The Black Rose Chronicles

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Aidan,” Valerian whispered in a hoarse, fitful murmur of joy, and groped for his hand. “Quickly—”

  Aidan bent and, once again, found Valerian’s throat. Black weariness clawed at him, pulled him downward, toward the filthy, bone-littered floor. He struggled back to the waiting vein and willed the blood to flow into Valerian, and it was still pouring forth when he collapsed.

  Far away, yet near as the next heartbeat, Neely stirred in her soft, unfamiliar bed but did not climb toward wakefulness. She knew, on some level, that it was better to stay asleep, to wander in dark dreams. When she opened her eyes, after all, she would have to make sense of all that had happened to her in recent hours, and that was going to be virtually impossible.

  Maeve found Aidan insensate on the floor of the crypt, his back to the high stone slab, his fine clothes speckled with blood. Ignoring Valerian, who stirred above their heads, she shook her brother and called his name in a frantic whisper.

  He was empty and wasted, and Maeve knew he would perish if she did not save him. She ripped away the fitted cuff of her frilly shirtwaist and pressed the inside of her wrist to his lips. He resisted weakly, then drank.

  After a few moments Aidan revived, opening his eyes. “Maeve,” he said, giving the name the shape and substance of a sob.

  She smoothed his lovely dark hair back from his wan face. “There now, you’ll be fine after this. It’s night, and you’re strong enough to feed properly.”

  “Valerian,” he said. “Is he all right?”

  Maeve remembered the other vampire, her mentor and erstwhile friend, and rose slowly to her feet. Seeing Valerian’s sunken cheeks and shadowed eyes, she clutched his hand and demanded, “What have you done?”

  “Atlantis,” he said. “Atlantis—”

  Aidan scrambled up beside Maeve, fairly shouldering her aside to peer down into Valerian’s tormented face. “What are you saying?” he rasped. “What about Atlantis?”

  “That’s—where it—began,” Valerian managed. “The mystery lies on the lost continent—”

  “Enough!” Maeve interrupted, her temper flaring. Having fed amply, she was by far the strongest of the trio, and she could afford to issue orders. “There will be no more talk of mysteries and lost continents! Can’t you see that he’s dying, Aidan? Don’t you realize that you nearly perished yourself?”

  Despair and frustration howled within Aidan like a spiritual storm. He grabbed at the bloody front of Valerian’s shirt and wrenched the other vampire upward with the last of his strength. “Tell me” he cried, and when Valerian remained silent, clearly too enervated to speak, Aidan wailed with all the forlorn grief of an animal caught in a trap.

  Maeve whirled on him, her blue eyes, mirror-images of his own, flashing with pain. She raised one hand, fingers spread, and pressed it to his face. He felt her horrific power surge through him, like a double dose of lightning, and then he swooned.

  When he awakened, he was lying on a wide-planked table, stripped to the waist. He turned his head—it felt as though a speeding locomotive had crashed into each temple at full throttle—and saw Valerian lying next to him.

  “Maeve?” Aidan lifted his head. The room was dark and dank, and it had the oppressive feel of a dungeon.

  “She’s out hunting,” answered a small, sweet voice.

  Aidan relaxed for a moment, getting his bearings. Candlelight flickered over the ancient, moss-streaked walls, where rusted iron rings were bolted. “What is this place?”

  A horrible parody of a child appeared at his side, a little girl with brown-gold ringlets, impossibly pale skin, and dark circles around her eyes. Her delicate fangs glinted in the candlelight.

  “It’s Havermail Castle,” she said.

  Ah, yes, Aidan recalled, despairing. The august home of Maeve’s hideous friends, the Havermails—a mommy vampire, a papa vampire, and two absolutely vicious baby vampires.

  He shuddered and tried to sit up, only to find himself too weak to rise.

  The child laid a clammy hand on his bare chest. “You’re not supposed to move,” she said, and while this announcement was delivered ingenuously, it also reverberated with warning. “Neither is Mr. Valerian. You’re to be our guests, until Maeve says otherwise.”

  “What’s your name?” Aidan gasped the question, appalled at his weakness. As a mortal man, he had loved children and been able to communicate intelligently with them.

  “I’m Benecia,” the monster said. “And my sister is Canaan. She’s gone out to hunt with Mummy, and when they come back, it will be my turn.”

  Valerian stirred next to Aidan, but it was plain that he was still in a stupor.

  “How long have you been a vampire?” Aidan inquired of Benecia. This was a ludicrous conversation, in an even more ludicrous setting, but he was certain he would go mad if he tried to keep silent.

  “Oh, a long time,” Benecia replied sunnily. “Almost as long as Valerian, in fact—about five hundred and forty years.”

  Aidan stared at her, appalled that even a blood-drinking fiend would stoop to turning a child into a vampire. Surely hell itself could not boast of a crueler demon. “How did it happen?”

  Benecia giggled, and the sound echoed eerily off the wet stone walls that had absorbed so much misery over so many centuries. “Papa was a scholar, and he joined a secret society. They met only in darkness, and he thought that was very curious, but nonetheless he was flattered to be invited, and he attended the meetings religiously. Finally he was initiated—the members made him into an immortal, like themselves. He came straight home and made Mama into a vampire, and she in turn transformed Canaan and me because she couldn’t bear to be parted from us.”

  Aidan whispered a profanity because he did not dare to pray.

  Valerian reached out and grasped his arm before he could express his opinion further, however, effectively silencing him.

  Alas, Benecia was already offended. “I don’t like you,” she told Aidan in a sweetly vicious tone. “I don’t like you at all.”

  “My friend is comparatively young, for a vampire,” Valerian put in quickly, and with good nature aplenty. “Be patient with him, Benecia. Remember what it was to be foolish and impulsive.”

  Benecia’s eyes were narrowed, and her searing gaze had not wavered from Aidan’s face. “I’m much older than you are, and much stronger, and much smarter,” she said with icy confidence. “Mind your tongue, fledgling, or I’ll dangle you from a high window by your feet!”

  Valerian laughed, though Aidan heard tension plainly in the sound. “Now, now, darling—is that any way to speak to a guest? Aidan is your aunt Maeve’s favorite creature in all the earth. She will expect you to be pleasant to him.” Benecia subsided, but only after a snakelike hiss and a rather chilling display of her fangs. She turned and flounced away, a small horror in her pink ruffled dress; then a door slammed somewhere, and Aidan knew he and Valerian were alone.

  Furthermore, Valerian was in a towering fury, the state of his health notwithstanding. “You are truly remarkable, Mr. Tremayne, for your arrogant stupidity!”

  Aidan was in no mood for a dressing-down. He’d been through enough as it was, what with all the high drama of recent nights. “I will not be threatened by a child!”

  “That child was old when Shakespeare penned his sonnets,” Valerian raged. “She can summon more power in a blink of her eyes than you’ve ever dreamed of attaining! Were she not mortally afraid of her beloved auntie Maeve, your head would probably be bouncing off an outside wall by now!”

  Aidan gave a ragged sigh. He still had the psychic equivalent of a headache. “If Benecia is so terribly powerful,” he began, “why is she afraid of Maeve?”

  Valerian’s chuckle was raspy, void of all humor, and hollow. “Do you know so little about your own sister, Aidan?” he scolded. “Maeve has special gifts—she lacks your aversion to the finer points of vampirism, you know—and it is said that she will someday replace Lisette as queen of the nightwalkers.”

/>   The thought made Aidan sick. He recalled Maeve as a human girl, warm and pretty and full of laughter and innocent mischief, and he came as near to weeping as a vampire is able. “You did it,” he remembered as hatred pooled in his breast. “You made her into a monster, Valerian.”

  There was grief in the other vampire’s voice, as well as resignation. “She pleaded with me,” Valerian said. “She offered me her throat, and I was hungry.”

  Aidan had heard the story before, but even now, after two centuries, he couldn’t fully accept the reality. “You might have resisted her. There were others about who could have slaked your thirst.”

  Valerian was growing weak again; Aidan could sense it because, for better or worse, their two beings were connected somehow, had been ever since that first sharing of blood. “We’ve been over this before,” he answered wearily. “There is no changing it. I’ve been conscious for at least five minutes, Aidan. How is it that you have yet to hound me about what I learned of Atlantis?”

  As incredible as it seemed, Aidan had forgotten about the miraculous secret that might be his salvation. His mind had been filled with thoughts of Maeve and of Neely. He rolled onto his side and reached over to clasp Valerian’s arm, which was bare like his own. “Did you go there?” Valerian shook his head slowly. “No, I tried, but I hadn’t the strength. I caught glimpses of it, though, and heard the music—”

  “But you discovered something.”

  “Yes,” Valerian murmured. “Vampirism began on Atlantis, with a series of medical experiments.”

  “How do you know this?” Aidan demanded, tightening his grasp on Valerian’s cold flesh.

  “I’m not sure. The knowledge was just—there. Please, Aidan—I grow weary. Let me rest.”

  “Not until you tell me how to change myself back into a man!”

  There was a long, horrible silence. Then Valerian answered, “You cannot. There is an antidote, but you would have to venture back even farther than I did to find it, and you are not strong enough. Resign yourself, once and for all, Aidan. You are, and shall remain, a vampire.”

  7

  It took a long time to awaken, and Neely managed the task in stages, grappling her way from one level of consciousness to the next. The struggle required all the will she could summon, for the lethargy that pressed down on her was oddly blissful, a sweet sleep, peaceful and all-encompassing.

  At last she persuaded her eyelids to rise.

  She was lying in a strange, beautiful bed, an enormous four-poster of mahogany or some other dark wood. The canopy overhead was trimmed in exquisite ecru tatting, the sheets were the softest linen, and the coverlet was made of worn blue velvet.

  Aidan’s bed.

  Neely remembered everything in a breathtaking rush—fleeing Bright River in Doris’s old car, renting the motel room, waking to find Aidan standing at the foot of her bed. It all flooded back, the unbelievable lovemaking, his convincing claim that he was a vampire, all of it. She gasped, stiffening beneath the covers. Aidan had wrapped her in his cape, and by some incomprehensible magic he had brought her here.

  That was it.

  Aidan must be a magician, and a very good one at that.

  She began to make a case for her theory, in the courtroom of her mind. Yes, she was in his house in Connecticut, not a mile from the Lake view Truck Stop, and she had no memory of making the trip; those were undeniable facts. But Aidan could have hypnotized her, or given her drugs, and planted the other recollections in her consciousness like seeds.

  She would just get up, she decided, get herself dressed, and leave. Aidan Tremayne might be the most attractive man she’d ever met, and he’d certainly captured her heart, not to mention turning her inside out sexually, but that didn’t mean she was going to let him kidnap her and play crazy games with her psyche.

  Brave talk, she said to herself. The truth was, if Aidan came to her at that moment, she would let him—let him? she would beg him to—make love to her all over again.

  She drew a deep breath and released it slowly in an effort to calm the dark, sweet excitement the memory of their strange intimacy stirred in her. In a more rational moment she faced another facet of her attraction to Aidan Tremayne, and that was plain, simple fear.

  The man was probably just a very good magician, as she’d decided earlier, but suppose he’d been telling the truth? Suppose he really was a vampire, for God’s sake?

  Neely was confused and irritated, and besides that she figured her bladder was going to burst at any moment.

  She moved to toss back the covers and sit up, but it was as if she were pinned to the mattress by some benign force. She ran a rather frantic mental check of her muscles and found them all in good working order. “Damn,” she said and attempted to rise onto her elbows.

  It was as if the ceiling had collapsed onto her, though there was no pain.

  “Aidan!”

  The name echoed in the large, empty room.

  Neely waited, working up another burst of energy, fighting the urge to slip back into sleep. “Aidan!” she called again. “You get in here and help me out of this bed, damn it! I have to pee!”

  There was no response at all, except for the hollow reverberations of her own voice.

  Neely summoned all her will, which was formidable, and managed to make an inch of progress toward the side of the mattress. She waited, then moved again.

  After ten minutes Neely was perspiring so heavily that the sheets clung to her skin. She reached the edge of the bed, spent a minor eternity gathering her strength, and then lunged again.

  She landed on the cool hardwood floor with a thump and lay there dazed for an interval, exulting because she’d made it, yet so drained by the effort that she wasn’t sure she could stand up.

  The insistent complaint of her bladder forced her to try; she reached her knees, gripped the antique bedside table for support, and raised herself shakily to her feet. She stood there, trembling and drawing deep breaths, until she dared attempt a step.

  To Neely’s surprise, walking was easy. She went into the adjoining bathroom, which was fitted out in the costliest Italian marble, used the facilities, then draped an afghan around herself to keep warm and set about exploring the enormous bedchamber.

  There were high casement windows on both sides of the suite, with built-in seats overlooking the snowy garden and the front yard, and the bureaus, closet, and armoires contained a wide assortment of men’s clothing. The room boasted its own fireplace, fronted in priceless hand-painted tiles, and here and there an exquisite Persian rug graced the gleaming wooden floors.

  Neely ventured out into the hallway. She was hungry, and a little reassurance from her mysterious host wouldn’t have done any harm, either.

  “Aidan?”

  No answer.

  She opened the double doors of the room across the hallway from Aidan’s and found another suite, almost as big and grand as the one she’d just left. Here the closets and bureaus were empty, however, and Neely’s hope of finding something to wear was dashed. She returned to the master chamber long enough to drop the afghan and put on one of Aidan’s tailored white shirts, then ventured into the hallway and headed toward the rear stairs.

  At the bottom of these was a kitchen, large and immaculate. The shelves of the cupboards and the pantry were bare even of dust, and there wasn’t a plate or a glass or a butter knife to be seen.

  Did vampires eat? Neely wondered. She immediately checked the silly thought. This whole setup was getting weirder and weirder.

  Neely shifted her concentration away from her grumbling stomach and examined the rest of the massive house. In the movies it would have been filled with cobwebs and dust and spiders, she supposed, but instead the place was as tidy as a nun’s dresser drawer. The massive crystal chandeliers glistened, the rugs and floors felt clean under Neely’s bare feet, and the walls were decorated with fine original art. In Aidan’s study, the only part of the house she had been in before, there were stacks of paper on the
large table he used as a desk, and books lined the walls from floor to ceiling, on every side.

  Neely gravitated to the music box she had discovered on her last visit, wound the brass key on its underside, and lifted the lid.

  Sweet yet unbearably sad music flowed from the tiny, precise mechanism, arousing emotions so deep Neely could not even begin to identify them. She felt hot tears sting her eyes as she whirled round and round in a solitary dance, caught up in the sorcery of the tune, clutching the little chest in both hands. As she moved, twilight gathered at the tall, deeply set windows, and heavy flakes of snow waltzed past the glass.

  “What a will you must have,” Aidan said, startling Neely so badly that she stumbled and nearly dropped the music box.

  He was standing in the doorway leading to the entryway, wearing a black overcoat, trousers, a white shirt, and a tie. Snowflakes glistened in his ebony hair and on the shoulders of his coat.

  Neely stared at him, unable, for the moment, to speak. The impact of his presence was overwhelming; her soul trembled, her heart pounded. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, whether to fling herself upon him in rage or seduce him on the spot.

  Aidan’s fine mouth tilted upward at one side as he indulged in a weary grin. “I guess I should have brought your suitcase when I carried you away from that dreadful motel,” he said, pulling leather gloves from his hands and shoving them into the pockets of his coat. “Though you do look quite charming in my shirt. Tell me—how did you manage to get out of bed?”

  She raised her chin. “No force can stop a woman who needs to go to the bathroom,” she said.

  Aidan laughed. “I see.” He removed his coat and hung it from a brass coat tree.

  “There’s nothing to eat in this place,” Neely said, her voice shaking a little.

  “Oh, but there is,” Aidan replied, disappearing into the entryway and returning momentarily with three cartons of Chinese take-out and a plastic fork wrapped in paper napkins. He smiled when she snatched everything from his hands and sat cross-legged on the hearth rug to rip open the boxes. Then he crouched beside her and said gently, “You’re not a prisoner here, Neely, and you won’t be mistreated. Please don’t be afraid.”