SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  "How did you do that?" He rose to his feet, a few of the cards still held in his hands while the others lay about him on the floor.

  "Never mind. Answer my question first. Where did you get the cards? I only have paper and pen. No one has ever offered me cards."

  Her voice was quiet and controlled, very unlike how it sounded when she was in a rage and the monks stood in the hall threatening to bind and gag her if she didn't shut up.

  "I asked for them so I could play solitaire. Joseph brought them yesterday."

  "Yes, I heard him," she said. "May I see the cards?" She floated to him and bent to retrieve a card from the floor. Suddenly Charles knew he must stop her. He couldn't risk her seeing how the figures came to life. He snatched the card from her hand before she was able to do more than glance at it.

  "No, you may not," he said. "They're mine."

  "Unfriendly cuss, aren't you?" A hint of a smile turned up her lips. "I've thought of visiting you before, but now I see it was a mistake. I should have stayed away."

  Her form shimmered and retreated. Charles, feeling an urgent sense of abandonment, stepped forward with his hand outstretched to stop her, and said, "No, wait! Don't go."

  The shimmering ceased and she was solid again. "Why did Mentor bring you here?"

  Charles lowered his head so she could not see the hatred he felt. He knew it disfigured his face. "He was scared of me." He lifted his gaze. "Why did he bring you here?"

  "I lost my mind."

  Charles found her honesty startling. "Are you still mad?" he asked.

  "Not as much as I was a hundred years ago."

  "You've been here a hundred years?" The very thought of spending a hundred years in this dreary place made his heart constrict, as if a knife had been plunged through it.

  "A hundred and eight years, actually," she said. "But that's old news and boring besides. Do you never answer questions put to you?"

  He'd forgotten what she'd asked. The thought of a century imprisoned behind these walls had completely filled his mind with despair.

  "Why did Mentor bring you?" She repeated the question for him as if she knew his confusion.

  "I told you, he was scared of me and how much power I might one day have over him."

  "That's ridiculous." Madeline leaned now against the wall and stared at the small barred window where morning light filtered into the cell. "Mentor is not afraid of anyone."

  "You know of Ross?" Charles asked.

  "The Predator who controls the blood in the southwestern area of the United States?"

  "The very same. He wanted my companies and my tremendous wealth. He and Mentor decided I'd be better off out of the way."

  "Poppycock."

  "What?"

  "You lie." She turned from the window and began to shimmer out of existence. "Everything you say is a lie. I don't even care about your cards. I shouldn't have visited."

  "Wait, stop going away like that."

  "Why should I? I hate few things more than a liar."

  "All right, then! Mentor knew I was planning to take over operations. I was going to get Ross to help me. Or I thought I was . . ."

  She solidified again, turning her face to him. He could see her intelligent eyes questioning the veracity of his words. He would tell her the truth, by glory. He had been alone so long without seeing anyone but the damned wordless monks. He hadn't held a real conversation with another being in over three years. Her appearance was thrilling to him.

  "Go on," she said. "You have my attention."

  "I don't know exactly how Mentor did it, but he knew what I had thought secret. I was working with Ross, letting him use my resources to expand the blood bank and start more of them—one in Oklahoma, another in Arizona. When he controlled the blood, he controlled the Predators who worked 'under him, and they controlled the Naturals and Cravens with their deliveries. Once I had Ross on my side, I was going to convince him he needed to kill Mentor. Incinerate him. He doesn't like him much anyway. They're always fighting."

  "While I've been here, Mentor and Ross have re-created their uneasy alliance in America. I know how they are," she said. "Before the Colonial days in that country, they were aligned in the French countryside, bringing together the clans who wandered in separate sects, living in hovels, mainly, preying on travelers along the roads. It's fair to say the two of them argued and fought for a couple of centuries before they ever laid eyes on you."

  He didn't care how long they'd worked together. Wasn't she listening to him? Then he understood what she was getting at. He'd been fighting a long-standing, if ill-tempered, alliance. "Then my plan to push the wedge between them even deeper might never have worked, but I didn't know that." Charles sat down on the stone bed, the knowledge he'd been rash and ignorant causing him to feel tired. He continued slowly, looking up at Madeline. "I had money. Lots of money. A disgraceful amount of money and companies and holdings, some would say. Once I had Mentor out of the way, I was going to get rid of Ross and take over everything."

  "And why would you do that, if you'd managed it—besides being a greedy little new vampire?" she asked.

  He felt scolded, but realized he deserved her contempt. He might have been sixty-eight when he'd become vampire, but in terms of age he was a babe compared to his enemies. "Because I think the way things are run is stupid."

  "You mean how the Predators allow the Cravens to live?" She seemed genuinely perplexed, as if he were a Chinese puzzle she could not decipher.

  "Yes."

  "And how the Naturals walk among men?"

  "Yes." He knew he would not insult her, for it was obvious to him she was Predator, the same as he. He could sense her warrior spirit. She had never taken blood except from living beings before imprisonment.

  "So you would make changes." She seemed intrigued with his plan.

  "I would definitely make changes," he said, encouraged. "I would destroy the Cravens wherever I found the mangy things. They're useless, a drain on our blood supplies. I'd have the Predators rise up and rule the world, as they should. I'd stop the supplies of blood to the Naturals. They could prey, the way their nature dictates, or they could starve for all I care. We've been human., It's not that great."

  "Isn't it?"

  It was the first time since he'd begun his confession to Madeline that he sensed she'd been leading him on. She was mocking him now.

  "You miss being human?" He was sincerely curious.

  "I miss the human who loved me," she said, fading from the cell. "They say it's why I'm mad."

  "Why are you leaving?" He felt desperate to keep her. "I told the truth. That's what you want, isn't it? The truth?"

  "Your truth is cold as the grave and just as sordid. It makes sense only to you. It is an ugly truth you want to make reality. You may keep that truth to yourself."

  "But I don't understand . . ."

  "No, I guess you wouldn't."

  Then she was gone, disappearing right before him. He knew vampires could change themselves into animals, though he had no idea how, but he did not know they could become mist and invade the minute spaces between ancient stacked stone. He had wanted her to tell him how to do it. He could escape if she'd only told him.

  "Madeline?" he called, rushing to the cell door and pressing his face against the little barred window there. "Madeline!"

  Joseph came down the dark, sooty corridor lit with kerosene wall lanterns even during the day as no light pierced the space between the cells. Joseph frowned and said to him, "Stop that yelling. Madeline does not speak to inmates."

  Unlike many of the other monks, who went about with their shaven heads uncovered, Joseph wore a cowl of orange cloth that matched his robe. He peered now from beneath it, his eyes like flat red coals.

  Charles almost told him he was a fool. Madeline had left her cell and come into his. She knew things he must learn. She did not like his truth, but she did indeed speak to him.

  Once Joseph was confident he had stopped calling into the c
orridor, he went away again, his robe swishing along the cobblestone floor. Charles moved from the door to the cards on the floor. He picked them up, caressing their strange warmth. Smiling to himself, he sat again on the stone bench. What did he need with mad Madeline's secrets when he had a better one of his own?

  He simply had to make out what the cards were telling him, that was all. It might be magic much stronger than Madeline possessed. It might be something that would set him free.

  Chapter 2

  Della Cambian Major had been a vampire nearly four years and her son, Malachi, born from a union with a human, was not quite three. Having moved from the suburban neighborhood in Dallas where she'd lived all her life with her family, she had begun a new existence with her husband, Ryan. They now lived in a small Texas country town best known for potluck community dinners and old cowboys and ranchers spending their waning years sipping black coffee at the one little convenience store. Here Dell's secret was easily concealed, as people kept to themselves and were especially cautious with newcomers to the vicinity. Dell loved the privacy afforded her so easily, so naturally, but she often felt isolated and lonely. Were it not for Malachi's company during the day while Ryan worked on a nearby ranch, Dell was not sure she could have remained on the two-hundred-acre ranch they called home.

  She had her studies, which were coming to an end, via Internet classes offered by a highly-regarded Texas university. She would soon have a degree in library science and might one day run a great library where she could research the world's knowledge and come to terms with her vampiric condition. She had already been reading whatever literature and nonfiction she could find that might give her a clue about her clan—its reason for being, its destiny. And in another year Malachi would begin preschool, which would allow her even more freedom to study, but until then her days were predictable and quiet, much too quiet. Some days she thought she lived in a world muffled by cotton.

  In the mornings she worked at the local library as a clerk and at noon she picked Malachi up from day care and spent the afternoons in his company. At night she turned to her studies, preparing homework and reading assignments.

  Today she was teaching her son something she'd learned in a book about hunters. She'd stumbled across the little volume at the library and found herself immersed for a couple of hours in the age-old rituals of hunting.

  "Mommy, can I have a marshmallow yet?"

  Malachi spoke better than his peers at day care. Most three-year-olds were able to speak in a few completed sentences, yet often they communicated in fragments. Malachi had been speaking well since he was two. Dell expected that was because he was dhampir. He'd inherited half-vampire and half-human genes. He was more advanced than other children and would grow into a superior specimen of a human who inherited some of the vampire's exceptional abilities. But he was not immortal, and when she thought of the day when she would lose him to death, she grew so cloudy and blue that she often took to bed and turned her face to the wall.

  "Mommy?"

  Dell realized she'd not answered him yet. He was relentless until his questions were answered. She knew this was typical of a toddler. In most ways he exhibited all the usual absurdities she loved best about small children.

  "Uh . . . no, don't eat the marshmallows yet. Just hold onto the bag. We're going to roast the marshmallows."

  Malachi pulled himself into a lawn chair and hugged the marshmallow bag to his chest. His legs swung loose over the edge of the chair. He was being as patient as he could. He had never tasted a roasted marshmallow, but she knew he trusted her. If she said they would do something as incredible as take a white fluffy treat and actually roast it over a fire, he would wait.

  "Now watch what I'm doing. This is an experiment." She placed a new roll of toilet paper into a large empty coffee can.

  "An experiment?"

  "Yes. I read about it in a book at the library today. Hunters make a fire like this to warm their hands when out in the woods hunting for deer. They can't make a normal fire because deer would smell the smoke. This fire makes no smoke or smell. Or at least that's what the book said. Let's try it."

  "Okay, Mommy." Malachi's legs grew still and he leaned over his lap, squishing the bag of marshmallows.

  "Now we pour a bottle of rubbing alcohol over the roll of toilet paper." Dell saturated the roll, then brought out a small box of matches. "We light it carefully. Once it's going, we'll put our marshmallows on sticks and hold them over the fire."

  "We're gonna cook marshmallows? Over toilet paper?" He giggled. Covering his mouth.

  "Oh, yes," she said. "You'll like them, wait and see."

  The roll of toilet paper flared up bright and clean, burning without smoke or scent. Just as the book had said. It amazed Dell. There were so many things she didn't yet know—so much knowledge she hoped to learn. From the simple making of a hunter's fire to the intricate workings of the universe. It would take a millennium to find out even a tenth of what she longed to know.

  Dell stood back, watching the fire burn for a minute. Fire always set off an alarm in her vampire brain. It could kill her. Fire was one of but two things that could.

  "Wow," she said, shuffling aside the sudden little fear she always felt. "It works. I can smell it, but I bet a deer couldn't." As vampire, she had a heightened sense of smell that was better than any animal's, but that wasn't something she needed to explain to Malachi.

  She broke two green branches from a flowering pear tree that grew close to the house. She stripped the leaves. She took the marshmallow bag from Malachi and speared a marshmallow on each stick, handing one to her son. "Okay, now hold it out over the fire until it gets all brown. After you eat that one, you can have this one to roast."

  She showed him how. When the marshmallow browned, its skin rumpled and blistered, she blew on it to cool it before she plucked it from the stick and held it out to Malachi. He hesitated. "Go ahead, it's good."

  "You've eaten it before, Mommy?" He wasn't convinced. "It looks like a caterpillar."

  She laughed. "Sure, I ate them when I was a kid." Memory of consuming food was growing dim in her mind, but the taste of a hot roasted marshmallow remained. The burned skin crumpling sweetly in her mouth, the inner white soft cloud of marshmallow running between her teeth and coating her tongue.

  Of course, since becoming vampire at seventeen, almost eighteen, Dell had never eaten food again, and did not miss it, but she always tried to remember her son was human and that there were treats in the world he should not miss.

  Malachi took the proffered sticky mess from her fingers and bit into it. Dell watched his face, his eyes, and saw the delight there. "You like it?"

  After swallowing Malachi said, "Umm, good!”

  “See? I told you."

  Having seen how his mother speared the marshmallow and held it over the fire, Malachi now roasted the second one she'd speared and did the same with a third, and then a fourth. While he roasted marshmallows over the coffee can fire in their backyard, Dell relaxed, basking in his enjoyment. Her little child was dark-headed with intelligent cocoa-brown eyes and a build like that of his father in miniature. Wide shoulders, long legs. He wore black cowboy boots, jeans, and a red pullover knit shirt with a little alligator on the pocket. To any observer he was completely normal.

  But Dell knew he wasn't. Not only was his vocabulary beyond that of other three-year-olds, his ability to learn was enhanced. Show him something once—like how to roast a marshmallow—and he remembered and could do it forever. Read him a story and he never forgot a detail, repeating it verbatim back to you. He could hear better than normal, often surprising his father with how he knew a car was approaching the ranch house from the distant road before the engine's sound could be detected. His eye and hand coordination was superior, so that he was already playing skill games on their computer, racking up high scores before getting bored and moving on to another game.

  He was also healthier, his immune system stronger and more resistant to
invasion than any other child his age. He never came down with the usual childhood maladies, never had colds or the flu, never ran fevers or lost his appetite. Because it was state law for children to be inoculated before starting school, he'd been given baby shots and vaccinations, but hadn't really needed them. He'd been a perfect baby, giving his mother little trouble, and now he was a perfect toddler scarfing down roasted marshmallows like there was no tomorrow.

  "Mommy, why don't you eat one? Why do I always eat everything alone? I thought you liked marshmallows."

  Ah, there was the rub. She could not tell her son she didn't need food. Her sustenance came from the plastic bags of blood she bought from Ross and his blood bank in Dallas. She drank one a day—or night as it happened, for she didn't want Malachi to see her feed. Soon she would have to tell him the truth. She was not human any longer, though for many years she had been. She was less human than he was and not at all like his father, Ryan. Her body was, in fact . . . dead. The organs were renewed and sustained from the fresh blood, but she did not have to breathe, except when around humans, and the heart in her chest cavity was as still as a rusting bit of machinery in a closed factory.

  She began to wave off his query. "I don't want anything right now, I . . ."

  "Your mommy's sweet enough as it is," Ryan said, walking around the comer of the house. "Aren't you, Mommy?"

  He bent down to kiss her, and she smiled against his lips. She sent him a mental comment. Thanks. It's getting harder to fool him.

  Ryan straightened, walked near his son, and tousled his hair. "Can I have one, Champ? We might as well both ruin our supper together."

  "Sure, Daddy. Here's another stick."

  While Ryan pushed a marshmallow onto the end of the stick, Dell looked him over. It was her habit to search for any clue her husband might not be happy and content. Ever since they'd married, she'd feared he would leave her. He only thought he loved her, she was sure. How could a warm-blooded man love a cold, dead thing like her?