For All Eternity (The Black Rose Chronicles) (35 page)

He looked at the old house for a while longer, remembering—for not all his recollections were unhappy ones, of course—and then turned to walk away.

Valerian was leaning against the nearest lamppost, arms folded, a disapproving expression on his face. “There you are,” he said, as if he’d conducted a long and weary search. In truth, Calder knew, the elder vampire had simply fastened his thoughts on his troublesome apprentice and willed himself to his side.

Calder felt a sudden stir of alarm coil itself in his chest, like a snake. “Maeve,” he said, stepping closer to Valerian, who still lounged against the modernized lamppost. “Is she all right?”

Valerian arched an eyebrow. “What do you care?” he intoned. “You are hardly an attentive lover, the way you keep rushing off all over time and creation.”

The alarm Calder felt intensified and was joined by a dull, pulsing throb of guilt. “Damn you, Valerian, what’s happened to her?”

Valerian smiled, but there was a glint of bitterness in the expression, plainly directed at Calder himself and not Maeve. “You are right to be frightened, fledgling,” he said coldly. “Maeve truly became the queen of vampires on this very night, when all the knowledge of the old ones was imparted to her, but the weight of it may crush her. She lies dormant, even now.”

Calder forgot himself, forgot the other vampire’s vastly superior powers, and grasped the lapels of Valerian’s beautifully tailored velvet waistcoat in both hands.
“Where?”

With pointed grace, Valerian freed himself. “For her sake,” he said in a low, smooth voice, “and for her sake alone, I will not bum you like a stalk of dry grass for your insolence.”

“Where is she?” Calder repeated, subsiding only slightly. Perhaps foolishly, he cared nothing for his own safety, but only Maeve’s.

Valerian took his time answering, first straightening his coat and smoothing the lapels Calder had crumpled. “Have you forgotten everything I taught you?” he asked. “Simply think of Maeve and will yourself to be at her side.”

Calder
had
forgotten in his anxiety. He scowled defiantly at Valerian, then closed his eyes and permeated himself with Maeve’s image.

Moments later Calder found himself, and Maeve, in a vast, echoing chamber that looked like a medieval dungeon. The place was lit by hundreds of flickering candles, and Maeve lay in the center on a long table draped with velvet, like Sleeping Beauty awaiting her prince’s kiss.

Her flesh seemed translucent in the candlelight, and the faintest of smiles touched her lips. Calder had seen that serene expression many times—on the faces of mortals who had died with clear consciences, after rising above their pain.

He took up her hand, kissed the knuckles. “Maeve?”

She did not respond, of course, or even stir.

It was only then that he noticed Benecia and Canaan, those horrible vampire children, sitting nearby in ruffled dresses, hair all in curls, swinging their feet. They smiled at him, in unison, but the glitter in their flat eyes was patently savage.

“If Maeve doesn’t wake up,” they said simultaneously, chilling Calder on some level far beneath his conscious reach, “then Mama will be queen, and we shall be princesses.”

Calder glared at them. “Get out of here, you little demons!”

They leaped off their chairs then, fangs bared, making a hair-raising sound that was at once a snarl and a shriek. Calder braced himself for attack, but before they lunged, Valerian materialized, blocking their way.

“Go dig up a grave or something,” that vampire said, waving a hand.

Benecia and Canaan looked sullen, to say the least, but they drew in their fangs and vanished.

Calder glowered at Valerian, even though—or perhaps
because
—his creator had just saved him an ugly experience. “What took you so long?” he asked, only then realizing that he was still grasping Maeve’s hand, and that his grip was not only possessive, but desperate.

Valerian sighed, as long-suffering as a martyr about to be burned at the stake. “I had forgotten how trying a fledgling’s insolence can be,” he said. His gaze fell on Maeve then and turned tender in the face of an instant. “I had hoped she would respond to you. Misguided though she may be, she loves you very much.”

Calder felt very human tears burning in his eyes as he looked down at Maeve. He had neglected her in the excitement of discovering and exploring his new powers, and he had never felt more remorse than he did then.

“Forgive me,” he whispered, not caring that Valerian could hear.

Valerian stood on the other side of the slab. “Come back to us if you can, Maeve,” he said with a strange mixture of gentle urging and sternness. “We need you if we are to survive. Nemesis’s angels are nearly upon us.”

There was not so much as a flicker of an eyelash from Maeve.

“How did this happen?” Calder demanded, as if knowing could make a difference, or somehow undo whatever it was that had brought Maeve to lie there on that slab, unmoving, unresponsive.

Valerian gave a complicated explanation, speaking of vampire corpses and a natural chamber far beneath the earth and a chest full of crumbling scrolls. Maeve had somehow absorbed the contents of those ancient parchments, all the knowledge the old ones had brought with them from Atlantis and gathered since. He finished with another brisk injunction for Maeve to wake up and resume her duties as leader of the vampires.

“Leave her alone,” Calder said distractedly. “Just leave her alone.”

He bent and rested his forehead lightly against Maeve’s, and that was when he felt the spiritual storm raging in and around her. She was struggling, fighting some internal battle on which everything outward hinged.

Calder raised himself and, clasping both her hands tightly in his, willed his own strength into her, without stint or reservation. He grew weak and swayed on his feet, ignoring Valerian’s orders to stop.

Maeve heard Calder’s voice above the howling tempest within her own being. She struggled toward him, reaching and straining, and finally letting him lead her.

Then she felt the inrush of vitality, as if she were feeding on the mysterious ambrosia that sustained all vampires. She felt him grasp her somehow, and pull her upward with all his fledgling power.

She opened her eyes just in time to see what price Calder had paid to help her. His face was waxen and strangely gaunt, and as she watched, her joy and relief turning now to horror and regret, his eyes rolled back, and he toppled across her, completely spent. Perhaps even dead.

Maeve screamed a protest as Valerian clasped Calder’s shoulders and gently pulled him away. She was still weak, and her efforts to sit up were futile.

“Valerian,” she pleaded. ‘Tell me—I beg of you—is he—gone?”

The other vampire’s voice was hollow. “I don’t know,” he answered. “I can’t make a connection—”

Fear shot through Maeve and propelled her off the slab. She stood beside it, trembling, and saw Valerian kneeling on the floor where Calder lay, unmoving. She had never seen that terrible stillness in any other vampire, not even the dormant ones she’d occasionally stumbled across when she was abroad and looking for a temporary lair.

She closed her eyes, trying to link her mind with Calder’s, but like Valerian, she failed. She could not sense her lover’s spirit or his formidable intelligence.

“He did this for me,” she said in despair, dropping to her knees. She took his hand and called to him silently with all the force and substance of her soul. And then she felt it—a spark, then a flicker of life, somewhere inside him.

Maeve bent closer and brushed his still, waxen lips with her own. “Come back to me,” she told him. “I love you, and I need you—”

Valerian must have felt Calder’s spirit rallying as well, for he gave a soft, joyous exclamation.

Calder grew stronger, and then stronger still. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he opened his eyes, stared blankly for a few moments, and then gave Maeve an insouciant wink.

With a strangled sob, intertwined with a burst of laughter, Maeve leaned down again and kissed him full on the mouth. “Don’t you ever do anything like that again!” she said as his lips formed a smile against her own.

She knew when Valerian left them alone, and was grateful.

Still kneeling, Maeve laid one hand to either side of Calder’s face, full of exaltation and love and fury that he’d nearly left her forever. “What happened?”

With considerable effort Calder raised himself onto his elbows. “Nothing,” he answered thoughtfully. “All I saw was darkness. My awareness kept shrinking until it was only a pinpoint.” He reached up, entangled his fingers in her hair, and tugged gently. ‘Then I heard your voice, and I followed it back.”

Maeve’s eyes burned with tears. “You were foolish to expend all your strength that way. Why did you do it?” He strained upward to give her a nibbling kiss. “You know why,” he answered hoarsely.

She did know, and it made everything worthwhile— all the suffering that lay behind her, and all the perils waiting ahead.

Calder Holbrook loved her.

C
HAPTER 18

The knowledge that the old ones were gone came to Lisette as she dreamed in her secure chamber beneath the Spanish villa, and although she had long ago parted company with the Brotherhood, she felt their loss. One, Zarek, had been her childhood sweetheart and later her husband, when they were both still mortal, of course. She had left him behind soon after they became vampires, for Zarek had been something of a philosopher, and he had not approved of the way Lisette used her powers.

She stirred on her cool marble slab, vaguely aware of the luscious mortal moving about abovestairs, helping himself to her chocolates, her brandy, and probably her money as well. She felt mild amusement; when George became a vampire, he would no longer have use for such human comforts. Let him enjoy them while he could, for soon she would be introducing him to much keener pleasures.

One of the first things she meant to do, she reflected, floating just beneath the surface of wakefulness, where mortals and vampires alike are awash in dreams, was change George’s name. She must choose something less pedestrian and more suitable—Raoul, perhaps, or Julian, or Nikos . . .

It wasn’t unusual for blood-drinkers to eschew their former identities completely, of course. She herself had done just that, shedding her mortal name, Cassandra, and abandoning her profession. Like the other old ones, she had been a doctor and a scientist.

Those ancient memories tugged at her now, pulled her back toward that time lost in mist, like the currents of some vast, unseen river. She reasoned that she was prone to reverie because Zarek and the others were gone, and she was virtually alone in the firmament. In any case, she made no effort to resist but instead allowed herself to drift slowly back, and back, and back . . .

Atlantis.

The doomed continent was real to Lisette, not the nebulous legend it had become in modem times, a green place with gently rolling hills and a curving mountain range edging its northernmost coasts. There were many lakes and rivers on the great island, and animals peculiar to it, curious and beautiful creatures that were lost in the great cataclysm.

Standing mentally on the stony shore of her homeland, Lisette put aside the certain knowledge that everything she looked upon was mere illusion, every stone and stick of wood, every grave and temple. All of it had fallen into the sea so long ago that there was no one to remember, save herself and possibly one other now-dormant vampire, the untrustworthy Tobias.

Lisette gave herself up to the joy of homecoming and climbed a grassy slope to look out over the impossibly blue seas. A fine, cool mist touched her skin and awakened that winsome mortal girl, the forgotten one who’d lain hidden within her all these thousands of years.

Lisette was no longer Lisette, but Cassandra, or Cassie, as she was called by those who loved her. She was young and beautiful, mortal and free, blessed with one of the finest minds in all Atlantis.

Cassie sat in the fragrant grass, drawing up her slim, strong legs and wrapping her arms around them. She did not fit the classical image of the Atlantean, she knew— she wore no toga or sandals, no wreath of leaves upon her head.

No, Cassie wore cutoff blue jeans and a skimpy summer top. She listened to rock music and lived in a split-level house, and her government was experimenting with weapons of terrifying power—bombs and missiles detonated by a process of turning atoms in upon themselves.

Cassie lay back on the grass, gazing up at the azure sky, her long auburn hair spread out around her. She tried not to worry about the tests her father and his colleagues, all top scientists, were conducting, but she knew too much for comfort.

Looking upon her younger self and at the same time gazing outward through that child’s eyes, Lisette felt a terrible grief. Cassie was as lost as if she’d gone under the sea with the rest of Atlantis’s population, including her father and mother and sisters and brothers.

Despite the pain of bereavement, Lisette was wont to leave this vision of her doomed homeland. She lingered, watching as Cassie grew into Cassandra and married Zarek, her handsome lover. They had joined the secret society, a group of renegade scientists, young and old, who had stumbled on a formula they believed would slow the aging process.