LEGIONS OF THE DARK (VAMPIRE NATIONS CHRONICLES) (24 page)

~*~

Ross sensed the advance of strangers coming to interrupt him long before he heard the sirens and the crunch of tires over his gravel drive. They were miles away, but they were coming, he knew that for certain.

Immediately he was reminded of the presence he'd felt near his house. It was when Mentor was leaving. Mentor had told him no one was there. And he had been too dazzled by the thought of taking the two women waiting on the sofa to sharpen his senses and discover the intruder.

Now, he was furious, both at Mentor and whoever had been outside his home. A stranger, a human must have seen something. He must have called the police.

Ross moved swiftly to the two dead women, lifting both bodies onto his shoulders, and he strode through the house to the back, pushing open the door with his mind. He rushed into the night with his burdens. He took them acres behind the house, dropping them like the garbage they were. They rolled over scaly dry ground into a natural gully. Coyotes and other wild predators would take care of the rest.

He was back into the living room of his home in seconds, cleaning blood from the Spanish tile floors. He finished the job quickly, licking at the pools and splatters the way a cat laps at a dish of milk. He took the stained ottoman and stuffed it into a closet in a bedroom at the rear of the house. He could dispose of it later. Back in the living room, he surveyed his work and found it good. Without using every available forensic tool, the police would never suspect there had been a slaughter.

He met the solitary policeman at the door, let him in, offered him coffee, asked what he was doing this far from the city. While Ross was talking, he tapped the deputy's mind and plucked from it every shred of suspicion.

Once the county sheriff's car had left, Ross, still furious at the intrusion and the accusation he'd found in the policeman's mind, went out the front door and walked all around his home. He found a man's scent near the windows. It was very distinct, filled with fear and loathing. It was strongest behind the stand of cypress at the corner of the house. Checking further, following the scent, he found evidence of human effluence.

Ross howled, opening his mouth wide and baying as a wolf does at the moon.

He would trace this scent if it took him the rest of the night. He would follow it to its home and find the man who had dared come onto his property, leer through the windows, and then call in the authorities after he'd evidently seen the two women die.

And now here he was, pressed against the little foreign woman's window, watching them. She was Bette Kinyo, the woman interfering in his blood bank operations. The man was her lover, a doctor named Alan.

His lips pulled back from his teeth in an automatic gesture of threat, but he swallowed the growl threatening to erupt. He had come merely to find the unwise human who had invaded his private space and dared to report his activities. He would decide when and how to take him later. First, he wanted to know what the man knew. He wanted to see how much he would tell the woman.

He really wanted to play with both of them. Watch and intrude the way he had been intruded upon. Learn their secrets and in the end display his intimate knowledge of their lives before he dispatched them to the Devil. Nothing, at the moment, could give him greater pleasure.

He sank back from the glass, vaporizing into the molecules of a thin fog, and insinuated himself beneath the tiny crevice at the bottom of the kitchen door.

Once inside, he wafted into a corner near the humming refrigerator, curling around its side until he was behind it. From there he listened, and what he heard increased his fury until his molecules danced like starbursts of electrical energy giving off cold heat and light.

How he hated humans. He could not remember what it had been like to be one. Sometimes he convinced himself that he had never been one, but was always Predator, always since the beginning of time.

He settled down again, resting at the base of the wall behind the black coils of the refrigerator's condensing unit.

He heard the man talking about a billionaire in Houston who was dying of a disease and wanted to find a way to beat it and beat death at the same time. That kind did not deserve eternal life. The diseased. The old and weak. The greedy and impure. They should die and do the world a favor.

The humming of the machine so close to him lulled him a little and the edge of his anger subsided to mere disgruntlement. He listened to the couple's idle talk about searching for vampires and the making of a research center and the possibility of life after death. Part of Ross' attention wandered to the window over the store. He sensed something approaching there and began to concentrate so that he might discover what or who it was.

His fury returned when he realized it was another vampire. It was another Predator, in fact. He could sense the being's frightful power. He was out there, infringing on territory already inhabited by Ross.

The creature was a Predator, but had not supped in days. He was hungry, but he was not coming to kill and feed. He wasn't looking for would-be victims in the foreign woman's house.

It was a hungry Predator who had stopped preying. Only one of them was fool enough to do that. Mentor. Always where he wasn't supposed to be. Always judgmental and grating on the nerves. And now he was calling to Ross, requesting he leave his hiding place and come outside.

So you want to pow-wow, thought Ross. You track me down and get in my way all the time, you ass.

Ross did not want to leave his cozy little spot behind the machine where the humming vibrations soothed him, where the darkness and privacy were so appealing. He had more to learn about the humans' plans. He had wanted just a taste of the woman with the short, shiny hair and moist, slanted, beautiful eyes.

Trust Mentor to throw his designs into chaos.

He would have to come out, leave the house, find out why he was being summoned. He would relish telling Mentor that even though he might have cleared the woman's mind about Strand-Catel's blood shipments, the man who called himself Alan was right there to remind her and to give back her memories. He should have wiped both their minds to insure they'd leave the blood bank alone. How would Mentor like failing for a change? How would he like knowing he was not infallible and that he could not control humans nearly as well as he thought?

The couple rose from the table and exited the kitchen. Ross spread out along the floor, sliding from beneath the refrigerator, and out again on the side nearest the back door where he flowed at the couple's heels. His fog-self curled and edged over the threshold into a hall where they had disappeared. He rose up in the shape of a head with eyes that sought after them. Then the fog folded onto itself and slid underneath the door like a regretful lover. In a second he was himself again, housed in flesh, and scowling fiercely at Mentor.

"Who asked you to come here? I thought I was through with you for the night."

"They're harmless," Mentor said, ignoring Ross's rude sarcasm.

"The man saw me take the two women. He was the presence I asked you about at my house. You lied to me, and I took your word for it. Not very trustworthy, are you?"

Mentor looked surprised at the news. He hesitated a moment before saying, "I can make him forget he was there and that he saw anything."

Mentor smiled and his incisors emerged, large and deadly in the reflected light from the window. "I already have. Hundreds of years before you were born. I have gone entirely too far to ever turn back now, and too far to be intimidated by the likes of you."

Ross reconsidered a confrontation. He hated to admit that Mentor could frighten him. As boastful as he sounded, he knew any fight with Mentor could not have a predicted outcome. Mentor might very well bind him long enough to set him afire.

"All right," he said, "I'll let you handle this one more time, and if it doesn't work, you have to step out of the picture and let me get rid of them. They're just . . . just . . .”

"Pests? That's what you feel about all humans, isn't it? Inferior and useless unless they're doing what you want or providing you with blood."

Ross began to shimmer and disappear. He sent one last thought to Mentor. I warn you. This is the last chance they'll have.

~*~

Mentor sighed and turned to the woman's Japanese garden. He walked to the bench and sat beneath the willow limbs. They rustled sweetly in a breeze, brushing gently and softly against his sagging shoulders. He sat looking at the raked swirls of white gravel glowing in the moonlight like a pale river snaking through the darkness. He studied the shadows cast by the large boulders. They were alien mountains rising in a white sea.

He would not intrude into the house and the lives of the couple just for the moment. He was tired of dealing with people. It had been a long night and there were hours yet until dawn.

When he thought of the woman, Bette, he felt a quickening in his chest. She was nothing like the human woman he'd loved and lost in the past, but something about her made his passion rise. When he'd entered her mind earlier and searched for the memories to erase, he had felt comforted. The soul which had created the garden he now sat in was unusually humane. He had discovered none of the bitter ugliness that often swamped the minds of most adult humans. Her mind was as clean and straightforward as any he'd ever been inside. It was good. A rare mind, unlettered by the folly of self-aggrandizing or bits of evil stimuli that led to evil deeds.

He shook his head slowly and put his hands on his knees. His shoulders fell further until he was hunched. He had deadened his emotions for so many years it was a miracle anyone could have stirred him. He didn't know if he should be grateful or angry. To love was too human. It was too fraught with the possibility of rejection, danger, and loss. He had never honestly wanted to love a woman again.

He sighed heavily once more and closed his eyes. Ross would certainly destroy her, and the man, too, given the chance. There had been others who ferreted out the existence of vampires, and it was Ross and his minions who had dispatched them without a qualm. He might even have done it tonight if Mentor hadn't halted in his walk to the stables with Dell and felt the alarm Ross projected once he'd entered the woman's house.

Mentor must do something with the couple. And he must do something about his burgeoning feelings for the woman. She was human. She already loved someone. He had no right to interfere with that part of her life.

He turned his head, straightened his shoulders, and looked toward the house. The lights were out. They had retired for the night. He wouldn't go to them now. He feared he'd find them in a bliss that could blind him with the truth of his deprivation.

Better to return to his own home where thoughts of the woman might dissipate. He could come back just before the sun rose over the city. If only he could sleep. Sleep and forget.

He stood, pushing aside the willow branches, and stepped into the moonlight. It was times like these when he wished he could fly away and never come back in touch with either man or vampire.

He had not slept in a century, his attention always alert and active, on the job to rescue others from their dementia and bad choices. He had never run away.

He glanced up into the clear sky to the stars. God had forsaken them. Perhaps vampires were not his creatures and he had nothing to do with their creation or their future. None of them might be worthy of redemption. They might have to roam the Earth until all humans had died, and all animals, and then, finally, their kind would die, too. It would be a mercy.

He thought at times, when he tried to communicate with the source of all power and all life, that one day the Creator would respond to him. He didn't just hope for communication, but believed with all his heart that one day he'd be answered. As yet, the Creator remained silent.

19

The morning after her wild ride, Dell apologized to her parents for disappearing. She admitted she didn't know what had gotten into her. Tears came to her eyes and she began to stutter until her mother put her arms around her and said, "Dell, you're going to be all right now. We don't want to hold you down. We just don't want you to get into trouble, so that's why we called Mentor to help."

"I know, Mom. It's a good thing he came. I'm glad you sent for him."

Her mother gathered the papers she needed to take back to the office and took up her purse. "I'll try to get off early," she said.

Dell knew she didn't want her left alone. "Don't worry, Mom. I'll stay home."

Her father entered from the hallway, tucking his shirt into his slacks. He smiled at her. "Another day, another dollar," he said cheerfully. She realized, not for the first time, how the years passed, but her father never aged. He seemed not that many years older than she was now.

"Maybe I should get a part-time job," Dell said, feeling her parents' weariness of going to work every day, always struggling to make ends meet.

"You stick to the books, young lady. We'll bring home the sausage."

Dell laughed. "Bacon, you mean."

He wrinkled his nose. "Ugh. I don't remember what bacon tastes like. Kind of thick and greasy, I think. But sausage, now . . ."

The thought of cooked animal meat made Dell want to gag. She hurried out the door to catch the bus, waving at her parents as they made for the cars.

At school all Dell could think about was the Loden party and Ryan sitting next to Lori on the sofa, watching the kids begin their blood rituals. When she'd decided to show up and blast off at Lori, she thought her aims were pure. She would save Ryan from getting involved in something stupid and dangerous. But the truth was more complicated. She had been jealous, the jealousy fueling her flight with Lightning across the night landscape later in the evening.