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

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  Now they were going separate ways and that saddened Malachi. Alex was working two jobs during the summer, saving for college. From early morning until early afternoon he worked as a clerk at Wal-Mart. After washing up and gulping a quick meal at home, he waited tables at Sholinger's Restaurant until it closed at eleven. They hardly got together anymore for fishing or horsing around. Alex told Malachi he was making a mistake by not applying to the better colleges, where he'd be admitted easily. But Alex didn't know Malachi really hadn't a clue about his future. He had no all-abiding passion the way Alex did. He didn't know what he should do with his life. Everything appealed to him, but nothing gripped him to the point he wanted to pursue it. He thought he could farm or ranch and never go to college at all and it would be perfectly all right with him, though he knew his parents had higher ambitions for him.

  His mother liked Alex a great deal and thought he was a good influence on her dreamy son. "Why don't you go to medical school like Alex?" she asked. "Or what about veterinary medicine, like your father? You need something, Malachi. You can't just drift."

  Well, he didn't know about that. Why couldn't he drift? Was drifting a sin and would he be punished for it? He couldn't help it if he had no focus. He liked football, but not enough to turn pro even though a scout had quietly offered him a starting spot on the new Houston Texans team. He loved books and reading, like his mother, but he hadn't any ambition to teach or write or become a librarian like his mom. Mostly, he loved riding horses, helping his father with their growing cattle herd, and being out in the open, feeling the changing seasons on his skin and in the roots of his hair and in the depths of his soul. What kind of degree did he need in order to do that, he wondered? Where was the money in it, unless he tried ranching? He teetered on the edge of feeling like a bum.

  To please his parents, he took up the many college catalogs he'd brought home from the counselor's office, and began to study them in a half hearted way. He was late. He should have already made up his mind about where to go and what to do years before graduation, but before then he just couldn't manage to get excited about it.

  Danielle never gave him grief about his lack of direction. They'd been friends since elementary school, and he was more serious about her than he found comfortable to talk about to anyone—even Alex. And he certainly wasn't ready for his parents to meet Danielle, though he knew he should bring her home soon.

  Danielle Orlena, a Mexican-American, with parents who had both migrated to Texas from Mexico, was a small, dark girl with the silkiest black hair and sweetest smile this side of the Pecos River. She was hardly five feet three inches tall and did not weigh more than a hundred pounds. She possessed a tremendous sense of true justice, always championing the underdog, the poor, and the outcast.

  When he was ten he had witnessed her in a school yard brawl during recess. She rushed in to defend a smaller girl from bullies, rescuing her and facing down the cruel attackers. Malachi stood nearby in a group of boys, watching, and he'd admired the plucky little Mexican girl for her courage. She was as fierce as a tiger, wading in against three larger girls who had their victim pinned to the ground, rubbing dirt on her face.

  As she'd helped the smaller child to her feet and began to lead her to the bathroom to wash her face, Malachi broke from the boys and fell in beside them. "That was great," he said, gesturing, "what you did."

  Danielle spared him a glance to see if he was mocking her. When she realized he was sincere, she smiled a little, and his boy heart did a triple pitty-pat that made him stumble over his own feet.

  After that, he watched and admired her from a distance in grade school, and by junior high had fallen into puppy love. She was smart, pretty, and dignified. By high school he could think of no one but Danielle.

  Now that they'd both graduated, his thoughts had turned to some kind of future with her—he couldn't imagine one without her in the picture. But when should they become an official couple? Danielle knew and accepted his slow resolve, her patience another trait he found attractive. She often said, "We're young, Malachi. We need to take our time. I've seen what happens when people get in a hurry and make mistakes."

  She referred to classmates who, because of early pregnancies or just from high passion, made commitments before they'd really had time to grow up and experience life. Though both their parents had married young, she wasn't sure youthful relationships were right for everyone. He agreed, though if he were truthful, he'd have to say he was as crazy about Danielle as a man could be about a woman. For the past year they had been having sexual relations, something that had brought them extremely close together.

  He was devoted to her, utterly, even if he couldn't fully express that devotion.

  Everyone in school saw Malachi and Danielle as a couple, but in every other area Malachi was considered a loner—a quiet, reserved young man, though not withdrawn. He did have Alex as a friend, after all. Others thought Malachi serious, reflective, a perfect gentleman who loved his parents, stayed out of trouble, minded his own business, and was destined for a bright future.

  Soon after his eighteenth birthday, when the world had just opened to him with a million opportunities that he recognized, but did not know how to acquire, it all came tumbling down.

  For months he had been having dreams that interfered with his waking life. The dreams were essentially the same, the only difference being the intensity of each. In the dreams a wolf came to him beneath a silver moon. It had never tried to lure him away from his house with sleepwalking again, but it still came prowling through his sleep like the predator it was.

  "Malachi, have you changed yet?" the wolf asked in the first dream he'd had in many years.

  Malachi stood silently, fear a freezing cold hand around his neck. He remembered this place, the silver moon, and the wolf. He'd dreamed of it all before in some dim past when he was a child. The wolf was a magician, changing to vampire and back to wolf at will. It drew him from his bed that long-ago night, intent on letting him be a snack for one of its voracious minions.

  "You're a man now. What are your plans?" the wolf asked.

  "I . . . I don't know what you mean. I don't have any plans."

  "I left you alone for years. I really wasn't going to do you harm the night you walked into the woods. Your mother promised you'd never threaten us, so that was just a test. Now I've come to find out if you are the one from prophecy. If you are, the promise means nothing to either of us."

  "Threaten who? What prophecy?"

  "It was prophesied a dhampir would be born who would turn on Predators. All of us. Will you? Are you my future killer?"

  "I . . . I . . ." Malachi glanced around. He wondered how he could get out of the nightmare. He tried to wake himself, but couldn't. He concentrated, trying to change the dream if he couldn't leave it. But no matter what he tried, the dry, open plain was as real as life, and he was trapped in it, at least for now. He straightened his shoulders.

  "Who are you?" he asked, finding a steely center in his being.

  The wolf transformed into a man, evolving from four feet to two. The man was a vampire, a large, menacing beast now revealing tremendous fangs. Malachi believed he made himself look that way, manipulating the dream however he wished. In reality he was probably a vampire trapped in a small human body. However, if he merely wanted to scare Malachi in the dream world, he was doing a good job.

  "I asked your name," Malachi repeated.

  "My name is none of your affair," the vampire said. "I want to know your intentions. I want to know your plans."

  "I have no plans. I don't even know what you mean. I'm . . . I'm not your enemy."

  The vampire nodded as he contemplated Malachi, looking him up and down from head to feet: "This may be the truth. If it is, I warn you not to take any interest in the world of your mother. If you disobey me, I will return and not in dream. Do you understand?"

  Malachi woke from these dreams that came night after night sweating and trembling, the reality of the dr
eam world so strong it seeped over into the reality of his room. For moments after waking he imagined the silver moon was in the corner of his room, shining brilliantly down on his bed. He saw his bed standing in the center of a sandy stretch of ground, the wall at his back as transparent as smoke. Only gradually did the dream world recede, leaving him sitting up in bed at home, eyes wide with anxiety.

  "Jesus," he whispered, wiping his brow.

  He lay down. He punched the pillow beneath his head, trying to relax. Once asleep again, either the same dream would repeat itself or another one played out in his mind. In this one there was a vampire in chains, an old man skinny of frame, with a twisted mouth and evil intent in his gaze. This vampire was being held somewhere against his will, but just as Malachi tried to decipher why he was watching the old vampire in a dark cell, the scene changed and suddenly, with no transition at all, the vampire was free and on the run.

  In the dream Malachi followed him, invisibly pulled along by a thread of consciousness. He was an unwilling spectator, watching as the old vampire killed his way through a dozen victims. After the bloodshed, the vampire went into a wilderness area dominated by high stone cliffs. From there he called Predators to him from all over the world. He sent out a call to the renegades, the loners and misfits, the most desperate and dangerous of the entire vampire nations.

  Malachi thought he knew what the dream meant. If he were to believe it, there was going to be an uprising and resultant war. Mortal man hung in the balance. If vampires fought, and it got out of hand, men would die.

  On waking a second time, Malachi shook uncontrollably and his nerve endings tingled as if he'd just come from an electric bath. He was unable to move for long minutes while the wisps of nightmare were burned away in the morning light of reality.

  He had not spoken of these recurring dreams to anyone, not even to Danielle. As much as he loved Danielle, how could he ever tell her about the supernatural nature of his mother and the talents he'd inherited from her? How could he ever admit there were real vampires, for Pete's sake? In the first place, she wouldn't believe him, and in the second, if she did finally believe, what if the whole notion scared her off? He just couldn't chance losing her.

  His mother suspected something was wrong, but waited for him to talk about his troubles. She had long ago promised she would not poke around in his mind, whether he was awake or asleep. She would grant him the privacy all humans expected as a right. Some mornings he almost spoke of the nightmares. He would be sitting at the table with his mother, and she would be carefully watching him, as if waiting. But each time he tried to speak, his tongue knotted and his throat tightened.

  Malachi knew many things about the vampires from his mother, but he didn't know if the great vampire in chains from his dream existed or if he was just a fantasy produced by the dream wolf that haunted Malachi's nights. He also didn't understand the connection between the wolf vampire and the renegade on the high cliffs. No matter how he pondered these dreams, knowing they were trying to tell him something, he could not decipher their meaning beyond the distinct feeling they presaged a vampire war.

  A week later, at a family gathering for July Fourth, he realized he'd not kept his nightmares secret at all.

  Everyone came. At least everyone from the maternal side of his family. They had never thrown the two sides of his family together. He couldn't imagine his father's people standing around waiting for hamburgers from the grill while his mother's people stood nearby, hungering for a glass of blood taken neat.

  Great-aunt Celia and her daughter, Carolyn, had come together, holding hands, walking from beneath the shade of the giant oak. Carolyn's husband, Andrew Greer, a lanky computer programmer with a lock of silky blond hair falling over his gold-rimmed glasses, followed just behind. It was known he was not vampire, not part of the clan, but he knew the truth and it made him skittish at these gatherings. Malachi's grandparents were there, holding hands, and smiling contentedly as they sat in the swing. His great grandparents were there, too, bopping a volleyball over a net to one another and laughing. They did not look as old as his own father, for they, like most of his relatives on his mother's side, were vampire and had not aged physically.

  Even Uncle Eddie showed up, coming into the back pasture from out of the woods like a wraith, his twelve-year-old body disguising the adult vampire he had become.

  Malachi was happy to see him. He hadn't talked with Eddie since he was just a boy himself. On that first meeting he had taken his uncle for a child at first, someone to play ball with. He had run to him, hugging a football to his chest, about to ask this boy to throw it to him. The minute Eddie spoke, however, his voice deep as that of a grown man, Malachi knew he was no child. "I'm like your mom," Eddie said in that surprisingly adult voice. "I'm not human anymore. I'm really in my mid-thirties. Damn shame, isn't it, boy? Give me that ball and run out there and see if you can catch it."

  They threw the football back and forth a few minutes and then Eddie said, "Let's go for a walk, kid." They walked off together that first time, away from the family, and Eddie talked about growing up with Malachi's mother, and how they'd all hoped, he and his parents and the entire family, that Dell would never be stricken with the malady that would turn her into vampire. She'd escaped it until she was in high school and they'd all been lulled into believing she'd been spared, like Celia, like Carolyn.

  "But few of us are spared," Eddie had said. "I sure wasn't. I changed when I was twelve and left home three years later. I couldn't finish school. I couldn't live in the neighborhood. I had to . . . go off."

  "Where did you go?"

  "I went to Brazil and stayed for many years."

  "Why Brazil?" Malachi asked.

  "There were whole gangs of children in the cities living on their own, scrounging through the dumps, living without adults to care for them. I sought their company. I was still a child, but I'd never grow up. No one noticed in Brazil, except the children. And they didn't care. Most of them were feral, more like animals than children, so we had something in common. That, suited me fine for a while because I felt like an animal too. Then I saw how it really was for the gangs. They sniffed bottled glue out of paper bags for cheap highs. They couldn't live in the world, so they sought another, a fantasy one. They grew cold and hard, committing worse crimes than theft to fuel their habits."

  "Did you leave them?"

  "After a couple of years. I couldn't really find my place. The glue didn't affect me. I couldn't escape what I was and what I faced in the future the way they could. I grew so depressed I went outside of the city and away from humankind. I spent several years in the jungles, living like a lost explorer or a native. Living like Tarzan."

  "Tarzan. Ha." Malachi laughed uneasily.

  Eddie ignored him. "It was silent. That's what I remember. The silence, broken only intermittently by jungle sound, by bird or frog or the antics of monkeys. It took me some time when I came back to civilization to even speak. I hadn't spoken a word in years."

  "What did you do then?" Malachi was fascinated. His mother rarely talked about her brother. He didn't know any of these details of his uncle's life. Being a boy himself at the time, it sounded exciting and adventurous to live in Brazil, to go into the depths of the jungle and live with the wild things. Had he swung from vines and bathed beneath waterfalls? Didn't all boys dream of such heroic adventure?

  Eddie continued, "I went back to the city. All the children I'd known before I left had disappeared. They'd died or moved on or were kidnapped or they'd just managed to reach adulthood and were assimilated into the crowds on the streets.

  "I wandered South America until I got to Buenos Aires in Argentina. It was different from the other cities. It was clean and prosperous. Urchins didn't pick over dump heaps and I never saw the homeless lying in gutters or doorways. I began to think about living again, like a human. I found a . . . a patron. Or he found me."

  Malachi vaguely understood the word. He'd read that word in Dickens, but
he wasn't sure the meaning was the same for Uncle Eddie.

  His uncle must have read his mind. "A vampire patron," he explained. "I was half starved, having come into the city after traveling. I was skulking in a park, hiding in shadows, when this tall, thin man appeared. He came down a path wearing, of all things, a bowler hat and sporting a cane. I remember sneering at him. Did he think he was in London? Was he lost? And why was he walking this dark path when he could have taken a better lighted one?

  "Before I knew it, he'd left the path and he had me by the throat, lifting me straight off my feet. I fought him, but without a prayer. I knew then he was like me. Vampire."

  Malachi shivered, imagining being taken off guard and threatened that way in the darkness.

  Eddie grinned suddenly. "He knew what I was. He was just teaching me a lesson. He said I was a rat, hiding like that in the shadows. Rats were brainless and not predators at all. They were scavengers, he said. Was I a little scavenger?

  "He let me go and made me walk with him all through the park. He made me tell him where I'd come from and what I thought I was doing. That very night he took me in and told me I could stay with him in his villa on a slope above the city. His servants were closemouthed and loyal, they'd never betray us. He had money and interests he could share with me. He could teach me all that I'd missed from my abruptly ended school days. He had a great library, he knew the famous writer, Borges, he could take me to the opera and the museums. He knew painters and artisans. He was a patron of the arts and highly regarded. He had nothing better to do, he said, than to bring me into that rarefied culture where he would make me an educated gentleman." Eddie laughed harshly.

  "Is that where you live now? In Buenos Aires?" Malachi asked.

  "I live in the house still," Eddie answered slowly. "I no longer live with the patron."

  "Why not?"

  Eddie grew agitated and stopped walking. They were miles from the house and surrounded by thick woods. "He died."