The Black Rose Chronicles

by Linda Lael Miller

  She gazed upon him thoughtfully for a few moments, a finger to her chin, even though she’d long since decided that he would be called Nikos. “Have you noticed anything—well—different about me, darling?”

  Nikos, formerly George, settled back, draining a glass of the finest Madeira in Europe before answering, “You are always gone when I awaken in the morning.”

  Lisette smiled to herself. “Is there nothing else?”

  Nikos frowned beguilingly. “You are unusually strong for a woman, and your skin is like iridescent stone when the moonlight strikes you.”

  She leaned to trace the underside of his jawline with one fingertip, then slid it slowly down the length of his throat and into the dense, dark hair matting his chest. It was pleasant and diverting to watch him squirm in his chair, already wanting her.

  “Would you like to live forever?” she asked, unbuttoning his silk shirt to the waist.

  Nikos made a throaty sound of surrender as she worked his belt buckle easily and opened his trousers. “Yes,” he rasped.

  Using her mind and not her hands, she began to stroke and tease Nikos, until he was bucking in his chair and, at the same time, groping for her.

  She withheld herself, although she wanted to be ravished by the eager young brigand as much as he wanted to ravish her, at the same time intensifying his arousal with ruthless skill. “Would you like to be just as you are tonight—young and hard and full of fire—for the rest of eternity?” she whispered close to his ear.

  He groaned, and Lisette knew what he was feeling because she was inducing those sensations that made him so feverish and fretful. “Yes—damn you, Lisette—what are you doing to me? I feel your hands cupping me—I feel your lips, your teeth, and it’s as if I’m about to be swallowed—” His words fell away as he gave an involuntary cry of savage need. “By the saints, I beg of you, give me mercy—”

  But Lisette was not inclined toward mercy. She compounded the battery of sensations, toying with his nipples, laying a wreath of kisses on his hard belly, squeezing his powerful buttocks and lifting him, driving him deeper and deeper into his own senses.

  The one thing she denied him was satisfaction.

  Finally she pushed him to the point of madness; he rose from his chair and overpowered her—or at least, she let him think that was what he’d done. He tore her clothes away, cleared the table with a sweep of one arm, and hurled her down onto the surface, taking her with deep, angry thrusts.

  Lisette’s release was instantaneous and violent. She pitched beneath Nikos’s plunging hips, arching her back and crying out in animal ecstasy as he punished her for her teasing.

  He was not satisfied with once, however—that was one of the things Lisette loved about Aidan—no, she must remember, this was Nikos—he was insatiable, just as she was. Thus, he turned her on the table, so that her buttocks touched his groin, and put himself only a little way inside her, just far enough to drive her wild with wanting him.

  He fondled her breasts as she begged, denying her in a low, murmuring voice, telling her that she was his and his alone, that he would have her when he was ready, and no sooner than that. He told her that she was a beautiful whore, pinching her nipples lightly and giving her another inch of his staff when she pleaded, and said what she needed was a proper hiding, and he had a good mind to give it to her.

  Lisette moaned, desperate, despairing, delighted. It was this explosive pleasure that gave her such tremendous power.

  “What do you want, little whore?” Nikos whispered, caressing her breasts, weighing them in his palms, chafing the nipples with his thumbs. “Tell me what you want.”

  She gripped the edge of the table. “You,” she wept. “I want all of you—oh, please—I want it all…”

  Nikos teased her some more, venturing a little farther inside her—but only a little—then withdrawing until he had almost left her completely. While he subjected her to this sweet torment, he pretended to ponder her request.

  Lisette was certain she would perish, she wanted him so badly, and when he suddenly thrust deep inside her, she shouted with avaricious lust.

  Nikos told her what a brazen wench she was, behaving in such a way, actually begging to be taken, making her whimper and whine, grasping her hips and holding her when she would have increased the tempo by thrusting herself against him. Finally, however, he lost control of his own need and pounded against her with greater and greater urgency, greater and greater violence, until they were fused by the heat of their fury, completely joined, each jerking against the other in instinctive surrender.

  “You are a very naughty boy,” Lisette said minutes later, when she had gotten down from the table and collected her shredded gown.

  Nikos pulled her close and bent to kiss her lightly on the side of the neck. “I think I’ll take you that way from now on,” he said in a husky whisper. “Like a stallion, mounting his mare.”

  Lisette was weak with satisfaction, and yet she felt her intimate places heating again as he talked on and on about all the sweet, sinful things he wanted to do to her, weaving his lover’s spell.

  Only when Nikos had draped her roughly over the wide stone railing of the terrace and put her through all the same exquisite little torments again, only when she was buckling against him in the throes of brutal pleasure, did she wonder—just fleetingly—how a mere man could so bewitch a great vampire like herself.

  Dimity was waiting when Maeve and Calder came up from the cellar at the setting of the sun and into the kitchen where Calder had eaten as a boy, well over a hundred years in the past.

  Maeve was slightly troubled that the other vampire had found them so easily; she had made every effort to veil herself and Calder in the hope that they would sleep in safe anonymity.

  “What is it?” Maeve asked.

  “The angels have come,” Dimity said. “They are encamped everywhere, waiting to attack us. Gideon says that Nemesis himself has come from the higher world to participate in the greatest purge since the war in heaven!”

  Maeve felt chilled and cast a quick glance toward Calder. He was strong and brave and most willing to fight, but he was a fledgling, his powers were new to him, and he was unskilled at wielding weapons of the mind. If he tried to aid in the cause, the results were likely to be disastrous, for himself and for other vampires.

  “There is more,” she said, looking Dimity straight in the eye once again.

  The angelic nightwalker nodded. “Yes. Nemesis wants to see you, Maeve. He’s issued an order that you are to come to him this very night.”

  Even as a mortal child Maeve had been intrepid, walking the high crumbling walls of the convent where she grew up, running away with a caravan of gypsies on one occasion. She’d battled Lisette herself and lived through the terrible pain of losing her brother, but this was by far the greatest challenge she had ever faced.

  “What is my assurance that I won’t be taken prisoner?” she asked quietly, raising her chin.

  Calder erupted in sudden protest, leaving the falling mantel he’d been attempting to right and rushing to her side. “You can’t seriously be considering such a thing—”

  Maeve used her superior powers to render Calder mute, though only temporarily, knowing that reason would not reach him.

  Dimity answered Maeve’s question as if Calder hadn’t spoken at all. “You have Nemesis’s word. The promise of the high angels cannot be false, you know that.”

  “Yes,” Maeve said as Calder struggled to speak, glowering at her, knowing she had somehow frozen his vocal cords. “Where is Nemesis to be found?”

  “Gideon said you are to go to All Souls’ Cathedral in London and wait. You will be contacted.”

  Maeve nodded as Calder made furious strangling sounds and grasped her arm as if to restrain her. She turned her gaze to Dimity. “Look after him,” she said, meaning Calder, and the other vampire nodded, her lovely eyes wide with sympathy.

  Forming an image of the cathedral where she and Valerian had been
attacked by warlocks, Maeve raised her hands slowly over her head and vanished. Calder could not cry out to her, it was true, nor could he follow with Dimity using her considerable might to restrain him, but Maeve felt his protest in the center of her soul all the same.

  He would not soon forgive her for restricting his freedom again.

  Maeve kept to the twentieth century, knowing that angels preferred the current moment to all the past combined.

  The graveyard of All Souls’ was not empty—here and there a derelict slept, curled up behind some headstone or monument, and all the benches were occupied as well.

  Maeve scanned the place with a quick sweep of her thoughts, finding naught but mortals who would sleep until morning, and more mortals who would sleep until Gabriel sounded his trumpet. A Dante-like picture came to her mind of wavering, vaporous souls rising from all the graves to be judged by their Maker, and she shivered.

  “Quite a dramatic image,” a male voice said.

  Maeve spun, taken by surprise, and looked upon the countenance of a tall, powerfully built angel. He was dressed in modern clothes, a tailored suit, an overcoat of the finest wool, a white cashmere scarf.

  “Nemesis,” she said, half in greeting, half in awe.

  He actually smiled, and Maeve noted that he wasn’t handsome in the standard sense, though if she managed to survive this night, she knew she would never forget a single detail of his features. He had brown hair, attractively shaggy, and green eyes; like Gideon, he shimmered with the light of a kingdom that could only be reached by traveling inward.

  “At your service,” he said with a slight bow of his head.

  Maeve’s awe began to give way to suspicion, annoyance, and plain ordinary fear. “I didn’t expect you to be quite so courtly,” she said.

  “And I didn’t expect you to be beautiful,” Nemesis replied smoothly. He sighed. “Unfortunately, neither my manners nor your loveliness has anything whatsoever to do with the business at hand.”

  He began to stroll along a stone pathway, and Maeve kept pace. The mortals around them slept on, unaware that their fate, as well as that of vampires and warlocks and all other immortals, was being decided.

  “What do you want?” Maeve finally dared to ask.

  Nemesis seemed amused by her bravado, even a little taken with it. “Surrender,” he answered in a cordial tone. “Nothing less than the complete surrender of every evil creature walking the night.”

  The idea was foreign to Maeve, but she had others to consider besides herself. “What would happen then? If we gave ourselves up, I mean?”

  “You would be cast into the pit, where you could do no more harm,” Nemesis answered, as calmly as if they were two humans deciding whether to have biscuits with their tea or scones with jelly.

  Maeve shuddered.

  “You’ll end up there either way, you see,” Nemesis went on with quiet, terrible reason. “Surely you realize that you cannot resist legion upon legion of angels.” She nodded but was careful to hold her head high. “Of course we know that,” she replied. “Our hope is to stop Lisette and bring her to you. She is the guilty one, after all.”

  “Every last one of you is guilty,” Nemesis argued pleasantly. “Even if you do destroy this devil’s spawn, this Lisette, why should I let you go on?”

  Maeve thought fast. “Because if there is to be a kingdom of light,” she said, “there must be a kingdom of darkness to balance it. You protect your Master’s beloved mortals, you guide and teach them, but it is the so-called evil creatures who make them strong by giving them adversity to resist.”

  Nemesis was quiet for a moment, thoughtful. Then he gave a low, bone-shaking burst of laughter. “You are smart, Vampire—like your father, Lucifer.”

  She stopped, furious. “I’ll thank you not to credit Lucifer with siring me—I’ve never met him, let alone sat at his feet to learn evil magic as you seem to be implying. Before I became a vampire, I was created—by the same God who made you.”

  The great angel glared at her for a moment, but then it seemed to Maeve that something in his bearing softened ever so slightly. “There is no time to argue semantics, child. I urge you again—surrender, and bring your dark followers with you.”

  Maeve shook her head, wondering if she was being brave or just foolhardy. “No, Nemesis,” she said. “I will bring you Lisette, and then I will storm heaven itself with pleas for mercy. If you do not grant us clemency, perhaps your Master will.”

  “Such a waste,” the warrior said, his eyes sad as he looked down into Maeve’s upturned face. “You would have been a fine angel.” With that, he shook his head once in apparent sorrow, turned, and walked away into the night.

  39

  Cobwebs swayed in gray scallops from the great chandelier in the entry way, but for the time being, Calder was not concerned with the condition of his erstwhile home. Although his voice had been restored, he was still as much a prisoner as if he’d worn chains and manacles, and the fact outraged him.

  “Maeve is only trying to protect you,” Dimity, his jailer, remarked distractedly when he’d joined her in the parlor. She was standing beside the tune-ruined harpsichord, running one finger over the keys.

  Damn, but he hated the way they could look straight into his mind, Maeve and Valerian and Dimity. Was he to have no private thoughts at all?

  “Not until you learn to veil them,” Dimity replied as if he’d spoken, smiling that angelic smile.

  Calder made yet another futile attempt to crash through the unseen barrier Maeve had erected around him, around this memory-haunted house, and it left him feeling as though he’d been struck by a train.

  He collapsed into a dusty chair, rubbing his temples with a thumb and forefinger.

  “Stubborn,” Dimity said, turning back to the harpsichord, drawing eerie music from it. If the sound was heard by mortals, there would soon be a new spate of rumors about the spooky old mansion.

  “I am Maeve’s mate,” he muttered. “I belong at her side—especially when she’s in danger.”

  Dimity drew back the spindly-legged bench and sat down to experiment further with the harpsichord. “You would only be a liability to her at this point,” she said, her attention mostly focused on that mouse-eaten old instrument. “Perhaps later, when you’ve learned to use your powers more proficiently—”

  “Damn!” Calder bellowed, bolting from his chair and startling Dimity, who jumped and then turned to look at him over one beautifully shaped shoulder. “No one, not even Maeve, will rob me of my personal liberties—I will not endure it!”

  “It seems to me,” Dimity observed diplomatically, smoothing her brown silk skirts, “that you haven’t much choice in the matter, at least for the moment.”

  Calder went to the warped, filthy mantel, which had once shimmered and smelled pleasantly of the oil Prudence used to polish it, and gripped it with both hands. His head was lowered, and his pride, like the exquisitely expensive mirror that had once hung over that fireplace, was in shards at his feet.

  “You’re right,” he said hoarsely after a long pause. “I have no choice—now. But tomorrow night, or the next one, or the one after that, I will be free. And love Maeve though I do, with every grain and fiber, with everything that makes me who I am, I will not sacrifice my freedom of choice to her whims.” Calder turned, knowing his bleak decision lay naked in his eyes, unable to hide the torment he felt. “I’m going to leave her, Dimity, if we survive this present trouble. I’m going to venture out on my own and learn the things I need to know, and work out just what sort of a vampire I mean to be.”

  Dimity’s lovely face reflected both misery and understanding. “It will kill Maeve to lose you,” she said softly. “She does love you, you know. Her passion is a part of her, as much so as her powers, even her soul.”

  “I feel exactly the same way about her,” Calder replied grimly, “but that isn’t enough. I need my right of choice, and Maeve’s trust, as well, and she needs those same things from me.” He pau
sed, shoving a hand through his rumpled hair. “I don’t think either of us is capable of giving them—not willing.”

  Slowly, gracefully. Dimity rose from the harpsichord bench and came toward him. “Maeve would give you anything,” she whispered. “Anything.”

  “Except the holy right of deciding my own fate for myself,” Calder replied. He escorted Dimity to a round table where his father and William had once played games of chess, the winning of which had been inordinately important to both of them, and drew back a chair for her.

  When she was seated, Calder sat across from her and folded his hands on the rain-warped, dirt-covered table-top.

  “Since we apparently have considerable tune at our disposal,” he said, “tell me about yourself. How were you made, and when? Were you changed against your will, or did you give your consent?”

  Dimity laughed good-naturedly. “I see you haven’t studied vampire etiquette yet,” she said. “It is very rude to ask a blood-drinker about her making—the topic is a sore spot with so many of us.”

  Calder was undaunted. He had never worried much about protocol in his human life, and he didn’t plan on doing so as an immortal. “Is it a sore spot with you?” Dimity shook her head, as if amazed and a little scandalized by the bluntness of the question, but there was a mischievous light in her blue eyes. “No, actually—it isn’t. I became a vampire by my own choosing, in the late fourteenth century…”

  It was silly, Lisette decided, as she watched Nikos parading back and forth in front of her, showing off his expensive new velvet coat and doeskin breeches, to deny herself the pleasure of creating a prince consort for even one more night.

  She thought of the process of changing a mortal into a blood-drinker and felt a rush of dark desire, almost as compelling as the passion Nikos could so easily stir in her. With him, she would bring the full extent of her powers to bear, and the experience would be exquisite for both of them—no more of those clammy corpses, quickly made and left to their own devices.

  Lisette shuddered and then put the vile creatures out of her mind.