The Black Rose Chronicles

by Linda Lael Miller

  Maeve sighed. Valerian would always stand out from the other guests, no matter how carefully he chose his clothing, in her opinion, but to say so would only inflate his already monumental ego, and she wasn’t about to do that.

  “Where is the lecture?” she asked instead, sounding weary and dispirited even to herself. “Surely you expected me before this?”

  Valerian shrugged. “I kept myself occupied in your absence,” he said. “What were you doing—mooning over that mortal of yours? What is his attraction, Maeve—is it the fact that he spends most of his days drenched in blood?”

  Maeve was instantly angry, though in truth, had she been in Valerian’s place, she might have offered much the same question. She whirled away from the other vampire, restraining her temper, and then, after a few moments, turned back to face him again. “Calder is accustomed to blood,” she admitted softly. “He’s a doctor, a scientist, and it isn’t revolting to him, the way it is to most mortals. Indeed, I imagine he knows, on some level, what a magical substance blood really is.”

  Valerian arched one eyebrow. “After all your grumblings about Aidan and his penchant for that human woman, Neely Wallace, I would never have expected this of you. You’re smitten with a mortal, just as your brother was.” He paused and touched her face lightly with curled fingers. “Nothing can come of this affection of yours, Maeve. Not, that is, unless you’re willing to make the fascinating Dr. Holbrook into a blood-drinker.”

  Maeve gave her head a quick and slightly wild shake. “I won’t risk that—you know how many vampires come to despise their makers. An eternity of Calder’s hatred would be worse than Dante’s version of hell.”

  “Do you hate me?” he asked with uncommon gentleness.

  She looked at him for a long moment, then shook her head.

  Valerian made a soft sound of exclamation. “Ah, well, that is a relief.” He raised an eyebrow. “Still, the situation is dire indeed. I needn’t tell you what a rare instance it is when a nightwalker puts the welfare of another before its own wants and pleasures—particularly when that other is mortal.”

  Trembling, Maeve nonetheless drew herself up and glared at Valerian in her most aristocratic fashion. “Enough talk of my personal affairs,” she said, her voice icy with authority. “What of Lisette? Have you learned anything new? Has she made more of her deviant vampires?”

  Valerian’s smile was slow and insolent, and he had the audacity to touch the tip of Maeve’s nose with a forefinger. “All vampires are deviant, my darling—don’t ever forget that. Now, to the business at hand. Lisette is ranging far and wide, but from what I can discern, she has made her vampires only in this time period. Still, we must find her, before she strews the beasts throughout history. Surely you know without my telling you how the warlocks, not to mention Nemesis and his army of angels, would react to that.”

  “We’ll start by approaching the Brotherhood,” Maeve said in a tone that invited no disagreement. “Then, with or without their approval, we will hunt Lisette down and destroy her.”

  Valerian affected a sigh; it was one of his favorite forms of expression, especially when he was feeling martyred. “At last,” he said. “You have grasped what I was trying to tell you all along—that both the mortal and immortal worlds are in desperate trouble.”

  Maeve could not disagree. The warlocks would not stand idly by while Lisette filled the earth with zombielike vampires, and Nemesis was surely lobbying the highest courts of heaven for permission to make war. Should the battle actually break out, it would make the ancient tales of Armageddon sound like cheerful whimsy.

  “I must change into something more fitting for an audience with the Brotherhood,” Maeve said, looking down at her dusty gown and cloak and then focusing a critical gaze on Valerian’s garb. “Although no costume could possibly be more in character for you, I do hope you aren’t planning to approach the Vampyre Court dressed as a French aristocrat.”

  Valerian sighed again, and all the sufferings of the ages echoed in the sound. He splayed the fingers of one hand over the place where his heart should have been. “You wound me,” he said, but there was a broad grin on his face. At Maeve’s scowl he gave another sigh. “Very well,” he agreed. “I’ll meet you in the south garden on the Havermail estate. The Brotherhood’s headquarters isn’t far from there.”

  Maeve frowned. “Why not go directly to the secret chamber?”

  “You don’t just pop into the place,” Valerian replied indignantly, tugging at one elaborately trimmed cuff and then the other. “These are the oldest vampires on earth, and we must use a degree of protocol.”

  “We could bypass them completely and handle the problem ourselves, I suppose,” Maeve mused, resting her hands on her hips.

  “Perish the thought!” Valerian said, and for once in his immortal life, he sounded sincere. “They’d never tolerate such disrespect!” There was a pause, then he leaned toward Maeve and peered into her eyes, narrowing his own. “You have fed, haven’t you? You’ll need your strength to deal with the old ones.”

  Maeve simply gave her companion a scathing look, raised her arms, and vanished.

  She materialized in her suite in the London house, where she shed her rumpled, dust-splotched garments, washed her alabaster skin, and brushed dust and tiny stones from her hair. Finally Maeve donned a beautiful dress, made of shimmering red silk, with Irish lace trimming the cuffs and yoke, along with a matching cape.

  Moments later she stood in the Havermails’ south garden, where a long-forgotten marble fountain presided, nearly hidden under blackberry vines and wild roses. The statue in the center had once been lovely, an exquisite sculpture of a young Greek boy with a vessel in his arms, but now it was spotted with moss and bird scat, and a knee and elbow had been chipped away.

  “Couldn’t you have found a more dismal place for us to meet?” Maeve snapped when Valerian joined her in the garden. He stood upon a low stone fence, practically invisible for the brambles and scrub brush that had grown up around it.

  He looked like the conductor of a great orchestra, or perhaps a movie vampire, in his rustling black cape and impeccably tailored tuxedo. “The whole of the Havermail estate is dismal,” he said irritably. “They wouldn’t have it any other way. Now, might we stop this quibbling, please—at least long enough to deal with the difficulties at hand?”

  Maeve felt a degree of chagrin, though she would not have admitted as much. Because of her past relationship with Valerian, and the pain he had caused her with his cavalier ways, she invariably sought to rankle him. He was right, however—this was no time for childish jibes. There were true perils that must be overcome.

  “Take me to the Brotherhood,” she said quietly.

  Valerian closed his cape around her, and, momentarily at least, she put aside her own powers and surrendered to his.

  With dizzying quickness the two of them disintegrated, shot through space like a single beam of light, and reclaimed their normal forms inside a cave far beneath the surface of the earth.

  “This is the place where Aidan became human again,” Maeve said in a stricken whisper. She saw clearly in the dense blackness, and took note of the paintings of animals and primitive gods and goddesses on the walls.

  “Yes,” Valerian said hoarsely. He, too, seemed shaken. “The resurrection ritual was carried out here, in the central chamber.” He took Maeve’s hand and began leading her along the edge of an icy subterranean stream.

  “If you’ve having any thoughts about becoming mortal so that you can live happily—not ever after, as in the fairy tales, but merely for the length of a heartbeat—you’d best reconsider. The Brotherhood has decided that no more vampires will be allowed to cross over after this—they’ve destroyed all written records of the rite and cleansed their minds of any memory of the chemical formula.”

  There were more paintings on the walls along both sides of the stream, and Maeve marveled at their pure definition and richness of color. The artists had been dead in the ne
ighborhood of thirty thousand years, at her best guess, and yet their handiwork looked as fresh as if it had been completed that morning.

  “I wasn’t thinking of becoming mortal,” Maeve bristled a few seconds after the fact. “I’ve told you before, I’m not interested in giving up my powers to sit and dam stockings in some man’s parlor.”

  “Things have changed a bit since your time as a mortal, Maeve,” Valerian pointed out dryly as they proceeded along the narrow path. “Modern women don’t mend stockings, to my knowledge, much less gather or wash them. They work at their own careers and guard their independence.”

  “I would not wish to live in the twentieth century were I human again,” Maeve said, sounding just a bit defensive even in her own ears. “I prefer the nineteenth, as you know. It’s more gracious and elegant”

  “And Calder Holbrook is there,” Valerian said.

  Before Maeve had to answer, a brilliant wall of sunlight appeared ahead, and both she and Valerian stopped, keeping to the shadows. Maeve stared in wonder and no little fear, for she had not looked upon such light in two hundred years and, had she stepped into it, it would have consumed her in invisible flames.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Valerian said quietly, squeezing Maeve’s hand. “It’s only an illusion—the Brotherhood’s way of guarding the innermost cave.”

  “What makes you so certain it’s an illusion?” Maeve snapped. “There could be a crevice on the surface….”

  “Think,” Valerian scolded with gentle exasperation. “The sun set less than an hour ago. How could that be daylight?”

  Maeve felt foolish for the second time since she’d awakened in Calder’s hospital and realized that it was full of angels, a vampire’s most dangerous enemies, and her impatience with herself made her prickly.

  “Do they know we’re here?” she asked in a peevish tone.

  Valerian glanced back at her over one broad shoulder. “Don’t be a ninny,” he said. “Of course they know. We’ll wait here until they send someone out to meet us.” Maeve gazed upon the false sunlight, both fascinated and repelled. She did not miss the limitations of human life, the aches and pains and superficial joys that were always so quickly gone. She sometimes yearned for bright spring days, however, for azure skies, and fields of wildflowers and sweet grass rippling beneath a golden sun….

  Only moments had passed before Tobias appeared, walking straight through the light, smiling and unharmed. He was one of the elders, a member of the ancient Brotherhood, and yet he looked no more than seventeen years old, with his slender, ladlike figure and youthful features.

  “This way,” he said. “The others await you.”

  Valerian started toward the light, but Maeve drew back, afraid. Illusion or no illusion, sunshine was a terror to all vampires, as agonizing as the flames of hell itself, and she was wary.

  “Did you see this—this barrier of sunlight, when you were here before?” she whispered to Valerian.

  “No,” he said, sounding mildly impatient. “What’s the matter with you, Maeve? I’ve already told you the light isn’t real—Tobias probably projected it from his mind.”

  “He’s right,” said the latter, standing only a few feet away now. “I manufactured the barricade in my imagination. Isn’t it splendid?”

  Maeve would not have described it so charitably, but of course she wasn’t about to voice her observation aloud. “Lead the way,” she said, determined to bring her fear under control. If she and Valerian were to succeed in their quest and stop Lisette, then she, Maeve, would have to face many more challenges. This was no time to allow her courage to fail.

  She stood at Valerian’s side, instead of cowering behind him, as she had done for the space of several humiliating moments. “That’s a marvelous trick,” she said, swallowing the desire to turn and flee. “Will you show me how to do it?”

  Tobias shrugged. “Perhaps,” he said. Then he turned and strolled back through the shimmering golden curtain.

  Maeve rushed past Valerian, in a burst of bravado, and hurled herself through the barrier. Even though she knew the veil was an illusion, she was still surprised that there was no burning as she passed, and she was dizzy with terrified relief to find herself safe.

  Valerian was next to her in an instant, a half-smile curving his mouth.

  Annoyed at his smugness, Maeve drew herself up and then turned to look back at the golden curtain. It dissolved into a magical fog of shining dust and finally vanished entirely.

  Maeve was impressed, and her mind was busy as she and Valerian followed Tobias through the twists and turns of the natural passageway alongside the stream. If Tobias could do such magnificent things as make walls of sunlight appear, then she, too, must possess at least the seed of that ability….

  What wonders might she be able to perform if only she knew the trick?

  She was still pursuing that intriguing idea when suddenly the passageway widened into a cathedral-size chamber, filled with the light of burning torches. The stream meandered off in another direction, into the depths of the earth.

  The Brotherhood was gathered, and they were an imposing lot, seated along the length of a long, exquisitely carved table as they were. They did not wear black capes or somber hooded robes, as Maeve had expected, but instead were clad in garb typical of various periods of human history.

  The spokesman, a giant with a red beard and piercing blue eyes, seemed to be a Viking. As Tobias took a seat behind the table, the vampire with the fiery hair stood and rounded one end to face Valerian and Maeve squarely.

  He merely nodded at Valerian, but studied Maeve with such concentration in his features that she began to grow uncomfortable. “You are the one,” he said at last. “The one spoken of in our legends.”

  Maeve said nothing, for she was still not at all certain that she was “the one,” nor was she sure she wanted to be.

  “Our next queen,” Valerian said smoothly with a grand nod in Maeve’s direction. His eyes twinkled as he registered her carefully concealed irritation.

  Still, though she was simmering with denials, Maeve did not speak.

  Valerian, as usual, was not at a loss for words. “We’ve come about another matter,” he said formally, taking in the other members of the vampire counsel with a polite sweep of his eyes. “As you probably know, Lisette, in her madness, is making an undue number of blood-drinkers. They are substandard creatures, insensible and indiscriminate.”

  Maeve was listening, but she was also looking around the enormous cavern and wondering what thoughts had been in her brother Aidan’s mind when he was here, undergoing the terrible transformation from vampire to mortal. Surely he had been afraid and, at the same time, full of hope.

  The Viking brought her attention back to the matter at hand with surprising ease. “We despair of what Lisette is doing, of course,” he said. “But we are weary, and we do not wish to govern any longer.”

  Valerian leaned slightly forward, as he always did when he was trying to make a point. “You cannot abdicate your authority now!” he hissed furiously. “Don’t you understand? The warlocks are ready to wage war against all vampires if Lisette is not stopped, and even at this moment Nemesis impugns the highest authorities in the heavenly realm to let him unleash his angels upon all of us! If this happens, the suffering, both human and immortal, will be incalculable!”

  The Viking spread his hands as if to say he could offer no solution, and turned to walk away.

  Impulsively Valerian reached out and grasped the ancient vampire’s shoulder in an effort to make him listen.

  The old one whirled, icy blue eyes shining with fire. “It is your battle, Arrogant One,” he said, and then his gaze shifted to Maeve with all the sharpness of a fine-edged sword. “And yours. As for us, we want only to rest Eternity has gone on too long for us as it is!”

  Maeve shrank back a little, startled, as Valerian obviously was, that any living thing would actually yearn for death. Perhaps, she thought, she would feel that way hers
elf after a few thousand years, but at the moment the idea made her shudder inwardly.

  “If you refuse to help us,” she said with dignity, “at least promise that you will not hinder us, either.” Her gaze sought and found Tobias’s face. “So be it,” Maeve finished, when no member of the Brotherhood spoke up.

  She wanted to go to Calder, to have what might be her last look at him before she found Lisette and engaged her in battle, but she brought her emotions under stem control.

  The old ones stood and bowed—except for Tobias, who regarded her with an expression of curious concern.

  Maeve turned and walked regally to the center of the chamber, well aware that only one choice was left to her.

  For the sake of all other vampires, for her own sake and that of Calder and of Aidan, the two mortals in all creation that she loved, she must take charge, with Valerian, and find a way to stop Lisette. If she failed, the most savage and terrible war since the expulsion of Lucifer would break out.

  Perhaps even then it was too late.

  She regarded each of the old ones in turn, then clasped her hands together and vanished.

  A moment later she was far away, as she had wished to be. A cool night breeze ruffled the heather of a Scottish moor, and in the distance Maeve heard the crashing of the surf against rocks that had been part of some earlier earth.

  Valerian was beside her, but before either of them could speak, Tobias arrived.

  His voice was infinitely sad. “They plan to destroy themselves,” he said, speaking, of course, of his friends in the Brotherhood. “They are so tired, and this modern time is foreign and confusing to them. They do not wish to survive.”

  Maeve caught hold of Tobias’s sleeve; he was wearing a flowing white shirt, reminiscent of a pirate captain’s, along with leggings and soft leather shoes. “What about you, Tobias? Do you want to die, too?”

  He shook his head. “No, but I, too, am weary. I will lie dormant, for a century or so, and recover my strength. I’m afraid the battle does indeed fall to you, my friends.” Valerian made an angry sound, but Maeve had tender feelings towards Tobias. He had saved all their lives, once upon a time, her own, Aidan’s, and especially Valerian’s, and she owed him a tremendous debt.