The Black Rose Chronicles

by Linda Lael Miller

  She approached him, laying her hands gently on his face. “Aidan—” she whispered, longing to comfort him, knowing there was no way to do that.

  He wrenched free of her and moved away. “Didn’t you hear me, Neely?” he growled, reminding her of a wolf that had just chewed off its own paw in a desperate effort to save itself from the metal teeth of a trap. “I am cursed for all time, and to care for me is to blaspheme against Creation itself!”

  She was shaking her head again. “No, Aidan—no.” It couldn’t be a sin to love, could it? But, yes. The act of adoring something evil did not transform it into good, but instead poisoned what was holy.

  They both stood still, the silence ringing around them like the deafening toll of some horrid death bell, for the longest time. Then, unable to bear it, Neely muttered, “My brother—”

  Aidan moved to his desk, keeping his back to her. “Write him a letter, then, and explain as best you can. Just remember that he will have to live with your words until the end of his days.”

  Neely nodded distractedly, well aware of Aidan’s meaning. She could tell Ben only that she was in hiding—it would be an outright lie to say she was safe, and there was no plausible way to describe the terrible truth.

  She went upstairs to the room where she had awakened hours before, switched on a lamp, and sat down at a small desk to stare, unseeing, at a blank piece of paper.

  Aidan paced his study, too restless to work on his journals, not daring to follow Neely upstairs and continue their conversation. He had fed sparsely that night, and he had yet to look in on the still-ailing Valerian, who was his only hope of finding redemption and, with it, peace. Maeve, adore her though he did, was embroiled as usual in adventures of her own and could not be depended upon to look after wounded ones.

  He rubbed his temples with a thumb and forefinger, slouched back against the edge of his desk, and sighed. Then, with the utmost reluctance, he took himself to the dungeon of Havermail Castle.

  Valerian still lay prone and ill, his long frame covering the length of a trestle table. In the flickering lights of the candles Aidan saw a small, snarling creature spring out of the shadows and attach itself to Valerian’s throat.

  Horror rocked Aidan as he realized that this abomination, this greedy fiend, wore the person of a child. He plunged forward and tore the small, wiry body away from Valerian’s neck as though it were a leech. The little girl—this had to be Canaan, Benecia’s sister—twisted in Aidan’s grasp, baring her lethal fangs and making a vicious sound low in her throat, like a starved she-wolf.

  Valerian moaned and rolled onto his side. “Stop,” he pleaded. “Please—stop!”

  Remarkably, the hellion went still, but when she raised her sherry-colored gaze to Aidan’s face, he saw the most abject hatred there that he had ever encountered. Coming from a being who looked for all the world like a sweet and warm-blooded five-year-old, the experience was particularly chilling.

  “She was merely trying to help me,” Valerian said gently.

  “Shall I leave you alone with this one, Valerian?” the fiend-child inquired, in a voice as delicate as the chimes of an exquisite little clock. “I do not favor him, you know.” Valerian gestured affectionately toward the door. “I am quite safe with Aidan,” he insisted. “Go now, please, and tell your mama and papa that we have a guest.”

  Aidan’s gaze sliced to his friend’s face. He had no real desire to socialize with the elder Havermails; they were innately horrible creatures, like their daughters. When Canaan had swept from the room, he bit out, “Honestly, Valerian, I can’t think what you and Maeve see in this family of monsters!”

  “We see ourselves,” Valerian answered quietly.

  The words left Aidan stricken, for no weapon could wound as deeply and as savagely as the truth.

  “This is what we are, Aidan,” the elder vampire insisted in an urgent whisper.

  “No,” Aidan rasped, shaking his head, trying to pull free of Valerian’s grasp. ‘No! You went back, almost to Atlantis—so will I. I will find the antidote for this curse or die seeking it!”

  Incredibly, Valerian smiled. “What a passionate specimen you are. Come with me, my friend, and let me show you other realities.” He paused, patting Aidan’s hand fondly. “You might have been a stage actor, with your flair for the dramatic. Together we could write plays that would outshine the words of the Bard himself. We could—”

  “Damn it, Valerian, you’re dreaming!” Aidan broke in sharply. He hadn’t meant his tone to be harsh, but it was, cruelly so, and the momentum carried him farther. “I want nothing from you, do you hear me, nothing, except for the secret that would restore the life that was stolen from me!”

  Valerian turned his head to one side, and it seemed that he was caving in on himself again. He looked much as he had that first terrible night in the crypt, when he had come so close to perishing. His suffering was tangible; it swelled in the room, choking Aidan, crushing him.

  Because of their bond, Aidan felt Valerian’s pain as keenly as if it were his own. And maybe, since he had caused it, it was. With a cry, Aidan let his forehead fall to Valerian’s concave chest. “I cannot offer you the devotion you want from me,” he whispered in agony. “I cannot!” Slowly, and with tenderness, Valerian raised a trembling hand to the back of Aidan’s head and entwined cold fingers in his hair. “Yes,” he said brokenly. “I know.”

  Just then, a nearby door swung open with a thunk, and Aubrey Havermail swept in, accompanied by his small, demonic daughter. He smirked as he watched Aidan step back from Valerian’s side, dazed by despair.

  “Such a touching, tender scene,” Aubrey drawled.

  8

  “We were just about to sit down to dinner,” Aubrey Havermail went on after a brief, charged interval of silence had passed. “Won’t you join us?”

  Under other circumstances, Aidan might have laughed at the idea of vampires taking a meal in the human way, but he sensed that his host was in deadly earnest. When Valerian reached out to grasp Aidan’s hand and squeeze, silently urging him to accept, Aidan inclined his head in polite assent.

  “We’ll just go on ahead, then,” Havermail went on, when it was clear that Aidan didn’t mean to leave the dungeon before he had a private word with Valerian. “Come, darling.” He took Canaan’s tiny, snow-white hand. “I’m sure our guest will be able to find his way on his own.” When the pair had gone, Valerian raised himself onto one elbow and regarded Aidan with sunken, shadowed eyes. “Is there any way,” he began, “that I can dissuade you from attempting to uncover the secret that would make you mortal again?”

  Aidan shook his head. “No,” he said.

  “I thought not,” the stricken vampire replied in a rasp of despair. He struggled for a time, grappling visibly with some fathomless fatigue, and finally went on. “My advice to you, as you already know, is to turn from this foolish pursuit and never look back. Clearly, though, you are not wise enough to heed my counsel—in which case, I offer you what little information I have to give.”

  Aidan leaned closer to his companion; had he been a man, he would have been holding his breath. “I beg of you, Valerian—tell me.”

  Valerian closed his eyes for a moment and was taken by an almost imperceptible fit of trembling. Then he met Aidan’s gaze and said, “You must learn to listen, my friend, if you are to survive! Do you not recall what the other child, Benecia, said before, when you asked how an entire family had become vampires? She stated that her father had joined a secret society. I’ve been thinking about it ever since and exploring this dreary castle with my mind whenever I could manage the effort, and I’ve come to a conclusion. Benecia spoke of one of the oldest fraternities on earth, Aidan—the Brotherhood of the Vampyre. This fellowship can trace its origins back to Atlantis itself!”

  Now it was Aidan who trembled, for the implications of Valerian’s words were, to him, profound. The Brotherhood, an organization Aidan had heard of only once before, when Maeve had mentioned it in pa
ssing, might well possess some clue to the secret of his own redemption—if not the means itself.

  “Thank you,” Aidan said, his voice hoarse. He enclosed one of Valerian’s large, elegant hands between his own. “I will come back to speak with you before I go.”

  Valerian held him fast when he tried to walk away. “What of that mortal woman you became involved with? Have you set her free, Aidan?”

  “She was never my prisoner.”

  “You are hedging!”

  Aidan forced himself to meet Valerian’s gaze. “Neely is living in my house. I cannot take the time to explain everything now; suffice it to say that I can neither hold her nor let her go.”

  Valerian stared bleakly up at Aidan, saying nothing. “You have fed?” Aidan inquired quietly. At Valerian’s nod, he went on. “Are you recovering your strength?”

  At this, the elder vampire turned his face away from Aidan and remained stubbornly silent.

  Reluctantly Aidan left Valerian’s side, left the dim candle glow of the dungeon for the torch-lit passageway beyond. Instinct led him up a curving flight of stone stairs, worn to slippery smoothness by centuries of use, through a dusty corridor, and into the castle’s great hall.

  There was every probability that all manner of knights, nobles, ladies, and wenches had dined and celebrated in this yawning chamber in some distant century. Now, however, the place was empty, except for the four Havermails, who sat around a long wooden table next to an enormous fireplace, their empty plates and glasses making clinking sounds, their horribly beautiful faces bathed in the crimson glow from the hearth.

  Aubrey, head of this ghoulish family, rose from his chair when Aidan approached. “Our guest has arrived. We wondered at the delay.”

  Aidan reminded himself that this posturing creature he so despised might be the very one who could solve his dilemma. “I hope I did not inconvenience you,” he said evenly. “I was concerned for my friend.”

  Benecia looked up at him with large, malevolent eyes, her tarnished-gold ringlets capturing the firelight. “Valerian is not your friend,” she said. “No vampire is, truly, for you are not one of us. Why do you pretend?”

  “That is quite enough,” Aubrey interceded. He was a slender, finely built man, obviously a product of generations of aristocracy. “Do join us, Mr. Tremayne.”

  Aidan was, for the first time in recent memory, mildly embarrassed. He took the only empty chair at the table, situated between Mrs. Havermail—Maeve had introduced her as Roxanne during his last visit—and Canaan, who looked as fragile as a kitten and was clearly about as well-mannered as a white shark in frenzy.

  Roxanne gave a trilling laugh that tripped down Aidan’s backbone, leaving patterns of frost as it passed. She had rich, dark hair, uncomfortably reminiscent of Lisette’s, perfect bone structure, and practically no color at all to her skin. “Please don’t be alarmed by our strange custom of sitting down at table together, Mr. Tremayne,” she said. “It is the one semblance of family life that remains to us.” Aidan nodded, his eyes moving from one lovely monster to another. Despite differences in size and in human age, all the Havermails were no doubt equals in their powers and experience as vampires. Roxanne’s reasoning made a grisly sort of sense; while seated around a table, they could pretend to be flesh and blood again.

  And that was something Aidan understood.

  “Do you miss being mortal?” he inquired, just to make conversation.

  Roxanne’s chuckle was wicked enough to curdle a saint’s blood. “Miss being mortal?” she echoed. “Dear me, Aidan—I feel that I know you well enough to address you informally, since dear Maeve has spoken of you so often—why would anyone miss head colds and bunions and broken hearts?”

  “And having to die,” Benecia put in.

  Canaan wrinkled her delicate, freckle-spattered nose. “And sitting in the schoolroom hour after hour, learning dull lessons.”

  Aubrey called the group back to order by raising both hands, palms out, making a silly smirk, and turning his head slightly to one side. “Here, now. Let’s not be rude.”

  Rude, Aidan thought. Amazing. These were beings who surely stalked their mortal counterparts by night, drained them of their life’s blood, and slept off the kill by day in perfect contentment. And Havermail was concerned about their table manners?

  “I don’t like you,” announced Canaan, as her sister had before, regarding Aidan with cheerful disdain.

  “I feel much the same way about you,” Aidan replied cordially.

  The other Havermails were amused by his audacity and cackled among themselves, putting Aidan in mind of the three crones in Macbeth. Double, double, toil and trouble, he thought, fire burn and cauldron bubble.

  Roxanne startled everyone by picking up a silver spoon and setting it clattering against the side of a crystal goblet. “Canaan, Benecia—you will atone for your poor manners by entertaining. Canaan, you may recite. Benecia, you will sing.”

  Inwardly Aidan groaned. Was this atonement, or was it free rein to torture a hapless captive?

  “Jolly good idea,” said Aubrey Havermail, leaping up from his chair with such suddenness that he overturned his empty wineglass. ‘To the main drawing room, then, where we shall find the pipe organ.”

  Aidan smiled, already in acute pain, and followed the family of vampires across the great hall and into another, smaller chamber. There was indeed an organ, along with tarnished candelabras and dingy chandeliers, all dripping cobwebs, and rags so long neglected that wisps of dust floated up from them as they were trod upon.

  Canaan took her place next to the organ, while Roxanne sat down at the discolored keyboard. Aubrey sank into a leather chair and drew Benecia onto his knee, just as a human father might have done. Aidan perched gingerly on the arm of a settee, trying to comprehend the fact that his sister deliberately spent time with these beasts.

  The younger daughter, not even three feet tall, clasped her tiny white hands together and held forth, reciting Shakespeare’s poem, “Venus and Adonis,” with chilling precision. “I know ‘The Rape of Lucrece,’ as well,” Canaan said, upon finishing.

  “Sit down, dear,” Roxanne told her fondly.

  Aidan held himself still, though he wanted to fidget and, even more, to flee.

  Benecia slipped off her father’s lap and sashayed forward to stand in front of the small company. She and her mother conferred, in whispers, and then Roxanne struck an introduction on the stained organ keys, and Benecia began to sing.

  The lyrics were Latin—something quite ordinary, concerning bluebirds and meadows and sparkling streams—but it was the child-vampire’s voice that struck Aidan. It seemed to move in the chamber like the eddies, swirls, and undertows of some vast, invisible river.

  When the performance was over, when the last quavering note had fallen away into silence, Aidan remembered to clap. This drew a look of scathing reprimand from Canaan, whom he had neglected to acknowledge in quite so formal a fashion.

  Roxanne rose from the organ bench and gathered her children close. “Come, darlings—there are still several hours left in which to hunt,” she said in the same tones a human mother might use to summon her brood to the station wagon for a trip to the nearest shopping mall. “Say goodbye to Mr. Tremayne.”

  Benecia and Canaan stood primly before Aidan and curtsied in unison. Then they chorused, “Good night, Papa,” kissed Aubrey on either of his waxen cheeks, and scampered out, their mother following.

  “Am I keeping you from anything?” Aidan asked when he and Havermail were alone in that odd room. The place might have come from the pages of a Dickens novel, he thought; all it really lacked was a spoiled cake being nibbled on by rats, and a demented old woman in a rotted wedding dress.

  Aubrey sat back in his chair as Aidan went to stand next to the fireplace, where an old clock stood on a mantel beneath a drapery of spider weavings.

  “No,” Havermail replied, studying his guest thoughtfully. “I fed some hours ago and have no desire to go
rge myself, as my wife and daughters often do. Tell me, Mr. Tremayne—what is it you want from me?”

  Aidan thrust his hand through his hair, fingers splayed. “According to your elder daughter, you became a vampire some five hundred and forty years ago, when you joined a select fellowship and undertook their initiation.”

  Havermail’s countenance darkened, and his mouth pursed for a moment. Clearly the lovely, vicious Benecia had spoken out of turn. “What is your interest in the Brotherhood?” he asked after a long and somewhat awkward silence. “It cannot be that you seek immortality, since you are already a vampire.”

  Aidan framed his words carefully, setting them out like so many fine porcelain plates. “I seek—mortality. In short, I want to be a man again.”

  After staring for several moments, Havermail burst out laughing. “You cannot be serious!” he howled when he’d recovered just a little.

  “I have never been more sincere about anything,” Aidan replied evenly. “I was robbed. I want the forty-odd additional years of life that were my due.”

  Aubrey stood, all vestiges of mirth gone from his expression. “Who made you a blood-drinker?”

  Aidan hesitated. “A powerful female called Lisette.” Havermail made a sputtering sound and moved one hand as if to make the sign of the cross over his chest, before stopping himself. An old habit, evidently, that had died hard. “Powerful, indeed,” he murmured. “All sensible vampires fear Lisette, Tremayne. Why should I risk incurring her wrath?”

  “You needn’t risk anything,” Aidan snapped, barely keeping himself from grasping Aubrey by the lapels of his cutaway coat and lifting him onto his toes. “I want to know about the Brotherhood, that’s all. Is it true that the fellowship has existed since before the fall of Atlantis?” Aubrey looked patently uncomfortable. “Yes,” he said, “but that is all I will tell you without permission from the elders.” He moved to the fireplace with that quick, gliding motion typical of vampires, took a poker from its place on the hearth, and jabbed at the burning logs until sparks rose toward the chimney in a crackling shower. “Leave this house, Tremayne. Go on about your business, whatever it is. If the Brotherhood wishes to grant you admittance, you will be contacted.”