Forever and the Night (The Black Rose Chronicles) (23 page)

“I hope you’re right,” Tobias said, without evident conviction one way or the other. “Let us go now, Aidan. The tribunal awaits.”

Aidan remembered the cell he hadn’t been able to escape on his own, the hunger, the filthy rats he’d been given as sustenance. A part of him wanted to feel the upcoming confrontation, but he accompanied Tobias without struggle.

Although Ben and Danny were ecstatic at Neely’s return, the hole her leaving had left had already knitted itself closed again. Ben was in love with Doris, as were half the regular customers at the cafe, evidently, and business was thriving.

“All that trouble,” Ben had asked, the night Neely arrived in Aidan’s sports car. “It’s over?”

Neely had nodded. “I can’t explain it, Ben, but my part in the Hargrove thing is history. I wouldn’t have come back here if I didn’t know it was settled.”

Ben had taken her into his arms then and hugged her.

At first Neely had slept a lot, and taken a great many hot baths, and helped out by cleaning motel rooms and occasionally waiting tables with Doris. She yearned for Aidan even as she tried to forget he’d ever existed, but there was no putting him out of her mind. Waking and sleeping, he haunted her.

She took to breaking and entering, letting herself into Aidan’s house through a window off the mud room, and spent night after night reading the chronicles he’d written. In truth, of course, she was waiting for him to return—but he didn’t.

His sister did appear, however, two nights after Christmas, when Neely was sitting by Aidan’s hearth and gazing at the flames.

Her heart wedged itself into her throat and hammered there, for Neely knew from the drawings in the first journal that this was the legendary Maeve. Aidan’s twin was stunningly beautiful, with her rich ebony hair and dark blue eyes, and she was also a vampire. An accomplished one, if Aidan’s written accounts meant anything.

This is it,
Neely thought with a strange sense of calm resignation.
She’s going to drink my blood and leave me flat as an old tube of toothpaste.

Maeve laughed, obviously sharing her brother’s ability to read minds.

“Are all vampires telepathic?” Neely heard herself ask.

“More or less,” Maeve answered. She went to the desk, picked up the music box, and listened thoughtfully as it played its quaint familiar tune.

The ditty left Neely stricken with love and longing for Aidan. She had not been able to bring herself to lift the lid of the small box and wind the key, for fear she would fall apart.

“Do you know where Aidan is?” Maeve asked, quite cordially. She was dressed in a simple muslin gown, and she sat down on a nearby settee, folding her arms and regarding Neely pensively.

Neely gulped, then shook her head. “No,” she replied honestly. “I wish I did.”

Maeve fiddled with the brocade upholstery on the arm of the settee, not looking at Neely. “He’s been taken before the elders of the Brotherhood,” she mused, revealing none of what she was feeling. Her blue gaze rose, linked with Neely’s. “They may destroy him.”

Neely sank back in her chair and closed her eyes. She’d never felt so helpless before, not even when she’d been tied up in the back of Vinnie and Sally’s van and slated for a mob-style execution. Somehow she’d known she would survive.

This was different; Neely couldn’t return the favor and rescue Aidan, as he had done for her. She had none of his powers.

“I sec you’re wondering how you might be of help to my brother,” Maeve went on. “There is a way, Neely.”

Neely leaned forward, still afraid, but curious, too. It wasn’t every day, after all, that one sat and chatted with a lady vampire. “What?”

“You could become one of us,” Maeve said bluntly. “Then perhaps Aidan could forget this nonsense about being human again.”

Maeve’s pronouncement brought about an emotional earthquake, and almost a minute must have passed before Neely was able to reply.

She shook her head. “Not that,” she said. “I love Aidan more than I’ve ever loved anybody, but I won’t sell my soul even for him. And he wouldn’t ask it of me.”

“You’re right,” Maeve said coolly. “He would be furious at first, but he loves you desperately. Can you honestly say it holds no appeal for you, the immortality of being a vampire? The power?”

Again Neely shook her head. “All I want to be is a woman, a plain, ordinary woman.” She paused, waited a heartbeat, then dared to ask, “Aidan really wants to be human again?”

“He’d do anything to accomplish it,” Maeve answered in a rush of confounded annoyance. She arched one eyebrow, studying Neely, paying a little too much attention to the pulse point at the base of her throat. “I don’t have to give you a choice, you know. I can make you into a vampire without your consent.”

Neely thought of the early entries in Aidan’s journals, the despair and anger he’d felt. “That was what was done to your brother,” she answered evenly, fingering the golden rosebud on the pendant Aidan had given her. “He despises the one who changed him, and he would be outraged if it happened to me as well. Do you want Aidan to hate you, Maeve?”

The impossibly blue eyes widened at the sight of the pendant, then were averted. “I adore him,” she said brokenly. “I became a vampire so that Aidan and I would not be separated. Now he wants to change back.”

Neely folded her hands in her lap and spent a few seconds gathering her courage, which, it seemed to her, was mostly bluster. Since that was all she had to work with, she proceeded. “Is that possible, for a vampire to be turned back into a human being?”

Maeve stared into space for a long time, then shrugged. ‘To my knowledge, no one has ever done it. But there are secrets and rituals only the elders know.”

Neely bit her lower lip and offered a silent prayer, not for her safety, but for Aidan’s redemption.

Abruptly Maeve rose from her seat and stood glaring down at Neely, her expression imperious and completely chilling. “You cannot stay here,” she announced. “If I found you, so might the others.”

Neely shivered as horrible images from books and movies flooded her mind. “What quarrel do any of you have with me?” she dared, setting aside the last volume of Aidan’s journal, the one that mentioned his love for her, and getting shakily to her feet.

“You are a threat to all of us,” Maeve answered. “Vampires and humans do not normally mix, beyond the obvious feedings and an occasional brushing of shoulders.”

“But what could I possibly do to you?” Neely pressed. “You have already done it,” Maeve said, and her words rang with an infinite and eternal sorrow. “You have taken Aidan’s heart and made him into a weak link. He might betray us all, not intentionally, of course, but simply because he’s lost a large part of his reason.”

Neely put a chair between herself and Aidan’s twin, although she knew only too well that no such puny effort would save her if Maeve decided to follow through on her original idea and make this troublesome human into a vampire.

“My crime, then,” she whispered, “is that I love your brother with my whole heart. As you do, Maeve.” Neely watched as the majestic creature of the night turned her straight, slender back, apparently struggling to contain some emotion. “We aren’t enemies, you and I. We’re on the same side.”

When Maeve turned to face Neely again, there were tears glittering in her sapphire eyes. “What will become of him?” she murmured. “Of all of us?”

Neely actually wanted to touch Maeve, to comfort her, but of course she didn’t dare make any such move. To do so would be like petting a wild tigress. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But there is one thing you can count on. I truly love Aidan, and I will never purposely hurt him.”

Maeve assessed Neely in silence for a long time, probably weighing her words. In the end she evidently found them true. “I have promised not to interfere in this other madness of Aidan’s, this transformation he so foolishly seeks. But there is one thing I can do, and that is protect the woman he loves more than his own soul.”

Neely waited, having no idea how to respond. For all she knew, making her, Neely, into some immortal, blood-drinking monster was Maeve’s idea of protecting her. Or perhaps the beautiful vampire would simply kill her, angering Aidan but at the same time saving him and a lot of the mysterious “others” mentioned earlier.

As it happened, Maeve stepped back to the desk, found a pen and paper, and scribbled something. “Come to this address, in London, as soon as you can. It is perhaps your only hope, to be under my protection.”

Neely swallowed. “London?” she echoed.

“Yes,” Maeve snapped, shoving the scrap of paper at her. “And be quick about it. The housekeeper will let you in. You do have money?”

Neely nodded. Dallas Hargrove had given her a healthy sum in cash, and so had Aidan. She’d spent very little. “Is that where Aidan is? In London?”

“Would that he were,” Maeve said with a bitter sigh. Having so spoken, she raised both her arms, as Neely had seen both Aidan and Valerian do, and vanished.

“London?” Neely muttered to the empty room.

The next day, after saying good-bye to Danny and Ben and Doris, who had begun to assemble themselves into a tight family unit, Neely got into Aidan’s car and drove to New York City. She carried only her passport, a toothbrush, and her wad of cash; she was getting very good at traveling light.

Another day passed, and then Neely flew out of JFK Airport, aboard a 747 bound for Heathrow. She sagged numbly in her seat, now sleeping, now staring out the window at the clouds blanketing the Atlantic. She held one shimmering, fragile hope close to her heart: that she would see Aidan again soon.

The flight was interminable, and when the plane finally landed, there was still Customs to be gotten through. Neely managed the task, practically dead on her feet. Outside, in the gray, slushy twilight of an English winter, she found a cab right away.

Neely gave the driver the address Maeve had written for her and ignored the gregarious cabbie’s whistle of exclamation.

“Pretty fancy real estate, that,” he said.

Neely wasn’t up to chatting, but as it turned out, that hadn’t been a problem. The driver had talked nonstop from Heathrow to the quiet, elegant neighborhood that was her destination.

He brought the old cab to a lurching stop in front of one of the most impressive mansions Neely had ever seen, Washington and New York included. The place was three stories high, made of gray stone, and surrounded by a high iron fence.

Even as Neely sat still in that tattered backseat, wondering how she was ever going to get inside the place and what she would do when she got there, a figure came hurrying out to open the gate.

Neely paid the driver, stepped out onto the sidewalk, and was immediately grateful for the bracing bite of the wind. The cab sped away, leaving its former passenger to stand there with her hands in her pockets, gaping.

“Miss Wallace?” the figure asked, clattering a key in a great lock and then swinging open the gate.

Neely blinked. She’d been expecting Frankenstein’s monster, but Maeve’s housekeeper was instead a plump, genial woman with rosy cheeks and bright, mischievous brown eyes.

“Yes,” Neely answered.

The housekeeper beckoned. “Well, come along then,” she prompted, with good-natured impatience. “No sense in our standing out here, freezing our bums off, now is there?”

In spite of herself, Neely laughed, drawn by the woman’s ordinary kindness.

“No sense at all,” she agreed.

Neely made little note of the inside of the house that first night, for she was too tired and too distracted. She simply followed the housekeeper, whose name, to Neely’s delight, was Mrs. Fullywub.

“Call me Mrs. F.,” the woman ordered benignly, depositing Neely in a guest suite on the second floor. “I’ll bring up some tea and scones shortly. There’s a robe and nightgown, folded all neat and tidy on the bench in the water closet—through that door.” She pointed a pudgy finger. “A hot bath can resurrect the dead, I always say.”

Neely made no answer, since none seemed to be needed. She took off her peacoat, looking around at the unbelievably sumptuous room in a state of mild shock. There was a fireplace, with glistening brass andirons, and a bed that probably dated from the reign of Elizabeth I. The couches and chairs were upholstered in mint-green silk, to match the spread and pillow shams, and there was a Chippendale desk in one comer.

It was like stepping into a layout in a high-tone decorating magazine, but Neely was too far gone to appreciate her surroundings. She soaked in the guest bath, which was roughly the size of a Scottish loch, then put on the waiting nightgown and robe. She brushed her teeth, stumbled back into the bedroom, and collapsed.

Mrs. F. brought tea and scones, which Neely ignored, and built a fire on the pristine hearth. Soon shadows danced on the high, molded ceiling, taking the shapes of vampires and angels.

Chapter 14

I
n the morning Mrs. F. brought Neely breakfast in bed— orange juice, oatmeal, buttered wheat toast, and a slice of melon. Tucked under the housekeeper’s right arm were two newspapers, which turned out to be the London
Times
and yesterday’s
USA Today.
Neely might have enjoyed the small irony, not to mention the luxury, under other circumstances.

“Thank you very much,” she said after forcing herself to take a sip of the orange juice, for her fearful yearning for Aidan was a shrill, relentless thing that left no room for food. “But you needn’t wait on me after this. I can look after myself.”

Mrs. F. beamed, looking bright-eyed and matronly with her salt-and-pepper hair arranged in a loose but tidy bun. She wore a flowered dress, along with a pristine white cobbler’s apron. Neely wondered if Mrs. F. knew that the lady of the house was a vampire.

“Nonsense,” said the good woman, in her brisk and lively accent. “You’ve great dark circles under your eyes, you have, and if you don’t mind my saying so, miss, it’s apparent that you could do with a little seeing to. Besides, there’s the jet lag to consider. You’ll enjoy your visit more if you give your mind and body time to adjust to the changes.” For a moment Neely wanted to weep. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had treated her with such tenderness, except for Aidan, of course, and that made the experience bittersweet.

She blinked back tears of terror that Aidan would be hurt or destroyed by forces she couldn’t begin to understand, let alone combat, but there was an element of self-pity in her sorrow as well. She was exhausted, not to mention confused, scared, and more than a little heart-sore, and she could use some time to heal, gather her scattered thoughts, and make plans for the future.

After a few moments of inner struggle, she managed to compose herself.

Neely pretended to nibble at her toast as Mrs. F. toddled over to the hearth and stirred a cheery fire from ashes and embers. “Have you been working for—
?”
She stopped. How was she supposed to refer to Mrs. F.’s employer— as Maeve? Miss Tremayne? That woman with the fangs? She redirected. “Have you been here long?”

“A few years,” Mrs. F. replied. “Madam isn’t around much, so it’s quite an easy job, really. Which is good, since my knees aren’t what they used to be. The heavy cleaning is done by a service, once every fortnight, regular as teatime. I putter, for the most part—dusting, answering the telephone, the like of all that. Once in a while, the Madam decides on a party, and then there’s a flurry, I don’t mind saying.” Neely smiled, though she still felt as if she’d been broken to bits and glued back together with some of the pieces missing. This gregarious, talkative woman knew nothing of Maeve’s other life, and wouldn’t believe the truth in any case. Who could blame her?

“How did you come to be acquainted with the Madam?” Mrs. F. inquired, catching Neely off guard.

No longer pretending to an appetite, she set the tray aside. “I’m a Mend of her brother’s,” she said.

Mrs. F. looked disapprovingly at Neely’s untouched breakfast but refrained from comment. In the next instant her face was alight. “Oh, you’re one of Mr. Aidan’s lot. Now, there’s a lovely gentleman for you. As handsome a rascal as the Lord ever turned from His hand, he is. Makes me blush with his teasing, and me twice his age.”

Neely thought of Aidan’s birthdate—the spring of 1760— and sighed wistfully. She didn’t know if she’d ever come to understand the mystery that was Aidan Tremayne; she just hoped she’d get the chance to try. “You’re younger than you think, Mrs. F.,” she told the other woman.

The housekeeper took the tray and left, and Neely immediately reached for her newspapers. At that point she was in dire need of a distraction, a way to avoid further thoughts of the dangers Aidan faced.

USA Today
said nothing about the Hargroves—Elaine’s funeral and the senator’s subsequent “nervous breakdown,” which had rendered him temporarily unfit to stand trial, were old news. The London
Times
, however, contained an update on Dallas Hargrove’s condition, tucked away in a comer of page 14.

The senator had contracted pneumonia, and while everything possible was being done for him in the way of medical treatment, he did not seem to be responding. Neely suspected that he’d simply decided to die; without Elaine, without his freedom and his reputation, he might well feel that he had nothing left to live for.

Feeling even sadder than before, Neely refolded both papers, set them on the bedside table, and tossed back the covers. A yellow-gray fog was curling at the mullioned windows, and there was a distinct chill in the air, even with the fire popping in the grate.

“Vampire weather,” Neely mused fancifully.

Soon enough she realized that even though she was weary to the point of collapse, inactivity would be the worst thing for her. Perhaps if she just kept moving, she reasoned whimsically, then disaster would not be able to overtake her.

Half an hour later, bathed and clad in a gray cashmere pants and sweater set that probably belonged to Maeve, she ventured out of her room. She would explore the house first, then call her friend, Wendy Browning, who was in London studying theater arts, and make arrangements to meet. Maybe that afternoon, if she felt up to it, Neely would go shopping for clothes. As it was, she had only the outfit she’d worn on the plane, and she couldn’t go raiding closets and bureaus for more of Maeve’s things.

Neely found the stairway leading to the third floor and climbed it. Here, instead of a nursery or servants’ quarters, as many such houses would have had, there was one great, drafty room.

Neely’s footsteps echoed off the walls of that lonely chamber as she approached the object that dominated it— a huge old-fashioned loom. Someone, Maeve surely, had been weaving a tapestry in delicate pastels and deep earth colors, though all that was visible was the hem of a pale, gauzy dress, a carpet of brown and crimson maple leaves, and a fallen rose, shedding its ivory petals.

A chill tickled Neely’s spine, and she hugged herself.

Aidan
, she mourned silently.
Where are you?

Tilting her head back, she saw that huge skylights had been cut into the roof, and the fog brushed against the glass like an affectionate cat.

There was a stack of completed tapestries on a table next to a far wall, but Neely didn’t approach. She felt as if she’d seen a private part of Maeve’s life as it was, and besides, this was a place of sorrow. Suddenly that huge room seemed as barren of life and hope as a cemetery.

She turned and hurried out of the attic studio.

On the second floor were a number of bedrooms and baths, along with a sitting room that overlooked the sumptuous garden at the rear of the house. Neely proceeded to the first floor, where she found an old-fashioned and purely elegant drawing room, a combination library and study, a formal dining area, the kitchen, of course, and a gallery.

Neely was even more drawn by the paintings on the walls of the gallery than she had been by the curious tapestry in Maeve’s attic room. These works, at least, had purposely been put on display, and because of that, Neely could look without feeling that she was prying.

The morning dawdled by, it seemed, and promptly at one o’clock Mrs. F. served a luncheon of deviled eggs, fruit compote, and salad in the kitchen. Neely forced herself to eat a little, then went off to the study to call Wendy Browning.

An answering machine clicked on. “Hi, this is Wendy. Jason and I are probably in class, acting our brains out. Leave a message, and one of us will call you back at the first opportunity. In the meantime, break a leg. Bye.”

Neely grinned as she left her name and the number where she could be reached. The thought of seeing Wendy again lifted her spirits, though she wasn’t looking forward to explaining why her friend’s seaside cottage in Maine had been blown to splinters. This might just be one of those rare incidences where it truly was better to lie, or at least go on pretending she didn’t know what had happened.

Feeling restless as the gloomy day wore on and twilight approached—Neely realized that she was both dreading the coming of darkness and looking forward to it because it might bring Aidan to her side—she called for a cab. While she waited for the car to arrive, she reflected on her own mixed emotions.

True enough, Aidan could appear. On the other hand, so could Maeve or Valerian or other vampires she wouldn’t even recognize. The cab appeared before she’d worked out the problem in her mind, and Neely put on her coat and rushed down the walk and through the gate to meet it.

It was time for a little therapeutic shopping.

She avoided the posh places, like Harrod’s, the designer shops, and the trendy boutiques, and spent the remainder of the afternoon in a fascinating establishment called Tea and Sympathy, which dealt in secondhand clothing. It was upscale stuff but definitely used.

In that hectic, cheerful, crowded atmosphere, Neely felt wonderfully safe and ordinary; she was even able to forget, at least during that brief, shining interval, that vampires were real creatures and that she’d fallen hopelessly in love with one.

She bought a black skirt that had supposedly once belonged to the princess, along with several pairs of equally royal-looking woolen slacks, some sweaters in soft colors, and a black, sparkly dancing dress. On the way home she had the cabdriver stop at a neighborhood shop, where she purchased a supply of underwear, some pantyhose, and three soft cotton nightgowns.

Later, Neely settled into the guest suite, back at Maeve’s house. Mrs. F. brought tea and “biscuits,” which were really cookies, and built up the fire. Neely couldn’t ignore her hunger any longer, so she sipped from a bone china cup, ate exactly one biscuit, and reviewed the day’s loot. Briefly she entertained a wry, bereft hope that someday she would have steady access to her own wardrobe again, instead of having to rush out and buy things everywhere she went.

Wendy called just before dinner, and she and Neely made plans to meet for lunch the next day, near the theater academy.

“Anything exciting going on?” Neely inquired, winding an index finger nervously in the telephone cord. She imagined herself blurting out the gist of her own situation.
Guess what? I’m in love with a vampire.

Wendy’s voice was bubbly and cheerful, like always. “Well, the police in Timber Cove did call to say my cabin in Maine had been reduced to ashes. I’ll have it rebuilt with the insurance check. What are you doing in London, anyway?” Neely suppressed an urge to tell all.

Of course, she didn’t talk about Aidan, or his mysterious mission, or the other vampires who threatened to demolish any whisper of a chance that they could ever be happy together. “You’ve read about the big scandal stateside, involving Senator Hargrove and the drug cartel, haven’t you?”

Wendy laughed. “All I read is
Variety
these days, and Shakespeare.” She paused, and there was a worried note in her voice when she went on. “Sounds like pretty dangerous stuff. Are you okay, Neely?”

Her friend’s concern warmed Neely, reassured her that there were still regular people in the world, affectionate, funny people who didn’t believe in the Undead.

“I’m terrific,” Neely lied, feeling her hard-won facade starting to slip. “I’ll explain it all tomorrow.”

“Great,” Wendy responded. “Now remember, twelve- thirty at Willy-Nilly’s.”

“I’ll remember,” Neely promised. But a nervous tremor struck her as she hung up the receiver, there in Maeve’s august study, a new and very frightening feeling came over her—the absolute conviction that someone was watching her.

Now,
she thought with bravado,
if I can just make it to tomorrow.

This time the Brotherhood did not mistreat Aidan physically, though his mental powers and his emotional strength were both severely tested.

He was given an austere chamber in the cellar of a remote hunting lodge in Scotland and allowed to come and go as he pleased, feed in his own way, and wear his own clothes.

Each night, however, as soon as he’d fed, Aidan was expected to present himself in the lodge’s main hall, where he sat in a great carved chair of medieval oak, facing the five members of the tribunal.

The elders lined a long wooden table, sometimes just staring at Aidan, but mostly they interrogated him. They asked seemingly limitless questions about every comer and facet of his life, explored his most private thoughts and beliefs with their probing minds. Since there was nothing Aidan could do to stop them, for his puny powers were laughable beside theirs, he endured the inspection as patiently as he was able.

The experience was intensely painful on a psychic level, and the Brotherhood made no particular effort to be merciful. They saw Aidan as a potential threat to themselves and all other vampires, and half of them argued openly and heatedly for an immediate execution. That, the angry ones claimed, would settle the problem once and for all.

Others, however—Tobias among them—spoke for simple justice. Tremayne had not, after all, committed any crime, and surely he should not be destroyed on the mere speculation that he
might
betray the others. Besides, if he passed through the ancient purging process—even in his suffering, Aidan was jubilant to learn that such a process existed at all—his memory of life among blood-drinkers
would vanish, along with all the powers and demands of vampirism.