For All Eternity (The Black Rose Chronicles)
Read For All Eternity (The Black Rose Chronicles) Online
Authors: Linda Lael Miller
Tags: #For all Eternity, #linda lael miller, #vampire romance
Contents
C
OPYRIGHT
For all Eternity
Copyright © 1996 by Linda Lael Miller.
eBook publication by IGLA
All Rights Reserved
L
ETTER TO
R
EADERS
Dear Readers,
I am thrilled that For All Eternity, the second book in my vampire quartet, is now available in this new format.
These books were written back in the 90’s, long before the current trend. They were inspired by the legendary Anne Rice, but they quickly took on a life of their own. For All Eternity pits Maeve Tremayne, a beautiful vampire who travels through time, between Calder Holbrook, the mortal Civil War doctor who loves her, and the evil forces that threaten to destroy them both.
I invite you to travel with me to Maeve’s grand and magical world. It’s a world I didn’t want to leave.
Happy reading,
Linda Lael Miller
D
EDICATION
For Wendy
—
again, always, just because. You’re still the best thing that ever happened to me.
I love you, Sweetheart.
Q
UOTE
“We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”
—Goethe
C
HAPTER 1
Bright River, Connecticut
The present
Vampires are not supposed to cry.
So Maeve Tremayne told herself, in any case, that day in midsummer, as she stood in the echoing entry hall of her brother’s house, gazing through a sheen of tears at the bouquet of dead roses he’d left for her.
The pale, shriveled petals lay scattered across the dusty marble tabletop, their curled edges the color of tea. Clearly Aidan had been away for some time.
Maeve took a certain bittersweet solace in this confirmation that her twin had not forgotten his promise to let her know whether his grand and foolhardy experiment had met with defeat or triumph.
The message of the roses was unmistakable: Aidan had surrendered his immortality to become a man again.
Maeve reached for a papery white petal, turning it slowly in her long, pale fingers. Aidan had never known a moment’s happiness as a vampire, she reflected, in an effort to console herself. He had, after all, been changed against his will by a vindictive lover, the legendary Lisette.
For more than two centuries Aidan had despaired of his wondrous powers, instead of glorying in them, as Maeve had in her own. Even now it amazed her that her brother hadn’t appreciated the extent of his gifts; vampires could travel through time and space at will, manipulate objects and human beings by mental tricks, disguise their presence from any lesser creature and most equals, and think with the entire brain, rather than just a small portion, as mortals did.
Oh, yes, vampires were far superior to those pitiful creatures, with their fragile organs and brittle bones. Immortals were able to see and hear as well or better than the average alleycat, and except under very bizarre circumstances, they need not fear the specter of death that awaited all humans.
Maeve shuddered, remembering the nightmare scene that had taken place only a few months before in an isolated graveyard on a hilltop behind an ancient abbey. Aidan had nearly died the most horrible of vampire deaths, a hellish, fiery ordeal triggered by the light of the sun.
Damn Aidan and his fatuous nobility, she thought. He’d gone willingly into Lisette’s trap in an effort to rescue another nightwalker, his friend Valerian. If it hadn’t been for Maeve herself, and for Tobias, one of the oldest vampires on earth, Aidan would have perished, screaming and writhing in the snow.
Maeve gathered petals in both hands and pressed them to her face. She caught their faint scent and tucked it away among her memories to recall at another time.
“Aidan,” she whispered brokenly. “Oh, Aidan.”
She was alone in the vastness of creation now, Maeve told herself, parting her hands and letting the rose petals rain gracefully down upon the tabletop. She had only enemies and acquaintances, but no friends.
Vampires were not particularly social creatures, since they feared certain angels and warlocks, as well as seemingly blundering humans who were in truth ruthless hunters, out to destroy them. Moreover, blood-drinkers mistrusted each other, and with good reason, for they tended to be greedy and unprincipled, unabashedly devoted to their own best interests.
Maeve sighed and wandered into Aidan’s study, where he had worked so many nights on those damnable journals and sketches of his. He had always fed early, if possible, and then returned to this great, ponderous, lonely house to pretend he was a mortal, with a piddly life span of seventy-six years or so. It still mystified her that he’d admired them so, these awkward beings who were almost completely oblivious to the marvelous powers evolving in the secret depths of their own spirits.
She took the first volume of Aidan’s many bound journals down from the shelf and felt a stab of grief when she saw the sketch of herself and her brother on the initial page. She recalled their human beginnings, in eighteenth-century Ireland, when they’d been born to a bawdy but very beautiful tavern wench, with a rich English merchant for a sire.
Alexander Tremayne had taken good care of his by-blows, Maeve had to confess, considering that he had another family, a legitimate one, back in Liverpool. His great sin, the one Maeve would always despise him for, had been in separating the twins when they were just seven years old.
Just prior to that fateful parting, Aidan and Maeve’s flighty, superstitious mother had taken them to an old gypsy fortune-teller. The crone had studied their small palms and then rasped, “Cursed! Cursed for all eternity, and beyond!”
At that, the ancient creature had risen from the steps of her colorful wagon and tottered inside. Moments later she had returned with duplicate medals, rosebuds shaped of gold and suspended from sturdy chains. With great ceremony she had hung a pendant around each child’s neck.
“These cannot save your souls,” she’d said, “but they will remind you to uphold the qualities of mercy and faith, no matter what befalls you. From those will come your strength and your power.”
Maeve had kept the gypsy’s gift ever since, taken comfort from it after she was sent away from her mother and brother.
From an upstairs room in an Irish tavern, Maeve had gone to a nunnery, where she’d been taught to sew, weave, and embroider, as well as to read and write. Aidan had been sent to an expensive school for boys, far away in England, and he, too, had kept his pendant close.
The two children had soon discovered an eerie ability to communicate via images held in their minds, and that contact had been Maeve’s consolation during dark, lonely hours.
Then, when Aidan had reached young manhood, he’d met Lisette, the most powerful of all female vampires, and had mistaken her for a mortal woman. In the end Lisette had murdered Aidan, and then restored him as a nightwalker by giving him back his own blood, altered.
When Maeve had discovered the truth, through the offices of an exasperating, impudent, and unbelievably handsome immortal called Valerian, she was shattered. From then on, she knew, all eternity would lie between herself and Aidan, for he would live forever, while she was destined to grow old and die.
Valerian had graciously explained the benefits of becoming a vampire, as well as the obvious drawbacks.
On the one hand, an immortal could do virtually anything he or she wished, on the strength of a single clearly focused thought. The world, even the universe, was their playground. But on the other, Valerian had said with a shiver, there was no doubt that if the fundamentals of religion were true, all vampires would surely be damned. There would be no help for them, and certainly no mercy; if they were judged before the courts of heaven, they’d be cast into the Great Pit as well.
Raised in a convent, Maeve had heard plenty about hell and been taught to fear it with her whole soul, but she was also irrepressibly adventurous. Moreover, she could not bear for Aidan to leave her behind, and, in the last analysis, the consumption of blood seemed a small price to pay for the privileges vampires knew.
After all, she wouldn’t have to kill her victims if she didn’t choose to, and even in her innocence she knew there were plenty of scoundrels in the world to take nourishment from. She needn’t pick on anyone with an honest heart.
When all these matters had been carefully reviewed, Maeve made her decision and asked Valerian to make her a vampire, since she knew Aidan would never consent to do it himself. At first, Valerian had refused, but he’d been attracted to Maeve, too, and she’d used the fact to her advantage.
Eventually Valerian had changed her, and it was not at all the unpleasant experience Aidan had described. In fact, Maeve had known unbounded ecstasy that night.
Aidan had been enraged when he discovered that his sister had followed in his footsteps; he’d called her all sorts of a fool and cursed Valerian to rot under a desert sun, and then he’d simply vanished.