This small cadre had been on the same side for twenty years. They all felt they were Mentor's soldiers, except for Ross himself, who felt himself an equal. Nevertheless, he was thankful they'd all shown up. Together they could rouse the band of Predators Ross usually controlled alone. They must work together or risk Upton's sneak attacks on each of them individually.
"Should I leave?"
It was the woman Mentor had watched over for two decades. Ross suspected he loved her, but he didn't expect he'd ever let him know that. Loving a mortal, the way Dell did, caused problems for everyone. None of them approved of these alliances, though of course Mentor could do as he pleased. There was no one to oppose him.
"No," Mentor said. "It's safer here. It's too late anyway. Two of Upton's followers are outside the door."
At the same instant all of the vampires in the room knew it was so. They had cloaked their minds when called to Mentor's home. They hadn't wanted Upton to know all of them were together and easily attacked. But the two outside the door had come on their own, hoping to find Mentor alone. If they killed him, Upton would make them captains. Upton would give them power above all others.
Mentor read these intimate thoughts of the two Predators as he moved toward the door. "Come in if you dare," he called.
The lurkers outside slipped away into the twilight, muttering oaths. Mentor turned back to the assemblage. "They're gone, but not for long. They'll tell Upton we're all here. We have to leave soon. Let me tell you what we must do."
~*~
It was three days of hell on Earth. Unnoticed by the human population in the city, Predator stalked Predator. Bodies piled up, and Mentor had dozens working as burial parties, moving the dead away from the city into the surrounding countryside. Sometimes Mentor sensed Detective Teal at the crime scenes. Each time he went to him and walked him away, throwing confusion into his mind. The man was a regular pest. He showed up when least expected, standing over a body, making notes in a little notebook, or reaching for his cell phone at his hip. If Mentor had had the time, he could have done something permanent to Teal's mind to keep him out of the way, but as it was, he was lucky to reach him in time to stop him from interfering.
The war grew until each side rose with victory and fell again, usually within mere hours, Upton's Predators sometimes taking Mentor's troops unaware and narrowing their control. They left the dead where they fell, so that Mentor's people had to take their own dead companions to bury before too many humans saw the headless bodies. It was up to Mentor to go to the witnesses and steal their memories, hiding them beneath layers of more mundane memories in the depths of their minds. Still, strange news began to appear on the television and radio news. The newspaper ran articles about three bodies in the morgue with unidentifiable wounds. Humans speculated on wild dogs, perhaps rabid, invading the city. They began to lock their doors and empty the streets at night.
Mentor worked tirelessly, day and night. He, too, hunted the enemy and put them to death. It was a relentless battle. None of them stayed in one place long enough to be found. But to hunt Upton's Predators, they had to frequent every alley and abandoned building in the city. Every time Upton tried gathering his forces together, Mentor's Predators attacked, scattering them. They couldn't find them with mental telepathy, so it was a war of attrition. It was slow and dreadful, a deep-night hunt where Mentor put aside all his hard won compassion and allowed the predator in him full reign.
He hated to admit how alive it made him feel. He hadn't killed that many of his own kind before. He had no idea the hunt itself and the resultant death might make him want to roar like a lion. The game of hide and seek raised his tension so that he was a tightly wound wire. Yet it was nothing compared to the feeling of power he enjoyed when he actually confronted another Predator, one who had betrayed his nation to follow Upton. He felt no compunction to talk them out of their negative path or save them from themselves. All he wanted to do was kill in the most ghastly and bloody manner he could manage.
After his first hunt where he'd killed three of the enemy, he returned to his home to see about Bette. She looked on his face and shuddered. His vampire nature was a fearsome thing that caused her to quake and move away. He tried to control it, tried to get back to himself when he came to her, but his blood was too high. He'd taken blood with each new kill and it gave him a feeling of majesty. Predators did not have the same blood as a living being, but it was blood just the same. Along with each vampire victim he drained came that vampire's vitality until his whole body was suffused with strength and fire.
Usually a being who had abstained from murder and taking the blood of a victim, the war had given him a taste of what it had been like when he'd first turned vampire. At his very core, he was a killer. He might keep it under control for years, but he could never divest himself of the urge. He liked killing Upton's followers. He enjoyed sending them into the darkness from which there was no escape.
Bette could see that reflected on his face, and he wasn't able to disguise it.
"What have you done?" she asked that first time.
"I'm trying to save people like you from a grim future.”
“That's a high-minded goal, but that's not what I see. I see a killer still high from taking life."
"What would you have us do?"
"I don't know." She wrung her hands in agitation. "I wish . . ."
"Go ahead, wish me away. Wish me dead and all the others like me. Maybe God will hear you and come out of His silence. That's what I wish. For God to end this charade I call my life after death." His bitterness was deep and abiding, but not truly aimed at Bette. He sighed. "I'm sorry. I can't make excuses for what I am anymore. What you see is the real Mentor."
"It's not the one I knew."
"Then you deluded yourself, didn't you? If I take blood without killing, I atone for all the murder I've had to do. But when I have to kill, I do love it. If I were a tiger you wouldn't judge me. If I were a lion fighting to the death with another lion, you wouldn't look on the victorious face of the conqueror and say he had done wrong."
"But you are not a tiger, Mentor. You are not a lion."
"No. I'm a vampire. And I'm fighting as much for you and mankind as I am for myself. Remember that."
The discussion left him feeling angry and depressed. He left the house to her and went out into the darkness to stalk another renegade. His wife had never admonished him for his nature. He had been more of a killer then than now. He had gone far and wide to take human victims so suspicion would never fall on him living as a man with a wife, but Beatrice knew when he came home suffused with blood. She knew what he had done. If she judged him, she kept it to herself.
He hadn't wanted Bette to see him this way, but he had known one day she might. Death wasn't as close to man in her modern world of medicine and doctors and heroic lifesaving measures. In his time with his wife, death was everywhere. Plagues, disease, floods, fires, and wars ravished the country as well as the city. Society experienced whole generations of cleansing where families and communities all died together. Life was shorter and more precarious. It was the rare man who lived to be forty and half the women died during their childbearing years.
Bette couldn't understand the death of her husband, and now she didn't try to understand the seriousness of his undertaking. Did she have no idea of how the world she knew would change if vampires like Upton ruled?
It was Mentor's ultimate imperative to stop him. If he could only find him, he would tear him into a million pieces. Every drop of blood he drank from Upton's followers fell on Upton's head. He was responsible for hundreds of deaths and all for what? Revenge, he could understand, but he knew Upton wanted much more than that. He always had.
Chapter 9
Upton saw his force dwindling night after night. There were more Predators working for Mentor than they could combat. Though Upton had trained his troops to cloak themselves and to hide well, one by one they were found and destroyed. He pulled them together to p
resent a united force, but each time he did, they were attacked so viciously, they had to flee to survive. He tried to tell himself they were simply careless, but he knew better. He hadn't really trained them long enough. They slipped and the cloak fell away, and then they were hunted down and killed.
After the fiasco when they'd gone en masse after Ross and missed him by mere seconds, Upton stood before his army like a general who has lost the pivotal battle. He looked out over the sea of faces and waited in furious silence. Whoever had screwed up was going to show nervousness, and when he did, Upton would move.
He stood there, glaring, waiting with impatience. Most of the Predators understood what he was doing, so they didn't dare protest. Someone had let down their leader. Someone had leaked his thoughts, and Ross had picked them up and fled.
It took most of an hour, hundreds of men standing in an open field before one man who never even blinked.
Suddenly Upton moved like a whirlwind, the flanks opening as he sped through them to the betrayer. There was a wild scream as Upton closed on the Predator, knocking him to the ground and holding him down with one foot while he swung a machete at his neck.
Even before the first Predator's voice was cut off, another made a grunting sound and began to flee across the fields for the forest. Upton raised his hands to his jittery troops and went for the fleeing vampire himself. He caught him just inside the shadowed line of trees, ripping off one of his arms before killing him. The gathered Predators in the open field could hear the screams that filled the air, scaring birds from trees to send them flapping across the sky.
None of his other followers would make this mistake again, Upton vowed. But he had lost Ross, and it was Ross who could command so many of the enemy.
It was a terrible blow to his strategy. If he could not separate Ross and Mentor, his plan might fail.
Invading the city again, they had done considerable damage to the Predators under Ross and Mentor, but not enough to overpower them. They tried, but couldn't take control of the city. Their numbers were no more than two hundred now and soon even those would be found and killed—or they would skulk away in the night, deserting. Upton ranted constantly in his mind and verged on mental collapse.
In the nights he had taken over an empty penthouse on the top of one of Dallas' downtown skyscrapers. He stood at the wall of windows overlooking the spreading lights that went on for miles. It reminded him of the splendor of the penthouse he'd owned in Houston and the one he was about to buy in Dallas before Mentor spirited him away to Thailand.
Thailand. The years and years in a cell listening to the chiming of the bells by monastery monks. Thailand, the native home of the body he now possessed.
If he could catch Mentor and, with the help of some of his men, overpower him, he would take him back to Thailand and put him into a grave there.
If he couldn't yet control this one American city, what if he did take a prisoner? Mentor. Ross. The woman called Bette. Someone important to wreak his revenge on. He hadn't come with a big enough army. He hadn't trained them right. They were made up of malcontents both he and Balthazar had gathered. More than half of them owed allegiance to Balthazar and hardly knew Upton.
He hadn't taken his time. First Ross and Mentor had killed his partner, Balthazar, and then there were too many of their clans to track and kill. The cat and mouse game was almost at an end. Before it ended, Upton must do something. He wouldn't be denied one small victory over Mentor.
Leaving the penthouse he went to the street and called together several of his minions. They met in the deeper darkness of a canopy over the entrance to a closed restaurant. "I want to capture someone," he told them. "If you help me succeed, you'll be my captains. We can't win, we've already had too many casualties, but we can take a captive and leave the country. Stay with me and we'll leave, but we'll come back one day, and we'll be stronger and smarter next time."
They vowed they would do whatever he commanded and, together, they began to seek out an opponent worth capturing.
~*~
Malachi was more tired than any of his comrades. He had tried to stay near his mother, but she had proved to be a significant commander, and was busily sending out groups to various parts of town where she thought the renegades might hide.
Tonight Malachi walked the streets with just one Predator named Clifton. They had run into one another in an alley where Clifton had just murdered one of Upton's people. They decided to go on together, the way Mentor suggested they hunt. "Go alone," he'd warned, "and you'll have more chance of being caught and killed."
Already he and Clifton had searched out three renegades, two of whom begged for mercy. Malachi stood back while Clifton dealt the deathblows, but he felt nothing. A renegade Predator was of no use to anyone, not even himself. He might pretend to be reformed, but he could never be trusted.
"Have you sent word for someone to pick up these bodies?" Malachi asked.
"They're on the way."
A lone car drove slowly toward them, then passed. Malachi and Clifton stopped, looking back. The car was going too slowly. It stopped at the head of the alley where the three dead Predators lay.
Clifton started back, but Malachi took his arm. "Wait, let me take care of this."
He saw a large man exit the car and head down the alley. He followed him. He tapped his mind and discovered this was a police detective and his name was . . . Teal? Tealiski?
He joined him at the three corpses and touched him on the shoulder. The detective jumped, having never heard his approach.
"This isn't you business," Malachi said.
"What? Step back, son. I'm with the police."
"I know." Malachi said. He couldn't do harm to this man. He sent out an urgent plea for Mentor.
The man was saying, "You know?"
"Your shoes," Malachi said, playing for time. He pointed to the big man's large black shoes. They were discount city shoes. Undercover officers who didn't accept bribes couldn't afford better.
Teal's lips showed a ghost of a smile. "My shoes," he mumbled. He reached for his cell phone.
Malachi took hold of his hand. "Don't do that."
Teal's eyes hardened. His voice deepened. "Are you the killer of these men? What's going on here?"
If Mentor didn't appear soon, Malachi would have to restrain the detective. He'd never done any sort of violence against a human. He didn't want to have to do it now.
There was a twinkling that caught Malachi's eye. He knew the mortal wouldn't have noticed it. He turned his head and said, "He won't listen to me, Mentor."
Teal twirled around and faced the old vampire. "Where'd you come from?"
"Hello, Mr. Teal. Let's go for a walk, shall we? We're becoming old friends."
Teal's eyes narrowed and then the skin around his eyes relaxed. "Oh, yeah," he said. "A walk. Sure."
Malachi watched them move away from the bodies and back to the street. He sighed. He didn't know what he would have done if Mentor hadn't come.
He rejoined Clifton and told him what had happened. They laughed about the policeman. He'd never know what hit him.
They wandered for hours, rarely speaking. They looked deep into shadows. They threw out the nets of their natural telepathy, hunting for something out of the ordinary. They passed by humans, sending silent warnings to vacate the streets, they were in danger.
It was the hour when the city really slept the deepest. There were two more hours left before sunrise. The after-hour bars were closed and the traffic was almost nonexistent. Stoplights at intersections blinked monotonously, green, red, amber. Bugs gathered around lampposts, knocking themselves out to be near the light. No one walked the streets at three in the morning.
Malachi was musing about how much he and a Predator vampire were alike. He had always thought he was more like his father, more human than supernatural. But since assassins had been sent to kill him, he'd had to rely on anything but his human instincts. The more he used his inborn vampire abilities, the
more he realized just how spectacular they were. The power was insidious and intoxicating. It made him feel omnipotent and indestructible. Which was a dangerous fantasy, of course, because even the most powerful vampire could be killed under the right circumstances. And he wasn't even a vampire.
As he argued with himself over the merits and faults of living the dichotomy that was his legacy, he paid little attention to his actual surroundings. He was relying on Clifton to be the lookout for any vampire presence. They were in the downtown area that seemed to draw some of the renegades after dark. Mentor thought it was because Upton was lying low there, drawn to the splendor of the lights and the tall buildings.
"He spent his life in the center of bustling cities," Mentor told them. "He's naturally drawn to the hub, the center, where he once lived like a king. It's why he wants this city first, why he picked it for his assault. You might think he's come out of revenge, come to punish me and Ross, but that's only half his motive. He used to run his massive conglomerate from here. With us out of the way, he could pick up the strings of his past life and start controlling the whole show again, taking over the corporation's board and installing a puppet chairman. He wants what he lost. He wants the money that fuels the power."
Charles Upton was a complicated individual, Malachi realized. There was more to him than a thirst for reprisal. He must have spent his years of imprisonment working out all the details. Mentor was right. Upton wanted the past back. He wanted to do it his way this time.
A swift warm wind kicked up, caressing Malachi's face. He smiled into it, pressing forward at Clifton's side. The first indication he was being hunted was when he saw Clifton slow and begin to swing his head back and forth like a hound, trying to pick up a scent.
Malachi suddenly knew that danger was close by. He took hold of Clifton's arm, halting him. They turned around, looking, but the streets and sidewalks were empty. "They're watching us," Clifton whispered.
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