Maeve was frowning, worried. “It might not be fatal, you know,” she said. “When Aidan fed on a warlock, he was very ill, but he survived.”
“I remember,” Valerian said somewhat gruffly. Talk of Aidan always made him either restive or testy, or both. “Even if she does not glut herself with the poison, in her greed Lisette will be seriously weakened. We will close in then, destroy her, and send her ashes to Nemesis along with our most eloquent pleas for mercy.”
He glanced up at the starry sky and smiled wanly. “Do you suppose Dathan would mind if I explored that delightful old manse?”
“As if you cared whether he minded or not,” Maeve retorted, amused, eager to feed and then return to Calder. She would send Shaleen away, lie beside her beloved on the slab, and join her dreams to his. “Good-bye for now, my friend.”
Valerian bent and kissed her forehead lightly. “Farewell,” he responded, and then he was gone.
Damn, but he’s good, Maeve thought, still awed by the other vampire’s theatrical flair.
She raised her arms, then, smiling, and took herself to her favorite hunting grounds—the seediest part of London, where the lowest of the low prowled the night, scheming, indulging in their deliberate evils.
She was drawn to a dark, stinking attic of a dockside pub, a place even rats and fleas would hesitate to frequent. There a drunken man had cornered his wife, demanding the few pence she’d been able to scrape together while he’d been at sea.
Maeve knew in a moment that the woman had been beaten half senseless for her trouble, and her wail was pitiful to hear. “Please, Jack—don’t ‘urt me no more—I needs the money for the babe that’s comin’—”
The lout drew back one booted foot to kick his fallen wife, and outrage surged through Maeve, as hot and sour as bile. She gave a snarling shriek, one fit to wake the dead, and flung herself at the brute, who raised meaty hands to shelter himself.
The woman, whimpering with terror, having no way of knowing that she would not be next, scrambled for the ladder at the edge of the loft.
Jack’s blubbery, unshaven face was white beneath a layer of filth. “Saints in ‘eaven,” he rasped, “what sort of devil are ye?”
Only an instant later he found out exactly what sort.
When his mates from the pub below came scrambling up the ladder to see what poor Mary had been blathering about, they discovered old Jack in a heap, near dead, and him with two bloody holes in his neck in the bargain.
*
CHAPTER 16
« ^ »
The cellar where Maeve had left Calder was empty.
Wild panic seized her. Had Lisette, or some other fiend, found him and stolen him away?
Frantic, Maeve searched the room and found Shaleen dozing behind a crate of antique china.
The little hoyden was barely conscious—dawn was so near—but she looked up at Maeve and blinked.
“What happened?” Maeve demanded, crouching and grasping the child’s bony shoulders. “Where is Calder? Where is he?”
Shaleen scrambled to her feet, visibly struggling against the inertia that overcame most vampires with the approach of sunrise. “He’s gone, mum, that he is—and it’s been a long time now, too! I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t be stopped—he’s a strong one, he is. Why, he came off that slab like a cannon shot!”
Maeve felt herself succumbing to the catatonic sleep and knew there was no point in resisting it. Her terror and despair increased even as she began to lose consciousness—there were so many things Calder didn’t know, so many dangers.
Calder had escaped his keeper easily, for he’d been full of strength when he awakened, half wild with curiosity and excitement.
Five minutes after bolting from Maeve’s cellar, he stood on a busy street corner in twentieth-century London, watching in amazement as magnificent horseless carriages rushed past, displacing the night air, making an extraordinary din. There were plenty of people about, too, streaming out of clubs and theaters, strangely dressed and chattering about unfamiliar things.
He was delighted, confounded, awed by his own powers and by the wonderful new world that surrounded him.
A place, he admitted to himself, grimly amused, that he knew absolutely nothing about.
He began to walk, following a high, wrought-iron fence. Beyond it lay a graveyard, the marble stones pristine in the moonlight, the grass well kept. He remembered the sensation of William’s bullet entering his chest, and a silent celebration stirred inside him because he was still alive.
Calder smiled as he strode along, reflecting now on the fact that Maeve had evidently come to the house in Philadelphia and collected him, prior to his transfiguration. He wondered what poor Prudence and the others had made of his mysterious disappearance.
Presently Calder began to feel a tightening inside himself, a need for sustenance, but he had no idea how to stalk prey. He knew very little, as it happened, except that he could not survive even the briefest encounter with sunlight.
Calder walked for hours, just looking in wonderment at the strange mix of new and old that was London. He was in the vicinity of Maeve’s grand house, which he presumed was still in her possession, when a glance at the sky warned him that it was time to find shelter.
He let himself onto Maeve’s property by a side gate, begrudging every moment of awareness he would miss by lapsing into the comalike slumber he could not hope to escape.
He found a narrow cellar window, dislodged the grillwork that covered it with a single wrench of his arm, and crawled through the space, whistling softly under his breath. Perhaps once he got the knack of being a vampire, he would discover a way for blood-drinkers to remain awake in the daytime, or even a means by which they could endure the full glare of the sun.
After all, he speculated, reaching out and pulling the iron grillwork back into place, he was a scientist. He might dissect one of those bumbling creatures Maeve and Valerian were so concerned about, after it was dead, of course, and learn a great deal about the inner workings of all vampires.
The prospect filled him with excitement.
Humming softly to himself, Calder found the very chamber he’d left earlier, and he could see immediately that it had not been in use for some time. Odd, he thought, loosening the collar of the shirt he’d awakened in, well over a hundred years in the past, that Maeve didn’t seem to favor this bustling, energetic century. It was like a carnival, rife with noise and color; he wanted to see and do everything, to take it all inside him somehow and possess it.
He stretched out on his slab, the same one he’d abandoned only hours before, and yet decades before, to go exploring, and considered the paradox of time. How deliciously ironic to be lying there in the cellar, in the very place he was missing from in the nineteenth century.
Sleep overtook him before he could make sense of the enigma.
The day must have passed quickly, for when Calder opened his eyes, it was as if he had just closed them. He felt a violent thirst, a growing weakness, and an unrelenting desire to continue his explorations.
He let himself out of Maeve’s house by the same method he’d used to enter it—he crawled through the cellar window—and was nonplussed to find Valerian waiting for him, arms folded, his expression dour.
“Do you know,” that august vampire began in a deceptively smooth, even voice, “how foolhardy it was to go rushing off into the world on your own like that?”
Calder felt only mild chagrin, and that was because of the worry his abrupt departure might have caused Maeve. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her, and yet the drive to try out his new being had been irresistible.
He began to walk away and would have opened the gate and passed through if Valerian hadn’t caught him by the back of his coat and brought him up short.
Calder’s temper flared; he bristled and opened his mouth to tell Valerian to go to hell, but thought better of it when he looked into those fathomless violet eyes.
“You have much to learn,” Vale
rian said quietly. “We’ll start with passing through solid objects, and then you’d better take your first feeding.”
Calder swallowed his formidable pride and nodded. He had trained a number of younger doctors during his career, but there were a great many vital things he didn’t understand about this new existence. For the first time in years he would have to play the part of the apprentice rather than the master.
Valerian affected a sigh, then began his instruction.
Calder was so taken with the mechanics of dissolving himself and passing through gates and walls and trees that his mentor finally had to remind him that there were other tasks that must be accomplished in the space of that night.
The finer points of stalking and feeding came next, and a lesson on the proper method of time travel as well. Valerian took Calder to a place he couldn’t help recognizing—a field hospital—but this was clearly a later conflict than the one he remembered so vividly.
“World War II,” Valerian explained as Calder tried to adjust himself to the sights and sounds of suffering so intense, so terrible that he could barely take it in, even after all the practice he’d had in his own century. “These are German soldiers, technically the enemy, since you were an American, but the pain is the same.”
They moved, unseen except by those nearest to death, among the rows of canvas cots.
Calder whispered a horrified exclamation as he looked upon some of the wounds. “What happened to these men?”
“I’m afraid warfare has advanced significantly since your time, Doctor—in this particular period, they used a lot of poisonous gasses and, of course, they were capable of dropping bombs from airplanes.”
“Airplanes?” Calder hadn’t come across the word in his brief exploration of modern London.
“Flying machines,” Valerian answered in a distracted tone. “I’ll show you later. In the meantime, you must choose one of these poor, suffering louts and draw from him the blood you need to survive.”
Calder had been awash in blood since his first day of medical college and he had gotten past the stage of revulsion long ago. It was medical stuff, blood, full of mystery and power—he believed that with his whole heart. Still, the prospect of drawing on a patient in such an intimate way was abhorrent.
Valerian spoke quietly, standing close behind him. “Trust me,” he said. “Your—victim, if that is indeed the correct word, will feel no pain. On the contrary, his agonies will cease, if you choose for it to be so, replaced by that same sense of ecstasy you felt when you underwent your own metamorphosis.”
Calder glanced back at the other vampire uncomfortably. He didn’t like being reminded of the joy his conversion had brought him, because he had yet to sort out its meaning. He certainly felt no physical attraction to this enigmatic creature who had given him everlasting life, but neither could he deny that he had known indescribable bliss during their unholy communion.
The elder vampire smiled—he’d probably discerned Calder’s thoughts—and moved past him to stroke the pale forehead of one of the fallen soldiers. The boy opened his eyes, stared up at Valerian in baffled adoration, and murmured something in German.
Calder recognized the word for angel, since he’d had some training in the language while studying to become a physician. He recalled, of course, how Maeve had moved among the wounded at Gettysburg, bestowing her strange mercies, and how the dying soldiers had seen her as a creature of heaven.
“Like this,” Valerian said gently, his gaze locked with the rapt, too-bright stare of the lad lying on the rickety cot. Then, to demonstrate, he bent over his welcoming prey, punctured the artery with his fangs, and fed.
When he straightened, Calder was stricken by the singular beauty of his tutor’s expression; his countenance seemed to glow, his skin appeared translucent. Tenderness shimmered in his eyes, along with the most brazen glint of satisfaction.
The “victim” lay still, plainly dead, his slender young body slightly arched, as if frozen in the first throes of some sweet passion. He stared, peering straight into the very heart of heaven, it seemed, and his flesh was like ivory, backlit by the flame of an inner candle. His smile was beatific and so tranquil that Calder averted his gaze, feeling that he was intruding on some very private moment.
Calder felt a variety of emotions, as well—anger, frustration, pity, awe, and strangely joy. Still, he had never gotten used to death, its peculiar loveliness be damned, and his most basic instincts urged him to fight against it until the last.
Valerian gestured silently toward another cot, where yet another man-child lay, his once splendid body ruined, his mind fogged with the horror of seeing behind the glorious facade to the true nature of war.
By this time Calder was ravenous, and he knew he could put off the sacrilege no longer. He spoke softly to the soldier, smoothing his hair as he had seen Valerian do, as he himself had done with other dying children, in another war, another time, another life.
He wept inwardly as he bent over the bruised throat, found the pulse point, and plunged his fangs through the thin but stubbornly resistant flesh.
Calder tensed, bracing himself for utter revulsion, but to his surprise the nourishing blood did not flow over his tongue, but through the short, needle-sharp teeth that had once been ordinary incisors. As the stuff raced into him, he was electrified with a pleasure so brutally intense that for several moments he feared it would destroy him. He started to withdraw, in fact, then felt Valerian’s hand come to rest lightly on his back, urging him to continue.
When it was over, when he’d felt the life force as well as the pain and terror leave the boy, Calder rose and turned away, ashamed. Paradoxically, for he was well aware that he could hide little or nothing from Valerian, he did not want the other vampire to witness his disgust.
Or his rapture.
Graciously Valerian said nothing, but only went on to another cot and fed again.
Calder could not bring himself to follow suit, even though he yearned to experience once more the inexpressible jubilation that was only then receding, a tide of sweet fire raking his soul as it ebbed away. He left the hospital tent by ordinary means and stood gazing up at the stars for a long interval.
Presently Valerian joined him, and by tacit agreement they returned to twentieth-century London and Maeve’s grand house.
Much to Calder’s delight, she was waiting there in the formal parlor, pacing back and forth along the edge of the marble hearth. Her hair fell free in wild curls, and she wore tight-fitting denim trousers and a black blouse of some stretchy fabric that clung to her curves.
“Where have you been?” she cried furiously when she realized that Calder and Valerian were there.
Wisely Valerian faded into mist and took himself off to some safer and no doubt more cordial place.
Calder made no attempt to hide his admiration or his curiosity. “I’m sorry you were worried,” he said in all sincerity, for he truly loved this glorious being, and even the bliss of feeding for the first time could not compare to the splendors he’d known in her arms. “I was impatient to see what it was like to move about as a vampire.”
Maeve’s temper seemed to subside a little, though her eyes still flashed with sapphire fury. “There are so many dangers,” she sputtered, running the fingers of one hand through her lovely tangle of hair. “Warlocks, angels—the sunlight. And sometimes time travel can go wrong, and it’s impossible to return—”
He gripped her shoulders. “I’m safe,” he said pointedly, touched by her concern. If anything, the transformation had deepened his love for Maeve, and the emotions she stirred in him were almost too splendid to be endured.
She flung herself at him then, wrapping her arms around his neck and murmuring, “I was so afraid—”
Calder stroked her back, warmed by her love, nourished by it. He laughed hoarsely and held her a little away from him. “What about these scandalous clothes of yours, Maeve Tremayne? What manner of devilment is this?”
Her smi
le was tentative but genuine. “This is how twentieth-century women dress,” she said. “If they choose to, that is. They have a lot more to say about a great many things than their ancestors had.”
He took her hand, lifted it over her head, and twirled her about as he had seen dancers do. “Trousers,” he marveled. Then he held her close again and kissed her. “I must say, I like the way they look on you.”
Calder felt Maeve tremble in his arms, and he kissed her again before saying, “I love you.”
Her blue eyes glistened with a sentiment equal to his own. “You taught me to mate as humans do,” she said softly. “Now let me show you how vampires give each other pleasure.”
Calder pretended to be shocked. “What? Do twentieth-century women seduce their men so boldly as that?”
Maeve touched his mouth with one finger, and with that single gesture effectively set him ablaze with the need of her. “Who cares what they do?” Her eyes, tender before, were smoldering with forbidden knowledge now. “I am a vampire, not a mere woman, twentieth century or otherwise. Come with me, and I will show you passion you have not even imagined.”
He did not resist her; indeed, Calder doubted that he could have done that, even if he’d wished to do so. He gave her his hand and then felt himself dissolve, felt his very soul plunging through space. Then, just as abruptly, he was whole again, and they were alone in an upstairs chamber, a vast room that he remembered as Maeve’s studio.
She’d brought him there after the shooting, and sometimes when she was working at her loom, unaware that he was conscious, he had watched her for a moment or two before slipping under again.
He moved to draw her close and kiss her once more, but she drew back, smiling and shaking her lovely head, like a mischievous nymph bent on luring him into some enchanted place.
“You’re thinking of the human way of lovemaking,” she scolded softly. “I want to show you how vampires mate.”
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