“She is not my concern! I want her to leave.” He held out his hand. “Come on, you need to rest.”
Robyn was eaten up by curiosity, but he refused to answer her questions. She wasn’t tired, but as soon as she sat on a couch that Sebastian dragged near the fireplace, she fell asleep.
Sebastian’s hand on her arm woke her. She groaned. “Leave me alone, I only just closed my eyes.”
“No, you closed your eyes eight hours ago,” he said, “and we have work to do.”
Robyn only believed him when she saw light in the windows. Full daylight made the room look bleak and grey, revealing every mote of dust, every moth-hole. Cold and dispirited, she shook herself awake.
“Is Rasmila still…?”
“I’m afraid so,” he said. “Never mind. Come on.”
Together they drew water from a well in the overgrown garden, carried containers into the kitchen, and cleaned an old tin bath. Sebastian even managed to light the kitchen range. She wondered if he would have been so industrious if he hadn’t been trying to ignore Rasmila’s presence.
She heated water, scoured cooking pots, plates and cutlery. The cupboards were packed with china. She could almost feel the ghosts of maids, cooks and footmen moving around her… and she cursed at having to do this menial work herself. Oh, for Mary, Alice and Mrs Wilkes…
I have twenty thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds in my suitcase, and here I am…
At last she was able to make a pot of coffee. Back in the salon, she drank cup after cup with cream and sugar, and made toast over the fire. Half an hour of heaven. It was the first time she’d felt warm since the previous night.
She stared around the cavernous room. A thousand pairs of eyes stared back. This place was designed for vampires, she thought. I can’t live here!
She found Sebastian still in the kitchen, wearing a voluminous old-fashioned shirt in which he looked irresistible. He was filling the bath with buckets of hot water.
“If you love this house so much, why don’t you buy it back legally?” she said. “Then we could restore it. If I want coffee I like to ring for Mary, not break my back for three hours.”
Sebastian looked coldly at her, as if she’d uttered heresy. Again she felt like a trespasser. And she hated him for it, as he sometimes seemed to hate her. “Your bath, madame,” he said aridly.
She undressed quickly and stepped into deliciously hot water. To her surprise, Sebastian knelt beside the bath and began to wash her, as if she were a little girl. His hands felt wonderful, sliding all over her body on a layer of soap. He seemed enraptured by the way her limbs gleamed through the lather, by the flashes of light on her glassy-wet skin. His long, green-brown eyes were contemplative under half-lowered lids.
“Do you really hate it here?” he asked.
“It’s – magnificent. Not what I’m used to, that’s all.”
“Be patient.”
He helped her out of the bath, wrapped her in a towel and held her. She found it madly arousing, to be all but naked while he was clothed. But when she began to respond and kiss him, he held her away and smiled. “Later.”
She looked up, thinking of Rasmila. “Is it because…?”
“We have more work to do to make you comfortable.”
Refusing to put on any heavy, ice-cold Victorian garment that had lain in a chest for sixty years, she dressed in the warmest clothes she’d brought: a skirt, sweater and cardigan of russet wool. While she made another attempt to render the kitchen usable, Sebastian fetched more water and chopped logs. He’d even brought extra candles, matches and oil from the village.
While he was outside, Robyn loathed being alone in the house. The shadows seemed to move. She couldn’t stop thinking about Rasmila, brooding in the ghastly ruins of the nursery.
It was dark by the time they finished. Robyn, finding the library the least unfriendly room, had lit a fire there. Now she was glad to collapse on a chaise longue in front of the smaller fireplace. Sebastian leaned on the rolled back, hands folded.
“Is she still here?” said Robyn, glancing at the ceiling.
“Yes.” He sighed.
“She’s making me uncomfortable.”
“I don’t want her here any more than you.”
“So do something! At least find out what she wants!”
He was silent, pressing his fingertips together. God, Robyn thought, does he have to be such an enigma?
“Very well,” he said. “Stay here. I’ll try a little persuasion.”
When he’d gone, Robyn fetched her coat, which she’d left on the billiard table in the salon. Returning to the library, she wrapped herself up and settled down to wait in her nest of warmth.
Why did I let myself in for this? Alice, I wish I’d stayed home with you…
Her thoughts sank into the red glow behind her eyelids. She slept.
* * *
“So, Rasmila,” said Sebastian, “I almost did not recognise you. Such a long time.”
“Your memory is poor,” said the figure in the shadows.
“My memory is perfect. I hardly saw you when you transformed me, if you recall. It was dark, and you all three had a glow that made it hard to look straight at you. I thought you were gods. Beautiful pagan spirits. You, Simon, and the pale one.”
“Fyodor,” she said. She was kneeling as he’d left her, like a statue. A Hindu goddess, perhaps. He’d felt almost nothing for Simon, but Rasmila aroused painful and incomprehensible emotions.
“And where are they now?”
“Our trinity was broken. We served our purpose as angels to guide Lilith, but when she rejected us, our power was gone.”
“I’ve seen her,” he said darkly, thinking of her leaning over Robyn’s bed. “Violette Lenoir.” He rested a hand on the rocking horse’s head. Even to his sensitive eyes, everything looked grey, decaying in the musty air.
“We were meant to be shepherds, too,” Rasmila continued. Her accented voice, calm and precise, conveyed her deep sense of loss. “I chose you. We should have stayed to mentor you – my mistake, to think you could find your way alone – but you wanted nothing of us. We tried to guide Kristian, but he was betrayed by love.”
“I heard. Tragic.”
“And Lilith, who should never have been created, and Lancelyn, who overreached his powers.”
“A catalogue of misjudgements.”
She spread her hands, palms upwards on her knees. He saw the triangle of black hair gleaming between her thighs, and sudden memories flowed and burned.
“We let God down, so He abandoned us. Simon blamed Fyodor and me and cast us aside. But Simon still needs us, if only he would admit it.”
“So, are you no longer a goddess?”
“I never was. I am a vampire. I’ve existed for a thousand years. I carried heavenly messages to and from Earth… but God is now blind and deaf to me.”
“And Simon?”
She paused. “If Simon, too, rejects me forever… that would be far harder to bear.”
Sebastian smiled. “So, what do you expect me to do about it?”
“Help me. I am afraid.”
“You? You came to me clothed in the night, like Kali.”
She bowed her head onto the floor, trailing her arms behind her. Her hair made a raven shawl over a shoal of broken toys and dismembered dolls. He watched her, enthralled despite himself.
“You are too proud,” she said. “You refuse to acknowledge any vampire but yourself. You wish you were the only one, but you are not! You must accept this.”
“Why?”
“If Lilith has not touched your life already, she will.”
Sebastian couldn’t answer that. He saw images of Violette and Robyn in the garden, heads close, whispering secrets; the dancer hovering by Robyn’s bed in her icy, silk-veiled beauty. Robyn threatening him with Violette! Ilona, Simon and now Rasmila with that name on their lips, affecting to despise her while their terror was painfully naked.
“Simon and Lili
th are both dangerous,” Rasmila went on. “They will try to destroy each other.”
“So leave them to it! Isn’t that what you want?”
She raised her chin and glared at him. He leaned down to her. She hesitated, then accepted his hand, letting him lift her to her feet. Her satiny dark skin enthralled him.
“All of this is Lilith’s fault! She sundered us from Simon. Without divine guidance he is too headstrong, uncontrollable like her. They will disrupt the Crystal Ring. The damage has already begun. Have you not noticed?”
The hostile storms of the Ring, the knot of darkness… Sebastian had noticed, but tried to ignore the changes.
“Of course, but there’s nothing I can do, is there?”
“Help us against Lilith. Help us show Simon that he cannot defeat her without us!” She pressed closer to him. “We created you for the benefit of immortal-kind. Why do you refuse to understand?”
“I do understand. However, I refuse to be used.”
“We made you! We never choose at random.”
“You chose badly, all the same.”
“You are betraying us,” she said, stroking his cheek. “Running away from your responsibilities.”
“I have none. I’m not in your debt.”
She slid one leg around the outside of his. “Don’t you remember how it was when we transformed you?”
He remembered. The dark cellar. Three fallen angels, capturing his soul and delivering him into a state of undeath… and in the darkness, Rasmila drawing him to her. Naked beneath her robe. Blind lust possessing him… the absolute, wanton sweetness of her, making him forget Mary and all that went before.
Now her mouth and eyes shone as she unfastened buttons one-handed and pulled at his clothes. Her legs went round his waist, supple as a temple-dancer’s. Weightless, she impaled herself on him and he thrust to meet her, sinking down onto the floor with her limbs entwined around him.
The aching compulsion was almost painful. He gasped with wonder. His body and the whole room came alight with jewels. Rasmila clawed at him, uttering a soul-deep cry. Sebastian dropped his head into her shoulder as a sharp, soundless explosion convulsed him.
Now he was tearing into her throat, streams of light on his tongue. The pleasure was less focused but more intense, unearthly rapture taking him so far out of himself that only the pain of Rasmila’s bite could bring him back.
The divine exchange of blood… something Robyn could not give him. He drew hard on her, merciless, but every drop he took, she stole back. Neither could win. Sated and in equilibrium, they ceased and lay still, smiling at each other.
Then he felt bleak. She was not Robyn.
“Now my blood is in you,” Rasmila said. “You can’t deny me.”
“You don’t know me,” he said pleasantly, refastening his disarrayed shirt and breeches. “When you changed me, I felt I’d become the Devil. Of course you could not ‘mentor’ me, nor could I ever share your beliefs.”
She shook her head. “No, you are not the Devil, Sebastian.” She sat up. “And you’ve given me something after all: your blood, your strength.”
Rising to her feet, she was magnificent against the window. A deity, Hindu or Celtic, there was no division: Kali and Cailleach were the same goddess.
“I hope you’re suitably grateful.” He stood up, brushing dust from his clothes.
“You are involved, whether you wish it or not,” she said. Her expression was sweet, but as strong as steel. “And so is your lover.”
“This has nothing to do with Robyn,” he said grimly.
“But it will, if you turn your back. Are we enemies?” Rasmila touched his cheek.
“No.”
“I came to warn you, not to threaten. I am not Simon, demanding acts of heroism. I ask only for friendship, a little help in protecting us all from Lilith. I’m going to find Fyodor now; we’ve been apart too long. Help us, and we’ll help you in turn.”
“I need no help.”
Her serene face showed amusement. “But if you change your mind, call and my blood will hear you.”
Rasmila moved away, seeming more an icon than a living being. In a column of smoky-bronze light, she stepped into the Ring. He was alone.
He stood among the detritus of long-vanished childhoods, feeling like a ghost among ghosts. Now I need to hunt, he thought. I need a human struggling in my arms and their hot blood… and then the solitude of the Crystal Ring.
Robyn was in his mind, but she was an abstract image, not a breathing reality.
* * *
“Do they feed on each other’s energy, as we do?” Cesare asked. “Karl, Charlotte and Lilith?”
His eyes were red, like those of a man who’d been working frantically for days and nights. His face shone with mania. “If she were separated from them, would she become weaker?”
“Possibly,” said Simon. They were in the sanctum with John: the supposed triumvirate. Lilith’s attack had petrified everyone. It had taken all their energy to keep control of their terrified human disciples. Something had been lost. John had sunk even deeper into his need for vengeance, while Cesare clung to the very lip of sanity.
Simon regarded Cesare with despair. If you were Karl, he thought, you would be rational, not crazed; and if John were Charlotte, we might have constructive suggestions in place of baleful silence. “I felt power between her and Charlotte.”
“There is nothing to do with Karl and Charlotte but kill them,” said Cesare. “An execution for the good of the majority.”
Would you extend the threat to me, thought Simon, if you saw that behind my smiling mask, I actually despise you?
“Killing them won’t stop Lilith,” Simon said wearily. “We’ve seen her strength. It’s a wonder she didn’t decapitate you on the spot, Cesare.”
“You urged me to anger her! ‘Kill the humans she loves,’ you said. ‘We are God’s fire. Annihilate her ballet, and Lilith will be nothing but a cloud of wailing anger!’ But her damnable ballet is still intact, while two of my flock are dead at her hands!”
“I hope you aren’t insinuating that it’s my fault,” said Simon. “We made her angry; wasn’t that the aim? In that, we succeeded admirably.”
Cesare lowered his head, collecting himself. “Simon, I don’t mean to rail at you. But we must bring the transformations forward. I need my army. Lilith frightened them, and I cannot afford to lose them to mortal fear.”
“The transformation is a simple matter,” Simon said. “It can be done whenever you wish, all in one day, one hour. However… neither Karl, nor your new army, is central to this.”
“Then what, precisely, is central?” Cesare asked icily.
“You’ve already given me the answer yourself.”
“Have I?”
“Sebastian’s message,” said Simon. “One word. Samael.”
“Just a name. What does it mean?” How desperate Cesare sounded.
“It means that only one vampire is capable of destroying Lilith. And that vampire is Sebastian. He’s like her: Samael was the Devil, Lilith’s husband. Her equal and opposite.”
“Who refuses to co-operate.” Cesare exhaled.
“But who thinks he can use this knowledge to manipulate us. He was trying to show he is cleverer, more knowledgeable than us! Well, let him think that. All we need is for Sebastian and Lilith to loathe each other, and to meet.”
Simon had expected to impress Cesare with this insight, but the leader only folded his arms and spoke with scorn, “How could you hope to arrange that?”
“It’s already in hand. Rasmila is assisting.”
“Rasmila, who has no thought in her head but you?”
“Exactly. She will do anything for me.”
“But I’ve met Sebastian. As I said, he and Lilith have no interest in each other. He cares for nothing but himself. No, Simon, forget him.” Cesare gazed at Simon with the fervour that had swayed his disciples. “He’s like Karl, an unreliable, useless subversive. Such men are p
owerless because they throw power away! But we three understand. Simon, if you and I and John lack the strength to defeat Lilith, what are we worth?”
Simon examined his perfect fingernails. There was something in what Cesare said.
“If only Charlotte and Violette were not joined at the hip,” he murmured. “If only Charlotte would leave her… and come to me.”
Cesare seemed not to hear him. As if possessed, he lunged forward and shook Simon, his eyes burning white.
“What if Samael and Lilith came together and created something worse?”
* * *
A sound disturbed Robyn’s sleep: the echoing cry of a woman in pain – or extreme pleasure. Her eyes snapped open. She stared at the embers of the fire, slept again.
When she woke properly, it was light. The fire had gone out and her coat had fallen to the floor. Numb with cold, she ached all over from sleeping in one position.
For a moment, she had no idea where she was. Thousands of books in faded reds, blues and browns towered around her. A mirror above the fireplace reflected a window framing a cloudy sky. Figures in oil paintings stared at her. Oh, this place, she thought, feeling sick at heart.
She sat up stiffly, swearing.
“Your language doesn’t improve,” said a voice.
She twisted round and saw Sebastian, a graceful silhouette against the window.
“How long have you been there?” She was angry at first; then, seeing the look on his face, the feeling deepened to suspicion.
“Not long.” He came to the chaise longue.
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“I love to watch you sleeping,” he said. His eyes were very soft, too tranquil. “Are you cold?”
“Frozen.”
“Then I’ll attend to the fire.” He began to move away, but she caught his wrist.
“Have you been gone all night?”
His eyes slid sideways under lowered lids. Shame? “There were certain things…”
“So you just left me to sleep on a couch again?”
“I meant to prepare a bed, but certain matters intervened. Forgive me, Robyn. I’m still unused to considering your needs before my own.”
“Damned right you are.” Her breathing quickened and her blood rose. He sat beside her and stroked her hair, but she folded her arms.
The Dark Blood of Poppies Page 39
