“I guess I’m just tired. I’ve been through a lot in the last few months.”
Wendy nodded sympathetically, her blue eyes wide with compassion. At least she knew about Neely’s adventures with the drug cartel. “You certainly have,” she agreed. “What you need is a good rest. You should go somewhere warm, where the sun shines, and think things through.”
Neely sighed in agreement. “I don’t know where I’ll wind up, just yet,” she answered, “but I feel ready to leave London now and make a lasting niche for myself somewhere. I’ll be in touch with you as soon as I get my bearings.”
Wendy patted her hand. “You’ll be all right, Neely. You’re the bravest, most resilient person I know.”
“Thanks,” Neely said. She knew her friend had meant the compliment, but at the same time she couldn’t really take it in. The days and nights ahead looked bleak to her, for as badly as she wanted to, she could not ignore the possibility that Aidan might never return to her.
She finished out the evening, cried all the way home in the cab, and spent much of the night composing a letter to Aidan. She wrote that she loved him, that she would always love him, that she would wait for him, even into the next lifetime, if that proved necessary.
Neely left the letter on the mantelpiece in the gallery the next morning, beneath one of Aidan’s paintings, said goodbye to Mrs. F. and set out in another cab for the airport.
18
For four days and three nights, Aidan lay upon his slab, motionless and pale as death. Valerian came, in spirit, to watch over him and stayed as long as his limited energy would allow, before scurrying back to his own ruined and unwelcoming body to regroup. The old ones returned every twenty-four hours, always at nightfall, to fill the golden chalice from their wrists as they had on that first occasion, and add their concoction of herbs. The only sign of life Aidan ever showed was when he opened his lips to draw from the cup.
Each night, as Valerian kept his helpless vigil, a new fissure traced itself over his heart. He would gladly have taken the beloved one’s place on that cold bed of stone, borne all his pain, argued his case for him in that other world, the mystical one, where some part of Aidan surely wandered. None of these courses were open to Valerian, however, all he could do was wait. When the fourth sunset came, Valerian was there in the cavern even before the elders appeared. It was as if he were the heart of some giant unseen entity, pumping fear, like blood, into veins and limbs and organs beyond his awareness.
He drew near Aidan, but it seemed that a wall of cold surrounded the still form, now as rigid and gray as a cadaver. Valerian withdrew again, scorning his vampire powers for the first time since his making. Smoke and mirrors, he thought furiously. What good are my tricks and secrets if Aidan does not live?
The others arrived, one by one, solemn in their dignity, wearing it as tangibly as their robes. They made a circle around Aidan, then, in a single motion, lifted him up in their hands.
Valerian was jolted out of his angry reverie; he rushed back to Aidan, shimmering above his bare middle like a firefly.
Wait, he demanded of Tobias, seeing no sign of the chalice. Something had changed; the ritual had taken a new turn. What are you doing? Where are you taking him?
Tobias sighed, and his effort at patience was lost on Valerian for the moment because he was too frantic to recognize it. The older vampire responded in the language of the mind, though there was never any question that the others could hear and understand.
We can do no more for the fledgling, Tobias said. The sunlight must now be his final judge.
Valerian felt horror batter against him, then surround and absorb him. What?
We will lay him out in a place once holy to mortals. If he survives the full rising of the sun, the transformation will be complete. If he cannot be changed, and we have failed in our efforts, he will be destroyed.
Valerian became a scream, since he could not utter one without his body. No!
It is done, Tobias responded.
In the next instant they were gone. All of them—Tobias, the other elders, Aidan.
Valerian’s strength was already waning—his body claimed much of it, being determined to renew itself—but he used all his will to follow the elders and their unconscious burden.
The small, hideous company reassembled itself in the center of a circle of ancient pillars, not far from Stonehenge. Moonlight splashed the ruined monument to some long-forgotten deity and turned the crusted snow to iridescent silver.
Aidan made no sound or movement as the elders laid him in the exact center of the ring of giant stones and stepped back, each one fading slowly, slowly, until they’d all vanished.
Valerian shrieked soundlessly, wild in his frustration and fear. He could not bear it, seeing Aidan left to await the sunrise and suffer the terrible cruelties reserved just for vampires, but there was nothing he could do.
Still, Valerian lingered as long as he was able, and when he saw dawn trim the distant horizon in golden lace, he tried to form himself into some kind of shield, to cover and protect his friend. Alas, he was made of nothingness, and he could offer no protection.
He was wrenched back to his own faraway body, just as the light tumbled and spilled over the snowy hills and into the circle of stones where Aidan lay.
Neely sat numbly on the postage-stamp-size terrace outside her hotel room in Phoenix, sipping iced tea and staring at the shifting patterns of turquoise light playing over the pool below. The sun was dazzlingly bright, and its warmth teased the very marrow of her bones.
She sighed, reached for her ice tea, and took another sip. She didn’t know a soul in Arizona, and Ben had made it plain when she telephoned him, on her first night back in the country, that he thought she needed looking after—at least for a while.
Neely didn’t want anyone fussing over her, for in those freaky times when the numbness wore off, she was hypersensitive to pain, and the very currents in the air bruised her. During these periods, the slightest sound seemed deafening and hammered against her senses until she trembled.
She needed to think. That was what she’d told her brother. She had money, now that the drug people weren’t tracking her anymore and she could tap her personal funds. She wanted to wait, and later, if necessary, do her grieving, in peace and privacy. Before she could go on and begin making some sort of life for herself and Aidan, however, she must finish putting herself back together and smoothing away the rough places where the breaks were mended.
As soon as possible, Neely planned to find herself a job as an assistant to some executive, rent an apartment, buy a car, make new friends. She wasn’t planning to sit on the sidelines while she waited for Aidan, though she certainly didn’t intend to date other men, either, for Neely knew one thing: For the rest of her natural days and, most probably, throughout eternity as well, she would love no one but Aidan Tremayne.
Neely closed her eyes, leaned back in the chaise lounge, and sighed, letting the sun caress her winter-whitened skin. It frightened her that sometimes she could almost convince herself that she’d imagined the whole fantastic experience—encountering Aidan for the first time, sleeping beside him under a hotel-room bed in London, Valerian and the paintings and the tapestries and Maeve’s grand mansion. The memories always returned, vivid and sharp, and wore well in her mind like a bright picture on a bar of novelty soap, one that would never wash away.
The last thing she wanted was to forget.
Often she awakened in the night, thinking Aidan was there beside her, and weeping when she found herself alone. She tried hard to accept reality: Aidan was a vampire, with all the attendant gifts. If he had not perished in that strange experiment of his, or been grievously injured, he would find her.
Neely waited, suspended, swinging back and forth between one emotion and its opposite, reminding herself to eat and sleep and even breathe.
She would hold on, though—she was determined to do that.
The first thing Aidan was conscious of w
as light. Dazzling, fiery light. He waited for the glare to consume him, but instead it played sweetly over his skin like some intangible ointment. He slowly opened his eyes, saw nothing but the luminous glow, and closed them again.
The next sensation he recognized was cold. Saints in heaven, he was lying in snow, bare as a pauper’s purse, and freezing his ass off in the bargain.
He raised his eyelids once more, only to be driven back a second time into the comforting darkness.
Aidan tried to lift his hands after that, but they were heavy at his sides. Where was he? In Hell? It would be some joke, he reflected, if the place turned out to be an ice pit instead of an everlasting pyre.
“Great Scot, Martha,” a male voice boomed from somewhere above him. “He’s quite naked, isn’t he? And him out here in the weather and all. Might be he’s a Druid or something like that.”
Someone crouched beside Aidan. He felt a woman’s hand come to rest on his shoulder, strong and blessedly warm.
“Druid or none, he’s in a bad way. Run and get the woolen blanket from the car, Walter, and we’ll wrap him up snug in that. Then we’ll try to lift the poor man between us.”
He felt the blanket go round him, and the awkward angels wrested him onto his feet. He could neither see nor speak, but as he stumbled along between his rescuers, a momentous realization came upon him.
He was breathing.
Aidan’s spirit soared even higher when he explored his chest and found a living heart beating there. “Neely,” he whispered as tears slipped down his half-frozen face. “Neely.”
When he awakened again, he was in the hospital, and the numbness of hypothermia had worn off, leaving a raw, scraping pain in its place.
Aidan exulted in that pain, however, for it was more proof that he’d been given a second chance.
He was a man.
He lifted one of his hands to his mouth, with no small amount of struggle, and felt his teeth. His fangs were gone, leaving an ordinary pair of incisors in their places.
Aidan tried to sit up, only to be gently pressed back to the bed again.
“There, now,” a woman, probably a nurse, said gently, “just rest and don’t be trying to rise. You came very near to meeting your Maker, you know.”
He felt tears gather in his lashes, hot and wet. You can’t imagine how near, he thought. He’d been forgiven, it seemed, or at least given an opportunity to redeem himself. He meant to make full use of whatever time was left to him.
“Thank you,” he whispered as the pain took hold and started to drag him under again. The nurse thought he’d been speaking to her and assured him that she was just doing her job.
In the days to come, Aidan tried to keep track of time, but the task proved impossible, since he was conscious only in bits and snatches. During those brief intervals, he reveled in the steady beat of his heart, the ragged but regular meter of his breathing, the ache in the back of his hand, where an intravenous needle was lodged. Even the need to relieve himself in a cold steel urn brought by a nurse was cause to celebrate.
When he found the strength to lift his eyelids for the first time, he saw gray-green walls, uninspired hospital art, a tiny television set that seemed to huddle in a corner of the room, near the ceiling. His bed was the crank-up sort, an iron monstrosity that might well have been a relic of some war.
A moment passed before Aidan realized that it was night, and he was seeing clearly. The knowledge frightened him; he thought for a moment that he’d only dreamed of being a mortal.
Then he saw the vampire, standing motionless and majestic at the foot of the bed. Aidan did not recognize the creature, and that only increased his alarm. He drew back against the pillows and held his breath.
The stranger raised a stately hand. Like his face, it glowed white in the darkness, illuminating him, so that he appeared to have swallowed the moon itself. “Do not be afraid, Mortal,” the creature said, sounding mildly exasperated. “I have not come to change you, but only to bring a message from the Brotherhood.”
Aidan’s heart had risen to his throat and was pounding there. He was frightened, and yet the mere existence of his pulse caused him almost incomprehensible joy. “What is this message?” he managed to ask, and as vulnerable as he was, there was a note of challenge in his voice.
The vampire chuckled. ‘Tobias was right,” he said. “You are certainly brave to the point of idiocy, Aidan Tremayne.”
He took several items from inside his coat, then rounded the bed to lay them on the stand and look down into Aidan’s defiant eyes. “I’ve brought you a passport, credit cards, some money. You have lost your powers as a vampire, of course, so you will have to make a place for yourself in the world of humankind now.”
Aidan glanced at the leather packet on the bedside stand. He’d had no use for identification and money before, but they were quite necessary to mortals. “Did Maeve ask you to help me—or Valerian?”
“Neither,” the fiend replied, moving away to stand at the window, looking out. “No one knows where that pair has gotten themselves off to, as a matter of fact. The Brotherhood simply felt that matters should be brought full circle—your mortal life was taken from you, now it is restored. In these modern times it is difficult to function without passports and the like.”
Aidan was silent for a moment, absorbing the knowledge that Maeve and Valerian had both disappeared. He felt his limitations as a man sorely—he could do nothing to help his sister or his friend—and then he accepted the new reality.
“How long?” he asked. “Am I going to live a day—a decade—another fifty years?”
The vampire smiled, then shrugged. “How long would you have lived before, if your life had not been interrupted? Only those beyond the Veil of Mystery possess such knowledge.” He sighed, tugged at the sleeves of his elegant coat, and approached the bed again. “I must go soon and feed.” He laid one of his cold alabaster hands to Aidan’s head. “You will forget what you were, in time, and, someday, even laugh at those who believe in such creatures as vampires and warlocks.”
Aidan caught at the corpse-like hand with his own warm fingers, tried in vain to throw it away. “Wait—there is a woman—I want—I have—to find her—”
“You will always be Aidan Tremayne,” the monster said. “Although your mind will soon dismiss her image, your heart will remember forever.”
“But—”
“It is done,” decreed the vampire quietly. And then he was gone, and Aidan tumbled into sleep, as if he’d been pushed over the edge of an abyss.
The next morning he ate solid food for the first time in more than two centuries and wondered why he was so excited over milk toast and weak tea. Wild, macabre images played chase in his mind; he told the pretty nurse he’d dreamed a vampire came to his room the night before, and she smiled and shook her head and pronounced the human brain a strange organ indeed.
Aidan had to agree, at least privately, for he held another picture in his mind, that of a lovely woman with short hair and large pixie eyes. He knew the gamine’s name was Neely, but that was the sum total of what he remembered about her. It was miraculous, considering that he’d had to take his own identity from the packet of identification that had turned up on his bedside table one night while he slept.
He grew strong in the days to come, and his mind manufactured a complicated and quite viable history for him. Soon Aidan believed the assortment of facts and actually thought he remembered the corresponding experiences.
He was alone in the world, having been born to his Irish parents very late in life. He had money, a grand house outside of Bright River, Connecticut, and an impressive career as an artist.
Certain mysteries remained, however. Aidan still did not know where he’d been before he was discovered lying in the middle of that ancient circle of stones, naked as a newborn, or how he’d gotten there in the first place. The police were equally baffled, but after an initial interest and a barrage of questions in his hospital room, they’d stoppe
d coming round. No doubt they’d written the patient off as a head case, and Aidan had to admit there were ample grounds for the idea.
He left the hospital in borrowed garb, bought himself new clothes, luggage, and toiletries, none of which he seemed to possess, spent one night in a London hotel, took a cab to the airport, and then flew to the United States.
In New York he rented a car and drove the rest of the way to Bright River.
Upon arriving in that small Connecticut town, he went immediately to the big house in the country. He didn’t remember the place being so gloomy, he thought, as he went from room to room, flinging back the heavy draperies to let in the sunlight.
The snow was melting, and spring wasn’t far off. He opened a few windows and doors to let in some fresh air.
Aidan wandered into the kitchen, humming. His breakfast, a muffin and a cup of coffee he’d grabbed at the airport, had long since worn off.
He opened one cupboard after another, amazed to find that there wasn’t so much as a can of chili or a box of salt on the shelves. There were no plates, no cups, no knives, forks, or spoons.
Puzzled, he shrugged his shoulders, found a leather jacket in one of the closets, and left the house. There was a truck stop just down the road; Aidan was sure he remembered eating there once or twice.
He set out on foot, his hands jammed into the pockets of his coat, reassuring himself as he walked. Although the doctors in London had insisted that the gaps in his memory would surely close someday, he was still troubled.
For one thing, there was that name that haunted him, and the sweet face and figure that went with it. Neely. Who was she? She had touched his life, he was certain of that, but he couldn’t remember where he’d known her, or when.
On the most basic level of his consciousness, a driving, urgent need to find the mysterious woman raged like a river at flood tide.
The Black Rose Chronicles Page 27