SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (104 page)

Jacques hadn’t moved from his bed in many hours. He had been awake on and off for three nights, first waking when the initial creature showed up. It was one of the little demons that often came to plague him with cryptic pronouncements and little nips at his flesh. That first night it had sat on the foot of the bed, spearing him with fierce dark eyes set in a face crunched and wrinkled as a brown paper grocery bag that had been blown through alleyways for a week.

The demon wasn’t speaking. He sat still as a stone statue, guarding the man in the bed.

Jacques tried making him go, shooing him away, even kicking at him with his feet, but the little beast wouldn’t be moved, nor would it say anything.

Not long after the demon arrived, three ghosts appeared, hanging in the air in the middle of the room, their clothes ragged and shredded from the grave. Two men and one woman hovered in the room, watching Jacques. All of them had clamped lips closed into thin lines that looked like slashes in their faces.

Next came a half dozen ghouls, gargoyles, and, for want of a better description, two little misshapen trolls. The room began to fill with these supernatural beings, until the door opened and a whole crowd of vampires slunk into the room to hug the walls at their backs.

Jacques yelled at them all, shouting for them to go away, but they didn’t move. Nor would they speak to him. The silence from the assemblage was like being suffocated in folds of dark velvet. The night wore on, fled the sunrise, and still the room was filled to overflow, some of the vampires having even slunk up the walls to hang from the ornate molding at the ceiling.

What in God’s name do they want? Jacques wondered. The whole house had been taken over by vampires already. The longer Jacques stayed, the more the apartments filled with the walking dead. Living residents left, usually in the middle of the night, scuttling down the stairs and making the sign of the cross. They had been spooked by shadows and movements they detected from the corners of their eyes. They whispered of unholy things taking over the building. The rumors spread until every apartment emptied.

Then the vampires came. More and more, taking over the rooms, sleeping in them after their kills.

Finally, when the present encroachment on his room lengthened into three entire days and nights, Jacques admitted he was really in for something. He was destined to face a maelstrom. He might even be at the center of it and be the reason for it in the first place. The vampires had kept to themselves, but when he bumped into them as he came and went from the building, they had given him sly smiles and nodded to him in deference. They expected him to lead them. To care for them in some way. To point them in some direction.

He did not know why. Or how he was supposed to perform duties he did not understand. Why had they chosen him this way?

Then these other beings filled his room until he couldn’t even get out of bed for stumbling onto one of them. It appeared nothing was going to make them go.

As the first day of his apparent hostage situation waned into evening, and then into night again, Jacques began to lose his temper. He had to urinate and pleaded with the visitors to let him up. A vampire came to his side, led him to the adjoining bathroom, where Jacques used the toilet, drank water from the tap in a cupped hand, and looked up frantically at the small, high window wondering if he could climb up there some way and get out.

Before he could figure out a way to do it, the vampire came back, and took him to the bed. Jacques asked, “What are you all doing here? Are you going to let me starve?”

A small girl, long dead and stinking of decay, her gown stained with earth and hanging in strips from her shoulders, came into the room carrying a tray. She must have been dug from a grave or had she clawed her way from it? The tray was loaded with fruit, crackers, cheese, and a bottle of wine. Jacques accepted the offering gratefully and ate like a wolf, all the while watching the minions around him whose expressions never changed.

This went on and on, one day into the next and the next. When he asked, he was taken to the bath. When he complained of hunger, someone brought him food. Jacques talked until his throat was sore, but they would not let him leave the room alone.

Finally, at the end of the third day, a vampire Jacques recognized from one of the upper floors broke the long silence. “There’s an epidemic in the city.”

Jacques flinched first at the voice after there had been so much silence and then he reacted to the news. “Do you mean a human epidemic? One that is killing people?”

The vampire nodded. He said, “It began just a few days ago and is running like wildfire through the city. That’s why we’ve come to you.”

“But why? I have nothing to do with it. I have nothing to do with anything.”

“Dress and come with us,” the vampire said. “If you had a television or a radio you’d know what’s happening. Now all you have to do is go outside. We’ve kept you here long enough for it to take hold good. Otherwise, you wouldn’t believe it. Let us show you.”

Jacques rose from the bed and this time the creatures moved back, allowing him room to stand. The door opened across the room and some of the vampires slid out into the hallway. The demons and ghosts clustered into a corner, squeezing together, grinning at him.

Jacques pulled on his pants and slipped his arms into a shirt. He had his shoes on and then the vampire who had spoken to him took his arm and began to lead him to the door. Jacques was embarrassingly aware he had not bathed in three days and he must smell as ripe as a dead fish.

“I don’t know what this is all about.” Jacques’ protest went unanswered. He had said the same thing for days and no one would talk to him. Why was there an epidemic and what wouldn’t he believe about it? It was preposterous.

He was led through the apartment and into the hall and down the stairs to the front door. His spirits rose just to be out of the claustrophobic room and away from the supernaturals that watched his every move. He noticed only the vampires accompanied him now. The others, the stranger beings, had vanished from view. He felt them around, maybe in the air, maybe just above his shoulders, but when he looked there, he saw nothing.

What could the vampire mean, an epidemic? What kind of epidemic? And why had they kept him prisoner so long?

Would he contract the disease, whatever it was? Not that he cared. Being fearless freed him completely from normal worries. He would die one day anyway, what was the difference?

He knew some of the answers to his unasked questions as soon as he was on the street. Throngs of people accosted them, thrusting them aside and into the gutter and then into the street. Cars were backed up, stalled, unable to move for the crowds of people that swarmed everywhere, clogging the arteries of the city. Taxi drivers screamed and raised their fists, drivers honked their horns, and people jostled by the traffic jam giving no attention at all to the frustrated drivers.

Jacques saw women weeping and men with strained expressions and eyes that looked hollow. Children were pulled along, their feet flying along pavement and sidewalk. Everyone carried something. People clutched bags, cloth satchels, suitcases, boxes, crates, dogs, cats, birds in bird cages, clothes hanging askew from hangers, and one man even carried a trombone. It looked as if the whole city was on the move, migrating like refugees to another land they could only reach by foot.

“Where are they going?” Jacques asked.

The vampire was at his elbow. “They’re running away. Trying to get out of Rome.”

“The epidemic is here, only here?”

“It’s all over Italy. Soon it’ll spread. In fact, it’s already spreading with the people who were able to get jets and private airplanes out. Now the airport is overrun with passengers begging tickets, and the train and bus stations are unable to handle the influx. All the streets in Rome are like this. No one can move except by foot now. There’s a curfew, but the police are sick too and no one can control the crowds.”

“What’s wrong with them? What do they have?”

The vampire drew back on Jacques’ arm, halting him in the street. He pointed toward an old man staggering along under a load of filled black plastic trash bags that must have contained everything he owned. Two bags hung over one shoulder and he carried another in his arms.

“Watch him,” the vampire said.

As Jacques stared the old man went down on one knee while the crowd surged around him. The old man vomited, retching violently, and it was blood that came from his mouth to cover the pavement in front of him. He was down on knees and hands now, his whole body shuddering, his bags dropped and being kicked away from him as people hurriedly tried to get away.

Jacques went to him, fascinated by the illness, thinking it must be the Ebola-like virus, for he knew that caused a man to “bleed out.” Blood would eventually come from every orifice, and even now as Jacques closed in on the victim, he could see that capillaries had burst just under the man’s skin on all the exposed areas of his body so that he was bruised looking as an overripe banana.

As Jacques neared the man looked up, his eyes wide and frightened, his mouth bloodied. When Jacques was less than four feet away, the man came to his feet. Color returned to his face. He wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve and the fear faded from his eyes.

Jacques reached him and put a hand on his arm. “Are you all right?”

The old man grinned widely. He only had two teeth in his bottom gum and none in his upper. He straightened, patted at his stomach. “I feel better now,” he said in Italian. “I feel like a new man. Thank you, thank you.”

Jacques felt a creepy feeling raise the hair on the back of his neck. The sickness had been wrong. Awful. Deadly. But the man’s instant recovery was worse, because it wasn’t natural. He had been certain the man was dying. Now the old fellow stood straight and smiled at him. Health seemed to have been restored. Even the skin sagging on his bare arms lightened and the bruising disappeared as if by magic. How could that be?

Jacques turned to the vampire and whispered, “What’s going on here?”

“It’s you. You healed him.”

The statement turned Jacques to stone. He couldn’t move, couldn’t draw breath. He hadn’t healed anyone! He hadn’t done a thing, couldn’t have done a thing!

“I did not.” Jacques away rapidly. He felt an anger he couldn’t justify. He hated people to take him for a fool, hated being tricked.

Behind him he heard the old man call after him, thanking him again, blessing him. People passing by heard him and looked after Jacques curiously. A few began to trail behind him and a conspiracy of whispers moved through the crowd.

The vampire, still at his side, said, “Everywhere you walk, they’ll live. Every street you pass, the humans in the houses will recover. You are the one sent to lead them. You’ve got the power.”

“Oh my God.” Jacques said it in an exasperated, annoyed tone. “You are insane. I didn’t do anything. The man probably wasn’t that ill.”

The vampire grabbed his arm and propelled him from the street where hordes of people surged between the stalled vehicles. He pushed Jacques toward the sidewalk and down the block until they came to a hotel entrance. It was not one of Rome’s Five Star establishments, but it wasn’t a hobo dive either. Many Italian natives visiting the city on business used the hotel. Going through the revolving glass doors, Jacques was confronted with real evidence of a devastating epidemic.

The lobby had been turned into a makeshift hospital. Sofas were used as beds and pallets had been made on the floors. People littered the big room in various stages of dying. Most clutched at their stomachs, many were retching, while other people, obviously not as ill, held pans beneath the sick faces.

One man must have been a doctor, though he wore no white coat. He had a stethoscope stuffed in his suit jacket pocket. His shirt was spotted with blood and was sweat stained. His hair was pure white and mussed, as if he hadn’t slept in ages. He hurried from one patient to another, barking out orders over his shoulder to nurses who trailed him.

People moaned. People rolled their eyes and rocked on their pallets and sofas, doubled up with spasms. Blood leaked from ears to run down necks. Blood dripped or spurted from noses. Blood tears fell from eyes so full of fear they made the people look rabid.

“Jesus. It’s Ebola, isn’t it, or something like it?”

The vampire shrugged. “I don’t know. No matter what it is, it’s killing them. It’s killing them all over the country.”

Jacques began to inch back toward the revolving doors, but the vampire put his hands on his back and pushed him forward. “Just stay a minute. Watch. Watch the magic.”

Jacques began to see it, the transformation, the going away of illness and the coming of health. Instantaneously. It was impossible, but it was happening. People began to rise up and sit, patting themselves as if they couldn’t believe they were able to do it. Eyes dried, ears ceased dripping, noses cleared, and the moaning stopped all of a sudden, as if someone had stolen the patients’ voices.

People gazed around, stunned. Some came off their sofas and rose up from the pallets on the floor, looking around bemused. A few began to smile.

“This is crazy,” Jacques said.

“It’s you,” the vampire said. “They’ll know that in a moment. We better leave before they do. They’ll mob you. They’ll try to lead you in a million directions to the homes of their loved ones so you can save them.”

As Jacques was hustled out the door and back onto the chaotic sidewalk, he said, “I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me. Maybe it was you
.
Maybe…maybe it’s a trick. Why are you playing this dreadful game?”

“It’s you,” the vampire repeated. “The One who was prophesied. To heal the sick. To lead the world. Perhaps, you’re the one who will bring the ending of time.”

“You mean…you mean the…”

The vampire shrugged.

The Antichrist. That’s what the vampire meant but could not say. That’s what he meant, wasn’t it? The only leader prophesized to do these things was the enemy of God.