The Black Rose Chronicles

by Linda Lael Miller

  Snow had been falling all night, and it was deep enough to make the tires of the sports car spin helplessly in the driveway. The sky was clear by then, however, a soft blue dusted with wispy clouds, and the sun shone brightly-

  Neely fetched a wide shovel from the shed and worked industriously to clear a path to the road, which had, fortunately, been plowed and sanded. She went back inside the cottage for her purse and keys, and when she did, she found herself paralyzed by what should have been a very ordinary sound.

  The telephone was ringing.

  Neely had not given the number to anyone, and she hadn’t even contacted Wendy in London to let her know the cottage was in use. No one—besides Valerian and Aidan, who had no use for telephones anyway—was supposed to know she was there.

  She hesitated, her hand poised over the receiver. The jangling continued, and Neely thought frantically. Had she given the number to Ben, or to Melody Ling, and simply forgotten? No. A person didn’t let things like that slip her mind, not when her very life depended on secrecy.

  Finally Neely snatched up the receiver, to end the terrible ringing if nothing else, and said, “Hello?” She hoped she sounded like a man, annoyed at the disturbance.

  “Neely?”

  Her blood turned to small, jagged shards of ice, piercing her veins in a thousand tender places. The voice was feminine and vaguely familiar, but Neely couldn’t match it with a face or a name.

  “Neely, are you there?”

  She closed her eyes and let out a long breath. She’d already given herself away by staying on the line so long, even though she hadn’t admitted to her identity. “Who is this?” she asked.

  “My name is Lisa Nelson—I’m Senator Hargrove’s personal secretary—”

  What a fool I’ve been, Neely lamented silently, actually telling myself they wouldn’t track me down. Before she could say anything, think of a lie to tell, or even just hang up, Lisa went on.

  “Senator Hargrove asked me to tell you that some mutual friends are on their way to pick you up for the services.”

  “What services?” Neely asked, glancing accusingly at the blank screen of the television set. The remark had to be a warning; if Elaine Hargrove had succumbed to her illness or her recent injuries, there would have been some mention of it on the news.

  “He just said, well, that there’s going to be a funeral. Didn’t some mutual friend of yours pass away?”

  Neely’s heart was pounding. She was glad Mrs. Hargrove was still alive and, at the same time, painfully aware that her own days—maybe even her hours and minutes—were numbered. “Right,” she said. “Thanks, Lisa.” With that, Neely hung up with a crash, flung her few belongings back into her suitcase, and ran for the car.

  She’d traveled a considerable distance before she realized that she was headed toward Washington, D.C. She’d chosen an out-of-the-way place to take refuge before, by going to live with Ben and Danny in Bright River; now she would try hiding in plain sight.

  Too afraid to check into another motel, Neely drove until she was blind with exhaustion, then pulled into a rest area and slept with the car doors locked, slumped over the steering wheel like a drunk. She chose to have breakfast in a tavern, hoping to throw off any pursuers, and gulped down German sausage and a diet cola while the morning drinkers nursed their beer.

  There were two bikers at the pool table, big and hairy, with every visible part of their anatomies tattooed, but they didn’t bother Neely. They just poked coins into the jukebox and sang along with various artists in off-key voices.

  Nobody in the place, least of all Neely, was stupid enough to protest.

  There was a television set behind the bar, but the proprietor had tuned it to a game show, and he didn’t look like the type who would switch to the news channel just because somebody asked. Neely paid for her food, used the rest room, and started out again.

  Aidan’s car radio picked up nothing but static for the next few hours, so Neely bought a newspaper when she stopped for gas, along with a plain seltzer. Normally she would have been hungry again by then, but she was scared and upset, and the sausage she’d consumed at the tavern that morning was still roiling in her stomach.

  The store’s parking lot was empty, except for a few teenagers, so Neely took time to scan the newspaper. There was nothing about Senator Hargrove’s shady doings, but in the upper right-hand corner of page five she found an interesting item.

  MYSTERIOUS BLAST DESTROYS BEACH COTTAGE NEAR TIMBER COVE, the headline read. Neely folded the paper, then folded it again, and braced the article against the steering wheel. Sometime during the night, the eager reporter had written, an explosion had leveled the Browning cottage on Blackberry Road. It was not known if there had been any casualties, but investigators were sifting through the wreckage.

  Neely pushed open the car door, ran behind the store’s giant garbage bin, and was still retching long after her stomach was empty. If Senator Hargrove hadn’t warned her, however indirectly, she would have been blown to smoldering fragments, perhaps in her sleep.

  She went into the public rest room when the bout of sickness was over, rinsed her mouth, and splashed cold water on her face until she figured she’d recovered her senses. Maybe, she thought, leaning shakily against a graffiti-scarred wall, she should rethink the idea of returning to Washington. It might be smarter to find a circus, climb into the tiger cage, and juggle a couple of raw pot roasts until the cats noticed.

  12

  Even separated from Neely by time and distance, Aidan felt her turmoil in his own spirit. He knew she was in the gravest danger, and yet his weakness pinned him to the couch in that lonely crypt, far more effectively than any physical bond could have done. He struggled, but the effort was fruitless.

  “Valerian!” he shouted into the dry darkness of the tomb. He waited, listening as the echo of his voice slowly faded away, but the other vampire did not appear. Aidan’s pride would not let him call out again.

  He closed his eyes, tried to calm himself. In his mind, he saw Neely standing next to a garbage bin, behind some roadside shop, retching. He watched her hurry into the women’s room, tasted the rusty water she used to rinse her mouth, felt the cool relief as she splashed her face. Then he frowned, trying to make sense of a sudden vision of Neely venturing inside a tiger cage at a circus, juggling ugly chunks of raw meat. The ludicrous image disappeared; Neely was behind the wheel of a car—he recognized the interior as his own Spitfire. He felt her quick, shallow breaths as if he’d drawn them himself, and the warm moisture of tears on her cheeks.

  She was afraid and confused, and not being able to go to her was among the greatest agonies Aidan had ever suffered.

  Neely, he thought, his soul reaching for hers. She didn’t consciously hear him, he knew, but she sniffled and squared her shoulders.

  “Okay, Wallace,” she said aloud. “No more panic. It’s time for some straight thinking.”

  Atta girl, Aidan encouraged, still seeing the world through her eyes and picking up her emotions and physical sensations.

  “I can’t go to the police, and certainly not to the FBI. I don’t know if Melody Ling is going to break the story or if she’s going to cave in to pressure and pretend it never happened.” With one hand she mussed her pixie hair in frustration, and Aidan felt the softness between his own fingers, and the tugging wiggle of her scalp. She sighed—he shared that, too—and his eyes filled with tears because he had been deprived of such simple, sweet nuances of humanity for so long. “If I go back to Bright River, then Ben and Danny will be in danger again. Which leaves my original plan—I’ll take the proverbial bull by the horns and head straight for Washington. I’ll confront Dallas Hargrove, either in his office or in the Capitol Building, and if the mob shoots me, they might just have to do it on the floor of the Senate.” With that, she started the car engine, shifted deftly into first gear, and guided the Spitfire back onto the slush-covered highway.

  No, Aidan protested, but it was to no avail, of c
ourse, for Neely apparently wasn’t aware that he was with her, even though he was conscious of her every pulse. He noted the electrical activity of her brain, along with other subliminal processes, like digestion and the manufacture of all sorts of chemicals and hormones. He warmed his own frozen soul at the silver spark of divinity shining at the core of her, the mysterious gift that was given to all mortals with the first tentative tha-thump of their hearts.

  Aidan rode with Neely for an hour or so, but the effort sapped him, and he withdrew. He had been foolish, he realized now, to squander his strength so recklessly by seeking out Lisette and the Brotherhood the way he had. Now, when his powers might have made a positive difference, he was all but depleted.

  He began to drift, now fully conscious, now only half aware. He slept, finally, and awakened to a ravenous hunger and a sense of terrible urgency.

  He had to rise, feed, and go to Neely, and the fact that those things might well be impossible had no real bearing on anything. Aidan was fresh out of choices.

  He shook his head, fighting the disorientation, the infernal weakness.

  After a painful struggle Aidan managed to raise himself onto one elbow. The effort left him grimacing, bruised with exhaustion, but he refused to lie down again. He used all his will to rise to a sitting position and then to stand, knees trembling, beside the couch. The piece of furniture, so absurdly out of place in that old crypt, was high and curved at one end. Aidan gripped that part for support.

  He needed blood, a lot of it, and fast.

  Aidan thought frantically. The tightly mortared stone walls of the crypt admitted neither the light of the sun nor that of the moon, but he knew it was night simply because he was conscious. What he did not know was whether the dawn was hours away, or just seconds, for he carried no watch. How much time had he lost to delirium?

  Should he miscalculate and be caught abroad at sunrise, the result would be an interminable and hideous death. That possibility was terrible enough, but there was a very real danger that this cruel passage would be only the beginning of his suffering. If there was indeed such a place as Hell, beyond the mysterious veil that separated the known from the unknown, Aidan would surely be condemned to everlasting torment.

  Remembering Neely, Aidan sought and found a forgotten reservoir of courage within himself. He began to pace, stiff-legged, from one end of the crypt to the other, forcing his woodlike limbs to function.

  He wanted to tune in to Neely again, to find out where she was, and how she was, and what she was feeling, but he didn’t dare waste energy. Before he attempted anything else, Aidan reminded himself, he must feed.

  All three floors of Senator Dallas Hargrove’s elegant Georgetown house were brightly lit, even though it was nearly three in the morning when Neely arrived. She’d driven for thirteen hours, on and off, and she was hungry, drained of all but the last quivering dregs of energy, and badly in need of a hot bath. For all of that, just the knowledge that she’d reached her destination gave her a second wind.

  She glanced around, saw designer Christmas wreaths on some of the doors. Getting out of Aidan’s car, Neely felt a stab of chagrin. Had Thanksgiving gotten by her somehow, when she wasn’t looking?

  She didn’t even know the date, she realized, with a sense of quiet shock. She just hoped Ben and Danny had roasted a turkey for the occasion, and maybe invited Doris, the new waitress, to dinner.

  Staunchly Neely moved up the front walk, climbed the brick steps, and rang the bell. The senator himself answered the door, and when he saw Neely, he swore and made a move to block her way, but she was too quick. She pressed past Hargrove and stood facing him in that spacious entry hall, with its parquet floors, cherrywood grandfather clock, and marble-topped credenza.

  “You must be suicidal!” the senator snapped. He had taken off his jacket at some point and opened his shirt, and his tie hung in a long loop, like a noose about to be jerked tight. There were shadows under his eyes, his cheeks were gaunt, and it was anybody’s guess how long it had been since he’d shaved. “Damn it, Neely—I did everything I could to warn you—it’s a miracle you’re alive—”

  Neely didn’t retreat, even though Hargrove’s stance was intimidating because of his superior size and strength. “I’m tired of running,” she said. “I won’t be tracked and hounded like some pitiful creature wanted for its hide!”

  After regarding her in stricken silence for several moments, the senator groaned. “No, Neely, you won’t be hunted anymore,” he said. “You won’t be hunted because they’ve found you, you little fool!”

  At this, four large men in dark, high-quality suits appeared, one from the room on the right side of the hall, two from the left, and another from the curved staircase. Neely dived for the door, but she was tired and her reflexes were poor.

  The smallest of the thugs caught her easily, pulling her arms back, hooking his own beneath her elbows.

  Neely struggled and screamed, but the man held her easily. One of the others came over and slapped her hard across the face, and the coppery taste of blood covered her tongue.

  “There’s no need for violence,” Hargrove protested, but his tone was weak, like his character.

  Neely stomped on her captor’s instep with one heel, and he howled in pain and released her. In a movie the trick might have worked, she thought fancifully as the other three bad guys rushed forward. In real life, however, two of the trio of stooges held her, while the third one brought a syringe from the pocket of his coat.

  “For God’s sake,” Hargrove pleaded, as ineffectually as before. Neely wondered how he’d ever attained high office in the first place, let alone held on to his seat in the Senate and married a topflight person like Elaine. “I see no reason to—”

  Neely struggled, making an inarticulate sound as she tried to avoid the needle. She felt a minute puncture in the side of her neck, then a stinging sensation as the drug, whatever it was, entered her system. After that, reality dissolved into a colorless, shifting mass of nothingness.

  When Neely came to her senses, she was surprised and alarmed to find herself lying on the hard, bare floor of a pickup truck or a van, her arms tied behind her back, her feet bound at the ankles. Her throat felt raw and dry.

  Senator Hargrove lay beside her, also tied.

  He glared at her. “I hope you’re happy now,” he whispered.

  Neely didn’t answer immediately; her thoughts were still pretty incoherent. Her head ached, and so did her right hip and knee. She saw a metal roof a few feet overhead and decided the vehicle was probably a van.

  “They’re going to kill us,” Hargrove said in a stage whisper.

  Neely tried to sit up and failed miserably. The floor of the van was as hard and cold as marble and, worse, it was corrugated, making a new bruise every time they went over a bump.

  “And you thought they were such nice guys,” Neely drawled, shifting in a restless effort to make herself more comfortable.

  “Shut up,” snapped her former employer.

  She tilted her head back, caught glimpses of shadowy hulks in the passenger and driver’s seats. It was still dark.

  and snow swirled against the dark windshield, while the wipers went thumpety-thump, thumpety-thump.

  “You aren’t going to get away with this,” she called out cheerfully, toward the front. “I turned all the proof over to a television reporter, and she’s going to make household names of the lot of you. Who knows? Maybe they’ll show your trial on cable… Neely was well aware that she was ranting like an idiot, but she didn’t give a damn. Her only other option was screaming in hysteria.

  The driver crumpled a paper bag in one meaty hand and tossed it over his shoulder. His aim turned out to be pretty good; the wad struck Neely on the chin, and she caught a whiff of stale french fries. “Put a sock in it,” he said in classic Brooklynese.

  Neely didn’t stop talking, she couldn’t, but she lowered her voice and directed her comments to the senator. For once in his life, she thought,
he was going to have to actually listen to an unhappy voter.

  “I can’t believe you ever got involved with these people!” she hissed.

  Hargrove closed his eyes for a moment. He looked sick, and Neely scooted back a ways, until she felt the cold steel of the wheel-well against her bottom. “I had to,” he said. “Elaine—needed so many things—”

  “Do me a favor and don’t blame this on your wife, all right?” Neely interrupted furiously. “I know the lady, and I can’t imagine her cooperating with a drug cartel for any reason or any amount of money!”

  “Keep it down back there,” grunted the guy in the passenger seat. He sounded as though he needed adenoid surgery.

  Neely bit her lower lip to keep herself from talking back. These creeps were for real, and if she made them mad enough, they might just pull over to the side of the road and blow her brains out with an illegal handgun.

  Hargrove gave a low, strangled sob, and his face contorted into a mask of grief.

  Neely felt sorry for him, but there was no way to lend comfort. Her hands were tied behind her back, and, besides, she wasn’t sure she wanted to touch the senator anyway. “I heard about the accident,” she said moderately. “How is Elaine?”

  He made a broken sound, deep in his throat, and it was terrible to hear. “She—she isn’t going to make it,” he managed.

  Neely ran the tip of her tongue over her lips and tasted dried blood. Perhaps because she was half out of her mind with fear, she wondered what Aidan and Valerian and the others liked so much about the stuff. The flavor was salty and metallic.

  “I’m sorry,” she said gently. “About Elaine, I mean.”

  Hargrove nodded. “It’s selfish of me, I know,” he confessed in a miserable rasp, “but I’m almost glad. She would be destroyed if she knew what I’ve done.”

  Neely followed the old rule of saying nothing when she couldn’t say something nice. She wanted to console the senator, yes, but she also ached to condemn him.