Forever and the Night (The Black Rose Chronicles) (11 page)

his head; by now the two men would be inside, ransacking the place, wondering how their quarry had managed to escape them.

He bent, kissed Neely tenderly on the forehead, and fought the awesome need to complete the dangerous process she had begun by taking him to her breast. The courage and sweet generosity of the gesture were beyond comprehension; he did not think he would ever fully understand why she had chosen to give him that singular joy.

“Sleep well,” he whispered, tucking the blankets around her. Then he touched her cheek and whispered a command that would anchor her to the bed as effectively as the heaviest chains, for that was the only way he could think of to keep her safe. Then he vanished.

Aidan found the thugs in Neely’s motel room, just as he had expected. They relished their criminality, he thought with disgust, and from what images he could glean from the recesses of their diseased minds, they hadn’t even had particularly difficult childhoods. He filled the doorway, making no effort at all to hide what he was, or to be subtle about his powers.

They whirled to face him, and one of them cried out.

Aidan wanted to kill them, yearned to drain them of every glimmering red, droplet of blood, and then toss their husks aside to rot. This development unnerved him, for he was always coldly dispassionate about his victims, and what he felt now was a fiery and utterly ruthless appetite.

He crossed the room on the impetuous of that thought, grasped a throat in either hand, and pressed his struggling captives to the wall.

“You may want to rethink this whole matter,” he instructed politely. “It’s a dangerous business, you see, involving forces and creatures you can’t begin to grasp with those pitiful little snot-wads you fancy to be brains.”

The thugs stared at him, mute with confusion. They were strong in a bullish sort of way and must have wondered why a lone man could render them powerless so easily.

“What the hell are you?” one of them managed to croak out.

Aidan showed his fangs then, although he personally thought it was a touch melodramatic—more Valerian’s style than his own.

“Jesus Christ,” murmured the first thug, while his partner fainted.

Aidan sighed. It was nearly dawn, and there was no time to go back to the Havermails and explain his sudden disappearance to Maeve, nor could he return to Neely. No, he must go to Valerian, who still lay stricken in that dusty crypt well outside of London, and it was imperative that he bring blood to give the other vampire sustenance.

Aidan eyed the two criminals before him, one awake and one unconscious. The bloodlust he’d felt earlier had turned to the purest disgust; he would have preferred to drink from rats. Regrettably, though, there was no real choice.

He fed on the larger one first, bringing him as close to death as he dared, and then lifted the smaller man and drank again.

The usual delirium of joy came over him, but it was nothing compared to what he’d felt when Neely had lain naked before him and cried out at the pleasure of his caresses.

But he could not think of her now.

Aidan blinked, and when he opened his eyes, he was in the crypt with Valerian. The sun had already risen by the time he arrived, although its light could not reach through the stone walls or the metal door, but the inevitable fatigue threatened to swallow his consciousness.

“Aidan,” Valerian whispered in a hoarse, fitful murmur of joy, and groped for his hand. “Quickly—”

Aidan bent and, once again, found Valerian’s throat. Black weariness clawed at him, pulled him downward, toward the filthy, bone-littered floor. He struggled back to the waiting vein and willed the blood to flow into Valerian, and it was still pouring forth when he collapsed.

Far away, yet near as the next heartbeat, Neely stirred in her soft, unfamiliar bed but did not climb toward wakefulness. She knew, on some level, that it was better to stay asleep, to wander in dark dreams. When she opened her eyes, after all, she would have to make sense of all that had happened to her in recent hours, and that was going to be virtually impossible.

Maeve found Aidan insensate on the floor of the crypt, his back to the high stone slab, his fine clothes speckled with blood. Ignoring Valerian, who stirred above their heads, she shook her brother and called his name in a frantic whisper.

He was empty and wasted, and Maeve knew he would perish if she did not save him. She ripped away the fitted cuff of her frilly shirtwaist and pressed the inside of her wrist to his lips. He resisted weakly, then drank.

After a few moments Aidan revived, opening his eyes. “Maeve,” he said, giving the name the shape and substance of a sob.

She smoothed his lovely dark hair back from his wan face. “There now, you’ll be fine after this. It’s night, and you’re strong enough to feed properly.”

“Valerian,” he said. “Is he all right?”

Maeve remembered the other vampire, her mentor and erstwhile friend, and rose slowly to her feet. Seeing Valerian’s sunken cheeks and shadowed eyes, she clutched his hand and demanded, “What have you done?”

“Atlantis,” he said. “Atlantis—”

Aidan scrambled up beside Maeve, fairly shouldering her aside to peer down into Valerian’s tormented face. “What are you saying?” he rasped. “What about Atlantis?”

“That’s—where it—began,” Valerian managed. “The mystery lies on the lost continent—”

“Enough!” Maeve interrupted, her temper flaring. Having fed amply, she was by far the strongest of the trio, and she could afford to issue orders. “There will be no more talk of mysteries and lost continents! Can’t you see that he’s dying, Aidan? Don’t you realize that you nearly perished yourself?”

Despair and frustration howled within Aidan like a spiritual storm. He grabbed at the bloody front of Valerian’s shirt and wrenched the other vampire upward with the last of his strength.
“Tell me’
he cried, and when Valerian remained silent, clearly too enervated to speak, Aidan wailed with all the forlorn grief of an animal caught in a trap.

Maeve whirled on him, her blue eyes, mirror-images of his own, flashing with pain. She raised one hand, fingers spread, and pressed it to his face. He felt her horrific power surge through him, like a double dose of lightning, and then he swooned.

When he awakened, he was lying on a wide-planked table, stripped to the waist. He turned his head—it felt as though a speeding locomotive had crashed into each temple at full throttle—and saw Valerian lying next to him.

“Maeve?” Aidan lifted his head. The room was dark and dank, and it had the oppressive feel of a dungeon.

“She’s out hunting,” answered a small, sweet voice.

Aidan relaxed for a moment, getting his bearings. Candlelight flickered over the ancient, moss-streaked walls, where rusted iron rings were bolted. “What is this place?”

A horrible parody of a child appeared at his side, a little girl with brown-gold ringlets, impossibly pale skin, and dark circles around her eyes. Her delicate fangs glinted in the candlelight.

“It’s Havermail Castle,” she said.

Ah, yes, Aidan recalled, despairing. The august home of Maeve’s hideous friends, the Havermails—a mommy vampire, a papa vampire, and two absolutely vicious baby vampires.

He shuddered and tried to sit up, only to find himself too weak to rise.

The child laid a clammy hand on his bare chest. “You’re not supposed to move,” she said, and while this announcement was delivered ingenuously, it also reverberated with warning. “Neither is Mr. Valerian. You’re to be our guests, until Maeve says otherwise.”

“What’s your name?” Aidan gasped the question, appalled at his weakness. As a mortal man, he had loved children and been able to communicate intelligently with them.

“I’m Benecia,” the monster said. “And my sister is Canaan. She’s gone out to hunt with Mummy, and when they come back, it will be my turn.”

Valerian stirred next to Aidan, but it was plain that he was still in a stupor.

“How long have you been a vampire?” Aidan inquired of Benecia. This was a ludicrous conversation, in an even more ludicrous setting, but he was certain he would go mad if he tried to keep silent.

“Oh, a long time,” Benecia replied sunnily. “Almost as long as Valerian, in fact—about five hundred and forty years.”

Aidan stared at her, appalled that even a blood-drinking fiend would stoop to turning a child into a vampire. Surely hell itself could not boast of a crueler demon. “How did it happen?”

Benecia giggled, and the sound echoed eerily off the wet stone walls that had absorbed so much misery over so many centuries. “Papa was a scholar, and he joined a secret society. They met only in darkness, and he thought that was very curious, but nonetheless he was flattered to be invited, and he attended the meetings religiously. Finally he was initiated—the members made him into an immortal, like themselves. He came straight home and made Mama into a vampire, and she in turn transformed Canaan and me because she couldn’t bear to be parted from us.”

Aidan whispered a profanity because he did not dare to pray.

Valerian reached out and grasped his arm before he could express his opinion further, however, effectively silencing him.

Alas, Benecia was already offended. “I don’t like you,” she told Aidan in a sweetly vicious tone. “I don’t like you at all.”

“My friend is comparatively young, for a vampire,” Valerian put in quickly, and with good nature aplenty. “Be patient with him, Benecia. Remember what it was to be foolish and impulsive.”

Benecia’s eyes were narrowed, and her searing gaze had not wavered from Aidan’s face. “I’m much older than you are, and much stronger, and much smarter,” she said with icy confidence. “Mind your tongue, fledgling, or I’ll dangle you from a high window by your feet!”

Valerian laughed, though Aidan heard tension plainly in the sound. “Now, now, darling—is that any way to speak to a guest? Aidan is your aunt Maeve’s favorite creature in all the earth. She will expect you to be pleasant to him.” Benecia subsided, but only after a snakelike hiss and a rather chilling display of her fangs. She turned and flounced away, a small horror in her pink ruffled dress; then a door slammed somewhere, and Aidan knew he and Valerian were alone.

Furthermore, Valerian was in a towering fury, the state

of his health notwithstanding. “You are truly remarkable, Mr. Tremayne, for your arrogant stupidity!”

Aidan was in no mood for a dressing-down. He’d been through enough as it was, what with all the high drama of recent nights. “I will not be threatened by a child!”

“That
child
was old when Shakespeare penned his sonnets,” Valerian raged. “She can summon more power in a blink of her eyes than you’ve ever dreamed of attaining! Were she not mortally afraid of her beloved auntie Maeve, your head would probably be bouncing off an outside wall by now!”

Aidan gave a ragged sigh. He still had the psychic equivalent of a headache. “If Benecia is so terribly powerful,” he began, “why is she afraid of Maeve?”

Valerian’s chuckle was raspy, void of all humor, and hollow. “Do you know so little about your own sister, Aidan?” he scolded. “Maeve has special gifts—she lacks your aversion to the finer points of vampirism, you know— and it is said that she will someday replace Lisette as queen of the nightwalkers.”

The thought made Aidan sick. He recalled Maeve as a human girl, warm and pretty and full of laughter and innocent mischief, and he came as near to weeping as a vampire is able. “You did it,” he remembered as hatred pooled in his breast. “You made her into a monster, Valerian.”

There was grief in the other vampire’s voice, as well as resignation. “She pleaded with me,” Valerian said. “She offered me her throat, and I was hungry.”

Aidan had heard the story before, but even now, after two centuries, he couldn’t fully accept the reality. “You might have resisted her. There were others about who could have slaked your thirst.”

Valerian was growing weak again; Aidan could sense it because, for better or worse, their two beings were connected somehow, had been ever since that first sharing of blood. “We’ve been over this before,” he answered wearily. “There is no changing it. I’ve been conscious for at least five minutes, Aidan. How is it that you have yet to hound me about what I learned of Atlantis?”

As incredible as it seemed, Aidan
had
forgotten about the miraculous secret that might be his salvation. His mind had been filled with thoughts of Maeve and of Neely. He rolled onto his side and reached over to clasp Valerian’s arm, which was bare like his own. “Did you go there?” Valerian shook his head slowly. “No, I tried, but I hadn’t the strength. I caught glimpses of it, though, and heard the music—”

“But you discovered something.”

“Yes,” Valerian murmured. “Vampirism began on Atlantis, with a series of medical experiments.”

“How do you know this?” Aidan demanded, tightening his grasp on Valerian’s cold flesh.

“I’m not sure. The knowledge was just—there. Please, Aidan—I grow weary. Let me rest.”

“Not until you tell me how to change myself back into a man!”

There was a long, horrible silence. Then Valerian answered, “You cannot. There is an antidote, but you would have to venture back even farther than I did to find it, and you are not strong enough. Resign yourself, once and for all, Aidan. You are, and shall remain, a vampire.”