Chapter Five:
The servants had returned to Parkland and routine had been instilled. Rose had ensured with an imperial set to her mouth that everything had returned to a state of normalcy. Violet stayed locked in the guest room listening to the rise and fall of life beyond the door, she hadn't moved for days, had barely stirred from her bed. She hadn't even remove the blood and dirt stained clothes she had crawled into bed with.
There was a timid knock at the door. "Miss Violet. Miss? The lady has asked your company in the dining room. Miss?" It was Cora, Rose's preferred maid.
Violet sat up, feeling like a marionette.
"Miss Violet? Are you in there?"
Violet was at the door in an instant, wrenching it open to see Cora shivering where she stood. "What?"
"Lady Rose has asked for your company in the dining room." She said giving an awkward curtsey.
Violet stared at Cora as if she didn't comprehend the words coming out of her human mouth. Human. Life pumping beneath her flesh. Blood flowing, plumping her lips, her cheeks…Violet could scarcely catch a breath and slammed the door between them.
"Go away, Cora." She said through the door.
She listened to the maid's pattering footsteps disappear down the hall.
When she gathered the strength to stand again she moved gingerly down the stairs. It was as if she were following the scent of mortality, the rich, coppery stench of human blood. She walked into the dining room to find her mother and sister sitting at the dining table with plates of fruit set before them.
Rose's eyes were bright as they met Rose from across the room.
Coral looked between the two with a bemused expression. "Well it's about time we sat together for a meal."
Violet shivered, unable to look at her mother's face. She sat nonetheless, opposite from her twin, staring down at the fleshy pink grapefruit in front of her. The sight and scent of it made her sick.
"Why aren't you girls eating?" Coral asked.
Violet cringed, vivid visions of blood, screaming, sucking flooded her sense and she pushed the plate away violently, slamming her fists on the table and hanging her head miserably. Rose glanced at her sideways whilst she daintily picked at the fruit on her plate.
"That's better." Coral smiled.
They sat in silence but Violet could feel the waves of emotion rolling off of her sister, a jumble of confusion, sadness and hot and terrible anger.
A servant set some glasses beside them. Violet knocked hers off the table with a swift swoop of her wrist. Rose and Coral both jumped.
"Don't you dare leave this room, Violet Calla Bludworth." Coral hissed.
Violet turned her cold eyes on her mother. They stared at each other deep in the eye. It was their little secret that burned between them. Smouldering between them.
"You will sit down and finish you breakfast and wait for the Marwood-Thorn clan to arrive." Coral intoned in a no nonsense way that neither Violet nor Rose had heard since they were very young girls.
"You do not tell me what to do anymore." Violet replied and strode toward the exit, slamming the door behind her.
*
Violet sat with her back to the willow tree, a poison thing that could kill her but oddly it gave her great and silent comfort. The earth seemed to vibrate beneath her body, secrets of the soil communing with her sorrow.
There was a rustle in the brush and she was on her feet in an instant. Coral Bludworth stood beneath the shade of a nearby tree, her eyes sad and set on her daughter. "That tree." She said and took a step forward. "That tree was planted from someone very special to me-"
"I know." Violet dismissed her mother turning her back to the woman.
"My soul mate."
Violet froze, a unnatural chill possessed her and a long moment of silence passed as she couldn't believe her ears. She turned very slowly to face her mother whose eyes were sober, her mouth solemn, her very stance unlike the woman she had known. "What did you say?"
Coral laughed but it was a hollow sound that did not fit with the dulcet bird song and rustling leaves. "Yes, you heard me, child. My soul mate, my human soul mate." Her voice grew harsh, bitter even.
Violet was already shaking her head, no. "Fairytales. It's all just fairytales."
Coral's expression turned cold. "I thought so too."
Coral Bludworth had stopped ageing somewhere in her twenties, her green-blue eyes shone like large aqueous pools from her classic doll like face. Her skin was as pale and perfect as porcelain and there was no sign of the drunken revenant creature Violet had seen that night the human had died.
"His name was Michael Devries."
Violet leant against the willow trunk as her mother recounted her sad story. Coral Redfern had departed from her island sanctuary in the midst of the roaring twenties. A world rocked by the first Great War and woman had a voice like they had never known and Coral was coming into her very own voice in the Night.
A vampire debutant, but naïve as she ran from theatre to bar, to private parties of the famous, the dangerous and the darkest creatures in the Night. This was where she met Opal Dravek, a diva, a flapper a legend even in the human world. A woman whose irresistible voice had charmed both the new and old world.
From then on Coral smoke cigarettes on long elegant stems, wore ivory lace gloves and wore dark makeup to frame her large blue-green eyes.
It was at one of Opal's soirees that she had first seen him. A skinny trumpet player teasing out a solo on his horn. Everyone in the house was on their feet, and the human musician commanded every step with his instrument. Coral was instantly enchanted.
After the musicians packed their instruments away and left the makeshift stage, Coral had followed the trumpet player as he walked alone on the street. He walked as if listening to music, each step on a beat.
"He was beautiful." Coral said with a faint smile. "Strange thing to think, he was only human after all and humans are…"
"What about daddy?"
"Bryce." Coral's voice was hard. "It was a marriage of convenience as I'm sure you understand." Most marriages amongst the Lamia were. The main preoccupation of Lamia matches was to keep the wealth and bloodlines pure. It was said Hunter Redfern himself had set up the Bludworth Redfern match, and as the patriarch of the most ancient line of vampires no one could refuse. Bryce Bludworth owed fealty to Hunter just as Coral was bound by her blood as a Redfern.
"How did he die?"
Coral eyes filled with tears. "My heart was set on Michael from the instant I saw him, it was all sparks and thunder and magic. Your father found out of course, he caught me with him whilst we were on our honeymoon." Smile. "It was a beautiful night, we drank champagne flutes of blood and listening to the band play."
"How did he die, mother?"
"Your father fed me his blood in those glasses." She said almost dreamily. "I found his body later that night."
"Daddy killed him."
"It was your father who ordered his death. I suppose I should thank him really otherwise I'd be dead too."
Violet thought of all her memories of her mother, drunk, wallowing in a kind of madness that had always separated her from life beyond the boundaries of Parkland. She may be alive but it was no life at all. Not without…
"That human was yours, was he?" Coral asked blandly.
Violet shook her head indeterminably, instead she was filled with the backwash of Rose's grief and now her mother's sad tale.
Coral moved up to her with great speed and grasped her arm hard. "We'll not tell Rose anything about what was said here nor what happened that night, it'll be our little secret."
Violet nodded, unable to resist her mother, unable to articulate her thoughts or feelings. Secrets. Too many secrets.
They walked back together to the house. Violet's eyes cast down to the ground, unable to digest fully what her mother had said. There was a gathering of People inside, Violet could gear a great buzz of voices and was suddenly frightened. Had they heard of Rose's human lover? Had the Night come for her?
Coral walked ahead with a stiff back and head held high. Violet hung back, listening, her hands trembling with mad thoughts of capture and torture. Even though her skin crawled with the thought of human hands over her sister and her mother, she would rather they not suffer death for it.
It explained why her mother was quite mad, as the legends went, two souls intertwined to make a perfect whole as the gods had intended.
There was the tinkle of laughter through the walls and she found a place to sit on a small, dark staircase used by the servants for discreet getaways. The Marwood-Thorn clan were in the house, it was their voices she could hear. She half-recognised some of the intonation from her childhood years spent in and out of their company.
She sat and numbly listened to the pomp and ceremony of the vampires preparing a momentously advantageous marriage. The Marrow-Thorns would climb up the social scale and the Bludworth's would expand their family to include more sons and daughters, as if they could outbreed the Redfern clan.
She set her head against the wall and closed her eyes, but there were too many secrets ricocheting in her skull.
More laughter, it was giving her a headache. The house felt like a giant trap, the Marrow-Thorn like teeth in the jaws of a great lion who had its hungry eye fixed upon her family. She had to get out. Even as she thought it she was heading for the front door.
She found her sister standing in the doorway, arms folded across her chest. "Where are you going? What did she say to you out there?"
"Nowhere and nothing." Violet said her throat suddenly thick with tears.
Rose marched up to her, standing alarming close she whispered. "You're lying. You're lying about Nicky and you're lying about everything else."
"Leave me alone." Violet pushed her sister out of the way and wrenched open the front door. She came face to face with Calder.
Without a moment of hesitation Calder embraced her, folded neatly in his strong arms, smothered by the fabric of his jacket. She went instantly stiff in his arms. "Are you okay?" He asked.
She pushed him away, holding him at arms length. "Rose is inside."
His expression became smooth, unreadable but his eyes searched her face, his nostrils flared ever so slightly, trying to detect who she really was.
She stood back, folding arms in front of her chest. "They're all waiting for you."
"Yes we are." Rose stood behind them, having seen Calder and Violet together, the chirpy note in her voice was forced. "Cally, are you coming?"
Calder brushed past Violet to get into the house, his eyes were focused on Rose a smile came to his mouth but what Rose didn't see was his hand brushing Violet's ever so softly.s