SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (76 page)

"Hi."

Alex held out his hand for shaking, but Jeremy didn't take it. He bounded past the two of them instead, heading for the horse shed.

"Jeremy, no!" Malachi was right behind him.

"Where's he going?' It seemed to Alex he kept asking questions and no one answered them.

Malachi caught up with the kid and swept him from the ground. He slung him over his shoulder. He turned back to Alex. "Wait here a minute. I've got to get Jeremy back in the house."

Alex stood around the horse stalls, petting Malachi's horse. When Malachi finally returned, he looked like someone with a very big problem. "What's with that kid?" Alex asked.

"He's just . . . uh . . . he's, like, hyperactive or something. We can't let him around the horses. He scares them."

"He kind of scares me, too." Alex laughed uneasily. "Now tell me, where have you been? Have you signed up for your first semester in Huntsville? I have to go down to Houston pretty soon and find a place to live." He meant for his first semester at Baylor College of Medicine. "I was thinking maybe we could make a day of it, me and you."

Malachi reached out and stroked his horse's head. "I don't think I can do that, Alex. There's some stuff going on around here. We have to try to help Jeremy. And there's some other things . . ."

"Well, hell, Mal, let's talk about it. Maybe that would help. I haven't seen you in months because I've been working so many hours. I've missed you, you big goof."

Malachi smiled now and Alex felt better.

"I can't really talk about it."

"Aw, you're always so secretive. You ought to let your fiends help out. Have you seen Danielle?"

"Not for a while."

Alex whistled. "You really are tied up, aren't you?”

“I'm afraid so. I might be able to tell you about it later. Right now . . . I can't . . . you know . . ."

Alex hung around for a while longer, but he couldn't get Malachi to open up. They parted with a handshake. Then Alex saw Jeremy come out onto the porch again and Malachi hurried back toward the house. "Thanks for coming by," he said, waving to Alex. "I'll call you, okay?"

Jeremy was off the porch and sidling around the side of the house, trying to get away from Malachi. Alex climbed into his car and as he drove away from the ranch, he saw his friend chasing the kid behind the house. Whew, he thought. That kid needs a keeper.

~*~

Bette Kinyo took the elaborately carved brass urn from the funeral director and held it tightly to her chest. In the car she placed it carefully in a box stuffed with newspaper on the front seat.

Alan.

With her again.

The police were stuck with an open criminal case, seeking an intruder she described for them. Not the monster who had really come. They wouldn't have believed that. They would have wanted to put her into therapy or lock her away. No, she described some scruffy imaginary man high on drugs. The police believed her, given her neighborhood, even when she wanted to scream the truth.

Now Alan was cremated, as he'd wished to be, and he rode beside her in the car in the beautiful urn she'd bought to contain his ashes. Some people drifted the ashes of their loved ones over a favorite piece of ground or into the sea, but she would keep all that was left of Alan with her always. His remains gave her some consolation. She felt his spirit close, hovering about, and superstitiously feared if she didn't have his ashes, he would disappear from her life forever.

Once Mentor had let her know where he lived in the city. They had been sitting on the stone bench in her garden late one night. He had told her more about his life in Dallas and how he lived it. He lived in a house, just like anyone else. Vampires hadn't ever lived in crypts and coffins. That was a fiction, he told her. Well, except for a couple of odd characters he had known, he admitted sheepishly. They believed the press on themselves and thought it quite romantic, so they adopted the lifestyle. For the most part, however, they all made their homes in human constructions, living quietly, seeking anonymity. They always had.

"Why do you want me to know where you live?" she'd asked.

"Because I trust you and if you ever need me and can't contact me, you'll know where I'll be."

Mentor loved her. One of the monsters loved her. The strange thing was, she accepted his love as natural. Destiny decided these things, she believed, and if she were to have a relationship, however one-sided, with a supernatural being, then it was preordained for her soul's growth.

Now she drove across the city toward that house. She had thought he'd be with her during the service for her husband, and when he hadn't arrived, she'd been disappointed. Some of her coworkers from the lab came and a few of Man's family drove from different Texas locations to see him put to rest. But with Mentor missing, it was like a dark hole had opened up in the chapel to suck the life from the proceedings. She had come to rely on Mentor to alleviate some of her fears. When he wasn't there for the service, she gave in to her grief and saw life ahead as barren and empty.

The neighborhood she drove through now was an older one, though not as old or run-down as her own. The houses stood on larger plots, with plenty of room between them. Most of the houses were made of wood and many of them boasted covered porches and wide steps flanked by stucco pillars.

She found Mentor's house and pulled into the drive. Mentor, she thought. I need help. I need so much help.

The door opened, and there he stood looking at her sitting in the car. He didn't seem surprised. He probably had known she was on her way. She admired how the vampire could reach into another person's thoughts at great distances. Though she'd been born with some abilities of her own, they didn't compare to what Mentor and his kind could do.

She reached into the cardboard box and withdrew the urn. Her fingers were slow to warm the cold metal. She carefully let herself out of the car and crossed the lawn. On reaching Mentor she stood looking up at him, the urn again clutched to her chest. "I . . . I couldn't go home."

"I know. Come inside."

They sat next to one another in the darkened living room. His home was comfortable, though the furniture was older and rather worn. The place was spotless, not a speck of dust anywhere. A book lay on the coffee table. A novel by Steinbeck. She smiled to think Mentor read novels in his spare time. She wondered if he'd read all the authors of every age he'd lived through. If he had, she expected he was the best-read person in the world.

He offered her tea and she declined. "I'm sorry I wasn't at the service held for Alan," he said. "The vampire nations are in turmoil. I couldn't leave my duties."

"That's all right," she said, feeling it wasn't all right at all. She'd needed him.

Finally he asked, "How can I help, Bette?"

"All the joy has left my life," she said, feeling her statement was not too strong. It was the truth. Light had been extinguished all around her and nothing gave her any satisfaction—not her job, her home, nothing.

"It'll come back," Mentor said. "You're in a dark place, but there's a way out."

She had placed Alan's urn on the table. She stared at it as if she could will her husband to lift the lid and come out like a genie from a bottle.

"I believe you. I know it's true. But that isn't helping me now. I had to take time from work. I can't seem to get up in the morning. I drag around the house and don't even get dressed until most of the day has passed and by then it makes no sense to put on clothes." She felt a catch in her throat and had to swallow hard. "Do you know why I never married until late in life?"

"I wouldn't say your early thirties is so late."

"Maybe not for you. For someone like me, it was.”

“Tell me why, then."

"You won't go into my mind and know the answer before I say it?" She looked at him.

"No, I won't."

"You don't know everything about me from the times you did go into my mind?" She referred to their first meetings when he and Ross feared she would tell the world what she knew about the shipments of blood from Dallas to outlets all over the Southwest.

"I know some things," he said tentatively. "Not everything."

"Well, the reason I didn't marry until I was thirty-two was because I thought I was better off alone. I'd convinced myself that was the way it should be. Except for Alan, I didn't date, didn't get involved. When he came to Dallas and stayed, I realized I had been fooling myself, protecting myself. Since I'd met him in college I'd wanted to be with him. I wanted to be his wife. But I'd put the thought so far out of my mind because we were going in different directions. He loved the healing profession. I loved research. His home then was in Houston, where he practiced. Mine was here. We met at medical conferences once or twice a year, renewing our affair and then parting again for months. It was killing me, but I denied my feelings."

"We all do that sometimes," he murmured.

She glanced at him. He meant his feelings for her. He'd denied them for as long as he could, and had only confessed them to her when he couldn't hold back anymore.

"I spent some of my best years alone because I didn't know how to get what I wanted," she continued. "I didn't know how to give up, how to sacrifice the career I'd made for myself here in Dallas. I built a small world in my home, created simple routines that kept my mind busy. I told myself I didn't need anyone in order to be fulfilled." She paused, the catch back in her throat. "I lied to myself."

"We all do that." Mentor sat still, not looking at her. She wondered what he was thinking. Maybe he thought she was whining about lost opportunity. And maybe she was. But it was thoroughly human and she couldn't help it.

"Now," she said, "I don't know how to go on. I waited so long to be part of a couple. It's been nearly twenty years since then, Mentor. I'm fifty-two. I thought we'd . . . Alan and I . . . would grow old together. But now I'm on my own again. And I've forgotten how to do it. I've forgotten how to live."

Mentor moved to put his arm around the top of her shoulder. She leaned into him. It was amazing that she'd known this old vampire for two decades. They'd shared many secrets and come to know one another intimately. She'd been drawn to him from the first time he appeared in her kitchen to wipe the memories from her mind. She'd been on the trail of Ross' blood shipments that hadn't been tested by her lab. Alan came along and, investigating further, discovered the vampires, though she'd known from the beginning they were in some way supernatural.

She should have despised Mentor for meddling with her mind, but once she was past her fear of him, she understood the reasons for it. He was the Protector. He couldn't let her tell what she knew to the world. Their agreement of silence had bound them together for the rest of her life. He promised not to let Ross hurt her or Alan. In return, she promised never to speak of what she knew.

"You may have forgotten what it's like to be alone, Bette, but you underestimate your strength. I don't think I've known many like you," he said. "I believe you'll come out of this."

She closed her eyes. If he could believe in her, she might find a way to believe in herself again. "Can I stay here a while?"

"Yes. As long as you want."

"A few days? I can't seem to go back to the house yet.”

“As long as you want," he repeated.

She settled against him and the weariness of the past days swept over her. It was as if she'd been given permission to let her mind drop into a dungeon where there was no emotions to tear at her spirit. She sought oblivion.

As she drowsed, she imagined the arm around her shoulder belonged to Alan and he was there caring for her. Loving her. Forever.

Chapter 8

Ross stood next to Sereny in his home while she admired his art. He'd bought or stolen pieces that by all rights should have been donated to museums. It was a new sensation for him to share his fascination for his masterpieces with anyone. The women he brought here were for the most part uneducated and wouldn't know a Matisse from a Pollock. It would be all dots to them. He laughed to himself over his small joke.

His Predators weren't close to him, never expecting an invitation to his home or into his life. None of them even knew of his obsession. And Mentor, god. Mentor despised his collection. He was always uncomfortable when he visited the house. Ross knew what he thought of him. That he was pretentious. That he wasted the money he earned from Upton's former businesses.

Sereny was the first person who showed any appreciation at all, and her authentic awe for the vastness and quality of his collection pleased him enormously.

Over time he'd understood what the masterful paintings did for him. Unlike living beings, the world of mortals, whose passions were based on survival, art expressed true passion for him. Released from care about his survival, he had found artwork the only reason man should be allowed to continue. A few talented artists of every age captured the heart of what it was to struggle and overcome, or to fail and face the music. Whether their work was considered representational, paintings of life as most saw it, or allegorical, or cubist, or modern, the artist took paint and canvas and made of it windows into the eternal.

Though Ross sometimes scoffed at his own sentimentality, he recognized how his collection kept him from falling over the edge into baseness. He often teetered on the precipice where he might become the one true monster the world found most odious—that dark stain of destruction personified which walked without a soul.

Mentor would tell him that was not possible. It was his soul itself that had chosen the Predator life. And being Predator did not mean he was monstrous.

But Mentor had never traveled in his soul and didn't know how thin a line it walked between monster and human. He gave in to his appetites. He could feel no remorse. He didn't care how much suffering was inflicted on mortal men. They were like rats to him, multiplying without any care whatsoever about how they were overpopulating the very planet they called home.