SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (15 page)

"I don't give a damn about you either," Ross said, twisting his beautiful mouth to show his fangs.

Mentor blinked, catching his own reflection in the wet white glisten of the other vampire's teeth. He knew this was one of Ross' newest tricks to entrance a prey. That he thought it would work on someone twice his age just went to show how pride could go before a fall. If he wanted, Mentor could have wrung forth from his being a fury that would have blasted Ross clear across the room and left him defenseless.

Instead of rising to the bait, Mentor walked to the dead fireplace and placed his hand on the mantel. He loved to show this Predator how unafraid he was of him. "Now that we have the polite greetings out of the way, what do you want?"

Ross turned his back for Mentor to contemplate as he spoke. "There have been quiet inquiries about the bank. Hank called me from Houston. Didn't he call you? He said he was going to."

"Not yet. What did he say the inquiries concerning your bank were about?"

Ross picked up a book from the table near the sofa. He dusted it off, though it was not dusty, read the title, and dropped it. "Our shipments."

"So?" Mentor was losing patience. Didn't the Predator know he was wasting valuable time? There was a new vampire being born right this minute without Mentor there to guide him through death. Mentor resented Ross' appearance and the talk about the blood bank. It was his problem. What possible motive did he have for coming to Mentor?

Ross turned so fast that a mortal would not have seen it happen, though Mentor did. "You accuse me of pride, but it's you who think yourself indispensable! I come here to ask for a minute, and you whine in your head about waste. I should rip you apart for that."

"If you think that you can, jump, Froggy."

Ross glared at him before he saw Mentor's small smile, and then he began to laugh. "Froggy!" He laughed some more, his anger all but gone.

"All right, it was rude of me to get impatient," Mentor said. "It must be serious if you've come to tell me personally. Now, what does it mean? I really do have to leave soon."

"It's a woman who runs an HIV testing lab. She has access to all the records of all the blood banks. Federal law requires the blood be tested, I'm sure you know that. She's discovered we ship out blood to other cities before it gets tested. She's called some of my people. She even knows it's been going on for years. She searched back records. She knows something isn't right."

Mentor realized this was indeed serious news. "Do you know if she's told anyone her suspicions?"

"We know she called a doctor in hematology at Hank's hospital. It's how he found out. I haven't sent anyone to investigate her yet. For all we know, she's already called in some federal agency or something. It could undermine our whole operation."

"Yes, it could." The thought of the loss of their blood bank threw Mentor into a sudden anxiety. Even he was nourished by the blood Ross supplied. The strongest-willed vampire, deprived of fresh blood, would turn on the closest victim to satiate his hunger. Naturals could only defeat their craving by having local supplies sold to them. If left to their own devices, many of them would be driven to hunt humans.

Ross was silent a moment. Then he said, "I wanted you to do it."

Taken aback, Mentor flinched inside. "You want me to investigate this woman?"

"Yes. I haven't really dealt with mortals in years except for servant types. I've lost the touch. While you . . ."

Mentor knew he had to do it. He was able to walk among mankind and pass easily as one of them. He made it his number one rule not to separate himself from the world, except for the youth, who changed their fads so often he could never keep up with them. Without staying close to adult society, he could never hope to gain the trust of their souls when the time came to choose the eternal path.

"All right, tell me what you know."

For the next few minutes Ross gave him details, addresses, and other data. Mentor knew what he had to do. He would approach the woman who was about to uncover their secret and he would mesmerize her into forgetting. That way she'd come to no harm. If he failed, Ross would simply kill her and cover up any trail she'd uncovered.

Mesmerizing was an ancient gift that was as real as a cloud, a leaf, or a stream. Magicians, bound by earthly magic, considered mesmerizing another word for hypnotism, but it was far beyond that. Other words for mesmerize were to spellbind, stupefy, and to find entry. To mesmerize people, Mentor had to enter their minds, meld with their souls, and change their memories as one would wipe a slate clean. It had to be done by a master, or it was considerably dangerous. In the beginning when he was first learning how, Mentor had accidentally wiped a few minds that were never the same again.

More guilt. And guilt he had no choice but to live with.

When Ross had gone, Mentor left his home and stood outside, feeling the early morning wind on his face. Earlier, when Dolan had left, the sky had been clearing, but now a few white clouds with dark underbellies coasted near the moon. In another city they might portend rain, but in Dallas they would no doubt scatter and disappear before even a drop of moisture could condense.

He would see the woman, Bette Kinyo, on the morrow. Tonight he had urgent business. It was not in the city, but out in the South Texas countryside near the border with Mexico. A family of Naturals lived there, and tonight one of the women was undergoing the change. The disease had begun earlier in the day when they'd first called for Mentor's help. Now he must hurry, or his charge would be lost. She might become a Predator. That was the fear of her family.

She might anyway, despite his guidance, but at least he would have tried to dissuade her. There were too many of them already, especially along the border where he knew more murders were going unsolved than in all the rest of the state. The authorities thought it was the work of a serial killer who left his victims horribly mutilated, but Mentor and his kind knew what it really was. Too many Predators in the area and too few sources of blood.

What they did not need was one more running loose.

He must be on his way.

With a flick of his will and a mental explosion that changed the very atomic makeup of his being, Mentor dissipated into the Dallas night wind an insubstantial shadow among the clouds sailing south. Just before he'd left the earthly plain, he'd heard the telephone in his house ringing and knew it must be Hank.

He'd speak with him later. He had all the information he needed for the time being.

Chapter 12

It was not Dell's birthday, that day was in June, after graduation, but it felt like it. On Saturday morning when she woke, Eddie stood at the end of her bed. She'd slept so deeply that she felt now as if she were coming up from a black well of unconsciousness where nothing had ever lived.

She'd heard someone call her name and opened her eyes. "What are you doing?" she asked, coming up onto her elbows. Eddie was bending over the foot of her bed and tugging at her covers.

"Mom and Dad have a surprise for you."

"What kind of surprise?" She threw back the covers and stood to stretch.

"It wouldn't be a surprise if I told you. They're waiting in the living room. C'mon."

Her parents were dressed, standing in the center of the room together, and in her father's hand dangled his car keys. "If you'll hurry and get your clothes on, we'll take you to see something special," he said.

"What?" she asked. "What's going on?"

"Tell her," her mother said to her father.

Her father shook his head, grinning slyly. "We wanted you to see for yourself. So hurry up, we're waiting. And no reading our minds, young lady."

She rushed back to her bedroom and stripped off her pajamas. She put on shorts and a sleeveless shirt.

She almost ran into Eddie when she hurried into the hall. She grabbed him by the back of his shirt. "Tell me what it is!"

"No way. Let's go, they're already in the car."

They drove from the neighborhood, through the suburbs of Dallas, and south, out of the city. When the terrain changed to wheat and cotton farms, Dell could not control her curiosity any longer. "Where are we going? Is it a long way?" She remembered being a little child again, asking her parents every few minutes how far it was to their destination. Vacations must have been tedious for her parents, she realized, having children whine at them for hours on end.

"It's not far now," her father said.

"You're gonna like it," Eddie said, punching her in the arm lightly.

It was a horse! She knew it was a horse. It had to be! She had begged for a horse since she was eight years old. They had never had a pet, not even a dog, and she'd yearned for an animal for years. Her parents told her that most pets sensed they were different and were never happy around them. They would cry and scratch at themselves, they would turn in circles going nuts, and once let outside, they would probably disappear.

Dell had seen it happen before her change when Eddie played over at a friend's house. If his friend had a pet, even if it was a hamster, the animal went bonkers trying to get away from Eddie and the scent the animal picked up that he was not quite human anymore. Eddie always made a joke out of it, saying animals just didn't like him and that was all right, because he didn't like them either.

Gosh, even Carolyn had a pet. It was a big, fat, fluffy cat she named VeryPretty. "That's a dumb name," Dell had said, rubbing the cat's fur and feeling it purr beneath her hands.

"VeryPretty doesn't think so," Carolyn said. "She likes it.”

Now, when Dell went to visit her cousin, she knew VeryPretty would shy from her and hide beneath Carolyn's bed. It made her sad to think about it.

But she had not wanted a house pet like a cat or dog. She had always wanted her very own horse. It might be spooked by her, sensing she wasn't human, but she knew she could reach it with her mind, make it comfortable with her.

One of Cheyenne's cousins had kept a horse where she lived on a ranch outside of Dallas. Dell had been visiting the cousin with Cheyenne one day and fell instantly in love. The horse at first shied from her, but after snuffling through its massive nose and prancing away from her twice when she neared it, she spoke to it softly until it steadied. He finally let her rub his nose. She had asked to ride it and Cheyenne's cousin said sure, why not? She hadn't taken the horse faster than a trot, afraid she'd fall off, but once out of the range of her friends' hearing, she had whispered to the horse how majestic he was and how wonderful it was to ride him.

She had been ten years old. The horse was just an old gelding that kids had been riding for years. At home, she had pestered her parents about it. "Why can't I have one?" she'd asked. She'd been told how expensive it was to buy a horse, not to mention its upkeep. They would have to board it at a stable, pay for its food and vet bills, and at that time they simply could not afford it. Everything they could earn went toward living expenses and the cost of the blood the Predators sold.

Crushed, Dell had stopped begging. Her parents really did work very hard. But she'd never stopped hoping to one day own a horse of her own. Now they were driving out of the city and all around them were ranches and farms fenced off from the road with barbed wire and hollow steel rails.

"It's a horse!" she cried, unable to keep quiet. She just had to know. "You've bought me a horse, haven't you?"

Her mother turned from the front seat, smiling. "We thought it would be good for you."

"Oh, Mama, thank you, thank you! Thank you, Daddy!"

"Now don't get too excited," her father said. "It's not much of a horse. We knew it would cost a great deal to keep it boarded, so we had to buy an older one than we would have liked."

She didn't care. She didn't care if it was old as Methuselah, at least she could ride it. She could love it. She could have something of her own.

At the stables where her father turned in, Dell eyed all the horses wandering in the paddocks and standing by the stalls. When the car stopped, she was the first one out of the door. She hurried to a man leading a horse by a halter. "Is that my horse?" she asked, breathless.

"And who might you be?" the stable attendant asked in a friendly way.

"Dell! Della Cambian. You have my horse here?"

"Well, shoot, little girl, I think we just might have it back there in one of those stalls." The man grinned, and a gold crown shone from an upper incisor.

Dell turned to the stalls and saw several horses still closed in there. "Which one?"

Her father was at her side then and said, pointing. "That one."

It was at the far end in the last stall. He had his head hanging over the gate and Dell saw that he was a roan with a white spot right between the center of his eyes.

"Oh!" That's all she could say. To her it was the most beautiful animal in the world. Her father had said the horse was old, and that made him cheaper, but to her the horse was ageless and grand. She ran all the way to the stall, coming to an abrupt standstill just before the horse so as not to spook it.

"Hey," she called softly. "It's me, Dell. Want to go for a ride?" She telepathically talked to the horse in a soothing monotone that she knew he could hear inside his mind. She was so afraid he would fear her. If he feared her, she would never be able to keep him.

Good horse, nice horse, she thought. I love you, do you know that? I do love you already.

She felt ten years old again once the horse was saddled for her and she had climbed aboard. His name, the stable hand said, was Lightning. "Not like he's fast anymore," the man added. "He's a little long in the tooth for racing."

Dell waved to her beaming parents and to her brother, who looked like he would split open with joy. She turned the horse with the reins and locked her legs around him. He started walking slowly, and that was all right with her. She was communicating with him silently, knowing he could read her thoughts. Good horse, she thought again. What a fine horse you are. We will be friends, we will be pals forever.