Time Without End (The Black Rose Chronicles) (31 page)

“Is it far away, this place where you’ve been hiding?” I spoke softly, trying to lull Challes a little so that he might relax his mental hold on me. I was regaining my normal powers, quickening inwardly on the sustenance my tutor had given me even as I ached for all the grief my mother’s misguided adoration had caused.

Challes extended a hand. “You will know soon enough,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper, as though fearing that we weren’t alone in that dank, gloomy crypt under the crumbling floors of Colefield Hall.

“I have no wish to be mortal again,” I confessed. The statement was purest truth, I realized, and it was shattering to face. I knew without asking that Daisy would not wish to become the very thing I gloried in being—a vampire. We were doomed, she and I, even if I managed somehow to save her from Krispin’s vengeance, to be parted yet again.

“But you would not be mere flesh and bone and blood,” Challes exulted quietly, laying a loosely knotted fist to his bosom. “Not you.”

I was mystified. “Speak sense, vampire!” I commanded. “I have no patience for your damnable double- talk!”

Challes laughed. “It pleases me to see that you are as arrogant as ever, Valerian Lazarus. Has it escaped your notice that you are a prisoner? It is I who govern the night, not you.” He paused and regarded me gently, as though memorizing my features. “Hush, now. Be not afraid. I have returned to fetch you home—we shall enter Paradise together.”

CHAPTER
15

Daisy

Las Vegas, 1995

Daisy walked quickly toward home, as though pursued.

The night was hot and dry, thrumming with sound and with silence. Las Vegas twinkled all around her, a bright, gaudy tangle of emeralds and rubies, diamonds and sapphires, tumbling over the desert sands like loot spilled from a treasure chest.

Daisy wondered if Krispin would be waiting for her when she reached her apartment. If he meant to kill her that night, he’d have to be quick about it—dawn was less than an hour away. Loneliness and fear made a swelling ache in Daisy’s throat. If there had ever been a time in her life when she needed someone to talk to, it was then, but there was nobody to confide in really, besides the elusive Valerian. She dared not tell her sister—to do so would worry Nadine and, worse, endanger her, as well as Freddy and the baby. Nor could Daisy open up to O’Halloran. One word about vampires, except in jest, and he’d personally see that she was put on medical leave.

Daisy couldn’t blame her partner; if someone had come to her with a wild story like her own, just a few weeks before, she would have recommended long-term therapy, if not shock treatments.

Her apartment building was in plain sight when the shift occurred.

In an instant reality altered itself with a sickening lurch. The sidewalk beneath Daisy’s feet turned to cobblestones, and the desert air was suddenly dank and somehow sour. Fog layered the ground, alive with shifting, wraithlike shapes, and Daisy made out old- fashioned street lamps and heard the rattle of carriage wheels and the clatter of horses’ hooves on the pavement. The vibrations rose through the soles of her feet.

Daisy sagged against the nearest wall, the brick cold against her back, closed her eyes, and tried to slow her runaway heartbeat and rapid breathing by sheer force of will. It didn’t help, knowing this wasn’t real, that it was only another “spontaneous regression,” as Valerian would say.

Normal, healthy people did not have experiences like this.

When she was sure she wouldn’t hyperventilate, or faint dead away, Daisy opened her eyes, cherishing even then the vain hope that she would find herself back in Las Vegas where she belonged.

Nothing had changed—except to become more intense.

The stench of the gutter at her feet swelled and then broke over her in a nauseating wave, and the passersby, clad in rags like fugitives from the cast of
Les Misérables
, were still more aromatic.

Daisy swallowed a scalding rush of bile and murmured an incoherent sound, meant to be a cry for help, but Valerian did not appear as he had the last time, when she’d found herself waiting tables in a fifteenth-century tavern.

It seemed the noxious fog was seeping through her skin, penetrating her skull, settling heavily into her mind and finally causing her memory to dissipate like steam. She was forgetting things, and remembering others that had never happened.

She clung desperately to the last shredded recollections of the person she’d been only moments before ... her name had been Daisy once, in a fever or a dream, but she had no idea who she was now. Or where she was.

It was getting darker and colder by the moment.

She reached out and caught at an old woman’s tattered sleeve. “Excuse me—what is this place?” she asked. “Where am I, please?”

The crone jerked free with a fierce and fearful motion and bustled on without answering, grumbling as she went.

“It’s London Town, miss,” said a small voice at her side. She looked down to see a child gazing up at her, an impossibly thin boy wearing tom clothing and a filthy cap. “You lost?”

She clung to the last memory, the name, repeating it to herself . . .
Daisy, Daisy . . .
though even that was struggling to escape her, squirming in her mind like a greased pig.

“Do you know me?” she whispered, terrified. “Can you tell me who I am?”

The boy shook his head. His enormous gray eyes were at once pitying and shrewd as he regarded her from beneath a fringe of dark, shaggy hair. “The peelers’ll take you away that quick,” he warned with a snap of his grubby fingers, “if they hear you talkin’ such ways as that. You got fine clothes on, so you must be a lady. Here—let me have a look inside that bag you’re carryin’—maybe we’ll find your name inside.”

She extended the bag—a frilly black drawstring affair with fringe and jet beads—but before the street urchin could take it from her, an elegantly gloved hand interceded. She caught a glimpse of a dark waistcoat, a silken vest, the merest impression of pale blue eyes, and then her vision faded completely. Rather than a cruel surprise, this state of blindness seemed somehow a return to the norm, and in its way it was comforting, even empowering, in its very familiarity.

“Away with you, you thieving little wastrel, or I’ll drag you off to Newgate myself,” the man said in a tone that was at once refined and mildly savage, and she heard the boy’s quick steps on the stones as he fled. There was a gentle reprimand in that cultured voice when he went on, and she felt his strong arm slip around her waist. “Jenny,” he scolded, and with the name came a torrent of remembrances, almost too many to sort through, and all sense of disorientation left her. “How many times must I warn you not to wander off by yourself?” He paused to emit an elegant sigh. When he went on, there was an edge to his voice. “Perhaps Adela is right in her assertion that you would be better off in an institution of some sort, where allowances could be made for your affliction.”

The reference to a hospital sent a little chill skittering along her spine, and she distracted herself by aligning all the things she suddenly knew about herself and the man beside her.

This was Martin, her elder brother and guardian, holding her arm so firmly, ushering her into a waiting carriage. He was a prominent man of business who kept offices in High Street. Her name was Jenny Wade, and she lived with Martin and his wife, Adela, in a spacious town house only a few streets away. She was nineteen years old and a spinster, much to her grievous disappointment, for her greatest ambition was to marry and bear children. Her “affliction,” as Martin called it, had come upon her in the course of an illness suffered when she was seven. Their parents were both dead, and the year was 1722.

Jenny heard Martin rap at the wall of the coach, and the sleek and costly vehicle jostled into motion, creaking and smelling of rich leather. “You won’t send me to an asylum, so don’t threaten,” she said cheerfully, acutely aware of so many things—the varied texture of her gown, her gloves, her cloak among them. Over the years Jenny had learned to let her other senses compensate for the loss of her eyesight, and she could determine much from touching, hearing, smelling, and tasting.

She sensed her brother’s smile, knew it contained reluctance as well as affection. “No,” he confessed, “I wouldn’t. But you’re a scamp all the same, and I can’t think why I put up with you.”

“That’s easy—it’s because you love me,” Jenny said. She was not spoiled by her brother, she reflected, but still he often indulged her. Out of affection, it was to be hoped, and not pity.

Martin laughed, but there was sorrow in the sound, and worry. Several moments passed before he spoke, and when he did, his tone was serious. “Why were you handing your bag over to that little street rat back there?” Jenny squirmed, uneasy. She’d suffered some kind of spell, she supposed, forgetting who she was and where she lived, and behind that realization were other memories, nebulous ones she couldn’t quite grasp, so fantastic that they would surely come up in her dreams.

“I was a bit confused, that’s all,” she said. Jenny seldom lied to Martin, for he was far more perceptive than most sighted people, and he had an almost unerring knack for recognizing an untruth. Deception by omission was another matter, however, and she often employed it. “You were too hard on the child. He only wanted to look in my bag for a name of someone who might come to my aid.”

“Piffle. Do you think the little wretch can read? If you’d handed him the bag, he would have run off with it,” Martin said with smooth conviction. “The world is a treacherous and deviant place, Jenny. You must be more cautious in future.”

“Why?” Jenny teased as the carriage rounded a comer. The swaying sensation was unique to this particular turn in the road, and she knew they’d entered their own street. “Are these coppers all that stand between us and penury?” She gave the handbag a little shake, causing the coins inside to rattle.

Martin’s reply was snappish, impatient, but Jenny was not deceived by the show of anger. She’d frightened her brother, and the thought filled her with remorse.

“Don’t be silly. Do you think I give a damn about a handful of pocket change? You were in
danger,
Jenny. And now you’re telling me you were ‘confused.’ I’m summoning the doctor as soon as Mistress Peach has given you supper and put you to bed.”

Jenny’s regret was swept aside by a rush of impotent fury, though she harbored an abiding affection for Mistress Peach, who had once served as her nanny and was now referred to as her companion. “I’m not a child, Martin, to be tucked up with a dolly, and no one has to ‘give’ me my supper. I can feed myself!”

Martin’s only answer was an exasperated sigh. The carriage stopped, and cold air buffeted Jenny’s cheeks when the door was opened from the outside. She descended without waiting for help from her brother, pushing aside the coach driver’s hand, and strode toward the house with the certainty of long practice.

She was greatly troubled, though she wouldn’t have admitted as much to Martin and certainly not to Adela, who was bound to nag, or Mistress Peach, who would fret herself into a sick headache. Jenny had been blind for twelve years, and yet she’d
seen
the fog and the boy and even Martin, though only for a moment. Furthermore, there were things she should remember, things she desperately
needed
to remember, about the moments prior to her fit of forgetfulness, important matters struggling behind a heavy veil at the back of her mind.

Jenny’s devoted companion met her in the foyer, muttering, bundling her briskly in a knitted coverlet, while Adela stood by, silent except for the slight, familiar wheezing sound she made when she was irritated.

“Where did you find her?” she demanded sharply of Martin. Adela was a fine woman and good wife to Jenny’s brother, considering her somewhat intractable and obstreperous nature, but she collected disappointments, slights, and minor injustices the way some people garnered seashells or buttons or bits of bright ribbon. The habit rendered her tiresome indeed, and pettish.

Jenny stiffened inside the coverlet. “Kindly do not speak as if I were deaf, Adela, as well as blind. If you have a question, then ask it directly!”

“That will be enough, both of you,” Martin said wearily, and Jenny’s ears caught the faint whisper of kidskin brushing flesh as he removed his gloves—more an impression than a sound, really. She felt a draft as he removed his waistcoat with a habitual flourish that was uniquely his own. “Jenny became distracted while I was doing business with the tailor, that’s all. I’m sure she merely stepped out of the carriage to get a breath of air and did not realize how far she’d strayed.”

Jenny’s face flamed with heat—Martin was as bad as Adela, in his way, making excuses for her behavior as though she were a slow-witted child—but it would be futile to argue. Besides, she was exhausted, and vaguely unwell in the bargain, wanting only to sit by the fire in her room and sip strong tea.

She endured Mistress Peach’s seemingly interminable fussing, and when that good woman finally left her alone, Jenny’s gratitude was profound. She felt oddly insubstantial, like a character in an oft-told tale, and she was deeply frightened. Pictures flashed inside her head, shifting, jewel-like images of a strange and faraway place, that pulsed with activity and with unaccountable noises. How, she wondered, could such things have found their way into the mind of a sheltered blind woman?