“Krispin—?” I spoke to Challes when the cup had been taken away.
“His body was destroyed,” my tutor replied. He looked shrunken, did Challes, as though he were dissolving from the inside, caving in upon himself like an ancient mummy, disturbed by some bumbling archaeologist, callously subjected to sunlight and air. “Krispin’s soul, on the other hand, surely awaits us both in hell.”
“Yes,” I said. I would have given much to see Daisy then, but I knew I would only grieve her, especially in my present repugnant state. I wanted her love, not her pity. “Nemesis will be here soon, no doubt.”
“You can’t go to hell without keeping your end of the bargain,” Dathan protested vigorously. He’d been leaning against the wall, but with these words he sprang at me like a wire coil released from a matchbox. “Damn you, vampire, you must pay this debt!”
I smiled at him and saw in his pitying eyes what a ludicrous picture I made, with my distorted face and hairless head. “Very well,” I said. “There is a vampire—Roxanne Havermail is her name. Her mate has left her for a fledgling, I hear—and I think she’d grown weary of him anyway, given the number of times she’s tried to seduce me. Go to her, warlock, and make your monster children—if you can.”
He looked as though he might stretch out his hands and strangle me for a moment, but then he must have realized the futility of such a gesture, for he whirled away with a curse, and struck the wall with one fist.
I laughed—there were so few pleasures left to me at that juncture that I could not spare even one—and the warlock came back to my side, seething with fury.
“You’d damn well better go to hell, vampire,” he spat, “for no other place will hide you from my revenge!”
“Tut-tut,” I scolded, groaning a little as the tide of pain rose up within me again. “You have no one to blame but yourself. ‘Never trust a vampire.’ Was that not your motto, your credo, the very litany of your black heart? Besides, I gave you the female you requested. It is not my fault if poor Roxanne is not to your liking.”
Dathan did not reply, for he was too angry—with himself, I suspect, as well as me—but simply shoved splayed fingers through his hair and turned away again.
I groped for Challes’s hand. I was weakening again, slipping into sleep, but even there I could not escape the relentless pain of my burns. “The murders—in Las Vegas—the police will never understand about Krispin—must be some resolution—”
My tutor smiled and smoothed my scarred forehead with gentle fingers. “A few memories erased, a few changes made in the department’s central computer, an idea planted here and there—”
I nodded, murmured a few disjointed suggestions of my own, and gave myself up, once again, to the ravenous, tearing teeth of torment.
Daisy
Las Vegas, 1995
Daisy arrived in Las Vegas at five-thirty in the afternoon, climbed into a cab at the airport, and headed straight for the police department. Do not pass Go, she thought, do not collect two hundred dollars.
O’Halloran was in his office, laboring over a stack of paperwork, when she walked in. He beamed at the sight of her, shot out of his chair like a dolphin going for a hoop at Sea World, and threw both arms around her. “Chandler! Damn, it’s good to see you.”
Daisy gave him an awkward kiss on the cheek, and they stepped apart. “How’s the vampire case going?”
O’Halloran’s smile grew broader, if that was possible. He gestured for Daisy to take a seat and sat down in his desk chair, making a steeple of his plump, unmanicured fingers. “Don’t you read the papers no more, Chandler? We got the psycho, dead to rights. Already arraigned.” Daisy knew the man behind bars wasn’t the real killer—Krispin had gone on to his reward—but she had a hunch that he was guilty of other murders, whoever he was. The situation smacked of vampire justice, but there was no point in trying to tell O’Halloran that, of course.
More important, if her theory was right, it meant Valerian was around somewhere. Didn’t it? The tricks would be simple to him—a memory or two wiped clean of certain facts, a couple of strokes to a computer keyboard, linked by modem to the department’s mainframe, a deserving criminal to take the rap for a certain renegade vampire. Easy stuff.
Don’t risk it, Chandler. Don’t let yourself hope.
“That was good police work,” she said with a purposeful smile of congratulations and admiration. “I wish I’d been part of it.”
“So do I,” O’Halloran said. “I missed you, partner.” Daisy’s smile faded. She hadn’t thought it would be so hard, explaining her change of plans. “I’ve turned in my letter of resignation,” she said. “I need to do other things—have a change of scene. You know.”
“Yeah,” O’Halloran replied sadly. “I know. Sometimes I wonder why I hang around myself. For every creep we nail, it seems like there’s fifty who get off on a technicality or something.”
Daisy told him about her plans to open a detective agency in Seattle and finished with, “I can always use a good partner. If you get burned out on the beat, give me a call.”
O’Halloran grinned, and his chair creaked as he sat back, hands clasped behind his head. “You know, Chandler, I can see myself as a gumshoe. The question is, can my Eleanor? She’s been after me to retire for a long time, but I don’t think living with Sam Spade is exactly what she had in mind.”
Daisy stood, ready to leave, and O’Halloran stood, too, offering his hand across the cluttered desk.
“Why don’t you ask her?” she retorted as they shook hands. It was as close as they came to saying good-bye.
Valerian
Colefield Hall, 1995
There was no fanfare when Nemesis came to collect me, no bolts of lightning, no crashing thunder, and certainly no trumpet. He simply appeared in the vault at Colefield Hall one night, standing patiently beside the bolted door until I took note of his presence. Or, more properly, until I ceased pretending I didn’t know he was there.
I was quite alone, as are we all, I daresay, when we face our unique doom.
Challes, having brought me blood like a mother bird nurturing a nestling and flown off again, on some errand of my invention, would not return for many hours.
Dathan, for his part, had decamped sometime before, I think to pursue the deceitful Roxanne Havermail. It was a great comfort, knowing that those two, who deserved each other so richly, were very likely careening, even then, along a collision course. My deepest solace naturally came from the knowledge that I had broken the curse and saved Daisy from Krispin and his madness.
She might mourn me for a while, my Daisy… Brenna—I would surely grieve the loss of her throughout eternity—but our tragic dance through the corridors of time had ended forever, and the orchestra was silent.
Alas, I digress. I was recounting Nemesis’s arrival.
The most feared of all angels found me reading peacefully in my underground chamber, and looked at me with obvious pity, though I was by that time quite myself again. My hair had grown back, and my flesh and features were as flawless as ever, except for a stubborn scar here and there.
I closed the book. “It is time to go?” I said. It was an observation, a statement, more than a question.
“Yes,” Nemesis replied. I thought I saw regret in his unremarkable face, then dismissed the idea as pure fancy. There would be no reprieve for me.
I rose from my chair, and the angel reached out and touched my forehead, very lightly. I remember that his fingertips felt cool, and that the contact was strangely soothing, considering all that lay ahead.
We were transported, the two of us, in a way much like the means I had employed since my transformation in the fourteenth century, except that it was somehow swifter and more graceful.
We stood on a dark ledge, looking down upon a pit of fire that seemed to have no bottom and no borders, but to be infinite. I felt its heat and heard the screams and shrieks of its inhabitants, and I admit that my very heart quailed with fear. I recall a
sense of mild hysteria, and a flurry of meaningless thoughts bursting from my head like a flock of crows. I know I told myself it was good that, as a vampire, I had no bladder.
Nemesis gestured toward the inferno. “Hell,” he said, raising his voice a little, to be heard over the hideous din, “is what each man or woman decides it should be. This, Valerian Lazarus, is your hell. It is an illusion, in truth, but it will be no less real for that.”
I thought of Daisy and took a faltering step toward the fires, ready to hurl myself in, but Nemesis caught my arm in one hand and stopped me. I felt his great strength and knew then that neither Challes nor I had ever deceived or eluded him; he had merely been biding his time until the appointed moment.
“You would truly suffer torment, throughout eternity, for the love of one mortal woman?”
I did not hesitate. “Yes,” I replied.
Nemesis did not release me but instead stared deep into my eyes. I felt him probing my very soul, exploring every corner and shadow, seeking I knew not what. The only thing that was really plain to me, besides the terrible fear gnawing at my gut, was the fact that I could hide nothing from him.
“You speak the truth,” he said, marveling. He raised his free arm, still gazing at me, and in one gesture caused my spectacular medieval hell to vanish in a twinkling. We were back in the vault, at Colefield Hall, before I could quite credit that I had been spared.
“Why?” I whispered, trembling, when I realized I was safe. The memory of that dreadful place we’d visited together would haunt me for all I knew of time. “Why did you bring me here instead of—?”
“There is truth in you,” Nemesis said. “For all your evil, there is an element of good, though I confess I like you no better than I ever did.”
I could not contain my joy, my relief. But my delight was quick to fade as I felt again the unceasing heat of hell, heard the shrieks of the damned, saw the hungry flames leaping against the darkness.
“That place—will I have to go back there someday?” Nemesis gave me another searching look. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. What really matters, vampire, is the moment at hand. Nothing else is real.”
Having made this pronouncement, the angel vanished, and I was alone once more.
I wanted to will myself to Daisy’s side, but I was far too shaken. After all, I’d just had a close call, one of truly cosmic proportions, and the next few minutes were given over to gratitude.
Valerian
Las Vegas, 1995
Jerry Grover, assistant manager of the Venetian Hotel and Casino, trembled in his expensive leather shoes as the magician loomed over him. “What the devil do you mean?” Valerian demanded in a lethal undertone, looking damned scary in those Count Dracula clothes of his. “How could she have left town without telling me?”
Grover swallowed. All around, slot machines whirred and clinked, swallowing tokens with melodic greed. Bells clamored and lights flashed, and Jerry wished he didn’t have to dance attendance like a flunky, but Valerian was a headliner, and the board of directors wanted to keep him happy. Nobody packed in the paying customers like this guy, and what the star wanted, the star got. Or somebody’s head, specifically Jerry’s, was going to roll.
“I checked on Miss Chandler, as you asked me to do, sir,” Grover said in a squeaky voice. God, he hated it when he sounded weak and effeminate like that. “My contact in the police department told me she’s resigned and moved to Seattle.”
The magician glowered down at him for a long moment, during which time Jerry honestly thought his best suit might spontaneously combust, then whirled and stormed off through the casino, his black cape trailing majestically behind him. As he passed, every slot machine in the place suddenly went berserk, clanking like old-fashioned fire bells and spewing coins into the trays and onto the floor. Happy gamblers shouted for joy, scooping up their winnings with both hands.
It was the damnedest thing Jerry Grover had ever seen, and he didn’t even want to think about trying to explain it to the corporation.
61
Daisy
Seattle, 1995
The ancient elevator in Daisy’s office building clanked and jerked as it made its dogged climb to the twelfth floor. It was late, and there was probably nobody else on the premises except the janitor, but that didn’t matter. Since coming to Seattle two weeks before, it seemed to Daisy that she did her best work at night.
That, she thought, with a pang and a rueful smile, was what she got for hanging around with vampires.
The cage lurched ominously, and Daisy looked up at the numbers above the ornate iron bars, feeling the first flicker of fear. If the cables were to snap…
She gave herself a mental shake. Since encountering Valerian and some of his crowd, she’d become fanciful, even skittish. If she wanted to succeed as a private investigator, and she most assuredly did, then she would have to put all that behind her and get back her old pragmatic nature.
The lights blinked off, then came right back on again. The needle on the indicator above the door bounced between two brass digits—seven and eight.
Daisy bit her lip. After arranging the move from Las Vegas, she’d driven to Nadine and Freddy’s place in Telluride and spent a week there, fussing over the baby and playing Auntie Mame to the hilt. All the while, she admitted to herself in the privacy of that antique elevator, she’d been waiting to hear from Valerian, to see him again.
He was alive and well and back at the Venetian Hotel, drawing crowds like never before—the newspapers and magazines were full of him. Daisy could only conclude that, after dealing with Krispin he had decided a mortal lover was a troublesome lover. Perhaps he had taken up with one of his many old flames, some splendid monster like himself.
There was a grinding sound, and then the elevator stopped completely, and the lights went out.
“Shit,” Daisy muttered.
“Not very ladylike,” Valerian’s voice responded.
Daisy’s heart stopped, much as the elevator had, then started again. Valerian. Had she only imagined hearing him speak to her? The cubicle was dark, but she could see well enough to know that she was still alone.
She felt a sweet heat stir in the depths of her femininity. She’d been alone in that motel room, too, midway between Las Vegas and Telluride.
“Do you love me, Daisy?”
There was no mistaking it. Valerian was speaking to her, if only inside her head.
The stress of the past few weeks had finally caught up with her.
“Yes,” she murmured nonetheless. “Do you love me in return?”
“Let me show you,” he responded.
The files fluttered to the floor as Daisy felt his lips touch hers, lightly at first, and then with passion. His hands caressed her everywhere at once, stroking her back, cupping her buttocks, weighing her breasts, teasing the nubbin of flesh between her legs.
“Damn you,” she whispered when he’d freed her mouth to let her take a breath. “Why can’t you make love to me in person?”
“Do you want me to stop?”
Daisy’s pride battled needs too long unfulfilled, and suffered a resounding defeat. “No—please—don’t stop.”
She felt her clothes dissolve like smoke, felt the heat of her desire in every tissue and fiber and pore, and sobbed for joy when he entered her in a single powerful thrust. He was neither tentative nor gentle, seeming to sense that Daisy needed a primal mating.
Satisfaction came swiftly, tumultuous and fierce, and left Daisy clinging to the handrail in the elevator with all ten fingers, barely able to breathe. The lights came back on, and the lumbering box resumed its climb to the twelfth floor with a shuddering jerk.
Daisy was still alone and frankly surprised to find her jeans and T-shirt on her body instead of in a crumpled heap on the floor. She knelt, blushing, and hastily gathered up the files scattered at her feet. All the while, satisfaction thrummed within her, deep and abiding and utterly undeniable.
Reaching her office, she was f
orced to lie down on the couch where clients were meant to sit, for small, sweet explosions were still rocking her from within, and she could not trust her knees to support her.
She fell asleep, bathed in silver light and feeling the lack of her lover’s presence, and was awakened sometime later by a shadow crossing the moon.
Daisy sat bolt upright with a little cry, for seated on the edge of her desk, resplendent in his magician’s garb, was Valerian himself.
“You should have been here for the lovemaking,” she said. “It was pretty good.”
He smiled and raised one aristocratic eyebrow. “Only ‘pretty good’? Maybe I’d better try again.”
“No!” Daisy said quickly and with conviction. “Another session like that, and I’ll be stimulated to death.” Valerian laughed and opened his arms, and against her better judgment Daisy went to him.
“Where the hell have you been?” she whispered. It was safe to be angry within his embrace.
He laughed again. “Exactly,” he said.
Daisy reared back to look into his eyes. “What—?” He laid a finger to her Ups. “Shh,” he whispered. “It’s over now, and we can be together. If you still want me, that is.”
“I was thinking you didn’t want me,” Daisy said, stiffening a bit but making no move to withdraw from his arms. “What kept you so long, damn it?”
Valerian smiled and kissed her forehead lightly. “I had a few scars that I didn’t want you to see, and I thought we both needed a little time to regain our balance.”
Daisy nodded. “I’d gotten mine back, but you just threw me off again. Now what?”
“Now we go about making some sort of life together.”
“I’m going to get old,” Daisy reminded him. “And when I’m ninety, you’ll still look just as you do tonight. People will think I’m your great-grandmother.”
“I have never cared, overmuch, what mortals think. Or immortals, either, come to that. Such things don’t matter, Daisy, when two lovers have been tom apart as often as we have in the past several centuries.”
The Black Rose Chronicles Page 92