Time Without End (The Black Rose Chronicles) (40 page)

I laid her tenderly on the examination table, still cossetted in my cloak, and began rummaging for blankets.

Calder sensed my presence in his domain, as I had hoped he would, and appeared posthaste, wearing a scowl that would surely have intimidated a lesser vampire than myself. “What the—?”

“I’ve brought you a patient,” I interrupted, finding a covering that looked like a relic from the American Civil War and giving it a shake before draping it over Daisy’s motionless form. “I’d like you to save her.”

The good doctor flung an irritated glance in my direction, but his attention was soon centered on the slender nymph lying, near death, on his table. I saw what I had hoped for in his face—a physician’s compassion. “What happened?” Calder asked, though he must have guessed some of the tale, for he had already laid gentle fingers to the marks of Krispin’s fangs defiling her throat.

I told him what my brother had done, and why, sparing no detail.

Calder worked on Daisy as he listened, examining her for other injuries, listening to her heart through a stethoscope, taking her blood pressure. This laboratory, unlike its counterpart in the last century, of course, was equipped with a number of modem medical implements.

While I watched, in vigilant silence, Calder took plasma from a refrigerator in the comer and administered the initial transfusion. For the first time since I had found her, Daisy made a sound and stirred slightly.

My eyes blurred with tears, for I knew it was pain that had moved her, and finding myself powerless to spare her this suffering, however subliminal, was agony.

I tried to mask my emotions with words, for I was not at ease in Calder’s company, nor he in mine. I could not wail and sob in despair, as I needed to do, as I might have done in Maeve’s presence, or even Kristina’s. “Human plasma,” I observed as the precious liquid dripped slowly through a tube and into Daisy’s veins. “Do you keep it around for those nights when you just don’t feel like hunting?”

Calder did not look at me; he had produced a small penlight from his pocket and was peering into one of Daisy’s glazed and sightless eyes. “Hardly,” he replied with quiet disdain. “I have a supply on hand because I am

a doctor, and because the occasional hapless human being finds his or her way here and has need of it.” “How did you know her blood type?”

Now he did meet my eyes. With a scathing glare. “Being a vampire, I am an expert on the stuff,” he said pointedly and with intolerance. “If you must blather to distract yourself from your worries, Valerian, at least find something worthwhile to say.”

I swallowed a cry of grief and fear and fury. “Will she die?” I asked when I felt I could speak coherently.

“Perhaps,” Calder said, going back to the refrigerator and rummaging through a number of clear plastic pouches filled with blood. “We know the alternative—allowing your brother to finish the process he began—and somehow I don’t think that’s what you want for her. Or what she would wish for herself.” He turned to look at me curiously. “Could it be, Valerian, that for once in your debauched and utterly self-serving life, you are actually putting the desires of another before your own?”

I did not refute his assessment of my character; it was, after all, accurate. “Daisy has never wanted to become a vampire,” I said, defeated. The multiple feedings I have taken in New York were beginning to wear off, and my strength was flagging. “And while I would like nothing better than to have her at my side forever, as you have your glorious Maeve, and show her all the wonders we are heir to, I won’t change Daisy against her will.” Calder made a sighlike sound. “Suppose that is your only choice? Would she prefer a mortal’s death to the everlasting life of a vampire?”

I found a stool and perched upon it, lowering my face to one hand. “Yes,” I said. “I have offered her the gift before, in other incarnations. I cannot think her wishes have changed. Daisy’s is a pure and noble spirit, unwilling to be counted among the damned.”

The doctor said nothing, but simply stood beside the table, watching his patient with a solemn and thoughtful expression. I would have given all the considerable wealth I had accrued over the centuries to know what he believed Daisy’s true prognosis to be.

We kept our vigil in silence after that, with Calder giving Daisy more blood at intervals. Slowly her color began to improve, and she stirred more often beneath her blanket, and made soft, disconsolate sounds that wounded me as nothing else could have done.

I had to feed, for Calder’s store of plasma, while life-giving for Daisy, was but thin gruel in relation to my hunger. With the greatest reluctance I left her in the doctor’s care and went out to hunt.

As before in New York, I was gluttonous, prowling the dark streets of London and filling myself, like a leech, until my tissues were swollen with the stuff.

When I returned to Calder’s laboratory to resume my watch at Daisy’s side, I found her virtually restored and sleeping soundly. The doctor had gone, probably to take his rest in some dark vault in the bowels of that very house, as dawn would soon be upon us, but Kristina was there, the talisman pendant clutched in one hand.

The last time I’d fed so copiously, I had not succumbed to the vampire slumber, but this occasion was different. I felt myself fading, losing my grip on consciousness. Stubbornly I lay down on the table beside Daisy and drew her into my arms, flinging Kristina a glance that dared her to protest.

“Sleep, Valerian,” Maeve’s child said quietly. “I will keep watch for you.”

I struggled to remain awake those few extra moments, nodding toward the pendant Kristina grasped. “A fat lot of help that was,” I complained. “Why didn’t you just make her a necklace of garlic?”

“Don’t be tiresome,” Kristina said. ‘The pendant would have protected Daisy if she’d been wearing it.”

It was then that Daisy opened her wonderful, fathomless eyes and looked straight into my hell-bound soul.

“You,”
she said in an odd voice. “You killed me.”

1 had no chance to reply before the darkness overtook me.

Daisy

Seattle, 1995

The room where Daisy awakened was filled with light and color. She did not know where she was, nor did she have any idea how she’d gotten there.

She sat up in the strange bed, with its linen sheets and exquisite lace spread, and looked around in amazement. There were six floor-to-ceiling windows opposite, affording a stunning view of dark blue waters and snow- draped mountains, and the furniture was light, lacquered stuff, painted with flowers. Italian antiques, probably, and beyond expensive.

Before Daisy could toss back the covers and rise, Kristina appeared in the doorway. She was wearing jeans and a loose white shirt with flowing sleeves and a cut-work collar.

“Welcome to Seattle,” she said with a smile.

“How did I—what—?”

“I brought you here, from my father’s lab in London. How are you feeling?”

Daisy settled back against the pillows, reassured by the presence of her friend and the normality of her surroundings. “Confused, light-headed, and hungry.” Kristina laughed. “I can’t do much about the confusion and the dizziness, I’m afraid. But food I’ve got. Sit tight, and I’ll bring you a tray.”

“You’re not going to zap it up out of nowhere?” Daisy asked, a little disappointed.

Her hostess sighed. “I only do that in emergencies. I like to cook, and besides, I try to live as normal a life as my predicament allows.” She nodded toward another door. “The guest bath is that way.”

Fifteen minutes later, when Daisy had used the facilities, washed her face and hands, and made her somewhat shaky way back to bed, Kristina returned with the promised food.

The dishes were heavy squares of brightly colored pottery, painted with whimsical flowers and checks and stripes. There was a tiny pot of steaming tea, along with pasta, warm bread, and green salad.

While Daisy ate, Kristina pulled up a large blue hassock, imprinted with smiling golden suns sporting pointed rays, and sat down.

“Papa and I discussed the situation and decided you would be better off here, in a more familiar environment.”

Daisy poured tea with a somewhat unsteady hand and raised the cup to her lips. The brew was strong and sweet, laced with milk. Just the way she liked it. “He can still get to me here, you know,” she said after several bracing sips. “Krispin, I mean.”

“Yes,” Kristina answered. “I’m sure he can. But he won’t find you alone and defenseless, like before.”

“No,” Daisy said with a mild note of irony. ‘This time he’ll be able to attack you, as well as me.” She shuddered, remembering Krispin’s assault in her apartment. She’d honestly thought, in those moments of violence just before losing consciousness, that she was about to die.

Seeing that Daisy didn’t intend to eat any more of her meal, Kristina rose from her perch on the hassock, took the tray, and carried it out of the room. She returned almost immediately, this time taking a seat on the edge of Daisy’s bed.

“I’ll do everything I can to keep you safe,” she promised.

“Why? Why would you put yourself in so much danger?”

“Because I care about Valerian, and about you, Daisy. Do you realize you’re the only friend I have who knows who and what I am? How do you think my neighbors and business associates would react if I suddenly announced that my parents are vampires, for instance? Imagine me confiding, say at a chamber of commerce luncheon, that I’m well into my second century.” She paused to smile sadly. “You’re not going to bail out on me now, are you, Daisy? Just when I’ve started to think I might have run across somebody I can really talk to?”

Daisy’s heart warmed, despite the mess she was in. She’d never had a close female friend, except for Nadine and their late grandmother, and she found the prospect appealing. “No,” she said. “I’m not going to ‘bail out,’ as you put it. If you want to talk, I’m ready to listen.” Kristina smiled and squeezed Daisy’s hand briefly. “Thanks, friend, but even listening is work, and right now you need to rest. Go back to sleep.”

There were a lot of questions Daisy wanted to ask Kristina, but she had apparently lost a lot of blood during the incident with Krispin, and she was exhausted. She stretched out, closed her eyes, and tumbled into a waiting memory. . . .

Her name was Harmony Beaucheau, and she was twenty-three years old. The year was 1878, and the town was called Poplar Hill, though it stood in a dusty comer of the Arizona Territory and boasted neither poplar nor hill.

Oh, damn it, thought that part of her that was still Daisy. Here we go again.

Harmony was standing in front of a cracked mirror, and with some relief Daisy saw herself looking back from the glass. She was wearing a worn dress of brown calico with a high neck, and her reddish-brown hair was pinned up in a loose, fluffy style. Stubborn tendrils trailed at her neck and on her temples and cheeks.

She turned away from the mirror and from all consciousness of herself as Daisy Chandler. Reluctantly Harmony left her small, sparsely furnished room and made her way down the narrow passageway leading to the stairs. The saloon below was filled with swirling blue-gray smoke, tinny music from the piano, which was missing a few vital parts, and the raucous, vulgar talk of cowboys, drifters, and various locals. There were a handful of tawdry women, too—they entertained men in private, and Harmony herself paid their wages.

She hesitated on the stairs, one hand resting on the crude rail, and sighed. Harmony was not a whore, and never would be, for she’d been raised in Boston by a maiden aunt and educated to be a lady. Before she could marry, however, her elderly guardian had passed away, and when dear Aunt Millicent had been properly buried, and all accounts settled, there was a small but respectable sum of money remaining.

Harmony had barely recovered from Millicent Beaucheau’s death when an old friend of the family appeared, bearing a packet of old letters. In them was irrefutable proof that Millicent had been Harmony’s mother, and not her aunt, and in staid Boston to be illegitimate was hardly a social advantage.

Despite her fine looks, cultivated mind, and more than adequate dowry, no one who knew the truth was going to marry the likes of Harmony Beaucheau. She was tainted forever.

A resilient sort, Harmony had taken herself to an establishment dealing in properties. These were the very people who had sold Millicent’s house, which, it turned out, had been bought for her by her lover and not bequeathed by a doting father, as she’d always maintained, and Harmony had no reason to mistrust them.

She had inquired about the West and promptly purchased a hotel, sight unseen, in the Arizona Territory. On her arrival, Harmony discovered that she’d bought a brothel, not an inn, and used her last nickel in the process. The place was thriving—that was one consolation.

Still lingering on the stairs, Harmony scanned the saloon with eyes squinted against the smoke, and a smile broke over her face. He was there again, playing faro at the table nearest the door, the handsome gambler with the fancy name.

Valerian, he called himself. Harmony was already half in love with him, and practical as she was, she’d had no success in disabusing herself of the fancy. Men like him never stayed in one place long; they dallied a while, drank and gambled and told lies, and then moved on.