Time Without End (The Black Rose Chronicles) (43 page)

I gave a roar of rage and torment. I could not plunge a stake through Daisy’s heart—I could not!

Dathan spoke. “This is not your beloved,” he said with uncommon gentleness. “If you cannot kill the dragon, then pray, step aside and allow me.”

I dropped the stake and the mallet, though I had made no conscious decision to do so. I was beginning to feel the first biting sting of the sun, despite the thick walls and floors that sheltered us, just as Challes had warned I might. I was, however, oblivious to the pain; it was nothing beside my horror and grief.

“Stand back,” Dathan commanded, and Challes grasped my arms and pulled me away from the high marble slab where Krispin lay, posing as Daisy, pleading with me now, in her voice, to save her.

I had seen the warlock work his magic before, but nothing could have prepared me for what happened next. He glared down at the lovely monster, still prone on the slab, and murmured some kind of incantation.

Fire seemed to explode in that chamber, to leap from the candles and catch on Daisy’s—{Crispin’s—clothes. He shrieked, did Krispin, more in fury than in pain, as the fire enveloped him, leaping, crackling, consuming. He abandoned Daisy’s shape, and became himself again, but the spectacle was still torture to watch.

I felt a scream of my own swell, shrill and sharp- edged, in my throat, and I struggled, compelled by some animal instinct to go to my brother’s aid, but Dathan and Challes restrained me.

Krispin writhed and shrieked upon his pyre, his gaze fixed on me all the while, hating, using even his agony to taunt me.

I cried out again, hoarsely, and fought to free myself, but my tutor and my unlikely ally were stronger. I sank at last to my knees, sobbing, as the warlock’s fire devoured the monster in flames of ever-changing colors.

And there were other flames, too—the invisible ones, spawned by the sun around which Second Earth revolved. I, too, was burning, and it was an unspeakable agony, but I did not care. I wanted to suffer, to atone for the anguish my brother had endured.

I was soon to have the opportunity, as it happened.

Daisy

Seattle, 1995

After three days at Kristina’s house, being spoiled, coddled, and overfed, Daisy was, for all practical intents and purposes, completely recovered. There had been no sign of Krispin, and she had not seen Valerian since he and the warlock, Dathan, had vanished in tandem from Kristina’s living room.

“I’m going back to Las Vegas,” Daisy announced that sunny morning, finding her friend on the large deck overlooking the waters of Puget Sound, a magazine resting in her lap. “I’ve got some loose ends to tie up there, but then I’d like to come back.”

Kristina looked surprised and pleased, then solemn. “You’ve felt it, then. That Krispin is gone?”

Daisy nodded, fighting back tears. “Yes. Valerian is gone, too, in a different way. I don’t know how to explain it, but—it’s as though he has died.”

“I know,” Kristina said. She had less success in suppressing her tears; her silver eyes glistened with them. “Maybe he’s only resting somewhere.”

“And maybe not,” Daisy replied. She supposed she was in shock—she’d dreamed a horrid death scene in the night and watched Krispin bum, twisting and turning like a twig, but the cries of torment she had heard had been Valerian’s. . . .

Kristina stood facing her. “What made you decide you want to live here in Seattle?” she asked. Gulls squawked in the sky, and in the distance a ferry horn sounded.

“I need a change,” Daisy said, moving to stand at the rail. She’d regained most of her strength, but it helped to lean on something. “I figured out one thing, at least. I don’t want to be a cop anymore.”

Kristina was beside her, looking at the view. “What then?” she asked.

“You’ll laugh.”

“I promise I won’t.”

Daisy sighed. “I’ve got some money saved, and it would be a shame to let my talents and all that training and experience go to waste. I’m going to rent an office somewhere and hire myself out as a private investigator.” Kristina grinned. “I can see you doing that,” she said.

“You know you’re welcome to stay here until you find a place to live.”

Daisy shook her head. “Thanks, Kris, but I don’t want to wear out my welcome. After all, you’re the only friend I’ve got in Seattle, and I’m going to need somebody to talk to. Somebody who believes in vampires, for instance.”

Kristina slipped a friendly arm around Daisy’s shoulders. “I also believe in ghosts, werewolves, warlocks, and a few other dysfunctional types, but I don’t suppose you’re up to hearing all of that just yet.”

Daisy smiled, though she wanted more than ever to cry. “Save it until I get back,” she said. “Unless, of course, you’re going to tell me that Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny really exist?” “Sorry,” Kristina said, and they both laughed.

Valerian

Colefield Hall, 1995

“Remember,” Dathan told me the instant I opened my eyes, “you owe me.”

I was lying on a cool slab in that familiar cellar where I had spent many nights, following my transformation. I lifted my arms, and that gesture raised a storm of pain that reached deep into my flesh like the white-hot claws of a million ravening rats. My hands were scarred and misshapen, and I must have made a pitiful sound at this discovery, for Challes appeared, fussing like an obsessed nanny, to give me blood in a silver cup.

“Don’t fret,” Dathan taunted me as I drew the desperately needed fluid in through my fangs. “You look like the ugliest of Lon Chaney’s thousand faces, but you’ll be your usual pretty self again soon enough, I vow.”

I might have spat at him if I hadn’t needed the blood so badly. The worst of my ordeal—an eternity in hell—still lay ahead of me. I spared no grief over my lost beauty.

“Krispin
—V
I spoke to Challes when the cup had been taken away.

“His body was destroyed,” my tutor replied. He looked shrunken, did Challes, as though he were dissolving from the inside, caving in upon himself like an ancient mummy, disturbed by some bumbling archaeologist, callously subjected to sunlight and air. “Krispin’s soul, on the other hand, surely awaits us both in hell.” “Yes,” I said. I would have given much to see Daisy then, but I knew I would only grieve her, especially in my present repugnant state. I wanted her love, not her pity. “Nemesis will be here soon, no doubt.”

“You can’t go to hell without keeping your end of the bargain,” Dathan protested vigorously. He’d been leaning against the wall, but with these words he sprang at me like a wire coil released from a matchbox. “Damn you, vampire, you must pay this debt!”

I smiled at him and saw in his pitying eyes what a ludicrous picture I made, with my distorted face and hairless head. “Very well,” I said. “There is a vampire— Roxanne Havermail is her name. Her mate has left her for a fledgling, I hear—and I think she’d grown weary of him anyway, given the number of times she’s tried to seduce me. Go to her, warlock, and make your monster children—if you can.”

He looked as though he might stretch out his hands and strangle me for a moment, but then he must have realized the futility of such a gesture, for he whirled away with a curse, and struck the wall with one fist.

I laughed—there were so few pleasures left to me at that juncture that I could not spare even one—and the warlock came back to my side, seething with fury.

“You’d damn well better go to hell, vampire,” he spat, “for no other place will hide you from my revenge!”

‘Tut-tut,” I scolded, groaning a little as the tide of pain rose up within me again. “You have no one to blame but yourself. ‘Never trust a vampire.’ Was that not your motto, your credo, the very litany of your black heart? Besides, I gave you the female you requested. It is not my fault if poor Roxanne is not to your liking.”

Dathan did not reply, for he was too angry—with himself, I suspect, as well as me—but simply shoved splayed fingers through his hair and turned away again.

I groped for Challes’s hand. I was weakening again, slipping into sleep, but even there I could not escape the relentless pain of my bums. “The murders—in Las Vegas—the police will never understand about Krispin— must be some resolution—”

My tutor smiled and smoothed my scarred forehead with gentle fingers. “A few memories erased, a few changes made in the department’s central computer, an idea planted here and there—”

I nodded, murmured a few disjointed suggestions of my own, and gave myself up, once again, to the ravenous, tearing teeth of torment.

Daisy

Las Vegas, 1995

Daisy arrived in Las Vegas at five-thirty in the afternoon, climbed into a cab at the airport, and headed straight for the police department. Do not pass Go, she thought, do not collect two hundred dollars.

O’Halloran was in his office, laboring over a stack of paperwork, when she walked in. He beamed at the sight of her, shot out of his chair like a dolphin going for a hoop at Sea World, and threw both arms around her. “Chandler! Damn, it’s good to see you.”

Daisy gave him an awkward kiss on the cheek, and they stepped apart. “How’s the vampire case going?”

O’Halloran’s smile grew broader, if that was possible. He gestured for Daisy to take a seat and sat down in his desk chair, making a steeple of his plump, unmanicured fingers. “Don’t you read the papers no more. Chandler? We got the psycho, dead to rights. Already arraigned.” Daisy knew the man behind bars wasn’t the real killer—Krispin had gone on to his reward—but she had a hunch that he was guilty of other murders, whoever he was. The situation smacked of vampire justice, but there was no point in trying to tell O’Halloran that, of course.

More important, if her theory was right, it meant Valerian was around somewhere. Didn’t it? The tricks would be simple to him—a memory or two wiped clean of certain facts, a couple of strokes to a computer keyboard, linked by modem to the department’s mainframe, a deserving criminal to take the rap for a certain renegade vampire. Easy stuff.

Don’t risk it, Chandler. Don’t let yourself hope.

“That was good police work,” she said with a purposeful smile of congratulations and admiration. “I wish I’d been part of it.”

“So do I,” O’Halloran said. “I missed you, partner.” Daisy’s smile faded. She hadn’t thought it would be so hard, explaining her change of plans. “I’ve turned in my letter of resignation,” she said. “I need to do other things—have a change of scene. You know.”

“Yeah,” O’Halloran replied sadly. “I know. Sometimes I wonder why I hang around myself. For every creep we nail, it seems like there’s fifty who get off on a technicality or something.”

Daisy told him about her plans to open a detective agency in Seattle and finished with, “I can always use a good partner. If you get burned out on the beat, give me a call.”

O’Halloran grinned, and his chair creaked as he sat back, hands clasped behind his head. “You know, Chandler, I can see myself as a gumshoe. The question is, can my Eleanor? She’s been after me to retire for a long time, but I don’t think living with Sam Spade is exactly what she had in mind.”

Daisy stood, ready to leave, and O’Halloran stood, too, offering his hand across the cluttered desk.

“Why don’t you ask her?” she retorted as they shook hands. It was as close as they came to saying good-bye.

Valerian

Colefield Hall, 1995

There was no fanfare when Nemesis came to collect me, no bolts of lightning, no crashing thunder, and certainly no trumpet. He simply appeared in the vault at Colefield Hall one night, standing patiently beside the bolted door until I took note of his presence. Or, more properly, until I ceased pretending I didn’t know he was there.

I was quite alone, as are we all, I daresay, when we face our unique doom.

Challes, having brought me blood like a mother bird nurturing a nestling and flown off again, on some errand of my invention, would not return for many hours.

Dathan, for his part, had decamped sometime before, I think to pursue the deceitful Roxanne Havermail. It was a great comfort, knowing that those two, who deserved each other so richly, were very likely careening, even then, along a collision course. My deepest solace naturally came from the knowledge that I had broken the curse and saved Daisy from Krispin and his madness.

She might mourn me for a while, my Daisy . . . Brenna—I would surely grieve the loss of her throughout eternity—but our tragic dance through the corridors of time had ended forever, and the orchestra was silent.

Alas, I digress. I was recounting Nemesis’s arrival.

The most feared of all angels found me reading peacefully in my underground chamber, and looked at me with obvious pity, though I was by that time quite myself again. My hair had grown back, and my flesh and features were as flawless as ever, except for a stubborn scar here and there.

I closed the book. “It is time to go?” I said. It was an observation, a statement, more than a question.

“Yes,” Nemesis replied. I thought I saw regret in his unremarkable face, then dismissed the idea as pure fancy. There would be no reprieve for me.

I rose from my chair, and the angel reached out and touched my forehead, very lightly. I remember that his fingertips felt cool, and that the contact was strangely soothing, considering all that lay ahead.