Forever and the Night (The Black Rose Chronicles) (5 page)

The mansion had looked spooky to Neely on Halloween night, but now that she stood before it in the dazzling sunshine of that November afternoon, it seemed very ordinary and innocuous, except for its size.

She wasn’t sure why she’d come; Mr. Tremayne certainly hadn’t invited her to drop by. All Neely really knew was that she was drawn to that house and even more so to its owner. It was as if she’d always known Aidan Tremayne, as if they’d been close once, very close, and then cruelly separated. Encountering him had been a reunion of sorts, a restoration of something stolen long before.

Wedging her hands into the pockets of her coat, Neely proceeded up the walk and climbed the steps onto the gracious old porch. Then, after drawing a deep breath, she rang the bell.

There was no answer, so she tried a second time. Again, no one came.

Neely walked around the large house once, thinking she might encounter the owner in the yard, but she didn’t catch so much as a glimpse of him.

Finally, feeling both relieved and disappointed, Neely turned and walked back along the driveway toward the highway. She had already cleaned the motel rooms that had been rented the night before, and she wasn’t due back at the café until the supper shift. Danny would be in school until three o’clock, and Ben was busy repairing a water pipe under one of the trailers.

Neely was a free woman, and she was at loose ends.

She decided to borrow Ben’s battered old Toyota and head into Bright River. Her emotions were churning; she tried to put Tremayne out of her mind and failed.

She would stop by the local library, she decided. There she would surely find back copies of the Bright River
Clarion
; she intended to scan the microfilm records for interesting references to Aidan Tremayne or his family. After all, she rationalized as she bumped along Route 7 in her brother’s car, she needed to keep up her professional skills—especially in research. God knew, she couldn’t work as a waitress and maid all her life; her feet would never withstand the strain.

Besides, the project gave her a legitimate reason to think about Aidan on a more practical level, and it would distract her from the riot of emotions and needs that had been bedeviling her ever since their first encounter.

Neely adjusted the car’s temperamental heater and shivered in spite of the blast of hot air that buffeted her. Aidan was going to change her life, and she was going to change his; she knew it as well as if an angel had whispered the fact in her ear. There was a magical mystery afoot here, and she yearned to learn its secrets.

The trick would be to stay alive long enough to investigate.

She sighed and silently reminded herself that she knew too much about her ex-boss’s source of campaign funds, among other things. Five years working in the nation’s capital had cured Neely of starry-eyed illusion—even though Hargrove was an easygoing sort who would not relish the prospect of ordering her death or anyone else’s, he loved the power of his office, and the status it gave him. The senator would never sacrifice money, position, and his marriage, much less his personal freedom, for Neely’s sake.

She must be more careful now and stop pretending to herself that all was right with the world.

Chapter 3

W
hen Aidan awakened, he was dangerously weak, a state that rendered him vulnerable to all manner of enemies. He had no choice but to hunt.

He rose slowly and stretched, this last being an unnecessary habit lingering from his days as a mortal. Aidan’s muscles had long since atrophied to a stonelike condition beneath his skin. Even that was changed, he thought, extending his arms and gazing at his hands. The once-living flesh was now as cold and smooth and hard as marble.

Aidan did not stay long in his lair, for the hunger had grown merciless in its intensity, biting into his middle, sapping his strength, threatening his very reason. He climbed deftly up the smooth dirt wall to the surface of the ground. There, the moon shed a silvery light over a new layer of snow.

He thought first of Neely, and ached to be mortal and thoroughly ordinary so that he could be close to her, learn
how her mind and heart worked, walk in sunlight with her. Most of all, he wanted to make love to her, feeling his own flesh warm and supple against hers, but that seemed the most impossible of all his dreams.

It was dangerous to think in such a fashion, he reminded himself. He would never be human again, and he would die at the hands of his enemies before he would turn Neely into what he was.

Aidan knew his vampire powers well, despise them though he did, and he feared that the fervor of his emotions would draw Neely to him. If he were to encounter her now, when he was so desperate to feed, when his vile hunger for blood would be coupled with the elemental physical and emotional passion he felt for her, he could not be sure of restraining himself.

As it happened, thrusting Neely from his mind was not enough, for she clung tenaciously to the innermost cords and fibers of his heart.

Maeve hid herself in the chilly mists of the evening and waited. Through the foggy windows of the Lakeview Cafe, she could see Neely Wallace, the woman Valerian was so concerned about.

Valerian was Maeve’s mentor, after a fashion, and he had made her an immortal when Aidan refused. Thus, she trusted Valerian, as much as one vampire ever trusts another, and since he saw the Wallace woman as a threat to Aidan, so had she. Maeve had come to this backward country, this century she heartily disliked, prepared to confront and destroy an enemy. Instead she found herself drifting with the breeze in a parking lot, like so much smoke, and questioning Valerian’s judgment.

Miss Wallace was an attractive young woman, between twenty-five and thirty, Maeve guessed, with short, shiny brown hair and large gamine eyes. She smiled a lot, and the café£ customers seemed to like her, but she was clearly an ordinary mortal with no special powers of any sort.

How could such a creature be a menace to any vampire, even a reluctant one like Aidan?

Maeve was irritated and not a little bored. She’d fed early so that the evening would be her own, and now she was missing at least one very important social event—specifically Columbine Spencer’s supper-dance in Charleston, South Carolina.

“Bother,” said Maeve. In a fit of pique she willed herself to Aidan’s house, solidifying herself very dramatically in the center of his parlor.

He was there, remarkably, sitting behind the antique library table he used as a desk, bent over one of those interminable volumes of his. Even though there was electricity in this crass century, and his house was wired for it, he worked by the light of a smelly oil lamp.

He raised his eyes at Maeve’s appearance, grinned, and stood, as befits a gentleman vampire.

“Kiss, kiss,” said Maeve, making an appropriate motion with her lips. She placed her hands on her trim waist— she was wearing an elaborate white dress decorated with hundreds of tiny iridescent beads, because of the Spencer party—and tossed her head impatiently. Her dark hair was done up in tiny ringlets and curls, her flawless white skin prettily flushed because she’d taken nourishment soon after awakening. “Honestly, darling, you’re becoming the worst sort of curmudgeon.” She held out a slender gloved hand. “Come. I’m on my way to a ball, and I know the Spencers would be delighted to have you among their guests.”

Instead of lowering himself into his chair, Aidan perched on the edge of his desk, his arms folded. “I suppose all the very best fiends will be in attendance,” he teased, arching one dark eyebrow.

Maeve was not amused. “The majority will be mortals, of course,” she said, raising her chin. “Stage actors, an opera singer, some artists of various sorts, I suppose—”

“Along with a vampire or two, a handful of witches and warlocks—”

Color flared in Maeve’s alabaster cheeks. “When did you become such a snob?” she demanded. She didn’t wait for an answer. “Valerian told me you were developing a dangerous predilection for the society of humans. Even after a firsthand look at the supposed object of your fascination, I still thought he was mistaken. Now I’m not so certain.” All friendliness had vanished from Aidan’s manner. His eyes narrowed as he regarded his twin in the smoky light of the oil lamp. “What do you mean, ‘after a firsthand look at the supposed object of my fascination’?”

Maeve gathered all her formidable forces, as she sometimes did when she wanted to intimidate a particularly brazen human. “I went to see Neely Wallace,” she said.

Aidan didn’t move, and yet every fiber of his being seemed to exude challenge.
“What?”

Maeve began to pace, folding and unfolding her silk and ivory fan as she moved. “So it’s true, then. You’re actually smitten with a human being.” She stopped and gazed at her brother with tears glittering in her stricken blue eyes. “Oh, Aidan, how could you do something so foolish?”

She saw conflict in her brother’s remarkable face, as well as pain.
“Smitten
is hardly the word for what I’m feeling,” he confessed. “Maeve, I’ve encountered the woman exactly twice, and it’s as if she owns my soul. I keep recalling what the gypsy woman said that day Mother took us to have our fortunes told. Do you remember?”

Maeve flinched inwardly, wanting to recoil from the memory and all it might mean, even after so many years, but unable to do so. “Yes,” she said grimly, “I remember it perfectly well. We visited a flea-infested camp, and Mama, bless her simple heart, paid an old, ignorant crone to predict our futures.”

Aidan gazed at her in quiet reflection for a long moment, and Maeve saw something uncomfortably like compassion move in his eyes.

She was indignant. “All right,” she conceded, even though her brother had not actually challenged her, “the witch was right about some things—our being cursed, if you want to think of it as that—but there is no reason to believe—” “That Neely is the woman the sorceress mentioned?” Aidan finished gently. “The one who would mean either my salvation or my destruction?” He paused, evidently gathering his thoughts, and frowned pensively when he spoke again. “Oh, to the contrary, my dear, there is every reason to believe it. I know almost nothing about Neely, and as you’ve so often pointed out, she is a mortal. And for all of that, when I saw her, it was as though my very soul leapt out of me and ran to her, desperate to lose itself in her.” Aidan looked so haunted, so beleaguered, that Maeve wanted to weep. She began in that moment to fear the Wallace woman, and to hate her, for if Aidan’s theory was fact and not fancy, then the situation was grave, indeed.

“What are you going to do?” Maeve whispered, struggling to restrain all the wild, violent emotions that suddenly possessed her.

“Do?” Aidan countered softly. “My dear sister, there is nothing to ‘do.’ It is something that must unfold.”

“No,” Maeve protested, shaken, remembering that long- ago day in the gypsy camp as if it were a part of last week instead of a remnant from a distant century. “The crone said it depended on your choices, yours and hers, whether you would be saved or destroyed!”

Aidan came to her then and laid his hands gently to either side of her face. “But I can only control my own choices,” he pointed out with infinite tenderness. “What Neely decides is quite beyond me—” He must have seen the rebellion brewing in Maeve’s eyes, for he smiled sadly and clarifed, “Beyond both of us.”

Maeve was full of fury and fear. “You want to perish!” she accused. “Damn you, Aidan, I followed you into eternity, and now you would leave me to take refuge in death!” He released her, stepped away, turned his back to stand at one of the tall windows, gazing out upon the snowy night. ‘To be parted from you would be exceedingly painful,” he admitted, almost grudgingly. “Still, we are brother and sister, Maeve, not lovers. Perhaps we simply were not meant to travel the same path.”

Maeve steadied herself, called on all her vampire powers to sustain her, as the agonizing truth of Aidan’s words settled over her spirit. “You’ve decided, then, that you will pursue this madness?”

“Yes,” he replied wearily, without turning to face his sister. For the first time in all the winding length of Maeve’s memory, he seemed unaware of her feelings. “Yes,” he repeated. “For good or ill, I will see it through and find my fate at the end.”

At last Aidan abandoned that wretched window to look at Maeve again, though he kept his distance. She knew the span was not merely physical, but emotional, too, and she was further wounded by this realization.

“You are not to interfere, no matter how consuming the temptation may be,” he warned quietly but with the utmost strength of purpose. “I mean what I say, Maeve—if you value my wishes, if you care for me at all, you will avoid Neely Wallace at all costs.”

Maeve was stricken, for she could not doubt that Aidan was grimly sincere. If she meddled in this threatening affair, he might never forgive her, and the thought of his scorn was beyond endurance.

Still, she was angry as well, and suspicious. “Can you possibly believe there is a need for you to defend her against me?”

Aidan did not relent. “I don’t know,” he answered bluntly, “but aside from wanting to let this thing run its course, be it curse or blessing, I am concerned for Neely’s safety. As you well understand, your presence could draw the attention of the others to Neely. Suppose, for instance, that Lisette should learn of her?”

Maeve had heard the rumors that Lisette, the most vicious and unfortunately the most powerful of all vampires, had come forth from her tomb, but she had disregarded them as alarmist drivel. “Don’t be an idiot,” she replied. “Even if Lisette is stirring abroad now and again, she surely has no interest in the likes of your pitiful mortal.”

“She is
not
pitiful in any way, shape, or form,” Aidan retorted tersely. “Neely is a magical creature, like most humans, and part of her splendor lies in the fact that she is quite unaware of her own majesty.”

Maeve examined her ivory-colored fingernails, which were perfectly shaped and buffed to a soft glow. She was still in turmoil, and her outward calm was all pretense. “You’re right to be afraid of Lisette,” she said with a lightness she did not feel. She was injured, and in her pain she needed to be cruel. “If your enemies suspect you are fond of the woman, they may use her to make you suffer.” She paused a moment for effect, then went boldly on, aware that the attempt was futile even as she made it. “There is one way to solve the problem forever, Aidan. ‘If thy right eye offends thee His rage was sudden and palpable; it filled the room with coldness. And it confirmed Maeve’s worst suspicions.

“No.” He whispered the word, but it had all the strength of an earthquake. “Neely is not to be touched, do you understand me? Her only sin is that she brought a child

to my door one night, on an innocent errand—”

Maeve lifted one hand and laid an index finger to Aidan’s lips to silence him. “You needn’t raise your voice, darling,” she said, again with a levity that was wholly feigned. “I will respect your wishes, you know that. Know also, however, that I love you and that I will do whatever I must to keep you safe.”

They studied each other in silence for a long interval, equally determined, equally powerful.

“Please,” Maeve cajoled finally. “Come to the ball with me. What better way to draw the attention of the others away from Neely Wallace?”

Aidan hesitated, then gave a grim nod.

He went upstairs to change into suitable clothing and quickly rejoined Maeve in the study. He was breathtakingly handsome in a top hat and tails, and for added affect he wore his silk cape.

Five minutes later, distracted and silent, he was entering the Spencer’s antebellum ballroom with Maeve on his arm.

Once her shift was over, Neely lingered at one of the Formica-topped tables in the cafe, sipping herbal tea and poring over the information she’d collected earlier at the library. She became, by an act of will, the detached professional, putting her personal feelings about Aidan temporarily on hold.

She’d found a number of articles regarding the Tremayne family on microfilm and made photocopies of each one. According to the newspaper pieces, there had been an Aidan Tremayne living in the colonial mansion for well over a century. Each generation was as reclusive as the last, apparently marrying and raising their families elsewhere. There were no wedding or engagement announcements, no records of local births, no obituaries. The articles yielded only the most general information—in the summer of 1816, part of the house had been destroyed by fire. During the War Between the States, Union troops had moved into the downstairs rooms. In 1903 a young woman had disappeared after leaving a calling card at the Tremayne residence, and there had been a brief flurry of scandal, an earnest but fruitless police investigation. One of the earlier ancestors had been a painter of some renown, and several of his pieces had brought a fortune at auction in 1956.