SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (26 page)

Chapter 20

Alan gnawed at worry all the way to Houston. He had begged Bette to come with him. He didn't want to leave her alone. She resisted. "I'm not a child, Alan. I can take care of myself now I know what I'm dealing with," she'd said.

Alan left before she woke, debating whether he should wake her and try again to convince her to accompany him. But he knew Bette well. Once her mind was made up, there was no moving her.

He drove directly from Dallas through the dark morning light to Charles Upton's building in downtown Houston. It was late morning when he arrived, and his stomach growled hungrily. The Styrofoam cup of coffee he'd purchased at a gas station sat in his midsection like a roiling sea of acid. He found a bottle of Tums in the car pocket and shook three into the palm of his hand. He chewed them on the elevator ride up to Upton's penthouse.

It wasn't the empty stomach that caused his real discomfort. He didn't really want to make this report to Upton. He had left the penthouse weeks before believing he was on a wild goose chase for a demented billionaire. And now he was returning with news that the old man was right. There were vampires walking the land—at least that was how it looked. He couldn't be sure. He had to make Upton understand that.

Lately it had seemed to Alan that reality was rapidly shifting. It wasn't just the fact he'd stumbled upon the lair of what appeared to him to be a murderous vampire or that a spiritlike, shape-shifting being had come to Bette and made her forget she was interested in Strand-Catel's blood shipments. No, there were other things going on in the world and being reported by top news agencies that completely baffled Alan.

On the car radio he'd been listening to on the way to Houston he'd heard a report of a UFO in the sky above a farmhouse in Alabama. The farmer had run outside with a video camera. What he taped was being reported as straight fact. The video apparently showed a huge circle of bright light illuminating the farm as it passed over, and once it passed there was deep darkness in the sky, like a black hole, blotting out the stars behind it.

That was odd enough. UFOs reported as if real. Were they? Could they be? If so, what did it say about reality and life on Earth?

On the same news broadcast was a report from China that a "Bigfoot" type creature had been sighted. Left behind were sixteen-inch footprints and tufts of tangled hair.

Either the world was changing, allowing these phenomena that seemed downright bizarre, or else humankind was going insane, maybe suffering from some sort of mass hysteria.

Is that what affected me? he wondered, as the elevator door opened onto Upton's suite. Am I hysterical and about to report as truth some kind of momentary psychosis that happened while I was outside the big ranch windows?

Upton's very proper, very British butler was waiting for him. Alan had called before he left Bette's house, saying he was on his way.

"Mr. Upton is waiting to see you, sir," he said, leading Alan through the rooms to the massive bedroom. Upton was propped on pillows in the bed, as he usually was, but his color was high and there was excitement evident in his pale, watery eyes.

Upton threw back the sheet and swung his legs to the side of the bed. He sat straight and looked stronger than Alan had ever seen him.

"Alan! Come in, come in. Are you hungry? You look famished. Please bring Dr. Star some breakfast," Upton commanded his butler.

"Yes, sir."

Alan watched the butler bow formally before leaving the room, presumably to tell the cook to make a meal for him. His mouth watered at the thought of bacon and eggs, and his stomach churned. He burped behind his hand. "Sorry," he said. His mouth tasted of chalk from the indigestion tablets. He frowned.

"Well, sit down. Tell me the news. You found them, didn't you? You wouldn't come here right from Dallas if you didn't have something for me."

"I do have something for you," Alan said, taking one of the ornate French chairs near the bedside. God, how he dreaded telling the old man anything. He sensed something bad would happen once he did. Something he couldn't even predict and most certainly would not like.

Upton clapped his hands together in a prayerful attitude. "I knew it. I knew they were out there. I've dreamed about them, you know. It's as if I'm walking with them in my sleep. I see a big one, just monstrously huge, bearing down on victims in a very dark wooded area where there is a red moon. Can you imagine? It's so real I wake weeping and shaking, scared to death. Because in the dream, or nightmare, if you will, the monster turns on me, finds me hiding, and comes my way. But you don't want to hear about my silly dreams. Tell me, what did you find?"

Alan shivered from the cold air-conditioning vent that blew frigid air down the back of his collar. "I first interviewed the manager of a blood bank in Dallas where there have been some odd shipments out of the city across the state. I was deliberately lied to and misdirected."

"Yes, yes . . ."

"Then I followed a man. It's a long story, but he was suspicious and he seemed to have something to do with the blood bank situation. He went outside of the city. Walking. I had to leave my car and walk, too, to follow. It was night and pretty spooky. He went for miles and then there was a big ranch. He went up to the house."

Upton still had his hands pressed together tightly before his lips. His eyes glittered and behind his hands Alan could see the rictus of his frozen smile. He continued, "When the man I followed left, I stayed behind a few minutes, looking through the ranch house windows. I saw . . ."

"Yes, yes!"

"Murder."

Upton's hands lowered from his face. He gripped the covers around him. His eyes blazed now. "What kind of murder?"

"That's what I've come to tell you. The man inside the house didn't use a weapon."

"No?"

"He tore out the throats of two women with his . . . teeth."

Upton sucked in a big breath and held it.

Alan continued, "Then he . . . he seemed to . . .”

“He drained them of their blood."

"Yes," Alan said, glad he hadn't had to say it.

"You're sure?"

"I was standing right outside the window. I had to stumble away and throw up, it made me so sick.”

“He didn't see you?"

"No."

"So what did you do then?"

"I hurried back to where I had my car parked. The man I'd followed had disappeared. In fact, even as I watched him on the road he seemed to . . . disappear. When I got back into town and found a phone, I called the police."

"You did what?" Upton fairly leaped from the bed. His back straightened, his hands flew up, his immovable face showed great shock through wide open eyes. "How could you do a thing like that?"

"But it was murder. I saw . . ."

"If you believe you saw a vampire who killed two people, didn't you stop to consider that by reporting him you were letting him know he'd been observed? Are you out of your mind?"

Alan didn't like the direction the conversation had taken. Upton, so elated, now appeared to be about to have heart attack. He was frantic, clawing his way from the bed, scooting his skinny old legs around until he could slip his feet into black velveteen house slippers. He staggered as he stood. "You have done a terrible thing by calling the authorities. You've let the vampire know someone was there. He'll find you."

"Oh, I don't think . . ."

"He'll find you!" Upton screamed. "And if he finds you, he finds me! What have you done?"

Alan stood, overwhelmed by Upton's fury. When Upton advanced on him, he began to retreat to the bedroom door. "I don't see why you're so upset. He didn't see me, didn't even know I was there so he wouldn't know who I was, who called the cops."

"Oh, God, you are so naive and ignorant. Didn't you read the material I sent with you? Don't you know what you're dealing with? I never thought you'd do something so stupid."

"Look here, calling me names is uncalled for. I did what you wanted."

"Yes! You found vampires. Yes! But you ruined it by reporting them. Now either the authorities will find out something, or the vampire you discovered will hunt you down."

"That's ridiculous. How would he know . . . ?”

“He's a vampire, Alan. Think about it. He'll know. And he'll come for you and anyone you told. He'll come for me."

Alan thought of Bette. He had told her first. Was there anything to what the raving Upton was saying to him? Could he be correct? Oh, Jesus, oh, hell, he had to get back to Dallas; he had to warn Bette.

Then it occurred to Alan he was behaving just as crazily as Upton. Hell, he might have been mistaken in what he'd glimpsed through the ranch-house windows. He might have had some kind of medical condition that made him fall into a trance or dreamlike state where he imagined the things he saw. Was he now firmly in control of his faculties and, if so, how could he possibly believe he'd witnessed the acts of a vampire? All his education and training told him there couldn't possibly be such a creature.

Upton's butler entered carrying a tray of fragrant food. Bacon, ham, eggs, grits, toast, orange juice, coffee. Upton said, "Put that down and help me dress."

Alan stood by, unsure what to do. Had he been dismissed?

"Are you . . . are you leaving?" Alan asked.

"Of course I'm leaving. If you're being hunted, I'll be found, too. I can't imagine it would take the creature long to get to us. I don't want to die at the hands of the vampire. I want to find one to help me. I have to go away now, where you won't know where I am, so he can't trace me through you."

Alan began to make for the door. Upton was just as insane as he'd ever been. It had evidently rubbed off.

"I'll call you," Upton shouted. "I want you to go back and find me another one, one less powerful, a young one. Do you hear me? If you want this grant, you'll do as I tell you."

Alan felt for one instant like turning and telling the old man to take his grant money and stuff it where the sun didn't shine. But the impulse passed. He said instead, without turning to face the old man, "I'll do what I can."

"You'll do it, just as I said," Upton shouted again, "and then you're out of this. But right now I advise you to go underground. Get away from everyone you know and tell no one where you are. Do you hear me? No one."

The smell of the breakfast followed Alan as he crossed the living room and entered the elevator for the lobby. He hadn't even had breakfast yet, and he was already dealing with a maniac. A man shouldn't have to do that.

But on the way down in the padded silence of the elevator, he reconsidered Upton's response and his advice. He reconsidered what he'd been telling Upton about there being real vampires in the world and how he'd seen one.

It made a little sense. Not a lot, but a little. He might have stumbled on vampires or he'd run into one of the worst killers in the state of Texas. Upton's response sounded like paranoid ranting. But what if the vampire could find him? If there was a vampire. Or what if it could find Bette? He must return immediately to Dallas and take Bette with him. She wouldn't want to go anywhere or leave her house, but he'd make her. Even if there was a shred of danger, he had to do that.

Paranoid or not, they might be dealing with the supernatural. Who knew how the supernatural worked? Who knew what the UFO was that sent a circle of bright light streaming down over a farm? Who knew what left behind sixteen-inch footprints?

But, more importantly, what did any of them know about the existence and motives of vampires?

~*~

Mentor hovered high over an area just outside the city limits of Houston, Texas. He was near the presence he knew to be Alan Star, and was just zeroing in on his location when he heard an urgent mental call. It was as if a siren went off in his subconscious, wailing . . . screaming for his attention. "Mentor! I know your name. Come to me now."

He paused in his shadowy flight, filtering the voice from all the others that clamored in a cacophony of calls for aid. He found it belonged to a woman. A human woman. Now what is this about? he wondered. Not once in a century had he had communications from humans, psychics who had somehow tuned into the channel of his subconscious. It always surprised and unsettled him.

He turned toward the direction where the voice emanated. North of his location. He searched farther and found it came from Dallas. Who . . . ?

She called him again, as if speaking directly into his mind, clearly enunciating every syllable. "Mentor. Come back. Leave Alan alone. We have many things to discuss first."

Bette Kinyo. She reached him over a distance of hundreds of miles. She was indeed an enigma. A gifted enigma.

He gave Alan Star one last moment of his attention, waffled between going directly to him to wipe his mind of all memories involving Ross, but then he sighed inside and turned back North. Bette called for him. This meant she remembered him. Not only that, but she had learned his name.

It took him mere minutes to respond and move his intelligence and the energy of his being to Bette Kinyo's home. He went through the wall into the kitchen where he sensed she would be found. As before, when he'd first ever appeared to her, she had her back to him and her hands deep into a sink of bubbles.

"You called for me?"

She turned purposefully, taking a dish towel to dry her hands. Her eyes were dark and heavy with meaning as she rested her gaze on him. He stood before her in his old man body, the cold old body that sometimes he could cause to contort enough to frighten the life from a mortal. He did that now, scowling fiercely, showing the row of upper teeth and sharp incisors.

~*~

Bette had come awake on the sofa after her session with Mentor. Confused, she staggered up the stairs to the small altar in her bedroom. Falling to her knees before the statue of Buddha, she bowed her head and began to weep. She knew she had been violated in some way, but did not know how or to what extent. She prayed to the god she adored to save her sanity and restore her spirit.