Lucien hurried to her side and took her hand. “My dear Sister, I know you feel you must be here, but it’s time for you to get to a hospital. You have done your duty, and now you must let yourself rest and heal.”
She smiled at him. It was the beautiful smile of the young girl he had seen in the dream, the sister herself, but so many years ago. “This is the beginning. If the earth signs don’t stop the demon, there is no hope. The Oracle must be there when it is time for water, fire and air to go into battle.”
“Sister,” he said gently. “You cannot stay here as you are. You are old, and very ill. You won’t be able to fight again if you don’t get some rest, not to mention medical care. And you must get better. We need you—the world needs you.”
She closed her eyes, and her smile deepened, some of the wrinkles that betrayed her great age beginning to fade.
“I know,” she whispered. “I knew…all those years ago, when I first saw you. You thought you were damned, and you played the part well. But I knew—as you knew, in your heart—that you were not meant to kill and destroy, but to go on. You thought your role now was just to show the others the way, but…our connection is strong. You entered the dreams I sent to Scott, and you saw what was happening. Already, you were the one. You have acted as the Oracle.”
He looked up a little helplessly at Sister Ana.
She shook her head. A dull thud of fear struck him. He was not ready for this responsibility. Sister Elizabeta could not die.
Her eyes opened, and she looked at him. “Lucien, don’t you see? You are the Oracle now.”
“No. I haven’t your faith, your strength.”
“I am old, and so weak that he is slipping into my mind. My heart is pure, but my body is weak. You are strong. And you will find the resources you need within your soul.”
Lucien wasn’t even sure that he had a soul.
“My son,” she said softly.
Her grip was suddenly strong. He felt something, as if he had been struck by lightning. He almost cried out, almost wrenched away. But even as the power of the Oracle burned through her touch into him, he suddenly understood.
And he was very afraid.
“Sister,” he whispered.
“Bless you, child.”
“Sister, please, no.”
“Let me die, let me die in the light in which I have lived, for it is time, and I will not risk my soul to such as he you must now fight.”
She touched his cheek. He felt her love, and the strength that would never leave her, not even in death.
Then she closed her eyes again. This time, they would not reopen.
“Scott, please, wake up. What’s wrong?”
Melanie was terrified. Scott had suddenly begun tossing about wildly, his muscles straining, his features taut, as if he were in extreme pain.
But worse than that…
The air had an odd smell about it. Like flesh charred by fire.
“Scott!”
At last his eyes opened. He looked around anxiously, saw her, and his eyes filled with relief. He reached out, drawing her to him. His heart was pounding. “My God,” he whispered. “You’re all right, you’re here with me. Unscathed.” He smiled at her, and she was startled by the wealth of emotion in his eyes, the force in his arms as he held her. His smiled faded suddenly. “Where’s Celia?”
“In the sitting room, where we left her. Rainier is standing guard.”
He eased back, and his grin returned slowly as he reached up and touched her hair. “He—Bael—tries hard, but, you know what saves me every time?”
“What?” she asked.
“You.”
“Me?” she asked, both puzzled and afraid.
He nodded gravely, studying her with a passion and warmth in his dark eyes that both thrilled and frightened her.
“Whatever you are, I know there’s not an ounce of cruelty in your body,” he said. “I couldn’t love you if you were cruel. And I even believe that you feel something for me—dare I suggest you love me in return?”
Love? No, it couldn’t be—could it?
It could.
And suddenly she was afraid. Afraid of the force of her own emotions—and his. She was afraid of his complete and utter faith in her.
She eased down, laying her head upon his chest. “You believe that I’m a vampire, don’t you?”
“I do, yes,” he told her, stroking her hair.
“Don’t you want to know more?” she asked him.
“Whenever you’re ready, yes,” he said without hesitation.
She didn’t believe that he would judge her harshly. Still, the fear remained.
She was quiet for a long time, and he didn’t push her. At last she sighed. “Do you know how old I am?” she whispered.
“No, but it doesn’t matter.”
She rose up on an elbow, looking down at him. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say, but she knew she didn’t want to look at him while she was talking. She eased back down on her back and stared at the ceiling as she began to speak. “It happened during the potato famine,” she said quietly.
“What? What potato famine?” he asked.
She winced. “The Irish potato famine, eighteen-forty-nine. They were truly desperate times. We were raiding an English estate near Dublin. My father, mother…brothers, sisters, all told me it was time to go, but I was determined to get more food. I pretended that I was right behind them, but I wasn’t. We knew that Lord Miller’s stockroom was full, but for some reason no one wanted to go near it. Miller had acquired a reputation for being not just cruel, but evil. Maids had gone into his manor to work and never come back out. Still, that night…you can’t imagine how hungry I was. How hungry we all were. So many people starving to death.”
“Miller was a vampire?” he asked.
She nodded, still not looking at him. “The worst kind. He loved being a lord, being able to rule his property, to drink—lots of wine and alcohol, as well as blood—and to take whomever he wanted to torture and abuse. No one stopped him. He was a member of the ruling class. No one dared.”
Scott rolled over to look at her. His eyes were deep and gentle, but he was such a strong man, in his own quiet way. He smoothed hair away from her face. “He caught you that night.”
She nodded. “I was always a fighter, I suppose. I had to be. So when he caught me, he had a great time torturing me. He’d let me think I had gotten away, then catch me again. And then I would fight him some more. Actually, I’m pretty sure I did hurt him several times. I was willing to die rather than let him have me. I just didn’t realize that I would die…only to awaken and find myself still in his home. With him. Then it got worse. He wanted me to feed upon my own people. I do know what Celia is going through now, because I went through it then.”
Scott pulled her against him as she spoke, and she didn’t stop him. Instead she looked him straight in the eye. “I killed one of his friends instead. Another English lord.”
She was surprised that he still managed a gentle smile. “You didn’t kill your own.”
“But I did kill. Don’t you understand? Maybe the bastard even deserved it—he’d certainly been cruel enough to his tenants. But…I never wanted the power of life and death over others. And…you have to understand. He was just the first. I made my horrible misfortune into a war of vengeance.” She rose to a sitting position, trying to make certain he was really paying attention. “A serious enough bite…enough blood taken, and you do die, then become one of us. But there’s an ancient law—one all of us, good and bad, are afraid to break—that a vampire can only make one of his or her own kind three times in a century. Survival of the fittest, you see. So I didn’t just turn these people, I killed them. I staked them or beheaded them after I had drained them.”
She wondered if she was trying to force him to turn away. Better now than later, when her heart was even more vulnerable.
But he didn’t turn away.
“Who finally helped you? Was it Lucie
n?”
She shook her head. “It was Rainier, though Rainier eventually introduced me to Lucien. In the days when we had to fight to stay alive, Lucien was what you would call the king of the vampires. He’s still the head, though there are rebel factions across the globe, those who want to stick with the old ways and kill indiscriminately for survival. They usually die,” she whispered.
“But not always?” Scott asked.
“No, not always. It appears that Bael has a way of gathering the disgruntled and the cruel around him. He’s managed to exert a mental power to keep them under control—the same power he uses to slip into our minds and our dreams.”
Scott nodded slowly. “I think I understand. It’s like a world within our world, and most of us don’t even suspect, because so many of you are careful to stay under the radar.”
She nodded.
“How did you wind up in California—and how did Rainier help you?”
“Lord Miller came to despise me. We carried the war into our private domain. He knew that I was killing anyone who helped him stay in power—and practice his cruelty. He managed to trap me in the dungeon of an ancient ruin for weeks with nothing to…eat—and then sent my baby sister in to search for me.” She stopped. All these years later, even with all her immediate family long gone, she could still remember how she had grabbed the little girl who had loved her so much and barely managed to shove her away. “I didn’t,” she said, her voice barely finding breath. “I didn’t kill her. But she went home and told my parents what she had found. Rainier had come to Dublin—to find an old…acquaintance. My parents ran to the priest and told him what I had become, and when Rainier heard the story he came to find me. He took me away before the entire town could come after me. My parents loved me, and my sister loved me, but they would have destroyed me to save my soul. Rainier got us berths on a ship to America. We settled in…New York first. Rainier taught me how to survive, far below the notice of those who might find me out.” She drew a deep breath and let it out, still determined to meet his eyes. “We can subsidize our diet with other blood, of course, but when we’re sick, injured…or need our strength, it must be human.”
“I see.”
“Over the years, I lost my accent,” she told him. “Actually, over the years, I’ve learned several languages and can affect many accents. But I love my country. I am very much an American now.”
“So…?” He let the word trail off inquiringly.
“So now you understand what a totally loathsome creature I am,” she said, trying to speak lightly.
“I don’t think you’re loathsome at all,” he assured her. “I can’t help but be curious, though, in all those years…”
“How many vampires have I created?” she asked, wincing. Her voice sounded cold.
And bitter.
But he shook his head. “You said that Rainier helped you all that time. Did you really never—”
She looked at his face; his tense features. She heard the slight twinge of jealousy in his voice—something he was trying hard to hide.
“He’s my brother. My friend and my brother. But we haven’t been close geographically in years. I moved on. I always move on.”
He took both her hands and kissed them briefly but tenderly. “Please don’t move on. Not away from me,” he whispered.
She didn’t have a chance to reply, because there was suddenly a long, low cry from the living room.
Scott leaped from the bed and nearly ripped the door off its hinges in his anxiety to discover what had happened.
As he raced to the living room, a million thoughts seemed to flash through Scott’s mind: Rainier had fallen prey to Bael’s mind games. He had fallen prey to the girl. Someone else had come in and fallen prey to the girl.
But when he reached the room he saw that nothing had changed. Rainier was sitting calmly in a chair, one long leg crossed over the other as he read. Celia was still sitting in the midst of her circular prison. The wail he had heard was hers, an agonized cry of hunger.
Scott understood; he hadn’t eaten, and his stomach was rumbling. Then he thought guiltily about what Melanie must have suffered during the potato famine, about what this girl was suffering now, and imagined his plight a thousand times over.
He could wait a bit longer.
“Where’s Mel?” Rainier asked, yawning calmly, as if he hadn’t even heard the girl’s howl.
“She’s coming,” Scott said.
To prove his point, Melanie emerged from the bedroom right then.
“Everything all right?” she asked.
“Celia is apparently very hungry,” Rainier said. “But not talkative. So…”
“I don’t know what else I can say,” Celia moaned.
“You know where he is,” Scott told her, folding his arms across his chest.
“You know where he is, too,” she said, pouting, then wincing and doubling over in pain.
“We’ve tried finding him below the church,” Rainier said, turning a page in his book, then looking up at her. “And he does have power there. But there’s somewhere else where he’s actually hiding. Somewhere that gives him a better opportunity to send his evil seeping out into the world. That’s where we need to go to find him.” He turned to Scott and Melanie. “And I believe our friend here knows how to find him. If we just give her a little more time, maybe she’ll talk to us.”
“Sure.” Scott yawned. “Well, I think I’ll go out and find a sandwich or something,” he said. “Can I get you anything?” he asked the others.
“No! Don’t leave me here alone with…them,” Celia pleaded.
For a moment, Scott was convinced that she was going to remain stubborn. Then she whispered, “He’ll know. He’ll know if I tell you, and he’ll kill me.”
Scott moved as close as he safely could. “He won’t kill you, because you’ll be with us. And we’re here to stop him.”
She winced. Scott heard a twisting sound behind him. Melanie had gone for another “cherry soda.”
“We will protect you,” Scott promised.
“It’s by the north end of the Forum,” Celia whispered, giving up the fight all at once. “There’s a huge rift…it’s covered by an old Roman archway. There are tunnels beneath, older catacombs still. He’s waiting for the full moon. The full moon gives him some kind of power. He’ll send out the rest of his armies to clear the way, and then he’ll appear and cause the earth to crack open everywhere. People will die, some in the cataclysm and others at the hands of their fellow men. It will be like a plague. A plague of desperation and cruelty, because mankind is only decent when things are going well.”
That’s not true, Scott thought. Trauma and tragedy could bring out the worst in people, yes. But they could bring out the best, as well.
Melanie passed Celia what was left of the bottle.
Celia drank it down greedily. Some of the blood dripped to her chin. She lapped it up with her tongue, not losing a bit.
Scott turned away.
Celia finished drinking, then started sobbing softly.
“The full moon,” Rainier murmured. “That would be…”
“Tonight,” Scott told him. “We don’t have much time.”
“What do we do with her?” Melanie asked.
Celia’s sobs ceased; she’d heard the question and now stared at them in horror. “No! I gave you what you wanted. Please don’t kill me. Please. I never meant to…I didn’t want to kill people…. I don’t want to go to hell, to burn for eternity…. All I ever wanted was to have fun and go to America.”
“Listen,” Scott said, “we have to start moving fast. Rainier, we can take Celia with us to your church to get every symbol of faith we can lay our hands on. Then the nuns can arrange some kind of prison for her and keep an eye on her. Then—”
He broke off, frowning. Melanie looked as if she had gone into a fog; she wasn’t paying any attention to him, just staring straight ahead.
“Melanie!” he said sharply. “What is it
?”
She didn’t answer him right away; it looked almost as if she were communicating with someone who wasn’t there—or hearing voices in her head.
“Melanie?” he asked more gently.
She looked at him. “Lucien is here.”
“Here? Where?” he asked, frowning.
“At Sister Maria Elizabeta’s church,” Melanie said.
“You can…feel that?” he asked her.
She nodded. “Lucien can…communicate. I don’t know how. He’s always had a certain telepathy with…with our kind. That’s how he entered your dream. The thing is—”
She broke off suddenly.
“The thing is what?” Scott pursued with exasperation.
“Sister Maria Elizabeta is dead,” Melanie said.
“What?” Suddenly Scott felt blank, as if they were now an army fighting without a commander. No new Oracle could possibly take her place.
“She’s dead,” Rainier said, as if he were in on the same telepathy, “but—”
“But—what?” Scott felt his anger rising, mingling with his pain over the loss of the wise old nun. “Will the two of you please stop this? What the hell is going on?”
Melanie looked at him, her forehead puckering in thought. “Lucien is now the Oracle,” she said.
Scott stood still for a moment. He thought about the sister, who had reached out to him in his sleep and brought him here. He thought about her beauty as a human being, the light within her that had been so special and unique, a strength that defied the years. And now she was gone.
“So Lucien is the Oracle now. What does that mean?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure he even knows,” Melanie said.
“Let’s go,” Rainier said.
Scott looked at him, about to complain, then realized the other man was right. They didn’t have time to mourn their loss. They didn’t have time to do anything but try to survive.
“How do we get her out of here?” he asked.
“She stays between Mel and me,” Rainier said. “We can’t take any chances. You drive, and we’ll keep her in back with us. Lucien will be waiting for us when we get there.”
As they moved out through the lobby, Scott found himself pausing. The television set was on in the bar area. The announcer was speaking in Italian, but he didn’t need to understand the language to grasp the import of the footage being shown.
Dust to Dust Page 24