SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (83 page)

Malachi sat down in the water. Maybe he could drink it. He hadn't tried that yet. If he drank it—untainted, undoctored water—he might get back his mind.

He reached out both hands to cup them in the muddy swirl at his feet. The guard drew back the thatched roof and threw rocks at him.

He couldn't drink. They wouldn't let him have anything but what they gave him.

He dropped his hands to his sides and the rock throwing stopped. The roof dropped down. The guard laughed like a maniac.

Mom, Malachi thought weakly.

The roof lifted again and the guard leaned down and knocked him in the head with a club. The guard had heard that. He was a part of his prisoner's mind. He heard everything Malachi tried to think. That was his job.

Malachi fell against the muddy side of his watery grave. He felt an instant headache bloom and take over his whole physical being. All he could think about was the pain.

They dropped a pan into the hole. "Start dipping," the guard commanded. "Throw the water out before it gets too deep."

Malachi thought of disobeying, but only for a moment. It was no use. They always won. If he didn't do it, they'd beat him unconscious and, cursing him, haul out the water themselves.

He lazily dipped the pan and caught it full. He stood shakily and threw the water up and out. He did not know why he must do this. The rain kept coming down. Water streamed over the sides from the land. It was coming in faster than he could throw it out.

He dreaded the monsoon rains more than anything. Once it had filled his hole so fast they had to run to a village and get a pump. They had to suction out the water to keep him from drowning. They could have just taken him out of the hole during rains like this, but that was too easy. That might give him hope.

He must stay cold, hungry, thirsty, and miserable.

It was endless, mindless work to dip the pan. Fill it. Hold it steady. Lift it. Throw it over the top of the hole and hope the water did not slip back.

Dip the pan . . .

Fill it . . .

Hold it steady . . .

Lift it . . .

Throw it . . .

He knew now why he thought he might be insane.

"I'm a man, damnit!" he screamed up at the guards. Something had gotten into him, maybe a brain parasite that causes rebellion, because he rarely fought back anymore. It took too much energy.

He squashed the imaginary parasite and winced when they said, "Shut up. You're not a man and you're not a vampire. You're nothing."

That is what they told him when he protested. He was nothing.

If he believed them, he would die. That is what they wanted, for him to die. It was boring duty to watch him in the hole. They took turns, but it was still an annoyance. They would be glad for him to die as it would set them all free.

He looked up at the rain, squinting.

He would not die.

He hoped they died from their boredom first.

He hoped someone would come and tear off their grinning faces and drape them on poles.

He hoped he could keep enough of his sanity to survive.

~*~

They were on their way. They had gathered at the foot of a mountain range in Thailand, a hundred Predators and Mentor and Dell. Dell knew where to go. They had their plan. Though it was raining, a cloudburst that poured buckets and soaked them to the skin, nothing would deter them.

Mentor touched Dell's arm. "It's almost over," he said. "Are you ready?"

She knew what he was really saying. Was she ready to discover her son after eighteen months of imprisonment and torture? Could she handle it?

"I'm ready," she said, but she felt sick. For the first time in years she felt dread.

They started out through the jungle, each of them moving soft and gentle as a praying mantis. They would have to surround the camp where Malachi was kept. They would have to surprise his captors. They all walked with their minds shuttered fast so as not to be detected.

They looked like a crazy pilgrimage of mystics, plodding up the mountainside in the drenching rain. A hundred and two vampires going to the rescue of one young dhampir.

~*~

The rain beat down in a homicidal rage. It stung Malachi's shoulders and arms and face. His shoulder-length, tangled hair kept getting in his eyes when he bent to scoop the water in the pan. He was the mechanical man, moving from habit, empty of mind and spirit. The guard, furious he was suffering in the elements because of his charge, taunted Malachi and threw rocks at him when he didn't move fast enough.

Malachi did not know how long he spent bending, scooping water, throwing it over the top of the pit. For all he knew this was the whole world and his entire existence in it. He could have been doing this since the day he was born. He'd done this sort of labor for years. His attention was narrowed to the water, the pan, and his cruel tormentor who screamed and pelted him with stones.

Thunder crashed, lightning zigzagged from sky to ground, striking the earth with a shudder. The rain was a berserk demon pounding the earth to submission.

At least two minutes passed before Malachi even noticed the voice had stopped babbling curses at him and the stones had ceased falling. He paused in the process of emptying the full pan of water, his arm held up above his head. His hand shook. Water sloshed out of the pan. Rain continued falling in hard, stinging droplets without letting up.

But everything had changed, everything. Malachi's dim mind struggled to distinguish what those changes were. He ticked them off slowly in his mind as he lowered his arm and swished the pan in the rising water around his knees.

One: The guard was gone. Or seemed to be.

Malachi couldn't see or hear him. He could see no one at all above his prison walls. It was the first time since he'd been brought here that he had been left alone.

Two: There was no evidence of the other vampires who he knew camped just on the rise above his pit. He always heard them and sensed them, even into the nights, and into his sleep. But now it was as silent as if a bomb had blown them all away and left him in his gravelike hole with only the steadfast drum-drum-drum of the rain.

He stood still, waiting. Surely the guard would peep over the side of the pit and leer at him and throw a stone, striking him in the eyes, dead center.

He blinked and grimaced in anticipation. That was it. That's what they were up to. Another trick to break his mind. Something to really drive him all the way over the edge, spilling his brains out his ears so he would start screaming and wouldn't be able to stop.

He waited, breathing through his mouth as the rain poured down his uplifted face.

Only the rain flowed. Only the splashing of the rain drummed around his legs.

Well, he thought, this is new. I don't like new situations. It usually means they've thought of an even greater torment for me.

Then he slumped into the mud and water, his bottom sinking down and down. His ragged shorts ballooned and then deflated. The cold water covered him above the waist. He let the pan go, and it floated away like the shadow of a silver moon.

He hung his head.

He couldn't take this any longer.

He couldn't take their cruelty and horrible tricks.

They expected him to crawl out and run away. That's what they wanted him to do. So they could spear him in the back or catch him in a net or trip him into a pit of sharpened bamboo. They meant to amuse themselves at his expense.

He was much too tired and dead to play their game. He would simply sit and wait here for them to tire and return.

Mom. . . .

~*~

"Malachi?"

Yes, Mom. I'm here. Why won't you come get me? You don't know, you don't KNOW, how bad this is.

"Malachi!"

What? What do you want of me? I can't help it. I can't get up and climb out of this pit. They'll kill me if I do.

A hand reached over his shoulder and gripped the front of his sodden shirt. It was a small white hand. A girl's hand. It did not belong here. There were no girls or women in the camp. What was he thinking? He had hallucinated before. Once he'd even seen Danielle in the pit with him, stroking the side of his face, and crying. He had told her to go away. She made him want to die. She shouldn't see him this way. He loved her and he was about to die without her.

The grip from the small white hand tightened and pulled. The buttons on his shirt popped and plinked into the water. His shirt, the material old and rotten, was tearing apart.

He lifted his head to see who belonged to the hand. See what kind of torture they had in mind for him now.

He saw his mother.

He closed his eyes. Dreaming. Just dreaming again. Or maybe his guard had found a way to transform into the image of his mother. That had to be it. They would never let him go. They would run him out of his mind before they ever let him go. He couldn't even seek his own death because they wouldn't let him. They were too hideous to him, keeping him alive this way. If he had the energy, he would hate them.

His shirt ripped apart, allowing the rain to stream down his bare chest. Someone screamed his name.

He wished they wouldn't scream that way. It hurt his ears. But they were very good at screaming.

He opened his eyes. It was his mother. His young, pretty vampire mother. She of the small white hand. Crying blood tears that turned pink as they mingled with the rain. Pulling at him, trying to get him to his feet.

He smiled at her. It was a wonderful dream.

"Say my name again," he said. "Say it, Mama.”

“Oh, Malachi."

He smiled.

"Malachi, please," she said, frantic to pull him from the watery pit.

He blinked, unsure, mistrustful. "Who are you?" he asked. "Please, Malachi, stand up! Can you stand up? I'm your mother."

And he smiled dreamily as he rose from the muddy water and came, obediently, to his feet.

If she said his name just once more, he would climb from the pit.

"Son."

"Yes," he said, the smile stretching his lips and expanding his heart.

"Malachi." Her voice was pleading and sorrowful.

"Yes," he said and he climbed from hell into the world above.

The End

Thank You For Reading! Continue reading the third novel, HUNTER OF THE DEAD. I hope you enjoy the trilogy.

HUNTER OF THE DEAD

By Billie Sue Mosiman

Smashwords Edition published at Smashwords by Billie Sue Mosiman

Copyright 2011 by Billie Sue Mosiman

This book was copy-edited by David Dodd.

DEDICATION

For my husband, Lyle Mosiman, and all believers everywhere.

Chapter 1

TEXAS

He wandered misty corridors of a gray landscape where the air smelled of stagnant water. In the murky water’s depth, life seethed and boiled around his feet. Peering closer Malachi saw the floor of the pit rife with worm and beetle, with things teeming in agitation, squirming to rise to the surface. He stepped back in shock as the water rose above his knees. The top of the water rippled with pockmarks caused by raindrops large as nickels. He looked to the stormy sky and squinted, rain battering his face and shoulders in stinging waves. Clouds the color of a bruised banana, sickly yellow and black, hung low and menacing. It was a dome not made by heaven, but imagined by a madman.

Oh, he could not be here again. Not again. He’d spent more than eighteen months in the pit, in the thatch-covered prison watched over by vampire Predators who taunted and tortured him, led by the monster, Charles Upton. He could not bear it again. Not again.

He heard someone calling his name. Malachi. It was a soft, female voice. It sounded like his mother, but his captors had fooled him before by transforming into a passable facsimile of her earthly form. He ignored the voice, telling himself not to reach for hope only to be horribly disappointed. His captors would not make sport of him this way.

It was perplexing to be here again, in the watery pit, rain sluicing down his body, slicking his ragged clothes to his skin. The chill was bone deep, causing him to shiver and ache. The awful squirming of the live things brushed his naked legs and feet. He winced with disgust and mentally moved away to some thought that might relieve this torture. He would think of Danielle, the girl he loved, the girl who waited for him still…

Malachi.

He opened his eyes, startled. There she was calling him. It could be her. It might be his mother. He’d prayed long enough for rescue. Maybe God took mercy and sent his vampire mother to save him. He was but dhampir, part human, with an inheritance of vampire strength and very few supernatural abilities from his mother. He had never done anything against mankind or against heaven. Why would a just God let him languish in this hell where he was drugged, tranquilized, and kept in a hole in the ground on an isolated mountainside in Thailand? Why was this happening to him?

The voice.

It could be his mother.

A small hand reached down into the pit for him. He sat down abruptly, sinking into the water until it ballooned his torn pants and splashed up past his bare nipples where the shreds of his shirt clung down the sides of his ribs. A hand, small and white, with nails squared on the ends. Was it an hallucination? Or had his mother really come for him? If she called his name just one more time, if she could convince him she was indeed his mother and not one of his captors playing a cruel trick, he would rise and turn to her. He would take her hand and crawl from this watery grave into the light of the natural world.

He woke, dripping cold sweat, sitting up in his bed, in his parents’ house.