The Black Rose Chronicles

by Linda Lael Miller

  Daisy’s heart warmed, despite the mess she was in. She’d never had a close female friend, except for Nadine and their late grandmother, and she found the prospect appealing. “No,” she said. “I’m not going to ‘bail out,’ as you put it. If you want to talk, I’m ready to listen.” Kristina smiled and squeezed Daisy’s hand briefly. “Thanks, friend, but even listening is work, and right now you need to rest. Go back to sleep.”

  There were a lot of questions Daisy wanted to ask Kristina, but she had apparently lost a lot of blood during the incident with Krispin, and she was exhausted. She stretched out, closed her eyes, and tumbled into a waiting memory….

  Her name was Harmony Beaucheau, and she was twenty-three years old. The year was 1878, and the town was called Poplar Hill, though it stood in a dusty corner of the Arizona Territory and boasted neither poplar nor hill.

  Oh, damn it, thought that part of her that was still Daisy. Here we go again.

  Harmony was standing in front of a cracked mirror, and with some relief Daisy saw herself looking back from the glass. She was wearing a worn dress of brown calico with a high neck, and her reddish-brown hair was pinned up in a loose, fluffy style. Stubborn tendrils trailed at her neck and on her temples and cheeks.

  She turned away from the mirror and from all consciousness of herself as Daisy Chandler. Reluctantly Harmony left her small, sparsely furnished room and made her way down the narrow passageway leading to the stairs. The saloon below was filled with swirling blue-gray smoke, tinny music from the piano, which was missing a few vital parts, and the raucous, vulgar talk of cowboys, drifters, and various locals. There were a handful of tawdry women, too—they entertained men in private, and Harmony herself paid their wages.

  She hesitated on the stairs, one hand resting on the crude rail, and sighed. Harmony was not a whore, and never would be, for she’d been raised in Boston by a maiden aunt and educated to be a lady. Before she could marry, however, her elderly guardian had passed away, and when dear Aunt Millicent had been properly buried, and all accounts settled, there was a small but respectable sum of money remaining.

  Harmony had barely recovered from Millicent Beaucheau’s death when an old friend of the family appeared, bearing a packet of old letters. In them was irrefutable proof that Millicent had been Harmony’s mother, and not her aunt, and in staid Boston to be illegitimate was hardly a social advantage.

  Despite her fine looks, cultivated mind, and more than adequate dowry, no one who knew the truth was going to marry the likes of Harmony Beaucheau. She was tainted forever.

  A resilient sort, Harmony had taken herself to an establishment dealing in properties. These were the very people who had sold Millicent’s house, which, it turned out, had been bought for her by her lover and not bequeathed by a doting father, as she’d always maintained, and Harmony had no reason to mistrust them.

  She had inquired about the West and promptly purchased a hotel, sight unseen, in the Arizona Territory. On her arrival, Harmony discovered that she’d bought a brothel, not an inn, and used her last nickel in the process. The place was thriving—that was one consolation.

  Still lingering on the stairs, Harmony scanned the saloon with eyes squinted against the smoke, and a smile broke over her face. He was there again, playing faro at the table nearest the door, the handsome gambler with the fancy name.

  Valerian, he called himself. Harmony was already half in love with him, and practical as she was, she’d had no success in disabusing herself of the fancy. Men like him never stayed in one place long; they dallied a while, drank and gambled and told lies, and then moved on.

  He was wearing a long duster made of soft leather, high black boots, well-cut trousers, and the kind of shirt only a man like him could get away with. His hat was pushed to the back of his head, and he sensed Harmony’s presence somehow, for all the hubbub between them, and raised his fathomless indigo eyes slowly to her face.

  She felt a charge of emotion go through her, feelings so complicated, so tangled and interwoven with each other, that she could not begin to sort them through. She had never seen Valerian before his appearance in Poplar Hill one night a month or so before, and yet it was as though she’d always known him. She knew, for instance, how his hands would feel on her body, and his mouth on hers. She, who was a virgin despite her spoiled reputation, knew the powerful flex of his hips as he took her, and the tug of his lips on her nipples….

  Harmony went to him, like a creature enthralled, and her life began that very night. He vanished often, her lover, often for days at a time, and she never once saw him when the sun came up. When he was with her, in her ugly little room, they made love, but he told her stories, too, about other countries and other times in history, and he was full of poetry.

  She knew he loved her truly—he admired her strong spirit and asked her opinion on important things, something no man had ever done before. And although his lovemaking transported her, she suspected its absence would not have changed her feelings or his. There was an old bond between them, as though their souls had been fused by some ancient and forgotten god, and if there were many mysteries about her Valerian, she didn’t care.

  He had been away nearly a month when the ruby ring arrived by stage with three weeks’ worth of mail. It was wrapped in gold foil and tied with a scarlet ribbon trimmed in lace, and Harmony’s heart brimmed with happiness as she slid it onto the ring finger of her left hand. Surely this was his pledge that they would be together, ever after….

  But Valerian did not return, although Harmony watched for him every night on the tiny balcony outside one of the upstairs rooms, anxiously scanning the moonlit trail that snaked away into the desert.

  It had been two more weeks, and she was beginning to despair. Perhaps the wonderful ring had not been a promise, after all, but a farewell.

  That night three men rode into town, liquored up and shooting. Harmony got her shotgun out from behind the bar and stepped out onto the sidewalk, her jaw set and her eyes narrowed. There was no law in Poplar Hill, not yet, and folks had to look after their own property and their own hide, whether they were women or men.

  The drunks howled and carried on, firing their six guns and spurring their terrified horses onto the sidewalk. They were headed for Harmony’s saloon, and she was ready for them….

  Daisy sat bolt upright, gasping and drenched in perspiration, clutching her chest. A bullet had struck Harmony, exploding in the center of her heart, and Daisy had felt it as though it had penetrated her own flesh.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered, falling back against the pillows, her face wet with tears of sorrow and fear. She was strong, though, and presently the trembling stopped and she drifted back to sleep, this time finding only sweet oblivion.

  She did not awaken again until sometime after the moon had risen.

  The house was quiet, except for a low murmur of conversation in a nearby room and the soft strains of a Mozart concerto flowing from the stereo system.

  Daisy rose, relieved to find herself stronger, and donned the terrycloth robe she found lying across the foot of the bed. She walked slowly out of the bedroom and found herself in a well-lit hallway with a shining oak floor.

  Kristina and Valerian were in the living room. The vampire stood, imperious and grim, beside the cold fireplace. Kristina sat cross-legged on an overstuffed sofa, a glass of wine in her hands. Their quiet but earnest exchange ended abruptly when they realized that Daisy had joined them.

  Valerian came slowly toward her, took her hands in his, and gazed down into her eyes. “Kristina told me you were better,” he said hoarsely, “but it is good to see for myself.”

  Daisy wanted to hurl her arms around him and cling in a very un-Daisy-like way, but she resisted the urge. “Yes,” she said, thinking how well she had loved him, not only in the present, but during her lifetimes as Brenna and Elisabeth and Jenny and Harmony as well. “I’m almost myself again, if you’ll forgive the expression.”

  He smiled and cupped a ha
nd under her chin, and Daisy closed her eyes for a moment, against a rush of emotion. He brushed her lips with his thumb, and sent liquid fire surging through her system.

  “I must know, Daisy,” Valerian said with tender sorrow, “what you meant in Dr. Holbrook’s lab when you said I killed you. Come, sit down and talk to me.”

  Daisy nodded, for suddenly she recalled uttering those words, recalled the experience that had made her speak them. She knew now, too, that it had been Krispin who had murdered Jenny Wade, Krispin pretending to be Valerian. And he had been behind Harmony’s shooting, too, and Elisabeth’s fever.

  Kristina left the room, and Valerian settled Daisy into a comfortable chair and carefully covered her legs with a knitted afghan. How could she have believed, in this lifetime or the one lived as Jenny Wade, that this tender creature would ever do her deliberate harm?

  Daisy spoke softly, hesitantly, as she related what she knew of Jenny’s story. Valerian, seated on the arm of her chair, listened in absorbed silence.

  When she’d finished the tale, he did not speak for a long time. The expression on his aristocratic face was one of quiet torment.

  “I’m sorry,” Valerian said at last. “I should have guessed that you were in danger, and been there to protect you.”

  Daisy rested her head against his arm. “Did you believe the stories? That Jenny ended her own life, I mean?”

  He met her gaze. “Yes,” he replied. “I was unable to visit her—you—for a considerable length of time. She—forgive me, but I find I cannot say ‘you’ when we are speaking of death—she was a porcelain rose, my Jenny, though she fancied herself to be as sturdy as a summer weed. I was convinced that she had sunk into despair because of my neglect.”

  Daisy bit her lower lip, then spoke quickly before she could lose her courage. At the same time, though, she touched Valerian’s hand in an effort to reassure him a little. “There was something else. Something Krispin knew, but you apparently did not.”

  Valerian did not speak, but simply waited for her to go on, one eyebrow slightly elevated.

  “There was to be a baby,” she blurted. “You and Jenny—you and I, Valerian—conceived a child together.”

  “No,” he said, quickly, gruffly. It was a plea, that solitary word, echoing with regret and incomprehensible pain. “That couldn’t be—” He stopped, glancing in the direction of the doorway through which Kristina had disappeared minutes before. Obviously he was recalling the circumstances of another birth—Maeve Tremayne, a vampire, and Calder Holbrook, still mortal then, had had a daughter.

  Daisy gave Valerian a few moments to collect himself before going on. ‘Times being what they were,” she said quietly, “Jenny’s family feared there would be a ruinous scandal. They were going to send her away somewhere, I think, but she never doubted that you would come back for her.”

  “And she died thinking I had murdered her. Along with our child.” The controlled agony, so visible in Valerian’s face as he spoke, found its way into Daisy’s heart and burrowed down deep.

  “Jenny sensed that something was wrong,” Daisy said, for that flimsy assurance was all the solace she had to offer him just then. “I think she knew, on some level at least, that it wasn’t you who visited her that awful night.”

  Valerian threaded his fingers through hers, and his attempt at a smile was even more painful to look upon than his stark grief had been before it. “Krispin,” he muttered, making a curse of the name by his tone and manner. His gaze, as he stared into the fireplace contained such sulfurous fury that Daisy fully expected flames to leap from the ashes in the grate. “Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, soul of my soul—Krispin, Krispin. What have you done?”

  Daisy shivered. An unspoken vow coursed beneath the anger and despair of the vampire’s words. Valerian meant to destroy Krispin—but at what cost?

  Before she could give voice to her concerns, however, another visitor joined them, nearly startling Daisy out of her skin.

  He appeared in the middle of the room, with no smoke or fire to herald his coming, but for all the strange experiences she’d had since meeting Valerian, Daisy still wasn’t used to such surprises. She longed for the company of other mortals, human beings who knocked on doors and telephoned and wrote letters but never, never simply materialized out of the ether!

  Valerian stood, but he seemed annoyed, rather than afraid. Daisy was touched—and irritated at the same time—by the way he put himself between her and the unexpected guest, like a barrier.

  “Explain yourself,” he snapped.

  Daisy leaned out over the arm of her chair to get a better look at the new arrival. He was remarkably good-looking, she decided, with his golden hair and soft brown eyes. His clothes were courtly and old-fashioned, and formidably expensive, like Valerian’s—he wore a splendid cape of dark blue wool, high boots, breeches, and a frilly shirt. In one gloved hand he grasped the handle of a carved walking stick—a weapon, Daisy decided, not merely an addition to his costume.

  He smiled at her, and at the watchful Kristina, and bowed, ever so slightly and ever so gracefully to each, pointedly ignoring the seething Valerian.

  “Allow me to introduce myself. I am called Dathan, and I do apologize for making an unannounced entrance. I trust I am forgiven?”

  Kristina replied with a brief, tentative smile, but Daisy was too fascinated to respond to him at all—except, of course, to stare.

  “You left out your title, Dathan,” Valerian interceded in an acidic tone. “Warlock.”

  Daisy was now so far out over the chair arm that she nearly fell. At her quick, scrambling motion of self- rescue, Valerian turned to glower down at her over one shoulder. The look was unmistakably a warning, and it both angered and intimidated Daisy.

  She subsided a little, though only temporarily.

  “Yes,” Dathan allowed, only then acknowledging the vampire looming within pouncing distance. “I am indeed a warlock.” The twinkling brown gaze found Daisy’s face, despite Valerian, and lingered for a moment, admiring. When he looked at Valerian, however, there was no gentleness anywhere in his countenance, and the mischievous, cherubic eyes were suddenly hard. “I grow weary, blood-drinker, of waiting. Did we not speak of a bargain?”

  Valerian glanced back at Daisy again, then returned his gaze to the warlock. “I will not discuss this here.”

  “Oh, yes, you will,” Daisy argued, tugging at the back of his coat. “I want to know what’s going on.”

  “We don’t always get what we want, do we?” Valerian retorted, frowning again, this time with such heat that she felt like paraffin going soft in the sun. “Stay out of this, Daisy, or I swear by all the old gods that I will stop up your ears and still your tongue for a fortnight!”

  Daisy was furious, but she was still too tired to wage a proper battle, verbal or otherwise, so she sank back in the chair, trembling. Kristina flung her a sympathetic look but contributed nothing to the conversation.

  It was Dathan who broke the oppressive silence. “You know where to find me,” he told Valerian cheerfully, tugging at his elegant gloves and then bowing once more to the ladies. “I shall expect you forthwith.”

  With that, he vanished without sound or flurry, just as he had appeared.

  Valerian did not bid Daisy farewell or even look at her again. In the blink of an eye he was simply gone.

  Valerian

  Last Ditch Tavern, 1995

  I arrived in the back room of the Last Ditch Tavern a fraction of a second after Dathan, and found him seated at one of the felt-covered poker tables, hat and cloak tossed onto a chair, feet up and crossed at the ankle.

  “What took you so long?” he asked with a grin.

  I overcame a whimsical desire to kick his chair over. I had not wanted him to see Daisy, to know her, for he represented yet another danger to her. Too, warlocks are notorious seducers, and while I held Daisy’s personal scruples in high esteem, I wondered what use they could be against the charm of such a fetching mons
ter.

  “How dare you intrude that way?” I rasped.

  Dathan cocked an eyebrow. “Intrude? I’m trying to do you a favor, Vampire. But it seems you no longer want my help.”

  I drew up a chair, probably with more clatter than necessary, and dropped into it. I didn’t want the warlock’s help, had never wanted it, but I was in this instance a beggar, not a chooser. I could no longer afford to indulge my dislike of this particular antagonist.

  “What can you do?” I asked with a dismal lack of faith in Dathan’s powers. “After all, if you could destroy vampires, you would have wiped out every blood-drinker in the universe by this time.”

  Dathan chuckled fondly at the image. “Yes,” he agreed. “With the possible exception of Maeve Tremayne. Splendid female. Her daughter is very like her—beautiful, brave, intelligent—”

  “Leave Kristina alone,” I warned. The warlock now had my undivided attention. “If you go near her, I’ll drain every drop of your poisoned blood into the nearest gutter!”

  He took a glass of whiskey from the table, without putting his feet down, and indulged in a thoughtful sip before replying. “Let us confine ourselves, for the moment, to the business at hand. The two of us, I fear, are prone to endless disagreement on an infinite number of points. Do you still want my help in destroying your brother?”

  I did, but the very necessity of the act struck me like a blow to the solar plexus. Would I never get used to it? Would I grieve for Krispin even as I burned among the very coals and embers of hell?

  “Yes,” I said in a miserable whisper.

  “Then let us lay a plan.”

  My eyes were narrowed, for I was recalling the previous encounter with Dathan, there in the Last Ditch. He wanted something in return for his assistance, of course, but he had yet to say what it was he meant to require of me, in the event of our success. “First,” I said, “tell me what you hope to gain by this.”