The Black Rose Chronicles

by Linda Lael Miller

  “It was dark,” Isabella said, shaking her head. “I was afraid. I remember only that it was the oldest part of the city, and that there was a cemetery nearby, a forgotten place where all the stones were crumbling.”

  Maeve gave a soft exclamation of frustration, composed herself, and spoke again. “If you see Valerian before I do, please tell him that Maeve Tremayne is looking for him. This is important, Isabella, so make certain it doesn’t slip your mind.”

  “I will remember,” Isabella said with an indignant sniffle. “This is not the sort of experience one forgets.” Maeve smiled. “I suppose not,” she agreed. Once again she vanished, arriving moments later in the heart of Los Cementerio de Los Santos y Los Angels, the graveyard Isabella had mentioned.

  A cool wind tossed Maeve’s dark hair as she stepped up onto one of the ancient, sinking crypts and scanned her surroundings. Valerian! she called in the silent language that could be heard in other times as well as other places, but, as before, there was no answer.

  She was concentrating on finding the love nest where Lisette had surprised Valerian—it was almost surely underground—when the sound of hoarse, wordless whispers began all around her. The noise came from behind every crypt, every broken headstone, growing louder and louder.

  Maeve kept her composure, even when the warlocks began to appear, one by one, seeming to take shape from the shadows themselves. They wore hooded cloaks that hid their faces and rustled as they made a large circle around her, these ancient and deadly enemies.

  She might have fled, for she had the power to transport herself anywhere in the known universe, but her pride would not allow it. Besides, instinct would have taken her straight to Calder, and the warlocks would surely follow.

  “What do you want?” she shouted, in order to be heard over the incessant, thunderous whispering.

  It stopped, that grating sound, as suddenly as it had begun. One of the warlocks stepped forward to look up at Maeve, who stood regally atop the old headstone, like a queen on a dais.

  The creature pushed back his hood, revealing a head of brown hair and a face as fetching as any angel’s. The beast looked human, even to the discerning eye of a vampire.

  He inclined his head in a polite gesture of greeting and actually smiled. “Allow me to introduce myself, Your Majesty,” he said, and to Maeve’s surprise there wasn’t so much as a hint of derision in his tone or expression. “My name is Dathan, and I speak for the covens.”

  Maeve did not ask how many covens; she knew this being was a leader among his kind, with much power. “I am no one’s queen,” she said coolly. “There is no need to address me so formally.” She narrowed her blue eyes and folded her arms. “But perhaps you were mocking me?”

  “Never,” Dathan replied with watchful geniality. His hair and eyes were brown, and his face had a look of impossible innocence. It was as if he were really an altar boy, turned warlock only an instant before by the spell of some evil magician. “A counsel was held, and we have decided to ask for an alliance between vampires and warlocks—albeit a temporary one.”

  Maeve was suspicious, and she could discern little from the friend’s mind because he was uncommonly powerful in his own right. “An alliance? Why should we trust you, we who do not trust our own kind?”

  “Our mutual survival depends upon it,” Dathan reasoned. “There are already warrior angels moving among the mortals—scouts and spies preparing the way for war. Need I tell you, gracious queen, that we cannot win against such enemies?”

  Precisely because her courage was flagging a little, Maeve raised her chin. “I am well aware of that,” she said.

  “Our only hope lies in destroying the vampire called Lisette,” Dathan went on moderately. “We left this task to you and your heedless friend, Valerian, and—please excuse my directness—we have not been pleased with the results.”

  Maeve’s considerable pride was nettled. “Perhaps if Valerian had not been set upon by warlocks, poisoned and then left for dead, we might have succeeded sooner.” The large, rustling circle of cloaked figures drew tighter as each one stepped forward a pace. “I warn you”—she paused and then raised her voice so that it would carry—“all of you—that I will be taken only at great cost to you. The first to fall will be your leader, Dathan.” There was an angry murmuring in the ranks, but Dathan silenced his followers almost immediately, simply by raising one hand into the air.

  “I have told you, my queen,” he said to Maeve a moment later, “we mean you no harm. We want only to ally ourselves with you, with all reasonable vampires, until the danger is past.”

  Maeve raised an eyebrow. “And then?”

  Dathan smiled his endearing, altar-boy smile. “Should we be fortunate enough to survive, I’m certain our separate factions will return to their old enmity. Our differences are deep-seated, after all, and our feud is so ancient that no one seems to remember how it began. It is time for a meeting between vampires and warlocks.”

  “I will consider your proposal,” she conceded warily. She swept the circle of cloaked creatures up in a single eloquent glance. “Come alone to my house in London, at midnight tomorrow, and I will give you my decision.” The warlocks began to mutter and stir again, and Maeve knew the consensus of the crowd would have been to take their chances and make an attempt at tearing her apart, had Dathan not been there.

  “Enough,” that warlock said sharply, and his eyes glittered with fury as he assessed his minions. “Go now and do not trouble this or any other vampire before the agreed time has come!”

  They vanished, moving noisily into the night, like a pack of crows flapping their wings, but Dathan lingered.

  He reached up to offer Maeve his hand, and after only the briefest hesitation, she accepted it and let him help her down from her perch on the headstone of some long-dead and probably forgotten Spaniard.

  “Until midnight tomorrow,” Dathan said smoothly. Then he lifted Maeve’s hand to his lips, brushed her knuckles with the lightest of kisses, turned, and walked away to become a part of the darkness that claimed his soul.

  And her own, Maeve thought glumly. Again Calder’s image filled her mind, and again she despaired because he had no glimmer of what it meant to be an immortal.

  She would return to him, she decided, for the night was almost over and she had no choice but to seek shelter. She was discouraged that she had made no more progress in finding Valerian.

  Perhaps, just as the mortal, Isabella, had said, that august vampire had finally met his end. It wasn’t impossible that he’d gotten himself destroyed, considering the foolish risks he undertook in his constant pursuit of pleasurable adventure. And that would certainly account for the fact that she was unable to link her mind with his as she had always done before.

  Glumly Maeve lifted her hands above her head and took herself home to London and to Calder.

  She found him in the library, surrounded by stacks of books and voluminous notes. He started when she appeared before him, and a heavy tome tumbled to the floor.

  He rose, his grin revealing irritation as well as genuine welcome. “I wish you wouldn’t just pop in out of nowhere like that. It’s unnerving.”

  “What would you have me do?” Maeve inquired, short-tempered because she could not find Valerian and because a devastating war was imminent. “Arrange for someone to blow a trumpet announcing my arrival?” Calder sighed. “We can’t go on like this, Maeve. I’m a doctor, and back home the hospitals are brimming with wounded soldiers. I cannot hide here any longer, no matter how much danger I might be in.”

  Had she been a mortal woman, Maeve might have given way to tears at that moment, so great was the pressure she was under. The paradoxical nature of their situation threatened to tear her apart; she loved Calder entirely too much to hold him prisoner in that house and too much to let him go out and face perils he couldn’t begin to comprehend.

  He saw that she was wavering. “Make me a vampire,” he said quietly.

  She stared up into
his eyes, searching his very soul, seeking some shred of understanding. The dawn was near; she could not tarry much longer or she would be badly burned, perhaps even devoured, by the first apricot-gold light of the sun.

  “Why?” she whispered, tormented. “Why do you want this?”

  Calder didn’t hesitate; she knew he’d given the matter a great deal of thought. He’d had a lot of solitude since coming to Maeve’s house, after all. “I want the power,” he said plainly. His thumbs moved on her shoulders, caressing, reassuring her. “Even more, I want to be with you always. I want to sleep when you sleep, and for your battles to be my battles, too.”

  Maeve rested her forehead against his strong shoulder for a few moments before gazing up at him again. He looked gaunt, tormented, and more earnest than she’d ever seen him. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” she told him sadly after a few moments had passed. “There is going to be a war, and Valerian is missing, and tomorrow night I must meet with the leader of the warlocks—”

  “I’m no stranger to war,” Calder broke in. He’d sensed the coming of the sun, too, and taking Maeve’s elbow, he began escorting her through the house, toward the cellar door. “I’ve been up to my elbows in bleeding, dying soldiers for three years. As for Valerian—”

  “Never mind him,” Maeve said impatiently. “I know your American war is a terrible one: I would not presume to minimize the suffering or the significance of such a thing. But the conflict I’m speaking of would destroy the world as you know it, Calder. Though the battles would take place between angels and those who move in darkness, like vampires and warlocks, human beings would necessarily be caught up in the fray. It would make your war of states look like a playground scuffle between children.”

  They had gained the cellar, and Calder moved unerringly toward the door of the hidden chamber, the place that had once been a secret from all mortals, even those who had lived and worked in Maeve’s house for years. “If this apocalypse comes about,” he said reasonably, “then I’ll not escape it anyway. I might as well be at your side, with at least a chance of being some help to you.”

  Maeve lighted a candle, for Calder’s sake. She, as always, could see plainly in the dense darkness. “That is a noble, if foolish, argument,” she said wearily, seating herself on the edge of the stone slab where she would sleep in the same way a mortal woman might sit on the side of a bed. “There are still other considerations, however.” Her words were coming more slowly now, and they were slightly slurred. “Once you make this decision, you will never be able to undo it and go back to being a man. You might come to hate me for changing you.”

  Calder laid her down, as gently as if she were a tired child, and took one of her hands into both his own. “That’s what you really fear, isn’t it? That I’ll grow discontented with the life of a vampire and then despise you for making me into a nightwalker in the first place. It won’t happen, Maeve. I’m not an impulsive man. I’ve thought this through. For our sakes, yours and mine, and that of a great many suffering mortals, I want to be changed.”

  Maeve could no longer keep her eyes open. She tightened her fingers around Calder’s for a moment, then sank into the fathomless sleep that awaited her.

  Calder sat with Maeve for a long time, until the candle flickered wildly and guttered out, in fact. During that bittersweet interval, he held her seemingly lifeless hand and wept for all that might have been, all that would never be.

  Then, partly by groping and partly by memory, he found his way back to the main part of the cellar, where thin London sunlight came in through narrow windows at the ceiling level.

  Leaving Maeve would be the hardest thing he had ever done, but if he could not be what she was, if he could not serve and protect her, and share her life to the fullest extent, then leave her he would. He’d book passage on a ship—even though he had no money, his family’s credit was good in virtually any part of the world—and God help him, once he left, he’d never look back.

  But what agony he would feel, remembering her, missing her, cherishing her. He had not dreamed, even in the poetic passion of his youth, that it was possible to love another as deeply as he loved Maeve.

  Still, he was a doctor, first and foremost, and to him life was a sacred thing. To waste that most precious of all gifts was the greatest sin a mortal could commit. And this was no life he was living now; he was cowering, like some hunted creature, while the minutes and hours allotted to him were passing by, unused.

  In the meantime, patients were suffering and dying. His patients.

  He would wait no longer; he must do something, he must stop the waste.

  Having spent several days in the Tremayne house, Calder had gotten to know the servants a little. They all regarded him with bafflement and no small amount of fear, and he thought he detected a smidgeon of pity as well. Obviously they were not used to having members of the household underfoot during the daylight hours, either.

  “I’ll need the carriage, if there is one,” Calder said to the butler, Pillings, a beanpole of a man who said as little as possible but always made sure the newspapers were brought in and the fires lighted.

  “You’ll want to shave and change your clothing, sir,” Pillings replied. “I believe Mr. Aidan Tremayne’s garments would fit you. And I daresay he wouldn’t mind making you the loan of a razor as well.”

  Calder knew Pillings was referring to Maeve’s brother, the vampire of legend, the only blood-drinker in history to have turned mortal again. It was a safe bet, however, that Pillings didn’t know Tremayne in quite the same context as that.

  “Thank you,” Calder said, looking ruefully down at his own rumpled garments. “I came away from home rather quickly, not to mention unexpectedly, and had no chance to pack a valise before I left.”

  “Quite,” said Pillings in a noncommittal tone, giving a little bow before starting up the main staircase. “I will see that the appropriate items are brought to your rooms, sir.”

  Half an hour later Calder was freshly groomed, and a sleek black carriage drawn by four matching gray horses awaited his bidding. The driver greeted him by touching the handle of his driving whip to the brim of his hat, and Pillings insisted on opening the door for Calder and lifting down the portable step inside.

  “The offices of the London-New York Bank, please,” Calder said to the driver before climbing into the carriage.

  The driver nodded and touched his hat.

  “The mistress won’t like this, you know,” Pillings confided at last, so tall that he could look straight in through the carriage window. One of his temples was throbbing, and Calder deduced from the man’s state of controlled agitation that he’d been wanting to protest the idea from the first and had only now worked up the courage to do so. “She gave express orders, she did, that you were not to leave the house for any reason.”

  Calder hoped his smile was reassuring, and that it didn’t reflect the annoyance he felt at being cosseted and caged like some exotic bird, or the terrible, clawing grief that bruised his heart. “Don’t fret, Pillings. I’ll be happy to bear the brunt of Miss Tremayne’s fury—if indeed she ever finds out that we conspired to ignore her instructions.”

  At that, the driver cracked his whip in the moist, cool air, and the carriage moved forward, wheels rattling over the cobblestones, leather fittings creaking.

  Reaching the bank, Calder arranged for a transfer of funds from one of his own accounts in Philadelphia. Even there, an ocean away from his own country, the Holbrook name was influential enough that strangers would advance pound notes against it.

  Leaving that establishment, he went to the wharf, where he booked passage on a ship leaving for New York the following morning. If he and Maeve could not agree on a course of action when they spoke that evening, he fully intended to be aboard the vessel.

  After that Calder visited a shop where men’s clothing was sold ready-made, and purchased enough garments for the journey, which would take ten days to two weeks.

 
Provided, of course, that Maeve didn’t give in and change him into an immortal, as he wanted her to do.

  Eventually Calder returned to the Tremayne house, where he was greeted with no little relief by Fillings. He enjoyed a lengthy luncheon in the library, while Pillings and the footman carried his purchases upstairs and stowed them away in his rooms.

  When he’d finished his meal, Calder paced, impatient. It would be hours before Maeve awakened, and even then he might not see her. She was an unpredictable creature and might start off on one of her adventures without bothering to speak with him first.

  The thought filled him with frustration and loneliness. Every moment, every hour away from her side, was like a wound to his spirit.

  He could go to the chamber belowstairs and wait there, holding her hand, until she opened those beautiful, impossibly blue eyes of hers, but he was afraid of drawing attention to her. Calder knew little about vampires, but he had gleaned, both from things Maeve had said and from an obscure book on the subject that he’d found on one of the library shelves, the worrisome fact that a blood-drinker was never more vulnerable than when it lay sleeping.

  At that point Maeve was utterly unable to defend herself. He could not risk having one of the servants follow him, or worse, some supernatural being. He had no idea who—or what—might be watching with interest the events taking place in this household.

  The thought only deepened his wish to be a vampire himself, to share Maeve’s fate, be it damnation or an eternity of walking the earth. He didn’t care, as long as he could be with her.

  At sunset, while Calder was having tea beside the fire in the sitting room off his bedchamber, Maeve appeared before him, her form seeming to knit itself from the very ether.

  She took in the boxes of new clothes with a sweep of her eyes, then stood frowning down at him, her arms folded.

  Calder rose from his chair, out of good manners, yes, but also because he’d felt like an errant schoolboy sitting down, looking up at her, awaiting his fate. “What have you decided?” he asked quietly.