The Dark Blood of Poppies by Freda Warrington Page B

hunt?” She spoke gently, but her heart sank. Violette looked desolate. Charlotte’s gaze was arrested by a pearly mark over her breastbone. “What’s that on your chest?”
    “This?” Violette smiled without humour, and drew down the front of her dress to reveal a ragged scar between her breasts. “Isn’t it wonderful, how fast we heal? Last night it was almost through to my spine.”
    “Who did this?” Rage electrified her. To think that some idiot had actually tried to kill Violette! “Was it John? I’ll tear him apart!”
    “I think you would.” Violette walked away into the dark library. As Charlotte followed, she added, “Something happened.”
    “Tell me.”
    Violette paused by a table, lowering her head. “There was a girl called Ute,” she began softly. “One of my
corps de ballet
, gifted enough to become a soloist. She told me she had family problems. Her father was putting pressure on her to return home. He thought her place was to be a
hausfrau
, not a performer. She was so upset, poor angel, and she came to me for advice. Wise counsel.” The ballerina touched her breastbone as if the wound was sore. “I am responsible for all my dancers, especially the girls. Some of them are very young and I am everything to them: parent, teacher, guardian. Ute trusted me in her distress, and I… I hadn’t tasted blood for three days.”
    “Oh, Violette,” Charlotte sighed.
    “It was more than thirst. I wasn’t sympathetic, I was furious with her for giving in to a selfish old man. And all the time I was sucking her blood and swooning with pleasure, I loathed myself. This thing that takes over…”
    “It’s hunger. If you’d drink when you feel the need, you wouldn’t become so desperate that you lose control.”
    “No, it has a name. The demon that takes me over is Lilith.”
    Charlotte said nothing. Pursuing this subject never achieved anything. Violette flexed her shaking hands.
    “I become Lilith, yet I don’t know what she
wants
. I wish she’d let me in on the secret. I only know that she’s driven. Like me.”
    “What happened to the girl?” Charlotte asked.
    Violette moved towards a stained glass window at the far end of the room.
    “Ute lived. I wasn’t crazed enough to kill her. Do you remember that other young woman I attacked, Benedict’s wife, Holly? That my bite seemed to break her child-like dependence on her husband? Well, something changed in Ute too, but not for the better. She didn’t remember what I’d done, but she had nightmares. I watched her trying to sleep, her pale little face on the pillow…”
    Charlotte recalled Rachel’s distress and agitation. Lilith’s judgement, it seemed, did not discriminate between vampires and mortals.
    “But she stayed with the ballet?”
    “Of course not,” Violette said with contempt. “She ran home to her father the next day. I can’t blame her. Who’d stay with a madwoman like me? But how could Lilith…” Her voice became anguished, “How could
I
do that to someone in my care?”
    The window was violet, with winter trees traced in lead, and a moon of thick white glass caught in the branches. Violette was an inky-haired shadow against it. She turned and opened the window, and the scene outside was the same; the violet sky, the moon.
    “They are out there,” said the dancer. “Humans. Prey. All I have to do is leap over the sill and find them.”
    “Yes,” Charlotte said without inflexion. “That’s all.”
    Violette’s hard white fingernails scraped the sill like a bird’s claws. She released a short breath. “But I can’t.”
    “Why not?” Charlotte watched her guardedly, unable to bear her pain. She wanted to soothe Violette, but daren’t try. The dancer still terrified her.
    “Always the same damned reason! This demon inside me…”
    “Close the window,” said Charlotte.
    “I’m not cold.”
    “Close it anyway.”
    “Do you think I’m about to start baying at the moon and growing hair on my