"Not for a while."
Alex whistled. "You really are tied up, aren't you?”
“I'm afraid so. I might be able to tell you about it later. Right now . . . I can't . . . you know . . ."
Alex hung around for a while longer, but he couldn't get Malachi to open up. They parted with a handshake. Then Alex saw Jeremy come out onto the porch again and Malachi hurried back toward the house. "Thanks for coming by," he said, waving to Alex. "I'll call you, okay?"
Jeremy was off the porch and sidling around the side of the house, trying to get away from Malachi. Alex climbed into his car and as he drove away from the ranch, he saw his friend chasing the kid behind the house. Whew, he thought. That kid needs a keeper.
~*~
Bette Kinyo took the elaborately carved brass urn from the funeral director and held it tightly to her chest. In the car she placed it carefully in a box stuffed with newspaper on the front seat.
Alan.
With her again.
The police were stuck with an open criminal case, seeking an intruder she described for them. Not the monster who had really come. They wouldn't have believed that. They would have wanted to put her into therapy or lock her away. No, she described some scruffy imaginary man high on drugs. The police believed her, given her neighborhood, even when she wanted to scream the truth.
Now Alan was cremated, as he'd wished to be, and he rode beside her in the car in the beautiful urn she'd bought to contain his ashes. Some people drifted the ashes of their loved ones over a favorite piece of ground or into the sea, but she would keep all that was left of Alan with her always. His remains gave her some consolation. She felt his spirit close, hovering about, and superstitiously feared if she didn't have his ashes, he would disappear from her life forever.
Once Mentor had let her know where he lived in the city. They had been sitting on the stone bench in her garden late one night. He had told her more about his life in Dallas and how he lived it. He lived in a house, just like anyone else. Vampires hadn't ever lived in crypts and coffins. That was a fiction, he told her. Well, except for a couple of odd characters he had known, he admitted sheepishly. They believed the press on themselves and thought it quite romantic, so they adopted the lifestyle. For the most part, however, they all made their homes in human constructions, living quietly, seeking anonymity. They always had.
"Why do you want me to know where you live?" she'd asked.
"Because I trust you and if you ever need me and can't contact me, you'll know where I'll be."
Mentor loved her. One of the monsters loved her. The strange thing was, she accepted his love as natural. Destiny decided these things, she believed, and if she were to have a relationship, however one-sided, with a supernatural being, then it was preordained for her soul's growth.
Now she drove across the city toward that house. She had thought he'd be with her during the service for her husband, and when he hadn't arrived, she'd been disappointed. Some of her coworkers from the lab came and a few of Man's family drove from different Texas locations to see him put to rest. But with Mentor missing, it was like a dark hole had opened up in the chapel to suck the life from the proceedings. She had come to rely on Mentor to alleviate some of her fears. When he wasn't there for the service, she gave in to her grief and saw life ahead as barren and empty.
The neighborhood she drove through now was an older one, though not as old or run-down as her own. The houses stood on larger plots, with plenty of room between them. Most of the houses were made of wood and many of them boasted covered porches and wide steps flanked by stucco pillars.
She found Mentor's house and pulled into the drive. Mentor, she thought. I need help. I need so much help.
The door opened, and there he stood looking at her sitting in the car. He didn't seem surprised. He probably had known she was on her way. She admired how the vampire could reach into another person's thoughts at great distances. Though she'd been born with some abilities of her own, they didn't compare to what Mentor and his kind could do.
She reached into the cardboard box and withdrew the urn. Her fingers were slow to warm the cold metal. She carefully let herself out of the car and crossed the lawn. On reaching Mentor she stood looking up at him, the urn again clutched to her chest. "I . . . I couldn't go home."
"I know. Come inside."
They sat next to one another in the darkened living room. His home was comfortable, though the furniture was older and rather worn. The place was spotless, not a speck of dust anywhere. A book lay on the coffee table. A novel by Steinbeck. She smiled to think Mentor read novels in his spare time. She wondered if he'd read all the authors of every age he'd lived through. If he had, she expected he was the best-read person in the world.
He offered her tea and she declined. "I'm sorry I wasn't at the service held for Alan," he said. "The vampire nations are in turmoil. I couldn't leave my duties."
"That's all right," she said, feeling it wasn't all right at all. She'd needed him.
Finally he asked, "How can I help, Bette?"
"All the joy has left my life," she said, feeling her statement was not too strong. It was the truth. Light had been extinguished all around her and nothing gave her any satisfaction—not her job, her home, nothing.
"It'll come back," Mentor said. "You're in a dark place, but there's a way out."
She had placed Alan's urn on the table. She stared at it as if she could will her husband to lift the lid and come out like a genie from a bottle.
"I believe you. I know it's true. But that isn't helping me now. I had to take time from work. I can't seem to get up in the morning. I drag around the house and don't even get dressed until most of the day has passed and by then it makes no sense to put on clothes." She felt a catch in her throat and had to swallow hard. "Do you know why I never married until late in life?"
"I wouldn't say your early thirties is so late."
"Maybe not for you. For someone like me, it was.”
“Tell me why, then."
"You won't go into my mind and know the answer before I say it?" She looked at him.
"No, I won't."
"You don't know everything about me from the times you did go into my mind?" She referred to their first meetings when he and Ross feared she would tell the world what she knew about the shipments of blood from Dallas to outlets all over the Southwest.
"I know some things," he said tentatively. "Not everything."
"Well, the reason I didn't marry until I was thirty-two was because I thought I was better off alone. I'd convinced myself that was the way it should be. Except for Alan, I didn't date, didn't get involved. When he came to Dallas and stayed, I realized I had been fooling myself, protecting myself. Since I'd met him in college I'd wanted to be with him. I wanted to be his wife. But I'd put the thought so far out of my mind because we were going in different directions. He loved the healing profession. I loved research. His home then was in Houston, where he practiced. Mine was here. We met at medical conferences once or twice a year, renewing our affair and then parting again for months. It was killing me, but I denied my feelings."
"We all do that sometimes," he murmured.
She glanced at him. He meant his feelings for her. He'd denied them for as long as he could, and had only confessed them to her when he couldn't hold back anymore.
"I spent some of my best years alone because I didn't know how to get what I wanted," she continued. "I didn't know how to give up, how to sacrifice the career I'd made for myself here in Dallas. I built a small world in my home, created simple routines that kept my mind busy. I told myself I didn't need anyone in order to be fulfilled." She paused, the catch back in her throat. "I lied to myself."
"We all do that." Mentor sat still, not looking at her. She wondered what he was thinking. Maybe he thought she was whining about lost opportunity. And maybe she was. But it was thoroughly human and she couldn't help it.
"Now," she said, "I don't know how to go on. I waited so l
ong to be part of a couple. It's been nearly twenty years since then, Mentor. I'm fifty-two. I thought we'd . . . Alan and I . . . would grow old together. But now I'm on my own again. And I've forgotten how to do it. I've forgotten how to live."
Mentor moved to put his arm around the top of her shoulder. She leaned into him. It was amazing that she'd known this old vampire for two decades. They'd shared many secrets and come to know one another intimately. She'd been drawn to him from the first time he appeared in her kitchen to wipe the memories from her mind. She'd been on the trail of Ross' blood shipments that hadn't been tested by her lab. Alan came along and, investigating further, discovered the vampires, though she'd known from the beginning they were in some way supernatural.
She should have despised Mentor for meddling with her mind, but once she was past her fear of him, she understood the reasons for it. He was the Protector. He couldn't let her tell what she knew to the world. Their agreement of silence had bound them together for the rest of her life. He promised not to let Ross hurt her or Alan. In return, she promised never to speak of what she knew.
"You may have forgotten what it's like to be alone, Bette, but you underestimate your strength. I don't think I've known many like you," he said. "I believe you'll come out of this."
She closed her eyes. If he could believe in her, she might find a way to believe in herself again. "Can I stay here a while?"
"Yes. As long as you want."
"A few days? I can't seem to go back to the house yet.”
“As long as you want," he repeated.
She settled against him and the weariness of the past days swept over her. It was as if she'd been given permission to let her mind drop into a dungeon where there was no emotions to tear at her spirit. She sought oblivion.
As she drowsed, she imagined the arm around her shoulder belonged to Alan and he was there caring for her. Loving her. Forever.
Chapter 8
Ross stood next to Sereny in his home while she admired his art. He'd bought or stolen pieces that by all rights should have been donated to museums. It was a new sensation for him to share his fascination for his masterpieces with anyone. The women he brought here were for the most part uneducated and wouldn't know a Matisse from a Pollock. It would be all dots to them. He laughed to himself over his small joke.
His Predators weren't close to him, never expecting an invitation to his home or into his life. None of them even knew of his obsession. And Mentor, god. Mentor despised his collection. He was always uncomfortable when he visited the house. Ross knew what he thought of him. That he was pretentious. That he wasted the money he earned from Upton's former businesses.
Sereny was the first person who showed any appreciation at all, and her authentic awe for the vastness and quality of his collection pleased him enormously.
Over time he'd understood what the masterful paintings did for him. Unlike living beings, the world of mortals, whose passions were based on survival, art expressed true passion for him. Released from care about his survival, he had found artwork the only reason man should be allowed to continue. A few talented artists of every age captured the heart of what it was to struggle and overcome, or to fail and face the music. Whether their work was considered representational, paintings of life as most saw it, or allegorical, or cubist, or modern, the artist took paint and canvas and made of it windows into the eternal.
Though Ross sometimes scoffed at his own sentimentality, he recognized how his collection kept him from falling over the edge into baseness. He often teetered on the precipice where he might become the one true monster the world found most odious—that dark stain of destruction personified which walked without a soul.
Mentor would tell him that was not possible. It was his soul itself that had chosen the Predator life. And being Predator did not mean he was monstrous.
But Mentor had never traveled in his soul and didn't know how thin a line it walked between monster and human. He gave in to his appetites. He could feel no remorse. He didn't care how much suffering was inflicted on mortal men. They were like rats to him, multiplying without any care whatsoever about how they were overpopulating the very planet they called home.
Yet when he surveyed his art, actually fondling the frames and running his fingers across the beautifully applied layers of paint, he was closer to the man he had been before becoming Predator than at any other time. He remembered the taste of food and the abatement of thirst. He remembered his mother and his father, who had died as mortals, still loving him despite knowing what kind of creature he had become. He remembered the world had not been built by the vampire, but by the efforts of man, and all that he took for granted in his pleasure flowed from man, not vampire.
He forgave himself.
If it were not for his love of art, whether paintings, sculpture, murals in great chapels, or architecture that had stood for a thousand years, he knew he would be irredeemably lost.
What a great creature he might be one day if he could incorporate his passion into his daily actions. He would never be as compassionate as Mentor—who could? But he might be able to hang onto that portion of his human self that held him back from the dark fall and that would be more than enough.
As he thought these things and basked in the glow of Sereny's attention to his prize possessions, he was slow to note her mood had changed.
He said, "What's wrong?" She was as prickly as a cactus, the aura around her body having changed from soothing blue to sooty black.
She turned completely around, her back to the painting they had been studying, and pointed to the rear of the house. "Someone's coming."
He could have slapped himself for letting down his guard. He knew Upton's plans included trying to get to him and to Mentor. He'd let that slip from mind only for minutes and if it hadn't been for Sereny, even now he wouldn't know what was happening around him.
He tuned into the house as if it were a box lying in his hand. He searched every room, every nook and cranny but found no one. He then projected his intelligence to the land surrounding his home. He picked up a faint transmission of a Predator unknown to him.
"I heard two of them," Sereny said, moving through the large open room to the hall that transversed the house and led to the back patio.
"Two?" Ross followed on her heels, trying to pick up the second Predator. He couldn't. "Two?"
She had stepped outside and stared toward the setting sun in the distance. "Two who leaked their thoughts," she said. "They're with hundreds. Upton will kill them for that transgression."
"Upton's brought his entire army?" Ross was flabbergasted. He prided himself on how alert he was. He could pick up another vampire within miles, yet he could only detect one Predator while Sereny spoke of hundreds. Upton and Balthazar had trained all of them in the art of cloaking their minds, but it had been Sereny who found them out.
"Yes." She turned to him and he saw flames in her eyes. It was an illusion. Her thoughts made him see the future coming for him. Flames. Death. Annihilation.
They didn't have to speak again. They didn't have time. He took her hand and they both began to shimmer, their matter changing to energy as it spun them away from danger.
As her essence mingled with his own, Ross let go of his identity, and together they formed a new energy that burst into light and then vanished. They moved as one from the ranch house and across the low, burnt-orange sky. He took her to Mentor's within seconds, holding each and every molecule of her close so he wouldn't lose her. She was an incredible woman and a very powerful Predator. He needed her. He hadn't known he would ever need anyone, but now, his being entangled with hers, the truth became clear to him.
When they reappeared in Mentor's house, they saw he sat on the sofa, his arm around Bette Kinyo. Mentor looked up and, reading Ross' face, he said, "They came for you."
Bette opened sleepy eyes. She flinched upon seeing the two Predators standing so close they could reach out and take her by the neck. A gasp escaped her, and she sc
ooted closer into Mentor's embrace.
"They're not here to hurt you." Mentor removed his arm and stood.
"Can we talk around her?" Sereny asked, gesturing to Bette.
"Yes." Mentor came near. "She knows about us." Sereny hesitated before saying, "All of them came. Every Predator Upton has."
Ross began to pace the room. "They'd cloaked themselves. All but two." He glanced at Sereny. No point in admitting to Mentor he hadn't been the one to detect them—that without the woman he'd be ash now. "We were lucky there were at least two with weak minds."
"I think it's time to call up our own army," Mentor said. "You have them ready, right? We can't have an all-out war. It'll attract mortals. We'll have to use subterfuge and hunt the enemy down one by one."
Ross agreed for once. He and Mentor often clashed over leadership and what actions should be taken, but this time he knew the old vampire was right. It was one thing to gather hundreds of Predators to attack him on an isolated piece of land, but if he and Mentor called up hundreds more there wasn't a place on Earth they could battle without someone knowing. Even if they went into the wastelands of the desert areas of West Texas, someone would see them, someone would know. Also, it wasn't Upton's style to fight a face-to-face battle. He would never agree to leave the city for a more secluded place.
Within minutes the house swarmed with their closest advocates. Dolan came, sheepish and guilty that he'd not saved the Cravens. Ross saw how he avoided Mentor's eyes. A few minutes later Dell arrived, the boy Predator with her, trembling at the experience of moving through space at such supernormal speed. "Malachi's coming," she announced. They all knew the dhampir couldn't astral travel the way they could. His noisy motorcycle could be heard a short time later as he drove into Mentor's driveway. He came through the door, breathless and flushed. There was excitement on his face, but no fear. Ross was impressed. He'd had little to do with the dhampir, but he'd heard of his mighty power in thwarting Balthazar's assassins. Dell had trained him well.
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