For All Eternity (The Black Rose Chronicles) (13 page)

Prudence set the tray down in Calder’s lap with unnecessary force. “I don’t see why you can’t talk in plain and simple words like anybody else!” she fussed.

He chuckled as he lifted the silver lid of a serving plate and saw his favorite fried potatoes and onions beneath it, along with several strips of bacon and some toasted bread. “And here I thought you were my greatest admirer.”

The housekeeper stopped herself from smiling, but just barely. “Go on with you,” she huffed, waving a scornful hand at Calder. She lingered a few moments, perhaps hoping he would say more about his night visitor, but, of course, he did not. At long last Prudence heaved a great and martyrly sigh and left the room.

Calder’s banter with the housekeeper had been mostly superficial; inwardly he was reliving the events of the night, pondering them in his heart, wondering if he wasn’t insane.

He might have believed that if Maeve’s pendant didn’t still rest against his bare chest.

Just as he was finishing his breakfast—for the first time in weeks he ate ravenously—Calder noticed a stack of books and other, less recognizable items in a nearby chair. Excitement possessed him—Maeve had remembered her promise to bring medical texts back from the latter part of the next century.

He nearly sent his tray flying in his eagerness to bound out of the bed and cross the room. Reaching the chair, he simply stood there, naked and transfixed by the books and by the strange medicines. They were pressed into tablets, these drugs, and packaged with stiff paper on one side and some hard, clear substance he didn’t recognize on the other.

Calder felt wonder as he studied those strange packets and no small amount of frustration with his own lack of knowledge. In the end he was able to identify only one of the compounds—morphine, the painkiller that was in such tragically short supply on the warfront.

Reverently he picked up one of the books and opened it to the copyright page. The publisher was William B. Finley and Sons, and the publication date was 1993.

1993.

Even though he knew the volume was real—it had weight and substance in his hands—Calder was still shaken. It had been
—would be
?—printed one hundred and thirty years in the future. He dressed, never taking his eyes off the book for more than a few moments, and kept it open on the washstand while he shaved. Unable to restrain his curiosity and his desire to learn, Calder stopped now and then to read a sentence or two.

By the time he was through grooming himself, he’d cut his chin and right cheek with the razor, but he didn’t care, for he was in a state of quiet ecstasy. Maeve had brought him not just one medical book, but several, along with some of the miraculous concoctions of twentieth-century chemists, and he was greedy for their wisdom.

Bending close to his mirror, Calder touched one of the spots where he’d nicked himself, then stared curiously at the bead of blood on his fingertip. As he did so, he thought of Maeve, and of her wonderful powers, and began to speculate.

C
HAPTER 7

Maeve ached to go to Calder, to warm herself by the gentle fire burning in his soul, but her practical instincts warned her to be wary. It would be only too easy to bring him to the attention of other fiends—most notably, Lisette, though Maeve was by no means certain she could trust even Valerian.

Instead she fed in the seamiest part of London, near the docks, and tried to content herself with the fact that she and Calder were at least in the same century. Because she was building her strength and attempting to hone her skills, she took blood often. As always, Maeve was careful to prey only upon the deliberately evil, not on the merely misguided.

On her third night among seagoing rats, of both the two-legged and four-legged varieties, Maeve encountered another vampire—one she had only heard of before, but never actually met The female was from the fourteenth century, like Valerian, and that made her old. She was, despite her great age, as beautiful as an angel, with waist-length blond hair, enormous eyes the color of spring violets, and a sweet, heart-shaped mouth.

She took shape at the end of an alleyway as Maeve was leaving another victim to sleep off his blood loss, and she was a vision in a blue velvet gown trimmed in exquisite handmade lace.

“You are Maeve Tremayne,” she said in a voice like the merest brush of fingers over the strings of a harp.

Maeve gave a cordial, if guarded, nod, for she recognized Dimity from Valerian’s description, and she recalled that the beautiful vampire was rumored to consort with angels. In some quarters of the dark realm, this was considered mildly suspicious behavior, in others, it was outright treason.

“Dimity,” she said by way of acknowledgment and greeting.

The other nightwalker tilted gracefully to one side, in order to peer around Maeve and have a look at the victim. “You chose well,” Dimity said thoughtfully. “This one is so foul-natured that even the devil would not wish to keep him company.”

Again Maeve nodded. She had, of course, assessed the man before feeding from the vein in his throat. “Do you have some business with me?”

Dimity smiled, clasped the rich velvet of her skirts in both hands, and executed a half-curtsy. “Yes, indeed, my queen,” she said, and though she was plainly teasing, there was a note of awe in her voice as well.

“Save your curtsies,” Maeve said, approaching Dimity. She was cautious and full of amazement, for the other vampire seemed to glow with some inner light, the way creatures of heaven did. It was possible that this ethereal beauty was not a blood-drinker at all, but an angel. “I am not yet queen. Perhaps I never will be.”

Dimity’s delicate mouth curved again, into another, softer smile. “Oh, but you will,” she said with certainty. “And you are wrong in what you’re thinking about me. I am a vampire like you.” She stepped forward and linked her arm with Maeve’s. “Come,” she said, her expression serious now. “We must talk.”

Dimity led Maeve along the street, into another alleyway, and far back into the complexity of that London slum. Finally they came to a pair of cellar doors, beneath a place that seemed to be a second-rate mortuary, and even though Maeve was used to death, she shuddered.

The other vampire’s laugh chimed like music, and she raised the heavy wooden doors as most immortals would—by a trick of her mind.

Dimity started down the stone steps, glancing back at Maeve over one shoulder. “Does it trouble you to know the dead rest here?” she asked, indicating the mortuary with a slight motion of her glorious head. “Who would understand better than you, the queen of nightwalkers, that they are mere husks, incapable of harm?”

Maeve didn’t speak, though she was well aware that that didn’t matter. Dimity could discern at least the shadow of her thoughts, as Maeve could hers. Dimity wanted to tender a warning, and it didn’t take a genius to guess what it was.

For Maeve’s part, she was recalling her brother Aidan’s account of his making as a vampire, in the eighteenth century, when he’d lain in such a place as that morgue, cold as a corpse and unable to move the tiniest muscle. Those who had attended him had believed him dead, and though he had struggled to convey the fact that he was, despite all outward indications, very much alive, they had prepared him for burial.

Maeve, being Aidan’s twin, as close to him as his heartbeat and his breath, had felt the ordeal herself, even as it occurred, and even after all that time, she had not forgotten the inexplicable, smothering terror. When Aidan had given an account of the experience, some weeks later, she had relived it with him. For that reason Maeve longed to be far away from this disturbingly familiar place.

Dimity continued into the cellar and then into another chamber, below that, a place lighted by the glow of scores of candles and quite comfortably furnished. There was an elegant Roman couch, where Dimity undoubtedly slept during the day beyond the reach of the sunlight, along with several comfortable settees and velvet- upholstered chairs.

There was even a painting on the wall, and it brought a sad smile to Maeve’s lips, for it was a portrait of two elegant vampires, waltzing together. She knew without looking at the signature that this was Aidan’s work, done many decades ago, when he was struggling to come to terms with what he was.

“Did you know my brother?” Maeve asked, her voice unusually thick.

“Only by reputation,” Dimity answered, taking a seat in one of the beautifully upholstered chairs, kicking off her delicate velvet slippers and wriggling her toes. “He became a legend, understandably, when he traded vampirism for mortality.” She winced prettily at the thought. “Can you imagine it?”

“No,” Maeve admitted readily. The image of Calder nearly came to her mind, but she managed to keep it hidden. Or so she hoped. “But the life of a blood-drinker was torment to Aidan. He’d reached the point where he was ready to perish—even to risk the Judgment—rather than go on as he was.”

“And he loved a mortal woman.”

Again Maeve struggled to suppress thoughts of Calder, but this time she wasn’t quite so certain of her success. “Yes,” she said, staring at the portrait.

“And now you love a mortal man,” Dimity pressed. Maeve turned her back on the painting with rather a lot of difficulty, since it represented a connection with her lost brother, however indirect.

Dimity laughed and raised a finger to stop Maeve from speaking. “Do not worry,” she said. “Your human lover is safe from me. Like you, I feed only upon the lowest of the low. Child molesters are my particular favorite, though I enjoy the sort of ham-fisted, drunken louts who like to beat their wives as well.”

Only moderately reassured—for vampires were not, as a rule, creatures of their word—Maeve took a seat on a settee. “You are very good at veiling your thoughts,” she said, “but I have discerned that you want to warn me about something. Please, tell me, although I believe I know.”

Dimity arched one pale gold eyebrow. “You
are
powerful,” she said. “I am an old vampire, and shielding my mind is one of my most distinctive skills.”

Maeve leaned forward slightly. “Please.”

Dimity folded her hands gracefully in her lap, and the candlelight flickered and danced in her fair hair. “I am acquainted with certain angels,” she said after a few moments of deliberate silence. “They tell me that war is imminent—vampires will be purged from the earth, along with warlocks and werewolves—all immortals, in fact, except for those who belong in the ranks of Nemesis’s army.”

Maeve was not surprised, but she felt a tremor of terror all the same. “Because of Lisette?” she asked, although she knew the answer.

Dimity nodded.

Maeve thought frantically of Calder in this century and Aidan in the next. Even she, with all her gifts and powers, could not be in two places at once and protect both of them at the same time. “Where will this war be fought?” she asked.

“In all times and dimensions,” Dimity replied. “Although every effort will be made to preserve mortals—as you know, the angels bear them unceasing affection—many will be wounded or killed in the fray.” Rising from the settee, Maeve went back to the painting, touched it gently with the palm of her right hand, and spoke very quietly. “Can it be stopped?” “Yes,” Dimity said doubtfully, and that single word flooded Maeve with relief. “But only if Lisette is destroyed within a fortnight. At the end of that time Nemesis will be given free rein.”

Maeve turned to face Dimity again. Before, the threat of war had been only rumor, but now she had to accept it as fact. She knew with all the certainty of her being that Dimity was telling the terrible, unvarnished truth.

“How do you know these things?” Maeve did not wait for a reply. “Is it true what they say—that you keep company with angels?”

Dimity smiled, unruffled. “The answer to the second question is also the answer to the first—I do have a special friend from that quarter. His name is Gideon, and he is indeed an angel. He told me.”

Maeve had been shaken by Dimity’s earlier warning, but she was also curious. “How can such a thing happen? 1 have always been told that angels are the most fearsome of all our enemies.”

The golden-haired vampire raised one shoulder in a shrug. “Nothing is absolute,” she said. “Gideon, like many angels, despises the vile creatures you and I feed upon, especially since the women and children who suffer are so often their particular charges. Angels, however, are not free to wreak vengeance, no matter how justified it may be—as you have seen, even Nemesis, the greatest of all warriors, must have the sanction of the highest realms before he can make war.”

“That is probably as it should be,” Maeve observed quietly. “If it were not so, you and I and a great many other beings would have been destroyed long ago.” Dimity’s expression was one of mild agreement. “Perhaps.”

A thought struck Maeve. “Would they take our side against Nemesis, these sympathetic angels?”

“Never,” Dimity answered with gentle certainty. “They are loyal to heaven, first and always. When the line is drawn, they will stand with the uncounted legions who are their brothers and sisters.”

Maeve might have sighed then, had she been human. “They couldn’t save us anyway,” she said.

Dimity shook her head. “No, it is true, they could not. Even if each of Nemesis’s warriors stood touching another angel on all sides, over the face of the whole earth and upon the surfaces of all the seas, there would not be room for even a fraction of their true number.”