The Black Rose Chronicles

by Linda Lael Miller

  He saw an infinite sorrow in her eyes and knew her answer before she spoke. “I will not be the one to damn you, Calder. I cannot sever the invisible cords that bind you to your Creator.”

  He did not attempt to argue, for he could see that she’d made up her mind. He was sick at his soul—his very heart seemed to crumble within his chest—and he would not allow himself to think of being parted from her, inevitable though it was, because he could not bear the knowledge.

  “Tonight,” she said before Calder found the strength to speak, “you will see other vampires firsthand. I will show you what dreadful creatures they can be.”

  Calder was shattered, but he was also intrigued, for he was first and foremost a scientist, and he was more than curious, he was greedy for whatever knowledge of vampires he could gamer. “How?” he asked simply.

  Maeve smiled, but her eyes were liquid with mourning, for she knew he would not stay and await her brief appearances, warming himself on the hearth like a lapdog. “There will be a vampire ball,” she said. “Right here, in this house, this very night. Will you be my escort, Dr. Calder Holbrook?”

  30

  Maeve’s guests began arriving at approximately ten thirty that night. Most were vampires, ruddy from recent feedings, but Calder noticed a surprising number of mortals, too. These brave, or perhaps reckless, souls were artists mostly, and writers; curious people, like himself, fascinated by the nightwalkers.

  All were ushered into the great ballroom, where gaslights flickered softly, their glow dancing golden in the polished mirrors that lined the walls. At the far end, on a dais, a small orchestra played Mozart.

  Glancing at the butler, Pillings, who was unruffled by this grand and innately horrible affair, Calder realized that he’d been wrong, thinking the other man didn’t know that there was something very different about the mistress of this house. Pillings obviously understood that the majority of that night’s visitors were not human.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you knew?” Calder said in a low voice after making his way to the butler’s side.

  Pilling’s manner was smooth and rather smug. “Because I couldn’t be certain that you did, sir.”

  Calder smiled, though he felt raw inside, and broken. Maeve had made her decision; she would not turn him into a vampire, and since she wanted him to stay in London, where she could protect him, she probably wouldn’t agree to transport him home by means of her strange magic, either. All of which meant that he would be traveling back to America by ship and leaving Maeve behind forever.

  The prospect of being parted from her filled Calder with a grief the like of which he had not felt since those torturous days, weeks, and months following his daughter’s death. All the same, there was no question of staying. He would have died for Maeve but, ironic as it was, he could not live for her—not if it meant enduring an insipid, sheltered existence. As it was, he felt like a tame mouse, caged, running round and round inside a wheel.

  Just then Maeve came to his side. She looked magnificent in a voluminous gown of purple velvet, the skirt decorated with crystal beads that glimmered like frost over clean snow. She might have been mortal, except for the pale, extraordinary perfection of her skin and the restrained energy she exuded with every movement.

  Calder looked down into her eyes and felt himself tumble, then free-fall, headlong into her very soul, where he would doubtless be a prisoner forever, even if he never saw her again. “How can I leave you?” he whispered raggedly.

  Maeve laid one slender, elegant hand to his cheek, and her touch sent a charge through his system. Then, silently, she linked her arm with his and led him the length of the ballroom and out through a set of French doors. They stood then on a terrace, under a glittering arbor of stars.

  “Perhaps it’s better if you go away,” she said coolly, but Calder wasn’t fooled. He heard the sorrow in her voice and felt it throbbing in her soul, the counterpart of his own mourning. “Better if you have no memory of me, or of what we’ve shared together—”

  “Wait a minute,” Calder snapped, unable to hide the note of desperation that reverberated through his whole being. “What do you mean, ‘if I have no memory of you’? Surely you can’t—” He paused, realizing that Maeve could do virtually anything she wished. “You wouldn’t—take that, the most precious gift I’ve ever been given!”

  She looked away for a moment, then faced him squarely again. “One night soon, when I can bear it,” she began evenly, “I will return to the precise instant when you first saw me, outside that church at Gettysburg. I will adjust that moment, make myself invisible to you, and all that came after will be undone.”

  Calder felt his eyes go wide. “No!” he protested in a hoarse cry.

  Maeve nodded sadly. “I should have done it days ago.”

  He shoved one hand through his hair and turned away to stand at the stone railing of the terrace, looking out over the rooftops of London. “I can’t endure it,” he said.

  He felt her hands come to rest on his shoulders. “It’s for the best, darling,” she said.

  Calder whirled, putting his arms around her slender waist, pulling her close to him. “What about you?” he demanded, and although he sounded angry, what he really felt was wild, raging despair. “Will you remember?”

  She regarded him for a long moment. “Briefly,” she replied. “Then, after a while, our time together will seem like a lovely dream, the kind that comes just as one is waking from a pleasant sleep.”

  “You can’t do this,” Calder rasped. “You can’t!” Maeve’s gaze was steady. She tugged at the chain around his neck, brought the pendant from beneath his collar, lifted the necklace over his head, and dropped it into her bodice. “I can, my darling,” she said gently. “And I will. For your sake, as well as my own. Perhaps, by the grace of the One who cherishes all mortals, you will be protected from the evils that surround you now.” She took his hand. “Come now—let us dance together while we can. Then I will take you home to Philadelphia and your wounded soldiers.”

  He swallowed hard, knowing it would be useless to argue the point, that night at least, and finally nodded. Even so, he could not, would not accept Maeve’s decision without a fight.

  Inside, among the pallorous, beautiful ghouls, they danced, two lovers doomed to be parted so completely that soon, too soon, they would not even remember each other.

  Midway through the evening a family of vampires arrived. Maeve explained that they were the Havermails, Avery and Roxanne and their offspring, Canaan and Benecia. The smaller pair were, in some ways, the most chilling of all the fiends Calder had seen that night, for although their eyes were ancient, they were trapped forever in the bodies of little girls.

  Calder shuddered in Maeve’s embrace as they waltzed.

  “And you were aggrieved that we’d never have children,” Maeve jested. Although she was plainly teasing him and her eyes were mirthful, Calder knew her sorrow was as fathomless as his own.

  At eleven-thirty Maeve called a halt to the dancing and stood on the dais, in front of the orchestra, to address her guests.

  Her voice was at once gentle and full of authority. She told the crowd about a vampire called Lisette, who had been creating blood-drinkers at random. They were mindless, inferior creatures, she said, and because of them the angels were ready to make war on all night-walkers, not only vampires, but every supernatural being.

  Calder listened in fascination as Maeve went on to say that the warlocks were outraged over this situation. Either the vampires would have to join forces with their age-old enemies, to destroy Lisette and defeat her growing army of ghouls, or the warlocks would make war on all blood-drinkers. Their hope was that, by wiping out vampires, the warlocks could appease the warrior angels and their commander, Nemesis, and thus avert their own destruction.

  A stir rose in the gathering, and then one of the macabre child-vampires stepped forward. She was small and blond; Benecia Havermail, Maeve had called her.

  “Where
is Valerian?” she asked in a clear voice. “Can we not depend on him to lead us? He is the oldest and most cunning vampire of us all.”

  Maeve seemed to grow before Calder’s weary eyes, to loom taller and more imposing. She was terrifying to see, in her beauty and her power, and yet he knew he’d never loved her more than he did at that moment, when he first realized that she truly was royalty.

  “Valerian has disappeared,” she answered without hesitation. “And even you, Benecia, should know better than to expect leadership from him. Furthermore, he is not the oldest blood-drinker—Lisette and the members of the Brotherhood of the Vampyre are ancient compared to him.”

  Benecia subsided a little, though she didn’t look happy about it. Calder imagined encountering such a creature on a dark sidewalk some evening, in the thin light of a gas-powered street lamp, and shivered.

  “Tonight,” Maeve went on, “Dathan, a warlock, will come to this house. He seeks a pact between our kind and his, a temporary truce. His suggestion is that we band together, blood-drinker and warlock, long enough to destroy our common enemy.”

  An elegant-looking male vampire with dark hair and eyes stepped forward. Like the other guests, he wore formal clothes, but there was an air of refinement about him that went deeper than appearances. “Are you suggesting that we trust those creatures?” he asked of Maeve. “Warlocks have been our greatest foes from the beginning. What is our assurance that they won’t turn on us, that this isn’t some sort of trick?”

  Murmurs of agreement rose from the crowd, but Maeve silenced the lot with a single sweep of her eyes.

  “Your question is a reasonable one, Artemus,” she said to the elegant male, “but this is a desperate time and it calls for desperate measures. Keep in mind, all of you, that we have more fearsome enemies than warlocks—angels. And they will descend on us in legions, these beings, unless we stop Lisette and destroy her minions. It will take all our strength to accomplish such a task, and that of the warlocks as well.”

  Calder was mesmerized, having forgotten his own despair for the moment. Maeve had spoken of the approaching cataclysm and stressed that all their circumstances were dire indeed, but he had not guessed the true scope of the situation. Incongruous though it seemed, the matter was one of life and death for immortals.

  Roxanne Havermail stepped forward, to stand next to Artemus. She, too, was beautiful, but, like her daughters, she made Calder’s skin crawl. “If Lisette is sent to face the Judgment, there will be no queen. Is that not so?”

  A collective groan followed her words.

  Roxanne bristled. “Well, if there’s going to be an election or something, I think I should be considered.” She cast an accusing glance in Maeve’s direction. “I am eminently suited to be queen, it seems to me, since I’ve been around much longer than certain upstarts I could mention.”

  “Yes,” muttered a short, squat male vampire in a bottle-green waistcoat, breeches, and a ruffled shirt, who stood within range of Calder’s hearing. “Roxanne has been around, all right. Around the block.”

  The female’s gaze sliced to her critic’s face in an instant; she had heard him plainly, even though a considerable distance lay between them. “You may keep your fusty old opinions to your fusty old self, Clarence Doormeyer,” she said, and Doormeyer actually quailed.

  Having dispensed with her detractor, Roxanne turned back to Maeve, hands resting on her hips. “Well? Will I be queen or not?”

  “There will be no dominion for you to reign over,” Maeve responded reasonably, “if we do not stop Lisette in time to appease Nemesis and his armies.”

  “We have something to say about who is queen, it seems to me,” put in a male dressed in the garb of a seagoing brigand. The remark started another uproar.

  Maeve raised both her hands in a graceful command that there be silence. There was. “Such matters need not be decided now,” she said.

  Roxanne went back to stand beside her vampire husband, looking disgruntled and unhappy. Apparently she’d expected a coronation on the spot.

  “What will I tell the warlocks, Dathan, when he comes to me tonight to ask for our decision?” Maeve went on, and even though she didn’t raise her voice, there was a note of steel in it that brooked no further nonsense. “Do we stand together against this threat, or do we scatter like frightened hens and perish at the hands of angels?”

  For a moment the room seemed to rock with a sort of silent thunder. Then Artemus spoke again.

  “I say we have nothing to lose by allying ourselves with Dathan’s followers, and our very lives to gain. What other choice do we have? Shall we allow angels to take us, and find out firsthand what special hells their Master has set aside for the doubly damned?”

  Silence reigned again, then Canaan Havermail spoke up in her sweet, horrid, piping voice. “Suppose it’s all a lie?” she offered, glaring at Maeve. “Why should we trust this one? Perhaps she is weak, like her brother.” Her unholy eyes sought and found Calder in the crowd, and he felt his spirit shrink before the magnitude of her evil. “Here is the proof. Maeve Tremayne consorts with mortals!”

  Maeve’s fury, though contained, was nearly tangible. Calder feared that she would explode and that when she did, the mirrored walls would shatter and the marble floor would undulate with the force of it.

  “Look around you, Canaan. There are any number of mortals here,” she said. “I am not alone in finding them diverting.”

  Diverting. The word sliced into Calder, sharp as a scalpel. Was that what he was to Maeve—a plaything, a curiosity, a diversion? He pushed the feeling aside to consider later.

  Just then, the doors to the terrace burst open, as though they’d been struck by some great, silent wind, and all heads turned.

  Calder felt his heart pound in a combination of excitement and fear.

  In the next instant a creature as lovely as any angel of the highest realms appeared in the opening. She was female, with flowing golden hair, eyes the color of bluebells, and a sweetness of countenance that was truly remarkable.

  Calder glanced at Maeve and saw that she was watching him, a pensive expression on her face. It gave him hope, though precious little, to think she might be jealous of his attentions.

  “It’s Dimity,” someone whispered close behind Calder. With reluctance he shifted his gaze from Maeve, who was more poignantly beautiful to him than any angel could ever be, to watch this new drama unfold.

  Dimity did not speak, but instead stepped aside to make room for a second entrant. This creature was male, and he seemed to blaze with some fire of the soul. He was so tall that he had to lean down as he stepped through the doorway from the terrace, and when he lifted his head again, Calder saw that his eyes were as black as polished onyx. His hair was fair, like Dimity’s, and he wore medieval garb, leggings and a tunic. He carried a magnificent sword with a jeweled hilt.

  Calder was drawn toward him, and the wild thought crossed his mind that this was the legendary Arthur, King of Camelot, founder of the Knights of the Round Table.

  He soon realized, however, that everyone else in the room, with the exception of Maeve and the vision called Dimity, had retreated.

  “Do not be afraid,” the lovely female said in a voice as soft as a summer shower. “Gideon has not come to do harm to any of you, but to relay a message.”

  Calder saw Maeve move to approach the giant, Gideon, and he followed, wanting to be at her side whether the outcome of the confrontation be good or ill.

  “What are you?” he asked baldly. Gideon’s person shone so brightly that Calder had to squint.

  Gideon smiled. “I am a Comforter,” he said. “A Guardian.” His wondrous features became solemn. “What are you doing here, Mortal, with these blood-drinkers?”

  Calder stepped a little closer to Maeve. An angel. God in heaven, this creature was an angel, albeit without wings, robes, harps, or halos. The experience was remarkable, even after encountering vampires. He tried to answer, but no words came to his mind, and no
sound to his lips.

  Dimity linked her arm with the angel’s. “Do not try the poor human, Gideon,” she said in a tone of good-natured scolding. “He has the gift of free will, just like the rest of us.”

  Calder found his voice; he had to answer, for his own sake and for Maeve’s. “I’m here because I love Maeve Tremayne.”

  “You must indeed love her,” Gideon replied. “More than your own soul, in fact.”

  “Yes,” Calder answered.

  Maeve laid a hand on his arm in an unspoken command that he be silent. “What is your business with us?” she asked Gideon.

  “I’ve come to warn you all,” he said in a clear voice, “for I feared that you would not believe Dimity if I sent her in my stead.” The angel paused, perhaps formulating his thoughts, perhaps translating them into words lesser beings like humans and vampires could understand.

  “Why would you, an angel, an enemy, want to help us?” Benecia Havermail demanded.

  It was Dimity who answered. “You heard what Gideon said. He is a Comforter and a Guardian—it is his task to look after one particular mortal. That mortal, a child, has been sorely abused by people who should nurture and protect him. I, and some other vampires, feed on the likes of that little one’s tormentors, and certain of the angels appreciate that. They, you see, are not permitted to take vengeance on human beings, no matter how grievous the offense.”

  Finally Gideon spoke up. “Mind you, one and all, that I have no sympathy with those among you who feed on the blood of innocents.” He laid one great hand to the hilt of his sword, and Calder saw his muscles tighten as he gripped it. “Such vampires should be shown no more mercy than their victims have known!”

  “What message do you bring?” Maeve asked, and although there was no fear in her voice, Calder had seen her glance quickly at a small timepiece hidden beneath a ruffle on the bodice of her gown.

  “Listen well, one and all,” Gideon began, and though he spoke quietly, the words reached into every corner of that enormous room. “I come at the order of my commander, Nemesis. He bid me tell you that if the renegade vampire, Lisette, is not stopped, he will destroy each and every one of you, with pleasure, and that even the darkest corners and crevices of hell itself will not hide you from his wrath.”