For All Eternity (The Black Rose Chronicles) (2 page)

For a time Maeve had been Valerian’s lover, as well as his apprentice. He had introduced her to the pleasures of vampire sex, a mostly mental pursuit vastly superior to the comical wrestling humans seemed to enjoy with such abandon. Since Maeve had been a virgin when Valerian transformed her, she’d been spared the indignity of sweating and straining and thrashing under some man’s thrusting hips the way mortal women did.

Valerian had introduced her to many other things besides the intense delights of mating, of course. She’d learned all the nightstalker’s tricks and learned them well. One night, when she caught Valerian playing vampire games with a beautiful fledgling named Pamela, Maeve had decided to strike out on her own.

She’d done well, too, eventually reconciling with a still-vexed Aidan and hurling herself into one wonderful adventure after another.

Now, as Maeve stood in the deserted room that had once been her brother’s favorite retreat, holding the golden rose pendant between two fingers, she struggled to accept another reality, another turning in the road.

She must leave Aidan to his humanity, though the temptation to seek him out was almost irresistible. It was to be hoped that he’d made a happy life for himself.

Maeve figured she would never know; Aidan was dead to her, and she to him, and there could be no returning to their old bonds.

There was nothing to do now but feed and retire to the attic studio of her home in London, where she liked to go when she was sad or injured. There she would sit at her loom, letting her thoughts drift while she worked the shuttle, allowing her deeper mind to dictate the image that would appear, as if by magic, on the resultant tapestry.

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania July 14, 1863

When Calder Holbrook slept—a rare event in itself— his dreams were haunted by the bone-jarring thunder of cannon fire and the screams of schoolboys-turned- soldier. Not a moment passed, sleeping or waking, when he didn’t want to lay down his surgical instruments and go home to Philadelphia, but he couldn’t leave the wounded. The color of their tattered uniforms meant nothing to him, though some of the other doctors refused to treat “the enemy.”

That particular summer night was hot, weighted with the metallic scent of blood and the more pungent stenches of urine and vomit. After operating for twenty hours straight, Calder had stretched out gratefully on the soft, cool grass covering an old grave, there in the sideyard of the small clapboard church, and plunged headlong into a fitful slumber. In the early hours, well before dawn, something awakened him, something far more subtle than the cries and moans of the injured boys inside, sprawled end to end on the pews.

Aching with despair and fatigue, Calder lifted himself onto an elbow and scanned the churchyard. There were so many wounded, such an impossible number, that they spilled out on the crude sanctuary to lie in neat rows on the grass. Even so, this was only one of many improvised hospitals, all overburdened, overwhelmed.

Some of the patients shivered or sobbed in their inadequate bedrolls—if they were lucky enough to have a blanket in the first place. Some moaned, and some had suffered only minor injuries and were just marking time, waiting to be sent home or to rejoin the Union troops at the front. The Confederates, of course, would be marched to some prison camp, or hauled there in whatever rickety wagon could be spared.

Calder came back from his musings and squinted. Something was different; he had an eerie, fluttery feeling in the pit of his stomach, made up partly of excitement and partly of fear. He dragged himself upright, his back against the cool marble headstone, ran blood-stained fingers through his dark hair, and strained his tired eyes.

And then he saw her.

She was a creature made of moonlight, moving so gracefully between the rows of fallen soldiers that she seemed to float. Her gown was pale, sewn of some shimmering, gauzy fabric, and her ebony hair tumbled down her back in a lush cascade.

Calder rubbed his eyes, then the back of his neck, mystified, certain that he must be hallucinating, or at least dreaming. This was not one of the good women of the town, who had been assisting so tirelessly with the injured of both sides since the terrible battle earlier in the month; none of them would have worn something so impractical as a white frock into the midst of such filth and overwhelming gore.

An angel, then? Calder wondered. Some of the stricken boys had spoken of a beautiful guardian spirit who came in the night and gave nurture and comfort to those who were the nearest to death. Of course, they’d been seeing what they wanted to see, being so far from their mothers, wives, and sweethearts.

Calder narrowed his eyes again, trusting neither his vision nor his reason. The woman did not vanish, as he had expected, but instead knelt beside a sorely wounded lad and drew him against her bosom with such tenderness that Calder’s throat tightened over a wrenching cry.

Her glorious hair, seemingly spun from the night itself, was like a veil, hiding the lad’s head and shoulders from view.

Calder finally gathered enough of his senses to scramble awkwardly to his feet. “You, there,” he said in a low but forceful voice. “What are you doing?”

The creature raised her head, her exquisite face pale and glowing like an alabaster statue in the silvery wash of the moon. The boy lay in her arms, his head back in utter abandon, an expression of sublime jubilation plain in his features. Even from that distance, Calder knew the soldier was dead.

The doctor scrambled to his feet, swayed slightly from weariness and hunger, and started toward the woman. She laid the boy on the ground with infinite gentleness, bent to kiss his forehead, and then rose gracefully to her full height. Just as Calder drew near enough to see her clearly, she raised her arms and clasped her hands together, high above her head. She favored the physician with one brief, pitying smile, and vanished like so much vapor.

Calder gaped, shaken, terrified that he was at last and indeed losing his mind, and oddly joyous, all of a piece. After a moment or so he composed himself and crouched beside the boy the woman had held so lovingly, searching with practiced fingers for a pulse.

There was none, as he had expected, but Calder felt the familiar mixture of rage and grief all the same. The soldier had obviously been trying to grow a beard, and he’d produced peach fuzz instead. His features were more those of a child than a man.

Damn this war, Calder thought bitterly, and damn the politicians on both sides for sending mere children into the fray. He was about to straighten the boy’s head, and cover him so that the overworked orderlies would know to carry him away in the morning, when he noticed the odd marks at the base of the lad’s throat—two neat puncture wounds, just over two inches apart.

“What the hell?” Calder whispered.

Tom Sugarheel, an earnest but largely incompetent fellow who had been dragged out of some second-rate medical college and pressed into government service, suddenly appeared, squatting at Calder’s side. “That’ll be one less to bawl and snuffle for his mama,” the other man said.

Calder reminded himself that he was here to attend the sick and injured, not to kill, then glared at Sugarheel. It galled him to ask an opinion of this oaf, but sometimes even idiots possessed insights that escaped other minds. “Look at these marks,” he said, pointing to the boy’s throat. “Have you seen anything like this before?”

Sugarheel shrugged, reaching into the tom, bloodstained pocket of the dead lad’s dark blue tunic. “Not as I recollect.” He found a small tintype, probably intended for the soldier’s mother or young bride, and ran a dirty thumb over the cracked glass while he pondered the already fading throat wounds. “Looks almost like something a snake would do.”

“You’re the only snake in the immediate vicinity,” Calder pointed out impatiently, snatching the photograph in its blood-speckled leather case from Sugarheel’s grubby grasp. “Rustle up a couple of orderlies, and don’t touch this boy’s personal belongings again.”

Sugarheel’s expression was wry and defiant “Most of these lads carry a paper with the name of their folks and such. I just wanted to make sure his kin got any valuables he might have.”

Calder felt a crushing weariness, deeper than physical exhaustion, something that lamed the spirit. “That’s the
chaplain’s duty, not yours. Make no mistake,
Doctor
—if I catch you stealing, be it from the quick or from the dead, I’ll cut you open like a bloated cow and fill your guts with kerosene. Is that clear enough, or were there too many syllables for you?”

Hatred replaced the amusement in Sugarheel’s narrow, pockmarked face, but he didn’t respond. Instead he got to his feet and ambled off to fetch the requested orderly.

Calder rose a moment later, after silently bidding the fallen soldier Godspeed, and stumbled back to the soft mound, hoping to sleep again, knowing with despairing certainty that he would not.

Maeve reached her new lair, a long-abandoned wine cellar in an old villa in nineteenth-century Italy, just moments before the light of the morning sun came flooding over the low hills to blaze in the olive groves and vineyards and dance, sparkling, on the sea. The inevitable sleep overtook her, and she sank into utter unconsciousness. All levels of her mind were blank, as usual, empty of the random images and fragmentary dreams some vampires experienced.

When she awakened, however, hours later, at the precise moment of sunset, a man had taken up residence in her thoughts—a
mortal
man, no less. He was very handsome, in a patrician sort of way, with dark hair, good teeth, and broad shoulders, but Maeve still resented the intrusion. Why, she wondered pettishly, should she find herself pondering the likes of a beleaguered army surgeon like Calder Holbrook?

Maeve rose from her improvised bed of dusty crates and smoothed her hair, feeling even more irritated at the realization that she’d taken the trouble to ferret out his name before leaving the Civil War field hospital for more pleasant surroundings. She had no particular fascination with human beings—beyond feeding on them when the need arose, that is.

In a flash, much of the doctor’s history flooded, unbidden, into Maeve’s mind. Calder Holbrook was the second son of a wealthy Philadelphia banker. He’d graduated from Harvard Medical School with honors and taken further training in Europe. He’d been married once, to a selfish socialite who had deserted her husband and their small daughter to run away with a lover. Holbrook had endured this betrayal with admirable equanimity, but when his beloved child had perished of spinal meningitis a year later, he’d turned bitter and cold, devoting himself to his work. His father had begged him to spend the war years in Europe, advancing his studies, but Holbrook had accepted a commission and left his comfortable life in Philadelphia without so much as a backward glance. . . .

Maeve put her palms to her temples and closed her eyes, trying to stop the onslaught of images and emotions, wanting to know nothing more about Dr. Calder Holbrook. All the same, she was well aware that she would see him again, whether she wished it so or not.

Exasperated, Maeve formed a picture of her grand house in London, with myriad comforts of the twentieth century, and centered all her inner forces on the desire to be there. In an instant she found herself standing in her own lush suite of rooms.

Moving rapidly, as if to shake persistent images of a doctor from her mind, thoughts of a man as sorely wounded as any of his patients, Maeve exchanged her white dress for a comfortable gown of red velvet. It was a simple creation, really, loosely fitted at the waist, with wide sleeves tapering into cuffs that buttoned with jet. After brushing her hair, she left her private apartments, walked along the wide hallway, and climbed the attic stairs to her studio.

She must feed soon. Maeve was not one for starving herself, knowing as she did that her powers, rare even among vampires, as well as her unflagging strength, came from the blood she took each night. Besides, she looked forward to the sweeping, thunderous joy that always overtook her during that intimate communion.

When she opened the door to the studio, however, and saw her loom awaiting her there, Maeve was drawn to it During those early, wildly painful nights when she’d first known that her brother had either ceased to exist or somehow been restored to all the faults and frailties of humanity, weaving had been her only solace. She had not seen Valerian during that time—for all she knew or cared, her former lover and mentor was rotting in some crypt with a stake through his heart—nor had she encountered her acquaintances, the Havermails, or any of the members of the Brotherhood. Indeed, Maeve had taken care to avoid all other vampires, fearing they would sense her unusual vulnerability and close in on her like so many frenzied sharks.

Maeve had no illusions about blood-drinkers; except for Valerian’s odd fascination with Aidan, and the deep bond that had once existed between her brother and herself, she had never known one to harbor true affection for another.

The pull of the loom was strong, stronger even than the unholy thirst.

She found the long box that contained her many spools of colored floss, then seated herself on the stool facing the primitive mechanism. Soon the shuttle was making its comfortingly familiar, rhythmic sound, and Maeve lost track of time, sublimating even the ravenous hunger she felt.

When a form suddenly towered opposite her, she cried out, startled. In the next instant, she was furious, for Maeve had not been caught off guard in such a fashion in nearly two centuries.