HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (41 page)

Mentor turned his
attention fully back to Dell and saw she was trying to tell him
something. He opened the channel and listened to her thoughts. You
can go, she told him. I'll be all right. Aunt Celia will see about
me.

"Yes," he
told her, "you will. You will be fine now. You'll find a way to
rise and walk again. Your parents and your brother love you and want
you with them. This is the dawning of your new life."

One single tear
fell from her eyes. Mentor reached out and plucked it from her cheek
with his finger. It was her blood. He tasted it to discover if she
could make the journey without a transfusion. He found it metallic
and cold, but with enough red cells to keep her going until she was
strong enough to drink on her own.

"I have to go
away for a while," he said aloud. "You know why. There are
always others who need me. But I'll be back. We'll set up sessions
once you're on your feet. You'll go back to school and resume your
life. For a while, you will come to me every day and I'll teach you
what you need to know to survive."

Thank you, she
said, and he could feel her struggling to lift her hand to him. He
patted her shoulder and stood.

"I'm happy to
be of service," he said, smiling warmly. "Good-bye, Celia."
She nodded her head at him.

He was about to
turn away and leave when he heard Dell's thoughts scrambling after
him, seeking an answer to a question. He leaned down and stared into
her open eyes. "What is it? What do you need to know so
desperately?"

What are you? What
are you, Mentor?

He knew she meant
what sort of vampire was he. He glanced at Celia. She knew almost
everything of the vampire life though she was not one. He looked back
down at his charge.

"I am not a
god," he said. "I know that's what you're thinking. That I
must be a god to know so much and to have the ability to enter
death's arms with you. But, my dear, I am merely old and experienced.
It's been my duty to do this for hundreds of years. And I am. . .
technically. . . a Predator." He could see the surprise and fear
mingling in her eyes. Again he patted her shoulder and said,
"Reformed. A reformed Predator. I've lived so many thousands of
years that I've gone beyond evil and crossed over into understanding.
I can kill—easily—and decide not to. At least most of the
time." He knew guilt had crept into his eyes and he turned away
so she wouldn't see. "I take my blood as you will, artificially,
not from the living flesh. Most of the time." He was incapable
of telling a lie.

He knew her mind
was eased, though she could not possibly understand how many hundreds
of years he had fought to free himself from the thirst to kill. She
could not imagine the pain he had endured and the willpower he had
exerted in order to change himself from one of the greatest and most
powerful leaders of the Predators into a creature who had sworn to
help others along the passage. Nor could she ever fathom why, even
now, he would kill when it meant preserving the secret of their clan
or when a Predator could not be restrained and threatened to give
them all away by his wanton acts of murder.

Like shifting
shadow, he moved from the room.

He would say
good-bye to her family, assure them she was coming along, and exhort
them to help her until his return.

The calls for help
thrummed through his brain from the dying. Dozens of voices called to
him. He must hurry. He must save some of them from choosing the wrong
path.

It was his duty.
His job. His reason to exist.

Dell watched Mentor
leave and immediately fell into a panic. Her throat closed as if it
were a sock being twisted and wrung by strong hands. Her mind would
not behave or obey, falling first into despair at her predicament
then leaping toward joy at the mere thought of living forever with
her family at her side. She must get control of her seesawing
emotions. They swayed through her—swinging pendulums of fear,
hope, disgust, and loathing, self-pity, and sudden elation. She was
in danger of losing her mind.

She had heard of
that happening before during the change. The result was permanent
madness. An insanity that never relented. Predators hunted those who
went mad and put them down. They were caught out in the open, away
from anyone who might help them, and set on fire. While they burned
in agony, a ring of Predators watched, showing no mercy, laughing,
swearing at the dying one and condemning him to utter darkness.

She must not let go
of her mind. She must not let this defeat her. More than anything she
wanted to live. She was too young to go mad and find herself hunted
and killed. She had hardly even begun her life yet. Even if she had
to live as a vampire, she meant to do it.

She felt Aunt Celia
squeeze her hand. She tried to squeeze it back but couldn't. From the
corner of her eyes she saw someone enter the room. It was Eddie. He
was fourteen now, though he had stopped growing at twelve. He was a
big boy who had nearly reached his adult height when the change had
happened. Soon, of course, he would have to leave the family and go
away. The school authorities, teachers, neighbors, and his friends
would finally realize he had not changed over the years, had not
grown, had not physically aged in any way.

Nevertheless,
inside the body the cells aged, like those of the cloned sheep,
Dolly—who looked younger than her clone, but was actually aging
quickly. In each vampiric cell the march of time continued and wore
the youthful-looking body completely out. The heart tired of working,
the kidneys failed, the liver and lungs and stomach all surrendered
in the end to the march of time.

Eddie would be sent
to live with relatives in another state. Her parents would make trips
to see him, but for all practical purposes, Eddie would be lost to
them. He would become a wanderer, moving from clan to clan, from
family to family, in order to keep secret the fact he never aged. One
day the trips her parents made to see him would grow less frequent
until finally Eddie would be entirely on his own in the world. It was
hardest on the ones who changed when so young. They couldn't really
have a normal life with humans unless they kept on the move.

Since the change
came on now when she was seventeen, almost eighteen, she would be
able to remain at home for some time, aging her face over the years
with skillfully applied makeup and disguising her young body with
more mature choices in clothes.

"Dell?"
Eddie's voice was soft and young, his voice having never changed. In
the dark room, without seeing him, he could be any age, from five to
twelve.

"She can't
talk yet," Celia said.

"I know, but
she can talk to me in here." Eddie pointed to his head.

"Do you want
me to leave?"

"You don't
have to."

Celia gave Dell a
kiss and stood, disengaging her hand from Dell's. "I'll see
about your mother. I'll be back, Dell."

Once Celia had left
the room, Eddie again called Dell's name. She wanted to answer him,
but still couldn't control her vocal cords. She sent out her thoughts
to him instead. Hi, Eddie. This is a terrible thing, isn't it? I
never knew it was so bad for you.

"Aww, you
couldn't know. No one knows until you go through it."

She kept silent,
not knowing what thought to project.

"Dell? Maybe I
can help. It just takes practice to do everything again, that's all.
I know how hard it is. It's kind of like . . . well, like relaxation
techniques, only turned on their heads. You know how you can
hypnotize yourself?"

No, I don't.

"Well, you lie
down and begin at your feet, relaxing your toes first, then the arch
of your foot, then the ankle, and on up the body all the way to your
brain. It relaxes people who get all stressed out." He grinned,
and she loved him so much at that moment she wanted to leap from the
bed and hug him tight. He looked so young, but he'd already lived two
successful years in his new life. He was just a kid. A boy. Her
little brother. And a very wise vampire already.

"Anyway, what
you do is send thoughts down to your toes, just as if you were going
into relaxation, but instead of telling your toes to relax, you tell
them to wake up. Get it? Wake up, Toes!"

If she could have
laughed, it would have been a big, openmouthed true laugh. She
laughed instead in her mind at how seriously her brother had said,
"Wake up, Toes!"

"Once you have
the toes awake, you move up the foot to the ankle, to the calves of
your legs, to your knees, thighs, abdomen, chest, arms, and finally
to your neck and head. If you'll try, I know you can do it. That's
how Mentor taught me how to move again.

Mentor had to go
away.

"I know.
That's why I'm here telling you stuff. Just concentrate on your toes,
okay? Tell them they belong to you and you mean for them to work
right again. You just can't get anywhere without toes."

She saws grin widen
and knew he was trying for humor to urge her along in an easy way.
Never mind that this was the most serious of endeavors. Never mind
that it would determine whether or not she could ever return to the
world again.

"Go ahead,"
he said, leaning over the bed to throw back the hem of her gown. He
stared at her toes like a surgeon waiting to see if his operation had
left her paralyzed or if she would recover feeling in her
extremities. "Go on, move them. Think, Dell, put your spine into
it. Think about moving your toes, then we'll get your feet moving.
You've got to do this. It's the only way."

She knew he would
not leave her alone unless she showed some sign of progress. She
focused on her feet. She narrowed in on just the tips of her toes,
imagining where they were, the dark copper nail polish she had used
on them the day before, the way her second toe was longer than her
big toe. There, she could visualize them now. Not bad feet, as feet
went. Not too large, the skin smooth and tan from a summer swimming
at the area pool.

She could move them
if she wanted, that's what Eddie was saying. If she really wanted to
move them, she could. It was all within reach. She had to exert her
will for the first time in her life. She'd do it, she knew she could.

Move, she
commanded.

She visualized
first stretching and then clenching her toes. If they would move, she
could consider herself on the road back to life. She must make them
obey.

Move.

"That's it!"
Eddie yelled, "it's working, you're doing it, I knew you could
do it!"

MOVE.

Stretch. Clench.

MOVE!

Wriggle. She wanted
them to wriggle, she wanted her toes to go crazy, she wanted them to
dance like individual ballet stars. She wanted to do so well that
Eddie would jump right out of his skin he'd be so happy for her.

She thought she
could feel them moving now.

"Your ankles,
concentrate, Dell. Twist your feet around from the ankle. You can do
it. You have to do it, it's just a little more effort, a little
more."

Dell saw her
parents come into the room. They quietly approached the bed, and
Eddie turned to them, grinning like a monkey. "She's coming
back," he fairly shouted. "Dell's moving her feet."

Her mother brushed
a hand across her cold brow. Dell could not yet blink, so she was
able to see the fine lines in her mother's palm. It struck her now
for the first time that her mother had borne both her children before
the disease struck. Neither her mother nor her father had been a
vampire yet. They'd taken an awful chance having children, knowing
that later they might fall ill and both their offspring after them.
How could her mother have had the courage to have a family? How had
they ever made that decision?

Dell's father knelt
beside the bed and took her lax hand into his own. "Come on,
baby. Eddie's right. You have to move, or there will be marks on your
skin where the blood has settled. They'll last a long time. You won't
be able to go anywhere people can see you for a very long time. You
have life. Now you have to animate the body before it's too late."

Dell tried, Lord
have mercy, she was trying. She let go of all thoughts except those
centered on her feet and legs. She visualized moving up her body,
commanding it to respond, just as Eddie had told her to do. She felt
her calves clench then relax. She felt her thighs tighten and loosen.
She felt her stomach contract then expand, as if she'd taken a breath
all the way down to her belly. She felt her chest walls push apart,
and then her throat opened by only the will of her thought processes.
Next she concentrated on her lips, her tongue, her vocal cords.
Finally, her nose, ears, eyes, eyebrows. She could sense every
individual hair on her head, from root to hair end.