Dell stared at her and the memory of her own crazy escapade of racing her horse nearly to death through the woods and pasture land returned. She had been a girl, newly vampire, and filled with rage. She hadn’t been herself. She’d been driven by something wild and uncontrollable.
She had momentarily lost her mind.
It was Mentor who had found her and put a stop to it, bringing her back to sanity. Perhaps he should be the one to help Malachi, too. He had the experience of centuries and thousands of times he had gone to the side of marauding new vampires who lost control.
“My poor baby,” Dell moaned, falling into Mentor’s arms. “My poor son.”
“I’ll see about him, don’t worry.” Mentor patted her back. “He needed to do this. Revenge drove him to become full vampire. It drove him to Egypt and to Europe in search of the enemy. But something happened, some encounter startled him. He faced himself, Dell. Like you did, like we all have to do eventually. He couldn’t stand what he found. He had to go away a while, keep himself from…doing harm.”
“You promise you can save him? You promise you’ll make him come out of the ice? If he stays there we’ll lose him.”
“Go home and take care of your husband. I’ll handle your son.”
Bette and Mentor watched from the door as she left. Dell fought the depression that had gripped her upon the news of her son’s whereabouts. She did not want to imagine the ice, the cold, and the darkness. The total isolation. She could not contemplate the pain her son had endured when he had faced the real facts of his existence.
She had told him not to do it! She had never wanted him to be vampire, not full vampire the way she was. When she’d sunk her fangs and brought him near death, she had cried even as he died. She had wept even as he lived again, rising up as an immortal.
She had done this thing. She was responsible. A mother who had given into her son’s grief and dream of revenge. She had done what he asked. She had made him like her.
It was she who was responsible for his flight to the Arctic where he buried himself in a frozen grave.
It was all her fault.
~*~
Malachi dreamed. On some far distant train of thought that wound slowly through his mind he knew he was dying. Starving. He had shut out the world and all its temptations, but one. The hunger. The hunger could not be overcome. It could be put away into the darkest recesses of his being and kept locked there, but it could not be killed. It was like a bright flare at the end of a dark tunnel, burning eternally.
He sometimes dreamed of blood. More often, he dreamed of his past. The years of nightmares that tore him from his childhood sleep, terrified. A silver wolf that stalked a moonlit plain, threatening him.
Later he dreamed of his coming of age and facing the facts of his heredity. He had to perfect a cautious nature. He couldn’t let people know he could read their minds. He couldn’t let them see him move so fast he seemed to disappear. He had to pretend he really was as smart as they thought when in reality he possessed a phenomenal memory and the ability to read pages as fast as he could turn them, committing the knowledge to memory.
He dreamed of Danielle. Of her dark hair and smooth light brown skin. He dreamed of the day he’d come clean with her and admitted his heritage. The same day she admitted her own secret—she was pregnant with their son.
He dreamed of his father well and strong, and then of his father paralyzed and helpless.
He dreamed of imprisonment, of loss, of an emptiness in the center of his soul that he could never fill.
These dreams played on a large screen in his mind inside the frozen stiffness of his body. He did not breathe or weep or move a muscle. He gave into the piercing cold that finally was as hot against his skin as a furnace. He drove off the need to kill, the need to survive, welcoming the black void where his memories poured over him like silver rain.
Time lost all meaning. Anything outside of his mind had to be ignored to the point it meant nothing to him. As he weakened and the body dropped in temperature until the blood froze in the veins and the muscles were hard as rock, he began to welcome the coming of total oblivion. Once he stopped thinking and remembering his life, his life would be over.
The first inkling he had of an obstacle to his plan for death came in a tiny whisper intruding into his deadened brain.
“Malachi, it’s time to come out now.”
I will ignore it, he thought. It’s not a real voice. It’s my brain’s way to survive. It wants to trick me so I’ll wake up and escape this icy grave. It wants me to take blood. It wants me to live.
He reached far back in memory for the sunny day beside the Trinity River where he held Danielle in his arms. They were young and in love, so in love…
“I’ve come to get you,” the voice said.
…in love so deeply that they believed they would live forever wrapped in each other’s arms. Her hair smelled of flowers and it shined like brown silk as he buried his face in it. Her body pressed against him was soft and yielding, her arms clinging to him, her breasts flush against his chest where his heart pounded…
“Malachi! This will not do. You have a son.”
…pounded like a drum beaten frantically. He clasped her to him as if she were his sole reason to live. And she was! He wanted the moment to last an eternity. If he could turn back time and then stop it in its tracks, that is the moment he would choose. Maybe death was a blackness without sound or sight or memory or hope. But if death allowed him to take one moment, just one, from his life and live it over and over, he would turn to Danielle and take her in his arms down by the rolling brown Trinity river…
“She’s gone, but you’re not. You have work to do yet. You can’t be selfish and end it when your time isn’t up. Listen to me. You have responsibility to Eli. Remember Eli, your son, your little boy? He’s lost his mother. He can’t afford to lose you too.”
…Danielle carried the baby in her womb and his name was Elijah. They called him Eli. A little bundle of energy careening through their lives like a rolling ball of fire. In him they saw themselves reflected. He carried a part of them into the future. He was evidence of their love…
“Yes, Eli, the evidence of your love. He’ll be alone without you. Parentless. An orphan. He may one day understand how he lost his mother, but he will never understand your death. He will be a suicide’s son. He will carry that throughout his life. Is that what you want?”
…evidence that they had hope for the future of the world. Eli was a part of them. He wished the voice would shut up. He didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all. It was not his voice, the voice in his head. It belonged to…
“Mentor. I’m here, Malachi. To take you back to the world.”
…Mentor. Where had he come from? How had he found out? No one could know where he hid, deep in the ice, frozen and motionless and dying, dying…
“I don’t want to have to force you. Don’t make me do that. I will if I have to. I will. But don’t make me.”
…if only he could die. Ice and slow starvation or fire and instant dust, what did it matter in the end? He could join Danielle and forget…
“Come, Malachi. You’re made of sterner stuff than this. I know you are. Wake up!”
All right! All right then!
The scream of his consciousness woke every atom of his being. He felt fiery ice. He felt the solid ice all around him, filling his world. He felt the pain of living. He felt the hunger.
I don’t want you here. Go away! Mentor, have mercy and go away!
“I can’t do that. I’m taking you out now. Be ready. Watch for the light. Reach for it or you’ll be dragged through it and burn fiercely. Hold to me.”
I am surely going to die now, Malachi thought miserably. I have hallucinated to the point I’ve devised my own ending. I’ve involved Mentor in my demise, who will drag me into the light of heaven. Soon I’ll be free.
The dark receded and the world of ice vanished very slowly, like a lucid dream fading
to smoke upon waking from sleep. Closer and closer the light inched, bathing him with beauty. He opened his eyes, realizing he was beyond the prison of the ice. His eyelids creaked and his eyeballs misted over then cleared, like mirrors, warmed, then suddenly chilled. He could not turn his head or lift his hand. He stood stiffly, wondering at how heaven looked so white and limitless.
And empty.
“I’m here at your side. You’re not alone.”
That was Mentor. He’d journeyed with him right through heaven’s gates. Did that mean he was dead, too?
Where is Danielle, he wondered? She must be here somewhere. She’s dead. I’m dead. I’ll find her. She’s got to be here if this is heaven. Somewhere in that vast wilderness of white ahead of me, she walks, and I’ll find her, I swear I will.
“You’re not dead, Malachi. This is not heaven. This is the Arctic, where you came to hide.”
It couldn’t be. Mentor was lying to him now and it was a cruel joke. Don’t say things like that, he thought. Mentor, please don’t make my death into a joke. That would be a sin.
“No joke. I’m telling you the truth. Do you hear the avalanche of cracked ice falling into the sea? Bringing you out caused the whole shelf to break. Do you hear it?”
Malachi listened as instructed. Behind him, like claps of near thunder, he heard the great blocks of ice cracking and falling into the water. He saw plumes of icy water arc over his head and fall all around his shoulders, rainbows caught in their midst.
Mentor said, “Now I’m going to take you with me to a warmer place where your body can thaw out. Do you want to go home? To Texas?”
No! How could he go home?
“I’ll take you to our vampire brothers in my monastery then. They’ll help you come back.”
I’m not going anywhere, Malachi thought. Except into the heavenly landscape to look for Danielle.
Yet his vision dimmed and his mind wandered and he knew he was being transported. The air warmed around him. Voices spoke softly and footsteps echoed in the distance. He took a breath and smelled the tropics. Banana trees, hibiscus, green herbs dozing in sunlight as they oozed their pungent oils.
He opened his eyes again and this time he could even roll his eyeballs in their sockets and look to the right and the left. He seemed to be lying on a cot near a wall of stone. Above him was a low, dun-colored stone ceiling. Near him hovered men in saffron robes tied with common hemp rope. They were holding still, arms crossed with hands hidden inside the wide sleeves. They were staring at him with pity.
Mentor swam into view, bending near his face. He was smiling. Square jaw, thin lips, and the head topped by blond hair. His eyes were gray as a cold ocean. It was Mentor all right. He said, “Hello, stranger.”
Malachi opened his mouth and a long, terrible moan escaped him. He squeezed shut his eyes and flung his head side to side.
He couldn’t be alive. He didn’t want to be alive.
Mentor couldn’t have done this awful thing to him.
Chapter 27
Mentor turned to the vampire monks and gave orders in a low voice. He would hurry to Dell and tell her Malachi was safe. At least for now. Nothing could stop him from leaving and finding another hiding place in which to die, but at least he would have to think about it again. He had not really thought about it at all this time. He’d been driven by learning the truth of his nature.
Maybe they should bring Eli here. Set the boy in his father’s lap. Let Malachi look the child in the eyes and tell him he was going to vanish from the face of the earth for good. He could never do that. He could never justify it. Not to a child. Not to his only son.
Mentor left the patient to the monks. They’d let him know if he should bring the boy. Turning down a long corridor, Mentor wandered through the monastery to the chapel. The last time he had visited here was when Charles Upton escaped. Since then Mentor had stayed at home, helping new vampires in the Southwestern part of the states when called upon.
It was a singular relief to be rid of Upton. Malachi had done that, thank God. His fury had driven him past Mentor and his army of Predators. He had launched himself at Upton in the darkness of the cavern and split him asunder, murdering him. It had taken them years to get Upton. Mentor sometimes had wondered if they would ever stop him. What it took was the single-minded wish to get revenge for a pain too great to bear.
Mentor had not counted on the murder of Malachi’s young wife on her wedding anniversary. Who could have predicted such a thing? Upton had been a deviously evil Predator. Having lost Malachi from the prison where he’d kept him prisoner so long, it was Malachi he had hoped to hurt first. He had accomplished his plan. And died for it.
Mentor turned into the ancient chapel area and kneeled on a worn prayer rug. The monks were busy and the bells had not rung for their morning prayers yet. The chapel was empty.
Mentor did not pray. He merely kneeled and looked up at the primitive wooden cross that had been carved and hung against the wall hundreds of years before. Mentor might be thought a wise man for he had lived many years longer than most of the vampires for whom he was the shepherd, but in his own estimation he was not wise enough about life and death to know for certain what waited on the other side. He spoke with God, but God did not answer. He believed totally in continuation of the spirit, but he couldn’t be thought of as any sort of religious believer.
He felt he should trust in the unknown. He didn’t know if he were being foolish or not. The monk vampires followed Buddha and lived a peaceful existence, harming none. Many vampires finally picked up some belief system or other, if they lived long enough and had seen enough of life. The group Malachi had found in London, the ones investigating the many dimensions that made up the universe, really was seeking after God, no matter what they called their research.
But Mentor could never be sure of anything. He had only a few rules he lived by. Do not kill unless it is necessary to survive. Save the lost ones of his kind, like Malachi, when he had the chance. Do good and spread tolerance. Teach the vampire nations to live with their human brothers rather than prey on them.
Those where the rules he had made for his life and only he knew when he broke the rules—which was not often. Beyond that, he knew little. It was astounding how difficult it was to live by his rules. It took all of his will and every ounce of his determination.
He rose from his knees and turned to leave. Malachi was in good hands. He could leave him now and let him come back to himself and face his actions on his own. The monks would bring him blood. They would bathe him, advise him, and edge him back toward the world.
Malachi was a young vampire, barely a year old. He had to make peace with the decision he’d made to become vampire. The majority of their kind had no choice in the matter, infected as they were with the hereditary genes that made them into vampire. They merely chose in death what sort of vampire they would be. One day Malachi would have to find a solution for vanquishing the revenge he carried in his heart.
It was all up to him now. Mentor had saved him from an early, unthinkable death by starvation. From this day forward finding a way to live the vampire life was Malachi’s burden to bear. Each of them must do it alone. Just as each human faced death alone, each vampire faced life eternal. One was just as serious as the other.
A warm breeze caressed Mentor’s skin as he stepped beyond the shaded portico into the monastery grounds. He lifted his gaze to the unmarred vault of sky overhead. It was a giant bowl of blue speckled with white clouds. He sighed, not really wanting to leave such a peaceful compound. This was one of his sanctuaries. Thailand had always drawn him to its beauteous mountains. But he had other work to do. Malachi wasn’t his only charge.
Mentor couldn’t stay and rest here forever.
He had to go.
Chapter 28
Jacques lay in a bedroom shrouded in shadow and filled with creatures. Shades were lowered over the two windows that faced the street. It was morning, not quite noon, but the beautiful Roma
n light was shut away.
Jacques hadn’t moved from his bed in many hours. He had been awake on and off for three nights, first waking when the initial creature showed up. It was one of the little demons that often came to plague him with cryptic pronouncements and little nips at his flesh. That first night it had sat on the foot of the bed, spearing him with fierce dark eyes set in a face crunched and wrinkled as a brown paper grocery bag that had been blown through alleyways for a week.
The demon wasn’t speaking. He sat still as a stone statue, guarding the man in the bed.
Jacques tried making him go, shooing him away, even kicking at him with his feet, but the little beast wouldn’t be moved, nor would it say anything.
Not long after the demon arrived, three ghosts appeared, hanging in the air in the middle of the room, their clothes ragged and shredded from the grave. Two men and one woman hovered in the room, watching Jacques. All of them had clamped lips closed into thin lines that looked like slashes in their faces.
Next came a half dozen ghouls, gargoyles, and, for want of a better description, two little misshapen trolls. The room began to fill with these supernatural beings, until the door opened and a whole crowd of vampires slunk into the room to hug the walls at their backs.
Jacques yelled at them all, shouting for them to go away, but they didn’t move. Nor would they speak to him. The silence from the assemblage was like being suffocated in folds of dark velvet. The night wore on, fled the sunrise, and still the room was filled to overflow, some of the vampires having even slunk up the walls to hang from the ornate molding at the ceiling.
What in God’s name do they want? Jacques wondered. The whole house had been taken over by vampires already. The longer Jacques stayed, the more the apartments filled with the walking dead. Living residents left, usually in the middle of the night, scuttling down the stairs and making the sign of the cross. They had been spooked by shadows and movements they detected from the corners of their eyes. They whispered of unholy things taking over the building. The rumors spread until every apartment emptied.
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