The Black Rose Chronicles

by Linda Lael Miller

  Allison shook her head, looking less than amused. “You and Max are getting too old to play such silly games,” she said. She looked around the room in general, as if seeking confirmation for her statement. “Why can’t they give each other regular presents like everybody else?”

  “That wouldn’t be any fun,” Gweneth answered.

  Soon the china and silver were clean and put away, and the football game was over, and practically everybody over the age of thirty was stretched out somewhere in the big, cozy house, taking a nap.

  Max found Kristina standing at a window in the dining room, watching the light change on the waters of the pond behind the house. He slipped his arms around her waist, kissed her nape, and drew her back against him gently.

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  Kristina turned in his arms, looked up into his face, and smiled, even though her heart was breaking.

  “Ready,” she said.

  78

  “You have a wonderful family,” Kristina said softly as she and Max drove out of the city and onto the freeway leading to Snoqualmie Pass. She had watched him say good-bye to Eliette and Bree, and had thought that Eliette clung a little at the parting, as though unwilling, even afraid, to let him go. Perhaps the child had been remembering another day, when she’d lost her mother, and very nearly her father as well.

  “Thank you,” Max replied, flinging her a sidelong grin. “Since I’ve never met your parents, I can’t return the compliment, but if they made you, they have to be special.”

  “‘Special,’” she said, with a smile and a nod. “You missed your calling, Max Kilcarragh—you should have been a diplomat.”

  He laughed at that. “I wonder if my players would agree,” he replied. “You might not believe it to look at me, but I’m one of those guys who paces the sidelines and shouts when things aren’t going well in a game.”

  Kristina studied him soberly. “Do you care that much about winning?”

  “I don’t give a damn about it,” he answered, eyes mirthful. “I just think a little yelling and an occasional dose of pressure make the kids better prepared to live in the real world. And, no, I don’t use the same techniques with Bree and Eliette, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “I was,” Kristina confessed. “It’s a bit hypocritical of you, though, wouldn’t you say, to shout at other people’s children?”

  Max smiled, flipped on his signal light, glanced into both the side and rearview mirrors, and changed lanes. “No,” he replied with certainty. “The guys on my team are all at least sixteen years old. There’s a big difference.”

  By tacit agreement, they avoided the subject of Kristina’s closed shop and all it might mean. It was as if nothing existed beyond the darkest edges of the upcoming Sunday night; everything difficult, if it had a bearing on the present, would be discussed then.

  “I guess you’re right,” Kristina conceded. “So someday when your daughters are that age, and they complain that a teacher is pressuring them—”

  “I’ll try to stay out of it, unless I think there’s a deeper problem.” The freeway was crowded with holiday travelers, and dusk had descended before they left Max’s parents’ house. He concentrated on his driving and did not look away from the road when he spoke again. “What about the letters? What happened after both your in-laws died so quickly?”

  Leaning back against the seat and closing her eyes, Kristina sighed. Although she had been rereading the letters, she didn’t need to do that to remember. It was just that the process made her feel close to Phillie, who had been her dearest and truest mortal friend except, perhaps, for Gilbert Bradford.

  In a quiet voice she brought Max up-to-date from the place where he’d left off—explaining, though it was difficult, about Joseph, and the injuries she’d suffered at Michael’s hand when she finally confronted him one too many times. She made very little mention of Gilbert, however, except to say that he’d sent Michael away to Australia, never to return.

  “And did he?”

  Kristina shook her head. “No,” she said. But there was much more to the tale, and, as they drove, she began to tell it, unconsciously lapsing into the accent of her English upbringing and the formal phraseology of the time….

  “After Michael had gone away, I believed I should have peace at last, but I did not. I was frantic over Joseph’s passing—ironic, isn’t it, that one’s life can be even more horrible than so wretched a death as he suffered? But such children were common in nineteenth-century London.

  “For five years I worked among the poor—I could not remarry since I was still legally Michael’s wife—but in the end the hopelessness of it was simply more than I could bear. I needed a respite, but did not know what to do.

  “Finally, I decided to go traveling, simply to get away. I rode elephants in Burma and climbed mountains in Peru and Africa. I was in China, perhaps eight years after I had left England, when I began having the dreams.

  “They were extraordinarily vivid and always terrifying. In them I was visiting Australia—a place I would never go, as large and fascinating as it was, because I feared encountering Michael. I could not be sure I wouldn’t kill him with my bare hands if I saw him again. I blamed him completely for what had happened to Joseph.

  “In the nightmares I saw a debauched Michael, aged by drink and whoring and the use of opium. He was in a small courtyard, beating a woman, slapping her again and again, first with the front of his hand, then with the back. She flinched, of course, for she was smaller, but she did not cry out, nor did she attempt to defend herself. She simply glared at him with such hatred that her dark eyes glinted in the moonlight.

  “At last he hurled her down into the dirt of a flower bed. She put out her hand, only to balance herself, but her fingers closed round the handle of a small gardening trowel. In that moment I became her, entered her body, took over her thoughts.

  “Now I was the one clasping the trowel. And I had no compunction about striking back. I raised my hand and, with a strength born of years of hatred, drove the point of the tool straight into Michael’s throat, and deep. He had not expected the attack—indeed, it had all happened very fast, in that way of dreams.

  “Blood spurted from his open jugular vein, staining his shirt, his coat, the very stones of the courtyard. He put his hands to his throat, eyes bulging with horrified rage, as if to stem the flow. Of course, he could not.

  “With a gurgling sound I shall remember as long as I have the capacity to recall anything at all, he slumped to the ground and perished there at my feet, and even then I felt no remorse. My hands and dress—indeed, her hands and dress, whoever that ill-fated woman had been—were sticky with the crimson evidence of my guilt, but I would have celebrated, rather than mourned.

  “It was always the same dream, and it went on for months on end, in exactly the same manner. Each time it ended as other people rushed into the courtyard, grasping at the woman, crouching over Michael, squashing the delicate flowers under the soles of their shoes.

  “About eight months had passed, I suppose, and I was in Paris, because my mother had bid me to come to that city on other business, when I happened to pick up an English newspaper left behind at a table in front of a sidewalk cafe. In it was a discreet report of Michael Bradford’s murder, somewhere in New South Wales. He’d been stabbed with a garden trowel, by an unnamed woman who had subsequently been taken into custody. Before the alleged killer could be tried, however, she hanged herself in her cell.

  “I was so stricken that I took to my flat for three days and would not come out for any reason. It wasn’t that I spared any grief for Michael, but every time I thought of that poor woman, I was bludgeoned with guilt. Had she been blamed for a crime I had actually committed, while thinking I was merely dreaming? How else could I have known so much about Michael’s death if I hadn’t been there?

  “Eventually I had to stop asking myself those questions, for it was pure torture, and there was no way to learn the answers.
But sometimes it haunts me still, even now, when so much time has passed.

  “I could not seem to stop moving about the world after that. I was always on board a steamer bound for somewhere, or a train, or rattling along in a coach. I still insisted on doing things the human way, you see, but if I’d really been human, I’m sure the pace I kept would have done me in. Even my parents, who can go anywhere they wish, provided the sun is not shining in that place, of course, simply by thinking of their destination, were hard put to keep up with me.

  “I began to collect things on my journeys—a jade figure here, a painting or a sculpture there, but the idea of going into business did not occur to me until 1925, when I finally opened a shop in San Francisco. I had garnered some friends in that city, and the need to wander lessened, though it certainly hadn’t abated.

  “By the time air travel was prevalent, I was off again, though I kept the San Francisco shop for many years.

  “My friends grew old and died, and that was nearly unbearable for me, being left behind over and over again. I became almost reclusive and then left California, because there were too many memories.

  “Finally I settled in Seattle—I’m not sure why, beyond the fact that it’s beautiful, with the water and the trees and the mountains all round. I know I had a sense of belonging that I had never really known before, in any other place on Earth, as if I had come home at last.

  “I was dreadfully lonely, but careful not to make many friends. I confined my social life, such as it was, to the company of my parents, Valerian, and a few other diverting vampires.

  “For want of something to do, I opened my store on Western Avenue under the name of Kristina Tremayne. When some years had passed, I went away for a while and came back as my “daughter,” Kristina Bennington. Then, when enough time had gone by, I reinvented myself again, this time as Kristina Holbrook. As my uncle Aidan had done before me, I willed my assets to myself, as though I were my own descendent. Otherwise, obviously, a lot of difficult questions might have been asked.

  “I grew set in my ways, over the years, as mortals and monsters alike will do. I ran my shop, made occasional buying trips, attended estate sales, and the like. I read extensively and I was excruciatingly bored. Sometimes, when the dreams of Michael’s murder in the Australian courtyard threatened, I didn’t sleep for weeks at a time.

  “Finally I met you, and everything changed….”

  She had almost said, “I met you again,” but caught herself just in time. Max had enough to deal with without adding an account of one of his past lives to the tale. There were reasons, after all, why most people did not recall earlier incarnations—good ones. The past, for mortals at least, was gone, and looking back, except to learn, was a waste of the precious present.

  “It sounds like a lonely life,” Max said gently. They had reached the mountain lodge where they had booked reservations the week before, and there were snowflakes dancing in front of the headlights.

  “It was,” Kristina replied.

  “Wait here,” Max said, reaching out to touch her arm. “I’ll register us and get the key to our cabin.”

  She nodded. After so many years of doing everything by herself, for herself, it was lovely to be so thoughtfully attended. She looked forward to being alone with Max, to the privacy of the cabin, and the freedom to make love as much and as long as they wanted.

  True to his word, Max returned within five minutes, climbing into the warm Blazer, tossing the huge old-fashioned key into Kristina’s lap with a grin, shifting the engine into reverse. A fire had been laid in their one-room cottage, but not lit, and the air was so cold that they could see their breath.

  Max crouched beside the hearth, struck a match, and got a good blaze going. Then, with a light in his eyes, he turned to Kristina, who was shivering inside her cloth coat.

  “I think you need a little warming up,” he said, rising.

  Kristina felt a thrill go through her as he came toward her, drew her into his arms, and kissed her. It was tentative at first, that kiss, but as Max put his hands inside Kristina’s coat and boldly cupped her breasts, it grew deeper and more demanding.

  She had made love with this man before, of course, and known true rapture, but that first contact was a portent of something still more powerful, something rooted in eternity itself.

  He stripped her of the coat, then her boots. He took off her sweater and her bra, and then, after kissing each of her taut nipples, he began unhooking her skirt. She was covered in goose bumps and at the same time approaching meltdown, so great was the heat within her.

  Finally Max removed her skirt and slip and pantyhose, and she stood before him utterly naked, trembling with anticipation. The fire on the hearth was just beginning to warm the room, but a thin film of perspiration glistened on Kristina’s bare flesh.

  “I’ve been wanting to do this ever since I first laid eyes on you,” he said. He was still fully dressed, except for his jacket, which he had tossed aside at some point, and now he knelt in front of Kristina like a worshiper before a goddess.

  “W-What?” she whispered. Though she knew, somehow.

  The cabin was dark, except for the flickering light of the fireplace, but Kristina was in a fever. She didn’t know whether she had turned out the single lamp or if Max had.

  “To taste you,” Max answered. He caressed her belly with his fingertips, then held her hips for a moment, as though aligning her for possession. Then he began to massage her most private place, making it ready, causing it to harden in the same sweetly painful way her nipples had done earlier, at the touch of his tongue.

  Kristina had nothing to hold on to, but it didn’t matter, because Max was supporting her. He widened her stance a little, moved his hands to clasp her buttocks, and delved through musky silk to take her full in his mouth.

  She cried out throatily, letting her head fall back, not at all certain that she could bear such pleasure.

  But bear it she must, for Max would show her no quarter.

  He teased her mercilessly, now suckling hard, now nibbling, now laving her with his tongue. She groaned aloud, grinding her hips without shame, desperate to be vulnerable and more vulnerable still.

  Finally Max eased her back into a chair, draped her trembling legs over its arms, and consumed her in earnest. Kristina bucked under his lips and tongue, hairline and body drenched in sweat, begging him in senseless, disjointed phrases for release.

  In his own sweet time he granted her appeal, but it was a brief victory. As soon as her body had ceased its violent spasms of pleasure, he proceeded to make her want him all over again. By the time Max carried Kristina to the bed, which was covered with a bright, heavy quilt, she was all but delirious and could not honestly have said whether the room was cold or warm.

  She herself was burning, but the fever was an ancient one.

  Max undressed at his own maddening pace, the way he did everything, but when he lay beside Kristina on the bed, and she reached out to touch him, to clasp his staff in her hand, she knew how much he wanted her. He had paid a great price to make certain that Kristina’s needs were accommodated.

  “I love you,” she said, rolling on top of him.

  “I—love—you—” The words came hoarse and splintered from his throat, for she was still holding him, her knees astraddle of his hips.

  “By all rights,” Kristina teased, leaning forward to nibble at his lower lip, “I ought to put you through the same exhaustive paces you put me through, but I won’t. Not yet, anyway.”

  Max groaned. He was at her mercy now, and she was enjoying the power this benign dominance gave her. To his credit, so was he.

  “There are all sorts of things I could do to you, you know,” Kristina said, passing a thumb back and forth over the moist tip of his erection, guiding it slowly toward its natural sheath inside her own body. She proceeded to name a few.

  Max was half out of his head with need by then. Exactly what he deserved. “Kristina—”

  She
took him into her, but lingered infinitely at every fraction of an inch, feeling herself tighten instinctively around him, feeling him swell and grow harder still in response. Finally, with a warrior’s cry, Max grasped her hips and thrust his own upward, possessing her completely.

  There was a power shift in that instant, but not to one or the other. They were true equals, Max and Kristina, as they rode the tempest into a storm of spinning lights and shattering ecstasy.

  Finally Max arched high off the bed, his powerful body flexing as he emptied himself into Kristina, once, twice, three times. For her, the climax lasted even longer—she was still descending, and occasionally catching on still another orgasm, each one sweet but less intense than the last, when Max kissed her temple.

  “Ummm—I think we forgot something,” he said.

  Kristina closed her eyes, crooned low in her throat, and then snuggled against him again. “What?” she asked.

  “A condom.”

  “I haven’t slept with anyone in a hundred years, Max,” Kristina reminded him. “You?”

  “Just Sandy, though it hasn’t been quite that long, so you’re safe with me. But what if you got pregnant?”

  Kristina’s eyes flew open. On the one hand, the prospect of bearing Max’s child delighted her. On the other, it was terrible, because she could never marry him. She had promised herself to Dathan, and it was a vow she must keep, no matter what her own feelings in the matter might be.

  “You don’t suppose—?”

  “Could happen,” Max said. “After all, this is the standard method.”

  Kristina held on to him very tightly and buried her face in his chest. “Would you be angry?” she asked in a small voice.

  “Angry?” The word ruffled the soft hair at her temple, which was still moist from their earlier passion. “God, no. I love kids, Kristina. And I love you.”

  Kristina fought hard not to cry. She was afraid Max was going to ask her to marry him, and equally afraid that he wasn’t. She made a circle on his bare back with the palm of her right hand, greedy for the feel of his flesh. “I thought it made a difference—my turning out to be mortal, I mean.”