The Dark Blood of Poppies (25 page)

“You never told me.” His voice was hollow.

“I never meant to. I told Charlotte once, to explain why I hated you so. I made her swear not to tell you.”

“Charlotte knew?” The thorn-prick became an ache. He gripped her arm. “Why didn’t you tell me at the time?”

“How could I? I didn’t know what you planned to do, until it was too late. What difference would it have made?”

“I don’t know,” he said truthfully. “I don’t know.”

“None, because you were too wrapped up in what you wanted to consider my wishes.”

“It’s true.” The ache reached his throat and eyes. He could hardly speak. “I was only thinking of myself. I wanted you with me forever, not growing old with some mortal man.”

“Yes, jealousy, too; you think I didn’t know? You didn’t only kill the child I was expecting, but all the potential children. Our descendents. You didn’t ask, you didn’t give me a choice!”

“I know,” he whispered. Ilona had never spoken so openly before. He’d longed for her to confide in him, but now she was doing so, he could hardly bear to listen.

“And my husband – after I became a vampire, I went back and killed him. You didn’t know that either, did you? I sucked him dry, because it seemed the only thing to do. Strangle my mortal connections, cut them dead so I didn’t keep wanting to go back. I can’t remember what he looked like, actually.”

“God, Ilona…”

“But none of this occurred to you. Even if it had, you’d have taken me anyway.”

“Not if I’d known it would cause you such pain, a century later.”

“But it doesn’t.” Her tone was thin, chilling. “Don’t you understand? That’s why I’m crying. Because I feel nothing.”

Karl’s grief hardened. It wasn’t sympathy Ilona needed; she never had. “If that’s true, why do you still want to punish me? I’m hopeless at being a martyr to guilt, however bad a father I have been.”

“Did I spring fully armed from your head?” she cried. “Because you never talk about my mother, never!”

“Would you want me to? When I told you that Kristian had your mother killed, you fawned on Kristian all the more, knowing I’d hate it. There’s nothing to say about our mortal lives, Ilona.”

Her sobs ebbed away. She lay across his lap as if she’d disgorged all her strength. “I’m not weeping for my mortal life, Father. I’m weeping because I swore I’d never tell you these things, and now I’ve broken my oath. It’s the humiliation.
This
is what Violette has done to me.”

He lifted her up and cradled her against his side. Her slender body fitted along his chest and shoulder. And for once she neither teased nor reviled him, but simply rested there.

“I was wrong to make you a vampire,” Karl said. “But if I hadn’t, you would be dead by now. Perhaps your great-granddaughter would be here with me instead. Would you really have preferred that?”

She gave him a poisonous look. “Oh, I’m a consummate hypocrite. You know how I feel about you. Don’t humiliate me more by forcing me to say it. You know.”

“Why is it humiliating to admit you love me? Why does it almost kill you to weep in front of me, or admit that I hurt you? I was your father. You once said we can’t retain human relationships, but I disagree. If you can’t trust me, who else is there? But that’s why you torment me, isn’t it? Because you know you are safe to do so.”

Karl expected vehement denial. Instead, her reaction was a shaky laugh. “You frightened me once,” she said. “The time Kristian brought you back to life and you found that I’d come back to him? You looked straight through me and it was the first time I felt you’d stopped caring. Oh, I would hate it if you didn’t care.”

“And do you think my patience is infinite?”

“No, but I know you’d always save me from danger, as you did tonight. You even braved the
Weisskalt
to save me!”

“So we understand each other, then,” he said gently.

Ilona raised a hand to stroke his neck. The hand pulled off his tie, undid the collar of his shirt. Like a cat she slid her cheek over his ribs and collarbone, nuzzled into his throat, then bit him. Her canines were so swift and sharp that Karl felt little pain. He let her drink, cradling her, his head tipping back a little, eyelids lowered, lips parted. Not breathing. As he looked down on her raptly bent head, he envisioned a baby’s head, with a mop of the same plum-dark hair, suckling at her mother’s breast. And this grotesque parody represented exactly what they were: a reversal of nature.

When Ilona raised her head, her brown eyes had turned molten, like a sated lover. Her fingers pressed into his neck; her robe and torn dress fell away from her milky shoulders. It took Karl all his willpower not to feast on her in turn.

“I’m going back to Europe,” she announced. “I wanted to prove Pierre wrong about Violette – only to discover that he’s right. She has to be stopped.”

Karl’s mood darkened. Violette had become an insoluble problem. Much as he distrusted her, for Charlotte’s sake he did not want her harmed. In any case, she seemed indestructible.
But
, he thought,
how long can I stand by while she attacks people like Pierre and Ilona? How long before she turns on Charlotte?

“That will only create more trouble,” he said. “More grief.”

“So? I have to prove that she
hasn’t
changed me, that she can’t turn me to a gibbering wreck like Pierre.” Ilona seemed her normal self again. Karl didn’t know whether to be pleased or dismayed. “Behaving vilely and destructively, tearing apart everyone she meets – that, my beloved Karl, is my job.”

* * *

Sebastian knew that Roberta Stafford lived on Chestnut Street, Beacon Hill. Discovering her address had been simple: after they parted in the Public Garden, he secretly followed her home.

Tomorrow night he would take her out to dinner, like the gentleman suitor he played so well – but tonight he haunted the street outside her house as his true self, a malevolent predator in the darkness. How pleasing, to spy on his prey in her natural setting.

Leaning against a tree trunk, Sebastian felt rain pattering softly through the leaves. The drops wove webs of light from the lamps, made the road surface glisten. A lovely street, with cobbled sidewalks, gas lamps and rows of red-brick houses stepping gracefully up the hill. So quiet, folded discreetly on its riches like a hen on her nest. The lindens, maples and maidenhairs that lined the sidewalks were so lush that the buildings were barely visible. No two houses were alike: each had its own architectural quirks. Robyn’s was particularly charming: four storeys high, tall windows framed by white woodwork and black shutters. A narrow front garden lay behind railings, with vines smothering the lower brickwork, wisteria twining around the arched doorway. The railings were topped with gold leaf, the steps whitewashed. The home of a rich widow, perhaps, utterly respectable.

And yet, defying propriety, this extraordinary woman lived like a courtesan in the grand old style. Sebastian, despite his world-weariness, was intrigued. He wanted to savour this.

He found his way around the row of houses, along an alley and into her walled garden. He noted kitchens on the ground floor, a flight of steps up to a terrace where lights shone from the parlour. Thick lace curtains were ideal to shield a vampire from sight, even if he pressed right up against the glass.

Four people were in the room: a puffy-faced businessman, a middle-aged woman with dark hair, a maid serving a tray of drinks, and Roberta herself. A cosy, happy gathering; even the maid joined in the talk and laughter.

Roberta was seated, facing away from the window. Sebastian took in her sleek brown hair, the curves and angles of her shoulders under the thin straps of her dress… and her neck, peach-soft, pleading for the touch of his fingers and lips.

The anticipation was exquisite.

None of them saw his face, half in shadow under a mass of dark hair, lace-patterns icing one high cheekbone and the sharp line of his jaw, catching one point of light in a darkly introspective eye. They didn’t sense him watching, nor notice him withdraw and vanish. He had learned enough for now.

The business type was called Harold and was apparently one of her lovers.
How many does she have?
he wondered. The two women were her maids, Mary and Alice. Roberta treated them more as friends than servants. Clearly they were loyal.

Interesting
, Sebastian thought. He already knew that his victim-to-be was far from the cold
Belle Dame sans Merci
whom Russell Booth had described. She was kind to her servants. She was ordinary. Hidden, then, the real poison of her heart.

He began to smile, but his pleasure hardened into black thirst. He’d had too much sadness in the past to feel joy now. He was not a gloating killer. He simply obeyed the grim urges of his nature; his passion for blood was bleak, ruthless and absolute.

Tomorrow. But he would not take her immediately, because he’d learned that her uncle was in town, and that he knew Karl. So he couldn’t fulfil his plan until the uncle and the other vampires left Boston. Still, he had time in abundance. He’d taken a risk, telling her his real name, but a little risk spiced his anticipation.

So hard to wait, so tantalising.

As Sebastian walked down Spruce Street towards the Common, he met an Irish housemaid with autumn hair like Robyn’s. Did she feel safe alone, so late at night? he asked her, effortlessly imitating her brogue. Charmed, she smiled and blushed. Quite safe, sir. I’m only after visiting a friend. But, he said, will you let me walk you home?

She let him, and they talked about Ireland as they went. As always Sebastian felt the strange conflicts of memory. Savage pain no longer… yet there was still something, the deep green pull of the old land and the house…

The Irish girl trusted him, and flirted shamelessly. She led him to the back of a big house on Marlborough Street, more old Bostonian wealth and grandeur. In the shadow of the kitchen door, they stood like young lovers who weren’t quite sure how to proceed.

“Well, goodnight, sir,” she said, looking at him expectantly.

He kissed her. “I’m superstitious,” he said. “I won’t come in until I’m invited.”

Her eyes were huge, dew-soft. He had not mesmerised her. “Would you like to?” she whispered.

They crept along corridors and up the back stairs to her attic room. As soon as the door closed he pulled her to him, scaring her a little. His hands travelled over the cheap material of her coat, ripping off the buttons in his excitement. She was compliant, not as inexperienced as a good Catholic girl should be. If they were really frightened or unwilling, which was rare, he would content himself with their blood. Sebastian was not a rapist – only of their veins, at least.

But she responded eagerly as he pushed her down onto the narrow, lumpy bed, tearing away her skirt and undergarments. He loved physical passion, albeit with a kind of grim detachment. She tried to kiss him but he turned his face away; that was not the intimacy he wanted. She was wriggling beneath him, gasping for breath.

“Slow down,” she said, voice high and faint. “What’s the hurry? Please, slow down!”

But he could not. All that mattered was his blind urgency as he thrust himself into her warm moist flesh, the shuddering build-up of fire.

How he loved this. Sometimes blood itself was not enough. Blood was the necessity, not sex – but to feed like this, in full, aching possession, gave the act an edge of unparalleled rapture.

His fangs entered her neck and hot fluid surged into his mouth. He was only half-aware of his victim’s mingled pleasure and pain. She was only a vessel, the source of the ruby heat building within him. He raked his hands through her hair and dug his fingers into her skull, imagining…

Imagining that she was Robyn.

“Robyn,” he murmured through the blood. “Robyn.”

His climax was a lava-surge that went on and on as her blood flowed to quench the searing thirst… until it slowed to a trickle of pleasure, and the girl’s body lay cooling beneath him.

Once it was over, he immediately wanted to escape. Leaving the house through the Crystal Ring, he strolled to the Charles River and stood looking across the dark water towards Cambridge. Anyone seeing him would have thought he looked too genteel to harm a soul. He was satiated, at peace; slightly depressed, perhaps, but nothing to cause pain.

The river’s wide flow filled him with tranquillity. Only the faintest ripple of hunger troubled him: the desire not to take a substitute, but to seduce and possess the one who really mattered.

“
W
here’s Ilona?” Charlotte demanded.

She switched on a light as she entered the suite, but Karl was there alone. He stood at the window, looking out at the street. Outside, she glimpsed traffic crawling between tall Victorian buildings, lights flickering on darkness; heard trolley cars rattling, motor horns, drunken voices singing in the distance. American cities never slept, it seemed.

“She’s gone,” he said.

“Oh, has she?” Charlotte couldn’t hide her anger. “She must know I’d like to tear her limb from limb.”