The Dark Blood of Poppies Read Online Free PDF Page B

calf. Now she looked forward to her warm bed.
    In the two years that Karl and Charlotte had been together, they preferred to hunt separately. Both felt that the drinking of blood was too personal to be witnessed. Perhaps it was a form of denial. To hunt together would have been conscious collusion, a step too far across the borderline of evil.
    Normally they would have let the woman pass by. Nothing was different this evening…
    Yet something happened.
    Unbidden, mutual need flowed between them. No word was spoken. As the peasant woman reached them they stopped, blocking her path.
    She appeared to be in her thirties, fresh-faced and charming in her headscarf, shawl and long skirts. A benevolent soul. But Charlotte, seeing her through a mist of hunger, perceived her as prey; as meaningful and precious as a sacrifice, but prey all the same. And Karl, his eyes like flames behind amber glass, no longer looked human at all.
    The woman froze in shock. Gently they closed in, embracing her with tender hands. Charlotte fed first, then held her while Karl sank his wolf-teeth into the plump throat. Moving behind the victim, Charlotte fed again, breaking the virgin skin on the other side of her neck.
    Her hands met Karl’s around the human’s hot body as they fed. They clasped each other with the victim between them. The moment was eternal, primal, throbbing with heat and blood. Transcendent.
    It was the first time they’d fed together like this. More than lust, this was a blood-ritual, connecting them to the darkest side of their natures. Entwining them in wordless ecstasy… and damnation.
    Afterwards, they carried the woman to the edge of a farm to be found, either to live or die. Then they went home without a word.
    What was there to say? They were both shocked to the soul, swimming in the same shadowy lake of passion. Moved, excited, afraid.
    Home was an isolated black chalet poised high in a pine forest beneath the Alps. The peaks of the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau floated on the horizon. Within, the rooms had a timeless, faded luxury. Dark pine walls and high ceilings supported by rafters. Persian rugs, panels of muted floral wallpaper, elegant furniture; a library lined from floor to ceiling with books; a music room; a kitchen used only by their housekeeper, who climbed the steep hill twice a week to clean the house. If she thought her employers strange, she was too well paid to ask questions.
    Vampires had few material needs – only human blood was essential – so they could have lived naked in graveyards, if they wished. Charlotte did not know of anyone who did. They still preferred to live like humans. The trappings of ordinary life were a fascinating luxury to some; to others, a poignant connection to their lost humanity. In this, Charlotte and Karl were no different.
    In the drawing room, Charlotte forced Karl to look at her. He seemed hardly able to do so. His exquisitely sculpted face, dark eyebrows giving bewitching intensity to his lovely eyes, his soft full hair of darkest mahogany – black in shadow, red where the fire caught garnet lights on the strands – still stopped her heart with their beauty. But sometimes he scared her to death. Tonight had added another irrevocable layer of darkness to their relationship.
    “Now do you believe I’m not human?” she whispered.
    * * *
    Charlotte lit candles on a low table, each flame adding a new wash of light to her golden-pale skin. Fragrant incense smoke coiled through the glow.
    Karl watched her. There was silent reverence between them, for what had gone before and what would surely follow.
    The drawing room took on the feel of a church prepared for midnight mass. This was a kind of ritual; dream-like, unplanned, but inevitable. A celebration, or wake, for the death of delusion.
    Karl, seated in an upright chair, felt the familiar curves of the cello between his knees. Scents of old, varnished wood mingled with the peppery incense. He set his bow to the strings and