The Black Rose Chronicles

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Did you know my brother?” Maeve asked, her voice unusually thick.

  “Only by reputation,” Dimity answered, taking a seat in one of the beautifully upholstered chairs, kicking off her delicate velvet slippers and wriggling her toes. “He became a legend, understandably, when he traded vampirism for mortality.” She winced prettily at the thought. “Can you imagine it?”

  “No,” Maeve admitted readily. The image of Calder nearly came to her mind, but she managed to keep it hidden. Or so she hoped. “But the life of a blood-drinker was torment to Aidan. He’d reached the point where he was ready to perish—even to risk the Judgment—rather than go on as he was.”

  “And he loved a mortal woman.”

  Again Maeve struggled to suppress thoughts of Calder, but this time she wasn’t quite so certain of her success. “Yes,” she said, staring at the portrait.

  “And now you love a mortal man,” Dimity pressed. Maeve turned her back on the painting with rather a lot of difficulty, since it represented a connection with her lost brother, however indirect.

  Dimity laughed and raised a finger to stop Maeve from speaking. “Do not worry,” she said. “Your human lover is safe from me. Like you, I feed only upon the lowest of the low. Child molesters are my particular favorite, though I enjoy the sort of ham-fisted, drunken louts who like to beat their wives as well.”

  Only moderately reassured—for vampires were not, as a rule, creatures of their word—Maeve took a seat on a settee. “You are very good at veiling your thoughts,” she said, “but I have discerned that you want to warn me about something. Please, tell me, although I believe I know.”

  Dimity arched one pale gold eyebrow. “You are powerful,” she said. “I am an old vampire, and shielding my mind is one of my most distinctive skills.”

  Maeve leaned forward slightly. “Please.”

  Dimity folded her hands gracefully in her lap, and the candlelight flickered and danced in her fair hair. “I am acquainted with certain angels,” she said after a few moments of deliberate silence. “They tell me that war is imminent—vampires will be purged from the earth, along with warlocks and werewolves—all immortals, in fact, except for those who belong in the ranks of Nemesis’s army.”

  Maeve was not surprised, but she felt a tremor of terror all the same. “Because of Lisette?” she asked, although she knew the answer.

  Dimity nodded.

  Maeve thought frantically of Calder in this century and Aidan in the next. Even she, with all her gifts and powers, could not be in two places at once and protect both of them at the same time. “Where will this war be fought?” she asked.

  “In all times and dimensions,” Dimity replied. “Although every effort will be made to preserve mortals—as you know, the angels bear them unceasing affection—many will be wounded or killed in the fray.”

  Rising from the settee, Maeve went back to the painting, touched it gently with the palm of her right hand, and spoke very quietly. “Can it be stopped?”

  “Yes,” Dimity said doubtfully, and that single word flooded Maeve with relief. “But only if Lisette is destroyed within a fortnight. At the end of that time Nemesis will be given free rein.”

  Maeve turned to face Dimity again. Before, the threat of war had been only rumor, but now she had to accept it as fact. She knew with all the certainty of her being that Dimity was telling the terrible, unvarnished truth.

  “How do you know these things?” Maeve did not wait for a reply. “Is it true what they say—that you keep company with angels?”

  Dimity smiled, unruffled. “The answer to the second question is also the answer to the first—I do have a special friend from that quarter. His name is Gideon, and he is indeed an angel. He told me.”

  Maeve had been shaken by Dimity’s earlier warning, but she was also curious. “How can such a thing happen? I have always been told that angels are the most fearsome of all our enemies.”

  The golden-haired vampire raised one shoulder in a shrug. “Nothing is absolute,” she said. “Gideon, like many angels, despises the vile creatures you and I feed upon, especially since the women and children who suffer are so often their particular charges. Angels, however, are not free to wreak vengeance, no matter how justified it may be—as you have seen, even Nemesis, the greatest of all warriors, must have the sanction of the highest realms before he can make war.”

  “That is probably as it should be,” Maeve observed quietly. “If it were not so, you and I and a great many other beings would have been destroyed long ago.” Dimity’s expression was one of mild agreement. “Perhaps.”

  A thought struck Maeve. “Would they take our side against Nemesis, these sympathetic angels?”

  “Never,” Dimity answered with gentle certainty. “They are loyal to heaven, first and always. When the line is drawn, they will stand with the uncounted legions who are their brothers and sisters.”

  Maeve might have sighed then, had she been human. “They couldn’t save us anyway,” she said.

  Dimity shook her head. “No, it is true, they could not. Even if each of Nemesis’s warriors stood touching another angel on all sides, over the face of the whole earth and upon the surfaces of all the seas, there would not be room for even a fraction of their true number.”

  The image practically overwhelmed Maeve, and the most dreadful thing was that she knew she hadn’t even begun to picture the full size of the opposing army. If such a conflict came about, Calder and Aidan would both be wiped out in their separate centuries, and if that happened, even Maeve herself would yearn for death.

  No, more than death. Oblivion.

  “I have to stop her,” she whispered, thinking aloud, feeling the truth of the situation for the first time. It was like some acid, eating away the marrow of her bones, working its way slowly, relentlessly, toward her soul. “I cannot allow this to happen.”

  Dimity’s hand came to rest on Maeve’s shoulder; until then, she had not been aware that the other vampire had risen and crossed the candlelit chamber to stand beside her.

  Maeve raised her gaze to the shadowy ceiling. “Perhaps they are to be envied after all,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

  Again Dimity lifted an eyebrow. “And perhaps not. Remember, we don’t know what actually becomes of them, after they shed those weak and pitiful bodies of theirs.”

  Standing, gathering her strength and her resolve for all that faced her, Maeve allowed a touch of sarcasm to creep into her voice. “Couldn’t your friend Gideon enlighten you about that?”

  Dimity was unruffled. “He knows the truth, of course, but to speak of it is forbidden—especially to us.”

  Maeve started toward the door, which was a high archway of stone. One would never have guessed, from the ringing silence of that place, that busy, raucous London lay above it. “Thank you for the warning,” she said, pausing at the bottom step to look back. “I trust I will see you again?”

  “I am your servant,” Dimity said with another nod and a twinkle in her purple eyes. Then she sat down, calmly took an embroidery basket from a table next to her chair, and brought out her stitchery.

  For a long moment Maeve hesitated. Then, knowing she had no choice, she turned and climbed the stairs, toward the ugliness and the glory, the love and the treachery, that awaited her.

  She half expected Valerian to be there, on the surface, pacing impatiently, but there was no sign of him. Both disappointed and relieved, she stood in the passing crush of sailors and prostitutes, missionaries and thieves, staring up at the starry heavens and wondering why this terrifying, impossible task had fallen to her.

  Maeve awakened with sudden violence, like a submerged buoy rushing to the surface, at sunset of the following day. She was filled with the sense of being watched, and looked wildly about for Valerian or Tobias, but she was alone in the chamber beneath her London house.

  Her second thought was of Calder and all the horrors he would see and suffer if angels actually made war on vampires and other creatures. S
he had to protect him; she would not be able to think clearly, to track and destroy Lisette, if Calder wasn’t at least reasonably safe.

  She went upstairs, by normal means, drawing no more attention from her nineteenth-century servants than she ever had. Just then, a little sympathetic notice would have been welcome, and Maeve found herself missing Mrs. Fullywub, her housekeeper in the nineteen-nineties, who hadn’t been born yet. Mrs. F. knew when and how to fuss over her mistress.

  After grooming herself and donning a simple gown of royal-blue sateen, Maeve immediately took herself across the ocean to Pennsylvania.

  She materialized just inside the great double doorway of the Holbrook mansion’s main parlor and immediately regretted her impulsive entrance. Calder was there, standing next to the fire and brooding, but so was another man, thinner and shorter than Calder, perhaps a decade older. This second person was looking right at Maeve when she took shape, and his glass fell to the floor with a clink, spreading whiskey over the Persian rug.

  The dropping of the glass made Calder turn, and when he looked at Maeve, the light in his eyes stopped all other thoughts. He came toward her, took her hands in his, and bent to kiss her gently on one cheek.

  “My darling,” was all he said, but those two words might have been an epic love poem, given the effect they had on Maeve.

  “Who the devil are you?” the other man demanded, breaking the spell and causing Calder and Maeve to draw apart slightly. “And where did you come from?”

  “Maeve,” Calder said, his voice weighted with quiet irony, “may I introduce my half brother, William.”

  She smiled at William, even though he was bad-tempered and petulant, and gently closed down a major part of his brain. He sagged to the floor in a faint, and Calder, ever the doctor, was about to stoop to the other man’s aid when Maeve stopped him.

  “Your brother is neither ill nor injured,” she said. “He will be all right in a few minutes, though he’ll never have more than the foggiest memory of meeting me.”

  “He’s my half brother,” Calder stressed, smiling.

  “William is a mean-spirited little jellyfish, quite deserving of whatever ill fate might befall him, but tonight I actually pity him. He has met you, only to forget the experience in the next instant. How sad that is.”

  Maeve remembered the reason for her mission, and the smile faded from her lips. “You must come with me, Calder—now, without asking questions.”

  She had not expected him to balk—Maeve was used to getting her own way—but Calder did resist, however gently. “I can’t leave my patients,” he said. “Or, for that matter, the experiments I’ve been performing in the laboratory at Union Hospital.”

  Maeve was exasperated. “I have no time to explain this to you now,” she said imperiously. “After I have fed—”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Calder interrupted stubbornly. He looked puzzled as well as recalcitrant. “What is this all about, Maeve? You’ve never behaved this way before.”

  She might have left him there, to face his fate, except that she loved him too much. While Nemesis could not attack for nearly two weeks, the warlocks were under no such compunction, and neither was Lisette, who might think it a great joke to make Calder into one of her witless monsters. It was absolutely vital that he be hidden away somewhere, at least until she’d had a chance to decide on a precise course of action.

  Being in no mood to argue, Maeve laid a hand to Calder’s forehead and caught his strong, solid frame in her arms when he sagged against her, temporarily unconscious. She saw William Holbrook raise himself from the floor and gape in horrified amazement as both she and Calder vanished into thin air, but she didn’t worry, knowing he would forget.

  Within moments, of course, the two of them were in Maeve’s London house. It was still the nineteenth century, for mortals had yet to develop the faculties for traveling between time periods, and Calder had not yet regained his wits.

  She laid him on the bed in her suite, smoothed his hair, and felt a mixture of sympathy and amusement as she imagined his reactions when he realized he was in England and not Pennsylvania. Unfortunately she needed to feed, and that meant there was no time to wait for him to come around and try to cushion the shock a little.

  Maeve bent, kissed Calder’s forehead, and disappeared from the room as quickly as she had arrived there moments before.

  Soon she was on the waterfront, stalking the night’s prey. She fed once, twice, a third time, feeling her powers grow with each infusion of fresh, vital blood. All the while, she waited for Lisette and wondered where Valerian was.

  Several nights had passed since she had seen him and, under normal circumstances, Maeve would not only have been unconcerned by this, but relieved in the bargain. Valerian was a hopeless hedonist, totally devoted to his own pleasures and interests. Therefore it was not unusual for years to pass between their encounters, not to mention a few scant turns of the moon, while he indulged one or more of his complicated fantasies in some far-off and very exotic place.

  This was different, however, for Valerian was well aware of the danger and urgency of the situation—indeed, he had been the one to bring it to Maeve’s notice—so it seemed unlikely that he would have gone off on one of his tangents….

  Maeve slipped into an alleyway, closed her eyes, and concentrated on Valerian. Within a moment an image formed in her mind: She saw the other vampire in the depths of some sort of pit.

  The image came clearer as she focused her thoughts… the pit was an abandoned coal mine, somewhere in Wales. Slowly the story unfolded in her mind.

  Three nights past, Valerian had been set upon by warlocks, outnumbered by the sneaking blackguards. They’d beaten him, tom his flesh with their talons and their teeth, and carelessly cast him aside, to be consumed by the next day’s sunlight. Somehow, the legendary vampire had dragged himself to that forgotten mine, and found sanctuary in the cool darkness.

  Heartsore, Maeve went to Valerian immediately, in that rat-infested hole in the stony, unforgiving Welsh ground, and gathered him up into her arms. He felt as light as a child, and she did not know, or care, whether that was because of his weakness or her increased strength.

  Holding him, in quite the same way she had held Calder earlier, Maeve took her mentor to London, and the chamber beneath her house. There, she laid him on the stone slab where she so often slept, then took a blade from the pocket of her skirt and drew it across her wrist.

  When the blood flowed, she held her flesh to Valerian’s mouth, and slowly, tentatively, he took sustenance from her.

  “What in the name of God—?”

  Maeve started at the sound of that voice, for she had not sensed anyone’s approach, and she was genuinely shocked when she looked up from Valerian’s prone form and saw Calder standing only a few feet away. He was holding a lamp high over his head, and his face was white with horror.

  “Calder,” she said, stricken. But she did not take her wrist from Valerian’s lips.

  “What devilment is this?” Calder demanded. “First you bring me to this place against my will, and now I find you—I find you—” He stepped closer, his physician’s curiosity beginning to take precedence over his shock. “What in hell are you doing?”

  “This is my friend, Valerian,” Maeve said evenly. “He is a vampire, like me, and as you can see, he has been sorely wounded. Blood is the only thing that will restore him, though I think it may already be too late.”

  Calder set the lamp down on a ledge nearby and took Valerian’s right wrist into his hand, searching for a pulse. Of course, he didn’t find one. He raised questioning eyes to Maeve’s face. “What happened to him?”

  “He was attacked by warlocks,” Maeve answered, almost defiantly, because she knew only too well how outrageous the story would sound to a mortal. She sensed that Valerian had taken all the blood he could assimilate in his weakened condition, and she withdrew her hand and turned it palm up so that Calder could see it clearly in the light of the
lamp.

  He watched, obviously stunned, as the wound in Maeve’s wrist closed before his eyes, leaving only a trace of a scar. That, too, would disappear with the passing of another sunset.

  She waited while Calder absorbed the things he had just seen, and tried to deal with them in his mortal, if formidable, mind. No doubt the events of this night had been too much for him to take in.

  When he met Maeve’s eyes, however, she took heart, for the pallor had left his face, and he was breathing at a normal rate instead of in fast, shallow gasps.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked.

  Even though Calder was visibly calmer, Maeve was still taken aback by his question. In his place most mortals—even the bravest—would have been thinking mostly of escape, of their own survival. “Valerian is not human,” she said after a long pause. “He is a vampire. We are different anatomically from you.”

  Calder’s gaze touched her, gently and with remembrance. “Not so different,” he said softly.

  Even in that dark place, with tragedy present, Maeve felt a tender stirring inside. Calder had done more than make love to her a few nights before—he had changed the shape and substance of her soul.

  It was Calder who was the first to speak again. “Let’s have a look,” he said, stepping closer to the slab were Valerian lay and handing the lamp to Maeve. “Hold this for me, please. Although I suspect you can see in the dark, I can’t.”

  Maeve accepted the lantern and did as Calder had asked.

  Without taking his gaze from the unconscious Valerian, Calder pulled off his rumpled suit coat and tossed it aside. “The next time you kidnap me, madam,” he said to Maeve, still not looking at her, “I hope you will do me the favor of letting me fetch my medical bag first.”

  “Instruments will do no good,” Maeve said, feeling an overwhelming sadness as she looked down at Valerian. Although he often annoyed and even enraged her, she bore certain tender sentiments toward him, and it did her injury that he had been the first real casualty of the coming war. “I told you before. Vampires don’t have what you doctors call vital signs—we have hearts that do not beat and lungs that do not breathe.”