He was dusty from a day's ranch work. He hauled cattle to auction, rounded up herds and branded the calves, and helped the heifers during calving season. He gave the stock shots, watched for scours—a disease that could bring a cow down fast—inspected hooves, fed the herds, and generally made sure his employer's investment lived healthy and multiplied. It would be another two years or more before he earned his degree and could practice veterinary medicine. Until then he worked hard for a living, though he never complained.
Dell was afraid he'd tire of all the responsibility, that he would age beyond his years and resent her for it. She studied him now with Malachi. How he laughed and joked with their son. She inspected him to see if it was genuine. She could read his mind if she liked, but didn't do that unless he slept and was unaware of her intrusion. It was an invasion and he wasn't fond of it, but she told herself she had to do it to be sure. To be sure he loved her and Malachi. To have some certainty he wouldn't leave them.
"You made a hunter's fire," he said, jogging her from the reverie of her close inspection.
She smiled. "Yes, I read about it in the library today.”
“My dad made fires like this when he took me hunting and the morning was cold."
"The deer really can't smell it?"
"I suppose not. Dad took a couple of deer every season."
Dell didn't like hunting, so Ryan didn't do it, turning down his father's invitation each fall. She hoped he didn't miss it. The thought of shooting a helpless deer turned her stomach. She knew it was a Texas tradition. The meat fed some of the poorer families who lived in the country. But to kill for sport, whether the man ate the meat or not, if that man could afford to buy his meat at the grocery store it seemed to her he was just indulging a primitive killer instinct.
Like a Predator. Predator vampires killed wantonly, killed humans. Naturals like herself, and the Craven, a type of vampire who was always sick and weak and hidden from the world, declined to commit murder. They had all been human once. Nearly every vampire in existence had once been a man or woman first. It was against unspoken rule to infect a human and leave him alive to become vampire.
Each of them might have changed as a child or as an adult, but they had all been born mortal. The mutated human disease, porphyria, caused them to change, to die and to rise again as vampire.
How the Predators were then able to forget their humanity and murder when the hunger drove them was beyond evil. Dell thought if she had to kill in order to live, then she would welcome the orange-and-blue flames of the hunter's fire and let them burn her to cinders and the final death.
"You're awfully quiet this afternoon." Ryan moved from his son's side and came to her. "Did anything happen?"
She looked up at him, and love flooded through her. All the sad thoughts about her kind fled, all worries over how her half-breed son would fare in the world vanished, and all fear of being abandoned by the one man she loved disappeared. She smiled at him. "No, nothing happened. I was just thinking."
"About him?" he asked softly, indicating their son.
"Some," she admitted. They had talked about Malachi since before he was born, wondering what it might be like to raise a child who would be so different. They had to prepare him soon. They couldn't wait forever. He was dhampir. He was not completely human. He might even contract the disease, as it resided in his genes from his mother, and he could one day be like her. Porphyria's mutated gene was like a twisted, hookworm latched onto the DNA chain. Some of the Naturals worked on research, secretly trying to discover just where the gene resided, hoping to manipulate it out of existence. One day maybe they'd be able to do that in living humans with a family history of the mutant gene. Until that time …
Mentor, the counselor to the vampire nations, and the wisest reformed Predator anyone knew, had told them chances were Malachi would never be infected. The odds were against it.
But still—just dealing with his enhanced abilities was going to be difficult. He'd live in the world and die like his father, but until then he would be more than human, enjoying supernatural talents, and how he used them would determine the state of his very soul.
"Don't worry so." Ryan pulled her by the hand from the lawn chair. "Let's make the champ some dinner."
Together they put out the coffee can fire and led Malachi into the house to wash his sticky face and hands. The farmhouse was old but comfortable, and Dell loved it. All the rooms, except for the old-fashioned kitchen, were large, with high ceilings. There was a fireplace, hardwood floors, and a wraparound porch on the front where Dell sat at night and watched the stars. When she and Ryan married right after high school graduation, his grandfather deeded the old house and the two hundred acres to them as a gift. They were eternally grateful. They both worked so hard to pay Ross for her blood supply and for the Internet tuition for college classes. If they'd had to pay for rent, too, they wouldn't have had two nickels to rub together left over. She didn't know how people managed to live. It surprised her that more of them weren't on the street or living under freeway overpasses.
Ryan turned on lights, as Dell often forgot, never needing illumination in order to see. In the small kitchen they worked together to make a pizza from scratch, rolling the dough, chopping up pepperoni and vegetables, grating cheese. In the living room Malachi, all washed up, and with his boots removed, sat in the middle of the floor playing with Legos. He built fantastic buildings, tall, futuristic, some of them standing beneath domes, as if he could see a Martian landscape in his imagination. He could be trusted to sit quietly and build things for hours and never clamor to watch television like other small children might. They let him watch cartoons on Saturday mornings and some educational shows, but she and Ryan were so busy in their lives with work and study, the television was rarely turned on.
"So what's up?" Ryan asked, pressing pizza dough into a pan.
"You know what it is." She didn't really wish to get into it. She was so tired lately. Despite the fact she never fell ill or complained, the psychic energy it took to maintain a believable humanity when out in the world doing her lowly job at the library seemed to sap her life force. It took the night—and the blood—to keep her moving.
"You'll have your degree soon," he said, knowing her concerns as well as she did. "Maybe you can work at Sam Houston University in Huntsville."
"I don't know. It's pretty hard to get in there.”
“Well, there'll be something. . . ."
She wondered what. And where. There was the nearby state penitentiary, but the gloom of the place scared her badly. Already she had troubles dealing with humans who lived without any real sense of their frailty and finite life span. How could they waste any single moment when they had so few given them? But dealing with truly doomed individuals, the prisoners, and working in a library donated by kind individuals who gave the prison their cast-off books and magazines might truly push her into a lasting depression.
"Malachi's going to be fine," Ryan said now, dumping tomato sauce onto the pizza dough. "He really is.”
“I know. Or at least I think I know."
"You have to stop making the salad," he said, hurrying over to her where she had lettuce and tomatoes cut into a bowl on the counter.
"What? Why?"
He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to his chest, kissing her hard and quick. When he let her go, she said, "What are you doing?"
"I'm making sure you let go of the blues," he said, grinning. "You can't make salad when you're blue. It'll turn the tomatoes sour and wilt the lettuce."
She laughed and hugged him. "Oh, Ryan, if it weren't for you, my life would be so awful."
"I know. Or I think I know."
She swatted him on the forearm and pushed him toward the pizza. "Finish up," she said. "I have studying to do. I can't spend all night in here lollygagging around with you."
They finished dinner preparations and joined their son in the living room while the pizza baked.
Malachi expl
ained his newest creation. "It's a ramp," he said. "For the air cars."
"I see," said his father seriously, with no hint of the grin Dell knew he hid inside.
"And what is this?" Dell asked, pointing to a block of interlocked Legos with a tall pitched roof, like a medieval cathedral.
"It's the barracks for the army," Malachi said.
"Ah. Of course it is." Dell had no idea where Malachi learned the word "barracks" or its meaning. Nor did she understand how he'd come up with the idea of "air cars." She rather missed the baby he'd been, lying quietly in her arms, staring up adoringly into her face. He was getting so smart. And so . . . strange.
"Where is this place" Ryan asked. "Is it the moon? A Mars base?"
"Uh-uh. It's the United States of America."
"But we don't have air cars and army barracks that look like big churches."
"We will," Malachi said with complete conviction. "One day when I'm a big boy."
Will we? Dell wondered. What did Malachi know they didn't? Was he a prophet? But she was worrying again; she was turning the worry wheel and all for naught. Whatever the future held, she'd find a way to protect her son and her husband from it, if need be.
After all, barring a catastrophic accident that set her on fire where she couldn't put herself out or if some malicious Predator lopped off her head, she would live forever. There probably were air cars and cathedral barracks up ahead or even things more fantastic that none of them could envision yet.
She would see it all.
Chapter 3
Mentor picked his way through the litter in the yard, grimacing at the uncut grass, and opened the door into a house of squalor and darkness. None of this surprised him, but it always left him feeling discouraged to come to a house of Cravens. He had lived for centuries and he'd had to deal with every clan, as it was the job he'd carved out for himself. But no matter how many years he'd seen lairs like this, it always brought him low.
To his way of thinking, he had certain duties he could not ignore. He watched Ross, to keep him under tight control. He could never trust him, not even after more than three hundred years. He helped new vampires enter their moments of death, face the red moon, and decide with the willfulness of their spirits to be either a Predator, Craven, or Natural. He guided new vampires in the ways to progress in their new lives. He prevented rogues and renegades from spilling the long held secrets to the world. Most of all, as his name proclaimed, he mentored. When that meant visiting a house he would otherwise pass by, then it was ordained so.
"I can do this," Dolan said, showing his resentment at Mentor's interference. They sat in Dolan's shabby room in the desolate house full of Cravens moaning and sighing from other rooms.
"It won't work," Mentor said again. "Cravens haven't the strength to do what you propose."
"Why don't you let me try and find that out on my own?"
"Because it will only lead to more despair."
Dolan hung his head where he sat on the edge of his unmade bed. "I have to do something, Mentor. I can't spend my time, all the days of this long life, sitting in this house listening to them. Listening to me."
Mentor tuned into the sounds Dolan meant for him to share and mentally crab-walked back from the cacophony, shutting the other Cravens out.
"You have the freedom to leave here," he said.
"And go where? On my own, into loneliness? Or into
the wilds where I'll live with the animals, like an animal?”
“It isn't as bad as all that."
"How would you know?" Dolan's voice rose.
Mentor had once counseled Dolan when he'd been suicidal and homicidal, hoping to burn down the Craven house and all in it. Now he had a plan, but Mentor knew it was a fantasy that must go unfulfilled.
"I know enough," Mentor said. "Do yourself a favor and leave them alone."
"Them?" Dolan pointed to the closed door. "When they could get up and try to change how things are?"
"You know there's no changing things. You chose this life, Dolan, did you forget? So did the others."
"Yes, I chose in death to live as a Craven, because I died a sick and depressed man, a human who had suffered too much. It really was no choice at all."
"You could have been . . ."
"A Predator like you?"
"Reformed."
Dolan laughed sarcastically. "Reformed my hind foot. If you wanted to kill humans, you could do it in a millisecond. I never wanted to kill."
"And neither do I."
"Now, you don't. Not now, maybe."
Mentor said, "You could have chosen the Natural life."
Dolan's laugh was even harsher. "Oh, of course, I could have come back into the same life I left. You know I was a suicide, don't you? Why would I want to be like that again?"
Mentor had not been there to guide this particular vampire through death. It had been at least two hundred years ago when Dolan had died of the mutated disease that made him into vampire. Mentor had been in another part of the world, only just becoming the man who mentored, the strong and resilient vampire he was now.
"No, I'm sorry, I didn't know you had killed yourself. Though I should have guessed it from our last visit with one another." Then Dolan wanted to die, too, and take the house of vampires with him—which was against vampire rule. Neither Dolan nor anyone else had the right to judge and execute another vampire unless that vampire was rogue and beyond reach.
"Now listen," Dolan said, growing animated. "Just listen to my plan, will you? I want to work with the other Cravens like me. I want to help them get up and learn to fight, learn to deal with the light of day. They need to find a useful mission to carry out. I don't believe we're doomed to handouts and begging and welfare. I don't believe we have to stay hidden behind drawn drapes and weep and gnash our teeth and feel powerless and so sick all the time. I don't feel sick! Why should they? We could join together, we could . . . maybe we could find work, pass as human the way the Naturals do. Maybe we could be our old selves again."
"Stop." Mentor raised the palm of his hand. "They don't have the energy you do, Dolan, haven't you noticed? They can't do these things you want."
"Why not? How can they be different from me?"
"Because you border, Dolan. You're Craven, yes, you know that, it's what you chose for eternity, but you border on being Predator and it gives you strength, it gives you urges, it makes you think other Cravens can think the way you do, can do what you want to do, can change their lives. But they can't. They're lost to themselves and to the outside world. It's what they want."
"But . . . but . . ."
"You're not the only Craven to be borderline, Dolan. It's happened before. I've listened and gone along with other plans, only to see them fail. I really hate to take away your dreams, Dolan, but it'll only mean more pain and disillusionment for you. I want to save you from that."
Dolan seemed to think it over. Mentor reached out and touched his arm to reassure him.
"I'll tell you the solution we might try," Mentor said.
"You come with me. I'll train you for . . . something. You are perhaps more like me than them." Mentor gestured toward the door.
"But I wanted to help them."
"You cannot help them. Be firm in your mind about that. There is no change for them. But for you. Perhaps . . ."
"I've never heard of a Craven living with a Predator. What could you train me to do?" Though he was doubtful, there was hope in his voice.
"We'll talk about that later. The point now is to get you out of this house where you're making everyone else miserable with your ranting and raving. Will you go with me?"
"You're not going to . . . kill me, are you, Mentor?"
It was the first time Mentor had seen the other vampire show fear.
"No, I'm not going to kill you. I'm going to make you more like me."
As the two vampires moved stealthily across the neighborhood toward Mentor's house, Dolan asking impossible questions all the way, Mentor r
eceived an alarming mental call from Dell, the young female vampire he had helped change four years before. It was about her son, the dhampir. The first dhampir to have been born in the clans on the North American continent in a hundred years. Dell's marriage to a mortal had been counseled against numerous times, but there was no changing the heart. Mentor knew this well enough since he'd married a mortal himself once. Long ago and lifetimes away.
He knew there would be offspring between Dell and her husband, Ryan. Mentor himself had never desired to chance making children with a mortal, but these were modern times and much had changed for young couples. Despite his wishes, vampires often did things he thought would bring not only themselves harm, but the whole vampire nation. Birthing a dhampir fell directly into that category.
Therefore, he was not surprised when he heard Dell's mental plea for help. He knew it would come soon, as the boy was already three and precocious.
"Dolan. Dolan! Hush and be still. I have to leave you. You know where my house is. Go there and wait for me." Mentor had him by the shoulders.
"Where are you going?" There was a little panic in Dolan's voice. He, too, needed Mentor to stay close by.
"Never mind. That's your first lesson. Don't be curious about anyone else's life or get into anyone's business. I have to attend someone; it's an urgent call. That's all you need to know. Now do as I say and wait for me at my house." With that Mentor raised his arms heavenward and swept from the sidewalk where they had been, spiraling into the black ink of the night sky. He knew Dolan stood there, staring after him long after he was out of sight in the clouds high overhead. He also knew that Dolan would do as he was told and go along his way.
Mentor stepped into a bedroom where the parents were frantic. Dell rushed over and grabbed him by the shoulders, crying blood tears. "He might be dying, Mentor! He's fevered and he's never even been sick before. He isn't dying, is he? Is he, Mentor? He won't go into the dark wood and face the red moon, will he?"
"Calm yourself. Let me see him." Gently moving Dell aside, he drifted to the bed and stared down at the little boy. He was handsome, his skin pink with the flush of fever, his hair and eyebrows and lashes dark as midnight. Mentor reached out and placed a hand on his forehead. It felt like a furnace.
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