The Black Rose Chronicles

by Linda Lael Miller

  He paused, then shamed her with a languorous smile.

  Maeve looked away, remembering things she would rather have forgotten. Valerian had taught her much more than how to travel through time and read minds during their long association. “That’s over,” she said.

  “Perhaps,” Valerian agreed. Then he grew impatient again. ‘Tell me—have you seen Aidan?”

  “Yes,” Maeve said, leaning back against the terrace railing and studying her mentor in the cold light of the stars. “He was here earlier, to bid me farewell.”

  “What?”

  She nodded, and when she spoke, her voice was lined with tiny fractures. “He would rather die than be what we are. Valerian—he would choose oblivion, even hellfire, over the life of a vampire. He despises himself, and us.” Valerian gave an explosive sigh and shoved one hand through his mane of rich brown hair. “I should never have left him alone,” the magnificent monster fretted. “It’s just that he exasperates me so, and he has no compunction whatsoever about breaking my heart—”

  “You don’t have a heart,” Maeve snapped, annoyed. As usual, Valerian was thinking only of himself. “And why did you leave Aidan alone?”

  “He was moping about over that woman, and I needed to hunt, to rebuild my strength,” Valerian said, flinging his hands out wide in a gesture of angry resignation. “I spent a few nights indulging myself—I admit that—and when I returned to Connecticut to look in on Aidan, he was gone.”

  Despair swelled up inside Maeve. “He’s not coming back, Valerian. The sooner we both give up and accept that, the better it will be.”

  “You don’t understand!” Valerian cried. “Somehow he’s learned to veil his whereabouts from me. Maeve, without me he has no defense against Lisette!”

  “Some defense you offer,” Maeve accused. “She despises you almost as much as she does Aidan. Leave my brother alone, Valerian—let him work this out for himself.”

  “Damn it, Maeve, do you have any idea what she’ll do to him?”

  Maeve closed her eyes. “I have to believe he’ll escape her,” she said. “I cannot think otherwise and still go on living.” With that, she turned and would have gone back into the house to rejoin her guests, but Valerian forcibly stopped her, gripping her shoulders and wrenching her around to face him.

  “Perhaps you are willing to let Lisette play vile games with Aidan until she finally decides to kill him, but I am not. And I am more powerful than you are, Maeve—don’t forget that.”

  She trembled, this female vampire who was afraid of nothing, save seeing her brother suffer. “What do you want?”

  “Look deep inside yourself,” Valerian ordered, his voice low and hypnotic, but urgent, too. “There you will see Aidan’s reflection. Tell me where to find him, Maeve.”

  Maeve began to shiver. “He’s standing on a terrace—like this one—” She gave a small, involuntary cry and raised curled fingers to her mouth. “Oh, Valerian, Aidan has gone to Lisette’s villa, on the coast of Spain!”

  Valerian released her so swiftly that she sank to the tiled floor of the terrace, too weakened by horror to rise. He held out his cloak and spun around, and before he’d completed a single turn, he’d vanished.

  Maeve sat dazed on the tiles for a few minutes, sobbing inwardly, longing to rush to Aidan’s rescue, as Valerian had, and knowing that her brother would never forgive her if she did. As rash and ill-advised as Aidan’s decision had been, no one, not even Valerian himself, would be able to sway him from it.

  “You are the adventurous type.”

  Aidan whirled, though he knew the voice behind him wasn’t Lisette’s, and saw a youth leaning against the stone wall of the villa, his arms folded. He was dressed all in black, like a cat burglar, and wore a cocky grin. By Aidan’s guess, the lad was no older than seventeen.

  “Who are you?”

  The sleek young vampire pushed himself away from the wall with one foot. “The name is Tobias—Aidan. You ought to be more alert, you know. It’s nothing but luck that Lisette is hunting elsewhere tonight.”

  “Yes,” Aidan said, “it’s luck, all right. Bad luck.” He tugged at the cuffs of his dinner jacket. “What do you want—Tobias?”

  “Not a thing. I’m here because of what you want. Or, at least, what you told Aubrey Havermail you wanted—a chat with a representative of the Brotherhood.”

  Aidan was taken aback, but he smiled and offered his hand. “Aren’t you a little young to be part of such an august group?”

  Tobias gave a slow grin. “I guess that depends on how you define the word young. I was among the first vampires created.” The sudden stunned expression on Aidan’s face seemed to please him. “Come. Even we old ones don’t enjoy tangling with the likes of Lisette. She can be such a bitch.”

  In the next instant everything went dark, and Aidan heard a rushing sound. When he was conscious again, he found himself standing with Tobias in a natural tunnel, beside an underground river. There was no light, but that didn’t matter, of course, for a vampire’s vision is at its best in the blackest gloom.

  “Where are we?”

  Tobias sighed. “You don’t need to know that,” he answered with cordial impatience. He sighed again. “I’m afraid Aubrey was quite right about you. You’re not much of a vampire.”

  “No,” Aidan said evenly. “I’m not.”

  “He says you want to be changed back into a man.” The words echoed in the dank chamber, hollow with disbelief. “Is that true?”

  “Absolutely,” Aidan answered. He felt a thrumming excitement deep inside, as well as a certain well-founded terror. “I did not willingly become a vampire. I was forced.”

  “You are not the first,” Tobias pointed out, clearly unmoved.

  “Perhaps not,” Aidan agreed mildly. “But I am a weak link in the chain. You saw for yourself, back there on Lisette’s terrace, how easy it is to catch me unawares. Suppose I fall into the hands of those who are enemies to all vampires—the Warrior Angel, for example. What’s his name again? Ah, yes. Nemesis. What if I were to be captured by Nemesis and forced to tell all I know about blood drinkers such as yourself? The Dark Kingdom would crumble then, wouldn’t it, like a castle of sand?”

  “I have only to destroy you, here and now, to prevent such a tragedy,” Tobias said coolly. Aidan was aware of the creature’s tension, however; he was like a string on an instrument, pulled tight and ready to snap.

  Aidan smiled. “I am an insignificant vampire,” he admitted, “but there are those who would miss me, and even dare to avenge my destruction.”

  “Valerian,” Tobias said despairingly. “And Maeve.”

  “You know them, then,” Aidan chimed, in a pleased tone that was meant to be irritating.

  “They are rebellious and cause the elders a great deal of consternation.”

  Aidan made a tsk-tsk sound, well aware that he was on proverbial thin ice. “I don’t know what vampirism is coming to,” he said. “Do you?”

  Tobias glared. “This way,” he growled. Then he turned and moved along the stream’s edge, headed into the very heart of the darkness, and Aidan followed.

  Eventually they reached a large, torch-lit cave, where ancient scenes and symbols had been painted onto the walls, among the earlier sketches and scrawls of prehistoric man. Aidan would have been fascinated if his business in that place hadn’t been so crucial.

  The vampires assembled themselves from particles of dust in the air around Aidan, it seemed to him, the oldest blood-drinkers on earth, some fresh-faced like Tobias, others with flowing silver beards and skin as crinkled and weathered as aged leather.

  “This one would be mortal again,” Tobias announced to the gathering, his bewilderment plain in his voice. “He says he was made against his will.”

  The elders murmured among themselves as they walked around Aidan, examining him, but their language was unfamiliar.

  Aidan kept his shoulders straight and looked each one, in turn, directly in the eye. He caught the
name “Nemesis” in the conversational drift, and knew Tobias had reported his threat.

  They might well destroy him now, Aidan thought. He was mildly surprised to realize that he didn’t care; having met Neely, and been reminded of what he was missing, he knew he would rather perish by the most horrible of means than live for all eternity knowing she could never be his.

  If he could not be restored to his humanity, if he could not love Neely freely, and without fear, he wanted only destruction.

  At long last the circling ceased. One of the elders leaned close to Aidan and rasped in English, “Do you follow Nemesis?”

  Aidan showed his fangs, in a rather impudent and theatrical way. “I am no angel,” he pointed out in the next moment.

  The ancient vampire’s glacial blue eyes narrowed, and he made an angry gesture with one age-gnarled hand. “Confine this unmannerly whelp where he can do no harm to himself or the rest of us. We will decide his fate later.”

  Vampires closed in on either side of Aidan, taking his arms, and he struggled, but in vain. Still, he did not regret the course he’d taken, for he was willing to risk anything, undergo any ordeal, in order to be with Neely.

  Aidan was dragged to a barred chamber and flung inside. His fine clothes were tom away without ceremony or apology, and he was given a monk’s robe, made of some coarse brown cloth. He put the garment on, for the sake of his own dignity, and when his jailers had left him, he tried the bars.

  They were immovable.

  “I trust you’re happy now,” a familiar voice said.

  He turned to see Tobias standing just behind him, inside the cell, and scowled. “Overjoyed,” he replied.

  Tobias shook his head, clearly amazed. “Such infernal audacity.”

  “There’s nothing worse than a smart-ass vampire,” Aidan agreed.

  Tobias laughed outright at that. “If you say so. You’re the first blood-drinker ever to ask for transformation—did you know that? That’s why you’re not staked out in some desert somewhere, waiting for the sun to cook you by degrees, you understand. Because you’re an oddity.”

  Aidan was careful not to let his trepidation show, although to be forced to endure the cruel ministrations of the sun was among the worst fears of nearly every vampire. “Have they destroyed others that way?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes. Over the centuries certain rebellious ones have had to be… dealt with,” Tobias answered. “We learned that particular trick from Nemesis.”

  An involuntary chill passed through Aidan at the mention of the Warrior Angel, and Tobias chuckled, recognizing it for what it was. There was no mercy in Nemesis, despite his ties with the Kingdom of Heaven; he had been conducting a personal vendetta against blood-drinkers for thousands of years.

  “Is there a way?” Aidan whispered, his voice hoarse. “Is it possible to go back to what I was?”

  For the first time since their arrival in that pit, there was a glimmer of compassion in Tobias’s deceptively youthful face. “Some of the oldest ones wanted to try, for the sake of learning, but it was always forbidden. After all, those who failed would logically be brought before the Throne of Judgment. If Nemesis is as he is, can you imagine what his Master must be like?”

  Aidan squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and nodded. “Yes—yes, I can imagine. And I’d rather face even Him than go on as I have been since Lisette changed me!”

  “Then you are either a vampire of uncommon courage or a mad one! Which is it?”

  He sighed, ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know,” Aidan said. “I honestly don’t know.”

  “Why do you want the transformation so much?”

  Aidan knew he could not hide Neely’s image from this ancient vampire, and he did not try. “I love a human woman.

  “You must care a great deal,” Tobias marveled, “to take such a risk as the one confronting you now.” Having offered this observation, he watched Aidan in troubled silence for a few seconds, then vanished.

  Aidan slept, dreamed fitful dreams of Neely, and awakened believing they were together. His despair at the discovery that he was still alone, and a prisoner in the bargain, was a crueler burden than any he had ever borne.

  Twenty-four hours later, when Aidan was half-mad with thirst, he was given three enormous rats, scrabbling inside a picnic basket.

  Aidan broke their necks, one by one, and tossed their blood-filled bodies through the bars.

  When another twenty-four hours had passed, he was in a fever, crouched against a wall of his cell, his mind loose inside his skull, hot with delirium.

  A form appeared before him, wavering and slender.

  “Go away,” he moaned, turning his head.

  “So stubborn,” a feminine voice scolded, and the sound of it was like cool water pouring gently over his parched spirit.

  “Neely,” he rasped.

  She laughed at him. “No, silly.” He felt her cold lips nuzzle the burning flesh of his throat, started when her fangs punctured it. Blood flowed into Aidan, reviving, sustaining blood, and he was helpless to resist. He drank, all his dried and empty veins leaping greedily to life, and when at last it was over and he could focus his gaze, he saw Roxanne Havermail kneeling beside him.

  She ran her fingers through his dirty hair, and he felt the sticky pressure of her lips where she kissed him on the forehead, undoubtedly leaving a smudge of blood.

  “How did you get in here?” Aidan rasped, resisting the urge to push her away.

  Roxanne smiled, then touched his mouth tentatively with her own. “What does that matter? I am well able to escape and I will take you with me.” She laid her hand to his face, and he felt its hardness and its chill. “Close your eyes, darling. Think of candlelight, and soft music, and—”

  Aidan lost consciousness, mesmerized by her words, her tone, her caress.

  When he awakened, he was lying on silk sheets, stripped of the rough robe his captors had provided, and Roxanne was washing him tenderly with warm, perfumed water.

  He tried to sit up, found himself too weak. Obviously the one feeding had not been enough to restore his full powers. Instead it had merely drawn him back from the brink of either blessed oblivion or the unbridled wrath of God. Roxanne bent and kissed his bloodless chest.

  “No,” he said.

  She drew back, looked at him with wide amber eyes, then narrowed ones. “What did you say?”

  Vampire sex, a cataclysmic and usually violent joining of two immortal bodies, was not without a certain appeal at that point, but Aidan wasn’t about to indulge. His love for Neely, however hopeless, wouldn’t permit it.

  “You heard me,” he told Roxanne. “Nothing is going to happen between us—Mrs. Havermail.”

  Roxanne sighed and continued to bathe him. “Honor among fiends,” she said. ‘Tiresome. Plain tiresome.” Valerian, Aidan thought. Help me.

  11

  Melody Ling, the television reporter, agreed to a rendezvous, but only after a little fast talking on Neely’s part. Although Neely refused to identify herself directly, she had to do some pretty heavy name-dropping in order to establish credibility—and hint that someone inside the FBI had obstructed justice. The site of the proposed meeting, an isolated, long-unused wooden bridge in the woods of central Maine, was chosen by mutual consent, during half a dozen fragmented calls from as many different telephones.

  Neely left Aidan’s car parked in the small garage behind Wendy Browning’s beach cottage and took the bus to the village, stopping off on the way to purchase a long red wig and big sunglasses. Of course she was taking an enormous chance, trusting a total stranger to meet her alone in an out-of-the-way place, but it seemed like a better bet than heading for New York and strolling into network headquarters with the packet of proof under one arm. When the bus stopped in snowy Danfield Crossing, Neely remained in her seat, toward the back, watching everyone else get off. Once she was fairly sure no one was lurking outside, waiting for her, she made her way up the aisle, her purse under one elbow,
carrying a disreputable old duffel bag she’d found in the shed behind Wendy’s cottage.

  There was no need to ask directions to the old bridge; Neely and Ben and their father had fished for brook trout there, years ago, and the place shimmered brightly in her memory. After a quick glance around, she set off for the woods, not following the county road, but keeping to the narrow, hard-packed trails left by cross-country skiers.

  Melody Ling was waiting patiently behind the wheel of a rental car, looking intent in the chilly afternoon sunlight. Her dark hair was moussed, her makeup too heavy and artful for the occasion, and she seemed poised to go on camera immediately. None of which mattered to Neely.

  Seeing her mysterious contact come trundling out of the woods beside the road must have been disconcerting, but Ling didn’t flinch. She opened the car door and stepped out onto the icy road in high heels.

  Neely glanced around nervously, but no gun-toting criminals or FBI men burst out of the bushes, and it was still too early in the day for vampires.

  She approached Ling and held out the manila packet, which was still wrapped in plastic. “Here’s the evidence we talked about,” she said, considering a preamble unnecessary.

  Ling took the offering. “You’ll grant me an exclusive interview, once everything has gone down?”

  Neely nodded. “I’ll be in touch,” she said. She smiled. “Good luck—and thanks.”

  The reporter nodded back, got into her car, and left.

  Neely immediately returned to the village, by way of the woods. She bought a fish sandwich and a diet soda in a convenience store and hitched a ride back to the coast with a trucker who wore a T-shirt with a picture of his three toothless children on the front.

  It had all gone so well, she reflected, settling into the passenger seat of the big rig to watch the night scenery go by.

  So amazingly well.

  “What happened to him?” Valerian demanded, arriving in the guest wing of Havermail Castle with an unceremonious crash.

  Roxanne turned from Aidan’s bedside, one hand to her throat in a gesture of gracious alarm. She was a vile strumpet, without a shred of loyalty to adorn her nature, and Valerian despised her.