My mouth dropped open as my vision of a fat, happy Julian was suddenly popped. Now I pictured him in a dark hole, scared and starving. I couldn’t remember how long a person could go without food or water. A series of threes thudded through my brain – three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food? Was that it? I had no idea. Even still, I knew dying that way would be excruciatingly painful. I started hyperventilating.
Teren lost it. His fist came around and bashed into the man’s face. I could hear the cartilage snap as his nose shattered; blood spurted everywhere. Malcolm cried out, more annoyed than anything, and shoved Teren back, hard. Weak from lack of food and sleep, Malcolm managed to get him off and blurred to standing before I could stop him.
As Teren started to stand, losing his balance and falling back to the cement, Malcolm adjusted his nose. He sniffed when it was healed. Pointing at Teren still on the ground, he snarled, “You get one, vampire. That was it!”
I helped Teren stand up, both of us shaky from the news that we were still trying to absorb. “Why take a child? What do you want?” Teren muttered feebly.
Malcolm shrugged, adjusting his threadbare clothes. “What do any of us want? A safe place to lay our heads. A few warm blooded bodies to nibble on.” His lips curled up in a smirk as he wiped some blood off his chin. “Gabriel’s heart, staked to a platter.”
Teren and I flicked a quick glance at each other as Malcolm crossed his arms over his chest. “You see, here’s the thing.” Reaching down, he picked two rocks off the ground. Holding one up, he said, “I have a problem,” he lifted the other one up, “and you have a problem.” He made the two rocks touch each other as he smiled at us. “Perhaps we can work together to solve both our problems.”
Finding the strength to stand tall, Teren grasped my hand; I could feel the tension in him. He took a confident step forward. “My only problem…is you,” he spat out.
Malcolm rolled his eyes and sighed irritably. “Hmmm…well, my problem, since I can see you’re so choked up about it, is that I have a very determined vampire on my tail.” Smirking, he lifted the grayer of the two rocks. “Picture this, five years ago, I was living my life, minding my own business. I had a lucrative little career that afforded me an opulent home and a small bevy of beautiful human hanger-ons.” He lifted the darker of the two stones. “But then, some asshole vampire killed one of my clients. Then that same do-gooder ran to my supplier and clued him in on the fact that his research wasn’t exactly destroyed, like he’d thought.”
He took the dark rock and flung it towards the abandoned building; it shattered the front window. Scowling, he looked back at us. “Now, a very powerful, pissed off vampire, is scouring the earth looking for me. And his form of justice is old school – we’re talking no jury, no judge, and definitely no lawyers! Only an execution awaits me!”
Teren lifted his chin. I tried to do the same but my entire body was shaking a little bit. “We don’t want any part in your fight with him. It has nothing to do with us. Let my son go.”
Malcolm snorted, palming the gray rock. “He was oblivious to my activities, for decades, until you drew him a path right to me. That makes you a pretty big part of this.” He sighed as he bounced the rock from hand to hand. “And now that ass won’t let me be. He’s got every spare set of eyes in his cult looking for me. And his influence extends everywhere. For years I’ve managed to escape him, but he’s tenacious and vindictive. I’m broke, and I’m tired,” his eyes flashed back to us, “and I’m done running.” He snapped his wrist and the other rock sailed away, smashing another window in the abandoned building.
I shook my head, loathing for the man in front of me giving my voice heat. “You brought this on yourself! You betrayed your own kind.”
His eyes slid to mine, as cold and unfeeling as vampires were generally portrayed. “I watched him flounder around with his ‘miracle’ drug for over three hundred years. His pipe dream was never going to work. He was never going to stop conversions…but that didn’t stop him from trying.” He rolled his eyes, wearily starting to pace before us. “All he did accomplish was converting vampires before their time.”
Malcolm shrugged, a bloody section of his shirt lifting to reveal a long tear, like he’d been sliced open recently. “And what do I care if vampires convert early? We all have to do it sometime. We are all destined to convert.” His hands rested on his hips as he stopped and glared at us. “What do I care when it happens?”
Teren stepped forward, the memories of his own conversion clear on his features. “You sold it to hunters. You let them kill our kind with it.” His face twisted in a snarl and he looked like he wanted to spit at Malcolm’s feet. “How could you condemn our brothers and sisters?” Teren lifted his free arm into the arm, the anger in his face shifting to incredulity. “My god, they used it on children!”
Malcolm only tilted his head and raised a shoulder. “Hey, I’m a businessman. I saw a very small niche with very deep pockets.” He raised an eyebrow at Teren as he sat back on his hip. “You would not believe what some hunters will pay for this crap.” His hand made a circle in the air while his lips twisted derisively. “They prefer killing us when we’re more like monsters to them.” A small smirk touched his lips as a light laugh left them. “Killing us with a heartbeat is apparently ‘unsavory.’ Less sinful if we’re dead, I guess.” He shrugged.
Teren’s mouth set in a firm line while his brow deepened to a sharp point. I felt like walking over and taking a swing at the weary vampire, smack the sneering grin off his face, but I had to remind myself that he had my son, and only he knew where he was. We couldn’t afford angering him so much that he left without telling us where he’d stashed him, especially since we now knew that he’d left Julian with practically…nothing.
Seeing our silent confliction, Malcolm smiled coldly and resumed his pacing. “I needed to make a living, away from Gabriel and his followers. I found a demand, a very lucrative one.” He tossed his hands up in the air theatrically as he shook his head. “But Gabriel’s shut down every production lab I had.” Malcolm flexed his body as he stalked back and forth, his wiry muscles tight with anger and frustration. “He’s destroyed every vial I ever recreated,” he paused to smirk at us, “so I returned the favor and destroyed his. I sent him a warning – penetrated his sanctuary, trashed his worthless research.” He spat on the ground like he was spitting on Gabriel’s grave.
My mind instantly flashed to my own conversion, to Starla. Malcolm had near permanently killed the prissy vampire by destroying all of Gabriel’s work. I stepped forward a couple of spaces until Teren’s hand in mine held me back. “You idiot! Those actually did work! He was saving lives with it.” My hand patted my chest as tears stung my eyes. Thinking of my miracle children, alive only because of Gabriel’s research, I spat out, “He saved us!”
Malcolm snorted as Teren pulled me back to stand beside him. Teren’s arm went around my waist, twisting me to him, and Malcolm raised his lip in a sneer. “I don’t really care about saving people. I care about remaining alive, and if Gabriel keeps this up, I won’t be.”
He took a few steps towards us; he was so close I could have reached out and touched him. The smell coming off of him was musty, like he’d been in dark, dingy places lately. “Gabriel won’t leave me alone, so yeah, I trashed his lab. But that didn’t stop him, so I upped the ante, torched his little human bitch.” Malcolm’s lips twisted on the harsh word, his green-brown eyes roaming up and down our bodies. “But he still didn’t get the message, so I’ve decided to be a little more proactive.” He shook his head wearily, his eyes softening, aging. “I’m tired, I’m tired of running. I warned him to stay away. I warned him this would happen. I told him there would be bloodshed.” His aged eyes hardened right back up.
Teren beside me dropped his hold on me. His head tilted, he stepped towards Malcolm; Malcolm took a step back. “You what? What human?” As I looked over Teren’s quickly darkening face, I thought ove
r what Malcolm had said – torched his little human. Torched? My eyes widened as Teren took another step towards the man who had our son.
Backing up another step, Malcolm shrugged. “Some girl. He had a vampire I was watching compel her to fly all the way to California for him.” He rolled his eyes as Teren stood stone still. “I figured she was important, so I followed. I figured he was grooming her for a changeover, maybe even going to attempt one himself. So once I finished with his lab, I snatched the little human, got rid of her before he could convert her – to teach him a lesson.”
In a whisper, my husband said, “Carrie? You killed…Carrie?”
Malcolm smirked and shrugged. “Maybe, I didn’t exactly ask her name first. It was more a grab and go, if you know what I mean. ” Teren’s eyes watered and Malcolm noticed, cocking his head curiously. “I held her for awhile, snacking, waiting to see what Gabriel would do. When it was clear he wasn’t letting up, I thought about tossing the little imp on his doorstep after I’d drained her, to prove my point, but then I decided a public fire would be more…poetic.”
Teren’s face exploded in anger, a surge of adrenaline giving his worn body a second of strength. He strode forward, shoving Malcolm hard. The elder vampire was caught off guard and smacked down to the ground. I blurred to Teren’s side, holding him back from pummeling Malcolm to pieces; sadly, we needed him alive.
Teren hovered over him, breathing heavy. “She wasn’t here for him, she was here for me. She was innocent!”
Malcolm spat out a wad of blood, having bit himself when he harshly landed. “Who on this earth is truly innocent?” he growled out. Standing slowly as Teren tried to reign in his anger, again, he smirked coldly. “I saw her on your doorstep, you know. Touching little moment there. I figured he was sharing his plaything with his ‘pet’ before he brought her into the fold.” Chuckling to himself, he shook his head. “Watching her led me to you.”
He raised an eyebrow, walking around Teren as he quivered with restraint. “I specifically made sure that Gabriel would find out about her, about what I’d done. Who do you think anonymously led the police to find her body? And I knew that once she was identified, Gabriel would figure it out. Gabriel doesn’t believe in coincidences.”
He leaned in close to Teren, whispering in his ear, enjoying taunting him on a subject that was clearly painful for him. And I knew just how painful a subject it was for my husband. He cared about Carrie. “I fed on her for a couple weeks, keeping her just on the edge of death. And, just for him, I left her alive enough that she would feel every lick of the flames, but weak enough that she couldn’t do anything about it. Message delivered.”
Malcolm cocked his head. “How ironic then, that she was here for you and I decided to give you the note written in her blood. Kind of fitting actually.” He laughed after that, and Teren lost his control. He lunged at Malcolm, but Malcolm was ready this time. He blurred just out of reach, then raised his hand in warning. “Back off, I said you get one vampire.” His eyes narrowed viciously as he looked between the two of us. “And now that you know I will kill, don’t think I won’t again.” He raised an eyebrow, pointedly. “Only this time, I won’t be killing a fully grown woman…I’ll be killing your son.”
“You son of a bitch,” Teren murmured, his hand reaching down to clench mine.
Malcolm shrugged. “Yeah, I’ll give you that one.” He tilted his head as he walked to the other side of us. “But Gabriel is worse. My warnings seem to make no difference to him.” He shook his head, his expression irritated as he studied the ground. “He’s coldly relentless and he’s after my hide. He won’t stop chasing me now. Not until I’m dead…or he is.” Nodding to himself, he added, “That’s the only way I can disappear. The only way I’ll ever find peace again.” Looking up, he pointed at Teren. “The only way to get him to stop hunting for me, is if I hunt him first.”
Teren shook his head, disgusted. “Maybe you should have thought of that before you went up against him.”
Malcolm narrowed his eyes. “He went against us first. You think he’s so perfect. You think he’s some miraculous saint, because he finally, after hundreds of years, got it to work on a handful of vampires?” Tilting his head, he pointed at Teren. “You probably call him Father too, don’t you?” He looked Teren up and down, his face twisting to match the disgust in Teren’s visage. “Just like his other drones.”
His hand lifted up to point south, down where Gabriel’s nest lay. “He’s not perfect. He’s not a saint. He’s a coldly calculating scientist who will stop at nothing to get his end result.” Malcolm raised an eyebrow as he took a step forward. “Do you know how many I’ve watched die because of him? Because of his obsession?” He shook his head, his thin mouth tightening. “Unlike human labs, we didn’t exactly have rats to conduct tests on.” Looking between Teren and me, he lowered his voice to a growl. “He used vampires, living vampires. Ask him how many died before he got to the drug that merely jumpstarted the conversion.”
I forcefully pushed aside what he was saying about Gabriel. I knew Gabriel was determined enough to do the things Malcolm was saying, but I didn’t believe he was as cold as Malcolm was making him sound. The odds were pretty good that Gabriel had made some mistakes in the past few hundred years, but I was sure he felt badly about them…unlike Malcolm, who only seemed to care about, well, Malcolm.
My eyes narrowed as I took in the weary, chatty man who had one of my reasons for being stored up in a hole somewhere, terrified. Wishing I could shake Julian’s location out of him, I sarcastically spat out, “Is that what he did to you? Did Gabriel accidently kill someone you loved and stealing from him was your pathetic attempt at revenge?” I eyed the dirty man up and down, my breath heavy as anger consumed me. “Is that why you hate him so much?”
Malcolm only gave me a blank stare. “Who said I hated him? No, if I hated him, I’d have tried to kill him ages ago.” He leaned into me and Teren stepped between us, shielding my body. I could nearly smell the desperation leech off Malcolm as he coldly said, “Don’t romanticize me. I just wanted away from him.” Smirking at Teren’s protective display, he took a step back. “This had nothing to do with a woman.” He lifted his hand in the air, gesturing with it. “This is no he-killed-my-lover-and-I-want-revenge fight.” His voice dropped along with his hand as he narrowed his eyes at us. “He’s a power hungry cult leader and I wanted out from under him.” He cocked his lip and shook his head. “The drug was my ticket to being on my own with pockets full of cash, nothing more. I saw an opportunity and I took it.”
Still in front of me, Teren shook his head. “How sad for you, that all it took was money for you to stab your species in the back.”
Malcolm dryly replied with, “Don’t forget the freedom part.” Rolling his eyes, he shook his head. “And don’t give me that high and mighty crap. Humans stab each other in the back near daily, for far pettier reasons.” Stepping towards us, he put both his hands on his narrow hips. “But my motives aren’t really the point, are they? The point is, I need you to do something for me and you are going to do it.”
Malcolm held his ground before us, and even though Teren was weak and exhausted, he lifted his chin, holding his ground as well. “What could you possibly want from me?”
A slow smile spread over Malcolm, his eyes brightening for the first time since we’d started talking to him. With a chilling coldness, the smile stretched across all of his haggard face before he spoke. When he did, I wished he hadn’t.
“You are going to kill Gabriel for me.”
Teren and I dropped our mouths open at the same time. Malcolm smiled even wider, seeing our reactions. Glancing over Teren’s startled features, then mine, he shrugged casually. “You help me. I help you – tit for tat. See how it works? It’s a win-win for both of us.”
Too dazed to speak, I could only gape at the clearly mad person before us. Teren somehow found a way to still be articulate. “What? I knew you were off, but I didn’t realize you were comp
letely insane.”
Malcolm narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. “Am I? You’re in his inner circle now. He knows you. He trusts you. He would never see it coming from you. You can get close…and finish him.”
His body quivering with fatigue and stress, Teren grit his jaw. “No, never.”
Lifting one corner of his lip, Malcolm leaned towards us, whispering, “Really? Do I need to remind you that I have your son?” Shaking his head, he shrugged again. “And thanks to my own unique, and, quite brilliant, concoction, you can’t track him.”
Teren looked back at me, fear and dread in his eyes; I had to believe I looked the same. As we stared at each other, Malcolm chuckled coldly. “You will kill Gabriel for me…because you have no other choice.”
Pulling my gaze from Teren, I stepped around him. “Please, let Julian go. He’s a child, he’s innocent.” Teren tried to pull me behind him again, but I dropped his hands and grabbed Malcolm’s dusty jacket. “Take me…let him go, take me.”
Conversion Book Three: 'Til Death Page 37