Time Without End (The Black Rose Chronicles) (12 page)

Just the mention of the beasts made me go bloodless with dread. In the next instant I blushed furiously, embarrassed by my first reaction.

“We saw no such animals last night while riding in the carriage,” I pointed out. The unpleasant images of a dying Krispin had faded from my mind, and I reached for my half-finished stew again.

Abelard made a production of chewing his bread, swallowing, and biting off a new piece. “I suppose they were busy elsewhere, then,” he said at long last. ‘They’re out there, though. You can be sure of that, sir.”

I could not hide my shudder. “Have you seen them?” “Oh, yes,” Abelard confided in a low voice. “And any man with ears can hear them howling of a night. Calling and calling they are, wanting the unwary to come out and play their dreadful games.”

I shifted the conversation away from the subject of wolves. “Is his lordship here, in this house?”

“He might be,” Abelard said speculatively, though it was plain, even to me, that he knew exactly where his master was and what he was doing.

“It’s damn rude,” I blurted out, “making such a mystery of things and leaving a guest all on his own. I didn’t ask to come here, after all.”

Abelard smiled. “Didn’t you?” he asked.

I was completely confused. “By the saints, man, I wasn’t so drunk that I can’t recall what I said with my own mouth!”

The servant finished his bread and then rose from the table. “There’s no need to be afraid, lad,” he said gently. “This is where you belong, and you’re welcome here, and safe, too, if you mind your manners.”

I wanted to point out that I was not some witless youth, that indeed I had lived five and thirty years, but I realized as I shaped the protest in my mind that I would sound foolish if I uttered it.

“Have you any wine?” I wanted to know. Blustering bluff was one of my stock traits; I had relied upon it, among other deceptions and ruses, for a long time.

Abelard sighed. “No,” he told me. “And if I did, I would not offer it to you. The stuff might have been your destruction, if his lordship hadn’t found you when he did.”

I was yet considering the wine, and resenting my host’s lack of charity where strong drink was concerned, so I did not stop to wonder how Challes had known where to look for me, or what business he had with me in the first place.

By the gods, I was not only mortal then, I was an idiot. I might have been deaf and blind for all the notice I took of the terrible and magnificent drama unfolding around me!

Abelard brought me one of the precious books that afternoon, and I read hungrily of ancient Greek adventures, hardly noticing when twilight came and the candles were lighted. I was so absorbed that I did not hear Challes enter the room where I sat, my stool drawn up close to the fire.

“This,” he said with gruff fondness, “is the Valerian I remember.”

‘Tell me,” I demanded quietly, closing the manuscript with great care. ‘Tell me why you sought me out, why you brought me here. Now.”

He smiled. “I
have
told you, my friend. I have an astounding gift to offer you. If you accept my tribute, you will have powers you cannot begin to imagine now.”

I was intrigued. “What is this great and mysterious treasure?” I asked.

Challes reached out to touch my shoulder. There was love in the contact, and reverence. His eyes glowed with affection as he looked down at my face. “Life upon life,” he said. “Endless, fathomless, unbounded
life.
Drink from the cup I hold out to you, Valerian—arrogant Valerian, as beautiful as Lucifer in his days of perfect favor—and you will never die.”

CHAPTER
6

The light of the drawing room fire flickered over Challes’s features as he sat beside me on that momentous night, staring fixedly into the grate. Beyond the windows, on the moonlit moors, I heard the wolves calling sorrowfully to each other like souls just waking to find themselves in hell, and I shuddered.

Nearly imperceptible though the motion must have been, it somehow drew my tutor’s notice. He turned his head toward me and smiled, and I remember thinking how remarkably white and even his teeth were. I was more conscious than ever, in that moment, of the dangers that filled the world.

“The time has come, Valerian,” Challes began moderately, “to discuss the gift in depth. Preparations must be made, of course, before it can be given. Still, I wish to tell you all that this entails, for you will be called upon to make a choice never presented to most mortals.”

I could barely contain my eagerness and curiosity; indeed, I had been in a state of quiet frenzy since he’d made the astonishing claim, a short while before, that I need never die. I find my excitement ironic now, in light of the fact that I had been trying for fifteen years at that point, albeit in a cowardly and indirect fashion, to murder myself.

‘Tell me,” I pleaded on a scant breath and came near to clasping his arm like a supplicant begging blessings from a saint.

“Be patient, beautiful one,” he said fondly. “Once you shed your mortal limitations, you will have all eternity to celebrate what you are.”

I waited and held my tongue, but it was the most difficult thing I had undertaken since my failed attempt to rescue Brenna from the merciless surf. I trembled with my need to understand what Challes was offering me, to snatch it from his grasp and hide it in my heart.

He settled back in his great chair, draped now in shadows, now in dancing light, and watched the blaze again. Just when I truly believed I would not be able to restrain myself from lunging like a fevered beast, to somehow wrench the secret from him, Challes began to unburden himself.

“I went to sea after I left Dunnett’s Head,” he told me, still gazing into the fire. “I know not how I kept myself apart from this cursed plague—it was, and is, everywhere. I saw so many perish, so horribly. I wandered, as you have done, and finally settled on the Continent, in Florence. There I encountered artists, bards, philosophers, and men of science—” He paused and smiled again, not at me certainly, but at some memory he must have glimpsed in the snapping flames of that cheery fire.

“Whores and dancing girls, too. Gypsies and princes, and vagabonds, like myself. Those who were drunkards”—he had the charity, bless him, not to look at me when he made this last statement—“those who were saints, and those who were a curious and fascinating combination of the two. I cannot possibly describe the richness and pleasure of my life in that gracious city—and yet I was not truly happy. At times I knew unutterable loneliness.” I bit my lip, feeling no compunction to interrupt now, listening with all my powers of attention. I, too, had known such a separation from others—it was that, more than any other factor, which had spawned my eternal need for strong drink.

“I encountered a magnificent being one night when I was brooding in one of the small piazzas that abound in Florence. We became friends, and then something more than that. Lovers, of a sort, though our consummation was spiritual, rather than physical. Many wondrous nights passed before Christoph told me what he was. What he
is
and will always be—” Challes hesitated again and studied my face with a troubled expression in his eyes, and I thought I would burst with waiting before he went on at last. “Christoph is a fiend, Valerian, as am I. He is a vampyre.”

My heart seemed to stop and, just as quickly, start itself pumping again. I drew back a little, I think, though the response was not a conscious one. “A
vampyre?
You mean, a drinker of blood?”

“Yes,” Challes answered with a sound that resembled a sigh, but was not.

I bolted to my feet, overturning the stool with a crash, suddenly far more frightened of my old friend and tutor than I’d ever been of the wolves waiting outside in the darkness.

“Wait,” Challes ordered calmly, even gently, rising unhurriedly from his chair. I would not have obeyed the command, but there was something in his eyes, something that held me spellbound and stricken, overriding my weak will. “I will do you no hurt, cherished one. There is only pleasure in what I would give to you, only joy.” He was silent for a moment, gazing at me, and when he spoke again, it was briskly, in the schoolmaster’s tone from days of old. “Sit down, pray, and listen.”

Though I was terrified, I righted my stool and slumped onto it, speechless and void of grace, my limbs full of trembling. I made the sign of the cross, and to my horrified amazement, Challes did not recoil. Did not so much as flinch. No, there was only the brief hint of a smile, falling across his lips like a passing shadow, and a deep, pitying sorrow in his eyes.

“Such gestures have their power,” he told me, “when there is true faith behind them. But you have none of that, do you?”

I tried to speak, stammered insensibly, and began again. “I believe there’s a God—I believe in the Holy Mother, and the Son, and all the saints and angels—”

Challes laughed outright, and the sound echoed, raucous, off the high ceiling of the keep. “Such a hasty and convenient creed!” he exclaimed finally with grim humor. “Even the demons grant the existence of God, Valerian—oh, especially them. Do you think you can fool me—I, who know you so well? You believe now, in this moment, it’s true, but only because you perceive your sinful hide to be threatened. Tell me, lovely one, were you so devout when the good brothers bade you stay there to take up the cross and become one of their number?” He shook his head, as if in response to something I’d said, although I spoke not a syllable, for I was too shaken to refute his words. “Let go of what is past, you spectacular idiot, and enter into the glorious future that awaits you.”

I could not move or make a sound. I heard the wolves, nearer now, and wished that I might be their prey, alone and unprotected on the moors—that I could be anywhere but in that warm, comfortably furnished drawing room in the company of a devil.

Challes began to speak, his tones the low and measured ones of a father lulling a fretful child to sleep. He told me what it meant to be a vampire—told me of the powers he possessed, the powers
I
would command should I raise the figurative chalice to my lips and drink. I would be able to will myself from one place to another and, eventually, from one century to another. I would become a shape-changer, of sorts, able to present myself to mortals in an endless variety of forms. I should not need food or water, nor would I lack any desirable thing—gold, castles, fine horses, and exquisite garments could be mine by means of simple trickery. And there were much greater gifts and abilities that would come to me over time, with the practice of my art.

“But I must drink blood?” I asked with a slight shiver when Challes had finished painting his grand, glorious images in my mind.

His smile was tender now. “Not in the way you think,” he said. And he proceeded to explain that, too—how the blood was drawn in through the fangs, how the victim could be made to feel ecstacy instead of fear and pain if the vampire wished it so, how the innocents need never be touched, because there was such a thriving abundance of truly evil mortals.

I was intrigued, despite my terror. I wanted the terrible magic of which Challes spoke, as he had always known I would. I wanted to fly, to learn, to explore. I wanted to wear rich clothing, always, to hear the music of a thousand minstrels, to traverse the wide seas and continents, to know secrets forbidden to ordinary men.

“Will you accept this gift?” he asked, although he knew what the answer would be. We both did.

I flushed. “Yes,” I heard myself say. My old life was untenable now; I truly
would
surrender myself to the wolves before returning to the beggar’s existence I had known only the day before. “Now. Tonight.”

Challes laughed again and shook his head. “Dear, precious fool! If I changed you now, you would be forever as you are at this moment—gaunt and ill mannered and totally void of the graces. No, Valerian— you must be groomed and prepared for the transformation, as I said before.”

I was alarmed—now that I knew what it meant to be an immortal, I could not bear the idea that my tutor might change his mind, might deny me what he had already offered. “How long will it take, this preparation?”

“A month, perhaps two,” Challes said. “I will bring you along slowly, lovingly, just as my dark angel Christoph did for me. That way, when you enter in, it will be willingly, and with full knowledge of what you understake. Anything less would be a travesty before hell as well as heaven.”

“I must have it now,” I muttered, covering my face with my hands. “I cannot bear to wait!” The marvelous gift would be withdrawn, snatched from my fingers for all time—I knew it would. I would suffer that worst of all fates, and remain ordinary.

Challes laid his hand on top of my shaggy, unbrushed hair. “Do not fret,” he scolded with gruff affection. “I cannot hurry this process, for it is too important. But I shall show you some of the joy that awaits you, if you’re willing.”

I raised my eyes to meet his gaze. And I nodded.

Not even Brenna or my poor, ill-fated mother had ever looked upon me with the kind of love I saw that night in Challes’s translucent face. It was not a lascivious regard he bore me—even in my ignorance and self-centered naïveté I knew that—but something much deeper and far more complex. The emotion transcended gender, made a mockery of human gropings, and I was in awe.