Time Without End (The Black Rose Chronicles) (28 page)

It wasn’t fair.

“Not much is fair in this life,” a female voice observed.

Daisy was so startled that she whirled and pressed herself to the wall. She had expected some stray fiend; instead, she was faced with an attractive woman of about her own age. The visitor had short dark hair, stylishly cut, and enormous gray eyes. She was sleekly trim and clad in black corduroy slacks, a white poet’s shirt, and a vest of charcoal velvet.

“Who are you?” the pixie demanded, taking in Daisy’s bare body with a frown of disapproval.

Daisy swallowed. “I was going to ask the same

question of you,” she said, just resisting a futile urge to cover herself with both arms. “Are you a vampire?” “Of course not,” was the brisk answer. “I couldn’t be abroad in the daylight if I were. But I’ll give you my name in trade for yours—it’s Kristina Holbrook.”

The surname was faintly familiar; Daisy thought Valerian might have mentioned it in passing. “Daisy Chandler,” she said. “I’m a detective with the Las Vegas Police Department.” She regretted that last part the moment the words had tumbled from her mouth—in her present unclothed state, she wasn’t exactly a credit to hard-working law enforcement officers everywhere.

Ms. Holbrook’s lips twitched. “Perhaps you’d better call for backup, Detective Chandler. It would appear that someone has stolen your clothes.”

Daisy flushed with embarrassment. “I was wearing pajamas when I came here,” she blurted out. “And then I went swimming, and it just seemed, with Valerian asleep and no one else around or anything—”

“It’s okay,” Kristina said quickly with a full-fledged and quite dazzling smile. “I’ll get you something to wear.” She pondered Daisy thoughtfully again, then said with conviction, “I think blue is your color.”

With that she closed her eyes, and within the instant Daisy felt cloth against her skin. She looked down, speechless with amazement, to see that she was wearing an indigo silk jumpsuit with a hammered gold belt.

“I was right,” Kristina boasted with a good-natured grin. “You look fantastic.”

“Who—” Daisy lapsed into incoherence for a few moments, then made another attempt. “Who are you?” “I told you. I’m Kristina Holbrook.”

“And y-you’re not a vampire.”

Kristina’s forehead crumpled slightly as she frowned. “Definitely not. But both my parents are. It’s very complicated—my father was still mortal when I was conceived, so I’m human. Mostly.”

Daisy swallowed hard.
“Mostly?”

Kristina laughed, and the sound was like the peal of distant bells. “I’m mortal, essentially. But I’m not sure when I’ll get old, if ever, and I do have certain powers, as I’ve just illustrated.” She paused for a beat or two, then took the conversation in a whole other direction. “Would you like something to eat?”

Daisy was breathless—and surprised to discover that she was still hungry. “Yes—please.”

The other woman pointed dramatically at the island in the center of the kitchen, and a picnic basket appeared, accompanied by the tantalizing aromas of fried chicken and freshly baked apple pie.

“Come on and join me,” Kristina urged pleasantly, pulling a stool over to the island and sitting down. “You said you were hungry, didn’t you?”

Daisy hesitated a moment longer, then approached the food. The fine silk of her jumpsuit brushed softly against her skin as she moved.

“Would you like some jewelry to go with that?” Kristina asked, pulling a drumstick out of the basket and biting into it with relish.

“No, thanks,” Daisy said, standing on the other side of the island and helping herself to the food. There were plates inside the elegant basket, along with sterling silver, crystal wine flutes, and a very fine Bordeaux. “The outfit’s enough. Is it going to melt at midnight?” Kristina’s grin was puckish. “Are you accusing me of slipshod magic?”

Daisy didn’t bother to answer. “Why are you here?” she asked between bites of delicious chicken, potato salad, and coleslaw.

“Mother has been worried about Valerian. She asked me to look in on him.”

By now Daisy’s head was reeling. Maybe the higher- ups on the force were right, she thought in a brief flurry of hysteria. Perhaps she was losing it, and she needed intensive therapy. But no—deep inside, where it counted, Daisy knew she was all too sane.

Delusions? Hallucinations?

She should be so lucky.

“Is he—family? Valerian, I mean?”

“He’s like a godfather, I guess,” Kristina answered. “Or a favorite uncle. We’re quite close, he and I. He spoiled me outrageously when I was a child—take the dollhouse he gave me, for example. It’s a perfect replica of the palace at Versailles, down to the last light fixture.” Daisy had been standing up, but now she groped for a stool, dragged it over, and sort of collapsed onto it. Now that she knew it wasn’t romantic, she had no pressing interest in Kristina’s relationship with Valerian. “So you just sort of zapped yourself here from somewhere else?” “Seattle,” Kristina said. “I own a small antiques shop there.” She frowned at Daisy over the rim of a carton of mashed potatoes. “I’m sorry. We must be quite overwhelming, Valerian and I. Have you met any of the others?” She paused to shudder. “Canaan and Benecia Havermail, for instance? They’re little girls, beautiful as dolls, and hardly any bigger than they were five hundred years ago, when they became vampires. What vile little creatures they are—but you needn’t worry about them. They wouldn’t dare bother anyone Valerian befriends.” Daisy had been left behind, like a piece of luggage tossed from a moving train. “Five hundred years—” Kristina shrugged. “That’s not uncommon,” she said. “My mother was born in the eighteenth century, you know, and my father served as a surgeon in the American Civil War when he was mortal. And as for me—” Daisy held her breath, bracing herself to absorb yet another stunning revelation.

“Well, just between us, I’ve been around a while myself. How old would you say I am?”

It was the kind of question Daisy hated, but she’d had a lot of experience at gauging such things as a police officer, and she was fairly confident of her abilities. ‘Twenty-nine or thirty, I’d say.”

“Bless you.” Kristina beamed. Then she leaned forward to confide in a cheerful whisper, “Lincoln was President when I was born.”

“No,” Daisy said, but the fall-away sensation in the pit of her stomach told her it was true.

“Yes,” Kristina insisted. Then she sighed sadly. “It’s hard, when your friends get old and you stay just the same, year after year, decade after decade. Naturally they wonder why.”

“Naturally,” Daisy croaked, at a loss for anything sensible to say.

“I take it you’re completely mortal?”

“Completely,” Daisy said.

“I envy you. I’d trade all my magic, you see, for a real home and a family of my own. How lovely to marry and grow old with a man you cherish and respect—”

Daisy pushed away her food. “Don’t envy me,” she whispered, and then she made the unthinkable confession. “I’m in love with a vampire. And that isn’t the worst of it. It would seem we’ve been together in other lifetimes—”

“Oh, no!” Kristina interrupted, covering her mouth with one hand and widening her already huge gray eyes.
“You’re
Valerian’s ladylove—the one he keeps finding and losing, finding and losing!”

Daisy nodded glumly. “I think so, yes.”

Tears of sympathy glistened in Kristina’s dark lashes. “It’s true, then—there is some sort of curse.”

Valerian had told her about their star-crossed encounters in various centuries, and she was beginning to remember the odd detail, but he hadn’t said anything about a curse.

‘Tell me what you know,” she pleaded.

Kristina shook her head. “You’ll have to ask Valerian, Daisy. This is a personal matter, and I have no business interfering. Besides, the plain truth is I don’t know much about it. I’ve heard whispers through the years, that’s all.”

Daisy supposed she should have been afraid of Kristina Holbrook, but instead she liked and trusted her. She wanted her for a friend, though it seemed unlikely that they’d have much in common.

“Okay, I can respect that,” Daisy said. “Thanks for the food, anyway, and the jumpsuit.”

Kristina got off the stool and started toward the kitchen door, and Daisy followed her into the living room. The dark-haired woman went to stand beside the couch and touched Valerian’s forehead with such tenderness that Daisy felt an involuntary stab of jealousy.

“Is he all right?” Daisy asked, because it was plain that Kristina knew.

“Valerian is very strong and not a little stubborn,” she replied, but there was a small, worried crease between her eyebrows. “We must all be tried and tested in the crucible, mortal or immortal, and it would seem that his time has come.”

“What do you mean by that?” Daisy could barely get the words out, she was so stricken by the grisly array of possibilities invading her imagination.

Kristina withdrew her hand from Valerian’s opalescent flesh, but did not look away from his face. Her expression was full of sorrow and hope, trust and fear. “Everything changes. Perhaps the curse has finally run its course—perhaps everything can be resolved, one way or the other.”

Daisy thought about Krispin, and the murdered women, about the horrible dummy she’d found hanging in her shower, and the scene played out on Valerian’s television screen. She’d watched those strange images and, at the same time, been a part of them.

Yes, she reflected, Kristina was right. Events were building toward some sort of crescendo, and she was caught up in it all, not only because of her past lives, but through her growing love for Valerian.

She stayed silent, because there was nothing to say.

Kristina bent again and kissed Valerian’s forehead, then straightened and turned to Daisy. “Here,” she said, taking a pendant from around her neck and putting it around Daisy’s. It was an exquisite golden rosebud suspended from a priceless chain. “This has been in our family since my mother and her twin brother, Aidan, were mortal children. Over the centuries, it has gained power from the love of those who wore it against their hearts. You’ll need all your wits, all your love, all your faith to fight the battles ahead, but this talisman will lend you strength.”

The necklace felt warm beneath Daisy’s fingertips. “Thank you,” she said. She was aware that, in giving away the pendant, Kristina was making a sacrifice. Whether that sacrifice was large or small, Daisy could not guess.

Kristina smiled somewhat sadly. Or so it seemed to Daisy. Almost as an afterthought, as she was preparing to leave, the pixie-witch asked, “Do you want to leave here? Or is your vigil a willing one?”

“I want to stay,” Daisy said.

Kristina nodded. “Please tell Valerian when he wakes that I was here to look in on him.” At Daisy’s smile of acquiescence, Kristina raised both hands over her head and vanished with a showy little puff of smoke.

“Wow,” Daisy couldn’t help remarking. Then she stretched out beside Valerian’s still form, there on that roomy leather sofa, cuddled up close, closed her eyes, and drifted into a fairy-tale sleep.

She dreamed she rested in a crumbling castle, its walls obscured by thistles and thorns, its parapets and baileys and courtyards overgrown with vines.

Only the kiss of a certain prince could awaken her.

Valerian

The Vampire’s Lair, 1995

I opened my eyes at dusk to find Daisy sleeping beside me. My strength was flagging, despite the rest I’d taken and last night’s hasty feeding outside one of my favorite haunts, the Last Ditch Tavern, but I could not leave her. Not yet.

I shifted slightly and brushed her lips with a tender kiss, and her eyes opened, wide and startled and so green that the sight of them made my heart clench like a fist within me.

Then she smiled and put her arms around my neck. She did not need to speak; the invitation reverberated through her supple, warm little body and pierced me like lightning.

“You don’t understand,” I began. My vampire senses, a thousand times more acute than those of an ordinary man, were leaping to life, pulsing beneath my skin, promising agony if I denied them, ecstasy if I gave in.

I have ever cherished my pleasures.

I made one last attempt, however. “Daisy—” I began, my voice no more than a raspy whisper.

She touched my lips with a fingertip and wriggled beneath me. “I want you,” she murmured. “I don’t care what comes after that.”

I groaned and fell into her kiss, willing to bum in hell for her, to offer myself as a living sacrifice—anything, so long as I could taste again the joy I had mourned these many decades since I had seen her last. And I wanted the joining of our two souls even more, for I was only whole when her spirit and mine were fused by the fire of our lovemaking.

Daisy whimpered beneath my mouth as I opened the front of her garment—a curious thing it was, trousers and a blouse fastened together—and took gentle sustenance at her full breasts, one after the other. Her fingers, buried in my hair, pressed me closer, and I felt her hips arch under mine, wooing and tempting me in the age-old way, tormenting me with the promise of pleasure so intense a mortal could not have endured it, setting my bedazzled senses ablaze.