For All Eternity (The Black Rose Chronicles) (24 page)

She hesitated, wavering, swayed by Calder’s argument and by the fact that she wanted him near her, now more than ever. Then, however, her prior convictions won out.

What were a few score years spent as a mortal, compared to an eternity of hellfire?

“Good-bye,” she said, and then she raised her hands high, closed her eyes, and vanished.

The warlock, Dathan, was pacing when Maeve met him at the agreed place, the stone monument in the English countryside that had figured so prominently in her experiences. Aidan had died to the life of a vampire and been resurrected here as a mortal man, and she and Valerian had met within the druids’ circle many times, to argue and confer.

“Where have you been?” the warlock demanded, the night wind catching his dark cloak and causing it to flow behind him.

“I had business to attend to,” Maeve said stiffly. “And kindly remember that I don’t have to account to you— about anything.”

Dathan’s strangely beautiful countenance softened, but only slightly. His eyes were still feral and sharp, missing no physical nuance of emotion or intent, no matter how minor. “We will not serve our purposes by arguing,” he said finally. “My forces, because they can move about in daylight, have destroyed a vast number of Lisette’s vampires with stakes and fire. She herself still eludes us, however.”

“We’ll find Lisette when she wants us to find her,” Maeve said with weary certainty. “What of Valerian? Is there news of him?”

Dathan looked impatient for a moment, as though he’d rather not trouble himself with the likes of that particular, and undeniably controversial, vampire. Then he sighed like a suffering saint and said, “She’s taken him to a place we cannot reach.”

Maeve stiffened. “Back in time,” she mused aloud as the realization struck her. “Back to a period before my death as a human, so that I cannot reach him.”

Dathan nodded. “We warlocks cannot travel between decades and centuries, the way you blood-drinkers do, so we can be of no assistance in this matter. Far better if we simply put all thought of the unfortunate Valerian behind us and concentrate on the business at hand. Time is slipping away, remember. The forces of Nemesis will be on us soon.”

Turning away, Maeve stepped up onto the curve of a fallen pillar and stood gazing at the dark plain that stretched away to the horizon. She knew well that time was sorely limited, and that the effort to destroy Lisette would neither stand nor fall because of Valerian. Still, he was the one who had given Maeve the dubious yet cherished gift of immortality. It had been he who had shown her her new powers and taught her to use them. He who had loved her once, in his own way, and introduced her to passion.

No matter what came of it, she decided, gazing up at a star-splattered sky, she could not abandon Valerian. She would have to find a way to help him.

When she turned to face Dathan again, she saw that he had divined her thoughts, and he was coldly furious.

“Come,” he said in a charged but otherwise even voice. “Let us seek the troublesome Lisette and move to destroy her.”

Maeve assessed the sky. “It will be morning soon. I cannot tarry much longer.”

Dathan looked violently impatient. “Then shift yourself to the other side of the world, where the light won’t reach.”

His reasoning was simple, and it wasn’t as though the option hadn’t occurred to Maeve many times since her making as a vampire. Some blood-drinkers, however, had experimented with the technique and never been seen again.

“It would be logical,” she reflected, “for Lisette to do that. It’s evident that she can move about during the day, from what Isabella said about Lisette’s sudden appearance in her and Valerian’s love-nest that morning. But I doubt our queen has progressed to such a point that she can endure the full glare of the sun.”

“Exactly,” Dathan said. “Let us go there—to China— and search for her.”

Maeve turned, looked down into the warlock’s handsome face in surprise. “You can do that? Travel so far, simply by the power of your mind?”

“Of course we can,” he replied with exaggerated politeness. “Did you think we had no magical powers?” Maeve went to stand facing him, on the stony, much- trampled ground. The druid stones were obviously a popular meeting point for humans, too, though only the most intrepid would venture there at night. “Let us see what powers you have,” she challenged coolly. “Just as dawn arrives, we’ll take a little journey together.”

They waited, side by side, cloaked in silence and private musings, until the first glow of pink and apricot rimmed the horizon. Then, like a fledgling swimmer plunging into deep water, Maeve thrust herself into the unknown, the darkness on the opposite side of the globe.

At first, dazed by the swiftness of the trip and the energy it required, Maeve could not discern where she was. She knew only that Dathan was beside her, and that he supported her with a chivalrous arm around her waist.

After a few moments Maeve’s head cleared. She had not been stricken by the distance, she knew, but by the avoidance of the vampire sleep that would normally have claimed her just then.

“Fascinating!” Dathan remarked, looking down into a moon-washed pit, where dozens of life-size bronze soldiers marched in formation, accompanied by life-size horses and chariots. The excavation had clearly been abandoned for some time, and Maeve knew intuitively that there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, more of these ancient sculptures buried all over China.

Maeve marveled, but not at the industry of a long-dead civilization. No, it was her own ability to resist that all-encompassing sleep that amazed her. It was probably these reflections, she would conclude later, that prevented her from sensing the impending attack.

They came out from behind every soldier, those terrible, blood-drinking corpses Lisette had made, making a shrill sound that was part shriek and part groan.

Dathan muttered an exclamation and tensed beside Maeve, and she knew that if he’d had a sword, he would have drawn it.

“Great Zeus,” he rasped, “there are hundreds of them!”

Maeve nodded, a half-smile forming on her lips at the prospect of challenge. “It would be my guess,” she said, “that we have found more than this army of blathering creatures.”

“What?” Dathan demanded, bracing himself as the creatures scrambled out of the pit and began lumbering toward them.

“Lisette is here,” Maeve said calmly.

In the next instant a geyser of blue-gold light exploded in the center of the pit full of statues, and as the glow solidified into a female shape, looming some twenty feet off the ground, even the mindless army stopped and stared.

Maeve applauded. “Very impressive,” she called as the shape became Lisette, dramatic and horrible in a gauzy gown that caught the night wind.

“Are you insane?” Dathan hissed, as the bluish light of Lisette’s countenance played over both their faces.

“Perhaps,” Maeve said, taking a step forward to stand at the precipice of the pit. “If you can summon your warlocks, you’d better do it now. Otherwise, you and I are doomed to a terrible end that might well have a beginning but no finish.”

Dathan shuddered, the way a mortal would have, and whispered back, “Don’t be naive. I don’t have to send for my armies—I brought them with me.”

Maeve did not look over her shoulder; indeed, she did not shift her gaze from Lisette’s shimmering form. Still, she could feel the warlocks now, gathering in the darkness behind her and Dathan.

Their presence, while reassuring, was by no means a reprieve from Lisette’s vengeance, however. She was possessed of spectacular powers—that much was obvious—and her army of brainless marvels would fight tirelessly at her command, not out of any such unvampire-like trait as loyalty, of course, but because she controlled them so completely.

“You are bold, Maeve Tremayne,” Lisette said in an earsplitting and yet strangely sweet voice, looming there in the darkness like the angel of death.

Oddly, Maeve thought of a movie she had seen once, during one of her reluctant visits to the twentieth century—a tale containing an alleged wizard, who had projected a terrifying image to frighten visitors away. All the time he’d been hiding behind a curtain, pulling levers and twisting dials, a nervous, fretful little man with no magical powers at all.

“Yes,” Maeve agreed. “Some would even say brazen. Show me your true self, Vampire. I am not misled by this theatrical trick of yours, though I must say it’s memorable.”

The creature that Lisette wanted them to believe was herself undulated with furious, beautiful light, and a continuous shriek of rage filled the night, loud enough, piercing enough, to shatter the very stars themselves.

Suddenly the banshee-like cry shaped itself into words. “Kill them!” Lisette screamed, and her troops, mesmerized only a moment before, began their stumbling, awkward advance again.

Battle erupted all around Maeve and Dathan, but they were in the eye of the storm, at least temporarily, for the warlocks came out of the night to meet the vampires and engage them in bitter combat.

Unearthly shrieks rent the air as warlocks were cut down by the vampires’ superior strength and, conversely, blood-drinkers were infused with the poisonous blood of their enemies.

Maeve concentrated on Lisette, whose image still hovered above them, shining and huge, and her thoughts transported her to a niche in a sheer cliff overlooking the battleground.

There Maeve found the vampire queen, no bigger or more daunting than she was herself. Lisette looked disconcerted for a moment, but then, with a scream of madness and outrage, she flung herself at Maeve.

They fought, the two vampires, snarling like panthers battling over a kill on some African steppe, tearing at each other. Maeve felt herself weakening, felt the vampire sleep threatening her, and redoubled her efforts, knowing that if she did not win this battle she would be left in the open to face the ravages of the morning sun.

Just when Maeve believed she could not continue, that the disastrous sleep would swallow her, however, Lisette turned to vapor and vanished.

Maeve collapsed against a wall of the shallow cave. She was alone, and gravely weakened, and if she did not feed and rest in a dark, safe place, she would be lost. She tried to transport herself back to her lair in England, but the effort failed. She clutched her middle and slid helplessly down the side of the cave to the ground.

She heard the battle going on and on outside. Evidently, when Lisette had fled—if indeed that had been her intent—she had not chosen to take her horrid soldiers with her.

Maeve’s head lolled, and she thought of Calder, and then of Aidan and Valerian. This was the ironic end of it all, then, she reflected, with a strangled sound that might have been either a laugh or a sob. She was wounded, the dawn was inching slowly, inexorably, toward her, and her only hope of rescue was a band of warlocks—
warlocks
, who six months ago, even six days ago, had been her implacable enemies.

She had almost lost consciousness by the time the din ceased, and she could feel the first light of dawn creeping into the cave, finding her with its acid fingers, tearing at her injured flesh.

Then—surely it was only a dream—strong arms lifted her, and she felt a rushing sensation, and the burning stopped.

Maeve opened her eyes slowly, fearing to find that Lisette had come back for her, and brought her as a captive to some place of temporary safety. She found, instead, that she was inside an old crypt—there was no telling what country she was in—and Dathan was with her.

He smiled, though his blue eyes were as cold as ever, and held a golden goblet to her lips. “Drink,” he said.

Maeve knew the chalice contained blood, the substance she most needed and that, at the same time, most repulsed her. She hesitated, quite sensibly, for this supposed gesture of mercy might well be a ruse. Dathan might be offering her the poison that flowed through his own veins, or those of one of his multitude of followers.

‘Take it,” he ordered gently, reading her mind. “It’s low-grade stuff—we stole it from a refrigerator in a nearby hospital—but there’s no warlock taint to fret about.”

Maeve’s choices were limited, since she could not regain her strength, or indeed even survive, without ingesting blood. She decided to take the risk and let the stuff flow in through her fangs, completely bypassing her tongue.

When the chalice was empty, she sank back onto silken pillows and regarded Dathan with questioning eyes. Her wounds had already begun to mend, closed by the cool, healing darkness and her own mystical powers, but she was frightfully weak.

“You saved me,” she said with emotion. “Why?”

Dathan narrowed his eyes at her and sighed again. He would have made an excellent martyr, it seemed to Maeve.

“Not out of anything so misguided as mercy,” he finally replied with a shrug. “We cannot achieve our objectives without you.”

Maeve tried to rise, but Dathan pushed her back down again.

“Wait,” he said. “You must have more rest and more blood. You will be no use to us without your strength and your powers.”

“None of that will matter,” Maeve argued, “if our time runs out and Nemesis is unleashed with his sword of vengeance.”

Dathan did not look quite so desperate or despairing as he had in times past. He shoved a hand through his thick, maple-brown hair. “We can conclude by the events of last night, I think, that Lisette’s new lair is somewhere in the region of that excavation.”