The Black Rose Chronicles

by Linda Lael Miller

  He bolted away from her with unsettling swiftness. Had he been anyone other than who he was, Neely would have thought he hadn’t heard her explanation, but she knew very little got by Aidan, whether he appeared to be paying attention or not.

  “It will require some thought—your predicament, I mean,” he said gravely, avoiding her gaze. “Please, make yourself comfortable. I’ll bring the car to the front of the house in a few minutes. I don’t use it often, so the engine will need some time to warm up.”

  Neely nodded, feeling both relief and disappointment at the prospect of being separated from him.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Aidan left the room.

  Neely waited, then raised herself out of the chair, supporting her weight with one hand and clutching the empty snifter in the other. Her legs were still trembling, and the small injury she’d done to her shin earlier stung like crazy, but the brandy had definitely restored her. And none of those things were of any consequence at all in comparison to the emotions and yearnings Aidan Tremayne brought out in her.

  She crossed to Aidan’s desk and set the snifter down.

  There was a music box sitting just to the left of the blotter, and Neely automatically reached for it, wanting to think of something else, if only for a moment, to shift her thoughts from the master of that spooky old house.

  Besides, she had a collection of such boxes tucked away in a rented storage unit, along with most of her other belongings. The small mechanisms and delicate tunes had always appealed to her.

  This one was clearly antique, perhaps dating back to the early nineteenth century. The case was carved of the finest rosewood, and there were tiny forest animals etched into its top.

  Neely lifted the lid, and the tinkling notes of an old tune rose from inside. She trembled, and her heart lurched painfully.

  It was the same melody she’d heard in her dream.

  With a little cry Neely closed the music box and stepped back.

  “Is something wrong?” an unfamiliar male voice inquired.

  Neely whirled, one shock compounding with another. She had never seen the man standing behind her; he was enormous, imposing, and, she supposed, handsome, with his rich chestnut hair and discerning violet eyes. She clasped one hand to her chest and made an inarticulate sound.

  “I’ve frightened you.” With a calm, easy smile the man bowed his head. “I apologize.”

  Neely was still shaken, but she was beginning to regain her equilibrium. She would work out the music box thing later, she decided. As for the man’s sudden appearance, well, that was easily explained. The Tremayne house was large, and Aidan hadn’t said he was alone there. She had simply assumed that.

  “My name is Valerian. Yours?”

  “Neely,” she said, still breathing fast. Could this man be the same one who had chased her into the woods? No—she’d been watching too much television and reading too many thrillers, that was all. This guy was hardly the sort to go rambling through the trees in the dead of night, and it was impossible to imagine him behind the wheel of a Blazer. “Neely Wallace.”

  “A pleasure,” he said, taking Neely’s hand, which she didn’t recall extending, and barely brushing the knuckles with his lips.

  A shiver went through her, part pleasure and part primal fear. She felt light-headed, almost as if she’d been hypnotized. She wrenched back her hand just as Aidan entered the room again, bringing the scents of fresh air and snow with him.

  He looked at Valerian but spoke to Neely.

  “The car is ready,” he said. His tone was terse.

  Neely nodded and scrambled into her coat, eager to be away. And, if she was to be honest, eager to be alone with Aidan again.

  A white English sports car, a Triumph Spitfire with a canvas top and plenty of chrome, waited in front of the house. Aidan opened the passenger door for Neely before going around to the driver’s side and sliding behind the wheel.

  “What’s going on around here?” she demanded, surprising even herself with the bluntness of the question. It seemed her troubled subconscious mind had decided to make a move on its own, bypassing the usual channels. “Aidan, I had a very strange, very vivid dream last night, about you. We danced, you and I, to an old-fashioned tune, one I’m certain I’ve never heard before. Tonight I lifted the lid of that music box on your desk, and out came that very same song.”

  Aidan shifted the expensive car into gear and stepped on the accelerator. The machine navigated the snowy driveway with ease. “Coincidence,” he said, but he didn’t so much as glance in her direction.

  “No,” Neely insisted. She was certain of that one conviction, if nothing else. “I couldn’t remember the dream—it drove me crazy all day long—but when I heard that tune, everything came back to me. You and I were dancing. And—and I’m not sure now that it really was a dream. What’s going on here, Aidan?” She paused to gather her courage. “Am I imagining the attraction between us?” she asked in a small but determined voice.

  He shifted again, and the car fishtailed slightly but quickly regained its traction. “No,” he said, with succinct reluctance, and in spite of all the danger she was in, Neely felt a rush of wild, flamboyant joy. She wanted Aidan to kiss her again, the way he had in the dream or delusion, whatever it had been, but he didn’t even glance in her direction.

  “We’re playing for very high stakes, here—much higher than you can possibly imagine. You must keep yourself safe, inasmuch as you can, and most of all you have to trust me.”

  She sighed and settled back in the leather seat, clasping her hands in her lap and memorizing his profile. “Well,” she said. “That was certainly cryptic. Why do I get the feeling you don’t intend to explain?”

  At last he looked at her, and even though he kept his distance, Neely had the oddest sensation that she’d just been soundly kissed. The incident left her dizzy and wanting Aidan with an embarrassing desperation.

  “I will explain everything when I can,” he said kindly.

  Neely touched her fingertips to her lips, which were still tingling from a kiss that hadn’t happened.

  Aidan lifted one corner of his mouth in a teasing and damnably mysterious smile. “I can do other things as well,” he said, leaving her even more mystified than before. “One of these nights I’ll show you.”

  Neely blushed and barely kept herself from blurting out that she wanted him to show her all his tricks, then and there.

  They had reached the highway, and Aidan made a right turn, chuckling to himself as if he’d heard her thoughts. She squirmed as the small, sleek car shot toward the Lakeview Trailer Court and Motel.

  Neely looked around, forcing herself to think of something besides the inexplicable need Aidan had managed to stir in her.

  There was no sign of the Blazer; the only other vehicle they encountered was a county snowplow.

  Aidan turned onto the gravel road that wound through the trailer court and came to a stop at Neely’s door.

  She felt as awkward as a teenage wallflower at the biggest dance of the year. She wanted Aidan to touch her and at the same time was terrified that he would. She opened the car door hastily and climbed out. “Good night,” she said cheerfully. “And thank you.”

  He left the car, walked Neely to her door, and waited patiently until she was inside. “Good night,” he said formally, although something mischievous smoldered in his eyes all the while, as she closed the door.

  It was only after Aidan had driven away, the taillights of his car blinking red in an otherwise white night, that she realized she’d never told him which trailer was hers.

  “Hunt with me,” Valerian pleaded as Aidan tossed his car keys into a china dish on the bookshelf behind his desk. His attention was focused on the music box.

  “I’ve already fed,” he replied, picking up the little rosewood case and lifting the lid.

  “Then feed again,” Valerian said.

  At last Aidan lifted his gaze. “Why? You know I abhor it.” />
  Valerian sighed. “Yes,” he agreed. “But a surplus may heighten your powers. It is more important than ever that you be strong, Aidan.”

  Now it was Aidan who sighed. “Another dire warning,” he said, returning the box to its place. “What would you have me do? Become a hedonist as well as a heretic, like you?”

  The other vampire slammed his hands down hard on the top of Aidan’s desk, making the music box and several other items jump. “Spare me the moral discourse,” Valerian rasped, his eyes seeming to burn like Saint Elmo’s fire as he glared at Aidan from under his heavy brows. “Others have seen Lisette. She is beginning to circulate.”

  Aidan shoved a hand through his hair. “Perhaps the thing to do is confront her,” he said.

  Valerian shook his head. “In your present state, that would be disastrous. Lisette is the queen of all vampires, the first female ever created. Even after a long sleep, her powers will be formidable.”

  Aidan’s mind touched on Neely, on her softness and warmth. He had to protect her, and the best way to do that was to leave twentieth-century Connecticut entirely. “All right,” he conceded raggedly, “I’ll put myself in your hands, Valerian. We’ll feed together, and I’ll at least listen to your counsel. I want one promise from you first, however.”

  The elder vampire did not speak but simply raised one eyebrow in silent question.

  “You must give me your sacred vow that you will not come back for the woman.”

  Valerian made an exasperated sound. “I presume you mean Neely Wallace.”

  “You presume correctly. I saw the way you looked at her, and I know what you were thinking. I want your word that you’ll leave her alone.”

  Valerian laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound and certainly no joy. He raised one large hand as if to swear an oath. “I will not feed on the waitress,” he said. There was a pause. “Just remember, Aidan. I cannot speak for the others.”

  “They won’t bother Neely unless you call their attention to her.”

  “I could say the same thing to you, my friend.” With that, Valerian raised both his arms high in the air and made a sweeping and wholly theatrical gesture.

  5

  Valerian was not without sympathy for Aidan, and a number of other emotions in the bargain. Indeed, he loved the younger vampire jealously, and with a devotion and tenderness that transcended all earthly meanings of the term.

  Which was not to say he did not consider the poor fiend to be wholly misguided. While he himself had been a vampire for nearly six centuries, and a happy one for the most part, Valerian also cherished certain recollections of humanity. There was the warmth of spring sunlight on winter-pale flesh, for instance, the oddly pleasurable sensation of an explosive sneeze, the sweet ache that followed in the wake of unrestrained laughter, the solace of tears. Now, as they sat in the rear of a dingy London pub, pretending to consume ale and kidney pie, savoring those last precious moments before they would be forced underground, Valerian reached out to touch his companion’s arm. Aidan, who had been staring morosely into space ever since they’d left the battlefield where they’d fed last, started slightly.

  “Do you really hate it so much?” Valerian asked in a low and, for him, somewhat fragile voice. He could not credit Aidan’s aversions; in all his wide experience he had never encountered another vampire who did not relish what he was.

  Aidan forced a smile; he was a handsome lad, and he stirred things in Valerian’s being that were probably better left alone, but he lacked the sensual abandon of most immortal creatures. “Yes,” he said. He was pleasantly flushed from their recent feast, but there was a look of anguish in his eyes, of torment that far exceeded any felt by the dying soldiers they’d seen that night. “Yes, I hate it. I despise it. Hell itself cannot be worse than feeling this vile compulsion!”

  Had anyone else made such a statement, Valerian would have asked archly why they had troubled to become a creature of the night in the first place, but this was Aidan. Aidan, the one blood-drinker he knew who had not made the transition willingly. He sighed, turning his plain wooden cup idly in one hand. “What would you have me do? What is it you want?”

  There was a quickening in Aidan; he sat a little straighter in his chair, and his blue eyes glittered with something more than the temporary fever caused by feeding. “You are the oldest vampire in our circle, except for Lisette,” he said quietly, “and among the most self-serving. If there is a remedy for this wretched curse, you either know what it is or how to find out.”

  Valerian looked away for a moment, toward one of two small, filthy windows. A subtle grayness permeated the black of night; dawn was near, and they must take refuge very soon, or the sun would catch them abroad. “I heard a legend once,” he said in a ragged, distracted whisper. “Mind you, it was only a story, I’m sure of that—”

  Aidan rose and seemed to loom over him. ‘Tell me!” he demanded.

  Again Valerian sighed. “There is no time,” he replied, hoping he’d disguised his relief in feigned regret. “It’s almost morning.” He rose and looked Aidan squarely in the eye. “Come. I know a place where we can rest safely.”

  He reached out, clasped Aidan’s arm, and gripped it hard when the other vampire moved to pull away. In the space of a wink they were inside a crypt in a country churchyard, far from busy, suspicious London.

  “Damn you!” Aidan cried, lunging toward Valerian with his hands out, as if to choke the life from him. Which was, of course, a macabre joke, since he was neither truly alive nor truly dead. ‘Tell me what you know of this legend!” Valerian raised his arms, erecting a mental barrier between them, like a wall of glass. He smiled at Aidan’s frustration and then yawned copiously. “I am too weary to tell tales,” he said. “We will speak of it when the eventide comes again.” With that, Valerian turned to a stone slab, brushed away the bones and dust and the debris of a coffin that had rested there, and stretched out with a sensual sigh. He saw Aidan hesitate, then slowly, reluctantly recede, until his back touched the crypt’s heavy door. He slipped into a crouch, his arms folded across his knees.

  “Until evening,” Aidan said. There was a warning in his tone, though his words were weighted with fatigue.

  Valerian smiled again and slowly closed his eyes. Unlike younger, less sophisticated vampires, he was not totally lost to sleep; he often dreamed and sometimes projected his awareness to other places, leaving his physical self behind.

  Such journeys were unquestionably dangerous, for the silver cord that anchored the spirit to the form could be severed in any number of ways. If that happened, the two could never be rejoined, and the traveler would be forced to contend with whatever fate awaited him in the next world.

  The mere contemplation of such an event was a terror to sensible vampires, for even they could not see beyond the Veil to determine the true shapes of heaven and hell.

  Far down in the deepest regions of his comalike rest, Valerian shuddered at the visions of eternal torment that had been impressed on his mind so long before, while he lived and breathed as a human animal. Since he had been born in medieval England, the images Valerian carried of the damned were especially horrible.

  Still, he was an adventurous vampire, interminably curious, and he loved to explore the dusty little corners and pockets of time that generally went unnoticed in the great intertwining schemes of history.

  And there was a secret.

  Valerian loved secrets, and mysteries, and conundrums of all sorts, shapes, and sizes. All the better that only he and a handful of other old ones knew. By concentrating very hard, Valerian could cast his consciousness into the most remote folds and burrows of eternity, venturing back and back in time, passing beyond his mortal life and even his birth as a human being.

  It was perilous work, utterly debilitating, often leaving him too exhausted to hunt for days afterward. Even so, Valerian could not resist occasional forays through the void, each time venturing closer to the Beginning.

  That p
articular day he had an added impetus, bittersweet and compelling; he sought the oldest, most closely guarded secrets of the vampire, for only in finding those could he learn what Aidan so desperately wanted to know.

  At nightfall Aidan stirred, opened his eyes, and raised himself slowly out of his crouch against the wall and into an upright position. Valerian still lay on his slab in the middle of the crypt, though he was awake, and he looked shrunken somehow. Even gaunt.

  His flesh was a ghastly shade of gray, and there were great shadows beneath his eyes. He raised one hand weakly, to summon Aidan to his side, and even though there were no tears, it was plain that he was weeping deep down in the essence of himself.

  Aidan clasped Valerian’s upraised hand in both of his; they were not friends, but they were of the same brotherhood, they trod on common ground.

  “What is it?” Aidan whispered. “What have you done?”

  “I went back—to search—” He paused, made a strangling sound low in his throat. “Blood. I—need—blood.” The plea rasped in Valerian’s throat like a saw severing hardwood. He clutched Aidan’s fingers so tightly that it seemed the bones would snap, brittle as twigs, drawing Aidan downward to hear, “Bring me blood.”

  Aware of an inexplicable urgency, and very little else, Aidan did not pause to question the gruesome request. He went to the door of the crypt, stopped to look backward once, and then willed himself to a time and place in London he’d often visited before.

  He returned within minutes, burgeoning with the blood of a back-street thief and murderer. By instinct, or perhaps by some subliminal instruction from the still-stricken Valerian, he transfused the life-giving fluid into the other vampire by puncturing the papery neck with his fangs. The process left Aidan temporarily weakened, clutching the edges of the slab to keep from falling, and only partially restored Valerian.