SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (105 page)

Jacques couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

The shock of that word caused him to falter in sudden paralysis. He felt the vampire push him gently and he moved on down the street, weaving among the people. As he passed through them, the throng looked back, and began to whisper, to point. It seemed everywhere he went whispers started up.

“I’m mortal,” Jacques said. “I’m not like you. Or any of those other things that were in my room.”

“Yes, you are. Mortal, that is. But you have powers, some of them very new. And you will lead an army.”

“Why do you think these things?” Jacques asked.

“Because I’m one of your soldiers.”

For the next hour, the vampire led him down street after street to witness the spiraling fear. Every now and then he would point to a window and they could see inside where people were moving around, smiling, hugging one another, faces alive with relief.

When they returned to Jacques’ apartment house, Jacques was almost convinced. Hadn’t he known he was special all his life? He possessed absolutely no survival instinct. He had no conscience to speak of. Nothing moved him, nor caused him to take pity. He had wandered the world aimless, even joining up with the vampire Charles Upton only because he was without direction.

The vampire read his mind for he said, “All that is true, what you just thought. It wasn’t time yet before for you to know who you are. What you are. Now is the time.”

“If I can heal the dying, how can I be the epitome of evil? I’m supposed to be of the devil, aren’t I?”

“Devil?”

“You know. Beelzebub. The Son of the Morning. The Fallen Angel.”

“I don’t know about that. All I know is you’re the one who’s come to lead us.”

“You’re not from Hell? You’re not from the devil?”

The vampire shrugged again. “I’m just me, a vampire, and we come from mutation, from genes gone awry. I know some things, that’s all. I know I was meant to find you and be at your side. I know what you are. I know you can work miracles. People will follow a man when they would not follow a vampire. They’ll love you and worship you. I’m not sure, but the epidemic might have been engineered just for your benefit.”

“But why?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? To get the people to believe in you. A true miracle worker.”

Jacques returned to his apartment alone, breathing shallowly and feeling in a panic. He almost wished the room was filled again with the beings that had haunted him for days. He didn’t like being alone with himself. He stalked to the kitchen and ran a glass of water, swallowing it down in a few gulps. He hiccupped and laughed, startling himself. He was human, damn it. He was no devil or antichrist. It was all a fabrication, perhaps even an hallucination created by the vampire who had led him from the apartment. What a wicked thing that would be!

Then Jacques mood darkened and his mind fell into a pit. He couldn’t fool himself into believing he had nothing to do with the people being healed. Something had happened when he was around the sick and dying, that was certain. Without willing it or even touching the patients, healing took place. He couldn’t explain that by hoping it had been a dream or a trick. He knew it wasn’t. Knew it somewhere down deep in the center of his soul.

He sagged at the sink, gripping the rim with both hands, head hanging.

He turned slowly and went to the bedroom where he took his journal from the bedside drawer. He found his ballpoint pen rolling around in the drawer bottom and snatched it out. He sank onto the bed and began to write.

The angel who came when I killed the first time couldn’t hurt me. None of the supernatural beings I’ve been seeing all my life haven’t really been able to hurt me to any degree. Vampires, sensing something about me, steered clear when I lived with Charles Upton. Lately they’ve been coming to stay near me, taking over the building where I live. And now when I pass by, people are cured of a deadly virus.

I have been told in so many words I am the Antichrist. If I am the second Christ, why don’t I feel it? Isn’t the second Christ the Deceiver? Why don’t I have any ambition to deceive? Why don’t I have a yearning for power? Wouldn’t the second Christ want it?

I’ve been told I am he. The Bringer of Destruction. The being sent to create a world following; the man who will trick humankind and then take him to the brink of extinction.

How could this be?

Wouldn’t I know?

Or did the first Christ know who he was right away? Didn’t he work as a lowly carpenter and produce no miracles until later in his life?

Oh, it is all madness!

There is one thing for sure.

I do not want to be the Antichrist.

I do not want the job, period.

I wonder if I can refuse it.

Jacques let the pen hover just above the journal page while his mind fell away. His head swam and fatigue gripped his body with an overwhelming exhaustion. He put down the pen and closed the journal, placing it on the table top. He lay back on the bed, swinging his feet onto the tumbled covers that smelled of his sweat.

What was he to do? Would someone please tell him, he wondered? If he were the sire of the devil, wouldn’t the devil appear to coach him? He had only a small religious training from very long ago time when he was a child. He knew very little about Christian stories and the Antichrist. He had not been a good student in church, preferring his imagination to the singsong voices telling silly stories to children.

And one more thing. A big thing.

What about Armageddon?

Chapter 29

Malachi dreamed of the end of the world. It was in flames, every country consumed in huge mushroom clouds and balls of fire.

He woke trembling and sat up, his feet slamming to the stone floor with a jolt.

Oh yes. He was in the monastery. Mentor had forced him from the ice and brought him here to the monks. He could hear the swishing of their long skirts and the floppy padding of their sandals as they moved through the corridors. He wondered if they stayed awake all night.

He wiped his face to free himself of the last vestiges of the terrible dream he’d had. In it he had seen the Frenchman, Jacques, long before the world went up in flames.

He hated him so much. Now he was dreaming that Jacques was about to bring destruction to the whole world.

A ridiculous notion. He was certainly an evil man and he would die for his crimes, but he was no world leader bringing about holocaust.

That had almost happened during the Mideast crisis not long after the Twin Towers in New York City were attacked by Muslim fundamentalists. It had only been narrowly averted, leaving the world breathing a collective sigh of relief.

If the world had kept its head during those dark times, why would it ever unleash an arsenal of nukes?

It was just a dream, he told himself. I have nothing to fear from dreams.

Malachi stood and washed his face from a bowl of water sitting on a table near the open window. He dried with a coarse cloth and stood looking into the night. He could see so much better in the dark than he ever had before. Leaves trembling in a breeze and birds shifting in sleep on the limbs. Clouds scudding across the dark sky to race the moon. The swept path that led from the compound into the jungle.

All right.

He could not run away from the world. He could not die to it. He could not commit suicide in the cold dead center of a block of ice as tall as a skyscraper.

So he would do what he set out to do. He would find Jacques, no matter how long it took. If he was ravished by the urge to kill and drink from humans, he would control himself and make sure he did not give in.

He was vampire, just as he had wanted to be. Full, deadly vampire. Mentor, though a Predator, no longer killed to live. He could do the same. It was like having a weakness for an addiction. He would simply have to exert willpower. It was not that simple, of course, but it did mean he had to depend on himself and his will.

Meanwhile, he had a mission to fulfill. Jacques would haunt him until the man was found and killed. Danielle would be revenged. And then Malachi could return to his little son and raise him the way he should.

Someone was at his back, in the doorway. He felt the presence and knew it was one of the monks.

“You’re not ready to leave yet,” the monk said, knowing he’d been detected.

Malachi turned, his face set. “Will you try to stop me?”

“I would do better to stop the wind.”

“You got that right.” Malachi crossed the room and stood before him. “You’re blocking the door.” He knew he sounded gruff, but he couldn’t let the monk talk him into staying.

The monk stepped aside. “I’d rather you stay just a while. Let us advise you and guide you. This life is too hard without help in the beginning.”

He meant the vampire life. Malachi smiled gently, hoping to repair his earlier rudeness. “I know you mean well. And you may be right. But I have to go. I’ve wasted enough time.”

The monk clasped his hands in front of him and bowed, moving out of the way. Malachi could have transmigrated, leaving the room full of mist, but that would have been another rudeness. To vanish abruptly was not their usual mode of taking leave. The monks had cared for him. He would walk out of the monastery like a man.

In the courtyard he saw the monks had all come to see him away. They were grouped along the path, their faces turned toward him.

“I want to thank you,” Malachi said. “I’ll remember your kindness always.”

He walked past them, following the path into the night. Into the jungle.

Into the world.

~*~

The first news Malachi heard when he was again a part of the world concerned the epidemic. It had spread across Europe like wildfire. It had strangled communication, travel, and interrupted commerce. Thousands had already died and thousands more were infected. Those not quarantined were locking themselves in their homes and boarding shut the windows.

Malachi thought it had to be a deliberate act of bio-terrorism. The Ebola virus wouldn’t have swept that quickly across borders. And now the virus had mutated, just as porphyria had done to create the vampire. But this mutation was dangerous enough to send alarms into every country on earth. They could not find an antidote, nor create a vaccine for it. Some scientists even claimed the virus was like a ravenous animal, changing form so rapidly in the bloodstream that by the time one group of people had contacted the disease, it was already changing into another form of hemorrhagic fever.

God, what was going to happen? Malachi stood in Bangkok at a newsstand reading the papers, his hands trembling. All around him people surged in panic, trying to flee the city. The plague hadn’t hit Thailand yet, but people feared the worse and wanted to get into the countryside.

Just as Malachi was about to close the newspaper and stuff it into a nearby receptacle, a small caption on a column in the left hand margin of the paper caught his eye. He paused, straightening out the paper again and pored over the article. It was captioned:

Hemorrhagic Fever Victims in Rome Heal Miraculously

Malachi thought it was probably some charlatan taking advantage of the dying, but as he read the short column he wondered if there might not be more to it. The story claimed a man lived in Rome and he was responsible for the healing of those dying of the terrible fever. He didn’t even have to touch them. When he walked through the streets, those in his proximity were instantly healed.

It was obvious the London Dispatch he had found on sale at the newsstand did not think much of this possibility. They’d nearly buried it on an inside page.

Malachi continued reading and in the last paragraph the words leaped from the paper. His eyes widened and he stiffened. No one knew the name of the mysterious healer, but he was described as a dark man of French origin.

A dark Frenchman. In Rome.

It was very little evidence, but Malachi knew he had to go to that city to see for himself. Not that Jacques would ever be a man to heal the dying. He was a killer, not a healer. He was evil, not a savior. Yet it wouldn’t hurt to check it out.

This time Malachi placed the paper in the receptacle and pushed through the crowded Bangkok street until he came to a narrow alleyway. There he found relative privacy from the humans and he began to change, his molecules dispersing. He had his destination well in mind.

Chapter 30

Jacques had the noose firmly around his neck as he stood flat-footed on an overturned milk carton. He was in the closet of his high-ceilinged room with the other end of the rope attached to the closet bars high above his head. He could reach the bar where he’d fastened the rope, but once he stepped off the carton, he would not try to save himself.

He was determined to get it over with. He had no intention of fulfilling some destiny for which he had no control over. If indeed he had been picked to lead mankind into the darkest era of history, then his demise should sidestep the whole issue.

He didn’t know any other way to get out of it.

He stared straight ahead of him into the bedroom where he’d confined himself for days. No one had come for him, not even Corgi, the vampire who called himself one of Jacques’ soldiers.

No, no one came except the people. The dying. They’d discovered his whereabouts merely by passing in front of his apartment building. Once healed, they told others, and those others came, swarms of them. They stood on the sidewalks and in the street, arms lifted to the blank windows of the stone building, calling out for their lives, praying and begging to be spared.

When they began to bang on the front doors, Jacques had gone to the closet and found the plastic carton holding the rope and old plumbing materials left behind by some former tenant.

Now he stood on the brink of suicide and marveled for the last time at how uninvolved he was in his own existence. Dead or alive, nothing mattered to him. Death was a sleep. At least it would get him away from the madness of this insane, dying world. It was no fun living at all. He would not be a puppet, used for someone or some thing’s own ends.