Time Without End (The Black Rose Chronicles) (35 page)

“It’s only me,” Valerian said.

Daisy’s relief was so intense that it seemed to melt her bones and muscles like sunshine on snow. She squinted as he came to stand beside her, his handsome face clearly visible even in the darkness, because of its pale translucence.

“For a moment, I thought—”

‘That I was Krispin, come to kill you at last?”

She could only nod.

He touched her face, and she was reminded of his lovemaking, as she’d experienced it in this lifetime, and as Jenny Wade, the blind girl. “My precious love,” he said in a ragged whisper and bent to kiss her almost fitfully on the forehead. “I’ve come to bid you farewell.”

Once or twice, since the vampire odyssey had begun, Daisy had wished she could have her old, comparatively uncomplicated life back. Now, faced with the prospect of losing Valerian forever, she discovered she was willing to risk almost anything to continue the relationship, weird as it was.

Maybe she
had
gone over the edge, and the department had been right to pull her badge.

“No,” she said, her eyes filling with fresh tears. “I don’t want you to go.”

“Daisy,” he whispered, and there was anguish in the way he said her name. “This is the only way I can protect you, and it’s difficult enough—”

“What
is the only way? What are you talking about?” Valerian deflected the questions with a statement. “Krispin won’t bother you again.”

“Damn it, Valerian, I have to know what you mean. I
love
you—that alone probably qualifies me for megatherapy—but there it is. You can’t just walk out of here, or turn into a bat and fly away, or dissolve into a mist and seep through the wall—by God, you owe me more than that!”

He regarded her silently for a time, and she saw his pain clearly in those moments, though the room was as dark as ever, and felt the weight of his sorrow descend on her own heart. When he spoke, his voice was only a raspy murmur.

“All right,” Valerian said tonelessly. “I’ve made a bargain with Krispin. We will both perish, together, and the curse will be broken. You’ll be free.”

Daisy wanted to blurt out a protest, but she stopped the words in her throat and swallowed them. Then she waited until she could trust herself to speak in a rational manner. “How?” She waved her good hand, precluding interruptions. “I’m not asking about the curse. I want to know how you intend to ‘perish,’ as you put it. What tragic elegance that word has!”

His eyes glistened as though he might be weeping, as she certainly was, but there was no tremor in his voice. “We’ll be burned.”

Such horror engulfed Daisy that she nearly fainted. She sat up at last and groped for the small stainless-steel pan on the bedside table, certain her stomach would fling up its contents. “
Burned?
Good God, Valerian, you can’t be serious!”

He managed a brief, crooked smile, full of grief. “It’s hardly a suitable subject for a joke,” he pointed out.

“I won’t let you!” Daisy cried and tried to scramble out of bed.

Valerian pinned her to the pillows, as surely as if he’d grasped her shoulders, though he was not physically touching her. “You can’t stop this, Daisy,” he said reasonably, gently. “And you wouldn’t try if you really understood the situation.”

Daisy’s face was wet with tears, and they kept coming, as if there were no end to them, and she didn’t give a damn. ‘That’s bull, and you know it,” she argued furiously. “I
do
understand the god-damned
situation.
What I don’t get is how you could be such an idiot! Can’t you see that this is a trick—that Krispin has no intention of going up in smoke with you?”

In a graceful motion that was at once firm and heartbreakingly tender, Valerian gathered Daisy into his arms and held her close against his chest. “Shhhh,” he said, stroking her hair with one hand as she gave way to great, silent, shuddering sobs. For a long time he rocked her gently in his embrace, and when the worst of the storm had passed, he crooked a finger under her quivering chin and made her look at him. “Why are you here, Daisy?”

She laid her head against his chest, listening for a heartbeat that wasn’t there. She was kneeling on the mattress now, the IV tube still dangling from her left hand, with one arm around Valerian’s neck. Haltingly she answered his question, told him how she’d been walking home from the Venetian Hotel when the second spontaneous regression had overtaken her. Daisy went on to recount her brief experience as Jenny Wade, finishing with, “You were there, too. You carried me away, and we made love. I was a virgin.”

She felt him tremble. “Yes,” he said.

“Did I travel through time, the way you do?”

“No,” Valerian replied at length. “You were only remembering. It was all an illusion.”

“Even you?”

“Especially me.”

Daisy was disappointed; she’d wanted the experience to be real. “Can vampires make women pregnant?”

He stiffened but did not pull away, as it had seemed for a moment that he would. “I don’t know,” he answered after another long interval. “Pray that such a thing cannot happen. Any child of mine would surely be a monster.” Daisy turned her wet face into his shirtfront and indulged in a loud sniffle. “Only during the Terrible Twos,” she said, because if she spoke seriously, or let go of Valerian, the world would end.

Valerian laid a hand to either side of Daisy’s head and tilted it back to look into her eyes. “Stop, Daisy,” he pleaded. “I know what you’re trying to do, but it won’t work. We can’t put off the inevitable.”

“Please—stay.”

“I can’t
. ”

“It’s a trap—Krispin means to let you die and save himself at the last moment!”

“I know that, Daisy,” Valerian said patiently, glancing uneasily toward the window. The darkness seemed to be thinning, losing its depth. “He won’t succeed.”

“Yes, he will. He’ll come back here and carry me off, and there’ll be no one to protect me—”

Valerian laid a finger to her lips, effectively stopping the rising tide of hysteria. “I love you,” he said, and then he was simply gone. It was as if she’d only imagined him, only dreamed he was there.

Daisy knelt on the bed for a few moments, frantic, her mind full of horrific images of Valerian burning. She reached for the pan again and retched convulsively.

When the spate of illness passed, Daisy switched on her reading lamp and reached for the telephone on the beside stand. She called information in Seattle and asked for Kristina’s number.

Ms. Holbrook answered right away, though she sounded sleepy. ‘This had better be good,” she said without preamble.

Daisy had had to make a lot of difficult calls in the course of her work. By comparison, telephoning the daughter of two blood-drinking monsters in the middle of the night was tame. “Valerian is in trouble,” she told Kristina. “I need your help.”

“Who is this?”

“Daisy Chandler. We met in Las Vegas, at Valerian’s house.”

“Oh, yes—the naked cop. Tell me—just what kind of fix has my Guardian Vampire gotten himself into this time? He does have a regrettable gift for generating chaos, our Valerian. Not to mention scandal, usually accompanied by high drama.”

Daisy closed her eyes, gathered her courage, and began to talk.

CHAPTER
17

Valerian

London, 1875

I found Calder Holbrook in the lab beneath the London house he shared with Maeve, his mate. Like many vampires, he preferred the century of his mortal birth and, having that option, passed much of his time there.

“Valerian,” the doctor greeted me, with more resignation than affection, when I appeared at his elbow. He was an ideal partner for Maeve, though like a great many doctors he tended to be taciturn to the point of abruptness. He was quiet and steady, providing a perfect counterbalance to her more spectacular personality. Though I had transformed Holbrook from mortal to fiend myself, and was thus, in a manner of speaking, his sire, and although it had been I, and no one else, who had taught him the rudiments of navigating the world of the supernatural, there was, as the saying goes, no love lost between us.

For it was I who made Maeve a vampire, albeit long before he knew her, and he was jealous of that undeniable intimacy.

I stood with my hands clasped behind my back, peering over Calder’s shoulder at the concoction bubbling in a bottle heated over a small brazier. “Have you discovered the cure for what ails us?” I inquired, for I knew that was what the doctor sought—a way to circumvent a nightwalker’s needs for blood-sustenance and protection from the sun, while retaining the glorious powers we possess. Unhampered by the kind of idealism that plagues men and vampires of Calder’s ilk, I envisioned a plethora of such creatures ranging over the earth and, subsequent to that thought, hoped for a resounding failure.

Holbrook turned his head to regard me archly for a moment or two, one eyebrow raised, then uttered a gruff
harumph
and turned back to his work. “Mysteries, mysteries,” he muttered. “Even vampirism cannot explain what ails
you
, Valerian.”

I had just parted from Daisy, probably forever, and I faced an eternity of damnation—unceasing punishment so terrible, so brutal, that only a medieval mind could truly grasp its portent—and I was not in the mood to exchange jibes with the queen’s consort. “Please—spare me your hysterical expressions of admiration and tender regard.”

The stuff in Calder’s glass vial turned to an interesting shade of amber, and he raised it high to peer through it and murmur again.

“What do you want?” he asked when he’d left me quivering on the hook a little longer.

“I have been told that you’ve discovered parallel dimensions and passages into those other worlds.”

At long last Calder turned and granted me his full, if somewhat grudging, attention. “I have uncovered the existence of such phenomena, yes, but I have only theories as to how they are reached.”

I resisted the urge to grasp the doctor’s collar and haul him onto his toes as I might have done with a mortal, for I knew Calder wouldn’t suffer such an affront lightly. He must have glimpsed the intent in my face before I quelled it, for the shadow of a smile fell across his mouth.

I had amused him. Oh, joy.

“The way must be sealed, whatever and wherever it is,” I said at last in an angry rasp. My temper was not helped by the sense of hopelessness that pervaded me being like an unseen vapor, bruising every cell and sinew, even in their atrophy. “Don’t you see? That’s how he—my brother, Krispin—has been able to hide himself from me all these centuries. Suppose there are others like him? Suppose—”

“What in hell are you talking about?” Calder interrupted.

Dawn was approaching; I could feel it tugging at my consciousness, pulling me downward into a maelstrom of nothingness, although the doctor did not seem to be affected. “There is so little time!” I cried, desperate to make him understand.

‘Tell me,” he said, this time with a note of gentleness in his voice. I imagined that Dr. Holbrook had been a comfort to his patients, as a mortal physician. He was not generally so delicate with the sensibilities of vampires.

I told the tale, as best I was able, my words faltering and tumbling over each other as I attempted to resist the grasping, smothering darkness rising around me. I explained the danger Krispin represented, or at least I hoped that was what I had done, for it all sounded garbled to me, and disjointed. All the while I was speaking, I wondered vaguely why my fledgling was not succumbing to the great sleep as I was.

Finally the moment came when I could no longer think, or speak, or wonder. I had been dragged under, into the oblivion of my innermost being, there to slumber, witless and unstirring, until the sun sank into westerly seas.

Daisy

Las Vegas, 1995

The sleeping pill must have taken hold soon after Daisy had finished her call to Kristina, for she wakened to full sunlight and a breakfast tray, with no conscious memory of hanging up the receiver.

The ageless Ms. Holbrook was standing by the window, her cap of dark hair gleaming richly in the dazzle of morning, clad in a cream-colored pantsuit of impeccable tailoring, Gucci shoes, and a matching bag of soft, supple leather. Her jewelry, a single heavy golden chain, was real, and Daisy wondered if she’d zapped the outfit out of thin air or simply bought everything in stores, like anyone else.

“Why didn’t you awaken me?” Daisy demanded, frowning at the food on her tray and reaching reluctantly for a piece of toast. She had no appetite, but she knew she would need her strength for the challenges ahead, and that meant she had to eat.

Kristina raised one shoulder in a slight, elegant shrug. “There’s really no hurry. Valerian is a vampire. He’s burrowed down somewhere, sleeping off the day.” Daisy nibbled at the toast. “And Krispin?”

“Who knows? From what you told me on the telephone last night, he may be the proverbial horse of a different color. An unknown quantity, if you will.”