SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (100 page)

He hadn’t thought about the woman again.

He refused to think of their conversation.

He was afraid of nothing.

He made his own choices. He did.

It was true what the peasant woman hinted to him: He was no mere messenger.

He was something…something much greater.

He would wake up to that fact all on his own. In time he would know who and what he was. From that self-revelation, he would know what he must do.

He was not afraid.

Chapter 21

“You should be afraid.” Mentor scowled as he said this.

“Of losing heaven?”

“I don’t know about heaven, Malachi. But I do know about the soul and you should be afraid for it.”

Malachi had made up his mind. It would not be changed.

Mentor read him. “You’ve made up your mind.”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll accompany you into the red dream of death.”

“So that I won’t become a Predator?” Malachi laughed harshly. “I want to be a Predator. I will be a Predator. I want to be the most powerful of our kind. Don’t bother trying to talk me out of it.”

They sat on the front porch of his parent’s house. Inside his son played in the kitchen while his mother cooked dinner for him and her husband.

Mentor had come at her insistent call, Malachi knew. He had asked her an hour ago to make him full vampire.

He hadn’t come to the decision easily. He’d spent his life embracing the human world and the part of him that he’d inherited from his father. He had never before been tempted to become vampire. But that was before. That was when he had Danielle. He’d had hope.

“Then there’s nothing for me to do here,” Mentor said, rising from the bench. He strolled to the porch steps and paused there, his big shoulders humped in failure. Malachi could almost see the image of Mentor’s old body laid over the one he inhabited now. The wide shoulders, the shaggy white hair of an old man, the slow, ancient tread. It hovered just out of sight of the strong, young body with clipped blond hair and a neck thick as a bull.

“I’m going to find him,” Malachi said into the stretching silence.

“Jacques? He’s not one of us. You’ll never find him. He won’t let himself be traced. There are ten billion people on the planet. You won’t find one.”

“I’ll find him.” His hands had pulled the sharpened blade across Danielle’s throat. He had stolen her life in an instant.

Mentor shook his head. He went down the steps and walked across the lawn, vanishing bit by bit until he was gone.

I want to be able to do that, Malachi thought. I want to vanish, I want to turn into mist or animal, bird or beast. I want to kill to live. I want to live forever, or at least until I can track down the murderer.

His mother, shocked at his request, had begun weeping right away. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “This isn’t the way.”

Then she said, “Who will take care of Eli? Who will raise him?”

“You’ll live forever,” Malachi said with a sharp tone. “You raise him.”

“Don’t you love your son?”

“I love him more than I love myself. That’s why I’m going to find his mother’s killer. As long as that man lives there’s some chance he’ll foment another uprising on his own. It’s Eli they’ll want next. It’s always the children who are taken.”

“When will this end?” Dell asked, wiping her eyes with her skirts. “You’re not a real vampire. You don’t live with the horror of your own death, walking in dead skin, in a dead body. You can’t do this. I forbid it!”
Malachi blinked, but he was not moved. “Mom, if you don’t make me vampire, I’ll find someone else. I’d rather it was you.” Hell, he was dhampir already and he’d had enough furious strength to kill Upton. But he needed immortality assured in order to finish the job. He wouldn’t chance some pure accident keeping him from his goal. What if a bus ran him down? Or a stray sniper’s bullet caught him in the back of the head? What if he drowned, crashed, burned, suffocated?

He wouldn’t take those kinds of chances. As long as he had a human wife and a human child, he hadn’t wanted the life of the vampire. But things were changed now.

He was changed.

Finally his mother gave in, albeit reluctantly. “Tonight?” he asked, pressing her. “After Dad and Eli go to bed?”

She had nodded perceptively and he had left the house to sit on the porch to wait. He didn’t want dinner. Didn’t want anything but to be vampire and invulnerable to the whimsy of death.

Now Mentor had come and gone, knowing he wasn’t going to stop it.

They weren’t going to threaten or cajole him out of it. He’d suffered enough, more than enough. If that was human life, then he was well shed of it. He couldn’t suffer that much if he had the powers to protect himself. And if he did not ever… Ever. Ever. Love again.

Chapter 22

Sereny could not look Ross in the eyes. “We’ll go,” she said. She had her hand on Jeremy’s shoulder. They had been called into the living room and asked to sit down, but Sereny didn’t sit. She knew what was coming. No point in getting comfortable.

“I’m sorry,” Ross said. “I just can’t keep him.”

Jeremy sneaked a dark look at Ross. Ross pointed at him until he hung his head and looked at his feet.

“I don’t want you to go,” Ross said.

Sereny blinked back the watering in her eyes. “I know. But I can’t send him out on his own. I have to go with him.”

“If he was only…” Ross stopped abruptly. He shook his head. They both knew it was useless. The boy couldn’t be controlled.

Sereny stepped forward and hugged Ross to her. “I was happy here,” she whispered. “I’ll remember you.”

He took her face in his hands and looked into her eyes. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever cared for. If you can find a way one day, come back to me.”

She knew what he meant. If Jeremy died. Or if she could ever abandon him.

Ross pressed a block of money into her hand. He kissed her then turned his back and left the room. Sereny sighed. She reached for Jeremy’s hand. “Come on, let’s go.”

“I’m sorry, Sereny,” the boy said in a small voice.

“Yes, I know. I know.”

It was full dark, a good time to leave.

“Where will we go?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. But she dreamed of home, of Italy. “Maybe we’ll go to Rome.”

“Italy?”

She smiled, thinking of Rome, Georgia. “Yes, Italy.”

“Allll right!”

She gathered the boy into her arms, lifting him easily from the floor. He was small for his age and he would never grow an inch. He was stuck in the child’s body until the body gave out.

She walked out the front door of what had been her home for a long while. She had turned her back on a vampire she truly loved. She did not see herself as a martyr, but she must make this sacrifice. Children were not responsible. Jeremy hadn’t asked to become vampire. He was too young to learn control.

He was her charge. Her child. And she would keep him safe.

Chapter 23

Europe

2027

Two years had passed since the vampire uprising and the weeks spent on the Italian hillside. Jacques had not left Rome; rather, he took to the city like a native. He loved the cobbled old alleyways where the sandals of Roman soldiers had tread. He loved the deteriorating ruins, the hawkers of goods, the plethora of small, intimate cafes so dim one couldn’t see the neighbor at the next table. It was an ancient city, decadent, rooted in history by violence and blood. Yet it was urbane, open, and linked to the global village of the world, growing stronger as an economic power.

Jacques bought a small, luxurious apartment near the center of the bustling city. He spent time at the museums and libraries and universities. He soaked in the culture, honing his Italian as he interacted with the people.

Early on he was sought for and found. One by one, two by two, the remaining members of Upton’s Predator army searched him out. Each of them wanted to know if he would lead them. They had spent long years as rogues before joining with Upton. They didn’t want that life anymore. Couldn’t he help them?

And did he know Malachi was looking for him? They would be happy to guard him. He should leave Rome and hide out in some out of the way place, some village Malachi might never search.

“I’m not going to run from Malachi,” Jacques said, unworried.

“He’s Predator now,” they protested. “He’s a fierce vampire. Everyone’s afraid of him.”

So Malachi was no longer half human. Jacques understood why. He needed greater powers to track down the enemy. So let him. This fatalistic world view was liberating—as indeed it always had been. Who cared what happened when Malachi caught him?

He did not care.

He sent Upton’s scraggly vampires away, proclaiming he could be of no use to them, but they always came back. They were like lost souls looking for a god. He was their god now. Over and over he sent them away. They simply came back, or hung around his abode scratching at the door, startling him on the street, hissing at him from the shadows.

Finally, remembering what the little demon had predicted years before, Jacques gave in and began to board the vampires in the same building where he had the apartment. Finally, every human had been displaced, a Predator taking over each and every residence. The whole house was full of them.

Jacques made some of the vampires his close friends. There was Michael and John, the two Predators who had taken him on the trip to the caverns. They were a couple, reveling in their lifelong love. “We knew one another before we died, before we changed,” Matt said.

It was impossible to distinguish a heterosexual vampire from a homosexual one. They were outwardly two men who spent time together, old pals. Their sexual preference did not bother Jacques in the least. It was their other nature—that of vampire—that interested him most.

Another vampire housed in the building was Hasid, an Arabic vampire, formerly of Jordan. He became Jacques confidant. Hasid sometimes spoke in a singsong voice about a vampire older than Mentor.

“Where does this ancient creature live?” Jacques asked, curiosity piqued.

“In Egypt, I believe. Some say he knows our whole history. That he was living when men were coming upright onto their feet on the vast plains.”

“They came to their feet in order to run from vampires, no doubt,” Jacques said, laughing. But the idea of an incredibly old vampire who had seen the beginning of mankind intrigued Jacques. What secrets he would possess!

“One day would you take me to him?” Jacques asked.

Hasid nodded eagerly. “If I can find him,” he said, “surely I will take you.”

“I thought he was in Egypt.”

“Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no. He’s like many of us—elusive. If he does not wish to be found, he won’t.”

Hasid had been a Muslim, but these days he did not practice any religion. The idea that Mohammed had spoken with the angel Gabriel and hadn’t been told of a disease that made men die and live again made Hasid angry. Why hadn’t the Prophet been told?

“I don’t think Jesus was told either,” Jacques remarked. “Nor Buddha.”

Hasid pressed both his hands alongside his face and let his fangs lower. “I cannot stand to think it,” he said. “We must not talk about these things.”

Instead, they talked about the wars in the Middle East and how these wars had been going on for generations. Before he’d sickened and become vampire, Hasid had been a guerrilla fighter. The border between Jordan and Israel had changed during war, moving back and forth with incursions into both countries, and still they fought.

All the nuclear weapons had been made obsolete by satellite controls in the West that rendered the weapons useless. Ground conventional wars raged instead between Iraq and the United States, between Jordan and Palestine and Israel, between Pakistan and India, between Syria and Russia.

Even without nukes, blood found a way to be spilled. Hasid said, “We vampires won’t have to stage war on man. He does the job well enough himself.”

Jacques rarely thought about the difference between instrument and that which wielded it, messenger and he who sent the message. No further enlightenment had come to him on the matter. Once he asked Hasid, “Who do you think I am? Why do you think you came to me?”

Hasid acquired a secretive look. “I do not know.”

“Who I am? Or why you came?”

“Who you are? You are a leader. That is all I know. And that is why I came to you.”

Jacques was reminded of those long minutes when he was crouched in the darkness of the New Mexico cavern, the vampire battle raging above him. He hadn’t led very well then, had he?

“Where shall I lead you, Hasid?”

“Into paradise.” The Arab answered without hesitation.

“Paradise,” Jacques mused. He thought it useless to try to disabuse these lost vampires from their wild beliefs. They had come to him and they would not leave. It didn’t matter what he said to them, they wouldn’t go.

Hasid left Jacques apartment smiling to himself. Jacques saw that smile and let his friend go. He knew him well enough to know he would say no more.

Paradise, indeed.

Chapter 24

Malachi went to Vohra first. As full vampire he was able to travel through dimensions, and in the beginning it was the only way he traveled. This travel left him rattled. He determined he would investigate it as soon as possible, try to find out exactly what transpired when he vanished and reappeared.

When he reached Vohra, the ancient being told him his mission of revenge was impossible. Jacques was a man. He could change his name, his personal information, and he could disappear more thoroughly than any vampire could hope to do. The multitudes in the world had already swallowed Jacques like a drop of rain in an ocean.

Malachi wouldn’t be discouraged. Just because they all thought he’d never find the man, that didn’t mean they were right. He had a lifetime now that would last longer than any mortal’s. He could spend it searching, if he wanted.