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

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  Malachi was shocked. Vampires did not die. He never heard tell of a dead vampire. It just wasn't possible, was it? The body gave out, he had heard, but not the spirit. It went on, taking another body. "Died?"

  "He asked me to kill him." Eddie had been staring at his shoes, a pair of fine leather sandals from Italy. He was dressed in gray slacks and a gray shirt with a pinstripe of red around the edge of the short sleeves. He looked like a miniature man. He glanced at his nephew and saw his consternation.

  "Malachi, life is not as easy for the Predators as it is for Naturals, like your mother. If you're a Natural, the way I was, and you go off on your own, away from ready supplies of blood, you sort of . . . revert. You become more Predator than Natural, more vampire than human. That's what happened to me.

  "Many Predators do away with themselves. My patron, my . . . teacher . . . admitted he'd taken me in purposefully to train me as his little assassin. I never knew that, of course. If I had, I would have run away from him as fast as I could. He first did all he promised, furthering my education about the world. He introduced me to intelligent people and taught me to hold my own in conversations with them. He made me read most of the books on his library shelves and then questioned me about what I'd read. He had me write essays and put forth opinions, then defend them. Finally, satisfied I knew enough to pass in society as a precocious young man, he showed me all the details of his finances and how he handled money and made it grow for him so that it hardly diminished as he lived on it. When he was sure I would be all right without him, he made me promise I would take his life and release him."

  Malachi thought he'd never heard anything so awful. "How could you do it?" he asked.

  Eddie grabbed him suddenly by the shoulders. He looked at Malachi face-to-face as they were nearly the same height. Malachi dropped the football he'd been carrying, and it rolled away from them. "Look into my eyes, Malachi. Read what you see there if you want to know the truth."

  Malachi tumbled down the corridors of his uncle's wide, fiery eyes. He fell into visions that rushed into him and transported him through time and space. He stood with Eddie in a beautifully appointed room where the only light came from tall mullioned windows open to the breeze. It was night, the air scented with summer blossoms mingled with the exhaust of vehicles on the crowded streets. Neon lights reflected from the shops below, turning the night vivid. Voices and traffic sounds floated from the city three stories below.

  An old vampire sat in a high-backed leather chair studded along the wide arms with brass nails. He spoke roughly to Eddie. "Do it! Don't make me get up from this chair and turn the sword on you."

  Malachi looked at Eddie and saw he held a long broadsword in his right hand. It hung limply from his hand at his side, the tip almost touching the floor. Light danced from the blade. The hilt was thick and heavily ornamented with scrolls worked in silver. It was a very old sword, possibly ancient. Malachi marveled, having never seen anything like it.

  "I don't want to do this," Eddie said. His voice was not that of a grown man yet. It had the high squeaky sound of a frightened youth.

  "You have no choice now, Eddie. I will die this night . . . or you will."

  "Don't make me do it." There was revulsion and sadness in Eddie's plea.

  "Lift it over your head, swing it wide, do not make a mistake!" the old vampire bellowed. "You're not a coward. You are vampire and the recipient of all my knowledge. I've given you everything. In return, I command you to kill me!"

  Malachi knew the second the sword began its upward arc, and he turned his head away, turned his body to the side, and refused to watch. If he were in a dream, it was too real to endure. He did not want to see the beheading. He would not watch it. He wanted to go home, find his mother, and bury his head in her lap. He wanted to forget he'd ever talked to Eddie and come to this foreign place of murder and death.

  He blinked and felt Eddie's hands fall from his shoulders. He fell to his knees, his eyes tearing. He was back home again, the woods he loved so well all around him. His uncle stood above him, his fangs lowered, his eyes ablaze.

  "Dell got off easy," Eddie said. "So did you. Now you know a little of what it is to be trapped in a boy's body and commanded to murder someone you love. I didn't do it because he might have killed me. And he would have, don't mistake it. I did it because he begged me and he wanted it more than he wanted another moment of this life, and because there was no other way. I owed it to him."

  Malachi never forgot the scene that had been projected into his mind that day. He understood his uncle's agony and his tenuous hold on his humanity. He realized how different the Predators were from all that he knew. He felt a fear of them he had never felt for his mother or her vampire family before this.

  He knew murder. Sacrifice. The depth of despair. The loneliness of separation.

  On this July Fourth gathering, Malachi went across the pasture to meet his uncle, remembering the day of the confession in the woods. He hadn't seen Eddie in over a year and hadn't really expected him to come today. Eddie looked the same, of course. Boy size. Fragile wrists at the end of long arms. A thin, freckled neck. Ears too large for his head. But in his eyes resided boundless experiences and more knowledge than Malachi at eighteen could imagine.

  Eddie smiled, taking Malachi's hand to shake. "You've grown into a big man," Eddie said. "Are you a linebacker?"

  Malachi laughed and fell into step beside him. "I played running back."

  "Bet you bowled the opposition over. Going to college now?"

  Malachi sobered. "Oh, I don't know. I mean, yeah, I guess. I just don't . . ."

  "Knowledge is power, Malachi. Get all of it you can get. That wolf in your dreams? You can keep him at bay with knowledge."

  Malachi turned to him in surprise. "You know about that? The wolf?"

  "We all do. Dell told us. We keep a watchful eye on you, didn't you know?" He paused and then said, "No, I guess you didn't."

  So they all knew. For how long? Why hadn't his mother told him?

  "How long have you known?"

  "Since you were a toddler."

  "What? Oh, man."

  "You had these nightmares when you were very small. I don't know if you remember. Your mother contacted the dream walker and found out his name. She made a deal with him. But she didn't trust he'd keep it. She made sure all of us knew of him and his threats. Even from Buenos Aires I've kept in touch with your mother, just to see how you were doing. I even know about that time when you were nine or so and Balthazar lured you from you bed into the woods."

  "God, I don't know what to say. I . . . I didn't know." Then they joined the family in Malachi's yard and Eddie went to embrace his sister, Malachi's mother.

  Later, Malachi questioned his grandparents and great-grandparents. Did they know about the silver wolf from his dreams? Yes, certainly, and they were on alert, always, for any message from his mother. His great -uncles and -aunts, his cousins, all of them knew, all of them had kept a quiet vigilance.

  He felt greatly loved, but also in some way violated. He had thought his worries his own. Maybe his whole life was an open book and nothing belonged to him, no secret or privacy. He felt invaded, even if for good reason. He must speak to his mother when the celebration ended and the family scattered for their homes. Had this all been necessary? Was the threat so real she had to divulge it to everyone?

  That night he and his parents talked. Since graduation he had been at loose ends, and they left him alone. They went to their jobs, they didn't bug him about making a decision. They let him do what he did best—drift.

  But now they talked openly, and he learned many things. How worried his mother had been all his life. How she had called Mentor and found out the dream walker's name—Balthazar. Her reasons for telling the family had been out of love and concern. She was sorry it felt like an intrusion to him. "I had to do it," she said. "Malachi? Don't you see? We're part of a clan. As dhampir, you're one of us." She glanced at her husband and smiled
a little "At least half, anyway," she amended. "We can't let something happen to you. We had to be ready. I had to know I could count on help if I needed it."

  In the end they weren't. Not ready at all, any of them. Perhaps Balthazar had taught his assassin to cloak himself so he could not be detected until too late. Perhaps Malachi's family sensed trouble and thought it another dream plaguing him. Whatever left him open that day for assault, it came as a total surprise, just as Balthazar wanted it.

  The day was in August, a very hot and bleached white cloud-hazy Texas afternoon that sapped the energy and left everyone drained and lethargic. It hadn't rained in two months. The grass in the fields had turned brown, and the cattle had to be given extra hay in bales in order to survive. They clustered beneath the sparse shade of trees, rubbing their flanks together, their tails swinging to swat away green-backed flies.

  Malachi still hadn't decided where to go to school or what subject to pursue there. He was home on the ranch alone, studying a college course catalog and trying to decide what direction he would take at Sam Houston University that fall. He might as well go to Sam Houston. It wasn't a great university or widely known, but it was close by and it wouldn't change his life very much if he went there.

  Unlike his parents, who had always known where their interests lay, he had trouble centering on a major field of study. He knew he didn't want to stay at home and take Internet classes like his parents had done. He also didn't want to move to Bryan-College Station, Texas, and go to A & M. Huntsville's Sam Houston was good enough for him, he thought, it was absolutely fine. Besides, his mother worked there in the university library. She'd be near if they ever needed one another.

  And he'd still be close to Danielle, who he couldn't imagine not seeing regularly. She had already enrolled at Sam Houston State and had urged him to join her. They might even share an apartment, help one another study, and split expenses. She was a thrifty girl and would have to work her way through college. It was too late for him to apply for scholarships. Together they could work it out. And wasn't it time he told his parents about her, she had asked him with a crooked smile. Would they be so disappointed?

  He had wrapped her in his arms and denied he was keeping her from his parents for any nefarious reason. They would love her, just as he did, he swore. How could they not?

  He thought of Danielle now and then as he read and reread the course descriptions in the catalog, his head resting on sofa pillows, sneakered feet propped on the sofa arm. The air-conditioning buzzed in his ear, relaxing him so that he dozed a little, the catalog slipping from his legs to the floor with little noise. He held Danielle against him, their bodies intertwined on crisp, white sheets. He slipped his hand over the swell of her buttocks and pulled her closer. His lips sought hers and . . .

  Suddenly he was wide awake and tensing. He came up from the sofa, swinging his long legs to the floor. He kicked the catalog out of the way. He had sensed a presence approaching the house. He turned his head and stared in front of him, getting that hundred-yard stare his parents recognized as a state of mind where he had disengaged from the world and was in touch with something or someone at a distance.

  He knew the person approaching was not human. Predator, then. And not a Predator Malachi knew. Not Mentor or Ross, not the Predator-like Eddie. Not any of the Predators who delivered his mother's blood and took her money.

  Malachi rose from the sofa. He walked softly to the door and opened it. Waiting. It wasn't a delivery. This wasn't the day for it. It was no one he knew. A stranger, then.

  A sense of alarm rushed through him, leaving him jangled and breathing unsteadily.

  His mother was at work at the library and his father at his small veterinary clinic in a town twelve miles distant. Malachi wished all of a sudden he had one of his parents beside him. He hardly knew fear, except in his dreams. Possessing many of his mother's vampire talents made him immune to most ordinary accidents or bodily harm, relieving him of normal anxieties that plagued other people. Yet, now, as he stood at the door staring across the ranchland, he felt a palpable fear creep up the back of his neck and over his head like a large hand enclosing his cranium with icy fingers.

  The fear kept coming at him like an arrow aimed at a bull's-eye. He recognized danger all around, like a force field holding him at its center.

  He saw no one, but knew he did not have to see an enemy to know he was near. Mentally, he scanned the land around the farmhouse, searching for any hint of where the Predator might be hiding. He went through the house to the back door and looked out from there, nervously expecting the intruder from any quarter.

  Seeing nothing out of place, he was about to send a telepathic message to his mother when he knew the Predator had entered the house and stood at his back. He whirled, his hands tightening into fists. He felt his adrenaline surge until his heart thudded with resounding thunder loud as a hammer pounding an iron rail.

  Before him stood a Predator of about his height and size. He was dressed in soiled slacks, a torn and dirty gray jacket, and a faded plaid shirt open at the throat. He would be taken for a homeless man on the street. His wrinkled face was layered in grime and his eyes were red-veined. He opened razor-thin lips and said, "I was told you need to be sent to the devil."

  Malachi thought he should try to first engage the vampire in conversation. His first instinct had been to attack, but all his life his teaching had been against violent action as first recourse.

  "Why would you want to kill me?"

  "Because you're the dhampir."

  "I'm not the only one. I've heard there are others like me, maybe as many as a hundred scattered across the globe."

  "I was sent to you."

  "But how can you be so sure?" This rebuttal gave Malachi time to send out the alarm to his mother. His father was strong, but mortal. His mother was the only ally who could battle another of her kind.

  "I'm sure." It was as if the vampire was a robot, his speech simple and delivered in a dull monotone. In his eyes Malachi saw the hunger and knew the beast hadn't supped in a very long time. He'd come on his mission on the brink of starvation. It gave him stronger motivation to kill and to drink the blood of an enemy. Never was a vampire's blood taken unless he was dead, that's what his mother had told him. One vampire did not feed from another, unless there was combat and hatred involved.

  "Who sent you? At least tell me that before you take my life," Malachi said.

  "The silver one. The Wolf."

  So his dreams were precognitive. The time had come. The wolf in the dream was carrying out his threat in the real world. He hadn't believed Malachi had no plans to hunt down Predators. He must be mad.

  Malachi saw the deadly resolve in the vampire's eyes a moment before his muscles bunched and he moved. Malachi sped away, walking backward up the door to the ceiling, down the wall behind the vampire and then through the door and rooms of the house.

  He was caught before he reached the front door. Clawed hands took him by the shoulders and threw him across the room where he Struck the mantel, knocking photographs and candlesticks to the floor. A sharp pain shot down Malachi's back.

  He was up in an instant, slightly stunned, but feeling his strength growing. As a small child he had pretended he was Superman. He climbed walls, leaped from any high furniture he could find, and ran through the house so quickly mortal eyes could not detect him. Holding down his exuberance had been a chore for his parents, who were always afraid he would hurt himself.

  Now he felt stronger than the fictional Superman might ever have been. Playing at being a superhero as a child hadn't been as impertinent as it had seemed at the time. Feeling immutable and untouchable gave him an iron will to win over the insanely hungry vampire following on his heels.

  Suddenly Malachi laughed, throwing back his head and holding out his hands, palms up, from his sides. This reaction would throw off the vampire, confuse and weaken him. Malachi knew the beast was an underling. A ragged, starved thing sent out to test h
im. If he got lucky, the vampire might bring him down and sink his fangs in Malachi's throat after murdering him, but unless he was able to throw off the stupor Malachi sensed clouded his mind, his strength would betray him.

  The vampire attacked again, rushing in and grabbing for Malachi's throat to pin him to the mantel. Malachi stepped aside again, turned and caught the other around the throat with his arm. He took hold of his wrist with his other hand and began to haul back, lifting the vampire off his feet and throwing him to the floor. Malachi could feel his strength as if it were steel wire running from his shoulders down into his arms and hands. His heart beat so hard he expected the vampire could feel it against his back before he was thrown down. Malachi straddled the prone beast and reached out his hands for the throat.

  "Oh, Jesus." It was his mother at the door. Then she was next to him as he pinned down the snarling vampire. Malachi had his knee on the beast's chest, his hands wrapped around his throat. Dell commanded, "Let him up."

  Malachi glanced at her. He had never seen such fury on his mother's face. He protested, "But . . ."

  "Let him go!"

  Malachi drew back, his hands falling from the vampire's throat. He stood next to his mother, watching as the vampire rose slowly to his feet. His eyes bulged, and his lips were pulled back from his teeth. He spoke in a rage-choked voice. "Get out of my way, woman."

  Dell did not bother to respond. She flew at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and pushing her face toward his throat. His head bent to the side as he howled, struggling to free himself.

  Malachi's heart stopped in his chest in fear. He didn't know what to do, how to help. If he got near the two of them, he was afraid he'd get in his mother's way.

  The vampire began to spin, trying to throw off the woman biting at his neck. His scream rose louder and louder, the sound ricocheting all around the walls.

  Malachi heard his mother's command in his mind. Get the machete.