She glanced back at the window and her husband. She saw he was coming from the window. He had swung one leg over the sill. She turned and leaped to the ground, rolling on the dew damp grass. She grunted from the impact, came to her knees and then to her feet. She looked to the window again, about to hurry her husband along. But Alan had vanished.
"Alan!" Her voice, strangled with fear, was not loud. She called again, "Alan!"
In her mind she screamed, Mentor! Help us!
The cat face appeared at her bedroom window. It hissed at her, the lips pulled back in a snarl. Her heart stopped, and she sucked in air to keep from passing out.
"Let him go," she called to the Predator, her voice still weak. "Please. Please let him go. Take me instead. Please, I'm begging you."
The awful face ducked back through the window, disappearing. Nightmare images flooded Bette's mind. The cat ravishing her husband Alan's throat torn open and pumping out his life's blood. His eyes closing forever.
She screamed, this time her voice returned to normal. She screamed at the top of her lungs. Lights came on in the house next door and dogs began to bark. She rushed to the back kitchen door and banged on it with her fists, weeping in frustration and mad with grief. It was locked. She couldn't get in. She couldn't get to Alan.
"Mentor, Mentor, Mentor, help us," she wailed, her fists breaking against the wood of the door like thunder against a mountainside.
~*~
Mentor had fallen into one of the deepest sleeps of his life. He was exhausted from worry. He didn't sleep but once in every three or four days and only then because the human body he inhabited forced him to it. But this night he lay down on his bed, covered his eyes with an arm, and was dead to the world in seconds.
The cry that woke him was so loud and so fearsome that his eyes snapped open and he could feel his skin drawing tight with dread.
It was Bette. She was on the brink of death or insanity, he could not tell which. He sat up in the dark bedroom and began to shimmer. He must reach her within the next few moments or she would be lost to him.
He shimmered again and he was behind her where she beat wildly at her own kitchen door from the outside. He reached out to take her arms. She turned, flailing at him, her face distorted with tears. He felt sorrow coming off her like heat from a stove. It inundated him and left him senseless.
She finally recognized him and fell forward against his chest. "Up there," she said between sobs. She pointed to the upstairs bedroom window. "A vampire! He's got Alan."
Mentor let her go and rose to the roof and then to the open window. He pushed through into the dark bedroom, but he could see everything as if it were day. There was no vampire, but he felt the presence that had been here. It was moving rapidly away from the house, taking its evil with it. On the floor lay Alan Star, Bette's husband. He had been savaged, his head nearly torn from the body. Blood covered him, covered the floor, the window sill, and the wall.
Mentor sighed and turned away his head. This was not a normal attack. Though every vampire attack was fatal, few of them were this vicious. It was as if the Predator who had done this meant to hurt others besides the victim. He wanted to leave behind enough carnage to damage the mind of anyone who witnessed it.
Mentor could not let Bette see it.
He heard her calling up to him, questioning him. Her cries were piteous. "Is he dead?" she called. "Is he dead, he isn't dead, is he, Mentor, he didn't die, did he?"
Mentor knelt by the body and took Alan's head and positioned it correctly. He placed his hand over the brutal wound and rested it there. He could make some repairs. He could not bring back this man's life, he hadn't that power, but he could close the worst of the severed flesh so that Bette would never know the horror of what had been done to the man she loved.
When he'd done what he could, he lifted Alan and carried him down the stairs. He laid him on the sofa and went to unlock the back door to let Bette inside. She was again beating at the door, her misery causing her to slip from her mind again. Mentor had learned over the years what made men go mad. The shock and grief Bette was experiencing were enough to plummet her over the edge if she didn't regain control. In madness the landscape changed, the world receded, and the mind sat in darkness, admitting no light.
He took her through the house, his arm around her waist to prop her up. She froze when she saw Alan on the sofa. Her shoulders began to shake. Though she was silent now, he could feel the terrible shock racing through her body. Suddenly, she slumped toward the floor, but he caught her before she hit and guided her to a chair. He found an afghan thrown over the back of the chair, and he took it across the room to cover the body.
There was still blood all over the pajamas Alan had been wearing. Mentor couldn't do anything about that. He wanted the body covered and away from sight. She had to see for herself he was dead and that was enough.
"Bette, I am so sorry. I came as fast as I could." He was not God. He could not prevent every disaster. He could not move instantaneously, covering miles without some time passing.
She couldn't speak. Or she wouldn't. He didn't know and refused to meddle by intruding into her mind. When he'd lost his wife to death, he had been this way. He knew no one could have reached him. He rode the waves of denial and acceptance alone until he could face living again. He must let Bette do the same.
He stood next to her, his hand on her shoulder, and waited. It might take hours, but she would have questions when she could speak to him and he had to be there to answer them.
The murderer had been Upton. He'd known it when he found Alan. He had detected the scent that belonged only to Upton. Since his escape in Thailand that scent had grown more and more like musk, the mark of the great jungle cat he favored.
Mentor did not have to ask himself why Upton would kill Alan. He had likely been after Bette instead, but she'd eluded him. He wanted to kill Bette because he knew what she meant to Mentor. If he had not fallen in love, and if that love had never been divulged through his thoughts of her, this would never have happened.
Bette might never forgive him. She loved Alan. One love was responsible for the death of another love. Who could forgive that?
He stood at her side, never moving, waiting for the sun to rise and for her to speak to him. This was his self-imposed punishment. Once he told her the truth about why Alan had died, he expected the punishment would be much more serious. She might banish him from her life. He could never visit her garden, never see her again. She would have no idea how that would leech all joy from him. He hoped he was wrong, he prayed she'd realize he couldn't help loving her and he'd had no part in Upton's theft of his most intimate thoughts.
He stood, mourning Alan, mourning for Bette and for himself. There was time enough later to let his fury carry him after the diabolical Charles Upton. For now he must wait, give solace, and eventually admit his guilt.
~*~
Dolan had always been a faithful servant to Mentor. If it were not for the great vampire, Dolan thought he would have long since killed himself. Mentor gave him reasons to live. He'd trained him in some of the Predator's arts and just as he'd predicted, Dolan possessed more strength and ambition than his Craven brothers. For years Dolan had gone with Mentor to the bedside of the younger vampires who were going through the red dream of death. He could not enter that fantastic world where the soul departed, returning as vampire, but he grew to have great respect for the crossover they all must make into immortality.
While Charles Upton had been imprisoned, it was Dolan's job to help monitor him. He'd failed miserably at it he often thought Mentor sent him to the Thai monastery to keep him busy. Given his weaker supernatural abilities, Dolan knew his desire to serve was stronger than his aptitude. As years stretched into decades, time being the vampire's worst enemy, Dolan spent more and more time at the peaceful retreat in the Thai jungle. As those years passed he grew lax and content, his attention often straying from Upton's cell.
Now Mentor had truste
d him with another important assignment, and he must not fail this time. He had already alerted three Craven communities, urging them to scatter somewhere away from the city to an open place that could not burn. They should go to ground, digging into the earth and burying themselves, he said, and pray the renegade Predators didn't find them.
He was approaching another Craven communal house when he smelled a hint of smoke in the air. His throat constricted as he hurried, his feet flying over the long expanse of neglected lawn leading to the house. Before he entered, he heard the cries of his brethren. Struggling, Dolan forced open the locked door and a cloud of black smoke engulfed him. He tried to narrow his vision so he could peer into the thick darkness, but it was like looking through murky water. He could make out figures writhing and crawling about, desperately trying to find the exit. He screamed at them to follow his voice. "Here's the door," he yelled, hoping they could hear him through their panic. There was nothing more devastating to a vampire than to be trapped in a fire.
Now he could make out the flames burning through walls and roof, and he heard the crackling as the fire swept through the large old house, consuming it with wicked speed. One or two Cravens made it to the door and stumbled out, their faces blackened with soot, their eyes wild with terror.
Dolan could not go inside. He knew he should. He knew if he were brave, he would. But the heat from the fire even now crawled over his face and hands like fiery worms and the smoke blinded him. His instinct was to run far away. The Predators who had set the fire were gone, and the Cravens left inside were doomed. Even if he entered the maelstrom, he might not save a single one.
He pulled one or two more survivors from the doorway and commanded them to flee from the city. Then he moved back on the lawn, sirens rising in the distance, and rubbed at his face with his hands. This was against all the rules they had once lived by. No one had ever murdered his own kind this way, heartlessly trapping the weak who could not save themselves. It was a truly evil entity who had ordered it. Charles Upton should burn in hell forever for this merciless act, he thought.
Before the fire trucks arrived, Dolan left, hurrying to the next place harboring the Cravens. As the night deepened, he found more and more houses burning with the Cravens trapped inside. He saved only two or three out of every house, sometimes dragging them from the buildings or throwing them from windows.
It seemed the whole city was on fire, fire trucks wailing through the seedier neighborhoods where these poorer vampires lived. Fire lit the night sky while smoke billowed and hung like storm clouds over whole blocks of houses. Mortals rushed from their homes, watching the burning of their neighborhoods, the sparks from the Cravens' homes dancing through updrafts to fall and take fire again on nearby roofs.
While hauling a few survivors from one building, Dolan saw Ross and a female standing in a yard across the street. He saw that house, too, was on fire, the roof caving from flame. He hoped Ross would help and send more Predators to his aid. This was too big for him. It was out of control. Wherever he went seeking out his kind, he found the renegades had gotten there before him.
This was truly a catastrophe. He estimated hundreds of Cravens had perished within hours. He didn't know where Mentor was, but if these events were any indication of the upheaval the vampire nations faced, it was going to be a bloodbath. Mentor would face the greatest difficulty putting down the rebellion.
They had to find Upton and stop him.
Ross crossed over the street, the female at his back. He said, "I've just returned from Lanzarote. What's going on here?"
Dolan didn't know where Lanzarote was or why Ross had been there, but he was tremendously relieved to see him. "The lairs of the Cravens are burning all over the city. I can't get to them in time. Everywhere I go the fire's already burning."
"Where's Mentor? Why isn't he here?"
"I don't know. He sent me. I don't think he knew there would be so many working against us tonight."
"We'll help you," Ross said. "I'll call some others to join us. We must stop this." He turned to Sereny. "Try to call for help from my clan. I have to handle the media and the police. This will be all over television if I don't get to them."
Trusting Ross to handle the big picture, Dolan hurried to the next block just ahead of a fire engine, hoping to find the lair intact enough to get some of the Cravens out. His mission had saved so few, and there were so many more places he had to get to. With Ross' help they might have a chance.
~*~
Ross flew above the city in the areas that were burning in order to find the fire trucks and television crews. He came down and went to them one at a time, mesmerizing the reporters and everyone involved. They turned off their lights, their cameras, and filed obediently into their vans to leave, having already forgotten why they'd come in the first place. Next, Ross found the police and, though it seemed to take forever, he implanted in their minds different memories of the entire night.
This took many hours. Every time Ross approached a human, all he wanted to do was open his jugular and drink. Controlling his blood need took every bit of his effort. But he could not let the fires and the many deaths be reported. It would start a panic in the city—just what Upton wanted, he assumed. Well, he would not get his way.
All through the night Ross tracked down every human he could find who might write, photograph, or report in any way how strange the fires seemed to be and how the targets were all run-down houses full of sick people.
Toward dawn the fires were all out and Ross had reached everyone who might say anything to create a panic. For this extreme aggravation alone, he thought he could cheerfully tear Charles Upton into a million tiny, bloody bits.
When he returned to his house and found Sereny there sleeping already, he crawled in beside her in the bed and put his arm around her body.
He could sleep for a decade, but he knew the night would come quickly and he'd be out again, fighting Upton's forces.
Sereny mumbled in her sleep and turned to face him. He hugged her close, shutting out the war in the city. There would be time enough for all that when the sun set.
~*~
Detective Teal came up to one of the fires that had only been snuffed out. It was almost dawn. He saw a man speaking to a television crew and watched as the crew packed up their van and readied to drive away. The man who had spoken to them seemed to have vanished. Teal looked around and couldn't find him anywhere. Slick bastard, he thought. What's his game?
Teal hadn't slept at all. The fires started after midnight. He'd seen the first fire glow from his fourth-story room. He made nothing of it, but he didn't leave his chair either. He wasn't sleepy yet, what the hell.
Then two hours later he heard fire engines and saw another fire in the distance, the glow against the bottom of floating clouds. A big one, he thought. What's up?
When he saw the third fire, he hopped from his chair and made for the door. Something was so wrong tonight it was like being dropped dead smack into some crazy movie written by a screen writer out of his head on crystal meth. Victims with their necks torn open and drained dry of blood. Fires.
It meant something. Maybe it was all connected, though it didn't have to be, of course.
He'd just go see for himself.
He took his car from behind the hotel and drove toward the latest glow in the city. Now he was here approaching the television crew. He jumped from his car and hurried across the street. "Hey," he said, flipping out his badge at the blonde woman reporter. Pretty, Teal thought, in a plastic, collagen-lipped sort of way. "What's the deal here?" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the fire that still smoldered. It must have been a big house, maybe an apartment building. It was a shambles now. People must have perished. Big news.
The reporter stared at him like he was a fish.
Teal snapped his fingers in her face. "You," he said. "Can you hear me?"
The woman swallowed. She blinked. She said in a prim voice, "There's no news here."
&n
bsp; "I beg your pardon?"
"This is not newsworthy. We'll be on our way now, thank you."
When she turned her back on him, his mouth gaped. "Wait," he called, gathering his wits. He had to rush to the door of the van to keep her from shutting him out. "Look, how many fires does this make tonight? Three? Four? Is there an arsonist loose in the city?"
He swiveled his head, expecting to see a police cruiser. Hell, he'd ask the officers. But the area had emptied. There were no patrol cars. No police. This was as eerie as an eclipse of the sun. Nothing made a lick of sense. If it had been arson, where was the crime scene yellow tape? If it wasn't, where were the families of the victims?
He had his hand on the van window's ledge. "Please let go of my door," the woman said. "We have to leave now. It is imperative we leave."
Teal stepped back, confused. He watched the van drive away.
He looked around and thought again, this ain't right, this ain't right no way, no how, boyo.
He returned to his car and, first scanning the city horizon, headed toward the next fire glow reflected off the night sky. He'd hunt this dog until it broke a leg. He jerked the microphone off the dash and called in. "How many cars you got out at the fires?" he asked.
"Fires?" Dispatch asked.
"Am I speaking Armenian to you? Fires, fires! House fires. Apartment fires. Someone's torching stuff all over Dallas, are you freaking asleep? Give me Sergeant Travers.”
A cold, white hand covered Teal's fist and crushed his fingers over the microphone. Teal jumped so hard and high his head hit the roof of the car. His testicles crawled up his body, and it felt like a buzz saw had just run over his scalp.
The hand belonged to the man he'd seen speaking to the reporter. He sat in Teal's car now, having appeared there out of thin air. Teal hit the brakes and swerved the car one-handed to the curb. The man let go of his hand.
SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy Page 54