HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (50 page)

"Not
dangerously low, I mean they can supply the hospitals if they have
to, but I began to notice huge shipments from Strand-Catel going out
of the city. They're shipped to Houston, El Paso, San Antonio, even
down to Del Rio."

"So maybe they
supply other places, not just Dallas, what's wrong with that?"

"Well, that's
it. I looked into it and those cities have plenty of banks, enough to
cover their own needs unless . . ."

"What?"

"Well, unless
those cities have emergencies. You know, hurricanes, a deadly virus
outbreak like e Coli, or major highway accidents."

"Well, I
haven't noticed Houston needing any extra blood."

"That's just
it, Alan. There haven't been any emergencies needing supplies for the
people who live there. I just don't get it."

It was then that
the light bulb went off in Alan's head. He shook himself mentally,
trying to rid his mind of the nonsense. Blood. Vampires. Missing
blood, blood shipped out of a central location to cities that were
not in need. Unless . . . But that was fantasy.

"Alan?"

"I'm sorry,
yeah, go ahead."

"So that's why
I'm calling. Your hospital hasn't sent a request for blood supplies
from this Dallas outfit?"

"I don't know,
but I can find out."

"Would you do
that for me? I just can't figure out what's going on. These shipments
go out untested, and that's totally against regulations. I'm hoping
the labs in those cities are doing their jobs. It worries me, that's
all. I looked up the records after I noticed the pattern and this has
been going on for a long time, Alan. A very long time. Years, in
fact."

"Any other
blood bank doing the same thing?"

"No, just
Strand-Catel. That's why I didn't catch on for so long."

"Okay, sure,
I'll find out something for you, Bette. I'll do some sleuthing."
He knew she could hear the humor in his voice because she laughed.
She didn't know he wasn't kidding. His real job now was looking into
things that had to do with the use and care of blood.

~*~

In a supply room
next to the doctor's lounge where Alan Star was taking his call from
Bette, a Natural by the name of Hank sat listening to the
conversation. He could hear both parties easily through walls and
phone wires. He had accidentally picked up the thought "vampire"
from Dr. Star when walking down the hall earlier and had followed
him. Doctors did not generally go around thinking about vampires. It
intrigued Hank enough that he stuck near Star most of the day. Every
now and then he tried to carefully tiptoe into the doctor's thoughts,
hoping to find out more details.

Now he heard the
woman share her suspicions about Strand-Catel. Hank would have to
alert Ross, the Dallas Predator who owned that particular blood bank.

Leigh, a female lab
research assistant and also a Natural, spoke aloud. "This could
interfere with our research."

Hank knew that. It
was an ominous turn of events, certainly. "Nothing's going to
stop us," he said, trying to sound confident. Early on, Ross,
the Predator with the most power in the Southwest, had tried to stop
them from getting into research. If there was a cure found, he'd be
out of business. He didn't like any one of the Naturals thinking they
might one day do something about the disease. If the Naturals stopped
needing blood to survive, there went Ross' control right out the
front door.

Hank didn't like
Ross worth a damn. He might have gone to war with him had it not been
for Mentor's plea for peace among the clans. If truth were told, Hank
relished the thought he was going to be the one to tell Ross of the
Dallas investigation by Kinyo. He'd love to hear him roar, that's
what he'd really love.

Hank, Leigh, and
another Natural, Dr. Shamoi, a molecular scientist and world-famous
hematologist, had been medical researchers for many years, looking
for a cure for the disease that turned them into vampires. They'd
gone along quite well in the hospital system that employed Dr. Star.
Often left to their own devices, they spent every spare moment
delving into the molecular level of blood, trying to discover just
what it was that changed porphyria from a human killer into a mutated
disease that had afflicted their clans ever since 2000 B.C. If they
could find the trigger mechanism, perhaps they could cure
themselves—or at least offer the cure to those who wanted it.
Some of them, Hank reflected, would never want to give up the
supernatural life. More power to them, that was his position. But for
the rest of them, like himself, who longed for a normal life again, a
cure would be a glorious discovery.

Leigh said, "What
are we going to do, Hank?"

"I'll talk
with Ross. Go back to the lab and don't worry about Dr. Star. He's a
nonbeliever. He won't get anywhere."

"And the woman
in Dallas?"

Hank hesitated. He
didn't have enough information to say anything about the woman.
"Maybe Mentor can see about her."

Leigh, looking
relieved, left the stuffy supply room for the lab. Hank leaned
against the shelves and closed his eyes. Tonight after his shift he'd
call Ross, and Mentor, too. No point in sending out a telepathic
alarm at this point. He'd only get everyone riled up and have them
descending on his hospital, further delaying important work.

And who, he
wondered, was Upton? He had no first name, no other clue to the
fellow's existence. All he knew from the tidbits he'd gleaned from
Star's brain was that Upton had employed him. Christ, he thought, if
it isn't one thing, it's ten dozen more.

11

Once Mentor let
Dolan go, the house settled into a slow, numbing buzz of lethargy.
There were always the unseen life-forms in a house. Cockroaches,
spiders, silverfish, scorpions, flies, beetles, termites, mosquitoes.
All of them flying just at the edge of the house seeking entry or
crawling around inside or beneath it. Mentor counted these unseen
creatures as his friends. They shut out the larger noises that
filtered in through the walls from outside. If he let them, the
sounds—of their little tapping feet, their wriggling antennae,
the crackling of the beetles' hard shells—focused him in a way
silence could never do.

Dolan had been
contrite. "I won't do it again," he said.

"If you have
to do it, do it only to yourself," Mentor advised.

Dolan gave him a
puzzled look. "You're saying you won't try to stop me if I just
want to destroy myself."

"Not after
this, Dolan, no. If after these days on your own in my basement,
where you were alone with your own conscience, you decide you can't
go on, well . . . I won't interfere a second time."

"I heard that
about you."

Mentor unlocked the
front door before turning back. "What did you hear?"

"That there're
no second chances."

Mentor shrugged. "I
plead guilty."

"But it hurts
you, doesn't it? I mean if I fall down. If I kill myself. You'll
blame yourself."

"I don't think
I want to answer that question." Mentor spoke gruffly, hoping to
spirit the old vampire out of his house and be done with him. He
would not speak of whatever guilt he took upon himself. Not with
Dolan. Not with anyone.

"All right,"
Dolan said, moving swiftly past Mentor and out onto the walkway. High
above, the moon shone clearly, and there was not a cloud in the night
sky. "I'm going back to my other prison now."

“
God speed,”
Mentor said, waving a little and beginning to shut the door. He
already had turned his attention to the small life evident in the
wall just behind him where he heard the scurrying of the tiniest
feet. He must concentrate on the sounds so that they would blot out
the world. He did not want to think about losing Dolan to despair,
did not wish to remember the Craven house he'd taken him from where
creatures almost too weak to maintain life lay about like sick dogs.
There was only so much Mentor thought he could take, and when he
reached that limit, he turned inward to survive another night,
another day.

An impediment
caused the closing door to jam so that Mentor had to shift his
attention to it again. Dolan stood there, his hand holding the door.
He looked into Mentor's tired eyes.

"I wouldn't
have your job for the world. I would rather be a Craven hoping to die
than to be you."

And then he was
gone, disappearing on the night wind, a transparent shadow rippling
past the leafy limbs of a tall mulberry tree planted close to
Mentor's house.

Mentor closed the
door with a sigh and walked slowly down the hall, an old man
returning to his solitude. He felt no physical fatigue, no pain or
ache, and was often completely out of touch with the process that ran
the old shell that he inhabited. He was simply tired from living the
life Dolan correctly recognized as a royal and total pain. How many
times had he embraced a despair deeper than any Dolan had ever
experienced and yet gone on? Sometimes he wanted to say to those like
Dolan who would take matters into their own hands, "You
spineless coward." He wanted to say, "You thought being a
vampire would release you from all earthly care. You believed eternal
life would be like a picnic, a holiday spree. Who gave you the idea
that life, in any form, human or vampire, would be without pain and
strange, unimaginable horror?"

Oh, he could not
teach them anything. He thought about the uselessness of his mission
some nights when he was alone, barring the transmission of the calls
for help that came through the air like demented radio signals. He
could not really teach them how to live. He provided stopgaps in
their plans. He talked them out of mistakes. He took young ones, like
Dell, and he hoped to see her prosper in her new incarnation, at
least for a few years. Eventually, all of them knew despair like an
old friend draped over their shoulders, a shroud to warm them.
Eventually, they realized their lives were but magnified human
lifetimes, lived over and over and over again, with so little
changing along the way.

It was less a
humanitarian urge than it was for his own sake that Mentor did what
he could to guide and to save his kind from total destruction. Once
they had lived as long as he, if they ever did, then they would know
the ultimate truth. Hope was something you manufactured out of thin
air. Not just when you were down and out, when you were depressed and
hopeless, but every day, every single minute of every spin of the
Earth around the sun.

Dolan was right to
realize he was better off as he was than to have to walk down
Mentor's path. Dolan was one of the intuitive ones. Dolan was no
fool.

And that lifted
Mentor's mood the smallest fraction. He had at least not wasted his
time with the other vampire. He had been dealing with someone more
enlightened than he'd imagined.

Mentor left the
lights off and sat on the sofa next to the darkened fireplace. He
would shut out the calls for help for just a little while. Ross, the
leader of the Predators was coming to him tonight. It would be late,
after midnight, when the city slumbered.

Mentor needed his
strength for the meeting. He never dealt with a Predator without
being at the top of his mark. After all, he had been one. He knew the
latent danger inherent in the species. He must reach down and bring
up his own power. Any weakness he might show could spell disaster. A
Predator would prey, even on his own kind, if he sensed weakness.

He closed his eyes,
laid back his head, and listened to the tiny creatures rustling all
through, beneath, and just outside of his house. How he loved them.

~*~

Ross, he called
himself, having taken a new name for each new body he migrated into.
He was the leader of a Predator band that owned and ran the
Strand-Catel Blood Bank in downtown Dallas. Because he and his kind
did not, for the most part, care to walk free in the sunlight, they
had hired enough underlings to keep the bank open and going in the
day, while at night the real work was done by Ross' sect.

Strand-Catel
supplied blood to Naturals and Cravens throughout the state of Texas
and into New Mexico. They had done so for almost a century, calling
their operation by different names over the years. It was made clear
early in the eighteenth century, when the Americas were being
settled, that their kind could not wantonly murder and prey on
humans. Some of them still did, many of them, in fact, though they
belonged to other Predator sects. But the majority of the vampire
population knew that secrecy was paramount for their survival, and
taking too many lives left a trail that would one day lead straight
back to them.