What? If she'd seen him two nights ago?
He dropped his large head into the palms of his hands and closed his eyes. Maybe he should take off his clothes and go back to bed until his alarm clock went off. He had a couple of hours yet before he needed to be up.
Maybe he'd remember then.
It was a scary thing to lose time, to lose memories. He had never been afraid of anything in his entire life. Not getting shot on the job. Not finding a woman to share his life with. Not his boss' opinion of him. Not anything. But this scared him.
He rose, lumbered to the bed, and threw off his jacket. He emptied his pockets the way he always did before bed, placing his wallet, keys, ID badge, cell phone, notebook and pen, and his gun on the bedside table. He dropped his shoulder holster to the floor. He kicked off his shoes without untying the laces. He sat on the side of the bed, taking off his stained tie and sweaty shirt.
It came to him that he would probably never recall the lost hours. He figured he had lost time two nights in a row. And he'd never get them back.
He was sick. Or . . .
No, he was sick, all right.
He wouldn't call the blonde reporter with the fat lips. He wouldn't go to a doctor, wouldn't tell anybody about any of this. He'd keep his damn mouth shut.
That's what he'd do.
He took off his belt and slacks and calf-hugging, black socks, and fell back into the bed.
Had he turned that lamp on beside the bed earlier? Oh, God. He couldn't remember.
~*~
It was as Mentor had surmised. Dell was caught in such a struggle that his call for her must go unanswered. She had slain three of the nest of renegades she and her Predators had discovered sleeping in the loft of an abandoned warehouse, but more came from the shadows to their rescue and it took all that Dell could do just to stay alive.
She'd been drinking the blood of the enemy, feasting after two days of starvation, and she was as bloodthirsty yet as any Predator under her command. She could not seem to get enough blood, could not restrain herself from draining the fallen vampires until even their skin shriveled and the moisture that made their musculature pliable stiffened in rigor mortis.
It was the second time in her life as vampire that she'd tasted the blood of another of her kind. Many years ago, before she married Ryan, when she was newly vampire, she had attacked Ross. Oddly, it had been in defense of Charles Upton. Ross had meant to drain him and she was too young and newly vampire at the time to understand she shouldn't interfere. She had attacked Ross. The small taste of his blood had made her crazy with hunger. If it hadn't been for Mentor stepping in, she would have thrown herself at him again to try for his jugular. Since then, for nearly twenty years, she had behaved as the Natural she'd chosen to be, living the lifestyle of a mortal. Whatever stray urge she felt to take blood from another being, vampire or human, was strictly denied, the very thought sent away.
Now that she'd fought Upton's Predators for days and killed her share, she needed the strength of her enemies. She'd needed their blood. She knew this was exactly what Upton wanted. He had hoped to force the Naturals to find prey. Those who didn't would soon die agonizing deaths, given his rule.
It was ironic to her that by fighting the enemy, she gave into him.
While fulfilling her ravenous need, supping hungrily at the neck of one of the three murdered victims in the loft, the shadowy ones attacked, catching her and the three veteran Predators with her by surprise. She turned, snarling, blood dripping from her exposed fangs, and with one arm knocked the vampire away. She jumped to her feet and saw what she'd have to overcome to get out of the warehouse alive. There were a dozen vampires silently spreading out across the dusty floor.
They would have to flee. They couldn't fight this many with any hope of victory. She glanced at her comrades and saw they knew they were outnumbered.
Before any of them could make a move to disappear, the renegades flew forward, feet never touching the floor. Their arms were outstretched, their fangs glittering in the moonlight that fell through the opaque high windows.
Dell let out a yell that spurred her into action. She rose up to the ceiling, hoping to draw off and splinter the group. Her ploy worked, four of the dozen rising with her to battle against the exposed plumbing and the concrete buttresses.
She spun, she swooped, she feinted in first one direction then another. She tore pipes from their moorings and used them as mallets. Below her the battle raged, Predator against Predator, wild cries of rage filling the cavernous loft.
Filled with foreboding, all she could do was hold off the slashing steel her enemies wielded. As she fought, fearing she might not survive many minutes longer, the ceiling-to-floor windows on one side of the loft imploded with a spray of jagged glass.
She hung from a pipe, about to wrench it loose, but now she turned her head at the rush of Predators coming through the open wall four stories up. She saw Ross and a woman and dozens more flying through to join the melee.
Now Upton's renegades were the ones outnumbered, and the tide had turned. Together, they fought with abandon, pinning the enemies to the floor, the ceiling, and the walls. They tore limbs off, pierced midsections with lengths of pipe, and once dominant, they swung knives, machetes, and even large jagged pieces of broken glass to deliver the deathblows.
Once it was over, Dell stood looking over the hideous scene of so many lying dead and dismembered. Though it should have sickened her, all she felt was the urge to go to her knees and lap at the gallons of blood that flowed from mortal wounds.
She trembled, resisting.
Sereny, the woman who now seemed to be Ross' shadow, showing up everywhere he did, came to her side and gently took the length of cast iron pipe from Dell's hand. "Something's happened to your son," she said.
Dell came slowly from the trance of fierce battle and vast longing to taste the blood.
"Malachi?" she asked dreamily. "What about Malachi?”
“Maybe you want to talk to Mentor."
Ross joined them and said, "Why did you say anything? You should have kept your mouth shut."
Sereny ignored his bad temper. Predators were frequently temperamental after a fight until the thrill of it had worn off a bit. "I was a mother," she said to Ross, though she knew that might not make anything clear to him. He had never been a parent before changing to vampire.
"Like that explains how you can't keep your mouth shut."
Sereny whirled on Ross and struck him a backhanded blow to the face. Blood rose to the skin and showed her handprint. "You will not speak to me like you do to the others. You will not disrespect my experience or second-guess my intentions."
Dell watched all this as from a distance. She was coming back to herself, but it took all her will. She felt lost in the flow of blood about her feet, drawn to it as if to a river of life.
"Tell me . . ." she said, haltingly. "Tell me about Malachi."
Ross, stunned by Sereny's anger, said nothing.
Sereny turned to her again and said, "We think he's been taken."
"Taken?"
"Captured. He's gone, Dell."
Now the words not only got through to her, but burned her ears like sizzling oil thrown against them. She physically flinched.
Before her knees buckled, Sereny caught her. The other woman spoke softly next to her ear, trying to soothe her. She couldn't make out what she was saying. Now her hearing was gone, the burning words still spinning around in her brain. Malachi captured. Malachi gone.
Gone.
~*~
Upton knew before he took the dhampir that the war was lost. He'd lost too many vampires; he'd been outmaneuvered.
Malachi was his ace. He might have lost the battle, but he had taken a prisoner whose disappearance would affect the opposition. If they thought to give chase, they'd think twice about it now.
The trip from Dallas across the face of the planet to Thailand didn't take long, but long enough for Upton to feel surprise at ho
w it seemed he was going home. It had been his home in the monks' prison for many years. Though he'd schemed and worked daily toward escape, the place had taken on the look and feel of where he belonged. Not behind cell walls. But free to roam the country.
He expected part of his feeling had to do with the body of the Thai man he'd had to transmigrate into. Perhaps the cells of the body remembered, the way they remembered a phantom limb after the actual one was severed. His Thai flesh longed for the Thai landscape to wrap it again in jungle and mountain, in tropical heat and lush foliage.
Five Predators and the dhampir came down to earth into a sunny afternoon in Thailand. Mentor would never believe Upton might return to the place where he'd been incarcerated. He'd never search for him there.
"Where am I? Where have you taken me?"
Upton looked at the young man with narrowed eyes. He was jaguar and he thought unless he really had to show a human face for some reason, he would not bring it out again. If Thailand was his home, the jaguar was his face. "I won't tell you where you are. No one will ever tell you anything. But you'll be here for the rest of your life if I have my way."
He pushed the dhampir ahead of him through jungle thick with vine and entangled vegetation. Monkeys chittered, leaping from branch to branch overhead. The heat caused the forest debris to wriggle beneath their feet, alive with the boring of ant and beetle and worm. Brightly colored birds flitted in and out of leaf cover.
Ahead of them, they could see the majestic range of mountains covered with tropical forest. This had been the kingdom of Siam, ruled by a king who had built beautiful temples right out of the forest floor. The Blue Mountains of Australia had not been nearly this splendid or packed with such varied wildlife.
Upton did not know where he was headed, except he wanted to go deep into Thailand's interior away from any village or town. After some hours, with Malachi holding his peace and Upton's captains silently following at his back, Upton called for a halt. They'd come to a green terrace of land on the side of a mountain. It was a small natural area that had never been farmed. Around its perimeter the jungle encroached, rising high all around.
"Here," Upton said. "Dig me a hole. Make it eight feet deep by five feet in width and length. A square."
His captains went to work immediately, clawing at the ground with their hands, flinging sod and dirt behind them. Upton stood back watching, Malachi at his side.
"What are you going to do?"
The dhampir still sounded stout and strong, a rebel, but he'd lose that attitude soon enough. "We're going to put you in the hole," Upton said casually.
When Malachi didn't respond, he added, "It'll be your home for a good long time, the sky your roof. This is what Mentor gets in repayment for the years I spent in his monk's cell. Don't ever ask me for pity. None was ever extended to me."
It didn't take long before the square hole was finished. Upton told his men how to go into the jungle and find good strong wood for the crosshatched roof. Before it was dark they'd fashioned the enclosure he wanted, staking the sturdy roof to the ground with Malachi thrown inside.
Upton stood over him looking down at his face. The covering wouldn't provide any shelter from the elements. It was open enough that his prisoner could breathe and see his captors standing by. The Vietcong had made traps like this for American captives in Vietnam. Some of the men lived in them for months. Some died in them. Malachi would live in this one until he died.
"We'll give you food and water. We'll provide you with a bucket for wastes that we'll empty every seventh day. Beyond that you will be given nothing. Not conversation nor comfort of any kind. You may break through this thatched opening, but it'll do you no good. I'll have several of my people here all the time to watch you. Your first escape attempt will get you a beating. The second will be a torture you can't imagine. The third . . . Well, you won't survive a third attempt."
Malachi said, "They'll come for me, you know."
"No, they won't. Because they aren't going to know where you are." Malachi didn't know it, but he was going to be fed on a diet of native food, rice, and vegetables spiked with powerful man-made tranquilizers. Upton had thought of everything to keep his captive weak and hidden. The boy was purported to have the mental ability to reach others and to read them in return, just like the Predator.
But he couldn't do much of anything if his mind was always clouded and unresponsive.
One good thing. He had to eat. He wasn't truly vampire, so he couldn't survive for too much time without sustenance. He lived on food the mortals used for survival. He'd never be given a morsel of bread or a cup of rice that wasn't first doctored. He'd live out his days so muddled he would be like a slobbering babe, unmindful of sensation. If Mentor or Ross or the mother of this creature ever did find him, they'd find someone mentally crippled to the point he wouldn't be worth dust to anyone.
Upton turned away from the dirt cell and went to his captains. They would stay to guard the prisoner until he gathered more Predators into a clan. He knew now how to go about it, who to search out, the type of vampire who could be swayed to join with him. It wouldn't take him nearly as long as before to get up another army, but this time he'd train them better. He'd take his time.
He had plenty of that. More and a world enough.
~*~
All through the night Dell sat in her home, calling to her lost son. Ryan had gone to bed, satisfied she was all right after her days of combat. He went away in despair, however, after she told him the news of their son's capture.
"We have to get him back," Ryan said, his years telling in the deepened wrinkles on his worried face. The news had first made him angry, then left him deflated and feeling helpless. He was only human. He merely loved. He could not fight the supernatural or save his son from its clutches.
Now Dell sat in the darkness in her favorite rocking chair, going over what had transpired and how she might find Malachi. Mentor related his story of coming upon the dead Predator and finding the trace of Malachi still lingering on his body. They all knew Upton had left the city. The few Predators he had left soon followed. Not one could be found anywhere.
Mentor didn't know where Upton might have taken Malachi. The Blue Mountains, where he'd first gotten the vampires together? Lanzarote, the Canary Island where Balthazar had brought together many more?
He could be anywhere in the world.
But why couldn't she reach him? She'd known his movements when he left home and traveled across Texas, trying to outrun the assassins. At any time in his life she'd been able to search him out and know how he was doing.
It seemed now he'd fallen into a black hole that had swallowed him whole. For the first hours after she learned of his kidnapping, she had heard faint echoes in her mind as if he were calling to her from another universe. She tried to link to him, but she couldn't latch onto the vibration. It was too weak, too intermittent, and then, finally, it was broken and there was nothing but silence. She had no connection with her son at all. It was as if he no longer lived.
She beat her hands on her knees in the darkness and swung her head back and forth in silent denial. He couldn't be dead. She prayed to God to take the thought away and not let her have it again.
He was . . . somewhere. He couldn't let her know where.
Even Mentor, who had much more power than she to find out Malachi's whereabouts, came up with nothing. He told her it was some kind of trick. Upton was malicious and he was brilliant, more so since escaping and being free for so long. He possessed most of Ross' great power, as Ross was his Maker, and combined it with his own massive intelligence, making him a formidable foe.
Mentor told her to keep trying. She'd find Malachi. Then he'd help her with the rescue. Meanwhile, he would keep trying to locate Upton. If they could find Upton, they would find her son.
If, if, if. But when? When?
She lay her head back in the rocker and closed her eyes, willing the vision of her son into the forefront of her mind. His tall l
anky body that was so much like his dad's. His brown hair that showed more natural wave the older he grew. His dark eyes, so knowing and bright with understanding.
She would keep trying, of course, for as long as she lived if need be. She wouldn't let the son she loved be lost so easily. If she did not find him through telepathic means, she would hunt him down. She would have to leave her home and her husband and seek her son. She would begin interviewing vampires, traveling wherever it took her, until she came upon someone somewhere who either knew where Upton was or where her son was being held.
~*~
Sereny had taken the little Predator, Jeremy, off Dell's hands. The woman had enough on her plate trying to find her own son. Besides, the boy reminded Sereny of the son she'd left behind when the change had come over her. During the nights when they all made raids into the city, hunting Upton's vampires, Jeremy had been left at Mentor's house in the care of guards who also watched after the human woman there.
Jeremy took to Sereny right away, sensing she felt more compassion for him than anyone else did. She had brought him to Ross', where he ran after her through the house, asking her to play games with him, watching her as she performed the endless house chores that afforded her such peace of mind. She learned all about his twin sister, Dottie, and his grandfather, and the store they'd called Howard's Rattlesnake Farm. Jeremy could spend hours talking about rattlers and how much he liked them. He'd been fascinated by his grandfather's milking them for venom.
Sereny settled into a sort of imitation life, one close to normal, one like she'd lived as a mortal. A house to clean. A man to care for. A child to raise. It was the last gift, the child, that gave her the most joy. He was so bright and new to the life. He needed her to teach him and stayed close to her side, like a shadow. When she turned, he was there. When she worked, he played nearby. When she slept at night, he lay outside the bedroom door. They couldn't make him stay in a room, he said. He had always slept in a room with his sister. He didn't like it without her.
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