He was wrenched back to his own faraway body, just as the light tumbled and spilled over the snowy hills and into the circle of stones where Aidan lay.
Neely sat numbly on the postage-stamp-size terrace outside her hotel room in Phoenix, sipping iced tea and staring at the shifting patterns of turquoise light playing over the pool below. The sun was dazzlingly bright, and its warmth teased the very marrow of her bones.
She sighed, reached for her ice tea, and took another sip. She didn't know a soul in Arizona, and Ben had made it plain when she telephoned him, on her first night back in the country, that he thought she needed looking after-at least for a while.
Neely didn't want anyone fussing over her, for in those freaky times when the numbness wore off, she was hypersensitive to pain, and the very currents in the air bruised her.
During these periods, the slightest sound seemed deafening and hammered against her senses until she trembled.
She needed to think. That was what she'd told her brother. She had money, now that the drug people weren't tracking her anymore and she could tap her personal funds. She wanted to wait, and later, if necessary, do her grieving, in peace and privacy. Before she could go on and begin making some sort of life for herself and Aidan, however, she must finish putting herself back together and smoothing away the rough places where the breaks were mended.
As soon as possible, Neely planned to find herself a job as an assistant to some executive, rent an apartment, buy a car, make new friends. She wasn't planning to sit on the sidelines while she waited for Aidan, though she certainly didn't intend to date other men, either, for Neely knew one thing: For the rest of her natural days and, most probably, throughout eternity as well, she would love no one but Aidan Tremayne.
Neely closed her eyes, leaned back in the chaise lounge, and sighed, letting the sun caress her winter-whitened skin. It frightened her that sometimes she could almost convince herself that she'd imagined the whole fantastic experience-encountering Aidan for the first time, sleeping beside him under a hotel-room bed in London, Valerian and the paintings and the tapestries and Maeve's grand mansion. The memories always returned, vivid and sharp, and wore well in her mind like a bright picture on a bar of novelty soap, one that would never wash away.
The last thing she wanted was to forget.
Often she awakened in the night, thinking Aidan was there beside her, and weeping when she found herself alone. She tried hard to accept reality: Aidan was a vampire, with all the attendant gifts. If he had not perished in that strange experiment of his, or been grievously injured, he would find her.
Neely waited, suspended, swinging back and forth between one emotion and its opposite, reminding herself to eat and sleep and even breathe.
She would hold on, though-she was determined to do that.
The first thing Aidan was conscious of was light. Dazzling, fiery light. He waited for the glare to consume him, but instead it played sweetly over his skin like some intangible ointment. He slowly opened his eyes, saw nothing but the luminous glow, and closed them again.
The next sensation he recognized was cold. Saints in heaven, he was lying in snow, bare as a pauper's purse, and freezing his ass off in the bargain.
He raised his eyelids once more, only to be driven back a second time into the comforting darkness.
Aidan tried to lift his hands after that, but they were heavy at his sides. Where was he?
In Hell? It would be some joke, he reflected, if the place turned out to be an ice pit instead of an everlasting pyre.
"Great Scot, Martha," a male voice boomed from somewhere above him. "He's quite naked, isn't he? And him out here in the weather and all. Might be he's a Druid or something like that."
Someone crouched beside Aidan. He felt a woman's hand come to rest on his shoulder, strong and blessedly warm.
"Druid or none, he's in a bad way. Run and get the woolen blanket from the car, Walter, and we'll wrap him up snug in that. Then we'll try to lift the poor man between us."
He felt the blanket go round him, and the awkward angels wrested him onto his feet. He could neither see nor speak, but as he stumbled along between his rescuers, a momentous realization came upon him.
He was breathing.
Aidan's spirit soared even higher when he explored his chest and found a living heart beating there. "Neely," he whispered as tears slipped down his half-frozen face. "Neely."
When he awakened again, he was in the hospital, and the numbness of hypothermia had worn off, leaving a raw, scraping pain in its place.
Aidan exulted in that pain, however, for it was more proof that he'd been given a second chance.
He was a man.
He lifted one of his hands to his mouth, with no small amount of struggle, and felt his teeth. His fangs were gone, leaving an ordinary pair of incisors in their places.
Aidan tried to sit up, only to be gently pressed back to the bed again.
"There, now," a woman, probably a nurse, said gently, "just rest and don't be trying to rise. You came very near to meeting your Maker, you know."
He felt tears gather in his lashes, hot and wet. You can't imagine how near, he thought.
He'd been forgiven, it seemed, or at least given an opportunity to redeem himself. He meant to make full use of whatever time was left to him.
"Thank you," he whispered as the pain took hold and started to drag him under again.
The nurse thought he'd been speaking to her and assured him that she was just doing her job.
In the days to come, Aidan tried to keep track of time, but the task proved impossible, since he was conscious only in bits and snatches. During those brief intervals, he reveled in the steady beat of his heart, the ragged but regular meter of his breathing, the ache in the back of his hand, where an intravenous needle was lodged. Even the need to relieve himself in a cold steel urn brought by a nurse was cause to celebrate.
When he found the strength to lift his eyelids for the first time, he saw gray-green walls, uninspired hospital art, a tiny television set that seemed to huddle in a corner of the room, near the ceiling. His bed was the crank-up sort, an iron monstrosity that might well have been a relic of some war.
A moment passed before Aidan realized that it was night, and he was seeing clearly. The knowledge frightened him; he thought for a moment that he'd only dreamed of being a mortal.
Then he saw the vampire, standing motionless and majestic at the foot of the bed. Aidan did not recognize the creature, and that only increased his alarm. He drew back against the pillows and held his breath.
The stranger raised a stately hand. Like his face, it glowed white in the darkness, illuminating him, so that he appeared to have swallowed the moon itself. "Do not be afraid, Mortal," the creature said, sounding mildly exasperated. "I have not come to change you, but only to bring a message from the Brotherhood."
Aidan's heart had risen to his throat and was pounding there. He was frightened, and yet the mere existence of his pulse caused him almost incomprehensible joy. "What is this message?" he managed to ask, and as vulnerable as he was, there was a note of challenge in his voice.
The vampire chuckled. "Tobias was right," he said. "You are certainly brave to the point of idiocy, Aidan Tremayne."
He took several items from inside his coat, then rounded the bed to lay them on the stand and look down into Aidan's defiant eyes. "I've brought you a passport, credit cards, some money. You have lost your powers as a vampire, of course, so you will have to make a place for yourself in the world of humankind now."
Aidan glanced at the leather packet on the bedside stand. He'd had no use for identification and money before, but they were quite necessary to mortals. "Did Maeve ask you to help me-or Valerian?" "Neither," the fiend replied, moving away to stand at the window, looking out. "No one knows where that pair has gotten themselves off to, as a matter of fact. The Brotherhood simply felt that matters should be brought full circle-your mortal life was taken from you, now it is restored. In these modern times it is difficult to function without passports and the like."
Aidan was silent for a moment, absorbing the knowledge that Maeve and Valerian had both disappeared. He felt his limitations as a man sorely-he could do nothing to help his sister or his friend-and then he accepted the new reality.
"How long?" he asked. "Am I going to live a day-a decade-another fifty years?"
The vampire smiled, then shrugged. "How long would you have lived before, if your life had not been interrupted? Only those beyond the Veil of Mystery possess such knowledge."
He sighed, tugged at the sleeves of his elegant coat, and approached the bed again. "I must go soon and feed." He laid one of his cold alabaster hands to Aidan's head. "You will forget what you were, in time, and, someday, even laugh at those who believe in such creatures as vampires and warlocks."
Aidan caught at the corpse-like hand with his own warm fingers, tried in vain to throw it away. "Wait-there is a woman-I want-I have-to find her-"
"You will always be Aidan Tremayne," the monster said. "Although your mind will soon dismiss her image, your heart will remember forever."
"But-"
"It is done," decreed the vampire quietly. And then he was gone, and Aidan tumbled into sleep, as if he'd been pushed over the edge of an abyss.
The next morning he ate solid food for the first time in more than two centuries and wondered why he was so excited over milk toast and weak tea. Wild, macabre images played chase in his mind; he told the pretty nurse he'd dreamed a vampire came to his room the night before, and she smiled and shook her head and pronounced the human brain a strange organ indeed.
Aidan had to agree, at least privately, for he held another picture in his mind, that of a lovely woman with short hair and large pixie eyes. He knew the gamine's name was Neely, but that was the sum total of what he remembered about her. It was miraculous, considering that he'd had to take his own identity from the packet of identification that had turned up on his bedside table one night while he slept.
He grew strong in the days to come, and his mind manufactured a complicated and quite viable history for him. Soon Aidan believed the assortment of facts and actually thought he remembered the corresponding experiences.
He was alone in the world, having been born to his Irish parents very late in life. He had money, a grand house outside of Bright River, Connecticut, and an impressive career as an artist.
Certain mysteries remained, however. Aidan still did not know where he'd been before he was discovered lying in the middle of that ancient circle of stones, naked as a newborn, or how he'd gotten there in the first place. The police were equally baffled but after an initial round of questions in his hospital room, they'd stopped coming round. No doubt they'd written the patient off as a head case, and Aidan had to admit there were ample grounds for the idea.
He left the hospital in borrowed garb, bought himself new clothes, luggage, and toiletries, none of which he seemed to possess, spent one night in a London hotel, took a cab to the airport, and then flew to the United States.In New York he rented a car and drove the rest of the way to Bright River.
Upon arriving in that small Connecticut town, he went immediately to the big house in the country. He didn't remember the place being so gloomy, he thought, as he went from room to room, flinging back the heavy draperies to let in the sunlight.
The snow was melting, and spring wasn't far off. He opened a few windows and doors to let in some fresh air.
Aidan wandered into the kitchen, humming. His breakfast, a muffin and a cup of coffee he'd grabbed at the airport, had long since worn off.
He opened one cupboard after another, amazed to find that there wasn't so much as a can of chili or a box of salt on the shelves. There were no plates, no cups, no knives, forks, or spoons.
Puzzled, he shrugged his shoulders, found a leather jacket in one of the closets, and left the house. There was a truck stop just down the road; Aidan was sure he remembered eating there once or twice.
He set out on foot, his hands jammed into the pockets of his coat, reassuring himself as he walked. Although the doctors in London had insisted that the gaps in his memory would surely close someday, he was still troubled.
For one thing, there was that name that haunted him, and the sweet face and figure that went with it. Neely. Who was she? She had touched his life, he was certain of that, but he couldn't remember where he'd known her, or when.
On the most basic level of his consciousness, a driving, urgent need to find the mysterious woman raged like a river at flood tide.
Aidan reached the truck stop, a noisy, cheerful place where the jukebox played too loudly, and felt better for having people around him. He took a seat at the counter and reached for a menu.
A friendly waitress-her name tag read "Doris"-took his order right away. While Aidan was sipping his coffee, a boy rushed in, waving a sheet of pink paper and beaming. He was about seven, Aidan guessed, and he had freckles and one missing tooth.
"Look, Doris!" the child cried, scrambling onto one of the stools, right next to Aidan. The lad glanced up at him, smiled with what could only be amiable recognition, nodded a greeting, and then turned his quicksilver attention back to Doris. "There's a letter from Aunt Neely!"
Aidan's heart somersaulted at the mention of the familiar name. It was unusual, after all, and it followed that he'd known her here in Bright River.
"What does she say, Danny?" Doris asked, grinning as she set a dinner of chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, and green beans in front of Aidan. She winked at him before turning her full attention on the boy.
Danny still clutched the letter in one grubby hand, and it was all Aidan could do not to reach out and snatch it away from him. "She isn't in Phoenix anymore-she's in Colorado,"
the kid announced importantly. "She was working in an office for a while, but now she's got a job in a steak house. Aunt Neely was bored sitting behind a desk. She says she's got all kinds of-all kinds of-" He paused and consulted the paper. "Nervous energy," he finished.
Aidan felt warm inside, and oddly amused, and he could explain neither emotion. He stuck his fork into his food, but his ravenous appetite was gone."And look at this great stamp!" Danny said, slapping a pink envelope down on the countertop.
Aidan strained, saw the return address: 1320 Tamarack Road, Pine Hill, Colorado. "I used to collect stamps when I was a lad," he commented casually.
Danny beamed at him. "I must have a thousand of them. Aunt Neely sends them to me all the time. I've got a whole boxful from England."
England. That produced another vague recollection, more a feeling than an image. He'd been so certain that he'd met the elusive Neely in Bright River, but the mention of the country he'd just left touched a resonant chord in his spirit.
1320 Tamarack Road, he repeated to himself. Pine Hill, Colorado.
"This Aunt Neely of yours must be a pretty interesting lady," Aidan commented when Doris had given Danny a cup of hot chocolate and bustled off to wait on some new arrivals.
Danny's eyes were alight. "She is. She used to work for a real senator. He was a crook, and she almost got killed because she told the FBI what he was doing, but she's okay now."
Aidan frowned, for the child's words stimulated still another memory that wouldn't quite come into focus.
He finished his meal, returned to his huge, echoing house, and wandered restlessly from room to room.
In the morning, after a virtually sleepless night, Aidan called the car rental company and asked them to pick up the vehicle he'd driven from New York. Then he went out to the garage where his white Triumph Spitfire awaited him.
He smiled when the engine caught on the first try, and sped into Bright River. His first stop was the supermarket, where he purchased staples-milk and butter and bread- along with tea and potatoes, both fresh and frozen vegetables, and a thick steak. Passing a florist's shop, he suddenly stopped, grocery bags in his arms, oddly stricken by an enormous bunch of white roses on display in the window.
Aidan felt yet another tug at his deeper mind, and this one was patently uncomfortable.
The flowers had some significance, he was certain, but that was all he knew.
Walking slowly, Aidan took the bags of food to the car and set them on the passenger seat. Then he returned to the florist's window and stood there, looking at the roses, trying to work out why they stirred him so.
He swallowed, fighting an unaccountable desire to weep.
A gray-haired woman put her head outside the door of the shop and called, smiling, "Hello, there, Mr. Tremayne. Aren't those the finest roses you've ever seen? I buy them direct from a nice man upstate-he raises them in his own greenhouse. They smell wonderful, too, unlike those poor anemic things they sell in the supermarkets these days."
Since the woman had called Aidan by name, he probably knew her, but her identity eluded him. He smiled and went into the shop, drawn there by some curious force buried in his subconscious.
The scent of the roses was delicate, but it seemed to fill the small shop, overshadowing the perfumes rising from bright splashes of colorful flowers grouped in buckets and pots and vases.
Aidan selected eight of the roses, which were still tightly budded, and put money on the cluttered counter.
"Good day, Mrs. Crider," he heard himself say as he left the shop with the strange purchase. So he had known the woman's name, after all, though he still had no recollection of meeting her before.
How odd, he thought.
At home Aidan found a crystal vase in a cabinet in one of the bedrooms and put the roses in water even before bringing the groceries in from the car. He set the flowers on the marble top of the round antique table in his entry hall and then stood staring at them for a long time, his arms folded. He wondered why the sight satisfied him so much, and at the same time stirred in him a seemingly fathomless sense of loss.
He supposed he was probably a little crazy, which wasn't really surprising, considering that he'd been found naked in the middle of an English snowstorm, lying inside a circle of stones like some kind of sacrifice.
He'd get over it, he assured himself, turning from the roses and heading outside for the bags he'd wedged into the passenger seat of his car. One of the few things he knew for certain was that he was a resilient sort, not easily broken.
Still, the scent of those flowers haunted him, and he kept going back to them, wondering and trying to remember.
Something else troubled him, though, even more than the roses did. It was the name Neely and the newfound knowledge that she lived in a place called Pine Hill, far away in Colorado.
After a steak dinner, which he devoured, Aidan retired to his study. The place was crammed with books, some of which he remembered reading and many that he didn't. The paintings on the walls were only vaguely familiar, though he knew he'd done them with his own hands.
He sighed, took an atlas from the shelf, and flipped through until he located a map of the United States. Bewildered, fascinated, driven, he sought and found Colorado, then traced the distance between that place and Connecticut with the tip of one finger.
Once again Aidan whispered the name of his private ghost: "Neely." Once again he searched his mind for something more than the fading image, but it was no use. Nothing came to him, except for a sensation of sweet sadness, and a yearning so keen that it brought tears to his eyes.