HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (57 page)

Ryan thought they
already did anything for one another. He'd be damned if he'd take a
knife to his arm, or any other part of his anatomy, and watch someone
drink from him. As for being the drinkee, well, that was totally out
of the question. Ugh.

He drove Lori home
through the night, but all he could think about was Dell showing up
at the party. He thought of her long red hair spilling around her
shoulders in spirals. He thought of how her eyes had looked, deep and
dark and amazingly impenetrable.

He tried to listen
to Lori while she made her case for what he'd seen. He wanted to
understand. He wanted to make sense of it. Finally he gave up trying
and decided it was just the shock that he was working through. She'd
said they all got over the initial disgust eventually. She suggested
he read Bram Stoker's Dracula, and he said he would. He would,
really. Read it slow, she said. Read it like you've never seen a book
before and this is the first one you've ever read. I'll try, he told
her, honest, I will.

"And after
that," she said, "I have a whole list of new books for you
to read. People are publishing books every day just for us."

"For you?"

"For the real
believers."

"You don't
really think you can be a vampire, do you? Dell asked that, I know.
But you don't, do you?"

"Oh, of course
not! But we can get close to it if we really try. We become one of
the underground the books are really written for. It's a society,
Ryan. If people really knew what we thought, they'd have to get a
little scared. Not because we're going to turn into bats and bite
their necks, but because we don't think at all about things the way
they do."

He didn't think it
made much sense to want to be so different you created a whole myth
around yourself and you made rituals up out of the whole cloth. He
didn't say it to Lori, but as far as he could determine, the kids at
the party weren't a danger except maybe to themselves. He wasn't
afraid of them. He wasn't lured.

He would, however,
read Dracula. He'd always meant to anyway. He'd just read Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein last year and that had been an eye opener. The
monster was nothing like he was portrayed in the movies. He expected
Stoker's monster would be more interesting, too. But nothing was
going to make him want to partake of blood. He was about as far from
that as he was from the moon in the sky. Dell really hadn't had much
faith in him if she'd thought otherwise.

When he went to
kiss Lori good night before she left the car, meaning to give her a
friendly little peck on the lips, she grabbed him around the neck and
kissed him back so hard he found himself trying to pull away.
Breathless once loose, his mouth still filled with the taste of her,
he said, "That was . . . intense."

She grinned at him
and said, "Yeah, wasn't it?"

He watched her
enter the house before driving away. He was too stunned to leave
earlier. He had really liked what she'd done. He thought he could go
for an aggressive woman.

Then he thought of
Dell and knew the truth. He would go out with her exclusively, if
she'd let him. He had no interest in blood drinkers and cults and
warped philosophies. Lori was a sweet thing and a terrific kisser,
but Dell was someone he couldn't stop thinking about. He was happy
she'd changed her mind about going out with him. All he needed was a
chance.

~*~

Mentor took a
direct route to Bette's house when he returned. She knew he was
coming back. This time he would make her let him inside. He walked
down the long street fronting her house, noting the small children
playing in the street after dark. If only they knew what kind of
creature he was, the mothers would never let their children be alone
outdoors again.

Teen boys, all
wearing black baseball caps with some kind of red insignia,
congregated on a corner across the street. They watched him quietly,
but did not move to intercept him. He projected an aura of danger
their way. They might be tough little hooligans, but in each of their
brains an alarm sounded that caused them to hesitate. Dallas had its
share of minority gangs, and this one dominated the neighborhood.

A white man in his
forties sat on a house stoop near the sidewalk. Mentor touched his
thoughts and found his mind scrambled by heroin. His personality was
near disintegration, and it made him angry and dangerous. As he
lifted his head when Mentor neared, Mentor sent a message
telepathically. Don't come near me, he told the man. You'll be sorry
if you do.

Finally, Mentor was
in front of Bette's walkway. He looked up to the front door and the
windows. Lights glowed lemon yellow through lace-covered windows. Her
car was in the drive. He telepathically searched the house and found
no one there but the woman. Now he would make her invite him in, and
he would finish the job he'd begun the day before.

When she answered
his knock, he hit her with his strongest suggestion. Ask me in, he
said to her mind. You know me as an old friend. He watched her
expression change from horror to recognition and, finally, to
happiness. She reached out for his hand and tugged him into the
house. "I haven't seen you in so long," she said.

"And I bet you
missed me, didn't you?" Mentor stepped through the doorway and
closed the door behind him. He should have done it this way the first
time instead of letting her see him as he really was, allowing her to
understand his real intentions. He didn't like to trick them so
easily, though, and unless he had to, he usually let a human face him
on his own terms. But he hadn't any more time to waste on the woman.

Once they were in
her small living room, he entered her mind fully. This caused her to
stiffen and become as still as a statue. His own frail body also
froze, waiting for his mind to return to it.

Inside Bette's
skull he rifled through the area that held her lifetime of memories,
shunting aside those that were too personal, those that concerned her
childhood or her parents or her friends and relatives. He searched
diligently for the memories that had to do with her work. She was a
bright woman; he admired her and would not touch anything in her mind
that would change her too much if he could help it. Of course there
was always the chance of an accident when doing such delicate
operations, but Mentor took special care because of the goodness he
found in the woman.

It took several
long minutes before he located her work memories, and then he went
through them gently, stirring them this way and that until he found
the exact ones he needed. She had memories from textbooks and classes
taken at a university. These memories were tangled up with flashes of
meetings with the man who had been in her house the night before,
when he was much younger. When they both were much younger.

She had volumes of
information stored about hematology and her lab work involving blood.
If he ruined too many of these memories, she would never be useful as
a scientist again. He meant to be careful, realizing he was trampling
among stored data that she needed in order to fulfill her life's
training.

And then he found
what he needed to expunge. He moved through a memory of lifting a
long computer printout close to her face and noticing the shipments
from Strand-Catel. There was confusion surrounding these memories,
like clouds shrouding a summer moon. She was not sure what the data
meant and it left her befuddled. He took these memories and folded
them the way one folds a newspaper, then he stuffed them behind a set
of memories that dealt with other blood banks. For her to recall them
again, she would have to have a traumatic brain injury that might
possibly jiggle them loose, but even then it was an improbability. In
other words, short of near fatal injury to her brain, she would never
remember them again.

He lifted every
memory he could discover that had to do with Strand-Catel and folded
and stuffed until the whole inquiry she had started had been swept
clean and put away in very deep storage within her brain.

On his way out of
her mind, he almost tiptoed over to the area of memory that held
personal data. He was tempted to look in on the love she had devoted
to the man who had spent the night with her. But he knew that was
snooping. It was an urge he should not indulge. What he might find
there would no doubt throw him into a conflict about his own lack of
a love life. It would depress him. Better to stay out of this woman's
love affairs and leave before he caused some kind of accidental and
irreparable damage.

He stepped out,
hovered in midair just for a moment, and then reentered the skull of
his old body. Just as he did, the woman collapsed forward into his
arms. Her eyes were closed and he checked to see if she was breathing
well. She was. She was sleeping like a newborn.

He lifted Bette and
carried her to the sofa. Then he made her comfortable with a pillow
under her head and smiled down at her slight body.

"You see? That
wasn't so bad, was it?"

He left the house,
happy that it had been so easy. He was reasonably sure he had not
harmed her, except for taking away the memories that would get her
into trouble with Ross. He walked down the sidewalk through the
neighborhood the way he had come. The gang was gone, and the
drug-addicted homeless man was missing from his stoop. Even the
children had fled the street. The neighborhood seemed to have
emptied, and he expected it was because they had unconsciously felt
the danger he represented. They had gone inside their homes and
bolted the doors. He smiled, showing his teeth. He thought how
wonderful it was to be able to command this much power over not only
the sweet, unassuming Bette, but a whole neighborhood of people who
might not have even seen him. Without catching sight of him, their
instincts knew something was walking close by that they did not want
to encounter in the darkness of the night.

Mentor had seen a
bus stop near the edge of the neighborhood. He decided he would take
public transportation over to Ross' house to tell him the news.
Mentor had not been on a bus in years, though in the past he had
loved bus rides very much. Leave the driving to us, he sang in his
mind. Yes, he would do that. Sit back and watch mankind moving from
this place to that unaware that in their midst rode someone who, with
very little effort, could mesmerize every one of them into a
catatonic sleep.

He must never
separate himself too far from man, he knew. He must renew his study
of man and their modern ways, or he could not hope to be of service
to his youthful charges like Della Cambian.

As he rode, he
watched an old Asian man fiddle with a leather pocketbook attached to
his belt loop by a chain. He listened in on a conversation between
two young women who seemed more interested in their dates this
weekend than in anything else in the world. He moved his attention
among the passengers, letting it pick up this and that observation
until he wearied of their daily cares and frustrations, their minor
joys and triumphs. Finally, he settled back in the seat and rested,
leaving the driving to them.

~*~

Alan woke just as
Mentor left Bette's house. He whispered a curse and sat straight up
in the seat of his car. He gripped the wheel and gritted his teeth as
he watched the old man come down the walkway and turn up the
sidewalk. How could he have fallen asleep! It was as if something
came over him, blowing out the candle of his awareness. It might have
been because he ate too much dinner. Used to canned goods, a real
meal often caused him to grow drowsy. But he would not have fallen
asleep tonight, not when he had to watch Bette's house and keep her
safe.

He cursed himself
as a fool again and turned in his seat to watch the old man saunter
down the walk beneath streetlights and crape myrtle trees that grew
along the sidewalks. The street was eerily quiet, with no one else
around. Had that been the stranger who'd frightened Bette the night
before? Or was he just an old friend who had stopped by for a visit?

Alan was torn
between rushing into the house to see about Bette or following the
man who had come from her house. He decided to see about her as fast
as he could. She was his primary concern. He rushed across the street
and into her house. When he found her sleeping, he touched her face,
felt the pulse in her wrists, and, satisfied she was all right, he
hurried out the door again.

He had to follow.
He was as drawn to the old man as if there were an invisible rope
attached to him that was pulling him along.

He started the car
and put it into gear. He turned his car around in the empty street
and cruised slowly toward the old man. He had not closed in on him
before he saw the man sit down on a bus stop bench. In the distance a
bus lumbered toward him. Alan pulled into a parking spot at the curb
and waited. He'd make another U-turn in a minute and follow the bus.
Something told him he must know where the old man was going. Whether
he was Bette's friend or foe, there was something magnetic about him
that made Alan want to get closer to him. He was very curious about
the old man's destination.