She heard cars outside. It would be a modest, private affair, as befitted a fake funeral. No flowers.
Under the shroud, she wore a dress of coffee-coloured georgette, so she could discard the shroud afterwards. They’d wanted to know how she would escape. Anne suggested that they screw down the coffin lid before the undertakers arrived. The idea of Charlotte being shut in the coffin seemed to horrify her family more than anything.
But she said, “No, I want them to see me as they fasten me in. So there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind. We’ll sew lead weights into the corners. As soon as the lid’s fastened, I’ll escape. I can walk through walls and vanish. Nothing can go wrong.”
But now the undertakers in black were here, sliding the lid over her, turning the screws, she experienced wild panic. Her heart, which she’d stilled, began to beat madly. She nearly gave herself away, on the verge of screaming, “No, don’t shut me in!”
That would have felled them all with heart failure.
She mastered herself and lay like stone. Petrified.
“She hardly weighs a thing,” said someone, as her wooden cocoon swayed into the air. “Shame, when they go so young.”
A short car journey. She was lifted and carried again, set in place. She heard the service, but sensed no one in church beyond the minister and her immediate family: Elizabeth, David, Anne, Madeleine. No one cried. It was a drear and depressing sham, like her supposed marriage to Henry.
In the cemetery now. She was being lowered in short, jerky stages; it felt like falling backwards, out of control. The priest’s voice receded. Eyes closed, she was aware of the lid barely clearing her forehead, wooden walls confining her. She braced her hands as if to push the coffin sides apart, to brake the downward motion.
The air turned clay-cold. Scents of soil and decay wormed in. When the coffin came to rest, there was terrible stillness.
Opening her eyes, she saw dim woodgrain above her nose. Her eyes were attuned to wavelengths beyond the visible, so the interior was not quite pitch-black… but dark enough. She thought, What if I can’t enter the Crystal Ring from here? Faint panic. I should try now, if it’s not too late…
When the first clod of earth hit the coffin, she jumped. Her mind stretched out instinctively for Raqia, touched only blunt nothingness.
What if the Ring doesn’t extend underground? I can’t escape!
Her heart, which she’d halted again by willpower, exploded into a wild rhythm. She pushed frantically at the coffin sides. It seemed the lid was made of glass and she saw black walls of soil, an oblong of daylight high above, the figures in black looking down. Then one leaned over her, screaming, “You can’t bury her! She’s not dead!”
She forced the hallucination away. Keep still. Wait until they’ve all gone.
There were no screams above her, only a murmur of voices. Anne whispered, “She can’t still be in there, can she?”
Somehow she forced her panic to subside. I must see it through. This is my penance.
Madness. And I pulled my family into my craziness with me, because I love them and – being a vampire – my love can only suck them dry and leave them insane.
Soon she sensed a massive weight of earth building up. The mourners had gone. Once the gravediggers finished their task, they, too, left. She imagined twilight gathering between gravestones, dew silvering the grass. And now she almost dared not try to escape, in case she truly couldn’t.
She relaxed, concentrated. She felt the wooden prison dissolve, soil holding her like concrete. She moved upwards with ghastly slowness, like an earthworm floundering through the sticky embrace of clay. At last she broke free into the mauve, dully glittering landscape of Raqia’s lowest circle. Gravestones and winter trees were warped ghosts of themselves.
Suddenly aware how very cold she felt, she wrapped her arms around her waist. A shock, to see her own form transmuted by the Ring: her arms snake-slender, the shroud a webbing of black strands. As if she’d been so far out of her mind that she’d forgotten this would happen.
Shivering so hard she could hardly move, she began to walk. Two human auras appeared, large and small: a mother and child, placing flowers on a grave. As she passed, she heard the child exclaim, “Mummy, that lady!”
“There’s no one there, dear,” replied the mother.
Charlotte looked up into the firmament. She saw charcoal clouds moving across darkness. All light had bled from the skyscape. No heart-lifting sapphire blue voids, or dappled bronze hills rising into towering ships of the air. All was stormy. Malevolent.
The Crystal Ring doesn’t want me, she thought with a rush of terror.
She was wholly unhinged now. Possessed. Something had made her act out this grisly charade of death, a grim tendril of the Ring crawling into her mind and loosening the bonds of reason. Forcing herself to the macabre journey’s end, taking her family with her, had achieved nothing good. No, it had been an act of pure evil, sealing her insanity.
There must be something of Lilith in me.
She threw off the shroud and watched it billow away, as if it had a life of its own.
She began to run, her teeth chattering. I can’t go home. I’m not Charlotte any more. I can’t take this gibbering shell back to Karl.
Charlotte rose through Raqia, caught by stormy currents. All her thoughts and memories were streaming away. She was a ragged skeleton. The only way to keep her psychosis at bay was to flee as hard as she could, an ice-thread lost between infinite walls of cloud.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DEATH AND THE MAIDEN
One morning, in the winter-light of dawn, Robyn realised that she was dying.
She was alone in bed, Sebastian out bringing death or nightmares to some victim in the dark. For the past two days, she’d been too ill to get up.
They had been making love far too often over the past weeks. She knew Sebastian took as little blood as possible – how much was that, she wondered, half a pint, a few sips? – but even those small losses were too much. Repeated nearly every night, how could her overdrawn system possibly keep up?
They both knew, but gave in to their insatiable obsession anyway.
She was cold. Get up and stoke the fire, she told herself. She tried to sit, only to fall back, dizzy. Hammers pounded inside her skull.
She lay shivering. After a time the spasm passed and she lay impassive, eyes half-open. The bed canopy, the fireplace and the walls hung dimly across her vision, seeming to blur and shimmer.
She was even losing her eyesight.
There were ghosts in the wallpaper, whispering to her. They peeled themselves off the wall and danced around the room.
Sebastian hadn’t touched her since her condition worsened. He was solicitous, but seemed frightened by what was happening to her. He sat with her constantly, except when he went out to feed. He brought her endless supplies of tea, soup and food to tempt her failing appetite.
“We must build up your strength,” he would say, incongruously, like a doctor. “Rest and eat, and you’ll soon be better.”
They both wanted to believe it.
Only this morning, with no particular emotion, had Robyn realised it was too late. She couldn’t eat or face more than a few sips of tea. Anaemia and starvation compounded each other. She had a cough, too, an infection she couldn’t shake off.
Perhaps a blood transfusion would have saved her, but even that seemed pointless. It would only delay the inevitable.
Spectres wove and fluttered in the walls. Robyn lay on her side, staring into the malevolent shadows, her teeth chattering. This room wished her ill, but there was nothing she could do. Only lie here in quiet despair. Sinking down into the cobweb dark.
For a while, she thought she was home in Boston. The bright cosiness of her own bedroom… Alice and Mary to attend her, admirers at the door with gifts. Showered with love, she’d responded with contempt… but her needs now were as simple as a child’s. To be home, Alice holding my hand.
Then she
roused from the hallucination, and saw where she was. This dark, empty, freezing, godforsaken house!
Drifting in fever-dreams, Robyn had no concept of time. At some stage she became aware of a figure beside the bed.
Fear shook her to a higher state of awareness. Not fear of dying, which she’d overcome, but the abstract terror of a nightmare.
“Oh, Robyn,” a voice murmured. The figure fell onto its knees beside her. A slight shape under a veil of black hair.
Robyn thought this was Rasmila, come to impart some dreadful revelation.
“Sebastian?” she cried, her voice almost gone.
“Why do you call him for help,” said the voice, “when he’s the one who brought you to this? Oh, God, Robyn, I could –”
The stranger rose and moved away. She lit a candle on the bedside table. As the light flared, hurting Robyn’s eyes, she saw that the visitor was Violette. The dancer looked far from gentle.
“Why are you doing this?” Violette’s voice was a serpent hiss. Rage turned her face bloodless, like opal with white fire burning inside. Tears ran down her cheeks.
“What?” Robyn painfully lifted herself onto her elbows.
“Embracing death like a lover! Why have you let him do this?”
A surge of adrenaline came to Robyn’s aid. She sat up, head spinning. “Because I love him.”
“Don’t make me sick. Even I would never have used you like this! Love, what love has he shown you?”
“You’ve no right –”
Violette’s hands flew down and pinioned her. “It’s not because you love him, it’s because you hate yourself. Your obsession is to punish yourself.” The dancer’s face was livid, terrifying. “Don’t fight me, Robyn. I see right through you. You think you’re punishing men, but really you’re only hurting yourself, because in your heart you still believe everything your father and husband told you. You believe you are worthless and evil!”
Robyn was shaking uncontrollably, fighting for air. Suddenly she felt very much alive.
“I’ll cure you of ‘love’!” Violette snapped. She opened her mouth. Her canines, fully extended, were thin, wet and sharp.
“Don’t!” Robyn cried. All she could think was how Sebastian would feel, when he came home and found her dead.
“Why not?”
“I can’t die without seeing him one last time.”
With a moan of anger, Violette attacked.
She flung back the bedcovers and leapt onto Robyn, welding herself from breasts to ankles. Violette’s body in the soft black dress felt divine, almost weightless, yet it also felt leech-like, sucking Robyn’s life from every pore.
The dancer’s breath was hot, scentless. A veil of black hair brushed Robyn’s face and its perfume was exquisite: roses, lilies, rosin dust. She would never forget that scent…
Then came the pain.
Savage pain, like thick needles driving through her neck, exploding in her skull. She thought she was used to it, but this wasn’t Sebastian’s gentle bite. This was a lamia in the throes of demonic rapture.
Robyn couldn’t breathe. The pain sang coldly on, but the slender body against hers was warm, vibrant.
She felt herself falling backwards. She clawed at Violette’s arms, clinging on for safety.
They fell together, locked, sobbing.
Light erupted between them. Searing diamond light.
As it faded, leaving Robyn in a different universe, she saw an overblown vision in crimson and black; a phantom of herself, drawn in rippling ruby light, being born from Violette’s mouth.
The ghost-Robyn dropped softly to the ground, still attached by a red string that went from its throat to the dancer’s lips: a grotesque umbilical cord. Violette stood facing the blood-red shape, her hands on its shoulders.
Violette spat out the end of the cord. Then she slid her hands over the spectral Robyn’s collarbones and, with a quick, pitiless action, snapped its neck.
Robyn felt something break and fall inside her, as if some vital organ had collapsed. Painless, but horrible.
Then the crimson ghost seemed to collapse and dissipate, like a bubble. Nothing was left on the carpet but a great splash of blood.
“It’s kinder that way,” said Violette, as if she’d simply wrung a bird’s neck.
The vision ended. They were back on the bed, limply entangled, exhausted.
Robyn lay staring up at the canopy, while Violette lay across her, drained and trembling. “Robyn, Robyn…”
“Get off me,” said Robyn. She felt unreal, hollow like glass. Everything around her was changing shape with the rumble of an earth tremor… She realised she was hearing her own labouring heart. “Get off!”
Violette obeyed, raven hair hanging over her face. As she swept it back, Robyn saw that her expression was sombre now, devoid of rage. Tender. Robyn, breathless and shaken, didn’t know what to think or feel. The dancer’s bite had changed everything… but she couldn’t grasp how, or why.
“Forgive me.” Violette touched Robyn’s cheekbone. “I knew I’d do this when the time was right. I almost left it too late. Only I didn’t know it would be so… No, don’t say anything!” Robyn had parted her lips to speak. “Rest. Don’t speak until you understand.”
Violette poured water from a jug and gave Robyn the glass. Robyn drank, holding the vessel tight to steady her hands. Her thundering pulse quietened. The trickle of cold water down her throat anchored her to reality. She felt…
“When did you last eat?” Violette asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.
The question startled her. “Oh… yesterday.”
“And how do you feel now?”
Robyn shut her eyes, taking deep, tentative breaths. Her heart beat strongly again. Her headache was gone. Strength returned to her limbs. Most amazing of all, she felt clear-headed. Sebastian’s feasts always left her languid, but Violette’s attack had scoured her like a clean, icy wind. She felt almost her normal self: the last stand of her spirit before death?
“Confused,” Robyn said shakily.
“You weren’t made to be a martyr,” said Violette. She took the glass away and placed an apple in Robyn’s hand. “What is wrong with you, that you won’t look after yourself?”
Robyn ate the apple, ravenous for its sweet juice. Violette’s lovely eyes rested on her. Is she hypnotising me? As if she needs to.
“What have you done to me?” Robyn asked.
“That, you must find out for yourself,” Violette said gravely.
“How did you find me?”
“You can’t hide from me.” The idea of Violette as clairvoyant seemed only natural to Robyn. “Your uncle is worried about you.”
At that, a wave of devastation shook her.
“Oh, Lord. I never thought – I should have written. My God, if I died and Josef never knew why…”
And she began to realise how Violette had changed her.
“You are not going to die,” said the dancer. “I won’t allow it. You will eat and you will live. But ask yourself, what has Sebastian done to you? He’s made you a victim. You were strong before you met him, weren’t you? You controlled your own life. Now he controls you. This is what love brings you to!”
Robyn’s mouth fell open. Her breath quickened. Yes. She saw the self-destructive insanity of her own behaviour as if looking on from outside. “How do you know this? I told you too much, that night in Boston!”
“No. One look was all I needed to know everything about you.”
Robyn resented Violette for compelling her to face what she had been doing to herself… Yet even resentment was a sign of emotional rebirth. She found herself regaining self-control, confidence. To find her soul stretched naked before Violette was both unsettling and eerily soothing.
“What about Sebastian?” Robyn asked. “How much do you know about him?”
“I’ve never met him, but I know him through you. He can’t face the strength of his own passions, so he walls them away. That’s why he brou
ght you here. To wall you away.”
“Oh, God,” said Robyn, putting her head in her hands. “Yes, that’s exactly what he was doing.” Only, she thought, I was too infatuated to admit it.
She felt easy with Violette now, as if they’d been friends for a lifetime. Yet she recoiled from the vision of Violette strangling the blood-red ghost, casting her into darkness.
“Tell me what you’ve done to me,” said Robyn, her voice raw. “Help me understand.”
As Violette’s dazzling gaze met hers, Robyn saw her as a divided entity; half goddess, half angry, passionate human. She spoke softly.
“I’ve changed you. Strangled the sickness in your soul so that the rest of you, the adult woman, can live. I am Lilith, destroyer of children: destroyer of infantile needs and obsessions, if you like.”
“Are you calling my love for Sebastian infantile?”
“No. But your need to hurt others before they hurt you, and your willingness to sacrifice your life to the first real love you found – that was a form of sickness.”
Robyn looked down at her own hands lying on the embroidered silk. So this was Violette-Lilith’s magic. Although she still loved Sebastian, she was no longer mad enough to die for that love. She felt calm and self-possessed. All she wanted was to live out her natural life. Nothing more.
And for Violette, now, she felt simple tenderness.
“If I was sick, am I cured? You must be an angel.”
Violette’s expressive face became bleak. “I envy Sebastian because you love him instead of me. That’s rather too human, isn’t it?”
“I offered to come with you! If you’d let me, I’d never have seen him again!”
Regret suffused Violette’s face. The look moved Robyn to tears.
“If only.” She stroked Robyn’s face, her fingers achingly delicate. “I wonder if he was sent by my enemies, to seduce you away from me?”
“Enemies? Who could hate you?”
“Almost anyone. Lilith is an evil demon, didn’t you know?”
“And a paranoid one, maybe,” said Robyn. Violette looked startled. “I met Sebastian the same night I met you, at that party. How could anyone else have known? It was a coincidence, Violette. These crazy things happen.”
The Dark Blood of Poppies Page 45
