The Dark Blood of Poppies by Freda Warrington Page B

fangs extended to their full length.
    “Don’t,” Karl said quietly.
    Simon ignored the command. Swift and savage, he lunged, struck Karl across the face, seized his throat two-handed. Wedged back against the table, Karl could not dislodge him. Simon gripped him by the collarbone and the chin, stretching Karl’s throat between his hands. His staring eyes were like Niklas’s; the iced-gold, mindless eyes of a
doppelgänger
.
    “If God creates angels like you,” Karl rasped, “we are damned, for certain.”
    He thrust his hands upwards in prayer position between Simon’s arms and stabbed his fingers at those glorious eyes. Simon loosed his grip to defend himself. Karl kicked his legs from under him and dropped on top of him, his hands clamping Simon’s elbows to the floor, the tips of his canines touching the angelic neck. The flesh was peach-soft.
    Karl did not bite. Instead he pulled back. “I don’t want a single mouthful of your blood. I remember what happened when Rasmila so generously gave me hers. A trap to put me in your control.”
    Simon looked defeated, furious. Karl thought,
He’s lost his way and he’s frightened of something. Very frightened.
    “You should leave,” said Karl. “If you wish to discuss anything in a civilised fashion, by all means call again. But if you threaten me, or lay a finger on my friends, I’ll bury you with Kristian.”
    He rose to his feet, letting Simon up.
    “You’ve made a grave error,” said Simon, “but then, I suppose you’ve had a lot of practice.” The vitriol of his stare could have melted glass. He pushed past Karl, looking back over his shoulder as he faded into the Crystal Ring. “You’re going to hell with Lilith, for certain.”

CHAPTER THREE

THE CLAWS OF THE OWL
    K ristian was dead, but Schloss Holdenstein remained: an age-raddled pile of brown stone on a ridge above the river Rhine, crowned with decaying roofs and turrets. Its silhouette crouched like a beast against the creamy sky. Rocks and ancient trees crusted its flanks. The hillside below fell steeply to the river, fell again into the green mirror of the water.
    Isolated in its forest wilderness, the castle lived under no human laws.
    It lived once
, thought Cesare,
but now it is dying.
    Every day Cesare would wander the tortuous corridors of the castle, the cramped, windowless chambers, the staircases leading up or down at mad angles. Sorrow and desolation breathed from the very walls. How empty, how drear this place was without Kristian, their master. Deserted and dying of grief…
    He would always pause in the meeting room, the large chamber where Kristian had held court. The ebony throne remained. Cesare imagined Kristian’s presence everywhere, as if to will the master back to life. He dreamed and mourned, dry-eyed.
    And then he would return to his own cell, and meditate on the futility of existence.
    There were a few vampires still left in the Schloss, but he might as well have been alone. They never spoke to each other. There was nothing to say.
    When Kristian first disappeared, Cesare and the other disciples had tried to carry on as normal. Almost two years they’d waited, held together by faith that Kristian would return.
    Instead, Karl had come to tell them that Kristian was dead.
    Devastation. Knowing they were lost without their leader, he had told Karl – as if yielding to a new king – “You took him from us, so you must take his place!”
    Karl had refused. In his anguish, Cesare had tried to kill him. Karl had won, almost severing Cesare’s head in the process.
    After the wound healed, Cesare changed. He no longer cared. Without Kristian, there was nothing to live for. Now he and the others, remnants who couldn’t face the world beyond the castle, merely existed. They went out at night to drink human blood or energy, rested in the Crystal Ring, prayed to their cruel God. The rest of the time, all those interminable hours, they huddled in their cells, questioning