Tonight and Always

by Linda Lael Miller

  Disbelieving annoyance had finally turned to rage. "That idiot!" Maeve hissed, letting go of Kristina's hand, surging to her feet. "How can he think Nemesis would tolerate such an aberration for so much as a moment?"

  Nemesis, Kristina knew, was a powerful angel. A warrior feared, and rightfully so, by the very demons of hell. For centuries, Nemesis had been straining at the celestial bit, wanting to destroy the supernatural world once and for all. Maeve, Valerian, and Dathan had barely prevented that from happening before Kristina was born. Clearly the danger was still very real.

  Kristina made another attempt at conjuring tea and this time got it right. She supposed caffeine was a mistake, given the situation, but she needed something to raise her energy level. "I ran into Benecia Havermail the other night," she said cautiously. "She implied that you have your hands full with some new crisis. What's going on, Mother?"

  As easily as that, the tables were turned. Kristina had become the inquisitor, instead of the one being questioned. Maeve began to pace smoothly and gracefully, as she did everything. But she was clearly agitated.

  "There has been an—incident."

  "What sort of incident?'' Kristina pressed.

  "Do you remember Dimity?"

  The image of a beautiful vampire came to Kristina's mind. Dimity was fair of hair and flesh, and she'd played a string instrument of some sort, a small harp or dulcimer.

  Her most distinguishing characteristic, however, was her friendship with Gideon, an angel under the command of Nemesis himself.

  "Yes," Kristina said. "I remember." She'd always thought Dimity looked more like an angel than a fiend, but then that was an attribute of evil—it was so often gentle of countenance, beguiling to the eyes, deceiving the heart.

  "They have vanished, the pair of them."

  Kristina made no further attempt to drink her tea. The ramifications of her mother's words were earthshaking. If Gideon had been destroyed or wooed to the dark side, there would literally be hell to pay. Dimity, for her part, would be on her own as far as her fellow vampires were concerned, but angels were protected, each one accounted for and cherished by their Maker. As were mortals.

  "Surely Nemesis would know where—"

  Maeve interrupted her with a shake of the head. "That's the mystery of it. There's no sign, anywhere, of either of them."

  Kristina let out a long breath. "What's your theory, Mother? And don't say you haven't one, because I know you too well to believe it."

  The vampire queen ceased her pacing and gave her daughter a level look. "I've discussed the matter with your father, of course. And the only possibility we've been able to come up with is that they've gone into some other dimension, some alternate reality."

  Kristina was nearly speechless. "A place even Nemesis doesn't know about?" The implications of that were staggering, because the warrior angel was privy to the greatest secrets of heaven itself. How could there possibly be a place, a realm, that was beyond his ken, out of his reach?

  "You've been searching for them."

  Maeve nodded. "To no avail, obviously. Nemesis has been turning the universe upside-down as well, and he is fit to be tied, as you can imagine. He thinks we're plotting against the Light, we vampires, planning to take over, extinguish the sun—" She flung her hands wide in a gesture of bewilderment, an extremely rare emotion for her.

  "Are those things possible?" Kristina asked, awestruck as well as frightened. If they were, she had underestimated her mother's powers and Valerian's by an immeasurable margin.

  "No," Maeve said, "but Nemesis can be utterly unreasonable when his temper is roused. The fact that his every effort to locate Gideon has failed only compounds his frustration, of course."

  "Dear heaven," Kristina murmured.

  "I wish you wouldn't use that word," Maeve replied crisply. She gathered herself, as imperious as ever, and stood before Kristina, willing her daughter to rise. Kristina could no more have resisted than a jonquil bulb could defy the warm, incessant tug of spring sunlight. "We must still discuss the warlock."

  Kristina thought of Max and Bree and Eliette, how vulnerable they were. "I have reasons of my own for forging an alliance with Dathan," she said evenly. "Just as you once had. Besides, I doubt that a warlock and a vampire could conceive a child in any case."

  "Do you?" Maeve asked, arching one ebony eyebrow in an expression that might have been disdain, had it been directed at anyone else except her daughter or her beloved mate. "You forget, then, that you yourself were born of a nightwalker and a mortal. That, too, was thought to be impossible."

  Kristina sighed. "I haven't forgotten," she said. "But my conception was a rare occurrence, wasn't it? There has been no other birth like it, before or since—isn't that true?''

  "Yes," Maeve admitted, but only after a long and stubborn silence. "It's true."

  "Then we can safely assume that any union between Dathan and a vampire would be childless."

  "We can safely assume nothing," Maeve said fiercely. "But you are right about one thing—I simply cannot concern myself with this affair, not at the moment. The other situation must take precedence over virtually everything else."

  Kristina faced her mother and kissed her cool, alabaster white forehead. "I will be very careful," she promised. "Don't expend your energies worrying about me."

  Maeve made a sound that might have been a sigh in a creature with breath. "Warlocks are the most treacherous of monsters," she said. "And they are the natural enemies of vampires."

  "Yes," Kristina replied, "but it isn't only politics that makes strange bedfellows. I need Dathan's help, and apparently he needs mine. Never fear, though—I won't make the mistake of trusting him."

  "That will have to be good enough, for the moment at least," Maeve conceded. "I am glad to hear that you are giving up this silly pretense of being human and finally exploring your powers. It's about time you came to your senses."

  Kristina bit her lip and gestured toward the shelves behind her, where the manuscript she had been perusing still lay. "May I borrow some of those volumes? There are some interesting, if ancient, spells recorded there—difficult to decipher but worth the effort, I think."

  "Of course," Maeve said. She made a gesture with one hand, and the books Kristina wanted to read vanished into thin air, to land neatly on her desk at home, no doubt. Express mail, vampire style. "I must go now, darling," the queen continued. "First to hunt, then to seek the ever-illusive Dimity. Your father is probably in the laboratory if you'd like to see him."

  Kristina smiled and nodded. "Good luck in your search."

  Maeve vanished in a draft of cool air and a whiff of jasmine.

  Kristina hesitated only a few moments before heading belowstairs, to her father's favorite place. Still oddly weary, knowing she would need her energy for the return trip to Seattle, she took the stairs in good mortal fashion and knocked at the laboratory door.

  Simultaneously a lock clicked, and Calder's voice called out, "Come in, Kristina."

  She entered to find her father busy at one of his tables. He appeared to be performing an autopsy on something, and Kristina felt bile surge into the back of her throat. "What is that?" she asked, holding back.

  Calder grinned at her over one shoulder. He was handsome, and more than one female vampire had dared to flirt with him over the years, but he cared only for Maeve. "Sorry, I should have warned you," he said. "This is—was—a vampire."

  Kristina's revulsion was overruled by her natural curiosity, much of which had been inherited, no doubt, from Calder himself. She stepped closer, looking down at the creature on the table, saw a humanoid shape with fangs and sunken, staring eyes. There was none of the gore that would have accompanied such an examination of a mortal, however—the vampire, a female, was dried out and crumbling, like a wasp's nest long abandoned.

  "Who-who was she?"

  "No one you knew," Calder said, returning his attention to his work.

  "How was she killed?"

  "A
n infusion of warlock blood, I would guess. There have been a number of such cases lately, though Dathan and his underlings deny all knowledge of the matter."

  Kristina shivered. "Why the autopsy?"

  "Part of an experiment," Calder said.

  Of course. He was still trying to find the method and the magic that would "cure" blood-drinkers of their ghastly obsession, without robbing them of their singular powers.

  She spoke quietly, gently, because she needed for him to look at her, needed his full attention. "Papa, I want to be mortal—I want to have babies, get gray hair, and eventually die. Can you help me?"

  Calder's splendid face contorted for a moment with pain and perhaps with understanding. He said nothing just then, but left the autopsy table to cross the room where he shed his lab coat and scrubbed his hands with disinfectant soap and a brush, like a surgeon.

  Kristina followed him, stayed close by his side. "Can you?'' she repeated.

  "I don't know," Calder answered. She saw true suffering in his eyes as he looked at her. To do what she asked would be, in his view, to kill her.

  "Don't you ever get weary, Papa?" Kristina pressed. "Don't you long sometimes for peace, for oblivion, for cool, dark nothingness?"

  Calder was drying his hands on a starched, spotless towel. He tossed the cloth into a hamper beside the sink before replying. "I am young, as vampires go," he said. "There is still much I want to accomplish."

  "But someday—?"

  He closed his eyes for a moment, this vampire who had once been a man, a surgeon on the bloody battlefields of the American Civil War. He had seen anguish, of both the flesh and the spirit, and despite his intense focus on his experiments, he was not insensible to the shared sorrows of men and monsters. "Perhaps someday I will grow weary, yes. Kristina, why do you ask these questions? Is it because of that mortal you have become enamored of?''

  "Mostly, yes," Kristina admitted. There was no use in lying to Calder, even if she'd felt the inclination. Because of the scientific bent of his mind, he was far more focused than Maeve, and attempts to dissemble were lost on him. "I love Max very much, Papa. You of all people"—they both smiled at the misnomer—"er—vampires—should understand."

  "I do," Calder said with a nod. He frowned and narrowed his eyes, studying Kristina more intently than usual. "You do not look well. What is wrong?"

  Kristina shrugged. "Love, I suppose," she said. "And I am so very tired."

  Calder's frown deepened. "Sit down," he said, indicating a nearby stool. Behind him, the half-dissected vampire was clearly visible, lying still on its gleaming stainless-steel autopsy table. Calder took a syringe from its sterile packaging and skillfully drew blood from the vein in Kristina's right forearm.

  "What's the diagnosis, Doctor?" Kristina asked with a wan smile.

  He set the vial of blood carefully on a countertop and smiled back, but there was a shadow of consternation in his dark eyes. "Probably nothing," he replied, "but it will take some time to determine the exact nature of the problem."

  Kristina felt a little shiver of uneasiness. Was it possible for her to be ill? She'd never had so much as a case of the sniffles, in almost a century and a half of life, though she did occasionally suffer headaches. Even those tended to be more psychic in origin, however, rather than physical. "You'll be in touch as soon as you know?"

  He came to her and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Of course, and in the meantime, I don't want you fretting. I took that blood sample as a precautionary measure, and for no other reason."

  Kristina stood. "But there is another reason. You must study the specimen closely, Papa." She paused to draw a resolute breath. "Please. I want to know what I am, if there's a definition."

  Calder squeezed Kristina's shoulder lightly before letting go. He did not speak again but simply nodded.

  Kristina summoned all her strength and willed herself back to Seattle. Although she had aimed for her house, she materialized in the shop instead. Then, too tired to do anything more, she curled up on a settee in the back of the store and tumbled into a deep, all-encompassing sleep.

  The shop remained closed that day. The telephone went unanswered, and so did the postman's knock at the door. Kristina was oblivious, almost comatose.

  When she awakened, it was dark, and for a few moments she could not remember where she was. She felt groggy and disoriented, as though she'd been drugged, and the thin light coming in through the windows cast eerie shadows all around her.

  Only then did Kristina recognize her surroundings.

  She pushed splayed fingers through her hair. The Victorian settee was hard, stuffed with bristly horsehair that smelled faintly musty, anything but comfortable. She sat up slowly, shaken and filled with a strange sense of urgency, as though there was somewhere she was supposed to go. Something she needed desperately to do.

  But she couldn't think, couldn't concentrate. What was wrong?

  Kristina made herself stand and flip on a light. She still had enough magic for that, at least, but the effort sapped her strength all the same, made her feel dizzy.

  Someone rapped at the shop door; Kristina made her way through the maze of old furniture and umbrella stands and statues to peer through the glass.

  Jim Graham, a policeman who patrolled the area on foot, greeted her with a concerned smile after she'd fumbled with the locks and opened the door to the chilly night breeze.

  "Everything okay, Ms. Holbrook?"

  "I'm just working late," Kristina said. She hadn't really shaped the excuse; it just fell from her tongue, ready-made.

  "You look like you could use some rest." The cop was a nice middle-aged man, and Kristina liked him. She wished it was so simple, that all she needed was a day in bed or a short vacation.

  "You're right." A smile fluttered near her lips, but she couldn't quite bring it in for a landing. "But you know how it is these days."

  Jim nodded sagely. "You want me to walk you to your car? I could wait while you get your coat and lock up."

  Kristina's car was parked in her garage at home, her coat still hanging in the hall closet. She didn't explain, of course. "That's really kind of you," she said, and meant it. "But I have a friend picking me up in a little while."

  "Well, just make sure you keep the place locked up tight until he gets here," the officer said. "Can't be too careful, you know."

  Kristina thought belatedly of the intruder who had broken into the store some months before. She'd turned him into a doorstop, handily enough, but she wondered now how trustworthy her magic had been, even then, and shuddered to think what might have happened if her skills had failed her. "That's for sure," she agreed as the policeman stepped away from the door. He waited, she noticed with appreciation, until all the locks were in place again.

  The brass monkey was still on his shelf in the back room, where Kristina had left him. Dredging up all the strength she could summon, she reinforced the original spell, and promptly sank to the floor in a faint.

  When Kristina opened her eyes, only moments later, she found herself at home, lying on her own bed. Dathan bent over her to lay a cool cloth on her forehead.

  "What's the matter with me?" she asked in a small voice. She wanted Max, wanted to go to him, to make sure he and the girls were all right, but she couldn't seem to move, except in slow motion.

  The warlock sat down beside the bed. He looked incongruous in the delicate, chintz-covered chair, given his size and his almost regal elegance. "It's only a guess," he said, "but I'd say that all these years of pretending have finally caught up with you. You've allowed your magic to be depleted and, thus, the very essence of your being."

  "Am I going to die?"

  Dathan smiled. "Probably not. You come from sturdy—not to mention stubborn—stock."

  Kristina wasn't sure whether to be relieved or disappointed, and the dilemma made her slightly testy. "What are you doing here?"

  "You're welcome," the warlock said pointedly.

  "Thank you." Kr
istina gave the words a grudging note. "What happened?"

  "You swooned. I dropped by on a lark, and did the—er—gentlemanly thing. Lifted you into my arms, brought you here, all that."

  Kristina closed her eyes for a moment, trying to absorb what was happening to her, to make some sense of it. Dathan's theory, that she had expended vital powers in her efforts to live as a mortal, seemed the most likely. "I'm in big trouble," she said.

  "That's true," Dathan agreed, but lightly.

  "My mother warned me not to trust you."

  He smiled as beatifically as an angel. "Maeve is a suspicious vampire."

  "She is also a smart vampire. I need a spell, Dathan. Something to keep the Havermails away from Max and the children, at least until I can get myself together. Will you help me?"

  "It is a good thing for you, my dear, that you are virtually irresistible." The warlock sighed in a long-suffering fashion. "Yes, I'll arrange to shield your precious mortals, for tonight at least, though I don't think Benecia and Canaan will trouble them."

  "I can't take the chance." But Kristina knew there would have been nothing she could do if Dathan had refused to help. She simply had no strength left.

  Max paced. He'd tried to call Kristina intermittently throughout the day. There was no answer at her shop or at her house.

  She was a businesswoman, an adult with a life of her own, and he had no claim on her, no right to obsess about where she was or what she was doing. Yet something in his gut, some instinct he had never felt before, was telling him there was trouble.

  He shoved a hand through his hair. It was late, and the girls were already in bed. He couldn't leave them alone and, after the exchange with Elaine the night before, he wasn't about to ask his sister-in-law to come over and babysit. The teenager he hired when Elaine wasn't available was probably sound asleep, and if he called his mother or Gwen in the middle of the night, they would be frightened, not to mention angry.

  Max returned to the telephone on the desk in his study and punched the redial button; there was no need to go through the sequence of numbers that would make Kristina's home phone ring, because he'd been calling there since six o'clock.