Valerian - Forever And The Night Part 26

Suddenly Aidan was seized with a terror that he would forget the face, and even the name, as he had forgotten so many scattered details of his past.

He rummaged for paper, scrounged up a pencil, and bent over his desk, in such a hurry to sketch the features wavering in his thoughts that he wouldn't even take the time to sit down. He finished in a few strokes, wrote "Neely" beneath the rendering of the beautiful young woman with large, inquisitive eyes and short dark hair, and gave himself up to the sweeping relief of having captured her likeness before she vanished from his mind's eye.

Aidan sat looking at the drawing for a long time, memorizing every line and curve.

Neely huddled in the big leather chair facing her therapist's desk, her blue-jeaned legs curled beneath her. She bit her lower lip, silently reminding herself that she wouldn't be able to come to terms with the events of the past few months unless she talked about them.

Still, getting started was hard.

"You work at the Steak-and-Saddle Restaurant, don't you?" Dr. Jane Fredricks prompted kindly, reviewing Neely's information sheet.

Neely nodded, grateful for the gentle push. "I wait tables there. I like being busy all the time-that way, I don't think so much-and since I work the night s.h.i.+ft, I'm always with other people when it's dark."

"You're afraid of the dark?" the doctor asked.

Neely bit her lip again, then forced herself to go on. "Not exactly," she said. "I'm afraid of-of vampires. Except for one, I mean, and-oh, h.e.l.l." She bit down hard on her right thumbnail.

Dr. Fredricks didn't grab the telephone and shout for help, or even gasp in surprise.

"Vampires," she repeated, with no inflection at all, making a note on Neely's chart.

Neely's voice trembled. "Yes."

Dr. Fredricks met her gaze directly. "Go on," she said.

Neely stared at her for a moment. "I suppose you're going to say there aren't any such things as vampires," she finally blurted out, "but there are. As crazy as it sounds, they really exist."

"I'm not questioning that," the doctor pointed out calmly. "You needn't convince me of anything, Neely-you're not on trial for a crime, you know. You needn't justify what you believe. Just talk."

Tears welled in Neely's eyes, blurring her vision, and she s.n.a.t.c.hed a tissue from a box on the edge of Dr. Fredricks's desk to dry them. "I met my first vampire on Halloween night,"

she began, sniffling. "Isn't that fitting? Of course, I didn't know Aidan was a vampire then- I just thought he was, well, a little different-"

Dr. Fredricks nodded encouragingly.

Neely spilled the whole story, over the next forty-five minutes, and even though nothing was resolved at the end, she felt better for having told another human being what had happened to her.

"Are you going to lock me up in a rubber room?" she asked, toying with the pile of crumpled tissues in her lap.

The doctor laughed. "No, of course not."

Neely leaned forward in her chair. "Surely you don't believe there really are vampires?"

she marveled.

"It doesn't matter what I believe," reasoned Dr. Fredricks. "We're here to talk about you. Can you come back next Tuesday?"

Chapter 19.

Neely was just reaching for the handle of the front door at the Steak-and-Saddle when, through the gla.s.s, she saw chaos erupt. The fire alarm and the inside sprinkler system went off simultaneously, and patrons and staff alike shrieked and scurried in all directions. Water roared from the ceiling and spattered on the floor, the counter, the people, everything.

Neely stepped back from the entrance just in time to avoid being trampled, and even then she was nearly knocked into the flowerbed.Duke Fuller, the owner of the restaurant, came out laughing, soaked from the top of his balding head to the soles of his expensive cowboy boots. Duke had a way of taking things in his stride, a trait that made most people like him right away.

"Go on, take the night off," he said, waving a huge hand at Neely as she stepped over the bricks bordering the petunia patch. "I got an idea Coach Riley's boys were behind this- they're feelin" their oats because of that basketball game they won-and I'm d.a.m.n well gonna make 'em clean up the mess."

Some of the customers stayed to help, but Neely had been feeling drained since her session with Dr. Fredricks that afternoon, and she had cramps in the bargain. So she turned around, got back into the used Mustang she'd bought after arriving in Denver by plane, and drove home.

1320 Tamarack Road was a humble place, a one-bedroom cottage with linoleum floors and plumbing noisy enough to disturb the dead, but it was solid and real, and Neely liked it.

Besides, she spent very little time there, since she worked all night and, having developed chronic insomnia, sat reading in the library most of every day.

She hoped she'd be able to sleep, now that she'd told Dr. Fredricks the secret she hadn't been able to give voice to before. The effects of her problem were beginning to show; she had bruise-like shadows under her eyes, she was too thin, and she cried so easily that it was embarra.s.sing.

Every day, every night, she told herself that Aidan would come back to her, and still there was no sign of him, and no word. Had he perished in the attempt to become mortal again? Or had he simply lost interest in her?

Neely hung her coat in the tiny closet just inside her front door and kicked off her crepe- soled waitress shoes as she moved across the living room. She flipped on the television set as she pa.s.sed to the kitchen, which was really just three cabinets and a sink shoved into an alcove, and the frenzied cacophony of some commercial tumbled into the quiet.

The refrigerator yielded the remains of a carton of cottage cheese; Neely got a spoon and went back to the living room. There, she curled up in the ancient easy chair, still in her polyester uniform and her pantyhose, to eat and watch the news channel.

Neely kept expecting to miss politics, all of a sudden, to yearn for the excitement, the prestige, and the intrigue of being in the center of things. All she missed, however, all she ever yearned for, was the sight of Aidan Tremayne, and the sound of his voice. She could adjust to the rest, even the outlandish truth of what he was.

She sighed, spooning a small heap of cottage cheese onto her tongue even though, as usual, she had no appet.i.te. It was downright crazy to be this miserable, she thought, chewing and then forcing herself to swallow-and over a missing monster, no less-but she couldn't seem to lift herself out of the doldrums.

Neely took another bite, then could bear no more and set the thin plastic carton aside, atop last week's issue of TV Guide. She got out of her chair, crossed the cool, smooth floor to the television set, and switched channels until she found one showing cla.s.sic movies.

When a forties-style Count Dracula appeared on the screen, resplendent in his high- colored black silk cape, Neely made a soft, abrupt sound that might have been either a chuckle or a sob. The Count had very white skin, and his hair came to a dramatic widow's peak on his forehead, but of course it was his overlong and extremely pointed incisors that marked him as the dreaded vampire.

Neely reached out for the old-fas.h.i.+oned channel k.n.o.b- the TV, like the rest of the furniture, had come with the house-but she couldn't quite complete the move. She stepped backward, away from the set, filled with a strange tangle of emotions-panic, joy, fascination, a fierce desire to deny that any such creature could ever have existed.

She went into the bedroom and exchanged her uniform and pantyhose for warm flannel pajamas, figuring that, by the time she returned, either the movie would be over or she would have found the fort.i.tude to turn to something else.

Instead Neely moved like a sleepwalker, sank numbly to the floor in front of her chair, and sat watching as if she'd been hypnotized. She knew she should get up, go to bed, read a book, take a bath, do anything besides just sitting there obsessed, but she couldn't gather the strength to move. Her gaze slid to the telephone on the other side of the room; she wondered if she was finally going to collapse under the strain. Maybe she should call Dr.

Fredricks, right now...

And say what? I'm so sorry to bother you, Doctor, but it seems I'm watching an old vampire movie-a hokey one, at that-and I can't bring myself to miss a moment.

Neely caught her right thumbnail between her teeth and bit. The movie went on, darkness gathered at the windows, and still she sat there, mesmerized.

A sudden burst of light, barely glimpsed out of the corner of her right eye, made Neely jump and cry out.

Valerian himself was standing in front of the couch, gaunt and even somewhat scarred, but for all of that, just as magnificent as ever. Instead of his usual das.h.i.+ng evening garb, he wore medieval garments, leggings, soft leather shoes, and a tunic of rough brown wool. A mean-looking sword dangled from a scabbard on his belt.

Watching the screen image of Count Dracula, the vampire laughed aloud.

Neely's inertia finally left her; she scrambled to her feet and looked around for a weapon, but all she found was the cottage cheese.

Valerian's gaze sliced to hers. "What will you do," he drawled, "stab me through the heart with a teaspoon?"

Neely's own heart seemed to bounce spasmodically between her breastbone and her spine. Valerian had been cordial enough in the past, but she had never deluded herself, for so much as a moment, that he was her friend.

"What do you want?" she asked.

Valerian sighed, one hand fiddling with the fancy molded steel handle of his sword. "It would take more time than I have to tell you that, my lady," he said sadly.

Neely collapsed into the easy chair, since she couldn't stand any longer. Now that the first rush of fear had subsided a little, she wanted to ask about Aidan. At the same time she was afraid-what if Valerian answered that the experiment had failed and Aidan was dead?

What if he said his friend was alive and well but had decided not to go to all the trouble of loving a mortal woman after all?

"He loves you still," Valerian said; clearly, he found her thoughts as easy to read as one of those big billboards out by the freeway. His voice seemed to echo the combined sorrows of the ages, deep and profound and eternal.

Neely raised one hand to her throat. "He survived, then."

Valerian's great shoulders seemed to sag beneath his tunic; he was the very image of weary despair. "After a fas.h.i.+on, yes. He's a mere man-good-looking, but really quite ordinary, when you consider what he once was. All eternity would not be time enough to work out the puzzle of why Aidan, or anyone, would make such a sacrifice." A shout of joy rose in Neely, but she stopped it in the middle of her chest. She wasn't about to put her most private feelings on display for the likes of Valerian, but there was another reason for her reticence as well. Aidan had become a man again, as he'd dreamed of doing, but he'd apparently made no attempt to find her.

Even without his supernatural powers, it shouldn't have been that hard to track her down, she thought, heartbroken. True, she hadn't left a forwarding address on file at the Bright River post office or anything so obvious as that, but Aidan could have reached her through Ben if he'd half tried.

Neely's older brother was a stubborn man, and he probably wouldn't have told Aidan where to find her, but he would surely have acted as an intermediary and pa.s.sed on any messages.

"Aidan doesn't remember you," Valerian said, mind reading again. "Not completely, at least. He clings to a few scattered images, as I understand it, but in time even those will fade. The Brotherhood thought it better if he could not recall too much of his old life."

Fury and relief warred in Neely's soul, fury because someone had come between her and Aidan, relief because he'd wanted to remember her.

She sat up a little straighter. "Is that why you came here? To tell me everything is over between Aidan and me? I won't accept that, Valerian-I won't believe it unless I hear it from him personally."

He looked miserable to her, though that could have been an act. Valerian had loved Aidan-he probably loved him still-and it was unlikely that he had Neely's best interests at heart. Or those of any human, for that matter.

"Be that as it may," he responded in a deep voice. "It must be ended. No mortal can be allowed to go about with knowledge of the sacred things. It is dangerous."

"Sacred?" Neely snapped, driven by impulse, as usual, rather than good sense. "What an odd word to use, in reference to creatures who drink blood to sustain themselves!"

Valerian's countenance seemed to darken, and he towered like some mountain thrust suddenly up from level ground; he was a black cloud, roiling and huge, ready to erupt with lightning and thunder. "I will not debate semantics with a mortal!" he roared.

"No problem," Neely a.s.sured him hastily.

The vampire took a few moments to compose himself, visibly smoothing his ruffled dignity. Then, imperiously, he announced, "For the sake of all who walk the night and take the communion of blood, this foolishness must be ended at once." He paused, rubbing his chin with one hand and regarding Neely thoughtfully. "I would be well within my rights to feed upon you. However, I have decided that sparing you shall be my last tribute to Aidan."

Neely let out her breath in a rush, only then discovering that she'd been holding it in her lungs and sinuses. In the next instant Valerian was standing close to her, though she hadn't seen him move.

He raised one hand, laid it to her forehead, like a clergyman offering a blessing.

"No vampires," he whispered. "There are no vampires, and there never were. You will forget, and any mortals who knew of your love for Aidan will give up all memory of it as well..."

Neely fought the barrage of thoughts as long as she could, but Valerian's mind was much stronger than her own; soon her consciousness was swamped in inky darkness.The following Tuesday, Neely arrived at Dr. Fredricks's office right on time, settled into the big chair, and waited expectantly.

"I believe we were discussing vampires last week," the psychologist said, closing Neely's chart and settling back to regard her patient.

Neely laughed. "Vampires? You're joking, right?"

The doctor frowned. "Joking?"

Neely thought back and remembered telling Dr. Fredricks about her job in Senator Hargrove's office and the subsequent adventures with the mob, in detail, but that was all.

"I-I talked about vampires?" she asked in a small voice. She felt the color drain from her face.

Dr. Fredricks smiled rea.s.suringly, opened the folder on her desk, and read back the outlandish story Neely had evidently told her the week before.

Neely shook her head, frantic to deny what she did not remember. She blurted out the short version of her adventures with Senator Dallas Hargrove and his criminal a.s.sociates, in a flash food of wild, eager words.

The psychologist digested the account in respectful silence, then said gently, "Neely, you've obviously undergone quite a series of traumas in the past year. Is it any wonder that you invented a flock of vampires-a sort of theater company of the mind-to help you sort through it all?"

The reasoning seemed sound, but Neely still had absolutely no recollection of talking about vampires. She hadn't even thought of the creatures since last Halloween, in fact, when her nephew, Danny, had worn wax fangs and a plastic cape to go out trick-or-treating.

"I guess that could be it," she said tremulously.

Dr. Fredricks seemed to be on some private roll. "Often," she said confidently, "the human mind will create personal myths in order to cope with some struggle in the unconscious. Generally these little dramas are played out in our dreams, but in some cases we feel called upon to produce something more flamboyant."

From what the doctor had read from her chart, Neely thought uneasily, her own presentation had boasted a cast of thousands. She'd actually mentioned names, if the psychologist's account was to be believed-Maeve. Valerian. Tobias.

She sank back in her chair, shaking. "Could I have a gla.s.s of water, please?"

After a week of driving west, thinking all the while that he must have lost his mind as well as large parts of his memory, Aidan crossed the Colorado border. He stopped at a motel that night, wolfed down a bagful of fast food while watching the Comedy Channel on cable TV, showered, and slept like a mastodon entombed in a glacier.

The next morning he bought a road map of the state, located Pine Hill, and pointed himself and his Spitfire in that direction. He had no idea what he was going to do when he arrived in the small mountain town, beyond finding the elusive Neely. Maybe when he looked into those big, luminous eyes of hers, he would remember whatever it was that had happened between them and understand the fascination that tormented him so much.

He arrived in Pine Hill in the middle of a sunny, late-winter afternoon. It was an ordinary place in itself, like a hundred other small towns all over the West, but the scenery was spectacular. The mountains were capped with snow, the landscape densely carpeted in blue-green trees that marched on and on, as far as he could see.Aidan drove into a filling station parking lot, took the folded sketch from the inside pocket of his jacket, and spread it over the steering wheel to study it for what must have been the hundredth time.

With one index finger he traced the outline of her cheek, the lips that almost smiled-but not quite-the hair he somehow knew was soft and glossy.

For a time Aidan just sat there, engaged in a peculiar mixture of mourning and celebration. Then he folded the sketch and tucked it back into his pocket, as carefully as if it were a map that would lead him to some incomparable treasure.

He frowned as he drove back onto the slushy gray asphalt of the highway. It was just as likely that this was some sort of fool's errand. After all, if whatever had pa.s.sed between him and this woman had been right and good and real, why weren't they together? Why had he blocked every detail besides her face and her first name from his mind?

Aidan pa.s.sed a construction sign announcing the building of a condominium complex, s.h.i.+fted into reverse, and backed up to read it again. There was the usual builder's hype, but someone had tacked on a HELP WANTED notice, and that was what had captured Aidan's true interest.

He had a wallet full of money, and much more stashed away in various trust funds and bank accounts, so it wasn't the prospect of a paycheck that attracted him. He felt a craving, in the very depths of his muscles, to work at hard, physical labor, to sweat and pound and carry things under the bright light of the sun.

To put off driving to 1320 Tamarack Road, wanting to savor the prospect a while longer, Aidan located the construction company's temporary office instead. Within an hour he had been hired as a day laborer-he was to start in the morning and arrive with his own tools- and he felt as though he'd just found a part of himself that had long been missing.

He rented a motel room, hastened to the hardware store for a hammer, a tool belt, a handsaw, and a measuring tape, along with a few things the salesman recommended, then bought work clothes and boots at the mercantile. That done, Aidan consumed another of the fast-food lunches he seemed to love-just where he'd acquired the taste was one of many things he didn't quite remember-and continued his search for the woman of mystery.

Neely was waiting tables at the Steak-and-Saddle that night when, through the restaurant's wide front windows, she saw the small white sports car swing into the parking lot and come to a flouris.h.i.+ng stop near the door.