They lay gazing at each other, shipwrecked on the far side of their journey, at peace, metamorphosed. After a time, Violette sat up and looked at Charlotte.
“Tell me what you learned,” she said quietly.
With an effort, Charlotte sat up and leaned on her drawn-up knees, her hair trailing over her thighs. “Lilith isn’t evil,” she began. “She never was. Men demonised her as a scapegoat for their own fears. Thousands of years ago, before they created God in their own image, there was a Goddess. She was all-powerful, like a mother to a child. She could create life or destroy it. She was the first trinity: Maiden, Mother, and Crone, but one based in the reality of nature: birth, life and death.”
Violette nodded, her eyes closed and her face a mask of relief. “Yes,” she said, “but men turned against nature.”
“Because the goddess was too powerful,” Charlotte went on. “Men envied her magic. They could only emulate her life-giving blood of birth by cutting themselves. Lilith – any woman – represented sexuality and wisdom, prophecy, knowledge, beginning and end. She contained everything, good or bad. Men feared her powers. They began to associate her with death, their greatest enemy. The Great Mother became the destroyer, Kali, the black crone.”
“And of course they were desperate to escape death,” said Karl, resting his hand on Charlotte’s hip. “They fashioned an ultimate god to offer eternal life, a linear existence of life, judgement, heaven. And invented our friend, the Devil, to explain away all the world’s evils. I’ve always felt this to be the truth.”
“But you didn’t see the other side, until now,” said Violette. “In elevating the male, men rejected everything female, twisting all that’s sacred in menstruation, sex and birth to seem filthy and bestial. They split spirit from nature. Men were spiritual, women mere flesh, like beasts. And all their natural gifts of sexuality and wisdom came from the Devil and must be reviled!”
“Lost. Wasted,” Charlotte said bitterly. Tears flowed down her face. She felt anguish at the madness of it all. “Did they mean to cripple the world by diabolising half the human race?”
Karl exhaled. He sounded weary and deeply sad. “All religions have sanctioned men’s disdain of women. The church was always about power. God’s name is used to sanction any atrocity, yet death is blamed on Eve’s disobedience! I haven’t believed any of this since I was six years old. Myths, all of it.”
“But with symbolic meaning,” said Violette. “Josef was right about that. When Lilith in her serpent form tempted Eve, she was telling her to rediscover the goddess’s wisdom before it was lost forever! Too late. The goddess was split in two. Eve the mother, who submitted to punishment and slavery, and Lilith the witch, who would submit to no one. She’s everything women are not meant to be.”
“Lilith personifies the rejected goddess,” said Charlotte, to reassure Violette she understood. “That’s what the vision told me. Her flight into the desert symbolised the end of matriarchal authority.”
Violette’s eyes were alight with conviction now. “The Holy Grail was the lost cauldron of the goddess, the womb of rebirth. God provides a fantasy of life after death; the goddess reveals the inescapable truth that everything dies and decays – even us, one day. That’s why she was rejected.”
She leapt off the bed and paced about in sudden fury, her black hair rippling. “How dare they turn me into a demon! Why are women feared and suppressed, unless we have true power? The goddess subjugates no one – she simply tells the truth, which men can’t accept. This God of theirs – with his plagues and floods and eternal damnation – he’s infinitely worse than the Devil. I curse him!”
Karl propped himself on one elbow to watch her. Turning to glare at him, Violette said, “Have you anything to say in God’s defence?”
“You know I haven’t. What was Lucifer’s crime, beyond challenging God’s autocracy – like Lilith?” Karl looked steadily at her. “I’ve no sympathy with Simon, Cesare and their kind. And Kristian represented the ultimate denial of flesh; he was a vampire who refused to feed on human blood. Now I know why. It was for the same reason that some men despise women. Fear. I was afraid of you, Violette, but I’ve walked through the darkness with you. You don’t need to ask.”
As they gazed at each other, Charlotte shivered with a thrill from head to foot. The feeling was not jealousy, but sheer relief.
“The truth is this,” said Violette. “No god, no power in heaven or Earth, can rescind the cyclic law. The goddess symbolises the blackness at the beginning and end of life. The infinite void. The shadow is terrible but mankind – and immortals – must learn to face it. They cannot live by rejecting Lilith!”
Her anger spent, Violette came back to bed and rested her head on Charlotte’s shoulder. “Now I know who Lilith is, I’m not ashamed. I’m at peace with her.”
“But she’s still in you?” asked Charlotte.
“Always.”
“I don’t know how I found you,” Charlotte said thoughtfully. “When I left my family, I went insane. I felt transparent… and Raqia possessed me. It was neither good nor evil, and it certainly wasn’t a deity of any kind. It’s what I suspected; the ebb and flow of mankind’s subconscious. But that doesn’t make us helpless vessels. We can take what we need, and filter out the destructive aspects, if only we stay aware. Something in me knew that you needed light. This bond…”
“Who was she?” Violette asked softly. “The one who entered you.”
“Like Lilith, she has many names. Such as Isis.”
“Only the goddess herself!”
“I’m no deity,” said Charlotte, “but I believe I understand why we’re driven to drink blood. Blood is the source of life and wisdom: women bleed in childbirth, men in sacrifice. This idea is so deep-rooted and powerful that it saturates the Crystal Ring. That’s why the Ring creates vampires. The ancient reverence for blood.”
“So mortals still offer their blood to deities?” Karl said wryly.
“More than that.” Charlotte was excited by the revelation. “I believe we evolved slowly, after men began yearning for eternal life. After they suppressed their blood rites until all that remained was the chalice of altar wine.”
“The chalice,” said Violette. “A remnant of the cauldron of life and death.”
“But we’re not gods,” said Karl. “We shouldn’t even think it, or we’ll become as deranged as Simon or Kristian. In my opinion, the Crystal Ring has a deeply perverse sense of humour.”
“And now we know,” Violette sighed. “I was insane because I was divided against myself. But now I’m whole.” She smiled coolly. “I may still seem mad, but be assured, I know what I’m doing. And I think we should go home.” She stood back, looking at Karl and Charlotte. “Well, has Lilith’s bite cured you of being enslaved to each other?”
Charlotte met Karl’s eyes, and knew, with a rush of joy, that nothing had changed. His lovely eyes held sadness and wisdom – and deeper warmth than she’d seen there for a long time.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“No,” Karl said emphatically.
“No,” said Violette, “because it wasn’t meant to. The transformation was to destroy fear, not love.”
Charlotte smiled. “You brought me back to Earth. I was out of my mind when I walked in here.”
“And where, precisely, is here?” Karl asked.
“Wherever it is, it can’t hold us now,” said Violette. “But before we leave…”
She held out her arms to them. They rose, and went into her embrace. As they did so, Charlotte’s perception of the room changed. Not luxurious after all but threadbare, damp and neglected. Not Parkland Hall.
“I was right to reject Lancelyn,” Violette went on. “He could never have shown me the truth. It had to be you, Charlotte… and you, Karl.” She stroked his face. “I needed you to stop me being afraid.”
“Of what?” He looked candidly at her.
“Of God, of men, of myself. You taught me that men are
not gods or demons. They’re only human. Even immortals are only human.”
She smiled, but she was still the Black Goddess, covered in a veil so bright that no mortal could look upon it. She slid closer, her arms enfolding them. “The wisdom concealed by the Goddess’s veil is knowledge of the future. Do you dare to look?”
Charlotte recoiled – but Lilith would not be denied. One last trial, before the underworld would relinquish them.
“Hold me tight,” Violette said. “Don’t let me bear it alone.”
They held each other, and visions came.
The relentless march of patriarchy.
The dark concretion in the Crystal Ring was not of Lilith’s making. Rather, it was a concentration of mankind’s thought-energy, an evil movement powered by fervid ambition. A new future, a new pure race, enemies annihilated – Cesare’s words. Trembling, Charlotte saw an endless flow of images.
Streets glittering with broken glass. Innocent people vanishing in the depths of the night. Armies on the move, families driven onto trains like cattle, smoke and flames rising. Cities in ruins. The sky aflame. Untold suffering.
She was looking at a world in which vampires were irrelevant, because men could create far greater horrors of their own.
Violette broke the link and the visions stopped. They stood speechless for a long time, bodies pressed together. Then Charlotte felt the change Lilith had created in her, and heard the same in Karl’s voice: new strength, an ability to watch human folly from the outside.
He spoke calmly, his sardonic tone drawing them back from the brink of despair.
“If Lilith has taught me something that Kristian never could, it is that vampires cannot change the future. We are not meant to change anything.”
“And we’re at the mercy of humans,” said Charlotte. “I always thought so.”
“I know what this place is now,” said Violette, looking around the dilapidated walls, “and it can’t hold us. It’s the heart of remembering and forgetting. This is where mankind shed their ancient memories in new pursuit of power. And it’s where we had to come to remember.”
“Simon didn’t know that, when he forced you here,” said Karl. “He was blind, as are mortals.”
“Is it too late to make them see?” asked Charlotte.
“We can’t stop the tide,” said Karl.
“And now they need no more of us,” Charlotte whispered. “They can create enough nightmares of their own.”
* * *
Werner clung to dreams of glory throughout his horror. Impossible. But, with all his might, he tried.
Clouds of fire, streaked with crimson, swarmed across his vision. He was flayed, boneless, raw with fear. He’d expected heaven and found hell.
So cold now. Shivering. Helpless. His hands were numb and he couldn’t feel Ilona or Pierre holding him. The circle hung in the void, ruby-clad vampires darkening to jet, the humans remaining pearl-white. Their hair and garments floated. Empty vessels, waiting for the rain of life to fill them…
Werner heard a drumbeat from a great distance. No, not drums. Marching feet. An army, bearing down in legions. Thousands of booted feet advancing, shaking the infernal skyscape, making the whole world tremble. Magnificence beyond his wildest hopes –
Precisely and deliberately, Ilona let go of his hand.
He didn’t realise she’d done so until he found himself tilting backwards, like a corpse in water. He saw yards of empty air between her hand and his. Caught a glimpse of her face. Pure evil in her searing eyes and malevolent smile.
Betrayal.
He saw his comrades, deathly white, floating like driftwood. He felt Pierre jerk his arm, as if in shock. Then, one by one, the humans began to wink out of the Ring.
Werner saw the immortals staring at each other in consternation. Their alarm was infectious. Unmanned by terror, he began to scream without sound.
The unseen army trampled him underfoot.
Hysterical, he sobbed for mercy. As marching boots passed over him, leaving him crushed in their wake, he glimpsed the amorphous shape of the future.
Horror and pain ground him to nothing. He couldn’t even cry out for Cesare. When the castle walls congealed around him once more, no glory awaited. All promises were broken. Lying untended on the flagstones, with his last breath running gurgling from his mouth, Werner died.
* * *
As they dressed, Violette became aware of how real the room felt. It was shabby, cold and haunted – but obstinately solid. This was not the Crystal Ring.
Charlotte slipped into her dress and Karl buttoned it for her, his eyes tender. Watching them, Violette couldn’t believe she’d had such a violent urge to tear them apart.
I’m glad, she thought. I never wanted them to be unhappy.
Lilith, too, had changed. She was less cynical, more tolerant. Just a little.
When Karl and Charlotte turned to her, she smiled. No guilt, no regret. Warmth flowed between the three of them, the delicious bond of shared secrets. Sweetest of transformations.
Outside the room, they found a narrow corridor with a high ceiling and bare, flaking walls.
“This is the real world, without question,” said Karl. “How did we get here?”
“I don’t know, but I know where we are,” said Violette. All Lilith’s calm strength was suddenly upended in turmoil. “It’s the house where I found Robyn. If she’s here, this time I’m taking her with me. And if she’s gone, I’ll find her!”
Dull grey light filtered through windows along one side. Looking out, Violette saw a courtyard with crumbling yellowish walls.
“Oh my God,” she breathed.
“What is it?” said Karl over her shoulder. Then he and Charlotte saw what Violette had seen. The long, thin white corpse of a vampire lay sprawled like a broken crane fly on the flagstones. The head was still attached, only by ribbons of flesh; the skull was crushed, the spine obviously severed.
“That’s Fyodor,” said Karl.
Without speaking they walked the length of the corridor, dusty floorboards creaking under their feet. Although Violette sensed no presences in the house, human or vampire, as they turned a corner she stopped in her tracks on a wave of dread.
“What is it?” Charlotte asked.
“Don’t you feel something?” Not waiting for an answer, Violette walked on.
The next corner angled onto a wider corridor that led to the master bedrooms. Violette recognised it. Her step slowed; the corridor seemed endless. In the wintry light, she saw, at the far end, the doorway to Robyn’s bedroom standing ajar.
She had no sense of Robyn’s presence… So why does the atmosphere feel so wrong? I perceive no one, yet I’m sure there’s someone here.
Violette went on, the others behind her. When they reached the door, Karl said, “Let me go in first.”
Charlotte placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. Violette quailed, thinking, I can’t go in. What’s the matter with me? I must!
With Charlotte beside her, Violette entered.
The curtains were drawn, the only light coming from a dying fire and an oil lamp. An odd shadow like a discarded coat lay near the fireplace. Violette took in the canopied four-poster, draped in lavish embroidered silk of cream and dark blue, saw Karl in silhouette inside the doorway, and another figure beside the bed. The stranger was a vampire she’d seen before, tall and dark-haired with a softly luminous beauty about him. His hands were folded and his head bowed, as if he were standing beside a deathbed.
The vampire said softly, “Don’t come in. Please don’t.”
The plea was half-hearted. Nothing could stop Violette. She walked past Karl and looked down at the bedcover.
Then she fell apart. Her composure, her very soul disintegrated. She flung herself down at the foot of the bed with a raw shriek of pain.
She knew Robyn was dead, without studying the pallid face or touching her stone-cold hands. Robyn’s lovely warm life-aura was gone.
I should have known, Vio
lette thought in anguish. Oh, Goddess, why didn’t I stay with her?
Grief flattened her with iron chains. No one spoke, no one touched Violette as she remained on the floor, clinging to the bedcover, fingers crushing the delicate fabric. Her shock was so extreme that she couldn’t speak or move. Robyn Robyn Robyn… She could only stare at the body that had once been replete with luxuriant life. Then she turned her gaze from the waxen mask to the dispassionate face of the vampire who had killed her.
Sebastian.
In a cat-leap, Violette flung herself over the corner of the bed and seized him. His expression flashed into rage; madness swam in his eyes.
“You did this!” Violette screamed. She was Lilith again and she was going to rip open his neck, snap his spine and tear off his head as she’d done to Matthew a lifetime ago–
But he was strong. He fought back, gripping her wrists, straining to reach her throat. Grief weakened her and strengthened him.
“No, you killed her,” he snarled. “You turned her against me.”
His fingernails tore like scalpels into her throat and chest. She lunged, slit his cheek with her fangs – then someone grabbed her from behind. Charlotte was trying to pull her away, while Karl got between them and forced Sebastian backwards. For a few moments Violette and Sebastian continued fighting like maddened dogs. Then they were dragged apart, struggling to reach each other across a space magnetised by hatred.
Two feral demons, fighting to the death. Lilith and Samael.
“Stop!” Charlotte yelled. “This is what they wanted! This is what Simon, Rasmila and Fyodor wanted!”
Her words sliced the air like a bright sword. Violette froze.
In the silence, from the corner of her eye, she saw that the shape near the fireplace was a vampire corpse. Its severed head gazed at the ceiling from a pool of blood.
Rasmila. Violette felt nothing; she had nothing left.
“What happened to Robyn?” Karl asked, his voice icy calm.
“What do you think?” Sebastian snarled. He bit Karl’s restraining arm, but Karl only flinched and held on.
Violette hissed, “Murderer!”
The Dark Blood of Poppies Page 52
