Howard fumbled with shells he withdrew from a jacket pocket. He got them socked into the chambers and snapped the gun shut, raised it, and said, "I wouldn't if I were you."
Dottie had hurried back into the house with her brother. Jeremy ran through the building to the front door. He slammed it open and flew across the porch, racing around the house away from the killers in the back. He hit the door of the shed, knocking it open and went straight for the shovel leaning against empty snake cages. He hurried out with it again, going around the store in the opposite direction now, hoping to get close enough to Malachi to hand the shovel over. He'd heard the shotgun blast, and tears sprang to his eyes, but it didn't slow him down.
Howard shot one of the vampires coming for him, turned the barrel and shot the other. Both of the creatures fell back to the ground, but even as Howard chambered two more shells he saw the two vampires he'd shot rise up again. Miraculously the middle of their bodies were as untouched as if they'd never been shot. Shirts hung in shreds from their bodies around their middles, revealing unblemished skin.
"My God," Howard said, talking to himself. He was sweating now and fumbling in his pocket for more shells. "What do I need? I need a stake, I need a silver bullet, I need a crucifix . . ."
Malachi was in a fight for his life, unable to give his attention to the old man. He threw off three vampires who were attacking, all of them biting at him on arms and chest and face. He screamed, the pain shooting through him like fire. He, too, would heal quickly, but not nearly as quickly as a true immortal.
He saw Jeremy coming, running as fast as his feet would carry him, the shovel held across the front of his body. He had to get the Predators off him so he could take the shovel. He could use the shovel's blade to slow down his attackers and when he got the chance, he could use it to lop off their heads, thereby rendering them dead forever.
He turned, beginning to spin so that the vampires couldn't latch onto him. His mind fell away, and he was simply flesh intent on survival. His movement was so swift that he looked like a blur. The vampires fell back a step or two, taken off guard. They never expected a dhampir to employ such ability. Balthazar had told them Malachi was unusual, that he was formidable, but they hadn't believed him. A half-breed as fast and deadly as they were? It had to be a lie.
Malachi leaped toward Jeremy just as he neared the melee. He took the shovel from his trembling hands. He stood still now, feet apart, the shovel held before him. He said, "Hide, Jeremy. Run and hide. Now!"
The two vampires Howard had wounded reached him on the store's back steps before the old man could chamber the next shells. The shotgun was ripped from his hands, causing him to wobble on his feet. He cried out in surprise and fear, but his cry was cut off by a roundhouse knock to the head with the butt end of the shotgun. He fell where he stood, crumpling to the ground unconscious and bleeding.
The vampire who had struck him dropped the shotgun, leaned down, and pierced the side of the old man's throat with one long fingernail. Blood welled and the vampire went to his knees, his face closing on the puncture. The other vampire turned back to Malachi.
Malachi began to fight in earnest. He knew one of the Predators was feeding on Howard and if he didn't get to him soon, he would be dead. The vampires surrounding Malachi backed off, wary of the sharp spade end of the shovel, their gazes following the rhythmic swinging motions as it sliced back and forth through the air.
Malachi advanced with such speed his attackers couldn't retreat. One by one Malachi took them down, slicing off the head of one, shoving the blade into another's midsection to slow him, striking another against the shoulder to knock him off his feet. All around Malachi the frenzy rose, the death-dealing so fast a mortal couldn't have followed it.
Malachi knew he was only able to outwit and outfight the vampires because he drew on the inner reserves that belonged to his own vampire heritage. He did not know how he had been so blessed with strength and agility, and he had no time to question it now, but it was obvious to his enemies he was no ordinary dhampir. He was no weak half-breed. In fact, he was as awesome in warfare as a monster killing machine. Despite the Predators' fearsome abilities, Malachi was superior to them.
With five of the eight mortally wounded or dead, Malachi went after the vampire kneeling over the old man, taking his life from the jugular in great draughts. He knocked him aside and buried the shovel blade into the vampire's stomach, withdrew it and used the spade as a hammer, swinging it high above his head and bringing it down with tremendous force on the enemy's neck, severing it from the convulsing body.
Six down, two more to take care of, Malachi thought frantically, swinging around to attack the remaining vampires. He saw he was alone, and panic filled him. He glanced down at Howard and realized the old man's eyes were open and fully dilated. He was gone. He'd been too late to save him.
What about Dottie and Jeremy? Was he too late for them, too? Jesus.
He sped across the yard, looked in the shed, found it empty. He scanned the rows of rattlesnakes and saw many of the cages had been knocked from their stands, the latches holding the cages closed having come undone. All around him on the desert ground swarmed the rattlesnakes, some fleeing into the nearby desert land, some curling, ready to strike. He backed away from them and turned. He rushed around the house and saw no one in front of the place. Up and down the long straight highway the lanes were empty.
Inside. They must have gone inside.
He flung open the door and entered the dark store, his vision adjusting immediately from his adrenaline rush. He saw nothing moving, no hint of the vampires. But he could feel them. He could sense their cold presence.
He ran into the back rooms where there was a kitchen and bedrooms. He heard voices and followed them, the shovel raised. He couldn't let them hurt the twins. He'd fight to the death for them.
He pushed open a bedroom door and thought he was hallucinating. Could he be dreaming?
It was the twins' bedroom, obviously, decorated with cartoon wallpaper. On one of the twin beds lay Jeremy Stretched out on his back. On the floor two vampires lay dead, decapitated, blood from their mortal wounds spreading in wide puddles across the hardwood. Between their bodies lay Dottie, her dress soaking in blood, her throat torn open. Calm, dead eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling. And over the bed stood Mentor and Ross looking down at the male child, their backs to him.
Malachi dropped the shovel. His whole body went weak, and he caught the doorjamb to keep from crumpling. He couldn't stand this. Couldn't. It couldn't be true. He had fought so hard, he had taken down the enemies with as much speed as he could command. How could they have killed the children? Even monsters should hesitate to take the life from a child. "Mentor," he whispered.
Mentor turned and came to him. "I came as quickly as I could," he said. "I'm afraid it wasn't quick enough." He lifted a sheet from the unmade empty bed and walked over to the girl on the floor. The sheet billowed out and floated down to cover her. "We knew you could handle the others. We tried to get in here before the children were taken."
"Oh, God." Malachi hung his head, his heart breaking inside him. He moved to the bedside where Jeremy lay. "Is he . . . ?"
"No, he's not dead," Ross said quietly. "We interrupted the attack. He's in the dream of the red moon."
Malachi sank onto the bedside. He took the boy's limp hand. There were sores on his bare arms and face. He'd been bitten by one of the vampires, but not killed. He'd been infected.
"Oh, no." Malachi knew what it meant to die to the world and enter the dream Ross spoke of. His mother had told him about it. How the soul chose there what sort of vampire he or she would come back as. Jeremy would be vampire. Jeremy would live again eternally. He'd be destined to walk in his nine-year-old child body for a hundred years, trapped in childhood though his mind would mature into an adult's.
"There's nothing to be done about it now," Mentor said, as if listening to Malachi's thoughts. "I'll try to help him."
&nb
sp; Ross moved and Mentor knelt by the bed, taking the boy's dead face in his hands. While Ross and Malachi looked on, Mentor closed his eyes and mentally entered the death world with the child, hoping to guide him.
~*~
Malachi tied his bag onto the back of the motorcycle. It was morning, the sun only just risen. Jeremy stood at his back, waiting. He was still barefoot and dressed in overalls, but he no longer looked like the innocent child he had once been. His face was as white as cooked rice, the eyes too intense and otherworldly to be human. When his lips twitched, as they did constantly now, his small fangs showed. Despite Mentor's advice and guidance during the dream of the red moon, he had chosen to be a Predator. Mentor said he'd been so full of the loss of his sister and grandfather that he'd been incapable of choosing otherwise. He'd been motherless and fatherless, and now had lost the only two people left in the world who had ever loved him. Knowing how alone he was, he had moved toward the Giant Predator Maker with sure resolve, inviting the immortal change that would give him the most power.
"I want to be like them," he had told Mentor in the death dream. "Like the ones who came to the store. I want to be exactly like them. I don't want to live as human anymore. I want to hunt and to fight. I want to kill."
He would soon possess more powers than Malachi, such as the power to change form and to fly. He would learn more as he lived the life and perfected the supernatural arts granted him.
"Where will we go?" he asked now, watching Malachi secure his belongings in the saddlebag on the motorcycle.
Malachi paused and looked at the far dry mountains of West Texas. "I don't know," he said. "Anywhere but here." They would wander. Stay on the move. Keep out of cities and away from other people so this would never happen again. He'd left home to save his father and instead had made Jeremy into a victim. He felt so heavy inside, like a bag of rocks was fastened around his heart, weighing it down.
Ross had buried the old man and Dottie. Then he'd disposed of the vampire corpses out on the desert plains. They'd locked the doors of the store, set loose the remaining rattlesnakes, and put the CLOSED sign in the window. They just didn't know what to do with Jeremy.
Malachi had insisted he come with him. He felt responsible for what had happened. If he'd never stopped at the store, never stayed, both children would have been spared. It was all his fault. Who was going to teach Jeremy how to live again? Who cared enough to protect him until he found the right way to exist as vampire? Mentor had too many responsibilities. Ross had no interest in fledgling Predators, especially one who was under four feet tall. So Malachi would take the boy and he would teach him how to survive. No matter how long it took.
"Get on the back," he said once he'd straddled the bike. "Hold me around the waist."
With the boy mounted and his arms encircling him, Malachi rose up on the starter pedal and turned the motor over. He sat down once he had the engine revving and, without giving the bike gas, turned the wheel first one way down the highway and then the other. He turned his head this way and that, trying to decide.
Jeremy let one of his pale hands fall from Malachi's waist and pointed. "That way," he said.
"Okay." Malachi put the bike into gear and let out the clutch. They were headed east again, but he wouldn't go home. He'd go somewhere else.
Somewhere safe.
Somewhere to hide.
BOOK THREE
THE UPRISING
1
Dell sat on the porch thinking of her son. It was Saturday, and Ryan was in the garage tinkering with his old truck. He was unaware of her worries and even if she'd told him, there was nothing he could do to help. As lovable and good as he was, his mortality kept him from being any help when it came to vampire troubles.
Dell tried to keep her mind at home, but Malachi was all she could think about. Mentor had told her what had happened. Now her son was not alone, but had a child in his care. He had no idea what he was doing, it seemed to Dell. Eddie, Dell's brother, had been infected and changed when he was just a child and it had been a sad event for the whole family.
Today Eddie was a wanderer. She might see him once a year, if she were lucky. He couldn't stay home, living as a Natural, and continue going to school while never physically maturing. They'd all known the day was coming when he would go away. It was put off as long as possible, but two years after Dell's marriage to Ryan, Eddie came to her to say good-bye. They had wept together and hugged. He would live a lonely existence, wandering the world, never fitting in anywhere for very long. He had heard of a colony of children, he'd said, living in Brazil. Perhaps he should find them.
"Oh, you don't want to do that," Dell had said. "They hang out on the streets, abandoned, wild. They aren't vampire, Eddie."
"The kids in Brazil are no wilder than they have to be. At least they'll take me in."
The Brazilian band was separated from their families, making one another brothers and sisters, creating their own families. The Brazilian public and the government thought they were scabby little runaways or orphans, sniffing glue and rummaging city dumps for food. No one cared about them. No one knew what to do.
Eddie didn't know what to do, either, unless he kept on the move, all alone, until his body finally gave out and released him so he could take the body of an adult. He didn't want to be so alone, he'd said, for so many long years. He'd rather be with children.
Dell had let him go, standing on the porch, watching him vanish. His molecules danced like a storm of light and then swept upward into the sky until no hint of his existence could be seen. She mourned him for many months, worrying about how he was doing. He would never tell her, she knew. None of the vampire nations liked to admit their youngest members were doomed to live such a hellish nightmare.
Now her son had taken on the burden of watching over a child who would one day have to leave him. She wished Mentor had taken the child away, but he said Malachi wouldn't let him. Her poor son, with his heavy guilt, had insisted the boy go with him. Maybe she should find them and try to protect them both. But then what about her husband? How could she leave the one person she loved with all of her heart? If Balthazar sent more assassins out of revenge, Ryan wouldn't have a chance. They'd kill him, killing her soul. She couldn't leave him and had to hope her son, who had proved so far that he could care for himself, might continue to survive the attacks.
~*~
"Tell me a fairy tale," Jeremy said.
They were camping in a dry gulch off the lost highway. Around them loomed the deep night, the sky overhead shining with an array of stars. Malachi lay on his side on a spread sleeping bag, supporting his head on one arm. A campfire made from fragrant sagebrush and small dry sticks flickered nearby. The smoke spiraled into the sky like deep gray ribbons sailing to heaven.
"I don't know any fairy tales," Malachi said. It was the truth. His parents had never told him stories, and the books they read to him were about cars or trucks or farming. It seemed his childhood had been so immersed with nightmare and dream that fictional tales weren't needed. He didn't even know if his mother knew any fairy tales.
"You don't know any?" Jeremy asked.
"Afraid not."
Jeremy sat cross-legged before the fire, staring into the flames. "I can tell you one, then."
"All right."
"There were two little kids who lived in the woods," Jeremy began. "They were named Hansel and Gretel. There was also a mean old witch who lived in the woods . . ."
Malachi listened to the child's tale and realized it was similar to what had happened to Dottie and Jeremy. Two children, a boy and a girl, menaced by something evil. When the boy finished, Malachi sat up and poked at the fire with a stick until sparks flew skyward. He wondered why anyone would tell a child such a terrible story.
"That's pretty awful," he said, adding more brush to the fire.
"Not so bad. It's just a pretend story."
"Yes, I suppose so." He wasn't going to ask for another fairy tale. He didn't think he li
ked them.
After a companionable silence, Malachi said, "Are you hungry?"
"Very. Really really hungry. My stomach hurts."
Malachi nodded, knowing it wasn't really the child's stomach that was involved. His whole being was deprived of sustenance. Soon he'd be moaning, unable to go on, starving for blood.
Malachi stood from the campfire and said, "I'll be back in a few minutes. Stay right here and you'll be all right.”
“Where are you going?"
"To find gingerbread and gumdrops."
Jeremy smiled and his fangs showed. "Okay."
It took under fifteen minutes. Ever since he was small, Malachi had been a superb hunter. He could smell the prey before he saw it. He could sense the slightest movement, the blink of an eye, the whisk of a tail. It was clear to him that he was in no way ordinary, not for man or for vampire. He had fought off a whole cadre of vampires. He was beginning to feel changes taking place inside that he couldn't understand. He wondered at this, finding it curious and bizarre. He thought he should try to find out why. Mentor might know. When he returned home, he'd ask him.
A tiny sound interrupted his thoughts. He spied a prairie hen waddling through brush and cacti, swooped down on it, and plucked it from the ground before it could take wing. He wrung the hen's neck as he sped back to the campsite in the distance. When he entered the circle of firelight, Jeremy looked up surprised.
"You didn't hear me coming?" Malachi asked.
"Uh-uh. You're real quiet."
"Don't worry, your instincts will kick in soon. You'll be able to know where I am even if I move far away from you."
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