Tonight and Always

by Linda Lael Miller

  "I must feed," Valerian said. His magnificent face was utterly impassive; he would not allow the warlock the satisfaction of being right. "Then I shall find the demon babies and make them tell me what they know."

  He crossed the room, ignoring Dathan as thoroughly as though the warlock had not been there at all, and bent to kiss Kristina's forehead. "Stay here," he commanded, and then he vanished.

  Barabbas merely blinked; he was used to his master's comings and goings. But his fierce eyes followed Dathan closely as the visitor sank into a chair near Kristina's chaise.

  "I am calling off our bargain," Dathan announced. "I want only one bride—you, Kristina."

  "I don't love you."

  The warlock closed his beautiful eyes for a moment, as though she'd struck him a physical blow. "I shall teach you to care for me, and make you queen of all my kind, male and female."

  "I do not think witches would take kindly to a queen,'" Kristina said with a soft smile. "You yourself have told me that they are independent creatures. Besides, I have no wish to reign over anyone."

  Dathan leaned forward, sitting now on the edge of his chair, his hands clasped together, his expression so earnest that it caused Kristina pain to look upon his face. "If I swore to keep your Max and his children safe, every moment of every day, until the natural end of their lives, would you agree?"

  Kristina started to refuse, but as the implications of Dathan's words sank in, she held her tongue. This was no idle promise; Dathan surely had the power to do exactly that. As matters stood, she could offer them nothing but danger.

  "It would be a sacrifice," Dathan said very softly. "I know that. But think of it, Kristina. Consider what it means."

  She did not need to think, she knew. Just by coming into Max and the girls' lives, she had put them in mortal peril. By leaving them forever, and taking Dathan for a mate, she could undo that.

  "I need some time," Kristina said. Her heart was already breaking.

  Dathan nodded and rose. "I will make you happy," he vowed.

  Kristina didn't respond. Her eyes were brimming with tears, and when she'd blinked them away, telling herself to be strong, Dathan was gone.

  Valerian found Benecia and Canaan in a forgotten cemetery, overgrown with weeds, behind the ruins of a church in a Nevada ghost town. They were conducting one of their bizarre moonlight tea parties. They had conjured an elegant table, set with fine china and a gleaming silver service, and arranged four chairs around it.

  Each of them occupied one, of course, their tiny feet dangling high off the ground in patent leather Mary Janes. They wore starched dresses, rife with ruffles, and their hair, as always, was done in gleaming ringlets. Their guests were a mummified miner and a teenage hitchhiker, freshly drained of her life's blood and staring mutely into eternity.

  The relationship between Benecia and Valerian was not particularly cordial, although Canaan appeared to bear him neither rancor nor affection. Canaan was a self-absorbed creature, concerned, in true vampire fashion, only with her own pleasures. No doubt the hitchhiker had been her evening's kill. Benecia had probably fed elsewhere, since the miner was nothing more than a husk, having been dead for at least seventy years.

  Benecia smiled sweetly, all the more horrible for her resemblance to an exquisitely made porcelain doll. "Valerian," she said.

  Canaan looked at the newcomer with indifference and returned to her one-sided conversation with the hitchhiker.

  Valerian overturned the table without moving, scattering the silver coffeepot, the sugar bowl and creamer, the costly china cups and platters. The miner toppled off his chair, and what was left of his head crumbled to dust. The hitchhiker teetered, but did not fall.

  Canaan vanished in an instant, clearly a vampire who believed that discretion was the better part of valor, but Benecia drew back her perfect upper lip and snarled like the vicious aberration she was. "How dare you?" she spat.

  "I would dare considerably more, and you know it," Valerian replied, unruffled. Benecia was nearly as old as he, but he did not fear her. Not for himself, at least. "Do not try my patience, little beast—if there is one penance in all the universe that might keep me from the flames of hell, it is driving a stake through your brittle heart."

  The demon-child's cornflower blue eyes glinted with hatred, but she did not advance upon him. "What do you want?''

  "An explanation," Valerian replied. "What were you doing in Kristina Holbrook's shop last night?"

  She stared at him in silence for a long time, her expression unreadable. Finally she laughed. "There was something I wanted."

  "The brass doorstop," Valerian said.

  Benecia smiled coyly. "Yes."

  "Where is it now?"

  "I shall never tell you that," she replied cheerfully, "no matter what you do to me."

  Valerian knew she was telling the truth; the fact that she longed for the peace of death was at once her strength and her weakness. Driving a stake through her heart would be a favor at this juncture, and he was in no mood to be merciful.

  "What do you want?" he asked, speaking as calmly as he could.

  Benecia folded small, alabaster white arms. Her shell-like fingernails were tiny and pink, and she wore a frilly white pinafore over her beruffled dress. Valerian recalled an incident far in the past, when she and Canaan had placed all their dolls in little wooden coffins and buried them in a long-abandoned garden, like corpses.

  Inwardly he shuddered, he who hunted human prey with the rise of every moon. The difference was that he rarely killed his quarry, but simply left them in a swoonlike state.

  "But you know what I want," she taunted. "So why trouble to ask?"

  "Answer me, damn you."

  "I want to change the past," she said with a touch of defiance and—Valerian could hardly believe it—sorrow. "I want to grow up as a mortal, become a woman, marry, and have children. Give me that, vampire, and you shall have your ugly brass monkey."

  Valerian did not speak. What she asked was impossible; vampires could travel no further back in time than the moment of their transformation from human to nightwalker.

  "Those are my terms," Benecia said. And then she dissipated like thin fog, as her sister had done, leaving the ruins of her tea party behind her.

  Valerian buried the hitchhiker and the miner and returned to Seattle, where he found Daisy seated in a rocking chair in the nursery, Esteban snuggled in her arms. They were both sleeping, and he did not awaken them.

  Instead he stood silently in the shadows, understanding only too well what Kristina must be feeling, now that she had fallen so thoroughly in love with her mortal, Max Kilcarragh. Centuries of wandering, in an incessant cycle of finding his beloved and then losing her again, had marked Valerian's soul with loneliness so deep that the scars would probably never heal. Now he had found her, managed to break the curse that had torn them asunder so many times before, and he was truly happy.

  With that joy, however, came a vulnerability unlike any he had ever experienced. Loving took so much courage, so much sacrifice. Always the knowledge was with him that one day, being mortal, Daisy would die. He, on the other hand, would look much as he did at that moment; he had not changed significantly in nearly six hundred years.

  She opened her eyes, sensing his presence. Esteban stirred but did not awaken. "Hello, handsome," she said. "What accounts for the frown?"

  "I was thinking that I love you."

  "Odd. Thoughts like that make most people smile."

  "Most people grow old at the same pace. Daisy, I don't want to lose you—not now and not fifty years from now."

  Esteban whimpered in his sleep, and Daisy began to rock the chair gently, one hand patting the boy's thin little back. "You're torturing yourself," she accused softly. "Eventually I'll die. Then I'll be born again as somebody else, and you'll find me, the way you always do. We're meant to be together."

  "Suppose I don't find you?"

  "Vampires are so neurotic," she teased. "Of course
you will." Daisy's expression turned serious, and she studied her beloved mate closely. "Did you manage to track down Kristina's brass monkey?"

  "Yes and no," Valerian replied, pacing, too restless to sit. He would have to go out again, for he had yet to feed, and his powers were at a low ebb. "Benecia Havermail was behind the robbery, and she's holding the thing hostage."

  "Out of spite?"

  "She wants to be mortal again."

  "That's impossible, isn't it?" Daisy asked, frowning.

  Valerian spread his hands. "Aidan Tremayne, Maeve's twin brother, was a vampire for well over two hundred years. Today he is flesh and blood again, with a wife, four children, and no memory whatsoever of his former existence."

  Daisy nodded. "I remember now." She had heard the story long before; there were no secrets between the two of them. "If Aidan could be transformed, why not Benecia?"

  "Aidan was basically good, and he had been made a vampire against his will. Benecia, on the other hand, begged for the privilege and has been unabashedly evil ever since she became a blood-drinker."

  "And as a human being, she would still be evil?"

  "Unspeakably so," Valerian agreed.

  Daisy rose, carrying the little boy out into the entryway. At the base of the stairs Valerian took the child gently from her arms, and together they climbed to the second floor. Esteban's nursery was next to their own room; Valerian laid his adopted son gently in his crib. By morning, they both knew, the baby would have climbed over the rail and curled up on the rug in the center of the floor.

  Daisy took her mate's hand and led him out of the nursery. The new nanny would arrive the next day; perhaps she could get through to Esteban, explain to him that he was safe now, that he need not fear being abused and neglected anymore.

  "Go and feed," she said in the hallway.

  Valerian nodded, resigned, and kissed her tenderly before taking his leave.

  The sun had been up no more than five minutes when Dathan made his way down the circular stone steps to the crypts beneath the desecrated chapel on the Havermail's English estate. The parents of the two beautiful demons were nowhere about—Avery and Roxanne had gone then-separate ways long before—but Benecia and Canaan lay side by side upon their beds of stone, immersed in the vampire sleep.

  It would be so easy to destroy them, the warlock thought, and he had no compunction about taking their lives. Despite their innocent appearance, these were not sweet mortal children, but fiends of the worst order. A stake, an infusion of his own blood, or simply carrying them up the stairs to lie in the sunny courtyard, any one of those methods would suffice.

  Only one thing stopped Dathan from killing them both, and that was the brass monkey. As he had suspected, and Valerian had later confirmed, Benecia knew where the thing was hidden, and she had probably confided in her sister.

  He drew a steel dagger with a jeweled handle from the scabbard on his belt and for a few moments enjoyed the fantasy of plunging it through those callous little hearts, first one, and then the other. Granted, the doorstop would still be at large, but at the same time, one of Kristina's greatest fears would be allayed: the Kilcarragh mortals would be safe from this pair of monsters.

  No chance of Kristina becoming his mate if that happened.

  Dathan wasn't prepared to be quite that noble.

  He smiled. He could, however, let both Benecia and Canaan know that they were not invulnerable, despite their highly developed vampire powers.

  Using the point of the dagger, Dathan pricked his finger and let a drop of blood fall first upon Benecia's barely parted lips, then upon Canaan's. It was not enough to finish them, more's the pity, but when they awakened at nightfall, they would know they had been visited by a powerful enemy. The message could not have been clearer: Beware, for I, the warlock, have found you.

  Reluctantly Dathan then resheathed his blade and left the tomb.

  Within moments of awakening that night, Calder Holbrook went out to feed. He was back in his laboratory, going over the results of Kristina's blood test for perhaps the hundredth time, before an hour had passed.

  Hunting, a delightful sport to many vampires, was a troublesome task to him, to be attended to and forgotten as soon as possible. Maeve relished her powers, her adventures, her singular challenges as queen of the nightwalkers. Calder, on the other hand, got all the excitement he needed just loving Maeve and working on his experiments.

  That night, however, he was deeply troubled.

  Maeve appeared, looking flushed from a recent feeding, just as the small clock on his desk was chiming half past two.

  Calder turned from his microscope to kiss her. As always, the old passion surged between them, undiminished by the passage of many, many years. Before the night was over, he knew, they would make love.

  "Any luck finding Dimity?"

  Maeve shook her head, her blue eyes probing deeply into his, exploring his heart. "What is it, Calder?" she pressed gently. "I know you're upset—I can sense it."

  He looked away for a moment. It was difficult, just knowing what he knew. Telling Maeve, and finally Kristina, would be much worse. "Sit down," he said, indicating a nearby stool.

  Maeve obeyed, her gaze fixed on his face. "Tell me."

  "It's about Kristina," he began, standing before his mate, resting his hands on her shoulders. "I've—well, I took a blood sample from her, because she said she hadn't been feeling well. Maeve, she is undergoing some kind of genetic transformation."

  "What does that mean?" Maeve demanded. She was rigid with anguish; like Calder, she cherished their child.

  He hesitated a moment, but there was no gentle way to say it. "Kristina is aging. Her blood cells are virtually indistinguishable from those of a mortal."

  Tears glimmered along Maeve's dark lashes. Her indigo eyes were wide with horrible understanding. "She's dying?"

  Calder struggled against his own emotions. "Yes," he said finally.

  During the night the snow melted away, and Sunday dawned gray and murky in Seattle. Barabbas lay curled at the foot of Kristina's bed, apparently taking his guard-dog duties very seriously.

  "What do you eat, anyway?" she asked him. "Besides little girls making their way through the woods to Grandmother's house, I mean."

  Barabbas made a sorrowful sound.

  "You're right," Kristina admitted. "It wasn't a very good joke. Come on—maybe there's a steak in the freezer."

  She put on a robe and slippers, because the house was especially cold, and led the way down the rear stairs into the kitchen. After thawing out a top sirloin for the wolf, Kristina poured herself a bowl of cereal and curled up on the family room couch to eat.

  She had just finished when Max pulled into the driveway in his Blazer.

  "I should have called first," he said when Kristina opened the front door to him, "but I was afraid you would tell me to stay away."

  She pulled him inside, closed the door, and then threw her arms around his neck. "Not a chance," she replied.

  Barabbas stood in the doorway leading to the dining room, making a low growling sound.

  "Hush," Kristina scolded. "It's only Max."

  Apparently satisfied, the wolf turned and padded away.

  "Did you sleep last night?" Max asked, holding Kristina in a loose but tantalizing embrace.

  "Did you?" Kristina countered, smiling a little.

  "You know damn well I didn't,'' he retorted somewhat ' grumpily. "All I could think about was that creep, the ex-doorstop, out there somewhere, dreaming up ways to get to you." He kissed her forehead. "Let's get out of here for a while. Take a drive or something."

  The idea sounded wonderful to Kristina, who was beginning to feel like a prisoner. "What about Barabbas?"

  "He can stay here," Max answered, giving Kristina a little nudge toward the stairs. She needed to get dressed, of course, before they could go anywhere.

  At the base of the stairway she paused and looked back at Max with a mischievous smile. "I believe you'r
e jealous of him," she teased.

  Max shoved a hand through his hair. "Maybe you're right," he answered in all seriousness. "After all, the wolf got to stay here and watch over you last night. I happen to regard that as my job, not his."

  Kristina shook her head. "Males," she muttered, and hurried up the stairs to get ready for the day.

  When she came back down half an hour later, clad in black corduroy jeans, a heavy gray sweater, and lightweight hiking boots, Max was sitting in the living room on a hassock. Barabbas faced him, seated on the hearth rug.

  They were staring at each other, man and beast, and Kristina wondered who would have looked away first if she hadn't entered the room when she did.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 14

  « ^ »

  Bree Kilcarragh took in her surroundings with wonder. Grandmother and Aunt Gweneth said the place was called a flea market, though she had yet to spot even one bug. All she could see was a lot of strange stuff, displayed on shaky tables and in booths.

  She tugged at Eliette's hand, while Grandmother and Aunt Gweneth stopped to examine a pair of salt and pepper shakers made to look like little toilets. "Why would anybody want to buy a flea?" she asked in a loud whisper.

  Eliette rolled her eyes. She was older and wiser, and she never missed a chance to let Bree know it, either. "That just means there's a lot of junk to buy." she whispered back.

  Grandmother turned and smiled at them. It was warm in the large building, so Bree and Eliette didn't have to wear their coats. "Getting tired?" she asked.

  Both girls shook their heads vigorously. Although they missed their daddy, they liked staying with their grandparents, and today was extra special because Aunt Gweneth was with them.

  "It's almost Christmas," Aunt Gweneth said. "I've got to find something really ugly for Max."

  Allison Kilcarragh, also known as Grandmother, smiled. She was so pretty, Bree thought, with her nice clothes and shiny gray hair. "Good heavens, Gwen," she replied, "it isn't even Thanksgiving yet."