SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (69 page)

Those qualities didn't seem to turn women on.

Now at forty-five years old, and three years from retirement, he had accepted the idea he would always live alone. The Swan Hotel suited him just fine.

Tonight the air stank of exhaust fumes and dust, but he drank it in anyway, glad to be out of the office with the piles of papers. He was never happy anywhere but on the street. Paperwork almost killed him, like it did most cops.

A shady character walked toward him on the sidewalk, and Teal mentally froze. He began to wonder. Was the guy a contract killer? Was he a pedophile? A wife beater, at the very least? There was something hinky-odd about him and Teal didn't know what it was. After all, he was just a stranger passing in the night. Without grabbing the guy, handcuffing him, taking him back to the station for a fingerprint run, he had to pass the stranger by.

But he was definitely bad. Something bad about him.

As Teal and the man drew close and passed on the sidewalk, Teal looked into the other's eyes, searching for a telling hint to his character. For a split second he thought the eyes were those of a cat and the face that of a jungle beast. Jesus! They must have slipped something in the station's coffee urn. He was psychotic.

Truth was, he was probably overtired and his brain wasn't hitting on all cylinders. In fact, at this point, it didn't even have spark plugs.

Once the man passed by, Teal forced himself not to glance back. Guy hadn't broken the law. He was bad, but how was anyone to prove it? There were lots of bad guys. Lots.

Let it go, Teal, he told himself. You're a dead-ass, paperwork-blind cop and need ten hours' sleep. You're seeing monsters.

And then Teal saw the corpse. He knew it was a corpse. It wasn't moving and it was sprawled all wrong on the edge of the sidewalk, the head stuck under a dusty holly tree that grew just beside the entrance to The Swan Hotel.

Teal took his time approaching the dead body. It was dead. It wasn't going anywhere.

He looked all around and saw no one on the street. The bad stranger had come from this direction and maybe he'd killed this person, but then maybe he hadn't. Who knew? He'd call forensics and let them scope it out.

Maybe the dead guy had died from an overdose or too much booze and his liver did a fatal flip-flop or he had keeled over from a heart attack.

But it was the way he was lying on the sidewalk that told the veteran cop it was probably murder. It just didn't look good at all. It looked like the result of violence.

As he reached the body, Mrs. Carrie came out of the hotel dressed to the nines. She had on heels, patent leather, white. She wore a low-cut, flowered dress that showed off too much of her aged bosom. A strand of fake pearls dangled in the crevice. She was on her way to the bar two blocks distant, The Rocky Road. Teal always thought of ice cream when he went down there.

Mrs. Carrie hit the place at eight every night and didn't come back to her room until eleven, but she was never really drunk. Slightly tipsy and sweet, yes, but not drunk. Teal liked her just fine. She reminded him of his Polish grandmother, the one with the last name of Tealiski.

Teal reached the body before she saw it and he passed it by, hurrying to take her arm as she came down the concrete steps. "Evening, Miz Carrie. Beautiful night."

She looked up at him in alarm for an instant and, recognizing him, finally smiled to show her dentures, all white and large and as counterfeit as the pearl necklace. "Hello, Mr. Teal. Won't you have a drink with me?"

"Not tonight, but thank you. I'm a little tired. Next time, maybe." He guided her down the steps, careful to stay between her and the body on the sidewalk. He could block a truck when he wanted to. He turned her toward the bar and waggled his fingers at her as she tottered off on the patent leather high heels.

When she was across the street and into the next block, he turned and hunkered down near the body. Dead man. Murdered man. He just knew it.

He carefully moved the short, spiky branches of the holly tree aside so he could see the face. He grew very still, breathing shallowly. His massive barrel chest deflated. "Oh, shit," he said.

The man had a wound in his throat as wide as a wrestler's hand. There were . . . teeth marks. All the tendons and muscles lay bare, sucked or licked or sponged dry of blood. There wasn't a speck of blood anywhere on him. His eyes were open and glassy and looked as if they'd been sucked right back into his skull. The skin of his face was so tight it had pulled his lips back from his teeth, which appeared to be perfectly capable of tearing the hide from a running cow.

Teal let the holly limbs go and stood up. He reached to his waist for his cell phone. He hit the auto dial.

"Teal," he said. "Send the meat wagon and forensics down here to The Swan. I've got something . . . um . . . different here."

It was after midnight before Teal again left the station and headed for home. He had been over to the coroner's office. Well, not the office, he thought. The morgue. That's where he'd been. Curious, standing around with his big meaty hands behind his back, rocking from one foot to the other. The city coroner said the wound looked like some kind of animal attack. "Dog?" Teal wanted to know.

"Not likely," the coroner said.

"Not even a big dog?"

"Don't think so. This will take some study."

In his hotel room on the fourth floor, Teal got a quart bottle of orange juice from the little refrigerator in the corner, and pulled up a chair to the open window. He sat sipping the good, cold juice and looking out at the night. While he had been at the station, two other reports of dead bodies came in, throats slashed or gashed or . . . torn, hell if they knew. Other detectives were sent out on those cases.

The coroner was busy tonight. He had three mysteries to plague him and he was sorely pissed off about it.

Teal drank and looked at the street and thought he was getting pissed, too. Animals didn't kill people in his city. They just didn't.

~*~

Bette Kinyo's eyes flashed open as she was aroused from deep sleep by a psychic alarm going off in her head. She was breathing quickly, her heart throbbing painfully in her chest. It was no nightmare that had awakened her. There was something real prowling around her house seeking entry. She knew it was there as surely as she knew the Earth revolved. It was not Mentor. This presence was vampire and Predator, but not at all like Mentor.

She sat up and threw back the covers. She reached for Alan and shook him.

"Wake up," she whispered urgently. "Someone's here."

Alan woke slowly, rubbing at his eyes as he sat up. "Who's here?"

"Someone bad. A vampire." Bette was out of bed and going for the door. "Hurry, we need to get out."

Alan was slow in obeying his wife, sleep still dragging him down. "What did you say, Bette?" He looked at the clock on the bedside table. "My God, it's three in the morning."

She had the door of the bedroom open, her head turned to the side to listen down the stairwell. She put a finger to her lips and shut the door again, the soft click of the lock she turned sounding to her ears like a gunshot. She came to the bed and said next to his ear, "A vampire. To kill us. He's downstairs."

She didn't know what to do. Their escape was blocked. She glanced at the window that overlooked her garden. She knew she should have bought a rope ladder in case of fire, but she'd always put it off.

There was a roof below the window that sheltered the back door. It was small, but they could climb onto it one at a time and drop to the ground from there. It was the only way.

"Hurry," she said, hauling him by the hand from the bed. Her heart was now beating so rapidly she could hardly breathe.

She didn't really believe they'd be allowed to leave the house, but they must try. The vampire she detected downstairs was unlike any she'd met before. It was a Predator with the face of a cat. A very large black cat. She didn't believe it was Ross, the Predator Alan had once witnessed murdering two women. This was another vampire, one with his hatred held before him like a shield. He was heartless and would never be talked out of his murderous rage.

Alan had the window raised and she sat on the sill, swinging her legs out. She turned onto her belly and inched down the outside wall, feet dangling as she felt for the solid roof below.

She cried out mentally, calling Mentor's name. She'd only done that once before, and she'd been able to contact him before he reached Alan in Houston. She hoped he would hear her this time. Their lives depended on it. Fleeing would not take them far from the danger. The vampire in her house was coming up the stairs now and soon he'd be in the bedroom. He could appear and disappear at will if he was anything like Mentor. He wouldn't have to climb, but could fly from her window. A lock on a door was no deterrent for him.

Escape was truly impossible and though she knew it, she hurriedly dropped to the roof and caught herself from toppling to the ground. If they could keep the vampire at bay for just a few minutes more, Mentor might come and save them. It was their only hope.

She glanced back at the window and her husband. She saw he was coming from the window. He had swung one leg over the sill. She turned and leaped to the ground, rolling on the dew damp grass. She grunted from the impact, came to her knees and then to her feet. She looked to the window again, about to hurry her husband along. But Alan had vanished.

"Alan!" Her voice, strangled with fear, was not loud. She called again, "Alan!"

In her mind she screamed, Mentor! Help us!

The cat face appeared at her bedroom window. It hissed at her, the lips pulled back in a snarl. Her heart stopped, and she sucked in air to keep from passing out.

"Let him go," she called to the Predator, her voice still weak. "Please. Please let him go. Take me instead. Please, I'm begging you."

The awful face ducked back through the window, disappearing. Nightmare images flooded Bette's mind. The cat ravishing her husband Alan's throat torn open and pumping out his life's blood. His eyes closing forever.

She screamed, this time her voice returned to normal. She screamed at the top of her lungs. Lights came on in the house next door and dogs began to bark. She rushed to the back kitchen door and banged on it with her fists, weeping in frustration and mad with grief. It was locked. She couldn't get in. She couldn't get to Alan.

"Mentor, Mentor, Mentor, help us," she wailed, her fists breaking against the wood of the door like thunder against a mountainside.

~*~

Mentor had fallen into one of the deepest sleeps of his life. He was exhausted from worry. He didn't sleep but once in every three or four days and only then because the human body he inhabited forced him to it. But this night he lay down on his bed, covered his eyes with an arm, and was dead to the world in seconds.

The cry that woke him was so loud and so fearsome that his eyes snapped open and he could feel his skin drawing tight with dread.

It was Bette. She was on the brink of death or insanity, he could not tell which. He sat up in the dark bedroom and began to shimmer. He must reach her within the next few moments or she would be lost to him.

He shimmered again and he was behind her where she beat wildly at her own kitchen door from the outside. He reached out to take her arms. She turned, flailing at him, her face distorted with tears. He felt sorrow coming off her like heat from a stove. It inundated him and left him senseless.

She finally recognized him and fell forward against his chest. "Up there," she said between sobs. She pointed to the upstairs bedroom window. "A vampire! He's got Alan."

Mentor let her go and rose to the roof and then to the open window. He pushed through into the dark bedroom, but he could see everything as if it were day. There was no vampire, but he felt the presence that had been here. It was moving rapidly away from the house, taking its evil with it. On the floor lay Alan Star, Bette's husband. He had been savaged, his head nearly torn from the body. Blood covered him, covered the floor, the window sill, and the wall.

Mentor sighed and turned away his head. This was not a normal attack. Though every vampire attack was fatal, few of them were this vicious. It was as if the Predator who had done this meant to hurt others besides the victim. He wanted to leave behind enough carnage to damage the mind of anyone who witnessed it.

Mentor could not let Bette see it.

He heard her calling up to him, questioning him. Her cries were piteous. "Is he dead?" she called. "Is he dead, he isn't dead, is he, Mentor, he didn't die, did he?"

Mentor knelt by the body and took Alan's head and positioned it correctly. He placed his hand over the brutal wound and rested it there. He could make some repairs. He could not bring back this man's life, he hadn't that power, but he could close the worst of the severed flesh so that Bette would never know the horror of what had been done to the man she loved.

When he'd done what he could, he lifted Alan and carried him down the stairs. He laid him on the sofa and went to unlock the back door to let Bette inside. She was again beating at the door, her misery causing her to slip from her mind again. Mentor had learned over the years what made men go mad. The shock and grief Bette was experiencing were enough to plummet her over the edge if she didn't regain control. In madness the landscape changed, the world receded, and the mind sat in darkness, admitting no light.

He took her through the house, his arm around her waist to prop her up. She froze when she saw Alan on the sofa. Her shoulders began to shake. Though she was silent now, he could feel the terrible shock racing through her body. Suddenly, she slumped toward the floor, but he caught her before she hit and guided her to a chair. He found an afghan thrown over the back of the chair, and he took it across the room to cover the body.

There was still blood all over the pajamas Alan had been wearing. Mentor couldn't do anything about that. He wanted the body covered and away from sight. She had to see for herself he was dead and that was enough.