Tonight and Always

by Linda Lael Miller

  If only, if only, if only.

  As Max climbed back into bed and stretched to turn off the lamp, however, he found himself thinking about Kristina again, and wondered if he was ready for all the things she made him feel.

  After Max and the children had gone, the house seemed emptier than ever. Kristina, though fond of her elegant home, suddenly felt a need to leave it, at least for a little while.

  She focused her thoughts on her parents' London residence, the stately mansion where she had passed much of her childhood, and arrived there in the blink of an eye. It was around five a.m. in England, and dawn was not far off.

  Her mother might still be hunting, Kristina knew, but her father would have fed early, in order to spend as much time as possible in his lab.

  Having assembled herself in the kitchen, still empty at that early hour, Kristina reverted to human habits, went to the cellar door and descended the steep stone steps. There was grillwork on the windows, which were just above ground level, and the area was in no way spooky, as a more fanciful soul might expect. No cobwebs, no coffins, no candelabras or ghostly shrouded furniture.

  "Papa?" Kristina rapped at the door of Calder's lab as she called to him. Only her mother and possibly Valerian would have dared to enter unannounced.

  The heavy panel swung open on well-oiled hinges, and Dr. Holbrook stood in the opening, wearing a lab coat, his dark hair rumpled. He was plainly surprised to see her, which in turn surprised Kristina, for vampires are perceptive creatures, rarely caught off guard.

  "Hello, sweetheart," Calder said, a glorious smile dawning in his handsome face as he took her hand and drew her into his inner sanctum. He kissed her forehead. "What are you doing here?"

  "I couldn't sleep," she said.

  Calder glanced at his watch, hastily drawn form his vest pocket, and frowned. In truth, he did not need such a mechanism to discern the time for, as a blood-drinker, he was always intuitively aware of approaching daylight. Dr. Holbrook still practiced many small, mortal rituals, though whether out of habit or preference Kristina didn't know. "What I wouldn't give for the luxury of insomnia," he said, and his serious expression was replaced in an instant by a wry grin. "I could accomplish so much."

  Kristina raised herself on tiptoe to kiss her father's cheek. He had not aged, since becoming a vampire in his mid-thirties, and thus did not look much older than his daughter. "You work so hard," she chided gently. "Why can't you be self-indulgent, like Valerian? Or adventurous, like Mother?"

  Calder chuckled and shook his head. There was no love lost between her father and the vampire she thought of as an uncle, although he had been the one to transform Calder to an immortal more than a century before. "Heaven forbid," he said, "that I should be anything like Valerian, beguiling monster that he is. As for adventure—I get all I need just living with Maeve Tremayne."

  Kristina saw that Calder was growing wearier by the moment as morning drew near; he spoke slowly and seemed unusually distracted. She smiled. "You need to rest now," she said, "so I won't keep you from your bed. It's all right, isn't it, if I spend some time here?"

  He squeezed her shoulders lightly. "Of course it is—this is your home." Discreetly he guided her toward the door of the lab. "Perhaps you'll still be here at sunset, and we can talk further."

  Eased out of her father's private domain, Kristina waggled her fingers in temporary farewell. "Sleep tight, Papa," she said and took herself back up the stairs to the kitchen.

  Mrs. Fullywub, the housekeeper, was there, standing in front of the open door of the refrigerator. She was clad in a yellow chenille robe, and her gray hair was tied up in the old-fashioned way, with many little strips of cloth.

  "Mercy, child," she protested, laying one hand to her heart, "you scared me!"

  Kristina was fond of the woman; though mortal, Mrs. F. had been with the family for many years, and she knew what was what in that unconventional household. "I would have thought you'd be used to people appearing and disappearing by now," she observed. The refrigerator was still open, and she reached past the housekeeper for a bottle of mineral water. "I use the word people loosely, of course."

  Mrs. F. took packages of sliced cheese and cold cuts from the shelves and carried them to the counter, where she began making a sandwich. "It's very good to see you again, Miss Holbrook," the old woman said warmly. "I hope I didn't make you feel unwelcome or anything like that."

  Sipping her water, Kristina pulled back one of the stools at the breakfast bar and sat. "I could never feel unwelcome here," she replied. "And I'm sorry for startling you."

  Mrs. F. rolled her wise, merry eyes. "I'm getting too old for this job," she confessed, still busy with her snack. "A body never knows who—or what—she'll meet in the passage."

  Kristina chuckled. "Valerian, perhaps?"

  "Oh, him," Mrs. F. muttered, discounting one of the most powerful vampires in existence with a motion of one hand. "He's gentle as a lamb, that one, if you know how to manage him." She paused and shivered. "It's creatures like those dreadful Havermail children—Benecia and Canaan, I believe they're called—that I dread."

  Kristina's amusement faded; she felt a flicker of alarm. Benecia and Canaan were hardly children, as each had lived more than five centuries as a vampire. "They've been here?'' she asked in surprise.

  "'Oh, yes," Mrs. F. answered. "Are you hungry, dear?

  I must be sleep-fogged—it only occurs to me now that you might like something to eat as well."

  "No, thank you," Kristina said automatically. Her mind was still on the Havermails—two ghouls all the more hideous for their appearance. They looked like little girls, exquisitely beautiful ones at that, because they had been transformed as children. "When were Benecia and Canaan in this house?"

  Mrs. F. trundled across the kitchen and took a seat at the table, a few feet from where Kristina sat, her sandwich on a china plate before her. "Just the other night, dear," she answered after pausing to make mental calculations. "Don't you worry, though—they came in response to a summons from your mother. I doubt they'd dare to show their awful little faces under this roof unless Maeve invited them, though I admit it gave me a turn to stumble across them the way I did."

  Kristina was not reassured. Benecia and Canaan might be afraid of Maeve, the acknowledged queen of all blood-drinkers, but they probably wouldn't fear a half-mortal like herself. Suppose their deadly attention was drawn to Max and Bree and Eliette through Kristina? Just the thought of that made her raise one hand to her mouth in a mute expression of horror.

  "Oh, dear," Mrs. F. fretted, pushing away her food. "You mustn't be frightened, Kristina—horrid as they are, those creatures wouldn't have the gall to trouble you. They know your mother would finish them if they did, and she'd have to get to the little demons before Valerian found them, at that."

  Kristina swallowed hard, her eyes burning with hot, sudden tears. "If only it were that simple," she murmured. She wanted desperately to speak to Maeve, but by now the sun had risen, and her mother would be sleeping, probably side by side with Calder in the special vault beneath the house. "It's not myself I fear for, Mrs. F. There are—there are mortals I've come to care about. And by that caring, I've made them vulnerable."

  Mrs. F. rose and went to stand beside Kristina, patting her hand once with cool, aged fingers. "Here, now. Human beings are born vulnerable. Yes, your love may endanger these special mortals of yours, but you are also in a unique position to protect them. You must not forget your own powers."

  "I've sublimated my magic," Kristina confessed, still near tears. "All this time I've wanted so much to be fully human—I've pretended—"

  "Then you must become strong again. You must be what you are, Kristina, and stop resisting your own nature."

  Kristina nodded. "Yes," she said after a long, reflective silence. "You're right, Mrs. F. It's time I explored my powers, found out what I can and cannot do."

  "Your mother will help," the housekeeper agreed gently. "And I have no dou
bt that Valerian could advise you in the matter, too."

  Valerian. It was eight hours earlier in the western United States. He would still be awake, if he had not gone abroad to hunt.

  Yes, Valerian was definitely the vampire of the hour. Kristina stood, stepped back from Mrs. F. and the breakfast bar, smiled, and gave the old woman a nod of farewell.

  Her thoughts took her not to Seattle, as she had expected, or even to Las Vegas, where Valerian still mystified the masses with his magic act four times per week, at the Venetian Hotel. Instead she found herself on a moonlit street, in a tropical clime. The paving stones were broken and uneven, the houses squalid and close together. The stench of raw sewage mingled with that of ripe garbage, and Kristina wrinkled her nose.

  There was no sign of the vampire, no sign of anyone, though she sensed the slumbering residents of the hovels crowding both sides of the narrow street. She heard rats rummaging in the mountains of refuse crammed into every alleyway, piled outside every door. Somewhere, a couple made sleepy love; from another direction came the faint mewling of a hungry baby.

  What is this place? Kristina asked herself, standing still on the street, waiting, listening to her intuition.

  "This is Rio," a familiar voice answered from just behind her. "Great Zeus, Kristina—you are rusty."

  She turned to see Valerian an arm's length away, looking spectacular and arrogant, as usual. Perhaps for the drama of it—he was impervious, of course, to the smothering heat—he wore one of his many tailored tuxedos and a voluminous cape lined with cobalt blue satin.

  "This is a really depressing place to hunt, if that was what you were doing," she said, in a futile effort to deflect his attention from her neglected skills.

  "All the places where I hunt are depressing," Valerian retorted, looming over her now, his patrician nose nearly touching hers. "Did you think I would go to Disneyland?''

  Kristina felt uncomfortable, though she had traveled to virtually every part of the world, sometimes with the aid of a train or airplane, sometimes without. "I don't like it here."

  "The answer to that is so obvious I can't bring myself to utter it."

  She sighed, then a new thought occurred to her, and she studied the imperious vampire with narrowed eyes. "So help me, Valerian, if you're hunting something besides your dinner—"

  He drew himself up, so that he seemed even taller than his already intimidating height, folded his arms and glared. "Have a care, Snippet," he said, seething. "To insult me in that manner—or any other—is most imprudent."

  "Before Daisy came into your life, you were a notorious rake," Kristina reminded him.

  "The key words in that statement," Valerian replied evenly, his tone no less lethal for its softness, "were before Daisy. I am here, if you must know, because there is a child—"

  Kristina's eyes widened in surprise. "You've sired a child?"

  Valerian bristled, then smoothed his countenance by means of his will, like a majestic bird settling ruffled feathers into sleek array. "Please," he snapped, thereby dispensing with the possibility, as though his word were universal law.

  "Well, you can't just snatch one off the streets," Kristina retorted, growing impatient. "Kids are people, you know, and they have rights."

  Valerian arched one eyebrow, which made him look, if possible, even more imposing. Then, a moment later he relented, and Kristina saw sorrow in his magnificent face. He might have been sculpted by Michelangelo, a statue brought to life at the whim of a favored angel, so perfect were his features, his build, his graceful manner. "Thank you for that sermon," he said, but then he took Kristina's hand and drew her along the street, through an alleyway, up a set of crumbling stone steps to a wretched, attic-like room.

  The heat was sweltering, the air close and fetid.

  On the floor sat a little boy, probably three or four years of age, though it was hard to tell. His clothes were mere rags, he was filthy, and he raised great, luminous brown eyes to the vampire.

  "His mother is a prostitute," Valerian said to Kristina, without taking his eyes from the child. "Tonight, in a cantina not far from here, she sold him, her own son, to a procurer who specializes in pretty boys. They'll be coming to fetch him at any moment."

  Kristina felt sick. Her own problems were forgotten, at least temporarily. "What are you going to do?"

  Valerian did not reply. Instead he dropped to one knee and addressed the boy in rapid, facile Portuguese. The child raised his arms to the vampire, obviously wanting to be held. He spoke to Valerian in the same language, and although Kristina did not speak it, she got the general drift.

  Valerian meant to take the boy away, perhaps even home to Daisy in Seattle, to be raised as their son.

  As Kristina watched, the magnificent vampire drew the little boy into his arms and rose to his feet.

  "His name is Esteban," he said to Kristina as the lad nestled against Valerian's broad shoulder and buried his face in his neck. With a shudder of relief, Esteban gave himself up to sleep.

  She was moved by the sight of the monster cradling the frightened child. "Valerian," she whispered, "he's mortal. This is very dangerous—"

  "Are you implying that I would do him harm—this—this baby?"

  "Of course not," Kristina replied, annoyed. The situation had reminded her, however, of her own concern for Max and his daughters, and the singular dangers she might have brought into their lives. "But you have enemies. He could be hurt."

  "Would any fate be worse than what awaits him this night, at the hands of his mother?" Valerian affected a sigh, having no breath to fuel a real one. "He will be my son," the vampire added patiently. "The fiend who dares to touch him will suffer a reprisal that would make hell itself seem trivial by comparison."

  Kristina had no answer, for she knew that Esteban's world was a place where children such as he could be shot in the streets like vermin. Despite the perils he might face, even with Valerian to protect him, he would undoubtedly be better off in Seattle.

  A woman's laughter sounded from the street outside, shrill and somehow ugly. Instinctively Kristina took a step closer to Valerian and touched the child's matted ebony hair with a tender, protective hand.

  Valerian gave Kristina a meaningful glance, covered the sleeping child with his cape, and vanished. She had no choice but to follow on the vampire's coattails.

  They popped into the mansion in Seattle simultaneously, and Esteban was still sleeping, undisturbed, when Valerian laid him gently on the plush sofa in the large front room Kristina thought of as a parlor. There was a fire crackling in the grate of the beautiful chiseled marble fireplace, and Barabbas lay on the hearth, his muzzle resting on his paws, his eerie eyes watchful.

  There was no sign of Daisy, but it was a vast house, and both Valerian and Kristina knew she was around somewhere.

  Kristina felt awkward, but she held her ground. It was important that she speak with Valerian.

  "What is it?" the vampire asked without looking at her, covering Esteban's small, thin body with a cashmere afghan as he spoke. "I know you didn't seek me out for nothing."

  "I wanted to speak to you because I'm—I'm afraid."

  That statement drew Valerian's gaze straight to Kristina's face. "Afraid? Of what?"

  "Of Benecia and Canaan Havermail, to name just two of a great many ogres."

  He raised an eyebrow in that familiar expression of irritation. "If those soulless chits have threatened you, I shall put stakes through their miserable, atrophied hearts!"

  Barabbas rose from his warm resting place on the hearth to pad over to the couch and sniff the little boy's grubby face. Kristina shook her head. "I'm not afraid for myself," she said. "It's Max and his children. Without meaning to, I've made them vulnerable."

  "Without meaning to?" Valerian echoed, somewhat skeptically. "Come now, Kristina—you may have let your powers go to an alarming degree, but you are not stupid. You must have known, from the moment you met this man, that he was only a mortal, and thus pre
y to all manner of fiends, human and otherwise."

  Kristina could not refute Valerian's claim. She had been selfish, wanting Max and the girls to be part of her life, however briefly, but she had not admitted them unwittingly. "All right!" she snapped, panicked. "I knew! I was lonely—Max is so gentle and kind and intelligent and—"

  "Shhh," Valerian said, taking her shoulders in his hands, as her father had done earlier in London. "You needn't justify what you feel, my sweet."

  "But what about the dangers? It will be my fault if—"

  "It is your task to protect those you love, Kristina. And you have the means to do so—you were born with a great deal of your mother's magic."

  Before Kristina could argue that she was no match for ancient vampires like the Havermails, Daisy entered the room, clad in a blue and white flannel nightshirt and fuzzy slippers. Her gaze went straight to Esteban, as though drawn there by a magnet, and Kristina marveled that she had not seen how much her friend wanted a child until now.

  "'Who is this?" Daisy asked in the softest of voices, kneeling by the couch and smoothing the boy's hair back from his forehead with feather-light fingers. He stirred and made a fearful, whimpering sound, but did not awaken.

  Valerian was watching Daisy with a tenderness so poignant that it wrenched Kristina's heart. She knew she could not stay another moment; to do so would be an inexcusable intrusion.

  She did not feel like blinking herself back to London, however. She'd done enough traveling for one day, and wanted only to return to her own house.

  She used no magic to do so, but simply let herself out and walked the short distance. Once there, she gathered all the letters she'd written to her aged governess over the years, settled herself in the big, cozy chair in the family room, and began to read.