From that night onward, Lisette had forced herself to rise and feed. She had been practicing her powers and regaining her former strength for months. Soon she would be immune to the light of the sun as she had once been, able to track errant vampires to their lairs.
She was still queen of the blood-drinkers, among the oldest on earth, and she intended to show them all that she had no intention of abdicating. After that she would deal vengeance to her enemies, one by one.
Valerian would be first, that despicable traitor. After him, Maeve, who, Lisette was convinced, secretly aspired to reign over the nightwalkers herself. And when Maeve and Valerian were nothing but smoldering piles of ash, shifting in the sunlight, Lisette vowed, she would turn her full attention on Aidan.
By the time she was through meting out her myriad punishments, the very fires of hell would look good to him.
“Lisette.”
The voices came from behind her, speaking in chorus and startling her so that she nearly toppled off the high terrace onto the rocky shore below. The fall would not have done her bodily injury, of course, but her dignity might have been hopelessly wounded.
She turned slowly and looked down into the white, upturned faces of her visitors.
Canaan and Benecia Havermail stood before her, wearing identical dresses of yellow satin. Lisette was glad they would never grow to adult size, for their natures were at least as vicious as her own, and she would not relish the competition.
“What do you want?” she snapped, irritated.
Again the child-fiends spoke in eerily perfect unison, their fangs glinting in the starlight as they chattered. “We’ve come about Mr. Tremayne. He’s been to Havermail Castle, you know, inquiring about the Brotherhood.”
Lisette floated down from the railing to stand before the horrid little pair. “What does Aidan want with the Brotherhood?” She raised a hand when they both started to talk again. “Only one of you need answer.”
Benecia, after a triumphant glance at her younger sister, went on alone. “He desires to be mortal again,” she said. At this oddity she giggled, and so did Canaan.
Lisette, however, was not amused. She turned away from her visitors and grasped the terrace railing in both hands. No vampire, to her knowledge, had ever made such a transition, but Aidan was just brazen enough, just fanciful enough, to try.
Perhaps she would be forced to resolve the matter sooner than she’d planned.
Chapter 10
Neely drove until midafternoon, when she simply could go no farther. She rented a room somewhere in New Hampshire, this time choosing one of the large chain motels, and secured all the locks carefully before collapsing onto the bed. After an hour or so she awakened just long enough to remove her coat and kick off her shoes, then sank back into an exhausted sleep.
When she opened her eyes, feeling as if she’d just risen from the depths of a coma, there was no light except for the red numerals on the clock radio on the lamp table.
3:47 a.m.
Neely would have been glad to sleep another twelve hours, at least, but she didn’t dare linger in one place for too long. Although she was fairly certain no one was following her, she couldn’t afford to depend on luck.
She stumbled into the bathroom, showered, and put yesterday’s clothes back on. Later, she promised herself, she would buy jeans, sweaters, underwear, and the like. For now she was traveling light.
At 4:14, Neely left the motel room. She was starved, but the fast-food places weren’t open yet, and the idea of wandering into a big, well-lit truck stop for oatmeal and toast made her feel too vulnerable. In the end she stopped at a convenience store for high-octane coffee and a sweet roll.
As she had the day before, Neely drove until she was blind with fatigue. Then she stopped at a shopping mall, entered a crowded discount store, and bought the clothing she needed, along with a hot dog and a bag of popcorn. That afternoon she checked into a motor court beside a frozen lake. She propped a chair under the doorknob, since the locks didn’t look all that secure. After devouring her scanty supper, she bathed and toppled into bed.
Sleep didn’t come as readily this time, even though Neely was every bit as tired as she had been the night before. She switched on the television set, turned to one of the cable networks, and settled in to watch a tabloid program.
“This is Melody Ling,” a sharply dressed reporter was saying, “reporting from Washington, D.C., where Mrs. Elaine Hargrove, wife of the prominent senator, is allegedly recovering satisfactorily from emergency surgery.”
Neely sat bolt upright against the musty pillows at her back, staring at the screen, willing Ling to say more. Unfortunately the piece was over.
She grabbed up the remote, then sought and found the twenty-four-hour news channel. She’d had the car radio on all day while she traveled, but she’d heard nothing about the Hargroves.
Neely watched three segments—a scandal concerning the sale of arms to some hormonal Third-World country, a piece on distraught dairy farmers, and the latest tidbit out of Buckingham Palace. Then, finally, Senator Dallas
Hargrove appeared on the screen, striding out of a well-known Washington hospital, looking harried and impatient.
Although Hargrove was definitely a skunk and a moral lightweight, Neely thought, it was impossible not to feel sorry for him just then. Reporters barred his way, the portable lights deepened the lines and shadows in his face, and microphones stabbed at him like drawn lances.
“Senator Hargrove, can you tell us anything about Mrs. Hargrove’s accident?”
“Is she resting comfortably?”
“Will she recover?”
“Was she driving when the accident occurred?”
The senator stopped and held up both hands in a bid for order. “Elaine—Mrs. Hargrove—is conscious,” he said tersely. “We have every hope that she will survive. And no, my wife suffers from a chronic illness and does not drive. She was riding with our chauffeur when the limousine was forced off the road by a reckless driver.”
“Has an arrest been made?” a reporter called out, but Hargrove was plainly finished with the interview. He forced his way through a throng of newspeople and got into the backseat of a waiting car.
The camera switched to an anchorwoman in the network newsroom, where the scanty details of Elaine Hargrove’s accident were reviewed. She had been on her way to a luncheon, where she was to be presented with an award of some sort, when, according to the chauffeur, another car had come up behind them and crashed hard into the bumper. The driver, already traveling at a fairly high speed, had been startled and lost control of the wheel. The limo had sideswiped a concrete abutment and then swerved into the path of an oncoming semi-truck.
No one else had been injured besides Elaine Hargrove. Chilled, Neely hobbled in and took another bath, soaking in the hottest water she could stand. When she got out of
the tub, however, and wrapped herself in a rough towel, she was still as cold as ever.
Obviously the senator had run afoul of his drug-dealing friends, and they’d made a cruel example out of Elaine. Hargrove would be desperate to appease the mob now, which meant he would make no further efforts to protect Neely.
All thoughts of sleep deserted her, even though she was half sick with weariness. She was on her own, and if she wanted to stay alive, she’d better move fast.
She tore the tags from her new clothes and wrenched on panties and a bra, stiff jeans, and a starchy sweatshirt. Then she groped for the telephone and dialed New York information.
Ten frustrating minutes later, Neely was speaking to someone in Melody Ling’s department at the television network. Ms. Ling was still out on assignment, and it would probably be impossible to reach her before morning.
Neely slammed down the receiver, snatched up her few belongings, and rushed out to the car.
She tried twice more to get through to Ling, the following morning and the one after that, and was unsuccessful both times. Finally, in the midst of a blizz
ard, she reached Timber Cove, a tiny town on the winter-bleak coast of Maine. Wendy Browning’s summer cottage was five miles north, and after buying a few supplies in a small grocery store, Neely took refuge there.
The front door key was under one of the legs of the picnic table out on the snow-mounded deck, as always. Neely had been a guest in the cottage many times, and before flying off to London, Wendy had told her she was welcome to use the place whenever she wished.
She let herself in, turned up the gas heater, and lifted the telephone receiver to her ear. There was a dial tone.
Neely carried in her bags of clothing and her groceries, set a pot of coffee to brewing, and stood at the glass doors leading to the deck, looking out at the rocky, snow-streaked shore.
When she had had a cup of coffee to warm herself, she put on her coat and trekked outside, through the grayness of late morning on a stormy day, to the woodshed. There she knelt in a comer and raised a loose floorboard with both hands.
Underneath lay a fat manila envelope, wrapped in plastic, just exactly where Neely had left it.
She carried the packet back to the house, opened it, and saw that all the documents and recordings were still there. Trembling slightly, Neely returned to the telephone and dialed Melody Ling’s number.
This time she got lucky.
Aidan found Maeve easily, for once. She was at her house in London, in her beloved nineteenth century, entertaining a drawing room full of guests. A string quartet played Mozart in one comer, while elegantly dressed visitors mingled, some sipping champagne and nibbling clam puffs, others only pretending.
It was an interesting mix of vampires and humans, jaded writers and artists who probably knew full well that they were socializing with fiends. In Aidan’s experience the right-brain types found such things stimulating.
“Darling.” Maeve swept toward him, her crisp satin dress rustling as she moved, both hands extended. Her dark blue eyes were alight with surprise and pleasure, both swiftly displaced by worry. “What a lovely—surprise. Aidan—?”
He kissed her cheek and smiled wanly, but that was the extent of his effort to appear normal. He had not fed for three days, he’d been so grieved over the parting with Neely, and he was faint with the lack of nourishment.
Maeve frowned, still holding his hands, and he felt some of her abundant strength flow into him. She pulled him through the strange crowd and out onto a stone terrace with high iron railings.
The wind was bitingly cold, but it did little to revive Aidan.
“What’s happened?” Maeve demanded. “Honestly, Aidan, if this has something to do with that wretched woman—”
He looked directly into his sister’s angry eyes. “It has everything to do with Neely,” he said. “I love her. I’d rather perish than lose her, and I would sell my soul, if indeed I have one at all, to live with her as a man.” Maeve’s face tightened, and for a moment her fury pulsed between them, but then she let her forehead fall against his shoulder and wept disconsolately.
Aidan held her in a gentle embrace. “I’m sorry,” he whispered raggedly.
She looked up at him, after a long time, her beautiful eyes glimmering with tears. Aidan was heartbroken to see his sister in such a state.
“There is no turning you aside from this course, is there?” Maeve asked, lifting her chin. “You’ll either succeed in your foolish enterprise or perish in the attempt.”
Aidan laid his hand gently against her cheek. “Anything is better than being what I am, darling,” he said. “Even eternal damnation.”
Her alabaster skin grew even paler, and she clutched at the satin lapels of his dinner jacket. “Don’t say that!” she pleaded in an agonized whisper. ‘To think of you burning forever and ever—oh, Aidan, I can’t bear it!”
“Shhh,” Aidan said, laying his hands on her glowing shoulders and giving her just the slightest shake. “Then don’t think of that.”
“How will 1 know what’s happened to you?” Maeve pleaded. “How will I know whether you’re alive or—or dead?”
He kissed her forehead. “Wait until you hear the first rumors,” he told her with a sad smile. “Then visit my house in Connecticut. If I’ve managed to make the transition, I’ll leave a bouquet of white roses on that round table in the entryway, as a sort of signal.”
Maeve studied his face for a long moment, then nodded. “You haven’t fed. Surely you know you cannot hope even to survive if you do not guard your strength.”
Aidan let his hands fall to his sides, though he still studied his sister with affection. He wanted to remember her always, whether he writhed in hell or was allowed to live out his allotted number of years as a man.
“The hunger makes it possible to think more clearly, Maeve,” he said. “You know that.”
She touched his cheek, and her lips moved, but no sound came from her.
“Goodbye,” he said.
Valerian crashed Maeve’s party half an hour after Aidan left, looking distracted and a little frantic. He grabbed her hand and pulled her out onto the same terrace where she’d stood with her brother, her heart broken at her feet.
“Have you seen that idiot sibling of yours?” Valerian demanded.
Maeve bridled, but not because Valerian had called Aidan an idiot—she quite agreed, just now, that the description suited. “Who do you think you are, dragging me away from my guests like this and speaking so familiarly?”
He paused, then shamed her with a languorous smile.
Maeve looked away, remembering things she would rather have forgotten. Valerian had taught her much more than how to travel through time and read minds during their
long association. “That’s over,” she said.
“Perhaps,” Valerian agreed. Then he grew impatient again. ‘Tell me—have you seen Aidan?”
“Yes,” Maeve said, leaning back against the terrace railing and studying her mentor in the cold light of the stars. “He was here earlier, to bid me farewell.”
“What?”
She nodded, and when she spoke, her voice was lined with tiny fractures. “He would rather die than be what we are. Valerian—he would choose oblivion, even hellfire, over the life of a vampire. He despises himself, and us.” Valerian gave an explosive sigh and shoved one hand through his mane of rich brown hair. “I should never have left him alone,” the magnificent monster fretted. “It’s just that he exasperates me so, and he has no compunction whatsoever about breaking my heart—”
“You don’t have a heart,” Maeve snapped, annoyed. As usual, Valerian was thinking only of himself. “And why did you leave Aidan alone?”
“He was moping about over that woman, and I needed to hunt, to rebuild my strength,” Valerian said, flinging his hands out wide in a gesture of angry resignation. “I spent a few nights indulging myself—I admit that—and when I returned to Connecticut to look in on Aidan, he was gone.”
Despair swelled up inside Maeve. “He’s not coming back, Valerian. The sooner we both give up and accept that, the better it will be.”
“You don’t understand!” Valerian cried. “Somehow he’s learned to veil his whereabouts from me. Maeve, without me he has no defense against Lisette!”
“Some defense you offer,” Maeve accused. “She despises you almost as much as she does Aidan. Leave my brother alone, Valerian—let him work this out for himself.”
“Damn it, Maeve, do you have any idea what she’ll do to him?”
Maeve closed her eyes. “I have to believe he’ll escape her,” she said. “I cannot think otherwise and still go on living.” With that, she turned and would have gone back into the house to rejoin her guests, but Valerian forcibly stopped her, gripping her shoulders and wrenching her around to face him.
“Perhaps you are willing to let Lisette play vile games with Aidan until she finally decides to kill him, but I am not. And I am more powerful than you are, Maeve—don’t forget that.”
She trembled, this female vampire who was afraid of nothing, save
seeing her brother suffer. “What do you want?”
“Look deep inside yourself,” Valerian ordered, his voice low and hypnotic, but urgent, too. “There you will see Aidan’s reflection. Tell me where to find him, Maeve.”
Maeve began to shiver. “He’s standing on a terrace— like this one—” She gave a small, involuntary cry and raised curled fingers to her mouth. “Oh, Valerian, Aidan has gone to Lisette’s villa, on the coast of Spain!”
Valerian released her so swiftly that she sank to the tiled floor of the terrace, too weakened by horror to rise. He held out his cloak and spun around, and before he’d completed a single turn, he’d vanished.
Maeve sat dazed on the tiles for a few minutes, sobbing inwardly, longing to rush to Aidan’s rescue, as Valerian had, and knowing that her brother would never forgive her if she did. As rash and ill-advised as Aidan’s decision had been, no one, not even Valerian himself, would be able to sway him from it.
“You are the adventurous type.”
Aidan whirled, though he knew the voice behind him wasn’t Lisette’s, and saw a youth leaning against the stone wall of the villa, his arms folded. He was dressed all in black, like a cat burglar, and wore a cocky grin. By Aidan’s guess, the lad was no older than seventeen.
“Who are you?”
The sleek young vampire pushed himself away from the wall with one foot. “The name is Tobias—Aidan. You ought to be more alert, you know. It’s nothing but luck that Lisette is hunting elsewhere tonight.”
“Yes,” Aidan said, “it’s luck, all right. Bad luck.” He tugged at the cuffs of his dinner jacket. “What do you want—Tobias?”
“Not a thing. I’m here because of what you want. Or, at least, what you told Aubrey Havermail you wanted—a chat with a representative of the Brotherhood.”
Aidan was taken aback, but he smiled and offered his hand. “Aren’t you a little young to be part of such an august group?”
Tobias gave a slow grin. “I guess that depends on how you define the word young. I was among the first vampires created.” The sudden stunned expression on Aidan’s face seemed to please him. “Come. Even we old ones don’t enjoy tangling with the likes of Lisette. She can be such a bitch.”
Forever and the Night (The Black Rose Chronicles) Page 15
