For All Eternity (The Black Rose Chronicles) (39 page)

The grassy clearing was covered with grayish-white forms, and as she watched, the wind came and spread them over the grass, and only the warlocks were left— the warlocks, and the few vampires who had been willing to stand behind Maeve in her time of greatest need.

“The dawn comes!” one vampire cried.

Calder and Valerian collected Maeve between them, sheltering her with their larger bodies, and she felt herself dissolve into particles. Moments later she was in a dark place, as cool and welcoming as a grave. When her dazed eyes adjusted, she realized they had brought her to a chamber beneath the circle of stones itself.

At one end of the small cellar was an altar, probably druid, so old that it was crumbling. Valerian stood before it and executed a truly regal bow.

“My queen,” he said.

Maeve was lying in Calder’s arms, and she was definitely grateful for that. “Get up,” she snapped. “I am nothing of the sort!”

Valerian laughed and spread the fingers of one graceful hand over his chest. “Anything you say, Your Majesty,” he replied.

Maeve closed her eyes, inexpressibly weary, and let her head rest against Calder’s shoulder. “Leave us,” she commanded, “and find a lair of your own.”

He obeyed, that troublesome, beloved vampire, dissipating into smoke with a finesse only he could have managed.

Maeve lifted her mouth to Calder’s, and he kissed her hungrily, furiously, and with unutterable despair. There was no time for lovemaking, however much they might want each other, for the sun was about to spill its light over the countryside above.

They lay entwined, Maeve and Calder, in the rubble of the old religion, and let the vampire sleep take them.

There were no dreams, at least not for Maeve.

When she awakened at sunset, Calder was already sitting up beside her, looking upon her with despair naked in his eyes.

“You’re leaving me,” Maeve said, certain that this was not reality, but merely what mortals called a nightmare.

Calder nodded once and reached out to caress her cheek lightly, with just the tip of one finger. “It will be better for us both,” he said hoarsely. “I love you, Maeve—more than I ever dreamed I was capable of loving—and I understand that you’ve held me prisoner only to protect me. Still, I cannot be subject to your will, no matter how benevolent.”

Maeve swayed, horror-stricken. It was real.

For an instant Maeve wished that she’d died in battle the previous night instead of Lisette, but her instinct to live was perhaps her strongest trait, and it prevailed.

She raised her chin. “I see.”

Calder looked away. He was already withdrawing from her, even though they shared that small chamber. He started to speak and then stopped himself.

“We could change,” she suggested tentatively.

His gaze returned to her face; his eyes smoldered with dark conviction. “Never,” he said. “You are too strong, and I am too stubborn.” He paused to sigh, and the sound was filled with heartbreak. “I wanted to be your true mate, your equal, but now more than ever I know that isn’t possible.”

Maeve closed her eyes. “But you are my equal.” “No, darling,” Calder said gently, shaking his head. “You are the vampire queen, and I am a fledgling.”

She was really losing him. It was unbearable, incredible, after all they’d been through. And they loved each other so much!

“How did you convince Dimity to bring you to the circle of stones last night?” she asked, needing to back away from the heart of the situation for a few moments, to gather the scattered pieces of herself and try to fit them back together somehow.

“I didn’t,” he said. “I sensed the danger you were in, and I guess my desire to be at your side was greater than your power to keep me away. I thought about you, and I was there.”

“How do you intend to live without me?” Maeve asked in all seriousness. “How shall I live without you?” Calder left her side, rose to his feet, and dusted off the legs of his trousers as a mortal man might do. “I suppose we’ll see each other, now and then,” he said, taking care not to look at Maeve. “In time we’ll forget.”

She shook her head. “When the last star collapses into dust, my darling,” she said softly, sorrowfully, “I will still love you.”

“Don’t,” he said, turning away. “Please. Just let me go.”

“That’s not so easy,” Maeve replied, standing, laying her hands on his broad back where his shoulder blades jutted beneath his flesh. “I love you, Calder. I need you. Don’t you care enough to forgive me, to try to understand?”

He turned then and looked down into her eyes. “It would only happen again and again—your trapping me somewhere every time you thought I was in danger— until I came to despise you as my jailer! The only thing we can do is end it now, before we’re both destroyed!”

With that, Calder disappeared, but his words echoed in Maeve’s mind.

Before we’re both destroyed.

‘Too late,” Maeve said softly. Then, with no one to see, no one to lend comfort, she buried her face in her hands and wept. She had won so much in that final battle, and lost everything.

Nemesis was waiting in the graveyard of All Souls’ Cathedral three nights later when Maeve arrived. He might have looked quite ordinary, in his conservative overcoat, with that simple but frightfully expensive black umbrella unfurled against the chilly rain, except for the luminous quality that came from inside him.

Looking upon this magnificent creature from a little distance, Maeve could see why the great masters had graced their painted angels with halos and bright auras. They must have been aware, some consciously, some unconsciously, of their own heavenly guardians and comforters.

She wondered if she’d had a guardian angel as a child, and what he or she was doing now, when his or her services were no longer required.

Or were they?

Nemesis smiled his cordial, benevolent smile when at last she stood facing him, feeling the fiery heat of his aura. “You did have a guardian, you know,” he said. “Every mortal does.”

Maeve covered her trepidation with bravado, for something about this powerful, mysterious, implacable being made her feel as defenseless as a child. “Fat lot of good it did me,” she retorted somewhat testily. Losing Calder had made her even more reckless than usual; she had so little to lose.

The warrior angel chuckled, and the sound was throaty and rich. “We are not infallible creatures,” he explained, and Maeve thought it was rather generous of him, considering the circumstances. “Sometimes we make mistakes.”

The rain pattered on the roof of All Souls’, the gravestones, and the ancient walkway that had been worn smooth by the passage of generations of saints and sinners. Maeve looked directly into the angel’s eyes and felt a strange, entrancing peace.

She shook it off. “Then perhaps you will be more understanding of the errors of others,” she said. “We have destroyed Lisette as you probably know, and all but a very few of her vampires—which are being gathered by my friends at this moment.”

Nemesis regarded her steadily, revealing none of his thoughts or emotions—if indeed angels had such things. She honestly didn’t know.

“A great deal of damage has been done,” he said. “And there will be more still,” Maeve reasoned boldly, flying blind, “if you unleash your forces on the dark kingdom. Granted, you’ll eventually prevail, but we will fight you, you may be sure of that, as long as we have the strength to raise our swords.”

“Insanity,” Nemesis replied. “You cannot win!”

“No,” Maeve agreed calmly. “We cannot. But remember this, Warrior Angel: We, the warlocks and vampires, have met your demands, and we plead without shame for peace. If you refuse us, and thousands of mortals die in the resulting fray, whose fault is that? Yours or ours?”

C
HAPTER 20

Maeve did not have to seek out the Warrior Angel to hear his final decision; she was in her studio, working feverishly on the tapestry she had yet to properly study, when he appeared in the center of the floor.

There was less fanfare than she would have expected of one of the most powerful angels in heaven, but she was startled all the same. Somehow all Valerian’s abrupt entrances had not quite prepared her for this particular surprise.

She let go of the shuttle and stepped down off the high stool, her eyes wide. Everything depended on this meeting—everything. Either heaven was satisfied that Lisette had been stopped and her minions destroyed, or the end was upon them all.

Nemesis, who wore a good nineteenth-century-style suit, including the tight celluloid collar, did not immediately speak or even look at Maeve. He went, instead, to the tapestry, now spilling, almost complete, from the back of the loom, and examined it thoughtfully.

“What does this image mean?” he asked after a long and, for Maeve, difficult silence.

Maeve had not looked at the tapestry in weeks, although she had worked the shuttle often in moments of intolerable stress. She felt stupid for not being able to answer the question—her pictures were never planned, they simply came out through her fingers—and they were often prophetic. She rounded the loom to stand beside Nemesis, and what she saw brought a small, strangled sound to her throat.

The tapestry showed herself, in a flowing dress, holding a lush bouquet of ivory roses. Some of the petals had drifted to the ground, which was covered in leaves of brown and gold and crimson, and behind her was a low stone wall, perhaps waist high. Sitting on the wall, with the casual grace so typical of the vampire, was Calder. He was smiling back at Maeve, who wore an expression of radiant joy, but it wasn’t those things that moved Maeve. It was the beautiful, dark-haired child, perhaps a year old, who sat laughing on Calder’s shoulder, small, plump arms reaching out to Maeve.

A child.

She laid her hands almost reverently on her stomach. A child? But that was impossible—no vampire in all of history had ever given birth.

Nemesis, probably weary of waiting for Maeve’s long-delayed answer to his original question, had by then divined the meaning of the tapestry for himself. He reached out and touched the likeness of the little one with the gentlest brush of his fingers.

Maeve gazed up at him, in wonder and fear, because everything in that tapestry, every dream it represented, was in his hands. “Please,” she said hoarsely. “Tell me what has been decided.”

He heaved a great sigh and turned to look down on Maeve with a peculiar combination of sympathy and love and reluctance. “Were it up to me,” he said, “I would still purge the earth of all night creatures— vampires, warlocks, werewolves, all of those things. But, alas, it seems there is some truth to that theory you expressed before—the Master feels that you have your place in the scheme of things.” He was studying the child again, an expression of troubled amazement on his face. When he turned to meet Maeve’s eyes once more, he said, “You will live and fulfill your destiny, and if you are to be destroyed, then it will have to be by one of your own kind.”

Maeve felt a great surge of joy, closely followed by an equally powerful rush of fear. “This infant—” Her words fell away, and she laid a hand to Calder’s woven image and then the baby’s.

Nemesis heaved another sigh. “One of their poets said it—‘There are more things in heaven and earth . . .’” “But vampires do not have children,” Maeve mused, as much to herself as to Nemesis, “and certainly I would never transform a mortal child. . .

“This infant
will
be mortal,” Nemesis said, frowning at the tapestry again. “Perhaps conception occurred before Dr. Holbrook was transformed.”

Maeve was in a daze. There would be no war with the angels, and a miracle of the sort she had never dared to dream of was happening. She, a vampire, carried a living,
human
child within her.

And the father of that little one, she reminded herself brokenly, had gone away.

Having delivered his message, Nemesis vanished in the blink of an eye, and Maeve was alone with her thoughts and the mysterious tapestry.

Dathan and Valerian must be told that the danger was past, that Nemesis and his Master had relented. Maeve would leave the spreading of this good news to them, however, for she had other things to do.

She stared into the tapestry for a long moment, her heart swelling with happiness and anticipation, then focused her thoughts on Valerian.

He was in a smoky saloon in the nineteenth-century American West, wearing rough-spun trousers, an old woolen shirt, six-guns, and one of the biggest hats Maeve had ever seen. A long, thin cigar protruded from one side of his mouth, and he was frowning at the hand of cards he held, as if the fate of the world depended on that very game of poker. A dance-hall girl hovered behind him, simpering and at the same time massaging Valerian’s broad, powerful shoulders.

None of the mortals saw Maeve; she made sure of that. Valerian, however, looked up at her over his hand of cards. The merest shadow of a smile touched his mouth, and his eyes twinkled.

You and your games,
Maeve told him.

He settled back in his chair, a gesture meant for the assortment of mortals sitting at the table and standing around it.
Eternity would be very dull without games,
he replied.