SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (70 page)

"Bette, I am so sorry. I came as fast as I could." He was not God. He could not prevent every disaster. He could not move instantaneously, covering miles without some time passing.

She couldn't speak. Or she wouldn't. He didn't know and refused to meddle by intruding into her mind. When he'd lost his wife to death, he had been this way. He knew no one could have reached him. He rode the waves of denial and acceptance alone until he could face living again. He must let Bette do the same.

He stood next to her, his hand on her shoulder, and waited. It might take hours, but she would have questions when she could speak to him and he had to be there to answer them.

The murderer had been Upton. He'd known it when he found Alan. He had detected the scent that belonged only to Upton. Since his escape in Thailand that scent had grown more and more like musk, the mark of the great jungle cat he favored.

Mentor did not have to ask himself why Upton would kill Alan. He had likely been after Bette instead, but she'd eluded him. He wanted to kill Bette because he knew what she meant to Mentor. If he had not fallen in love, and if that love had never been divulged through his thoughts of her, this would never have happened.

Bette might never forgive him. She loved Alan. One love was responsible for the death of another love. Who could forgive that?

He stood at her side, never moving, waiting for the sun to rise and for her to speak to him. This was his self-imposed punishment. Once he told her the truth about why Alan had died, he expected the punishment would be much more serious. She might banish him from her life. He could never visit her garden, never see her again. She would have no idea how that would leech all joy from him. He hoped he was wrong, he prayed she'd realize he couldn't help loving her and he'd had no part in Upton's theft of his most intimate thoughts.

He stood, mourning Alan, mourning for Bette and for himself. There was time enough later to let his fury carry him after the diabolical Charles Upton. For now he must wait, give solace, and eventually admit his guilt.

~*~

Dolan had always been a faithful servant to Mentor. If it were not for the great vampire, Dolan thought he would have long since killed himself. Mentor gave him reasons to live. He'd trained him in some of the Predator's arts and just as he'd predicted, Dolan possessed more strength and ambition than his Craven brothers. For years Dolan had gone with Mentor to the bedside of the younger vampires who were going through the red dream of death. He could not enter that fantastic world where the soul departed, returning as vampire, but he grew to have great respect for the crossover they all must make into immortality.

While Charles Upton had been imprisoned, it was Dolan's job to help monitor him. He'd failed miserably at it he often thought Mentor sent him to the Thai monastery to keep him busy. Given his weaker supernatural abilities, Dolan knew his desire to serve was stronger than his aptitude. As years stretched into decades, time being the vampire's worst enemy, Dolan spent more and more time at the peaceful retreat in the Thai jungle. As those years passed he grew lax and content, his attention often straying from Upton's cell.

Now Mentor had trusted him with another important assignment, and he must not fail this time. He had already alerted three Craven communities, urging them to scatter somewhere away from the city to an open place that could not burn. They should go to ground, digging into the earth and burying themselves, he said, and pray the renegade Predators didn't find them.

He was approaching another Craven communal house when he smelled a hint of smoke in the air. His throat constricted as he hurried, his feet flying over the long expanse of neglected lawn leading to the house. Before he entered, he heard the cries of his brethren. Struggling, Dolan forced open the locked door and a cloud of black smoke engulfed him. He tried to narrow his vision so he could peer into the thick darkness, but it was like looking through murky water. He could make out figures writhing and crawling about, desperately trying to find the exit. He screamed at them to follow his voice. "Here's the door," he yelled, hoping they could hear him through their panic. There was nothing more devastating to a vampire than to be trapped in a fire.

Now he could make out the flames burning through walls and roof, and he heard the crackling as the fire swept through the large old house, consuming it with wicked speed. One or two Cravens made it to the door and stumbled out, their faces blackened with soot, their eyes wild with terror.

Dolan could not go inside. He knew he should. He knew if he were brave, he would. But the heat from the fire even now crawled over his face and hands like fiery worms and the smoke blinded him. His instinct was to run far away. The Predators who had set the fire were gone, and the Cravens left inside were doomed. Even if he entered the maelstrom, he might not save a single one.

He pulled one or two more survivors from the doorway and commanded them to flee from the city. Then he moved back on the lawn, sirens rising in the distance, and rubbed at his face with his hands. This was against all the rules they had once lived by. No one had ever murdered his own kind this way, heartlessly trapping the weak who could not save themselves. It was a truly evil entity who had ordered it. Charles Upton should burn in hell forever for this merciless act, he thought.

Before the fire trucks arrived, Dolan left, hurrying to the next place harboring the Cravens. As the night deepened, he found more and more houses burning with the Cravens trapped inside. He saved only two or three out of every house, sometimes dragging them from the buildings or throwing them from windows.

It seemed the whole city was on fire, fire trucks wailing through the seedier neighborhoods where these poorer vampires lived. Fire lit the night sky while smoke billowed and hung like storm clouds over whole blocks of houses. Mortals rushed from their homes, watching the burning of their neighborhoods, the sparks from the Cravens' homes dancing through updrafts to fall and take fire again on nearby roofs.

While hauling a few survivors from one building, Dolan saw Ross and a female standing in a yard across the street. He saw that house, too, was on fire, the roof caving from flame. He hoped Ross would help and send more Predators to his aid. This was too big for him. It was out of control. Wherever he went seeking out his kind, he found the renegades had gotten there before him.

This was truly a catastrophe. He estimated hundreds of Cravens had perished within hours. He didn't know where Mentor was, but if these events were any indication of the upheaval the vampire nations faced, it was going to be a bloodbath. Mentor would face the greatest difficulty putting down the rebellion.

They had to find Upton and stop him.

Ross crossed over the street, the female at his back. He said, "I've just returned from Lanzarote. What's going on here?"

Dolan didn't know where Lanzarote was or why Ross had been there, but he was tremendously relieved to see him. "The lairs of the Cravens are burning all over the city. I can't get to them in time. Everywhere I go the fire's already burning."

"Where's Mentor? Why isn't he here?"

"I don't know. He sent me. I don't think he knew there would be so many working against us tonight."

"We'll help you," Ross said. "I'll call some others to join us. We must stop this." He turned to Sereny. "Try to call for help from my clan. I have to handle the media and the police. This will be all over television if I don't get to them."

Trusting Ross to handle the big picture, Dolan hurried to the next block just ahead of a fire engine, hoping to find the lair intact enough to get some of the Cravens out. His mission had saved so few, and there were so many more places he had to get to. With Ross' help they might have a chance.

~*~

Ross flew above the city in the areas that were burning in order to find the fire trucks and television crews. He came down and went to them one at a time, mesmerizing the reporters and everyone involved. They turned off their lights, their cameras, and filed obediently into their vans to leave, having already forgotten why they'd come in the first place. Next, Ross found the police and, though it seemed to take forever, he implanted in their minds different memories of the entire night.

This took many hours. Every time Ross approached a human, all he wanted to do was open his jugular and drink. Controlling his blood need took every bit of his effort. But he could not let the fires and the many deaths be reported. It would start a panic in the city—just what Upton wanted, he assumed. Well, he would not get his way.

All through the night Ross tracked down every human he could find who might write, photograph, or report in any way how strange the fires seemed to be and how the targets were all run-down houses full of sick people.

Toward dawn the fires were all out and Ross had reached everyone who might say anything to create a panic. For this extreme aggravation alone, he thought he could cheerfully tear Charles Upton into a million tiny, bloody bits.

When he returned to his house and found Sereny there sleeping already, he crawled in beside her in the bed and put his arm around her body.

He could sleep for a decade, but he knew the night would come quickly and he'd be out again, fighting Upton's forces.

Sereny mumbled in her sleep and turned to face him. He hugged her close, shutting out the war in the city. There would be time enough for all that when the sun set.

~*~

Detective Teal came up to one of the fires that had only been snuffed out. It was almost dawn. He saw a man speaking to a television crew and watched as the crew packed up their van and readied to drive away. The man who had spoken to them seemed to have vanished. Teal looked around and couldn't find him anywhere. Slick bastard, he thought. What's his game?

Teal hadn't slept at all. The fires started after midnight. He'd seen the first fire glow from his fourth-story room. He made nothing of it, but he didn't leave his chair either. He wasn't sleepy yet, what the hell.

Then two hours later he heard fire engines and saw another fire in the distance, the glow against the bottom of floating clouds. A big one, he thought. What's up?

When he saw the third fire, he hopped from his chair and made for the door. Something was so wrong tonight it was like being dropped dead smack into some crazy movie written by a screen writer out of his head on crystal meth. Victims with their necks torn open and drained dry of blood. Fires.

It meant something. Maybe it was all connected, though it didn't have to be, of course.

He'd just go see for himself.

He took his car from behind the hotel and drove toward the latest glow in the city. Now he was here approaching the television crew. He jumped from his car and hurried across the street. "Hey," he said, flipping out his badge at the blonde woman reporter. Pretty, Teal thought, in a plastic, collagen-lipped sort of way. "What's the deal here?" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the fire that still smoldered. It must have been a big house, maybe an apartment building. It was a shambles now. People must have perished. Big news.

The reporter stared at him like he was a fish.

Teal snapped his fingers in her face. "You," he said. "Can you hear me?"

The woman swallowed. She blinked. She said in a prim voice, "There's no news here."

"I beg your pardon?"

"This is not newsworthy. We'll be on our way now, thank you."

When she turned her back on him, his mouth gaped. "Wait," he called, gathering his wits. He had to rush to the door of the van to keep her from shutting him out. "Look, how many fires does this make tonight? Three? Four? Is there an arsonist loose in the city?"

He swiveled his head, expecting to see a police cruiser. Hell, he'd ask the officers. But the area had emptied. There were no patrol cars. No police. This was as eerie as an eclipse of the sun. Nothing made a lick of sense. If it had been arson, where was the crime scene yellow tape? If it wasn't, where were the families of the victims?

He had his hand on the van window's ledge. "Please let go of my door," the woman said. "We have to leave now. It is imperative we leave."

Teal stepped back, confused. He watched the van drive away.

He looked around and thought again, this ain't right, this ain't right no way, no how, boyo.

He returned to his car and, first scanning the city horizon, headed toward the next fire glow reflected off the night sky. He'd hunt this dog until it broke a leg. He jerked the microphone off the dash and called in. "How many cars you got out at the fires?" he asked.

"Fires?" Dispatch asked.

"Am I speaking Armenian to you? Fires, fires! House fires. Apartment fires. Someone's torching stuff all over Dallas, are you freaking asleep? Give me Sergeant Travers.”

A cold, white hand covered Teal's fist and crushed his fingers over the microphone. Teal jumped so hard and high his head hit the roof of the car. His testicles crawled up his body, and it felt like a buzz saw had just run over his scalp.

The hand belonged to the man he'd seen speaking to the reporter. He sat in Teal's car now, having appeared there out of thin air. Teal hit the brakes and swerved the car one-handed to the curb. The man let go of his hand.

Teal dropped the microphone. He went for his holster and the gun there.

The hand again, magically it seemed, stayed him. "Uh-uh," the man said.

"What the . . . ?"

Then the world dimmed, and he thought he was floating down the pretty green Guadalupe River in a rowboat. He was relaxed and dreamy, his big belly unencumbered in a pair of loose shorts and his shirt open to the warm sun. A voice spoke softly at his ear and he listened, his head turned slightly to the side.

The next thing he knew it was morning and he was lying in his hotel bed in the same clothes from the night before. He hadn't even removed his big shoes so the sheets wouldn't get dirty.

He was disgusted with himself. He must have had one too many with Mrs. Carrie. He had to stop that shit, even if she did look like his grandmother. He'd be late to work. He had to hurry and take a shower and get his other brown suit from the Mayfair Cleaners. It was going to be a long day.