She tightened her grasp on Moll’s hands and looked deep into her old friend’s troubled eyes. “My father will have me whipped if he catches me at this,” she said softly. “If I can risk that, can you not chance letting me out of my room when the time is right?”
Moll was in anguish, but she nodded just before she turned and left the room.
Brenna’s evening meal was served in her chamber, by the light of tallows, for she was well and truly banished from her father’s table as well as his heart. He would not forgive her, and the knowledge grieved her sorely, but that night her status in the household was the least of her concerns.
She didn’t even pretend to eat; the food on her trencher had grown cold, and she was pacing nervously back and forth at the foot of her bed, her hems whispering in the dry rushes. Moll did not return, and the hours dragged past, with Brenna still a prisoner in her chamber.
She slept in her beautiful gown, and no breakfast was brought when the morrow came. She was given water, that was all, by a servant who would not meet her gaze or answer her questions.
A week had passed, during which Brenna had eaten nothing and heard not a word spoken by another human being, when a burly manservant came and summoned her to her father’s chamber. Still wearing the green gown, now much crumpled, she finished the last of a cup of water before stepping into the passageway to follow her silent escort across the stone floors to the other side of the keep.
The baron stood at an open window when she entered, gazing out at the dark sea, and he did not turn to greet her.
Brenna herself heard the song of the tides and felt the cooling mist on her face. She took courage from those things, and straightened her back, for she loved the sea.
“You sent for me,” she said with simple dignity. She was light-headed with hunger and worry, but her sense of injustice sustained her. “I am here.”
Her father’s broad back stiffened, and she felt a stirring of pity for him. He was bound by what and who he was, she realized, and even if somewhere inside himself he truly wanted to show mercy, he would be unable to do so. He had been born to a rigid code, he knew nothing else, and it was not in him to change.
“You have broken my heart,” he said starkly, and still he did not face her. “Tell me, have you lain with that devil’s spawn or simply lusted after him?”
Brenna swallowed. Tread carefully, warned a voice in her giddy mind, one with the timbre and substance of Challes’s. “I want him,” she admitted without the slightest remorse. “But, no, Father, I have never lain with Valerian or any man. You knew that before you asked me.
At last the baron turned, very slowly, and Brenna’s heart quailed behind her rib cage. She was not effortlessly, foolishly bold like Valerian; she had seen her father punish servants and errant villagers, and she knew the ferocity of his rages. Now she was utterly stunned to see that his face was wet with tears.
“Perhaps,” he whispered, “your body is indeed pure, just as you say. But yours is the soul of a whore. You have fused yourself to that filthy peasant as surely as if he’d taken you to his bed. And now there is nothing to be done. He must die, and you must go to your new husband in shame.”
Brenna interlaced her fingers and bit her lower lip for a moment, trying to think calmly. “There is something that can be done,” she said quietly, and at length. “Banish us, both of us, Valerian and me. We’ll make our way to London, or—”
“Silence!” the baron roared. “Do you argue for him still, when you know I cannot bear any reference to the scab?”
A shrill commotion in the hall beyond the baron’s heavy door stopped Brenna’s impulsive reply in her throat. It was undoubtedly for the best.
“What in the name of—?” her father muttered as the great door crashed inward.
Seraphina Lazarus, Valerian’s mother, filled the chasm, beautiful even in her frenzy. Her flawless skin was white as a corpse’s, her violet eyes wild, her chestnut hair loose and untamed, like a witch’s tresses, and her simple gown was streaked with ash.
Brenna felt ill, and would have retched if her stomach hadn’t been shrunken and empty, as she watched the woman rush to the baron and kneel at his feet.
“My firstborn,” Seraphina pleaded, clutching the nobleman’s hand and kissing his knuckles and fingers and wrist, frantically, feverishly. “Oh, sir, I beg you, spare my boy—allow me to die in his place—take all of us, my husband, my other son—” The bootmaker’s wife paused and made a pitiful, strangling sound, far down in her throat. “There is pestilence abroad in the land,” she blathered. “Set Valerian free, I pray you, sir—if it is the will of Heaven that he perish for his sin, then surely the plague will take him—”
Plague. Brenna barely registered the word on a conscious level, weakened by her confinement as she was, and sharing Seraphina’s agony as she did, but she felt a ripple of fear all the same.
“Damn your indecent soul, woman,” the baron seethed, glaring down at Seraphina. “You utter one travesty on top of another, arguing and bargaining for the life of this young devil as if he were a lover!”
Brenna flinched at the cruelty of the words. “Father—” she began in protest, starting toward the pair, but there was no stopping fate.
The baron’s rage mounted visibly; he went crimson, temples pulsing, and raised a swordsman’s hard fist to strike Seraphina a savage blow. Even after he’d struck her, the bootmaker’s wife scrabbled through the rushes to clutch at his garb again, sobbing now, and wailing piteously.
Brenna’s father tore himself free with a great curse, and he might have kicked the poor woman if his daughter hadn’t stepped between them.
“Her only crime is love,” Brenna reasoned with a tranquility that surprised her as much as it did the baron. “Oh, Father, turn from this—please. I’ll do anything you say, anything at all, if you’ll just unbend this once and show compassion.”
The baron eyed her coldly, and then the woman groveling on the floor. He raised his voice to cover the sound of her anguish; she babbled something unintelligible and then fell to whimpering. “Valerian dies,” he barked.
Seraphina gave a great, bubbling shriek and fell unconscious onto her side, and a spew of bright red blood burst from her mouth.
Brenna tried to go to the woman’s aid, but the baron took a bruising grip on his daughter’s arm and flung her out the door. He was shouting for the servants when Brenna started for her chamber, paused, and then slipped into the shadows and made her way to a rear passageway.
The dungeon was unguarded—the baron knew Valerian was injured and probably considered him unworthy of a bailiff’s time. Carrying a tallow she’d stolen from the kitchen, along with some cheese, a basin, and a piece of soft cloth, Brenna moved from cell to cell until she reached the last and most cramped of them all. A rat scuttled out of the gloom before she could work the lock. It stopped at her feet to rise onto its haunches and whirl about in a macabre little dance, before falling dead on its side.
A chill trickled down Brenna’s spine, and she crossed herself hastily and offered a prayer to the Virgin. Then she stepped over the small, furry corpse and into the cell where Valerian lay.
He was a shadow, curled in the fetid straw. The dank walls dripped with water, and the faint, panicky twitter of other rats reached Brenna’s ears.
“Valerian,” she whispered urgently.
He stirred. “Milady?” Valerian moaned the word, then sat up, blinking, one arm clutching his wounded middle. “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary,” he marveled on a long breath. “Leave me—now—before they find you here!”
Brenna set down the cloth and tallow on a crude bench and knelt beside him in the straw, giving him water from a cup and the morsel of cheese. “This is where I intend to pass the night,” she answered. “Here, with you.”
He managed to eat just a little, and Brenna went back for the basin. Then, kneeling beside Valerian in the fowl straw again, she began to bathe the blood and dirt from his flesh. Even in the dim glow of that
one candle, she saw the tears shimmering in his eyes.
“Oh, God, Brenna,” he whispered. “How did we get ourselves to this place?”
“Shhh,” she said and went on washing him. Her own hunger and weakness floated somewhere above her, suspended.
Presently the loving task had been done as well as it could be, given the circumstances. The tallow guttered out, and Brenna laid herself beside Valerian on the cell floor, and gathered him close with one arm. With the other hand she undid the laces at her bosom and, baring her breasts, offered him the only intimate comfort she knew about.
He was half dead of his wounds, but the blood in his veins was youthful, like the sap in a fierce young tree, and he drank hungrily from her breasts, and kissed her, and spoke pretty, disjointed words while he nibbled at her earlobe. Finally he raised her skirts and took her, with a hard, greedy thrust.
Brenna felt searing pain, followed swiftly by a treacherous pleasure, and she gave herself up to her forbidden lover with all the passion pent up in her innocent soul.
43
Daisy
Las Vegas, 1995
The victim was a showgirl, no more than twenty years old, and she lay sprawled on the living room floor of her cramped apartment, wearing nothing but a short sea-green robe. Her shoulder-length blond hair spilled over the cheap carpeting and partially covered her face.
She was impossibly pale, even for a corpse. Daisy thought of Snow White waiting for her prince, and shuddered. There was no blood anywhere.
Daisy had been promoted to detective six months before, after the requisite four years on the street, and she had seen her share of murders. No matter how many she investigated, the bile still rushed into the back of her throat, and sometimes she had to run to the nearest bush or bathroom to throw up. On other occasions, especially when the victim was a child, she wept.
This time she felt an ugly sort of shock take hold, deep inside her. Even before her partner, O’Halloran, started filling her in on the details, she knew they were dealing with some kind of monster.
“Look at this,” O’Halloran said, crouching beside the body, which had already been outlined and photographed. In fact, the coroner’s people were hovering, ready to do their grisly duties. He brushed back a tendril of the dead woman’s glossy blond hair with remarkably gentle fingers to reveal a pair of neat puncture wounds, set about two inches apart, in the victim’s neck. “If I didn’t know better, Chandler, I’d say this was the work of one of them vampires. You know, like in the movies.” Daisy felt a chill trip down her spine. “I know what vampires are,” she snapped.
O’Halloran, a wiry, graying man of medium height, with twenty-eight years on the force to his credit, sighed loudly and stretched to his feet. His eyes were either pale blue or pale green, depending on the weather and how things were going at home. This was a blue day. “What’s the matter, Chandler—you suffering from PMS or something? Well, take a pill. I got enough problems without you flashing an attitude.”
Daisy didn’t apologize, though she knew O’Halloran was right. She was off track—her meeting with the magician had occupied her every waking thought since she’d left his dressing room the night before. When she had managed to sleep, she’d been plagued by strange, vivid dreams of a medieval courtyard and two men fighting with swords…
“Chandler,” O’Halloran prompted, poking her with an elbow.
Daisy jumped and shook her head once in an effort to clear her head. “Yeah, I’m with you. Sorry. What’s her name?”
“Jillie Fairfield,” O’Halloran answered, consulting his notes. “She was nineteen and worked with that hotshot magician over at the Venetian. What’s his name—?” He began flipping pages.
“Valerian,” Daisy said, feeling jolted.
“Yeah,” O’Halloran agreed, tapping his pocket-sized notepad with the end of his stubby pencil. “That’s him. You ever catch his show?”
“Last night,” Daisy managed.
“I’ve heard it’s really something. According to the papers, there are magicians flying in from all over the world just to see the act and try to figure out how he pulls it off. And he won’t let anybody take his picture, either.”
“He’s good, all right,” Daisy said, glancing at the body again. She remembered the dancers coming out of the coach while it was suspended in midair, then sitting underneath, smiling and posing. She wondered if Jillie had been the one who’d brought out the umbrella and gotten a chuckle from the audience. Even to Daisy’s trained eye, the performers had looked very much alike.
The older cop led the way toward the gaping front door of the apartment, and Daisy went along gratefully. She’d never gotten used to the smell of death, or the clammy feeling it gave her.
“You look a little peaked,” O’Halloran remarked. “You have a bad night?”
She drew in a deep draft of desert air as they descended the wooden stairs outside. The Las Vegas sun was bright, and for Daisy it dispelled some of the chill that had settled into her spirit. “Me? I never have a bad night, O’Halloran,” she said with a manufactured smile. “And I never get PMS, either. What’s your take on this? What happened to the Fairfield woman?”
O’Halloran shrugged. “I don’t know. The coroner will fill us in, though.” He paused beside his car, a battered sixty-seven Mustang on its fourth engine, and scratched the back of his head. “This one’s different, I can tell you that much. There ought to be blood, and we didn’t find a drop. No blow to the head, no visible wounds except for those punctures on her throat. You’d better haul it over to the Venetian and see if you can track down that magician character. See what he can tell you.”
Daisy had hoped to encounter Valerian again, though certainly not under those circumstances. “I’m off to see the wizard,” she said, heading for her own car, a sporty blue convertible. “Meet you back at the office later.”
When Daisy reached the Venetian, Las Vegas’s newest and most elaborate hotel-casino, she left her car in the outer lot and stood looking at the place for a few moments, marveling. It was a spectacle in and of itself, bigger and gaudier than the Mirage or Excalibur or even Caesar’s, an elegant palace with pillars and fountains. There was a maze of canals in front, traversed by sleek gondolas with costumed attendants.
With a shake of her head Daisy went to the quay and allowed herself to be helped into one of the boats, along with several tourists. Sunlight flashed on the water, dazzling her, and she slipped on her sunglasses, turning her thoughts from the conspicuous consumption that surrounded her to the magician.
Her first reaction, when she’d learned of Valerian’s connection with the dead woman, had been to wonder if he’d had something to do with Jillie Fairfield’s death. In cases like this one, the murderer often turned out to be someone the victim had known fairly well.
The gondola coursed along the narrow channels, making its way toward the hotel entrance, and Daisy propped her elbow on her blue-jeaned knee and rested her chin in her palm. If Valerian hadn’t killed Jillie, and there was no reason to believe he had, he probably wouldn’t have heard about her death yet.
Daisy hated being the one to break news like that. She and O’Halloran usually alternated, and when they couldn’t remember whose turn it was, they flipped a coin.
Daisy murmured a curse as the gondola struck the dock in front of the hotel. It was O’Halloran’s turn, damn it. She’d told a woman, just two days before, that her fifteen-year-old son had been shot in a gang fight.
Inside the hotel was a massive casino, filled with noisy slot machines, blackjack tables, and other accoutrements of gambling. The light was dim, the temperature pleasantly cool. Cigarette smoke made simple breathing a game of chance.
Daisy hurried through, toward the nearest bank of elevators. She hated casinos; they reminded her of when she was a kid. Her divorced mother, Jeanine, had been a cocktail waitress, and every once in a while she’d gotten the gambling bug. When that happened, Jeanine either left Daisy and her younger sister, N
adine, to fend for themselves, often for days at a time, or dragged them along with her. In some ways, that was worse, because Jeanine would either park them on the curb with a hamburger and a bag of french fries to share, or point out the pinball room and order them to stay there until she came back. Only later did she allow the girls to stay with their grandmother for a short time before wrenching them away again.
Snap out of it, Daisy scolded herself as she stepped into a sumptuously appointed elevator and pressed the button for the third floor. The business offices were there, along with a number of conference rooms and hospitality suites.
The receptionist looked Daisy over coolly when she asked where to find the magician. The main entrance to the theater would be locked at that hour, and there were probably big guys posted outside the stage doors.
“You a fan?” the girl asked. Her name tag read ‘Tiffany.’
Daisy wondered how Tiffany could see, since her false eyelashes were the size of whisk brooms. In answer to the girl’s question, she pulled her badge out of her handbag and showed it with the appropriate flourish. “Where do I find him?”
Tiffany tapped acrylic nails on the surface of the desk while she thought. From the looks of her, that was no small accomplishment, but a feat involving many wires and gears. “How should I know?”
Daisy braced her hands against the desk’s edge and leaned in close. “Look it up,” she said evenly.
The receptionist flushed, and her plump lips, no doubt pumped full of collagen, quivered. She left her desk, disappearing into a nearby office, and returned a few moments later, looking resolute.
The Black Rose Chronicles Page 64