SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (68 page)

"You may go with me," he said, savoring the memory of their brief coupling in the caves.

A long piercing cry rose from deep in the bowels of the volcano. It made Ross' ears prickle, and he hunched his shoulders against it. He imagined the flesh singeing and curling, finally falling from the skeleton. He could almost feel the terrible heat and the cleansing flame that devoured everything in its path, even bone. There was not one ounce of remorse for what he'd done to Balthazar, but he had hoped not to resort to using fire.

"He's dying," Sereny said.

Ross thought regret had crept into her voice. She didn't bother to deceive him now.

"Yes," Ross said. "It's over, isn't it?"

Sereny nodded and floated down, her feet settling gently on the volcanic stone near him. Ross looked into the sky over the vast flat sea, imagining how far he was from his ranch house in Texas. "Let's go," he said. "Let's get out of this godforsaken place."

As Sereny sailed alongside her new mate toward a distant, foreign shore, she let the grief over Balthazar's death enfold her. He had been good to her, and loyal, and understanding. She had not helped him because she could not. If she'd been able, she would have helped him defeat Ross, but it all happened too fast. They were beyond her down the corridor before she ever raised herself to her feet and straightened her skirts. Making love with Ross should have given Balthazar a chance to take his enemy unaware, but he'd waited too long and Ross had been vigilant, even in coitus.

She thought maybe she kept taking male vampires as her own because she was trying to recapture the love she'd had for her husband. She took male vampires and served them as she'd served her husband. In servitude she really wielded the power in the relationship, something she'd known since she was just a girl. In giving of herself, she controlled the man who received her.

No matter what the buried reasons for her behavior, she held no regrets. Ross was just as strong and sexually attractive as her other lovers. She was only drawn to powerful men, powerful vampires. Her lost husband had been just a brick mason, but he had been strong in both body and mind. He studied books in his free time, learning how to manage a business and just before her death, he had taken their small savings and started a little shop of his own. He never bowed his head to another man. He never mistreated his wife and children. He had ambition and loyalty and he had loved her as if she were a goddess. . . .

Now she was speeding across the face of the globe to a new situation. A new world, with a new master over her. She had never been outside of Europe and the Canary Islands. She'd never even visited the African cities though they were so near Lanzarote. She had picked up English and could speak it only because she had been a tourist so long, traveling with vulgar Americans who thought everything in the world was there for their singular amusement. She did not know if Ross really wanted her along or if he'd tire of her and slit her throat.

All she knew was that she was again homeless, without family, and cast out to fend for herself. She'd only survived so far because of her magnetic sexuality and her ability to adjust to change.

She hoped it would be enough this time.

She did not want to die, though Balthazar had always suspected she was suicidal. He had been so wrong.

She really did not want to die.

3

Charles Upton walked openly down the night-shrouded streets of Dallas, recalling landmarks from when he'd moved his headquarters from Houston to Dallas after turning vampire. He marveled at the new skyscrapers raised during his years in prison, the great flowing fountains, and the increased population that meant more freeways and snarled traffic.

He drank in the cardinal scent of humanity all around him. He glanced through windows at the silhouettes of people in their homes, thinking themselves safe behind locked door. They drove past in cars and trucks, going about their lives as if nothing evil might ever befall them. They stood behind store counters, shopped for groceries, drank and danced in bars, and walked hand in hand down sidewalks, oblivious to how precarious their existence was.

Charles reveled in the thought he could take any one of them at any second, ending life so quickly the victim wouldn't even know he was dying. Already this night he'd fed on two men, leaving their bodies exposed so they'd be found, their torn throats as clean and bloodless as his careful licking could leave them.

He wanted to strike fear into men. He would no longer hide the corpses or heal the puncture wounds before he left them. Let humanity discover they were not alone. They'd been yearning to meet an alien creature for years, discussing the Roswell incident endlessly, looking to the skies for spaceships, devising abduction scenarios and alien encounters. There was a whole cottage industry publishing books and making movies about man's desire, his hidden desire, to bump into something much stronger and more intelligent than he. Charles would oblige, happily. If they wanted monsters, he would show them monsters. His Predators, the most powerful beings in the world, had come from hiding. Nothing would be kept secret any longer.

Ahead of him, Charles saw a small group spilling onto the sidewalk from a downtown dance club. They were young and high on life. They smelled of liquor and tobacco and sex, of acrid sweat and sweet, fruity perfume. They were laughing and talking, unaware of the danger approaching.

Charles neared, meaning to move past so fast they'd never see him, but something about their confident strides and calm voices caused him to slow. They were so arrogant and secure. They hadn't a shred of fear in their minds, and he hated them for their easy camaraderie. His presence was that of a man, they thought. Just a man moving past them, someone on the periphery of their consciousness they could safely ignore.

Charles easily rearranged his human face, the brown Thai skin darkening and sprouting slick black fur, the forehead elongating while his human nose and mouth formed into a snout. His eyes glowed as they slimmed to thin almond shapes. His cheekbones rose. His teeth sharpened.

He growled.

Two males on the edge of the group of people heard him and turned to stare.

Charles came closer. He growled again, louder, the sound coming from deep in his chest and drowning out their chatter.

The whole group paused and turned as one body. They could see him clearly now. He'd stopped not more than three feet from them, his face completely transformed into that of a jungle cat rising up out of the prim white collar of his shirt. More specifically, he had taken on the image of a black jaguar from the neck up.

He turned into their minds.

A cat . . .

He's wearing a mask . . .

What kind of . . . ?

Need to get out of here quick . . .

Oh, God, no, I must be drunk . . .

"Hello." Charles could speak as human with vocal cords though his exterior was perfectly animal. "Would you like to die tonight?"

Two women screamed and one fainted into the arms of her partner, standing at her side. One of the men whispered, "What the hell?"

Another said, breathlessly. "Let's get out of here."

Charles watched them curiously as their reactions evolved from disbelief to understanding. Whether they could have voiced their thoughts or not, their instincts—and their eyes—told them he wasn't entirely human. He was the alien they had always wanted to meet, yet could never really believe existed. He was the childhood bogeyman. He was the fantastic thing hovering just at the edge of their nightmares, the shadow in the open closet door that shouldn't be there. He was the grave and the darkness of the void.

He wouldn't attack. He cared too little about these little people to take their lives. They were the ants working away at the base of a giant tree. They were ephemeral ripples on the surface of a pond.

They were nothing but food. They were blood containers. They were stupid and inferior.

They broke and ran, one of the men carrying the unconscious woman in his arms, staggering with her weight as he made his way across the street with the others. Passing cars screeched as the stunned drivers hit their brakes and bent over their horns in frustration.

Charles let his human face take over his features and then he laughed, his laughter trailing the fleeing mortals like a dark storm.

Once they had disappeared from the street, Charles walked on, a frightening smile on his face. He knew he'd played a parlor trick, but he'd enjoyed the moment immensely. There would be so many more like it. One day he'd transform before television cameras so that even those at the ends of the world could see him go from man to jaguar in milliseconds. They would worship and obey or die. Once his army grew from hundreds to hundreds of thousands, nothing could stop him.

Mankind did not need an Antichrist. They only needed Charles Upton.

Upton's plan to disrupt the natural order of the vampire nations was already underway. His soldier Predators walked the streets of Dallas, methodically decimating the lower level vampires, the despicable Cravens. A few of Ross' clan tried to intercept, but were quickly surrounded, outnumbered, and taken down.

In his first days as vampire Upton learned of the three distinct categories of vampires and how they lived on the Earth in peace and in hiding. He was repulsed by the Cravens from the beginning. They were weak and useless, creatures that hid from the sun which could scorch and burn them. They were physically ill, suffering the drastic symptoms of porphyria, the same disease that had plagued Upton when he'd been human.

Their very existence infuriated him because they reminded him too much of his last years with the same disease. They were an affront to the supernatural—bottom feeders who drained the efforts of Predators who helped keep them alive. Before his change, he'd believed vampires were not just supernatural beings using human forms, but nearer to gods who ruled the planet. When he'd found out about Cravens, who had no business taking up space, and Naturals, who in their fantasies thought they could continue to function as humans alongside mankind—well, he wanted to protest vehemently. It wasn't at all like he'd imagined. It wasn't at all as it should be. Better that vampires be exactly like the fictional depictions of them than to be so divided and weak.

That it had been this way from the beginning when porphyria mutated to create the vampire meant nothing to him. He thought the Predators should have made it their task to kill off the other nations immediately. They never should have been allowed eternal life, something rightfully reserved only for the creature who deserved the dark gift.

Mentor gave Upton some ridiculous explanation of why Cravens had chosen their path and why none of the rest of them had the authority to interfere. Upton had laughed in his face. "You must believe in a Supreme Being who is able to reason and create life. What a delusion!"

Mentor hadn't appreciated Upton's scorn. He had refused to speak to him of these things again. He warned him, however, to leave the Cravens alone. Leave all the others alone, he'd said.

Before he'd been imprisoned, Upton had followed the edict. Now he was free to do things his way, and it wouldn't include mercy for any but the Predators. And not even them if they refused to join with him. He didn't care how many vampires died. There were already more than enough to rule humanity. More Predators were born out of their human deaths every day. Humans might outnumber them a hundred thousand to one, but one Predator could bring a city to its knees if he wished. What were mortals going to do? Chase a being who could disappear? Fire weapons at a creature who healed in seconds and regenerated the flesh without thought or will?

Humans could not get close enough to take their heads. And if they used fire, they'd have to burn down all of civilization and still they wouldn't kill them all.

A stray little whirl of wind swept down the street, picking up leaves and litter from curbs and gutters. Upton glanced around to see he'd entered a rundown neighborhood. Older cars were parked along the street and in driveways. Shotgun houses stood in dark silent rows, all of them built fifty years ago or more and now sagging with age. There were few streetlights, no patrol cars, and no evidence of guard dogs.

He had reached his destination. Inside the small white house he faced resided the woman Mentor had come to love. He had learned of her from snooping in Mentor's thoughts one day before he displeased him enough to be sent to Thailand. Oh, Mentor loved her, all right. She was like a permanent stain he could not erase. She camped in his soul like a demon latched onto the devil's tail.

That woman slept now next to her husband, a doctor, neither of them dreaming their lives were about to end.

The predator cat came forward again, changing Upton's face into jaguar. He licked his wide cat lips with a rough feline tongue and moved stealthily toward the door.

4

Detective Lewis Teal was on his way home after a long day filling out paperwork. He had helped lead a task force to round up a crack cocaine ring in the city. All that had been left on the case were the endless forms he had to fill out and file with the correct departments.

He lived near the station in a second-rate hotel called The Swan, named, he presumed, long ago in a better economic climate and a more poetic time. The six-story hotel had once been home to addicts and welfare recipients who ran numbers and prostitutes too old for pimps. When he moved in, the whole place was nearly emptied and another sort of clientele moved in. In order to attract that clientele, the management had painted the lobby and hallways a pretty cream color, fixed the elevator, and put new light bulbs in the hanging sign over the sidewalk where the great, white swan herself floated on a neon strip of blue fizzing gases. Civil servants lived here now, bank clerks, the elderly on pensions, and, of course, a cop.

Teal had never married, not because he didn't want to, but because it just never quite worked out. He was a big, burly sort of fellow with brown suits that never really fit him and big black, lace-up shoes that he bought at a discount in warehouse department stores. His brow overhung his faded blue eyes and his jaw was a couple inches too long for his face. He wasn't Russell Crowe, he knew that. He wasn't even Jay Leno. He wasn't witty. He did not make much money because he was an honest cop and immune to graft. He wasn't anything to speak of, except smart and dedicated.