Forever and the Night (The Black Rose Chronicles) (31 page)

“It is done,” decreed the vampire quietly. And then he was gone, and Aidan tumbled into sleep, as if he’d been pushed over the edge of an abyss.

The next morning he ate solid food for the first time in more than two centuries and wondered why he was so excited over milk toast and weak tea. Wild, macabre images played chase in his mind; he told the pretty nurse he’d dreamed a vampire came to his room the night before, and she smiled and shook her head and pronounced the human brain a strange organ indeed.

Aidan had to agree, at least privately, for he held another picture in his mind, that of a lovely woman with short hair and large pixie eyes. He knew the gamine’s name was Neely, but that was the sum total of what he remembered about her. It was miraculous, considering that he’d had to take his own identity from the packet of identification that had turned up on his bedside table one night while he slept.

He grew strong in the days to come, and his mind manufactured a complicated and quite viable history for him. Soon Aidan believed the assortment of facts and actually thought he remembered the corresponding experiences.

He was alone in the world, having been born to his Irish parents very late in life. He had money, a grand house outside of Bright River, Connecticut, and an impressive career as an artist.

Certain mysteries remained, however. Aidan still did not know where he’d been before he was discovered lying in the middle of that ancient circle of stones, naked as a newborn, or how he’d gotten there in the first place. The police were equally baffled, but after an initial interest and a barrage of questions in his hospital room, they’d stopped coming round. No doubt they’d written the patient off as a head case, and Aidan had to admit there were ample grounds for the idea.

He left the hospital in borrowed garb, bought himself new clothes, luggage, and toiletries, none of which he seemed to possess, spent one night in a London hotel, took a cab to the airport, and then flew to the United States.

In New York he rented a car and drove the rest of the way to Bright River.

Upon arriving in that small Connecticut town, he went immediately to the big house in the country. He didn’t remember the place being so gloomy, he thought, as he went from room to room, flinging back the heavy draperies to let in the sunlight.

The snow was melting, and spring wasn’t far off. He opened a few windows and doors to let in some fresh air.

Aidan wandered into the kitchen, humming. His breakfast, a muffin and a cup of coffee he’d grabbed at the airport, had long since worn off.

He opened one cupboard after another, amazed to find that there wasn’t so much as a can of chili or a box of salt on the shelves. There were no plates, no cups, no knives, forks, or spoons.

Puzzled, he shrugged his shoulders, found a leather jacket in one of the closets, and left the house. There was a truck stop just down the road; Aidan was sure he remembered eating there once or twice.

He set out on foot, his hands jammed into the pockets of his coat, reassuring himself as he walked. Although the doctors in London had insisted that the gaps in his memory would surely close someday, he was still troubled.

For one thing, there was that name that haunted him, and the sweet face and figure that went with it.
Neely.
Who was she? She had touched his life, he was certain of that, but he couldn’t remember where he’d known her, or when.

On the most basic level of his consciousness, a driving, urgent need to find the mysterious woman raged like a river at flood tide.

Aidan reached the truck stop, a noisy, cheerful place where the jukebox played too loudly, and felt better for having people around him. He took a seat at the counter and reached for a menu.

A friendly waitress—her name tag read “Doris”—took his order right away. While Aidan was sipping his coffee, a boy rushed in, waving a sheet of pink paper and beaming. He was about seven, Aidan guessed, and he had freckles and one missing tooth.

“Look, Doris!” the child cried, scrambling onto one of the stools, right next to Aidan. The lad glanced up at him, smiled with what could only be amiable recognition, nodded a greeting, and then turned his quicksilver attention back to Doris. “There’s a letter from Aunt Neely!”

Aidan’s heart somersaulted at the mention of the familiar name. It was unusual, after all, and it followed that he’d known her here in Bright River.

“What does she say, Danny?” Doris asked, grinning as she set a dinner of chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, and green beans in front of Aidan. She winked at him before turning her full attention on the boy.

Danny still clutched the letter in one grubby hand, and it was all Aidan could do not to reach out and snatch it away from him. “She isn’t in Phoenix anymore—she’s in Colorado,” the kid announced importantly. “She was working in an office for a while, but now she’s got a job in a steak house. Aunt Neely was bored sitting behind a desk. She says she’s got all kinds of—all kinds of—” He paused and consulted the paper. “Nervous energy,” he finished.

Aidan felt warm inside, and oddly amused, and he could explain neither emotion. He stuck his fork into his food, but his ravenous appetite was gone.

“And look at this great stamp!” Danny said, slapping a pink envelope down on the countertop.

Aidan strained, saw the return address: 1320 Tamarack Road, Pine Hill, Colorado. “I used to collect stamps when I was a lad,” he commented casually.

Danny beamed at him. “I must have a thousand of them. Aunt Neely sends them to me all the time. I’ve got a whole boxful from England.”

England. That produced another vague recollection, more a feeling than an image. He’d been so certain that he’d met the elusive Neely in Bright River, but the mention of the country he’d just left touched a resonant chord in his spirit.

1320 Tamarack Road,
he repeated to himself.
Pine Hill, Colorado.

“This Aunt Neely of yours must be a pretty interesting lady,” Aidan commented when Doris had given Danny a cup of hot chocolate and bustled off to wait on some new arrivals.

Danny’s eyes were alight. “She is. She used to work for a real senator. He was a crook, and she almost got killed because she told the FBI what he was doing, but she’s okay now.”

Aidan frowned, for the child’s words stimulated still another memory that wouldn’t quite come into focus.

He finished his meal, returned to his huge, echoing house, and wandered restlessly from room to room.

In the morning, after a virtually sleepless night, Aidan called the car rental company and asked them to pick up the vehicle he’d driven from New York. Then he went out to the garage where his white Triumph Spitfire awaited him.

He smiled when the engine caught on the first try, and sped into Bright River. His first stop was the supermarket, where he purchased staples—milk and butter and bread— along with tea and potatoes, both fresh and frozen vegetables, and a thick steak. Passing a florist’s shop, he suddenly stopped, grocery bags in his arms, oddly stricken by an enormous bunch of white roses on display in the window.

Aidan felt yet another tug at his deeper mind, and this one was patently uncomfortable. The flowers had some significance, he was certain, but that was all he knew.

Walking slowly, Aidan took the bags of food to the car and set them on the passenger seat. Then he returned to the florist’s window and stood there, looking at the roses, trying to work out why they stirred him so.

He swallowed, fighting an unaccountable desire to weep.

A gray-haired woman put her head outside the door of the shop and called, smiling, “Hello, there, Mr. Tremayne. Aren’t those the finest roses you’ve ever seen? I buy them direct from a nice man upstate—he raises them in his own greenhouse. They smell wonderful, too, unlike those poor anemic things they sell in the supermarkets these days.”

Since the woman had called Aidan by name, he probably knew her, but her identity eluded him. He smiled and went into the shop, drawn there by some curious force buried in his subconscious.

The scent of the roses was delicate, but it seemed to fill the small shop, overshadowing the perfumes rising from bright splashes of colorful flowers grouped in buckets and pots and vases.

Aidan selected eight of the roses, which were still tightly budded, and put money on the cluttered counter.

“Good day, Mrs. Crider,” he heard himself say as he left the shop with the strange purchase. So he
had
known the woman’s name, after all, though he still had no recollection of meeting her before.

How odd, he thought.

At home Aidan found a crystal vase in a cabinet in one of the bedrooms and put the roses in water even before bringing the groceries in from the car. He set the flowers on the marble top of the round antique table in his entry hall and then stood staring at them for a long time, his arms folded. He wondered why the sight satisfied him so much, and at the same time stirred in him a seemingly fathomless sense of loss.

He supposed he was probably a little crazy, which wasn’t really surprising, considering that he’d been found naked in the middle of an English snowstorm, lying inside a circle of stones like some kind of sacrifice.

He’d get over it, he assured himself, turning from the roses and heading outside for the bags he’d wedged into the passenger seat of his car. One of the few things he knew for certain was that he was a resilient sort, not easily broken.

Still, the scent of those flowers haunted him, and he kept going back to them, wondering and trying to remember.

Something else troubled him, though, even more than the roses did. It was the name Neely and the newfound knowledge that she lived in a place called Pine Hill, far away in Colorado.

After a steak dinner, which he devoured, Aidan retired to his study. The place was crammed with books, some of which he remembered reading and many that he didn’t. The paintings on the walls were only vaguely familiar, though he knew he’d done them with his own hands.

He sighed, took an atlas from the shelf, and flipped through until he located a map of the United States. Bewildered, fascinated,
driven,
he sought and found Colorado, then traced the distance between that place and Connecticut with the tip of one finger.

Once again Aidan whispered the name of his private ghost: “Neely.” Once again he searched his mind for something more than the fading image, but it was no use. Nothing came to him, except for a sensation of sweet sadness, and a yearning so keen that it brought tears to his eyes.

Suddenly Aidan was seized with a terror that he would forget the face, and even the name, as he had forgotten so many scattered details of his past.

He rummaged for paper, scrounged up a pencil, and bent over his desk, in such a hurry to sketch the features wavering in his thoughts that he wouldn’t even take the time to sit down. He finished in a few strokes, wrote “Neely” beneath the rendering of the beautiful young woman with large, inquisitive eyes and short dark hair, and gave himself up to the sweeping relief of having captured her likeness before she vanished from his mind’s eye.

Aidan sat looking at the drawing for a long time, memorizing every line and curve.

Neely huddled in the big leather chair facing her therapist’s desk, her blue-jeaned legs curled beneath her. She bit her lower lip, silently reminding herself that she wouldn’t be able to come to terms with the events of the past few months unless she talked about them. Still, getting started was hard.

“You work at the Steak-and-Saddle Restaurant, don’t you?” Dr. Jane Fredricks prompted kindly, reviewing Neely’s information sheet.

Neely nodded, grateful for the gentle push. “I wait tables there. I like being busy all the time—that way, I don’t think so much—and since I work the night shift, I’m always with other people when it’s dark.”

“You’re afraid of the dark?” the doctor asked.

Neely bit her lip again, then forced herself to go on. “Not exactly,” she said. “I’m afraid of—of vampires. Except for one, I mean, and—oh, hell.” She bit down hard on her right thumbnail.

Dr. Fredricks didn’t grab the telephone and shout for help, or even gasp in surprise. “Vampires,” she repeated, with no inflection at all, making a note on Neely’s chart. Neely’s voice trembled. “Yes.”

Dr. Fredricks met her gaze directly. “Go on,” she said. Neely stared at her for a moment. “I suppose you’re going to say there aren’t any such things as vampires,” she finally blurted out, “but there are. As crazy as it sounds, they really exist.”

“I’m not questioning that,” the doctor pointed out calmly. “You needn’t convince me of anything, Neely—you’re not on trial for a crime, you know. You needn’t justify what you believe. Just talk.”

Tears welled in Neely’s eyes, blurring her vision, and she snatched a tissue from a box on the edge of Dr. Fredricks’s desk to dry them. “I met my first vampire on Halloween night,” she began, sniffling. “Isn’t that fitting? Of course, I didn’t
know
Aidan was a vampire then—I just thought he was, well, a little different—”

Dr. Fredricks nodded encouragingly.

Neely spilled the whole story, over the next forty-five minutes, and even though nothing was resolved at the end, she felt better for having told another human being what had happened to her.