Time Without End (The Black Rose Chronicles)

by Miller, Linda Lael

  “Bloody hell,” I rasped, sitting up and shaking my head. I felt rather like a pugilist felled by a stronger opponent.

  Kristina smiled sweetly. “Hello, Lazybones.”

  I stood shakily, grasping the examination table with one arm to steady myself during the process. “Where the devil is that no-account father of yours?” I demanded.

  She sighed. “When I turned a hundred and thirty, I stopped keeping track.”

  “He didn’t sleep,” I marveled.

  “What?”

  “Calder. Your father—he didn’t sleep.”

  “I know Calder is my father,” Kristina said patiently, leaning forward in her chair but not rising, as a more mannerly and respectful child might do. “And how do you know what happened after you dropped off? Papa could have willed himself to some other lair the moment you closed your eyes.”

  My practiced instincts, coupled with the memory of a wide-wake, completely alert Dr. Holbrook, argued against Kristina’s theory. “He’s found a way to circumvent the vampire sleep—by all the old gods, he’s done it!” Fury scorched through me, consuming the last wisps of insensibility lingering in my brain. “And damn him, Calder means to keep the secret to himself!”

  Kristina folded back the slim, tapered fingers of one hand and gazed thoughtfully at her nails. “You aren’t being fair,” she accused mildly. “Papa does not number among your more ardent admirers—we both know that. But he would never withhold any knowledge that could be used to accomplish something good.”

  I began to pace, muttering to myself as I moved. Although I had awakened refreshed, my thoughts were again jumbled and fragmentary, and I quite literally did not know which way to turn.

  The woman who would, in any other society except our own, be called my goddaughter, rose at last from her chair. “I’ve seen Daisy,” she said, stopping me in midstride. “There’s a crazy scheme cooking in the back of that mortal brain, Valerian—she figures she can save you, your Daisy, if she surrenders herself to Krispin before your heroic sacrifice can be made.”

  The mere idea chilled me. I grasped Kristina’s shoulders and hauled her onto her toes, giving her a little shake in the process. “You talked her out of it, of course,” I said.

  Fire kindled in Kristina’s pewter-colored eyes, but she did not use her singular magic to punish me for the effort. “I tried,” was her response. “Right now Daisy is too frail to try anything very dramatic, but there can be no question that she’s determined. I expect she’ll do something stupid the moment she’s worked up the necessary stamina. Now, let me go before I turn you into a garden slug and bury you in salt.”

  I released her, wincing at the image, and at the same time smiling a little. “Not very imaginative,” I scolded, bending forward to plant a soft kiss on her forehead. “Help me, Kristina. Please. If you know anything about Calder’s experiments, I beg of you, tell me now.”

  She looked at me with a sheen of tears glimmering in her eyes. “You’re asking me to betray my father’s trust.” I shook my head. “I’m asking you to save Daisy, and others probably, from Krispin’s madness. If I can find the passageway between this world and his, I can find him.”

  Kristina was silent for a time, obviously tom, but then she turned and crossed the room to a wall lined with neatly arranged volumes on sturdy shelves. She ran an index finger over the spines with affection and finally selected one particular book and took it reverently from its place among the others.

  She held the tome against her chest for a moment, then extended it to me.

  It was a diary of sorts, a complex record of Calder’s most recent explorations of science. In it were all his theories concerning parallel dimensions, and I absorbed the words greedily by running my right hand down every page.

  When I was finished, I had a very good idea where to find my brother.

  The solution, in fact, was almost ludicrously simple. I might have thought of it myself, or at least asked a certain friend who writes screenplays for horror films to suggest possibilities, if I had been in a calm frame of mind rather than a mild state of hysteria.

  “Thank you,” I said to Kristina and pressed the volume back into her hands.

  I went from there to my favorite part of nineteenth- century London for a hasty feeding, leaving my victim anemic but otherwise ecstatic. Then I proceeded to a certain burial mound not far from modern-day Dunnett’s Head, a place where Challes had taken Krispin, Brenna, and me long ago while in the throes of a scholarly passion for antiquities. We were all fascinated by the area, for the bones secreted beneath that manmade hillock of stone and rubble and grass had been ancient even in our medieval time. According to our tutor, the occupants of that underground chamber had lived and died before the Romans came to Britain.

  When I reached that bleak, moon-swept monument, it looked so strange, so eerie, that it might have been the landscape of some lesser planet, knowing neither snow nor fire, catching only the chill, straying beams of some wasted star. It was difficult to believe that any cogent being, human or otherwise, had ever trod this hard, unyielding ground, let alone toiled there, and given birth, fought battles, and built small, leaky ships to brave the treacherous seas.

  For me, that night, as well fed and strong as I was, it seemed to be the loneliest, most desolate place in the universe. I reminded myself of the information I’d absorbed from Calder’s notes—in order to move between our world and the alternate one Krispin apparently frequented, one must undergo another birth, with the grave for a womb.

  I was drawn to that particular site by an impulse born in some unexplored region of my being—no doubt there were still bonds linking Krispin and me, however tenuous they might have been. We had been brothers once, after all.

  I closed my eyes as an infinite sadness encompassed me, but my resolve was not shaken. If I found Krispin before the appointed time of our mutual destruction, I would destroy him, thus evading the ambush he most assuredly planned for me and, at the same time, making certain that Daisy was safe.

  I was willing to risk anything to succeed in that one aim, and with that certainty in mind, I dared to call upon the most fearsome angel in all heaven’s uncounted legions.

  “Nemesis!” I shouted into the night. “Pay heed to the bargain I offer!”

  Even though I had just summoned him, it was still a profound shock when the night was rent by a narrow strip of light, no product of the sun or the moon, but of some inner universe. It broadened, a gleaming doorway to a realm I would never see, and the great warrior angel appeared. He was quite ordinary-looking, was Nemesis, a fact that probably served him very well during his frequent interactions with the mortal race.

  The chasm vanished, but Nemesis seemed luminous, as though light flowed through his veins instead of blood. Perhaps it did.

  He looked at me with contemptuous interest. “You dare to command me, Vampire, as though I were a genie in a lamp instead of a warrior of the One God? What is your purpose?”

  “I seek your assistance.”

  Nemesis chuckled to himself, and that sound, too, was disdainful. “What perfidy is this?” he demanded after a few moments of silence. “Vampires do not seek favors of angels.”

  “This vampire is desperate,” I replied with resignation, and then I told him my lengthy story, which was also Daisy’s, leaving nothing out beyond those things that would offend a celibate creature. Aside from that, I spoke the absolute and unvarnished truth, describing Krispin and all the havoc he could wreak if he wasn’t stopped.

  The angel listened without interruption, I will give him that, but when I had finished, he was plainly still doubtful of my motives for calling him to that barren place and relating such a tale.

  “You would ask me to help destroy this vampire?” Nemesis inquired, after considering my words in silence for a long interval. When I merely nodded, he went on. “If it were up to me,” he said, “you may be certain I would put a finish to the lot of you. Abominations, that’s what you are. Since I have
yet to reduce you to ashes, to be swept away by the wind, it should be plain that the choice is not mine.”

  “You have a certain autonomy, I suspect,” I ventured to insist, though quietly and very, very carefully. “Were that not so, you couldn’t have risen to a position of authority.”

  Nemesis studied me, his eyes narrowed in distrustful curiosity, and I marveled that, for all his terrible power, he clearly could not look into my mind. Had he been able to do so, he would have known that I was sincere, and there was no treachery afoot.

  “I cannot destroy any creature, save demons,” he said, but with less certainly than before.

  “Perhaps,” I conceded moderately, “but you are allowed, I trust, to escort surrendering fiends into the welcoming arms of hell.”

  The statement caught him off guard, I was pleased to see, but only for a moment. “What are you saying?”

  “If you will help me to capture the one who bore the name of Krispin Lazarus, as a mortal, then I shall go willingly into the pit.”

  “You cannot begin to guess what you are suggesting,” the angel said, but I knew he was intrigued by my proposal. To rid the world of two troublesome vampires was surely, in his view, a worthy aspiration.

  I recalled the things I had been taught about hell as a human child, and shivered involuntarily. “Oh, but I do,” I said at last. “I was mortal in the fourteenth century, and the torments awaiting the damned were described to me in vivid detail from the time I could make sense of such matters. I know well what I shall suffer.”

  “And you are willing to face such punishment for the sake of one woman?”

  “Yes,” I answered without hesitation, but I was full of dread and sorrow, for there has never been another creature that loved life as I did.

  “Remarkable,” the angel said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully between a thumb and index finger as he pondered my countenance. “Either you lie, which seems most likely, or you are indeed a rare vampire. It hardly wants saying that your kind is not noted for generosity— especially when the required sacrifice is one of such magnitude.” He paused. “It is known that you have made a bargain with your brother, the renegade Krispin. You have agreed to accept the help of a warlock, as well. Why, then, do you come to me?”

  I smiled sadly. “You have a remarkable intelligence system.”

  “The best,” Nemesis agreed. “Speak, Vampire. Do you dare attempt to deceive me?”

  I shook my head. “No. You are a fierce warrior, Nemesis. You will surely rejoice when I fall into the hands of Lucifer. But unlike Dathan, the warlock, unlike my misguided brother, you can be counted upon to honor any bargain you make. Truth is your nature, and there are no lies in you.”

  “How beautifully you speak. And what a waste that you have cast your lot with fiends and devils. Yes, Vampire—I would delight in putting an end to your evil, and that of all others like you, but you mistake me in one point. I take no pleasure in the suffering of any creature, no matter how heinous it may be. Why do you think I despise you so much? Because you cause pain and fear, because you make the sweet sanction of darkness, where humankind is meant to take rest, a foul and unholy thing.”

  I was not armed for a philosophical discussion, nor was I in the mood to undertake an argument. Still, Nemesis had the upper hand in this scenario; his was the power to grant or deny my entreaty, and I was merely the supplicant. “You are misinformed,” I answered, maintaining my dignity but giving the words no edge of contempt or sarcasm. “The attentions of a vampire are not painful. They foster only ecstasy. Furthermore, we rarely frighten a mortal deliberately—they manage to scare themselves nicely, with their silly legends and superstitions.”

  Nemesis was still, measuring me with his eyes, and I could not discern from his expression whether I had roused his ire or his sympathy. Common sense caused me to dismiss the latter possibility entirely.

  I waited, having said my piece, gazing back at the great angel in silence, using all my strength to veil the terror I felt. Yes, I loved Daisy—enough not only to surrender the myriad pleasures and powers of my existence, but to consign myself to eternal torment as well. And yet everything within me, every instinct, every mental pulse, clamored for life.

  “Very well,” the angel agreed after a long while. After a moment’s hesitation, during which his distaste showed clearly in his face, Nemesis laid a hand to my shoulder.

  “The covenant is made. I confer upon you the power to capture and bind your enemy, and I warn you—do not abuse this gift, for it will turn on you like a viper if you attempt such a thing. When your quest is achieved, I will come for you.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Valerian

  New York, 1995

  After taking my leave of Nemesis, there on that cold and empty plain, I traveled immediately to New York, a favorite city of mine, to feed. I was greedy that night, and perhaps a bit less delicate with my “victims” than I would normally have been. The ordeal ahead, the covenant I had made with the warrior angel notwithstanding, would require the fullest use of all my powers. Proper preparation demanded that I take more blood than ever before.

  I did not kill; indeed, I was not even unkind. Further more, knowing how Challes had tricked me into taking the wine of warlocks before, I was unusually cautious in selecting my prey.

  It was an intoxicating feast—I imbibed the blood of a teenage gang member, a hot and heady brew, vibrant with youthful anger, passion, and frustration. I took sustenance from a baglady and left her swooning in the warm night, remembering me as a generous and tender lover rather than a fiend. The roll of bills I tucked into the pocket of her ragged coat would provide for her needs from then on.

  There were others, too—I don’t recall exactly how many, for after the youth and the old woman, I was in something of a frenzy. When the first light of dawn rimmed the New York skyline with gold and apricot and crimson, I was still bursting with energy and power.

  I would not sleep this day away, I knew, and yet I dared not let the sun find me. Beneath the ebullience I could not seem to quell was the grim and ironic awareness that perdition itself, Dante’s hell and my own, awaited my surrender. There I would know fires that burned eternally, but never consumed the anguished, screaming creatures writhing within their flames.

  It seemed pointless, in the face of such suffering, to avoid the light of one minor star, whirling through space with nine odd and insignificant planets in its thrall.

  Nonetheless, I was a prudent monster when the situation called for the virtue of circumspection. I took myself to the center of the stone circle, where Krispin had danced and reeled with such demented abandon, drunk on moonlight and evil, and I became mist, slipping into the ground only moments ahead of Old Sol’s fiery fingers.

  I scrabbled through the bones I found there—strong and wakeful, I was—but Krispin was nowhere to be found. Even through some twelve feet of earth and rubble, roots and bones, rodents and worms, I could feel the clawing warmth of the sun, seeking and groping and prodding. Searching me out.

  I had once seen a vampire who had been caught abroad in daylight, shortly after Challes transformed me, and the recollection still causes me to shudder. It was a living monstrosity, a blackened skeleton, ludicrous and pathetic. I wondered what had happened to the poor wretch in the centuries since, but only briefly. I reminded myself that I must focus and find Krispin.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on my brother. In my mind I saw him in the same way I always had: as a fragile, eager boy, forever following me about, admiring me despite my arrogance, desperately tolerant of my impatience with him. A tear slipped down my face as I mourned that child, lost to me for all time, and the remorse I felt for the way I’d treated him made me heartsore.

  My musings took me to Krispin’s side, as I had hoped they would. Imagine my amazement in finding him not only awake, but standing on the darkened stage of the showroom in the Venetian Hotel, examining the carriage I used in my magic act.

  He did not seem surpri
sed by my appearance, but then, he wouldn’t have been, would he, for he had surely expected me. I had a peculiar idea that, indeed, he might actually have summoned me there somehow.

  “Did you think to find me lying on a slab somewhere, Valerian?” he asked with amusement, running an artist’s hand over the fancy gilded cupids and flowers carved into the coach door. “Just waiting for you to plunge a stake through my heart and put an end to me for all time?”

  “Yes,” I said, for there was utterly no point in lying. “How is it that you, a vampire, are up and about while the sun shines?”

  “I took a great deal of blood over the past night or two, as you undoubtedly did,” Krispin replied, sounding almost bored. He crouched beside a wheel now, touching it with those white minstrel’s fingers and tipped his head back briefly to gaze upward into the rigging for the stage lights. “It’s so dark and cool here,” he mused. “One wouldn’t guess that the morning has come.”

  I did not take a step closer to him, as reflex bade me to do, but instead folded my arms. My posture was idle, shoulders at a slight slant, head tilted to one side, but I doubt Krispin was fooled by these mannerisms. Being my sibling, he knew all my ruses, shams, and affectations.

  ‘Tell me about this place where you’ve been hiding all these centuries.”

  Krispin smiled, met my eyes for a moment, then returned to his thoughtful examination of the carriage. Such things had fascinated him as a lad, I remembered with a vague pang; he’d loved carts and coaches and wagons as a mortal, as well as ships.

  “It’s a world almost indiscernible from this one. Rather like passing through Alice’s looking glass. Everything here has a counterpart there.”

  “You have no special powers, then?”

  Krispin laughed, stroking the ornate spokes of one wheel as a mortal lover might stroke a shapely limb. “I have many unique qualities, Valerian, as you do. Like most vampires, I sleep during the day and cannot bear the light of the sun. I must take blood or perish of a truly agonizing hunger. I can travel through time, change my shape, veil myself from all but the most discerning eyes—the usual.”