"What do you mean, like Balthazar?"
Mentor now raised his gaze. "He's dead, Charles. Ross went to the island. Balthazar was burned. What's going to happen when his troops find out? Can you get them to follow you then? I think they'll desert you. They'll know we're too strong for them and they're outnumbered. They'll move away from you to grieve for their fallen leader."
Upton was speechless. This blow wasn't expected. He thought he'd armed himself against any surprise Mentor might try to spring on him. He'd never have imagined they'd already reached Balthazar and disposed of him so easily.
Suspicion crept into his mind. "What if I don't believe you?"
"Check for yourself. I have no reason to lie about it."
Upton could have tried to mentally reach Balthazar, but he knew now it was no use. Mentor wasn't lying. Balthazar was dead.
Upton straightened his shoulders. "I don't care if he's dead. I was going to kill him anyway. The Predators will follow me. I'm their leader now."
"And if they don't? Do you think you can take over this city, much less the region, without them?"
Fury rose inside Upton until it came to a crescendo in his brain. He wasn't about to stop the transformation of his face into jaguar. In seconds he was the wild hungry cat whose single imperative was to bring the prey to its knees.
Even as his face changed, Mentor came to his feet. In his eyes glared murder.
"You don't want to test me here and now," Mentor said in a menacing voice.
"I'll bide my time until you're mine," Upton said, edging toward the door. He shook himself, changing his features back to human. He slipped on the sunglasses. If he'd been sure he could have taken Mentor, he would have pounced. But he couldn't take stupid chances and risk the future. In caution waited victory. He would only attack Mentor, or Ross for that matter, when he had other Predators at his side. He wasn't absolutely convinced he could win alone. He must do nothing without certainty of the outcome.
"If you persist in this uprising, most of your Predators are going to die," Mentor warned. "And you're going to pay for going after the woman and then killing her husband."
Upton went out the door and never turned back or responded. It wasn't his business to give the enemy satisfaction. It was humbling enough he'd backed down from a one-on-one pitched battle. But he'd touched Mentor with the mortal's death, that's for sure. He laughed to himself as he remembered the man's death stare, surprise and horror frozen on his face as his blood pumped out. Though he hadn't taken the woman, he'd hurt her, oh, he'd hurt her quite deeply. And through her, Mentor.
That's what mattered.
Even as Upton moved away from the house, he called mentally to his army, dismissing all thought of the mortal's death and Mentor's warning. His Predators were scattered in hiding all over the city. In order to reach them, Mentor and Ross would have had to visit three hundred different lairs.
Upton sent an urgent message directly to his captains. He didn't fear Mentor or Ross intercepting his message when they went directly from his intelligence to the targets he intended to reach. It would have been like trying to catch a butterfly on the wing. He wanted his captains to gather the army to meet with him at a ranch on the outskirts of Dallas by sundown. It was where Ross lived. First they'd all descend on the vampire leader, burning him along with his extravagant home.
Then they would finish burning and tearing down the blood banks that supplied the Naturals and surviving Cravens all over the southwestern part of the state. Already they had attacked the Strand-Catel and taken away all the blood supplied there. Ross was in a frenzy to make up for the loss.
With Ross dead and the routines performed by his clan disrupted, the whole city would fall into Upton's hands. Dallas was only the beginning. Within months he believed he could give over Texas to Predators determined to live as reigning vampires.
In a year, he'd control the middle of the nation, and in five years, the whole country would be quivering in the palm of his hand.
In less than a century he thought the vampires would control the world as they always should have. And what was a century to an immortal? A day before the sun set, no more.
~*~
Mentor watched Upton leave, the sunglasses that covered his inhuman eyes incapable of disguising the ferretlike, sloped forehead with the smooth brow and widow's peak of slick hair that seemed to be creeping down toward his face.
He was crazed, of course. Charles Upton had been verging on lunacy even as an industrialist intent on squashing his competitors no matter the cost or how long it took. It was how he acquired so much of his fortune during one lifetime. He had learned to be ruthless and it had served him well. But now his madness was beyond anything Mentor had seen from a Predator in two hundred years. None of them had ever had the audacity to think he could rule over everyone, the way Upton wished to do. The clans in the cities were ruled over by individual leaders. Upton would have to make war against each clan, ripping at the fabric of their organizations.
Mentor turned back into his house and went to the sofa to sit quietly, consoled by the fact he didn't really believe Upton could be triumphant. It was true the Predators were always restless. Until the birth of the New World and Ross' institution of the blood banks, Predators led a more nomadic life, but even then they felt responsibility toward their own kind. They made sure the Cravens and the Naturals got the blood they needed. It was a close fraternity, with brother vampire helping brother, the strongest watching out for the weak. There were fewer of them then and they depended on one another in crisis. Whole societies had been formed across Europe, Asia, and South America, setting up supply lines to service their kind. A Craven or a Natural would have died for a Predator, and vice versa.
Vohra had told Mentor each new birth of a vampire soul who chose the weaker paths put demands on the strong, but it had been that way from the first. It had never been something they thought about or discussed, as if there was an alternative. Predators, possibly the least human of them all, still came from woman. They still understood the suffering of death, and the reasons one might chose to be other than Predator. They had all been beneath the glow of the red moon and wrestled with their souls.
Upton thought he could change all that overnight. Mentor admitted Upton might gather some of the new Predators who hadn't been guided long enough. Or he might appeal to the borderline misfits who drank despair like it was a narcotic twisting with need at their innards. But he would never turn a whole history back on itself. He could never convince the majority of Predators to leave the helm and let the ship wallow on rough seas.
This is what made him a lunatic. He was unable or unwilling to see his plan for what it was—a desperate ambition not all of them would accept as righteous.
Nevertheless, Upton was a very large problem and, at least locally, this whole thing had gotten out of hand much more quickly than Mentor had expected. Ross had put his clan though training and had warned them to stay alert. Yet Upton had sneaked into the city and started his destruction before any of them could stop him.
Mentor reflected on the fact that he was godlike in some ways, but evidence of his deficiencies always pulled him down from the high pedestal. The Predators respected him and the new vampires he tried to guide through death even came to love him—some of them. But he could not be everywhere at once. He could not stalk Upton if Upton cleared his mind and made it a blank slate. He could not save the Cravens from a conflagration when evil ones came with the torch.
He hadn't even been able to spare Alan. It bothered him most when a human he'd grown close to was sacrificed with such contempt. Ross had threatened to kill both Bette and Alan for meddling with vampire knowledge. It had taken Mentor months to dissuade him. Now Upton had come along and with apparent ease, destroyed the life of the man Bette loved. Mortals lived such circumscribed live and faced death, for the most part, with enough courage that it put a brave Predator to shame. To snatch a man from sleep and rip out his throat the way Upton had don
e must be a sin, it seemed to Mentor.
If there were such a thing as sin.
Something Mentor still didn't know and might never find out, no matter how long he lived. If he needed proof he was no god, he had only to remember how little he could do, how few disasters he could avert, and how minuscule his knowledge was of the mysteries in the universe.
7
Malachi turned the motorcycle into the long dirt road leading back to his parents' farmhouse, Jeremy clutching him tightly around the waist. They bumped over the road, the old motorcycle spitting smoke and spewing dirty exhaust that smelled of burned oil. It was doubtful the machine could have taken them much farther. The carburetor needed another overhaul and the brakes were just about shot. He would have to get his dad to help him fix it.
Right away, Malachi knew the house was empty. He turned off the ignition of the motorcycle and kicked down the stand. He slipped off and lifted Jeremy from the saddle to his feet. "They're not here," he said, worry evident in his tone.
"Where are they?" Jeremy asked. Then he spied the horse stalls and stood staring into the dark recesses there. Malachi saw the hunger in his eyes.
"I don't know where they are. Listen, don't even think about bothering the horses. My mom would kill you. I would kill you. One of those horses belongs to me."
"I wasn't gonna bother 'em."
"Like hell you weren't. I'll get you something in just a minute. We keep blood in the house."
"In the house?"
Malachi had forgotten the boy knew nothing about the arrangement Naturals and Cravens had with the Predators. "My mom's a Natural. She keeps bags of the stuff in the fridge."
"Bags of it? Blood? Yuck."
"You'll get used to it."
Malachi started for the house. He swung open the yard gate and trusted Jeremy had followed. When he reached the porch steps, he saw he hadn't. "What are you doing? Come on."
The boy was still attracted to the horses in the stall. He hadn't moved an inch.
"Jeremy, you hear me? You can't have the horses. They're pets. You don't kill people's pets."
Jeremy came slowly from his trance and straggled down the pathway. He raised guilty eyes to Malachi. "I was just looking," he said. "They're so big."
With so much hot blood in them, Malachi thought with a cringe. He just couldn't get used to the boy's dreadful preoccupation with killing. He had never been around a Predator for any extended length of time. His mother lived like any other human, except for her need for the blood. But she never stalked or killed, the thought abhorrent to her. She'd not chosen to come back to life as a Predator. For that he was immensely grateful. The boy's normal urges that caused him to strike and take small living things was getting on his nerves big time. He was going to have to get some lessons from Mentor. Malachi didn't think he'd be able to control him much longer.
"Just come inside. I'll get you what you need and we'll wait for my parents. They should be home from work by now, but wherever they are, they'll be back soon."
Jeremy trailed him into the house, his small body covered with dust and his clothes ragged and spotted with dark specks of blood. "Why don't you take a bath and I'll try to find some of my old clothes. Mom must have packed a few of them away somewhere."
"I . . . don't think I like water much." Jeremy was hanging back again. He had that bad look on his face, the predatory one that gave Malachi the heebie-jeebies.
"Why don't you like water? It's for washing. You can't go around like that the rest of your life."
Jeremy glanced down at himself. "I'm okay."
"No. You are not okay. You smell to high heaven, and there are probably bugs crawling in your hair. Now come on, I'll show you the bathroom and find you a washcloth and towel."
The boy reluctantly did as he was told. Malachi turned on the bath faucets and adjusted the temperature of the water and left him. But before he had finished rounding up an old plaid shirt and a pair of blue-washed-to-gray jeans that might fit a ten-year-old, Jeremy was out of the shower, standing naked with the towel around his middle. A puddle had dripped onto the wood floor of the hall where Malachi almost ran into him.
"Jesus. Did you wash at all?"
"Yeah."
His hair was plastered to his head so maybe he'd washed it, but Malachi suspected he hadn't done more than a perfunctory job of it. "Okay, fine. Dry off and put these on. I couldn't find any underwear so you'll just have to go without."
"I don't like underwear."
"That's right, I forgot. So okay, put these on."
"Where's the blood?" Jeremy stood holding the clothes, making no move to dress. His eyes were dark in the shadowy hallway, and Malachi couldn't make out his expression. He thought that might be a good thing.
"All right, come with me. Bring the clothes and put them on later." He marched him through the house to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. He stood there staring for some seconds before speaking.
"Where's the blood?" Jeremy repeated.
"It's here." Malachi reached in and withdrew the last bag. The box his mother kept her supply in was empty save for the one bag. He couldn't believe it. His mother had never let it get this low. Why hadn't the Predators brought more? What was going on? The empty box was as ominous as a road sign saying the bridge ahead was out.
Maybe that's where his parents were. They never had to go get his mother's supply, but maybe, this time, something unavoidable had delayed the Predators.
The boy stood holding the cold bag and eyeing it with scorn.
"It's not that bad. At least, I don't think it is. Naturals and Cravens drink it that way all their lives. Just try, okay?"
"How?"
Malachi had seen his mother drink only a few times in his entire life. It was something she did in private, as far as she was able. But he knew what happened. How the fangs automatically descended when the bag drew near.
He took the bag from the boy and pushed it up against his face. Jeremy drew back, flinching. Malachi pressed it toward him again. He had to get him to do this. "Look, you can't be picky. I know it's not a squirrel or a rabbit, but it's what you need, so take it."
As the bag neared him the second time, the boy latched onto it like a snake, just as he had with the prairie hen and his first taste of blood. He buried his face in the bag, his hands clutching it so close his face disappeared behind the plastic container.
When Malachi heard the slurping sounds, he had to leave the room. It wasn't that the sight of blood or the taking of it made him sick. It did, for some reason, always produce a sense of sadness in him. To think a creature was reduced to renewing the body only with another creature's blood made him think again and again of becoming a vegetarian. He hardly ate meat anymore as it was. Having Jeremy around for a few days had further diminished his appetite for it.
Not to mention the news of Mad Cow Disease that was spreading around the world. A hundred and fifty thousand cases of it were found in England alone. Another case of mutated cells gone rampant. Protein cells. No DNA. No RNA. One hundred percent fatal to humans. People who contracted the disease died with skulls full of mush, the disease eating away at their brains, leaving it like a hunk of Swiss cheese riddled with holes.
In France there were reports of mad bees. Bees so disoriented they couldn't find their ways back to their hives. Maybe their brains were scrambled, too.
My God. Ten years ago he'd have dismissed all these horrors as bad ideas from an old 1950s horror movie. But they weren't. They were scientifically verified facts. One heck of a lot scarier than anything he'd ever seen in the movies. Now that he thought about mad cows and mad bees, he decided he wouldn't be able to look at hamburger or a spoonful of honey the same way again.
While Jeremy drank his mother's last container of whole blood, Malachi walked around the house. He looked for clues about his parents' absence. Unless they'd had to go for a new supply of blood, he couldn't think where they could be. He hadn't been mentally in touch with his mother in the
last couple of days. He'd tried without success and wondered at her unavailability. Why had she lost communication with him?
Then a great fear entered him and he stopped dead in the center of the living room. What if Balthazar's last act had been to send eight more assassins to kill his mother? Or twelve? Or, God forbid, two dozen?
No. He would have known if she had been harmed. He put the thought from mind. He stood staring out the window, expecting their car any minute, when Jeremy came up behind him. He knew he was there though the boy hadn't made a sound.
"Don't tell me," Malachi said. "You're still hungry.”
“Yeah."
"Well, you're just going to have to learn some restraint. I can't keep going after prey for you."
"Malachi, I'm not at all like you, am I?"
"No. Not much."
"I'm not like your mom either."
"No, not exactly."
"You think I'm bad, don't you?"
He hadn't sounded pitiful, but the question tugged hard at Malachi so that he turned and, stooping to the boy's level, took him into his arms. "No, I don't think you're bad. You just don't know anything yet. You don't know how to control this . . . this thing. My mother can help you. It won't always be like this."
"It won't? You promise?"
Malachi hated to promise when he wasn't sure of what he was saying. He only hoped it wouldn't be like this for the boy forever. His unquenchable thirst was a frightening thing. It was like a dark part of him that drove him above all else. The hunger.
“I . . . I can't promise."
"The man who was in the dream with me . . . you know . . . when I died . . ." Jeremy paused, trying to recall the name. His words were softly spoken against Malachi's shirt.
SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy Page 57