter she is not, nor Angel’s bride:

  beyond paradise’s prolific marshes

  waiting to be milked

  the unicorn

  carries her, Lilith, who already knows

  the mysterious form of the mandrake root

  and the golem that grows in the kernel. She knows

  that jasper placed in henbane

  causes a mortal sleep, drier and stranger

  than the one fastening on Orpheus’ back

  that in the starred moray’s vulva

  there is a mermaid’s embryo

  in the tiger lily the latex

  that will beget Amazons, and one hundred

  female deities are waiting in the steeped firtree

  in the shape of gold ducklings

  another hundred female deities

  will be nursed by unicorns and their blood

  will be white to contagion, prescient to fire.

  ROSANNA OMBRES

  “THE SONG OF LILITH”

  TRANSLATED BY EDGAR PAUK

  CHAPTER ONE

  1926: CRUEL ANGEL

  Violette Lenoir, prima ballerina assoluta, was not proud of her ability to inspire terror.

  Of course, it has its uses, she thought as she watched her corps de ballet daintily traversing the mirrored studio. I need their respect; without it, I’d have no authority. Perfection requires discipline.

  Sometimes, though, she would go too far. If she involuntarily let her vampire nature show through the human facade and frightened some poor girl or boy, afterwards she would feel mortified. So she was always on guard. It made her a ruthless taskmaster, never cheerful, never relaxed.

  Violette stood at the barre, supervising rehearsals for Coppélia. She was dressed like her dancers in practice clothes: leotard, skirt and tights of grey wool. She was of average height but appeared taller, being very slender and long-limbed. And she looked like Snow White, with alabaster skin and black hair – now gathered in a loose bun – and her claret mouth and large, knowing eyes. Their colour was startling and changeable, from deep
blue to violet, like the iridescent wings of a butterfly.

  As a human, she had been as beautiful and graceful. Adored for her talent and notorious for her perfectionism, she’d always commanded respect. Outwardly, nothing had changed.

  No one has guessed, she thought. None of my dancers, musicians or staff, not even Geli, has any suspicion that a few months ago I became a vampire, or something worse…

  I can see it in my own eyes, she thought, but they can’t. Thank goodness vampires cast reflections after all, or I really should be in trouble.

  The ballet was still her life. So, if she was to continue working in the human world, the truth must remain secret. Such a struggle, though, against the blood thirst, the raging entity within her. A perpetual strain to keep it in check.

  Pushing these thoughts aside, she watched the dancers with intense concentration. Their synchronisation was imperfect. One girl, Ute, usually flawless, had been making mistakes all afternoon.

  “No!” Violette snapped. The pianist stopped abruptly. “We changed that step. Can’t you remember anything? Like this!”

  Moving to the centre of the studio, she demonstrated en pointe, her blocked shoes barely making a sound. The girls watched raptly, desperate not to fall short of Madame’s expectations.

  “Try again,” Violette said crisply.

  She knew they were tired, but she felt no pity. Her own teachers had never shown her any. “If you cannot stand hard work, leave,” she told any dancer who dared complain. Harsh, but realistic.

  This time, the corps de ballet was perfect… until Ute went wrong again.

  Violette felt like shaking her. Such feelings were dangerous, threatening to unleash the floodgates of vampire thirst. She must always hold herself like stone against emotion.

  “Ute!” Her voice made the mirrors ring. “If this is your best, perhaps you’d better give up your role to someone who can concentrate.”

  The girl, thin and elfin with honey-blonde hair, looked at the floor. She was a fine dancer and should make a prima ballerina one day. Violette saw that something was badly wrong. The long curve of Ute’s neck held her attention…

  “What is the matter?” she asked more gently.

  Ute’s reaction was to flee the studio in tears. The others shifted uneasily. Madame Lenoir had reduced them all to breaking point at some stage. They were better dancers for it, but never forgot the pain. Violette knew they nearly hated her sometimes.

  “Continue,” she said, and the long-suffering pianist began again.

  She knew she pushed them too hard. She’d forgotten how it felt to battle with aching muscles, to rehearse until she was near-blind with exhaustion. Now her limbs were always strong and supple, and she could have danced for days if she’d wished. That made her impatient with human frailty.

  A few months ago, she’d been fighting arthritis that was slowly eroding her joints and spine. Would I still be dancing now, if not for Charlotte? No, I would have been facing life in a wheelchair. But the price I’m paying…

  Rehearsal over, she went to her office and found Ute outside, her face drawn and eyes bruised from crying. Violette took her inside, sat her down on a hard chair, and gave her a handkerchief. Lamps under blue glass shades cast a harebell glow.

  “I don’t mean to upset you,” Violette began. “Anyone can make mistakes. But with three weeks until we sail for America, and two ballets to perform, we can’t afford to be less than perfect. You understand why I am so strict.”

  “Of course, Madame,” the girl whispered, her head bowed. “It’s not the discipline, I’m used to that.”

  “What, then? Are you ill?”

  “No, Madame. It’s my father… he wants me to go home. He insists I give up my career to look after him.”

  “Why? Is he sick?”

  “No, he’s in perfect health. He misses me. He doesn’t think a girl should have a career, especially not on the stage. He always disapproved of me coming to you, Madame. I don’t know what to do.”

  “It’s simple. Stay here.”

  “But, Madame, you don’t know him!” Sobbing again, Ute explained her father’s arguments. Utterly ludicrous and selfish, they sounded to Violette. But the girl was weakening towards his demands. Her weakness made Violette furious.

  She felt herself becoming Lilith, regarding the young dancer through cold and ageless eyes. Ute must be forced to face her own stupidity. Violette could not suppress the impulse.

  “Are you mad?” She walked around her desk and gripped Ute’s shoulder. The girl’s head jerked up in shock. “You would sacrifice a career as magnificent as yours will surely be, deprive the world of your talent, just to satisfy the whims of a selfish old man? What do you want to be, when you are sixty?”

  “Madame?”

  “An embittered old woman, living in obscurity in some Bavarian village – or sitting behind this desk in my place?”

  Violette saw the pulse jumping in Ute’s neck, felt it accelerating under her fingers. She caught the scent of fear. And then she committed the sin. Gave in to Lilith’s thirst.

  * * *

  That night Violette stalked the deserted rooms, a creature condemned never to sleep. She was still in her practice clothes. Clawing her arms like an abstracted Lady Macbeth, she stared into the darkness, stricken.

  Her apartment above the studio was no longer a place of refuge and sleep, merely somewhere to keep her possessions. Space to be alone, yes, but she felt alone everywhere, so it made no difference. Her maid, Geli, must have noticed the changes, and wondered why she no longer suffered backache or demanded ice packs on her knees. Violette had made no attempt to explain, and Geli was too meek to ask.

  Charlotte had insinuated herself into Violette’s life without invitation. Unwelcome at first, she became irresistible. A strange and lovely creature, sweetly old-fashioned with her demure manners and a gorgeous wreath of tawny-bronze hair. Deceptive Charlotte; a demon who drank blood. And who, for all her promises of restraint, had eventually slaked her thirst from Violette’s veins. It had seemed a violation, a betrayal of trust… but I encouraged her, Violette thought. I was as much to blame. And afterwards, we still couldn’t leave each other alone.

  Violette had not consented to becoming a vampire – not until the very last moment, at least. It was Charlotte who insisted. Violette had fought, though not too hard, because it felt inevitable. Her fate, if such a thing existed.

  In the moment of transformation she’d become someone else. Someone who knew too much, whose talent was to corrupt and ruin and transmute.

  That other being’s name was Lilith.

  Now Violette’s life was one of conflict with her other-self. She found the state of vampirism hateful. Her desire for blood was agonising, the bliss of sating it, loathsome. Violette fought for creativity, to preserve her ballet, and never to take a sip of blood from any member of her company.

  Lilith’s intentions were the opposite.

  You cannot be a vampire and live like this, Lilith would whisper. You cannot resist your instincts. Listen to me. Oh, the seductive whisper in the night. Listen, and you’ll know everything. Look into their pitiful souls and show them the truth!

  Violette tried to turn away, but when the hunger rose, she was Lilith. At those times, to protect her dancers, she would usually leave the premises and wrestle with hideous urges alone in the darkness. Until today, with Ute…

  Now, her blood thirst guiltily sated, restlessness brought her to the empty studio. On the polished floor, lit by long rhomboids of starlight, she began to dance in meditation.

  A chill washed over her, as if someone were watching.

  She sensed human presences in the building, asleep. She perceived inhabitants in houses along the riverbank, and across the river, where the domed and spired city of Salzburg slumbered. Sleeping mortals. Lilith’s prey.

  What can I do? she thought. How do I find a way to bear this?

  Ute, too, lay in her little attic room, perhaps troubled with bad dream
s. Violette would never forget the flat astonishment in her eyes, or the searing tang of her blood. She could only pray that the girl would forget. Ute had been dazed, stunned… wide open to the suggestion that nothing had happened.

  I drank only a little, Violette told herself. The physical harm will pass – but what have I done to her mind?

  However strict and aloof she appeared, the truth was that she cared passionately for her dancers. She would lay down her life for them.

  When Violette-Lilith took a victim, it was not just to satisfy thirst. There was a deeper compulsion. Her bite was transformative, forcing her victims to see themselves all too clearly. The results could be disastrous. Violette hated the responsibility, but Lilith would have her way.

  Outside, the river flowed softly and a cold breeze off the Alps ruffled the forests. Violette thought of entering the Crystal Ring, but the other-realm of immortals held no respite. Wherever she went, Lilith went with her.

  So she danced slowly, her hair flowing loose.

  If Lilith existed only in her imagination, this might be easier. She could accept herself as mad. Nothing could be that simple, however: others had seen Lilith in her, too. Three enigmatic vampires had captured and delivered her to Lancelyn, a human and self-styled magus. He’d addressed her by many titles: the Black Goddess, Sophia, Cybele. He had offered hope that she was not evil. We can empower each other, he’d said. Your darkness is the veil of Wisdom; let me lift the veil and become immortal through you. Then we will both find the truth.

  She’d almost succumbed. In her despair, Lancelyn seemed the only one who could help. But in the end, his desires had been selfish. He wanted to possess her, to marry her and achieve magical communion by consummating the marriage.

  Everyone wants to control me, as if the force inside me is too terrifying to be let loose.

  Violette had always rejected men, from her father onwards. Many had wanted her, several had dared to try, but she’d never given in. She found their lusts repulsive. It was a matter of pride to stay forever immaculate and self-contained.