LEGIONS OF THE DARK (VAMPIRE NATIONS CHRONICLES) (22 page)

After a mile of walking, he was sure the old man was absolutely crazy. There were no houses, no lights, nothing but a few cattle barns and rows of barbed wire fences. Hadn't there been something in the news about some cattle mutilations going on for a while out here? he wondered. Was this the highway where they'd found the cattle lying dead, no footprints or tire tracks around them, and they had been cut, their genitals taken, half their jaws, parts of their stomachs? What was that all about?

Despite the fact he was a medical doctor, he was not a surgeon. He couldn't fathom how anyone without knowledge of animal anatomy could perform such delicate surgery in the middle of an open field. Or why they'd want to. People who perpetuated hoaxes had never made sense to him.

Alan shivered, though the night was warm. He saw some cows in the distance, like black dots at the horizon in the fields behind the fences. God, he was glad he was not a cow. Eating grass and waiting for something to descend upon them to surgically and cleanly remove most of their blood and vitals. Or if not that, the slaughterhouse.

He walked another mile, keeping far back from the old man, always alert and ready to fall down into the high grass of the ditch if he thought the old guy might look behind him. Not far ahead he saw lights illuminating a house. A very large house, tall in the middle and long on both sides. There were small domed pathway lights along a gravel path leading up to the massive doors.

That's where the old man was headed. He was not crazy, he was just being careful. Alan watched him near the house, and then enter it after a moment or two at the door.

Going up the gravel driveway was out of the question. It would be like turning on a foghorn to announce his presence. Instead, Alan walked on the thick lush lawn, now wet with dew, skirting the front and approaching the windows from an oblique angle.

When he got to the wide, leaded-glass picture window on one side of the door, he crept close and peered inside. He saw two women in bathing suits, sitting on a sofa together. They weren't talking. They weren't doing anything, but sitting, looking kind of spaced out. Drugged? He couldn't really tell, but it sure looked that way to him.

To the right of them, he saw the old man talking to a younger man dressed in bathing trunks. There was something about this man that gave Alan the willies. He was handsome and fit, very tall and broad in the shoulders, but there was an unmovable cruel expression on his face that could make you go jelly-kneed. Alan couldn't make out what the two of them were saying.

He looked around and found a thick stand of cypress near the corner of the house, close to the window, and stepped behind them. He was just in time. The door opened again and the old man stepped out. He heard the younger man call to his back, "Are you sure you won't have a taste of my lovelies before you go? When was the last time you had a warm meal?"

Taste of his lovelies? The girls inside? Taste them, as one would a . . . a . . . meal?

Alan cringed, knowing without doubt that the man meant exactly what he said. He wasn't talking about tasting them sexually or he wouldn't have added the stuff about a meal. Jesus, were they cannibals? This was too bizarre for words.

The old man made some reply, then stalked off into the night, back down the road toward Dallas. Alan watched him go and heard the younger man close the door. He stood up, watching and waiting. As he tried to decide when he could leave his cover and follow, he saw the old man disappear into the night. Alan stepped out from behind the cypress trees and took a step forward. He stopped, staring hard at where the old man had been walking, sure he had made a mistake. It was a trick of the night, the lack of light along the highway, the utter isolation of this place. It was because he was tired and felt dumb for playing at detective work. Surely a person could not just vanish.

He began to walk toward the highway, searching everywhere, hoping for a glimpse of the old man. Maybe he had suffered a spell or seizure and fallen down so quickly Alan hadn't seen it happen.

When he neared the spot where he had last seen the man, he looked around on the pavement, in the ditch, even over the fence and into the pastures. The old man had simply vanished, all right. He was nowhere. There were no hills, no obstructions, no place where he could have hidden himself. He was just gone.

Just then Alan heard screams from the house and he turned, hunching his shoulders. He hurried back to the cypress trees near the window. The man inside had drawn the curtains, but Alan could see through a slit into the lighted interior.

The screams were from the women he'd seen on the sofa, and they were unending. The screams rose from the house and into the night like sirens at full blast. Peering through the slit, Alan saw what was occurring, but his mind could not comprehend the scene. He fell back, putting both hands over his eyes, his lips tight and teeth gritted. He lowered his hands to look again.

The man had straddled one of the women, bending her back over an ottoman. He held her arms down with one hand and her head down with the other. She was screaming piteously. The man had torn flesh from her throat with his teeth. A gout of blood gushed from the wound, covering the ottoman and the tiled floor. The man chewed the flesh as one would a mouthful of steak.

The other woman seemed to have come out of the trance she had been in and was standing, screaming, beating at the mart's back with her fists to try to stop him.

As Alan watched, sickened and stupefied, the man whipped around, dropping the wounded woman onto the ottoman where she slipped limply and unconsciously to the floor. He grabbed the other woman who had been fighting against him, bent her over his knees, held one arm against her forehead so as to bare her throat, and then he leaned down and bit at her savagely.

She screamed until the scream changed to a strangled gurgling.

Alan turned from the window, stumbled back, and vomited into the grass. His dinner at Landry's Seafood Restaurant came up, all of it, and the beer mixed with it. He retched dryly, stumbling farther and farther from the house and into the darkness. He hurried to the road that would lead him away from the bloody massacre, afraid to look behind him.

17

Dell rode Lightning as fast as she dared, crossing a ravine in the darkness, past low hanging limbs that whipped past her face, around and through stands of cottonwoods and pine and soaring oaks. Something had entered her, and she was trying to get it out again. It was the memory of the dark wood where the moon shone blood red and the giant Predator, king of them all, swooped down toward her from out of the crimson sky like a monstrous prehistoric dinosaur with wings.

It felt as if The Maker was here again, coming for her in the night as she rode the horse. She raced from him, flying as fast as she could, as fast as the horse could be made to run. "Go, Lightning!" she yelled, swatting at his flanks with her reins, leaning forward so that she was as close to him as possible. Branches pummeled her back and whipped across her lowered head.

"Hurry, Lightning, hurry!"

The remembered dream that was now so real had come on her in a flash. She'd just been trotting along in the darkness, thinking about Ryan and Lori at the Loden party. She thought she had done the right thing showing up and confronting them, but she couldn't seem to get rid of the anger. She knew where it originated. Ryan was with someone else. He should be with her. He had to be with her.

Maybe she should have stayed home and talked it out with Carolyn. Or maybe she could have visited Cheyenne and asked for advice. Instead, she'd come here on her own, and now the memories raged through her unsettled mind.

When she had first saddled Lightning and taken him out along the riding path, it was delicious to know she had slipped away from everyone, taken the car to Loden's party and then to the stables. After leaving the party, spending time alone was what she needed most.

She had never disobeyed her parents before or done anything remotely rebellious. Her conscience gave her a twinge when she thought they might be wondering where she'd gone.

But now that she'd done what she pleased, she realized how much fun it was to feel like a runaway, a brat, an unbridled spirit who had no master. She could say anything to anyone; she could ride in the night like a blithe spirit.

She glanced up once at the moon risen partway into the sky, and saw that it was a full milky orb surrounded with a halo of silver. Without warning the dream came on her, returned to reality. The tremendous fear it had instilled in her very soul when she lay dying returned full force. Suddenly it burned in her mind with clarity and emotion. All thoughts of Ryan and Lori left her. Fear was at her back, lifting a clawed hand to capture her brain.

She had kicked Lightning to send him off on a marathon race, plunging through the thickets and woods as if the very hounds of hell were on their heels.

Now that they were spinning out of control, she didn't want to stop it, wanted, in fact, to run the horse until he could run no more, lose her way without any thought as to how she might get back.

The monster was at her back, and she would outrun him. Together, with the help of her marvelous steed, they would show him that he could not have her, never. Never would he have her!

When they reached a shallow creek running silver in the moonlight, Lightning dashed across it, sending sprays of water to each side. Laughter erupted from Dell and fell around her like diamond droplets, filling her with so much pleasure at her escape that she thought she might burst. Beyond the creek lay an open field where she could push Lightning flat out and no one could catch her. She would ride across it and into another world, ride over the horizon and into oblivion.

Then she saw him appear. Mentor. He stood ahead of her, straight in the path. She hauled back on Lightning's reins, trying to halt him before he ran down her only friend. Lightning was responsive, but not quick enough to avoid a collision. The two of them, girl and horse, ran through Mentor as if he were a ghost.

Dell turned the horse, got him under control, and trotted back to where Mentor waited patiently, none the worse for being run through.

"What's gotten into you?" His voice was stern.

"I'm . . . I'm sorry, Mentor. I didn't see you in time." She was wet with bloody sweat, her hair hanging in dark damp strands around her face. The horse was breathing heavily, foam dropping in huge globs from his mouth. He lifted his head, hoping to take off again on a run, prancing yet, unable to still himself.

Mentor walked closer and put his hand on the horse's nostrils. Immediately Lightning settled and hung his head as if full of patience now, eager to please the old man.

It was as if Mentor had touched her, too. She could not remember why she had been racing the poor horse and why it was so important to treat him that way. She remembered being upset over Ryan, but she didn't know when that had turned into a nightmare about the giant Predator. She slid off the saddle, holding onto the reins, and stood shakily. It was as if all the bones below her waist had liquefied. She held onto the stirrup to keep from falling on her face.

"I don't know what happened," she said, "I was riding, just riding along slowly, and then . . . I thought . . . Oh, Mentor, what's wrong with me?"

He came to her aid and helped her sit on the ground. He took the reins and patted the horse's neck, calming him further. "You can't do this," he said.

"I know! I didn't mean to. Something came over me and I . . . I . . . got scared."

"You shouldn't have left your house. Your family is worried sick about you. They asked me to find you and bring you home."

She looked up at him guiltily. "I didn't think it would matter. I wanted to be alone with Lightning. He's my . . . my friend."

"I'm your friend, too, Dell. And I'm telling you that you can't go off on a whim. You can't give in to whatever urge strikes you. It's dangerous. It's what Predators do. Dell, do you hear me? You're treading down the wrong path. It could lead to your destruction."

"I'm sorry, Mentor." She wiped sweat from her face and then dried the bloody dampness on her jeans. She was as tired as she'd ever been and wondered if she could even stand up. She was hungry, too, her veins screaming for blood.

What might have happened if Mentor hadn't found her? How far might she have gone; to what lengths might she have driven her animal in order to escape a phantom?

"You could have killed the horse," he answered her thought. "You might have run him until he died."

"No!" She struggled to her feet and reached out for Lightning. She fell against him, her head against his side, and put an arm over his back. "I’d never hurt him."

"Yes, Dell, you would. You were out of your mind. You were vampire only and there was no human left in you. Don't you feel it? Don't you even now want to lash out at me for stopping you? For keeping you away from the thrill of the ride and the slap of the wind against your face?"

She admitted to herself that he was right. There was a tiny part of her that wanted to mount the horse again and whip him into a run so they could cross the pasture as fast as possible. She looked behind her, searching for shadows, feeling a touch of panic again and a fear that someone was watching.

"The dream came to you again," he said. "You had The Maker on your back."

"Yes." She hugged the horse closer and shivered. "What happened, Mentor? What's wrong with me?"

"Get on your horse and let me lead you back to his stall." He helped her into the stirrup and then into the saddle. The horse raised his head, eyeing Mentor as if for direction.

As they walked slowly back into the woods and across the creek, Mentor explained to her the way desires would take hold and, unless she squelched them, would override every human caution and lead her into violent action. It might be riding a horse too hard or it might be finding a weak human and being filled with a craving she could not control. She was a Natural only as long as she disciplined herself and held herself accountable for everything she did. She must not let fleeting thoughts of pleasure lead her toward excess. It ended with blood and death.