“Did she find the fountain of youth?”
Malachi knew this was going to shake the foundation of all Danielle had known about the world. “Not exactly,” he said. “She won’t look older because she’s…she’s a vampire.”
He expected Danielle to laugh, but the silence stretched. He should have known. She was a very serious girl, and she knew him well. She knew when he was joking and when he wasn’t.
“She’s a vampire,” Danielle repeated dully.
“I’m afraid so. And I’m half what she is.”
Now she moved to look him full in the face. He saw the worry in her eyes. “You’re a vampire,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Just half. My dad isn’t a vampire. I’m what they call a dhampir.”
“You drink blood.”
He shook his head. “No, I just have some of the supernatural abilities from my mother.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” She asked.
He sighed. “I know it sounds fantastic. Crazy, even. You’ll just have to take my word for it. You know I don’t make things up—and I sure wouldn’t make up something like this.”
For the next two hours as the sun set behind the delta fields on each side of the river and the moon began to rise through the trees, Malachi told Danielle everything he knew about the vampire nations. She sat next to him alert, hardly interrupting, listening carefully.
To drive his point home that he had inherited some of the vampire’s qualities, Malachi stood up and moved so quickly it seemed to Danielle that he had disappeared. He called to her from yards away and at her back. She twisted around, squinting to see him in the moonlight.
“You vanished,” she whispered in awe.
He walked back to where she sat on the riverbank. “No, I just moved so fast the human eye is tricked. I can do other things too.”
“Like what?”
He went to the water’s edge where a fallen tree leaned out over the rushing water. He bent down, wrapping his arms around the trunk, and flexing his knees, stood, raising the huge tree as he did so.
“Oh God,” Danielle said.
He dropped the tree, causing water to splash out over the river in a rain of silver. He walked back to her and sat down.
“I can read books in minutes, just by turning the pages. I can remember everything ever said by our professors. I can see in the dark like a cat. I can smell things at a distance…”
She put a hand on his arm to stop him. “Malachi…”
He heard the fear in her voice. He turned and took her into his arms, holding her close to him. “I’ll die just like you will, honey. I’m not really Super Man (???Superman). I’m a mortal and I have weaknesses. But you had to know. I love you, Danielle. I want you to marry me. I couldn’t keep these secrets anymore.”
He felt the wetness of her silent tears on his shirt. She said in a broken voice, “Oh, Malachi, you should have told me before.”
“Why?” Something in her voice alarmed him. A real sadness, a pain she was about to share with him. He braced himself, fearing the worst. She would break up with him. She’d turn her back and walk away and he’d lose her. Something was terribly wrong and she had to tell him so he could deal with it.
“What’s wrong, Danielle? Tell me.”
“I’m pregnant.” Her voice was small, but the words seemed to have been shouted into Malachi’s ears. Pregnant! But they’d been so careful. They were still in college; they weren’t going to get married for two more years.
“Jesus.” He breathed the word, clutching her to him.
“We can…we can terminate the pregnancy.” The catch in her throat made the word “terminate” come out like a peal of doom. “It’s so easy now, no muss, no fuss. We’ll never know it was…”
“No,” he said immediately. “We can’t do that. You don’t want to do that, do you? Because of what I’ve told you?”
She said softly into his shirtfront, “What should we do?”
Malachi closed his eyes to the night and his ears to the wild life singing along the riverbank. He drank in her scented skin and pressed his lips to her neck. Oh God, he thought, what are we going to do?
Chapter 5
TEXAS
Elijah toddled around the living room chasing the golden retriever. He would almost catch him by the tail only to miss by inches. His laughter was as golden as the dog’s flying fur.
Danielle never believed she could be so happy. Her son Eli not only looked like his father, but he possessed many of his personality traits. He was a serious little boy who nevertheless showed a strong sense of humor. He was sweet, open, curious, and truthful.
Malachi had assured her their children would not inherit any of the vampire characteristics. Mentor, the Predator leader of the nation of vampires within a six-state area, had taken Danielle under his tutelage. He and Malachi told her not to fear for her son. He would be merely human, grounded in the real world. Not only would he be watched over by his parents, but also throughout his life the large surrogate family of vampires to whom he was related by blood would protect him.
Danielle tried not to think about vampires. Though not religious by nature, every time she thought of a vampire, much less in the vicinity of one, she felt the urge to cross herself. Malachi did not frighten her, of course, and neither did his mother, but Mentor and some of the other vampires she’d met made her so afraid she grew cold inside. That something could live beyond death was an unholy thing. Dell, Malachi’s mother, was always kind and caring, but there was still something horrible about not aging, about drinking blood to survive, about…being dead.
Danielle had accepted these things as a part of the world, but that didn’t mean she had to like them. She had majored in philosophy and was now an assistant professor at A & M in College Station, Texas. Nothing in her training had prepared her to deal with life immortal. There were no manuals about how to accept unnatural beings without fear.
She could never say she was sorry she had fallen in love with Malachi, found herself pregnant, and then married him. He was her life. She couldn’t imagine having never met him. And now they had a fine son, Eli, who filled her days with joy and her life with brand new pleasures.
But how, really, could there have been vampires since the dawn of man? Why hadn’t their lairs been uncovered, their secrets exposed? Malachi explained how they could bewitch people and cause forgetfulness. In fact they’d done that for many hundreds of people during a past war that Malachi swore had taken place in Dallas. The fires of that year hadn’t been done by human arsonists, as later reported. The deaths hadn’t been of living people.
The Craven had died, Malachi told her. There were so many kinds of vampires it made Danielle’s head swim. Predators, Naturals, Cravens, dhampirs. There were even vampires, Mentor had told her, who had lived so long they were like living gods, their concerns hardly of this world any longer.
One of them lived in Egypt, a vampire by the name of Vohra, and he had been instrumental in helping to find Malachi when he’d been taken prisoner to Thailand.
Danielle had wondered where he had gone and why he’d left her so alone without explanation during that time. But she had waited, faithful to him, hoping he would return and heal her broken heart. When he did come back, he was changed. He was downcast and wandering, though he enrolled and went to his classes. He rarely smiled and tended to be on guard as if something might come out of the shadows at any moment.
Then he had told her the truth that day by the Trinity River. And she had told him about the baby.
Their fates were connected; she had known that from their very first meeting. She couldn’t imagine a future without him in it.
The golden retriever, a dog Malachi had brought home as a pup and named Harper, scampered away from the child, his teeth showing in a smile. Danielle scooped Eli into her arms, swinging him high. “Time for lunch!”
Eli drew in a startled breath on the upswing and giggled on the down. “Mama, do it again!”
At least it’s not a bag of blood you need, she thought in distaste.
She paused to look out the window over the sink. She could see her in-laws’ big white farmhouse across the pasture. They had helped Malachi build a home for his new family. She liked being on the ranch. Her own family had always lived in town. And now they had invested in a FAX for their house, making it look like an alpine cottage. Danielle never knew how great it was to live out where the wind blew constantly, wildflowers sprouted in the lawn, and cattle grazed just on the other side of the fence.
“Mama! Hungry!”
Danielle turned and smiled at her son. “Okay, okay. Mama’s cooking right now. See?” She grabbed the skillet from the stovetop and held it up for him. His passion was for grilled cheese sandwiches. He’d eat them three times a day if she allowed it. She had to make them manually as neither she nor Malachi went in for the SIRs or one of those automated kitchens her mother swore by.
The sun was overhead, but a cooling breeze swept through the many windows of the house. She could smell the heat as it warmed the earth. Everything smelled so green, fresh and new. She meant to plant two trees today, an oak and a Japanese pine she had gotten from the garden center. It was her day off and she tried to get some planting done every chance she got. She’d turn her bit of pasture where the house was set into a veritable paradise of shade trees and perennial flower beds one day.
She might be a city girl, but she was learning fast as a gardener. Without shade, the coming summer heat was going to turn the house into a furnace. Every summer was hotter. The climate change was on them hard and most of Texas was dry with drought. Although they got rain on the farm, the heat still beat the life out of the land each and every summer.
It might be five years before the trees she placed around the perimeter of the house would provide even a little of the soothing shade she longed for, but she was a patient woman. Besides, there was no alternative.
Just as when Malachi had disappeared. No alternative but to wait. It had taken a year and a half before he was returned from where he’d been a captive in a foreign land.
If she could wait so patiently for the man she loved, she could certainly wait for a few trees to grow.
~*~
Charles Upton didn’t think he could wait any longer. Inactivity was driving him nuts.
Jacques cocked his head to the side in question.
“How many do we have in our troops?” Upton asked. He had been enlisting Predator malcontents for years. His small, bedraggled army had been disbanded once Mentor had defeated him. Now he was gaining in power and vampire recruits again.
Jacques kept track of them, going around to the different groups hidden around the city of Cannes, France, with orders and messages from Upton. He appointed leaders of various groups, making sure all of the inductees understood they were to lie low and not feast upon the city’s inhabitants. There was to be no hint of a coming together.
“We have a little over five hundred,” Jacques said.
“It’s probably enough.” Upton wasn’t sure, and he’d really like more, but five hundred hungry, mad, driven Predators was a formidable force.
Upton reclined on one of his velvet sofas with Jacques sitting in a club chair across from him. It was full dark and the drapes were drawn. Pools of lamplight fell on mahogany tables, imparting a soft glow to the room. Upton raised the arm from his eyes and stared up at the ceiling.
“Why don’t I make you one of us?” He asked. He turned the jaguar head with the jaguar eyes squeezed down to slits toward the Frenchman.
Jacques shook his head. He had never shown any sort of fear or loathing when Upton looked like the jungle cat. This amazed Upton.
“I’d rather not,” he said without enthusiasm.
“If I insisted? If I just pinned you down and took your life against your will?” Upton liked to torment him. He’d never do it. He actually wanted Jacques as he was, thoroughly human. He could use him to infiltrate where a vampire could not safely go. But he regularly offered him the vampire life just to see if he again refused.
“You can do what you like,” Jacques said, entering into the old argument. “But I’d rather you not.”
Upton laughed and turned away his slick head. When he smiled he knew he looked horrible, so he smiled often when in Jacques’ company. “You’re an incorrigible human. If you were more afraid of dying, you’d take me up on the vampire life.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“It goes without saying.”
Upton amused himself trying to shake the other man. He had played tricks on him, trying everything from visions of a grotesque corpse hanging from the balustrade to dismembering a victim before him, to see if he would crack. Never had he seen the man even wince, much less tremble. He could not be touched. Something at the center of Jacques was so rock solid and immovable it gave him a superior sense of aloofness. Kill him this second or a decade from now, it did not matter to the man.
Upton adored him. If he’d had a son, he would have wished for someone like Jacques.
Changing subjects, Upton said, “I was told Mentor had to take a new body.”
“Did he?”
“He’s a Nordic blond now. Big guy with gray eyes. I won’t even know him. I wish I could take a new body,” Upton said wistfully.
“You will eventually.”
“Yeah, when this old sack of bones finally gives out. I don’t know why we can’t just transmigrate when we feel like it. If I can turn into an animal, why can’t I take a new body at will?” Upton growled like a jaguar.
Jacques gave a considered opinion. “Perhaps it’s because bodies come with souls.”
“And animals don’t.”
“And animals don’t,” Jacques agreed.
“It’s maddening.”
Upton had not been at home in his own body for many long years. When he’d been human and plagued with porphyria, his body had been hideous in the last years before his change. He had begun to hate his body then, feeling it had betrayed him. While his mind remained sharp, his body had steadily begun to fail him.
“At least I can be an animal,” Upton said, reminded of his fierce jaguar head that he kept most all the time now. By force of will he exuded the musk scent of a cat’s glands. He sniffed the air, whiskers shivering in delight, and enjoying himself tremendously.
“But you’d rather be a big blond Nordic guy with icy gray eyes."
Upton laughed uproariously. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do with Mentor’s new fine body. I’ll tear it to shreds. I’ll burn it to ashes. I’ll cast it in the Rio Grande River.”
Jacques nodded sagely.
Upton spent the next half hour railing against his enemy, Mentor, and his maker, Ross. He listed all the ways he could find to torture them. “And that boy,” Upton said, spluttering in his anger.
“Malachi?” Jacques asked.
“Yeah, that one. I should have killed that little pip-squeak when I had the chance. He lasted much longer than expected.”
“He’s not really someone for you to fear, though, is he?” Jacques asked.
“Fear? Certainly not! He’s not even a vampire. He has no power over vampires. Not like Mentor does, or Ross.”
“And Balthazar’s fears were unfounded,” Jacques added. Upton had told him most of the history of the last uprising.
“Balthazar was an insane superstitious fool. I’ve told you that before.” There was nothing to the old prophecy of a dhampir who would lead a war against Predators, he thought. It was a ridiculous notion on the face of it.
“But Mentor cares for the boy, regardless,” Jacques said. “True?”
The jaguar lips closed before slowly lifting over the sharp teeth to emit a low animal growl. “Everyone Mentor cares for will be killed if I get my way.”
Upton knew the Frenchman under
stood his hatred was not all based on simple revenge. He could never gain power in the world with Predators like Mentor and Ross around. They embraced the vampire status quo. They wanted to keep everything the way it had been for a thousand years. Make no new vampire, that was the ultimate rule. Sponsor research for a cure for the mutated disease that caused vampirism. Keep the uneasy alliance between the nations and do as little harm to mankind as possible.
Fools, all of them.
Upton had made at least fifty new vampires himself and they were some of the fiercest Predators in his whole army. They owed him an allegiance they’d never break for they were of his blood.
As for research and science—hell, the brightest minds couldn’t find a cure for bio-degradation, the disease terrorism spawned. How could they ever decipher the riddle of how a man died and lived again?
Doing harm? Harm was the way of the vampire. It was his birthright. Do harm, leave behind deaths and victims, or die, that was the rule, the only rule.
Mentor had to be brought down. He was listened to, he controlled and influenced thousands of their kind. He was beloved.
Oh, how Charles Upton hated him.
“Bring me the girl.” Upton gestured suddenly to Jacques. His anger was gathering like a storm on the horizon. If he didn’t feed soon, he would only get worse. “She’s been locked up long enough to turn her into a gibbering baboon.”
Jacques rose and left the room wordlessly. Upton listened to his footsteps recede through the house to the basement door. He heard the locks and chains coming undone. And then he heard the girl crying softly.
When Jacques brought the girl into the living room Upton was on his feet, hands easy at his sides.
The girl raised a tear-stained face to look at him. She seemed to be a stunned animal. She had been locked in the dark too long. Her imagination had done more damage to her mind than the imprisonment. He wanted her to react! He threw back his jaguar head and opened his great mouth to show the many rows of shining, pointed teeth.
A flicker of horrified recognition dawned in her blood-shot eyes. Fear sweat popped out on her brow and temples, smelling strongly of unwashed skin. Her head trembled on her spare neck and her hands danced with tremors. Now it was time to drink.
SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy Page 70