Forever and the Night (The Black Rose Chronicles) (12 page)

Chapter 7

I
t took a long time to awaken, and Neely managed the task in stages, grappling her way from one level of consciousness to the next. The struggle required all the will she could summon, for the lethargy that pressed down on her was oddly blissful, a sweet sleep, peaceful and all-encompassing.

At last she persuaded her eyelids to rise.

She was lying in a strange, beautiful bed, an enormous four-poster of mahogany or some other dark wood. The canopy overhead was trimmed in exquisite ecru tatting, the sheets were the softest linen, and the coverlet was made of worn blue velvet.

Aidan’s bed.

Neely remembered everything in a breathtaking rush— fleeing Bright River in Doris’s old car, renting the motel room, waking to find Aidan standing at the foot of her bed. It all flooded back, the unbelievable lovemaking, his convincing claim that he was a vampire, all of it. She gasped, stiffening beneath the covers. Aidan had wrapped her in his cape, and by some incomprehensible magic he had brought her here.

That was it.

Aidan must be a magician, and a very good one at that.

She began to make a case for her theory, in the courtroom of her mind. Yes, she
was
in his house in Connecticut, not a mile from the Lake view Truck Stop, and she had no memory of making the trip; those were undeniable facts. But Aidan could have hypnotized her, or given her drugs, and planted the other recollections in her consciousness like seeds.

She would just get up, she decided, get herself dressed, and leave. Aidan Tremayne might be the most attractive man she’d ever met, and he’d certainly captured her heart, not to mention turning her inside out sexually, but that didn’t mean she was going to let him kidnap her and play crazy games with her psyche.

Brave talk
, she said to herself. The truth was, if Aidan came to her at that moment, she would let him—let him? she would
beg
him to—make love to her all over again.

She drew a deep breath and released it slowly in an effort to calm the dark, sweet excitement the memory of their strange intimacy stirred in her. In a more rational moment she faced another facet of her attraction to Aidan Tremayne, and that was plain, simple fear.

The man was probably just a very good magician, as she’d decided earlier, but suppose he’d been telling the truth? Suppose he really was a vampire, for God’s sake?

Neely was confused and irritated, and besides that she figured her bladder was going to burst at any moment.

She moved to toss back the covers and sit up, but it was as if she were pinned to the mattress by some benign force. She ran a rather frantic mental check of her muscles and found them all in good working order. “Damn,” she said

and attempted to rise onto her elbows.

It was as if the ceiling had collapsed onto her, though there was no pain.

“Aidan!”

The name echoed in the large, empty room.

Neely waited, working up another burst of energy, fighting the urge to slip back into sleep. “Aidan!” she called again. “You get in here and help me out of this bed, damn it! I have to pee!”

There was no response at all, except for the hollow reverberations of her own voice.

Neely summoned all her will, which was formidable, and managed to make an inch of progress toward the side of the mattress. She waited, then moved again.

After ten minutes Neely was perspiring so heavily that the sheets clung to her skin. She reached the edge of the bed, spent a minor eternity gathering her strength, and then lunged again.

She landed on the cool hardwood floor with a thump and lay there dazed for an interval, exulting because she’d made it, yet so drained by the effort that she wasn’t sure she could stand up.

The insistent complaint of her bladder forced her to try; she reached her knees, gripped the antique bedside table for support, and raised herself shakily to her feet. She stood there, trembling and drawing deep breaths, until she dared attempt a step.

To Neely’s surprise, walking was easy. She went into the adjoining bathroom, which was fitted out in the costliest Italian marble, used the facilities, then draped an afghan around herself to keep warm and set about exploring the enormous bedchamber.

There were high casement windows on both sides of the suite, with built-in seats overlooking the snowy garden and the front yard, and the bureaus, closet, and armoires contained a wide assortment of men’s clothing. The room boasted its own fireplace, fronted in priceless hand-painted tiles, and here and there an exquisite Persian rug graced the gleaming wooden floors.

Neely ventured out into the hallway. She was hungry, and a little reassurance from her mysterious host wouldn’t have done any harm, either.

“Aidan?”

No answer.

She opened the double doors of the room across the hallway from Aidan’s and found another suite, almost as big and grand as the one she’d just left. Here the closets and bureaus were empty, however, and Neely’s hope of finding something to wear was dashed. She returned to the master chamber long enough to drop the afghan and put on one of Aidan’s tailored white shirts, then ventured into the hallway and headed toward the rear stairs.

At the bottom of these was a kitchen, large and immaculate. The shelves of the cupboards and the pantry were bare even of dust, and there wasn’t a plate or a glass or a butter knife to be seen.

Did vampires eat? Neely wondered. She immediately checked the silly thought. This whole setup was getting weirder and weirder.

Neely shifted her concentration away from her grumbling stomach and examined the rest of the massive house. In the movies it would have been filled with cobwebs and dust and spiders, she supposed, but instead the place was as tidy as a nun’s dresser drawer. The massive crystal chandeliers glistened, the rugs and floors felt clean under Neely’s bare feet, and the walls were decorated with fine original art. In Aidan’s study, the only part of the house she had been in before, there were stacks of paper on the large table he used as a desk, and books lined the walls from floor to ceiling, on every side.

Neely gravitated to the music box she had discovered on her last visit, wound the brass key on its underside, and lifted the lid.

Sweet yet unbearably sad music flowed from the tiny, precise mechanism, arousing emotions so deep Neely could not even begin to identify them. She felt hot tears sting her eyes as she whirled round and round in a solitary dance, caught up in the sorcery of the tune, clutching the little chest in both hands. As she moved, twilight gathered at the tall, deeply set windows, and heavy flakes of snow waltzed past the glass.

“What a will you must have,” Aidan said, startling Neely so badly that she stumbled and nearly dropped the music box.

He was standing in the doorway leading to the entryway, wearing a black overcoat, trousers, a white shirt, and a tie. Snowflakes glistened in his ebony hair and on the shoulders of his coat.

Neely stared at him, unable, for the moment, to speak. The impact of his presence was overwhelming; her soul trembled, her heart pounded. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, whether to fling herself upon him in rage or seduce him on the spot.

Aidan’s fine mouth tilted upward at one side as he indulged in a weary grin. “I guess I should have brought your suitcase when I carried you away from that dreadful motel,” he said, pulling leather gloves from his hands and shoving them into the pockets of his coat. “Though you do look quite charming in my shirt. Tell me—how did you manage to get out of bed?”

She raised her chin. “No force can stop a woman who needs to go to the bathroom,” she said.

Aidan laughed. “I see.” He removed his coat and hung it from a brass coat tree.

“There’s nothing to eat in this place,” Neely said, her voice shaking a little.

“Oh, but there is,” Aidan replied, disappearing into the entryway and returning momentarily with three cartons of Chinese take-out and a plastic fork wrapped in paper napkins. He smiled when she snatched everything from his hands and sat cross-legged on the hearth rug to rip open the boxes. Then he crouched beside her and said gently, “You’re not a prisoner here, Neely, and you won’t be mistreated. Please don’t be afraid.”

She gulped down a mouthful of fried rice. “ ‘Don’t be afraid’?” she echoed, somewhat bitterly. “I’d be some sort of idiot if I weren’t.”

He smiled at her reasoning, touched her hair briefly, then drew his hand back. In the next moment an expression of infinite sorrow filled his eyes.

“I can’t bear it,” he whispered hoarsely, “knowing that you fear me.”

Neely set aside the food, for even though her body still craved sustenance, her emotions had taken full control. She could not stop herself from touching Aidan, from laying her hands on either side of his face.

For one long moment they simply gazed at each other, exchanging some silent, mystical form of comfort. Then Neely said, “How did I get here, Aidan? Did you hypnotize me or something like that?”

He shook his head. “Nothing so ordinary, I’m afraid,” he told her. “I really am a vampire, Neely, just as I said. And you were in rather grave danger last night, I might add. It was foolish of you to set out on your own like that.”

She looked away because she wanted him so much, wanted to become one with him right there on the hearth rug, and out of the comer of her eye she saw him stand and distance himself from her.

“What kind of danger?” she asked, a little testily. She suspected Aidan had looked into her mind and seen her insatiable passion for him. His withdrawal struck her with the force of a blow.

‘Two blighters came round to kill you,” Aidan answered from the vicinity of his desk. He sounded distracted, like an ordinary man recounting the events of his day while flipping through the mail at the same time. “There’s no reason to worry, though—I dealt with them.”

So that was why he had suddenly stopped and thrust himself away the night before, when he’d been about to make love to her in the normal way. He’d heard someone approaching the room.

Neely allowed herself a slight shudder and took up her dinner again. “I’ll bet you came as something of a surprise—especially if you let them see your teeth.”

Aidan chuckled. “Yes, I daresay they weren’t expecting to encounter me.”

“Of course, it isn’t over,” Neely said with a sigh, reaching for one of the other cartons of Chinese food. “They’re not going to give up quite so easily.”

“Neither am I,” Aidan remarked.

Neely could no longer resist looking at him, and when she did, she saw that he was watching her with a mixture of bewilderment and delight.

“What a hot-blooded little creature you are,” he reflected. Neely blushed. “What makes you say that?”

He laughed. “A few moments ago you wanted to make love on the hearth.”

She didn’t deny the thought; she couldn’t. “I’m not normally so—amorous,” she said.

“I should hope not,” Aidan teased.

Her eyes flew to his face. She felt fury first, but the tender mirth she saw in his gaze stole her momentum, and she could not be angry with him.

“Have there been other men in your life, Neely?”

She was at once insulted and pleased by the question. “You claim you can read minds. Why don’t you just look inside my head and find out for yourself?”

“Because it would be an intrusion,” he said with a slight and very appealing shrug.

Neely sighed. “Fair enough,” she replied. ‘The answer is, just one. He broke my heart, my first year in college.” She decided that turnabout was fair play. “What about you, Aidan? How many women have you taken to your bed?” His jaw tightened, and he looked exasperated. Then he murmured something that sounded like “This modem age!” A moment after that, however, he replied, “There were a number of tavern wenches in my youth—”

“ ‘Tavern wenches’?” Neely interrupted, struck by this old-fashioned turn of phrase.

Aidan was clearly growing impatient again. With quicksilver speed he changed the subject. “I will find you something more appropriate to wear,” he said in a cool and formal tone. “Maeve must have left a few things behind—” Maeve. Neely was troubled by the name, but she had enough to assimilate without pursuing yet another subject.

By the time Aidan returned, carrying a bundle of clothing with him, Neely had finished eating and stashed the leftovers in the big, hitherto empty refrigerator humming away in the kitchen. She was perched on a window seat, knees drawn up, the tails of Aidan’s shirt tucked modestly beneath her, watching the snow fall.

“There’s still some sweet and sour pork left....”

He smiled. “Vampires don’t eat, Neely. Not in the same way humans do.”

She rolled her eyes, accepting the folded cotton garment he held out to her. “Please,” she said. “You’re no ordinary guy, I’ll grant you that, but you can’t really be a vampire. Can you?”

Aidan’s laugh seemed to burst from his throat, rich and sensual and warm.

Neely slid out of the window seat and went to stand behind a high-back leather chair, her imagination running wild all of a sudden. “You don’t actually drink blood?” Again she saw that peculiar, fathomless look of mourning in his eyes. “Yes,” he said miserably. “I despise it—I hate everything about being a vampire—but without blood I would die, and I am not quite prepared to do that.”