He swallowed again, letting the last of the dream leave his mind. “It’s all right.”
“I shouldn’t have come. We were…we were afraid to leave you alone.”
“Is Jeremy here too?”
“No, I left him in the village.”
“The rest of them, are they up there with him? In the village?”
“Not yet. I told them to stay away until I called for them.”
“Don’t call. I don’t want them here. I came to figure a few things out.”
“Did you? Figure them out?”
He shook his head.
“Do you want me to leave?”
He hesitated and the answer was evident. He heard her rise, her skirts rustling like the wings of bats.
A panic bloomed in his chest. He didn’t really want to be alone, not after the intimate dream. He felt so lonely even his bones cried out for companionship. “Wait,” he cried.
He stood and moved close to Sereny. “I’ll come up with you for a while.”
He saw her face only as deeper darkness, but he thought that she smiled. “That would be nice, Malachi.”
He passed ahead and the two of them skimmed the floor of the tunnel, following winding paths back to the entrance they’d both taken down the iron grill.
No one saw them exit. They moved too swiftly for human eyes. Once in the street, Sereny sent out a mental call for the child, Jeremy, and finding him, led the way.
It was full dark, even late, the moon riding low in the east. Few villagers moved about the streets. Once Sereny turned to Malachi and whispered, “He’s feeding.”
She said it with some alarm and Malachi grimaced. He hadn’t killed in days and the hunger was a live coal in his stomach, but the thought of murder caused him to recoil. Jeremy was a little murderer. A marauder. From the innocent, orphaned child Malachi had brought home with him from West Texas, Jeremy had changed into a wolverine. His appetite was becoming legend among the vampire nations. Despite the fact he was a child in body, his hunger was stronger than any Malachi had known. It was his murdering need that had driven him out of Ross’s house and made Sereny stay with him to exert some kind of control.
They came upon Jeremy inside a ground floor apartment in the poorest part of the town. He stood in the darkened house in the bedroom where he’d dispatched a couple right in their bed. He sat back on his haunches, his mouth dripping blood. His smile was wide as the ocean, and evil.
“Jeremy!” Sereny rushed to haul him from the bloodied bed to his feet.
Malachi, caught up in the scene, suddenly smelled younger blood than had been spilled in this room. He turned and hurried toward the scent. In a second bedroom he found two children dead. In an alcove off the living area he found two more.
He sighed with distress even as he touched each small throat to be sure no life remained. He couldn’t let Jeremy leave one alive to become vampire.
When Sereny and Jeremy found him, Malachi hissed, “Little monster.”
“It was you who taught me,” Jeremy said.
It was true he had taught him to feed on blood, but it was the blood of animals. He had never taught this boy to kill humans. Children! “How could you do this?”
Jeremy shrugged, but he showed no remorse.
“He can’t help it, Malachi.” Sereny always defended the boy. She had adopted him as her own and her mother instinct was as fierce as anyone’s could be.
Malachi made a scoffing sound and walked out of the house of blood. He wasn’t even tempted to taste it. The boy’s murder spree made his stomach turn.
Outside Jeremy rushed to his side and took his hand. Malachi threw him off. “Get away from me. You don’t even try to control yourself. Why did you have to take the children? Four children, none older than ten!”
“I was hungry,” he whined.
“Not that hungry. You’re a killer, plain and simple. I have no use for you.”
“Malachi!” Sereny hissed this time.
He didn’t care if she thought him cruel. He only spoke the truth. He had come to despise the boy he’d saved for the vampire life. Mentor and Ross should have let the boy die a natural death or dispatched him into the void themselves when they’d come to the place where he lay in the red dream of death. Look what they’d all unleashed on the world. A child who had grown old in his mind while remaining small and cherubic in body. A machine killing whoever he could at every opportunity, man, woman, child, saint or sinner, deserving and the undeserving.
He was an abomination.
“Send me away this time and I won’t come back unless it’s to bedevil you,” Jeremy said, standing frozen in the street, his small hands balled at his sides.
“Bedevil me?” Malachi laughed but his laughter dripped with sarcasm. “You’ve picked up some quaint Victorian speech, haven’t you? Do you think that makes you a man? A worthy opponent? For me?” He turned fearsome eyes on the boy. He lowered his head like a bull and looked from beneath stern brows. “If I see you again, I’ll kill you myself. Now get the hell out of my sight.”
“Oh, Malachi, don’t.” Sereny stepped forward to take his arm as if to waylay his anger.
“No, I mean it. I’ve overlooked his ravenous nature too long. He gives us all a bad name. He makes us into monsters and into legends told to naughty children to make them behave. He’s worse than a rogue because there’s no excuse at all for him. Get him away from me.”
Jeremy scowled back, his vampire teeth showing in a snarl. “I’ll be back,” he threatened.
“You’d better bring an army with you.”
“Are you coming, Sereny?” he asked the woman who had become his mother surrogate.
She looked between the boy and Malachi, seemingly at an impasse. Malachi finally realized something. Sereny was fonder of him than she had ever let on. He thought of her as a woman swayed by circumstance, taking to the man of the moment who gave her the greatest advantage. He had even heard she’d once slept with Charles Upton, though he couldn’t feature it. Lover of Balthazar, mistress of Ross, adoptive mother of Jeremy, yet now she vacillated between leaving with the child she’d taken to herself and Malachi. It touched him so deeply that his face softened toward her.
“It’s all right,” he said, waving her away. “Go with Jeremy. Try to make him see what he’s doing wrong.”
“But…”
“No, really, go.”
Jeremy ended this exchange by stomping off down the empty street, his fists still swinging at his sides. His little shoulders were squared and he carried his head high. Malachi would have pitied him, as he’d done for a long time now, except for the carnage he’d witnessed in the peasant apartment just minutes ago. It was a heartless beast who had murdered a family of six, sparing no one.
Malachi no longer pitied Jeremy. He probably should have flown at him and pinned him to the ground and ripped off his head. If he’d had the heart for it, that is what he should have done.
He watched the woman rushing after the boy stalking down the center of the sleeping village. He remembered Sereny’s touch in the tunnel, the delicate massage of his shoulders that signaled an offering of herself. He shook his head and turned back to the street and to the tunnel entrance.
He had not yet thought about what he should do. He could sense other vampires all around. He couldn’t see them, but they were there, hiding on rooftops, in groves of trees at the village edge, and even beneath floorboards in abandoned houses. Despite admonishment, they’d followed him. He sighed to himself at the way no one obeyed his wishes.
Stay away, he warned them telepathically. Stay away and leave these people alone!
He didn’t want to be responsible for bringing more death to this place than he already had with Jeremy’s massacre.
As he dropped into the tunnel, he realized this was the first time in months he had gone for any length of time without thinking of Jacques. At least that was a sort of blessing.
Chapter 35
Jacques told his guards
to take the night off. He needed to be alone. If they must guard him, he said, do it at a greater distance.
He watched as they moved away from the tent. They were an army now and none of them needed shelter, but Jacques. They’d brought the large canvas and fashioned him a tent with poles of tall saplings scrubbed clean of bark. All around the tent the arid desert shimmered with mirage. The vampires winked in and out of existence as if they were made of smoke. The human crowds that had taken to showing up wherever he was were kept back in their villages and not allowed to enter the desert compound of the lone canvas tent.
So it was during dusk when the stars began to prick the night sky and the moon hadn’t yet rose when Jacques found himself in relative privacy. Sure, the supernaturals kept appearing, but each time they did, he grumbled until they went away. Demons, gargoyles, and revenants wandered into his space and upon his command they left again. It was a relief to him that he had not seen the small person he took to be the Devil. Not since the first and only time the creature appeared to him. He didn’t think his mind could take a second meeting so it was a small mercy.
I wonder how I can sneak away, Jacques wondered, as he stood alone in the wan light of the canvas tent. He didn’t expect an answer, even from his own muddled mind, but one came.
“You’re going away with me.”
Jacques whirled from the tin bowl of water he’d been using to wash his face. Water dripped from his chin. There in the tent with him was a vampire Jacques didn’t recognize. He was tall, with short blonde crew-cut hair, broad shoulders, and piercing blue eyes.
Jacques carefully took a striped cotton cloth and dried his face and hands before saying, “Didn’t I demand to be left alone?” Jacques anger was always just below the surface these days. His patience had worn thin weeks before.
“I’m not one of your soldiers. I don’t take orders from you. In fact, the only reason I could come is because you’ve let your guards wander away.”
Jacques felt his anger die and apprehension replace it. He blinked rapidly at the way this creature probed his mind. “Who are you?”
“They call me Mentor. I haven’t used my living name in centuries.”
“Mentor! Upton’s enemy.” Jacques had never seen this one before. During the siege of Dallas with Upton’s rogues Mentor had led battles, but Jacques had never been in his vicinity. Or if he had, Mentor must have looked completely different. It was certain he’d never seen this being.
“What do you want? Revenge for Malachi’s woman? Why didn’t Malachi come to do his own dirty work?”
“He’s going to. Once you come with me.”
Jacques knew that wasn’t the plan. The plan was everything. His mission was to perform miracles, to deceive the world and make it smile upon him. Then once he’d accomplished that, he and Malachi and their armies would finally clash. The whole world would know about it and watch the cataclysm. That was the plan. How could Mentor alter it on a chance encounter this way?
Mentor had been standing quietly, studying him even as Jacques thought these things. A smile played around his lips.
“I’m not going with you.” Jacques brushed past the great vampire and threw back the flap of the tent. He was jerked from behind, the canvas ripped from his hand. He was in the vampire’s embrace. He could smell the scent of death on him and feel his cold flesh.
“You are going with me.”
Jacques closed his eyes, knowing he was going to be taken on another flying journey through space. It made him sick when this happened, when his soldier Corgi or one of the other vampires took him out of his body and dispersed his very molecules. Every time he’d wanted to die rather than feel the touch of the void.
The interior of the dusty tent faded from sight and the earth dropped from beneath Jacques’ feet. He sagged in the vampire’s arms and gave in to the dizzy spinning of his brain, losing consciousness.
This is it, he thought a moment before he vanished. This is how it ends.
~*~
Vohra found Malachi sitting on the floor of the dark earth, the tunnel wall propping up his back, his legs splayed before him. Malachi slept. His mind was as slack in sleep as his fine lips.
The change of the ambient temperature and the movement of air molecules alerted Malachi of an intruder. He was on his feet instantly, his hands held out in combat position. When he saw it was Vohra, his old teacher, he relaxed slowly. He began to smile. “Well, now they’ve sent you to fetch me. If Sereny couldn’t do it, they decided to call in the Big Dog.”
Vohra rarely smiled, but the corners of his eyes crinkled in amusement. “Mentor and I have decided to give you your wish, Malachi.”
“You’ve brought Jacques to me?” Malachi was incredulous. His gaze flickered toward the tunnel behind Vohra, searching the shadows.
“No, we’re bringing the two of you together somewhere else. Not here.”
“How did Mentor find him? I’ve been on his tail for months and couldn’t manage to catch him.”
“Mentor called upon all the powers he possesses, it’s true,” Vohra said. “We have ancestors who know more about these things than any of us.”
“Ancestors?”
“Ones older than Mentor and older than me. Mentor and I called on them for help.”
Malachi licked his upper lip nervously. “No one’s ever told me there are vampires like that.”
“Oh yes. But you had no need to know of them before. They reside in dark places beneath the earth and we only go to them in direst need.”
“They’re down in tunnels like this? Or graves? Where are they?”
Vohra shook his head, stepped forward and took Malachi in a loose embrace. He whispered near his ear. “Where they are is of no concern. We asked for their help and they sent Mentor to Jacques’ side. And now he has him. Come. Let us go.”
Malachi joined with Vohra in the fantastic dance of atoms that would sweep them from the reality of the Nazi tunnel into the stream of time. He saw nothing and felt nothing and became nothing, lapsing into Vohra’s control, letting himself be taken away for a last journey.
Until he could think no more, his mind dispersed to the heavens, Jacques’ name rang throughout his being.
Jacques…Jacques…I’m coming…
~*~
Mentor stepped back from Jacques.
Vohra stepped back from Malachi.
The four beings stood in a great hall with cold Carrera marble floors, giant white marble columns, and walls of ancient plaster painted with spectacular murals of people in purple and white Roman togas reclining before a feast.
“This doesn’t look like the plains of Armageddon,” Jacques said lightly. He had taken in Malachi facing him only yards away, but he turned in a circle to look over his surroundings.
Malachi glanced about and knew he was in a huge old palace on the outskirts of Rome, Italy. He also knew the building was deserted and wondered if Vohra and Mentor had made the people who lived here leave it. It was appropriate they were back in the city where Malachi had first found evidence of Jacques’ miracle works.
“It’s under custodial care,” Mentor said, answering Malachi’s unspoken question about the palace. “The caretakers are absent at our request. At one time it belonged to a Roman senator under one of the Caesars.”
Jacques faced Malachi again. He glanced at the two great vampires standing near the wall. He wondered where the devil was and why he hadn’t intervened in his abduction. Why had he let the plans go so awry? Were the vampires even greater magicians than the devil himself?
“Why do you believe you’ve met with…with the one you call the devil?” Vohra asked, having read Jacques’ mind and found it puzzling.
Jacques drew himself up. He looked straight at the vampire who was dressed somewhat like the reclining guests painted at the frescoed feast on the walls. He wore a white toga edged with gold and leather slippers on his brown feet. “Because I have met him.”
Malachi laughed. Then his laughter died abrup
tly. He moved forward a step. His face changed, hardened, and his incisors lowered. "There is no devil, you fool. And if there were, he would have taken your name.”
Jacques turned out his hands palm upwards and shrugged. “It was never personal, Malachi. I was told to kill the woman. It was war…”
Before the last word left his mouth, Malachi was upon him. He held him in arms of steel and his fangs were already sunk into the carotid artery at the side of Jacques’ neck.
Jacques cried out, startled. Malachi had moved so fast. He felt the sharp, needle-like teeth embedded in his neck and he twisted to free himself. He called upon his hands that were pinned to his sides to work one of the miracles they’d been so used to performing. He turned this way and that and screamed to be let loose.
And then he felt his heart stutter as the blood began an upward rush, backing out of the chambers.
It was all a lie, Jacques thought. I can be killed. I’m not powerful like the vampire. And there is no one to protect me now.
His head clouded and it was as if the muscles of his limbs were in revolt. He could feel himself dancing, kicking, arms flailing and he couldn’t do anything about it. His neck was in the vice of the fangs and his blood was flooding out of his body into the mouth of this beast latched onto him like a giant leech.
“Oh!” Blood spilled from his open mouth. Again he drew in air into his lungs and said, “Ohhhhhh…”
Darkness crept from the pale painted walls like the wraiths of ghosts gathering. The Romans of old who reclined on stone benches began to wither and fade.
Jacques felt his heart clench in his chest and the pain was excruciating. He closed his eyes against the horror of it, against the sting of death as it bore down on his vulnerable neck. The river of his life pushed past the dam of his heart, leaving it empty, until finally the room narrowed to a tunnel of light and then to a spark, like an ember floating on the wind above a fire.
But I can’t die. He truly had thought he would live forever. Some way. Somehow. Wasn’t he favored by the Son of the Morning? Hadn’t he been promised everlasting life for bringing the world to its knees before him?
SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy Page 86