For All Eternity (The Black Rose Chronicles) (9 page)

Calder absorbed her words for a long interval, one of his hands clasping hers. “Can you take me there?” he asked, finally, catching Maeve off guard with the last question she would have expected him to ask.

She shook her head regretfully. “Mortals cannot travel through time as yet, though you do have the propensity for it locked away somewhere in your brain. It is an ability that must evolve over many, many generations.” He looked so disappointed that Maeve’s heart ached, but a moment later his countenance brightened again. “Can you bring me things from the future, Maeve—like medicine, or books about surgery and diagnosis?” Maeve considered, knowing she should leave this man’s side, once and for all, and never return and, at the same time, feeling infinitely grateful for an excuse to see him again. “I suppose there would be no harm in that. There’s just one thing, however—it isn’t wise to change the course of history, because one can never predict all the ramifications of even the simplest act. You could use the things you discover in twentieth-century books, but you must not teach them to others.” She stood, unable to ignore the hour any longer, and Calder rose with her. She put her hands on the warm, supple flesh of his face. “I cannot stay any longer—there are matters that must be attended to.”

“Will you be back?”

Maeve felt a pang, for she could not discern whether he wanted to see her again because he cared for her just a little, or because he wanted the books and wonder drugs she could bring from the future. “Yes,” she said. “If I can return, I will.”

Calder bent his head then and touched Maeve’s lips with his own, and as brief and innocent as it was, the contact rocked her to the very center of her being.

Her gaze flew to his, searching for the revulsion she so dreaded, seeking Calder’s horrified reaction to kissing a cold mouth. Instead of those things, however, she saw a certain reverence, unmasked affection, and, yes, a disturbing sort of curiosity—that of a scientist studying a unique specimen.

Filled with sadness and bliss, she reached up and touched his lips with three fingers.

“Good-bye,” she said.

One moment Maeve was there, standing before him, pale and ethereally beautiful in the darkness, and the next she was gone.

Calder felt a bleakness unequaled in his memory; he wanted to be with Maeve, now and forever, but that was clearly impossible. He would wait, he told himself, as patiently as he could, and one night soon she would return to him.

He stood in the rain for a long time, remembering. Then he dropped the pendant down inside his wet shirt, to hide it from the curious gazes of his father and half brother in the same way he had always hidden his heart from the world.

Until Maeve.

The pattering shower turned to a downpour, but still Calder remained where he was, marveling, telling himself that Maeve could not exist, could not be what he knew she was. An immortal.

Finally Calder broke his stunned inertia and strode toward the house, where he was met by Prudence, the family’s longtime housekeeper.

“Lord have mercy,” that good woman fussed, seeing Calder’s wet clothes and distracted expression. “I thought you had better sense than to be runnin’ around in a cold rain! You want to die of the pneumonia, you foolish chile?”

Calder paid no attention to Prudence’s ire, for the affection between them was old and deep. “Send Perkins around for the carriage,” he said, entering the big kitchen and heading straight for the rear stairway. ‘Tell him we’re going to the Army hospital on Union Street.” Prudence followed her erstwhile charge as far as the newel post, her sizable body quivering with disapproval. The glow of the gaslights flickered over her beautiful coffee-colored skin, and her jaw was set at a stubborn angle. “You ain’t goin’ to no hospital at this hour,” she ranted. “I swear this war of Mr. Lincoln’s done somethin’ to your brain. . . .”

The war had “done something” to Calder’s brain, all right, and it had nearly broken his spirit and his physical strength in the bargain. Now, however, knowing there was a future, a time when miracles would occur in the realm of medical science, gave him new hope.

‘Tell Perkins to bring along a slicker,” he called back over one shoulder as he gained the upper hallway. “It might be a long night, and this rain isn’t likely to let up.” “Mr. Calder!” Prudence bellowed after him. “You get back here—you hear me? You ain’t well!”

Calder opened the door to his room, already stripping off his wet shirt when he crossed the threshold, thinking to himself that, contrary to Prudence’s assessment, he was feeling better than he had in years.

C
HAPTER 5

Maeve passed the following day not in her favorite lair beneath the London house, as usual, but in a dusty crevice behind the foundation of the Union Hospital. She’d known Calder was going there after their meeting in the summerhouse, and she had wanted to be near him.

Normally Maeve’s slumber was untroubled by dreams, be they pleasant or unpleasant, but that time was different. The wards and even the passages of the old hospital were filled with the wounded and the dying. They were only boys, these soldiers, most of them so young that they’d never been away from home at all before marching off to battle.

Maeve did not hear their screams of physical pain, for suffering, however intense, is a temporal thing, meaning little in the face of eternity. No, it was their soul-cries Maeve discerned, the agonized protests of their spirits.

When she awakened at sunset, she was instantly aware of her mistake in coming to that particular place. With so many mortals in torment, it was only logical that the premises would be crawling with angels.

A surge of terror moved through Maeve as she raised herself, dusted off her clothes, and pressed her back against the wall of the foundation. What had possessed her to make such a dangerous error in judgment?

She listened, and waited. Now, with all her senses on the alert, she could feel the presences of companion angels, hundreds of them. Fortunately—and this fact, she thought, might well save her from certain destruction—they were not warriors, these winged messengers from heaven, but comforters. Their full attention was fixed on their charges.

For all of that, Maeve was trembling when she closed her eyes and willed herself away from that hospital and far into the future, where other challenges awaited her.

She fed on a mean drunk, who’d been on his way home from the pub with every intention of beating his wife for his own sins, as well as a bevy of imagined infidelities, and left him whimpering on a heap of trash.

Maeve found Valerian at the circle of stones, sitting patiently on a fallen pillar and blowing a haunting, airy tune on a small pipe.

“Well, then,” the great vampire said with good-natured sarcasm, “you have at last decided to honor me with an appearance.” He bowed deeply. “Welcome.”

Maeve was still agitated by the foolish carelessness she had exhibited back in Calder’s Pennsylvania. She’d never made such a mistake before, since the night of her making.

Valerian climbed gracefully down from his perch and approached. For the first time since her arrival, Maeve noticed that he was dressed as a seventeenth-century gentleman. He wore a waistcoat of the finest silk, along with kid-skin breeches, leggings, and buckle-shoes. His hair was tied back with a dark ribbon and lightly powdered.

“Going to a costume party?” Maeve asked with the merest hint of disdain in her voice.

Valerian smiled indulgently, using only one side of his sensual mouth, and dropped the musical pipe into a pocket of his coat. “I was indeed attending a festivity, of sorts, but since this is the way the French aristocracy always dressed during those glorious pre-Revolutionary days, I did not stand out from the other guests.”

Maeve sighed. Valerian would always stand out from the other guests, no matter how carefully he chose his clothing, in her opinion, but to say so would only inflate his already monumental ego, and she wasn’t about to do that.

“Where is the lecture?” she asked instead, sounding weary and dispirited even to herself. “Surely you expected me before this?”

Valerian shrugged. “I kept myself occupied in your absence,” he said. “What were you doing—mooning over that mortal of yours? What is his attraction, Maeve—is it the fact that he spends most of his days drenched in blood?”

Maeve was instantly angry, though in truth, had she been in Valerian’s place, she might have offered much the same question. She whirled away from the other vampire, restraining her temper, and then, after a few moments, turned back to face him again. “Calder is accustomed to blood,” she admitted softly. “He’s a doctor, a scientist, and it isn’t revolting to him, the way it is to most mortals. Indeed, I imagine he knows, on some level, what a magical substance blood really is.”

Valerian arched one eyebrow. “After all your grumblings about Aidan and his penchant for that human woman, Neely Wallace, I would never have expected this of you. You’re smitten with a mortal, just as your brother was.” He paused and touched her face lightly with curled fingers. “Nothing can come of this affection of yours, Maeve. Not, that is, unless you’re willing to make the fascinating Dr. Holbrook into a blood-drinker.”

Maeve gave her head a quick and slightly wild shake. “I won’t risk that—you know how many vampires come to despise their makers. An eternity of Calder’s hatred would be worse than Dante’s version of hell.”

“Do you hate me?” he asked with uncommon gentleness.

She looked at him for a long moment, then shook her head.

Valerian made a soft sound of exclamation. “Ah, well, that is a relief.” He raised an eyebrow. “Still, the situation is dire indeed. I needn’t tell you what a rare instance it is when a nightwalker puts the welfare of another before its own wants and pleasures—particularly when that other is mortal.”

Trembling, Maeve nonetheless drew herself up and glared at Valerian in her most aristocratic fashion. “Enough talk of my personal affairs,” she said, her voice icy with authority. “What of Lisette? Have you learned anything new? Has she made more of her deviant vampires?”

Valerian’s smile was slow and insolent, and he had the audacity to touch the tip of Maeve’s nose with a forefinger. “All vampires are deviant, my darling—don’t ever forget that. Now, to the business at hand. Lisette is ranging far and wide, but from what I can discern, she has made her vampires only in this time period. Still, we must find her, before she strews the beasts throughout history. Surely you know without my telling you how the warlocks, not to mention Nemesis and his army of angels, would react to
that.”

“We’ll start by approaching the Brotherhood,” Maeve said in a tone that invited no disagreement. “Then, with or without their approval, we will hunt Lisette down and destroy her.”

Valerian affected a sigh; it was one of his favorite forms of expression, especially when he was feeling martyred. “At last,” he said. “You have grasped what I was trying to tell you all along—that both the mortal and immortal worlds are in desperate trouble.”

Maeve could not disagree. The warlocks would not stand idly by while Lisette filled the earth with zombielike vampires, and Nemesis was surely lobbying the highest courts of heaven for permission to make war. Should the battle actually break out, it would make the ancient tales of Armageddon sound like cheerful whimsy.

“I must change into something more fitting for an audience with the Brotherhood,” Maeve said, looking down at her dusty gown and cloak and then focusing a critical gaze on Valerian’s garb. “Although no costume could possibly be more in character for you, 1 do hope you aren’t planning to approach the Vampyre Court dressed as a French aristocrat.”

Valerian sighed again, and all the sufferings of the ages echoed in the sound. He splayed the fingers of one hand over the place where his heart should have been. “You wound me,” he said, but there was a broad grin on his face. At Maeve’s scowl he gave another sigh. “Very well,” he agreed. “I’ll meet you in the south garden on the Havermail estate. The Brotherhood’s headquarters isn’t far from there.”

Maeve frowned. “Why not go directly to the secret chamber?”

“You don’t just pop into the place,” Valerian replied indignantly, tugging at one elaborately trimmed cuff and then the other. “These are the oldest vampires on earth, and we must use a degree of protocol.”

“We could bypass them completely and handle the problem ourselves, I suppose,” Maeve mused, resting her hands on her hips.

“Perish the thought!” Valerian said, and for once in his immortal life, he sounded sincere. ‘They’d never tolerate such disrespect!” There was a pause, then he leaned toward Maeve and peered into her eyes, narrowing his own. “You have fed, haven’t you? You’ll need your strength to deal with the old ones.”

Maeve simply gave her companion a scathing look, raised her arms, and vanished.

She materialized in her suite in the London house, where she shed her rumpled, dust-splotched garments, washed her alabaster skin, and brushed dust and tiny stones from her hair. Finally Maeve donned a beautiful dress, made of shimmering red silk, with Irish lace trimming the cuffs and yoke, along with a matching cape.

Moments later she stood in the Havermails’ south garden, where a long-forgotten marble fountain presided, nearly hidden under blackberry vines and wild roses. The statue in the center had once been lovely, an exquisite sculpture of a young Greek boy with a vessel in his arms, but now it was spotted with moss and bird scat, and a knee and elbow had been chipped away.