Time Without End (The Black Rose Chronicles) (26 page)

Even in those silly, oversize pajamas, which had probably been left behind by an earlier lover, Daisy was a vision. Her copper-gold hair tumbled around her shoulders, and her eyes were like antique gems I had once admired in a shop window—impossibly green, but opaque with tension. The smattering of freckles stood out against the creamy paleness of her skin.

“How can I leave you here?” I whispered, stricken to the heart.

She drew a step nearer, and I saw the flash of memories in her mind—she was recalling, of all things, the somewhat one-sided lovemaking session in that tacky motel along the road to Telluride. Her desire for me burned bright, like a flare, and such longing seized me then that I uttered a small cry of protest and need.

‘Take me with you,” she said. “Let me sleep where you sleep.”

I had not consciously cast a spell over Daisy; to do so would have been an abominable liberty, tantamount to rape. No, it was not magic, but plain fear that made her want the scathing comfort only I could give her. “But when we spoke of safety, you said—”

“I said I would not be your prisoner,” she interrupted gently, putting her arms around my neck. “But I will be your lover.”

I ached to have her, even to make her into my true mate, but of course I could do neither. The recollection of Elisabeth’s death, following so soon after our intimate union, was preying upon my mind. Too, the need to hunt was urgent—were I to encounter Krispin or some other enemy before feeding, I would be too weak to protect either Daisy or myself. Once I had taken sustenance, I must immediately resume the search for my brother.

“This is not the night,” I told her gently. I am certain that my disappointment was greater than hers.

‘Take me with you, then,” Daisy urged, running one fingertip down the chilled, pale planes of my cheek and upper jaw. “Please. I can face this killer—this thing—I know I can. But not tonight.”

I kissed her forehead and wrapped her in a loose embrace, and she tucked herself against me like a nestling seeking shelter beneath the wing of a larger bird. “Very well,” I said and fixed my mind on the lair hidden well outside the city’s bright, tattered edge, beneath the desert sands.

We were there in an instant, standing in my gracious living room. Daisy swayed a little, from shock no doubt, and I steadied her.

“You are probably safe here, for the moment at least,” I said, aware that time was passing at its usual merciless and inexorable pace. “Vampires are not gregarious creatures, and they are, therefore, most uncomfortable in a stranger’s lair.” I stepped back, left her teetering there in her pajamas, and moved one arm in a broad gesture intended to take in the whole of my splendid hiding place. “I must go now, Daisy. Explore to your heart’s content. I’ll be back an hour or so before dawn.”

With that, I vanished, carrying with me the look of unadulterated surprise I had glimpsed on her face, smiling a little over it. Mortals have such a difficult time accepting new realities.

Daisy

The Vampire’s Lair Outside Las Vegas, 1995

At first Daisy was so overwhelmed by Valerian’s latest flashy disappearance and her own recent introduction to broomstick transport that she sank onto the leather couch and stared blankly into space. Her next coherent thought, coming some time later, was the wish that she’d taken time to change her clothes.

Trust her to show up for the experience of the aeons in the pajamas O’Halloran had given her for Christmas the year before. He’d been making a point about equality between the sexes at the time, but Daisy couldn’t quite recall what it was.

She levered herself off the expensive sofa, once she’d recovered the required muscle control, and stood shakily, her knees trembling. Valerian might have spumed her seduction attempt, however politely, but he had flat-out invited her to check out his house, and she wasn’t about to miss the opportunity.

Daisy soon realized that the whole place was underground, a gigantic and very luxurious bomb shelter. The light was artificial, of course, but of such clear intensity that it might have sprung from the sun itself. Besides the living room, which appeared to be equipped with every modem electronic plaything in existence, there was a large, lagoonlike swimming pool and smaller hot tub, both surrounded by a jungle of lush plants, and a kitchen containing every conceivable appliance but no dishes, silverware, pots and pans, or food. There was nothing in the giant refrigerator except a lightbulb and a box of baking soda.

Daisy considered calling out for a pizza, just to see if the delivery driver could find the place.

The master bedroom was a suite, decadently appointed with antiques, paintings, and sculptures, all priceless. Besides a huge bed with a canopy and velvet draperies, and a working gas fireplace, there was a marble tub of truly decadent proportions set right into the floor. The faucet and spigots were gold, and the exquisite tiles surrounding the bath were hand-painted and very old.

Daisy found six other bedrooms opening off the same hallway, all sumptuously furnished and obviously unused, all with their own marble-and-gold bathrooms, spectacular enough to suit the most hedonistic guests. She hoped to find clothes to borrow—Daisy took care not to think too much about who might have left such garments behind, and not just because she felt proprietary about Valerian’s attentions—but there was nothing.

Finally she returned to Valerian’s room and helped herself to one of his pleated dress shirts. The tails reached almost to her knees, and she finished the ensemble off by taking a tie from his vast collection and knotting it loosely around her waist for a belt.

She was just entering the living room again, planning to stretch out on the leather sofa and try to sleep, when the biggest television screen she’d ever seen—and there were some enormous ones in the casinos—slid down out of the ceiling with an electronic purr.

Daisy looked around, thinking she must have touched a button inadvertently, but there was nothing like that in sight. She stared at the screen, and a peculiar sensation of mingled terror and excitement stirred in the pit of her stomach.

She made her way to the sofa as the great expanse of glass flickered and then brightened into light. Sliding both hands along the back of the couch, Daisy made her way to one end and collapsed into the deep cushions.

A field of flowers nodded on the screen, breathtakingly beautiful, bending and bowing gracefully in a twilight breeze. Daisy waited for credits, for any explanation of what was happening, but in some half-conscious part of her brain she’d already grasped the truth.

The image she was seeing wasn’t being transmitted from any television station. This was vampire magic, but the trick wasn’t Valerian’s. He wouldn’t have frightened her like that.

She watched the flowers, daisies mostly, bathed in the lavender of approaching night and at the same time reflecting a peculiar crimson glow. When she saw someone in the upper right-hand comer of the screen, she felt tension coil in her stomach, and when that figure drew near enough to see clearly, she gasped aloud.

The woman was a stranger, a tall, brown-eyed blonde, and yet Daisy knew she was looking at herself. Valerian had not told her about this incarnation, and she suspected that was because he hadn’t known about it. By some mysterious cosmic fluke, she’d gotten past him that time.

Watching the screen, fascinated and terrified at the same time, Daisy struggled to remember being this person, but not so much as a glimmer came to her.

She stood up, squinting, realizing only then that the living room, so dazzlingly bright before, was now lighted only by the flickering glow of the screen. A chill dripped down the center of her back, like a trickle of icy water, and she shivered, studying the face of that other self.

She sank down onto the cushions again a moment later, when her knees would no longer support her.

She forced herself to stay calm, to watch. Daisy was in danger, and she knew it, but her years of training and police service stood her in good stead. If she panicked, if she failed to pay close attention, she would not survive.

Daisy took careful note of the image on the screen— studied the reflection of this being who was and yet was not herself. The clothes her double wore were ragged and old, garments a peasant woman might have worn in any one of several different centuries.

She scooted forward, gripping the edge of the couch with both hands, heart thrumming, upper lip moist with perspiration.

The woman on the screen began to call out for someone, raising both hands to cup her mouth, scanning the field with worried eyes. There was no sound except for the faintest murmur of circuitry, but Daisy recognized the name on those lips so similar to her own.

Shock rocketed through Daisy, and her heart began to beat painfully fast; she barely overcame an elemental urge to cover her eyes with both hands.

The flowers were wilting, and a garish light had arisen in the background, crimson and orange, leaping, hot to the eye as it would be to the touch.

The fire was drawing nearer.

She watched herself begin to run, and realized that the flowers and grasses, all fainting beneath an undulating, glimmering tide of heat, grew in a graveyard.

Suddenly Daisy was not sitting on Valerian’s couch, watching the scene—she was in it.
She
was the pretty woman-child running between tilting headstones.
She
felt the heat of the approaching fire scouring the flesh of her back, even through the rough weave of her shift. The earth was rocky and uneven beneath her feet, her lungs burned fit to burst, and she was scared enough to pass water without slowing down.

Between one instant and the next she forgot that she’d ever been called Daisy Chandler, would not have recognized the name except as one she might have heard long ago in a dream.

“Krispin!” she screamed, tripping, falling, and rising again, all in a virtually simultaneous motion. The blaze roared as it ate up cottages and fields and churches behind her, gaining on her like the fleetest of runners.

She ran on, making a whimpering sound when she wasn’t choking on the rolling black smoke, until her legs gave out a second time. She toppled to the ground and crawled behind a great huge monument with a French name chiseled into its side.

It was coming on dark now—or was it just the smoke darkening the sky?—but where was her beloved? He’d promised to meet her here, to take her far away from London—perhaps to Paris, he’d said, or Rome or even Istanbul.

“Here’s the truth of it, Maddie Goodtree,” she whispered to herself, choking on the thick, acrid air between words. “Either he’s gone up in flames like a scarecrow, your fancy man, or you’ve been made the fool.”

Maddie leaned around the end of the monument, which felt hot as brimstone to the touch, and peered toward the line of thundering crimson on the horizon. London was gone, that it was. And at the rate the flames were traveling, they would gobble up the rest of England as well. Paris might have gone up, too, if it weren’t for the waters of the channel blocking the way.

She tried to rise, to run again, but all the feeling had gone out of her knees. Other folks, fleeing the city, scrambled past, dragging carts, mewling children, and the doddering old behind them.

No one stopped to help.

The fire drew nearer, and Maddie found it more and more difficult to breathe. She managed to gain her feet at last and stumbled after the others. The sun had set, but one would never have known it, with the sky so hellish bright.

Then suddenly he was there beside her. He smiled and took her hand, her beautiful lover, and told her not to be afraid.

There were shrieks puncturing the darkness all around them, cries of terror and of pain, and Maddie would have thought she was lost in hell itself if her beautiful, fair-haired angel hadn’t been walking beside her, showing her the way.

Krispin had found her at last.

They escaped the fire in a twinkling, it seemed to Maddie, taking refuge inside cool, dank walls, where there was no light at all. He drew her close, and their lips and bodies seemed to melt into one as they celebrated the darkness. . . .

Slowly, slowly, Daisy returned to herself.

The television screen had disappeared, and every light in the place was blazing, and she heard a soft, seductive voice that should have come from anywhere except within her own head.

“You were mine in that lifetime. Not Valerian’s.
Mine.”
There was a pause, no longer than a heartbeat, followed by a throaty chuckle. “He didn’t know you were alive, and you belonged to me. As you shall again.”

CHAPTER
13

Valerian

Outside Las Vegas, 1995

I returned to my underground lair just before dawn, exhausted and frustrated beyond measure. I had combed the earth, from one pole to the other, over the last few nights, and found no sign, no hair or trace, of my prey. Krispin had hidden himself very cleverly indeed.

Daisy was lying on the couch when I returned, clad in one of my handsewn shirts, artfully belted with a necktie. She was pale as a medieval snow.

I extended a hand and swayed slightly on my feet, for I was already beginning to succumb to the vampire sleep. I had sought my brother with little regard for the thinning darkness, and dawn was only moments away.