She laid her head against his chest, listening for a heartbeat that wasn’t there. She was kneeling on the mattress now, the IV tube still dangling from her left hand, with one arm around Valerian’s neck. Haltingly she answered his question, told him how she’d been walking home from the Venetian Hotel when the second spontaneous regression had overtaken her. Daisy went on to recount her brief experience as Jenny Wade, finishing with, “You were there, too. You carried me away, and we made love. I was a virgin.”
She felt him tremble. “Yes,” he said.
“Did I travel through time, the way you do?”
“No,” Valerian replied at length. “You were only remembering. It was all an illusion.”
“Even you?”
“Especially me.”
Daisy was disappointed; she’d wanted the experience to be real. “Can vampires make women pregnant?”
He stiffened but did not pull away, as it had seemed for a moment that he would. “I don’t know,” he answered after another long interval. “Pray that such a thing cannot happen. Any child of mine would surely be a monster.” Daisy turned her wet face into his shirtfront and indulged in a loud sniffle. “Only during the Terrible Twos,” she said, because if she spoke seriously, or let go of Valerian, the world would end.
Valerian laid a hand to either side of Daisy’s head and tilted it back to look into her eyes. “Stop, Daisy,” he pleaded. “I know what you’re trying to do, but it won’t work. We can’t put off the inevitable.”
“Please—stay.”
“I can’t.”
“It’s a trap—Krispin means to let you die and save himself at the last moment!”
“I know that, Daisy,” Valerian said patiently, glancing uneasily toward the window. The darkness seemed to be thinning, losing its depth. “He won’t succeed.”
“Yes, he will. He’ll come back here and carry me off, and there’ll be no one to protect me—”
Valerian laid a finger to her lips, effectively stopping the rising tide of hysteria. “I love you,” he said, and then he was simply gone. It was as if she’d only imagined him, only dreamed he was there.
Daisy knelt on the bed for a few moments, frantic, her mind full of horrific images of Valerian burning. She reached for the pan again and retched convulsively.
When the spate of illness passed, Daisy switched on her reading lamp and reached for the telephone on the bedside stand. She called information in Seattle and asked for Kristina’s number.
Ms. Holbrook answered right away, though she sounded sleepy. “This had better be good,” she said without preamble.
Daisy had had to make a lot of difficult calls in the course of her work. By comparison, telephoning the daughter of two blood-drinking monsters in the middle of the night was tame. “Valerian is in trouble,” she told Kristina. “I need your help.”
“Who is this?”
“Daisy Chandler. We met in Las Vegas, at Valerian’s house.”
“Oh, yes—the naked cop. Tell me—just what kind of fix has my Guardian Vampire gotten himself into this time? He does have a regrettable gift for generating chaos, our Valerian. Not to mention scandal, usually accompanied by high drama.”
Daisy closed her eyes, gathered her courage, and began to talk.
57
Valerian
London, 1875
I found Calder Holbrook in the lab beneath the London house he shared with Maeve, his mate. Like many vampires, he preferred the century of his mortal birth and, having that option, passed much of his time there.
“Valerian,” the doctor greeted me, with more resignation than affection, when I appeared at his elbow. He was an ideal partner for Maeve, though like a great many doctors he tended to be taciturn to the point of abruptness. He was quiet and steady, providing a perfect counterbalance to her more spectacular personality. Though I had transformed Holbrook from mortal to fiend myself, and was thus, in a manner of speaking, his sire, and although it had been I, and no one else, who had taught him the rudiments of navigating the world of the supernatural, there was, as the saying goes, no love lost between us.
For it was I who made Maeve a vampire, albeit long before he knew her, and he was jealous of that undeniable intimacy.
I stood with my hands clasped behind my back, peering over Calder’s shoulder at the concoction bubbling in a bottle heated over a small brazier. “Have you discovered the cure for what ails us?” I inquired, for I knew that was what the doctor sought—a way to circumvent a nightwalker’s needs for blood-sustenance and protection from the sun, while retaining the glorious powers we possess. Unhampered by the kind of idealism that plagues men and vampires of Calder’s ilk, I envisioned a plethora of such creatures ranging over the earth and, subsequent to that thought, hoped for a resounding failure.
Holbrook turned his head to regard me archly for a moment or two, one eyebrow raised, then uttered a gruff harrumph and turned back to his work. “Mysteries, mysteries,” he muttered. “Even vampirism cannot explain what ails you, Valerian.”
I had just parted from Daisy, probably forever, and I faced an eternity of damnation—unceasing punishment so terrible, so brutal, that only a medieval mind could truly grasp its portent—and I was not in the mood to exchange jibes with the queen’s consort. “Please—spare me your hysterical expressions of admiration and tender regard.”
The stuff in Calder’s glass vial turned to an interesting shade of amber, and he raised it high to peer through it and murmur again.
“What do you want?” he asked when he’d left me quivering on the hook a little longer.
“I have been told that you’ve discovered parallel dimensions and passages into those other worlds.”
At long last Calder turned and granted me his full, if somewhat grudging, attention. “I have uncovered the existence of such phenomena, yes, but I have only theories as to how they are reached.”
I resisted the urge to grasp the doctor’s collar and haul him onto his toes as I might have done with a mortal, for I knew Calder wouldn’t suffer such an affront lightly. He must have glimpsed the intent in my face before I quelled it, for the shadow of a smile fell across his mouth.
I had amused him. Oh, joy.
“The way must be sealed, whatever and wherever it is,” I said at last in an angry rasp. My temper was not helped by the sense of hopelessness that pervaded me being like an unseen vapor, bruising every cell and sinew, even in their atrophy. “Don’t you see? That’s how he—my brother, Krispin—has been able to hide himself from me all these centuries. Suppose there are others like him? Suppose—”
“What in hell are you talking about?” Calder interrupted.
Dawn was approaching; I could feel it tugging at my consciousness, pulling me downward into a maelstrom of nothingness, although the doctor did not seem to be affected. “There is so little time!” I cried, desperate to make him understand.
“Tell me,” he said, this time with a note of gentleness in his voice. I imagined that Dr. Holbrook had been a comfort to his patients, as a mortal physician. He was not generally so delicate with the sensibilities of vampires.
I told the tale, as best I was able, my words faltering and tumbling over each other as I attempted to resist the grasping, smothering darkness rising around me. I explained the danger Krispin represented, or at least I hoped that was what I had done, for it all sounded garbled to me, and disjointed. All the while I was speaking, I wondered vaguely why my fledgling was not succumbing to the great sleep as I was.
Finally the moment came when I could no longer think, or speak, or wonder. I had been dragged under, into the oblivion of my innermost being, there to slumber, witless and unstirring, until the sun sank into westerly seas.
Daisy
Las Vegas, 1995
The sleeping pill must have taken hold soon after Daisy had finished her call to Kristina, for she wakened to full sunlight and a breakfast tray, with no conscious memory of hanging up the receiver.
The ageless M
s. Holbrook was standing by the window, her cap of dark hair gleaming richly in the dazzle of morning, clad in a cream-colored pantsuit of impeccable tailoring, Gucci shoes, and a matching bag of soft, supple leather. Her jewelry, a single heavy golden chain, was real, and Daisy wondered if she’d zapped the outfit out of thin air or simply bought everything in stores, like anyone else.
“Why didn’t you awaken me?” Daisy demanded, frowning at the food on her tray and reaching reluctantly for a piece of toast. She had no appetite, but she knew she would need her strength for the challenges ahead, and that meant she had to eat.
Kristina raised one shoulder in a slight, elegant shrug. “There’s really no hurry. Valerian is a vampire. He’s burrowed down somewhere, sleeping off the day.” Daisy nibbled at the toast. “And Krispin?”
“Who knows? From what you told me on the telephone last night, he may be the proverbial horse of a different color. An unknown quantity, if you will.”
A shiver cartwheeled down Daisy’s spine, and the words she spoke were born of pure bravado. “Can you take me to him?”
“Oh, that’s a brilliant idea,” Kristina muttered, ignoring the nurse who came to see if Daisy was eating her breakfast. “If this thing didn’t kill us both for our trouble, my mother well might. Or Valerian himself.” She shoved a hand through her hair, and it immediately fell back into perfect array, a soft cascade of ebony spun to silk.
In her next life Daisy wanted hair like that.
She settled against her pillow, an unwilling patient, dolefully spooning stewed peaches into her mouth. A nurse had taken the IV needle from her hand; that was some progress, at least. And O’Halloran hadn’t been in with any further news flashes on the dismal state of her career. A person had to focus on the positive whenever possible. “Okay. Then just tell me how to find the creep,” she said between bites of spongy fruit, “and I’ll go by myself.”
“Absolutely not,” Kristina said. “I’m taking you to my place in Seattle. You can stay there until all this is settled, one way or another.”
Daisy couldn’t bear the thought of sitting by passively and leaving everything to fate. She had too much to lose—and besides, there was really no place to hide. Krispin would close in for the kill when he wanted to—up until now, he’d only been toying with Daisy, using her to torment Valerian.
“Hiding out is no solution, Kristina, and you know it,” she replied with as much firmness as she could muster under the circumstances. “Some things can’t be avoided, and this is one of them. There has to be a confrontation.”
“Between Valerian and Krispin, yes,” Kristina insisted. “But you should stay out of it. You can’t begin to understand what you’re dealing with here.”
“Would you turn away and pretend nothing was happening? If you were in love with a man—excuse me, a vampire—could you hide out somewhere until it was all over?”
Daisy thought she saw a shadow of sadness move in Kristina’s eyes, but the expression was so fleeting that she told herself she’d imagined it.
“Daisy, the important thing here is for you to stay alive. The relationship isn’t going to work anyway, because in case you’ve forgotten, you’re a mortal woman and Valerian is a vampire. How could the two of you ever hope to have anything even remotely resembling a normal life? You’ll get old and die, for instance, but Valerian, if he survives, will look the same a thousand years from now as he does today.” She paused to walk over and close the door on the hustle and bustle of the hospital corridor before continuing. “He wouldn’t change back into a mortal, Daisy, even if such a thing were possible. Valerian revels in what he is. Would you be willing to become a vampire?”
Daisy shrank back, repelled by the idea and more than a little stricken because Kristina’s points were valid ones. “Of course not,” she said.
Kristina spread her hands wide as if to say, “Well, then?”
“I love Valerian,” Daisy insisted in a fragile tone. “And I don’t care if everybody thinks I’m his mother someday—or if I don’t see him in the daytime, or any of that. It would be enough just to be with him.”
The other woman raised one delicate eyebrow. Her eyes were an intense shade of silvery gray and so expressive that few words were needed. “Of all vampires, Daisy, Valerian is the most fickle, the most outrageous, the most flamboyant. His passions have a range you cannot begin to appreciate.”
Daisy closed her eyes, just briefly, against the keenest ache she had ever felt. “If you are saying he has loved others—”
“He has,” Kristina said, though not unkindly.
“Whose side are you on, anyway?” Daisy demanded, regretting that she’d turned to this woman—if indeed she was a woman and not some kind of spook—for help in saving Valerian from himself as well as from his brother.
“Your side, Daisy,” Kristina answered sadly. “And Valerian’s. Just now my only aim is to keep you both alive. Still, if you’re smart, you’ll take my advice, forget our splendid friend and find a nice, ordinary mortal to love.”
Daisy pushed away her food and folded her arms stubbornly. “I’m afraid knowing Valerian has spoiled me for ‘nice, ordinary mortals,” she said. “Besides, there’s something bigger than all of us going on here. It’s as if we’ve come to the crux of it all, the X on the map, after centuries of blunders and near misses. The situation has to be resolved—I feel sure of it. There is something we’re supposed to do to make things right.”
“No wonder you keep reincarnating as Valerian’s lover, over and over again,” Kristina remarked with some irritation. “You haven’t the sense to learn your lesson.”
“Which is?” Daisy asked tartly, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and testing a privately held theory that she could stand on her own if she tried, despite the bone-melting weakness that still afflicted her.
“That you must let go of Valerian, once and for all. And the same goes for him. The two of you are obsessed, following each other from continent to continent and century to century, as if you could thwart karma by mule-headed persistence!”
Daisy stood, wavered, clutched the bed, indulging in a few deep, steadying breaths before replying. “Maybe it’s just that we know we belong together,” she said. “Damn it, aren’t we entitled to one lifetime of happiness, after all we’ve been through?”
“None of us is entitled to anything,” Kristina countered, folding her arms. “We’re here on sufferance. Mortal and monster, saint and sinner—we could all be obliterated at the whim of heaven.”
“How nice that you came to visit,” Daisy said with acid sweetness. “To think I was actually depressed before!”
Kristina smiled tentatively and approached Daisy’s bedside. “Sorry—I tend to be a little overrealistic sometimes,” she said and laughed a little. “I get that from my father, I think. He’s pragmatic to a fault.”
Daisy, steadier on her feet now, began to make her way slowly around the bed, with a goal of reaching the closet. She didn’t ask Kristina to blink her up an outfit, like before at Valerian’s house; it had occurred to her since that the clothes might have been woven of fancy and little else, like those of the fabled emperor. There was also a possibility that the garments could vanish, being magical, like so much smoke, leaving her standing in some public place clad only in her good intentions.
“Nothing wrong with taking a sensible approach to things,” she said, because she liked Kristina and because she, being a cop, albeit a suspended one, was inclined toward a practical view herself. Her knuckles whitened where she gripped the steel rail at the foot of the mattress as she inched along. “Are you an only child?” she inquired, sensing that Kristina was about to order her back into bed and anxious to deflect any concern, however well meant, that might be coming her way.
“To say the least,” Kristina answered, folding her arms and watching Daisy’s slow progress with her head tilted slightly to one side. The expression on her exquisite face was at once pitying and wry. “As far as I know, my mother w
as the first vampire to give birth in the human fashion. Nightwalkers generally create their ‘children’ by transforming favorite mortals.”
Daisy stopped, trembling with weakness, grasping the footrails as if to keep from dropping over a precipice. She laughed, but the sound was one of pain, not merriment. “I thought I’d heard everything, until I fell in with your crowd. The confessions of serial killers and street hoods pale by comparison.”
Kristina moved silently to her side, as lithe and graceful as a cat, and put a strong arm around her. “Back into bed, Daisy,” she said with kind insistence. “You’re not ready to ride to the rescue quite yet.”
Daisy wanted to resist, but there was a hypnotic quality to Kristina’s touch, as well as her voice, and besides, she was tired. So unbelievably tired. “Can’t just—give up—” she protested, amazed to find that she was already lying down again. Kristina was covering her gently with the sheet and thin blanket.
“I can’t imagine you doing that,” Kristina said with amusement and a touch of sorrow, too. “In fact, I don’t believe you know how to quit—even when it would be the smartest thing to do.”
Daisy felt the bed spinning beneath her, felt herself spiraling down and down, like Alice tumbling into the rabbit hole, to land, bouncing, on a dream….
Valerian
London, 1875
I awakened from my enforced rest to find myself sprawled ingloriously on the floor of Holbrook’s laboratory, with the good doctor gone. I was not alone, however—Kristina, child of my soul, was sitting nearby, slender legs elegantly crossed and arms folded, awaiting my return to consciousness.
“Bloody hell,” I rasped, sitting up and shaking my head. I felt rather like a pugilist felled by a stronger opponent.
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