SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (106 page)

He closed his eyes and stepped off the carton, kicking it aside as he did so.

The rope tightened around his neck, cutting off his wind instantly. He began to struggle and his eyes popped open as he wondered for a moment if what he was doing was the right thing.

Too late, he told himself, his sight dimming. His lungs screamed and he began to kick.

Suddenly he was lifted into the air and the rope was magically loosened from his neck then slipped over his face. He gasped for breath and looked down, but nothing supported him. He hung suspended in thin air.

He blinked, water running from his eyes. He sucked in air and coughed, grabbing at his throat and the deep rope burn there.

When his vision cleared he saw a little demon sitting outside the closet, hunched on the floor. It grinned up at him showing teeth as sharp as razors. “You can’t get away from it that easily.”

Jacques floated to the floor, as if someone gently lowered him. He leaned over his knees, still gasping air into his depleted lungs. He realized he was lucky his neck had not been broken. Or unlucky, actually, he realized. He was still here. Still the puppet.

“Can’t off yourself, old man,” the demon said. “Might as well face it.”

Jacques couldn’t speak. His throat was raw and painful. It felt like a pipe heated to a scald. He shook his head slowly at the demon as if saying he didn’t understand.

“You still don’t get it, do you?” The demon wasn’t grinning now. It scowled fiercely at him. “Why someone as stupid as you was picked, I’ll never know. You can’t kill yourself!”

The demon leaped up and ran to him, screaming up into his face. “You can’t kill yourself, you fool! That’s not allowed!”

Then the little beast skipped across the room and flung open the door and disappeared. Jacques, his knees weak, sank to the floor just outside the closet.

What in the world was he going to do? Would every suicide attempt be thwarted this way?

He could hear the clamor of the people in the street and the rattling of the doorknobs of the lobby door. They wanted him. Given the chance, they’d tear him asunder just for a piece of his flesh.

Corgi slid into the room, his face expressionless. He wore black, as usual. Black slacks, black tee shirt, and shiny, polished black shoes. Even his hair was black. And the big pupils of his eyes. He was an Italian, but he claimed to have lived in dozens of countries during his time as vampire. He spoke French perfectly. “We need to leave here,” he said.

Jacques sighed deeply as he came to shaky feet. His neck felt as if a burning iron collar had been clamped around the scalded pipe. He had both hands at his throat as he stumbled after the vampire, following him up the stairs, and up, and up to the fire door on the rooftop, and then into the warm evening air of Rome.

“How…?” Jacques glanced around at the tarred roof and the distant roofs beyond. Where could they be going?

Corgi stepped near and wrapped his arms around Jacques. “I’ll show you how we leave.”

The world spun out of time and space and Jacques saw only darkness broken by swirling stars. He did not know what was happening or where he was, and he didn’t care. He didn’t even care if the vampire kept hold of him or else let him fall.

~*~

Malachi found himself on a stone bench in a park inside of the city of Rome, Italy. Across from him on an identical bench an old woman sat with a tattered suitcase at her feet. She saw him appear and crossed herself quickly. He was a frightening apparition who had suddenly disturbed the balance of her world. She tried to stand. She grabbed for her suitcase.

Malachi said, “Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you.” It was trite, but truth often was, he reflected. “Honestly, you don’t need to be alarmed. I didn’t know anyone was here.”

The old woman coughed and hunched over, holding her belly. A look of great pain crossed her wizened face. She was horribly ill. Malachi strode to her to try to help, but when she saw him coming, she scuttled away down the path, leaving behind her suitcase.

“Wait!” Malachi took up the suitcase and was about to pursue her, but realized she was too scared to take it from him. He set it on the bench and sighed. Maybe she’d come back for it.

The park was empty except for him now. Through a stand of cypress he could see the street and it was clogged with noisy traffic. He stood listening to it and to the cacophony of human voices, most of them panic-stricken. People were running from this city of death.

Where was the healing taking place then?

Leaving the park, Malachi began to crisscross the ancient city on foot, taking in the sounds and sights, gauging the mood of the people. Some looked infected, hardly able to walk. Others looked healthy enough, but fear had rid their eyes of reason. Malachi had never seen people this way. There seemed to be a miasma of fear suffocating everyone, lying like a pall over the city.

There were very few vampires. Malachi found one working behind a counter in a bakery. She was a Natural, a worker for her blood. She was blonde and pretty, her lower lip pouty and her eyes a green probably intensified by tinted contact lenses. She recognized what he was immediately and caught his eye. He came around to the end of the farthest counter from the door, following as she urged him with her glance.

“May I help you, sir?” she asked. But her eyes asked a different question. What was a Predator doing in her bakery?

“Have you heard of the Healer?” he asked below his breath.

She nodded. “I’ll get that right away,” she said, busying her hands inside the glass counter, taking small white-frosted cakes to put into a bag. She whispered, “He’s in the place where dozens of Predators gathered around him. On the Via Piodora.”

“He’s vampire? What is his name?”

She glanced across the room to be sure they weren’t being monitored by other employees or customers before replying. “No, he’s not vampire. All I know is they call him Jacques.”

The name caused Malachi’s face to blanch. Blood rushed from his head and he swayed a little. Jacques. It was him.

“And he can heal people?” Malachi could not believe it. How could a murderer have such a gift?

She shrugged and handed over the bag of little cakes. “You can pay the cashier, sir.”

He had all the information she knew. He paid for the purchase and stood outside on the sidewalk, looking straight ahead of him into the traffic. He shook himself mentally and stopped the first pedestrian who happened by to ask directions to the street called Via Piodora. He gave the helpful man the bag of cakes. Within minutes he had found the street and knew what building Jacques lived in by the number of people crowded before it. Police tried to break them up, but people were fighting back. Some carried lit candles, others wept, and they all pressed toward the entrance.

My God, it was a phenomenon. They must really believe in a magic cure. As Malachi neared, he sensed none of the petitioners were ill. Why had they come here if they didn’t have the virus? Or perhaps it had vanished from their bodies just as soon as they arrived at this place.

Yet Malachi did not feel anything particularly benevolent about the building before them. Was the power of healing something that he might sense, he wondered, or was it like air, surrounding the area and below notice?

Taking a side street, Malachi circled the building and came up behind it. Police had cordoned it off with yellow tape, as if it were a crime scene. He spoke to one of the officers in Italian.

“Has there been a murder?”

“No sir, the house is empty. We are just trying to keep the curious at bay. The Mayor has requested the house be closed.”

“Empty? Has the healer left?”

The officer put his hands on Malachi’s chest and pushed him back a step. His eyes grew flinty. He must have been asked the same question too many times today and his temper was frayed. “He’s not here. No one is here, sir. Please move along now.”

Malachi wandered away, but not far. When it was dark enough, he would go into the house and see for himself if it was empty. He sensed no presence in it, no musk of vampire, no hot blood of a human, but maybe he could find a clue about where Jacques had gone.

He had been so close!

He was a day late and a dollar short, as his father would say. Something extremely strange was going on and he was determined to discover what.

He found a shadowed doorway across and down from the cordoned building on Via Piodora. He leaned against the wall and waited, watching the crowd as it slowly dispersed.

It was not long before a rogue vampire found him. He was an Italian peasant, dressed in soiled farm clothes and heavy boots. He growled as he came near, giving warning.

Malachi straightened. “You don’t want to mess with me.”

The starving vampire showed his teeth before licking his lips. “I didn’t think you were a sick one.”

“Nor am I human.”

“I know that.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Nothing.” The vampire slid into the doorway and leaned on the opposite wall. “I’m just hanging around, waiting for someone not sick. The sick ones taste like hell. Those out there, in front of the building, they’re well now.”

“You could wait somewhere else.” Then Malachi thought better of running off the scab vampire. “But if you want to stay, you can help me out.”

“Get your own damn victims. Do I look like a slave to you?”

“I don’t want a victim.” Malachi pushed the hunger farther back in his mind. It was always there.

“What do you want then?” The Italian avoided looking into Malachi’s eyes. If it ever came to a match between them, he knew he’d lose.

“They say vampires lived in that building. The one with the healer. Why?”

“You don’t know?”

“If I knew I wouldn’t be asking.”

The rogue snarled. “You don’t have to be hateful. They were his soldiers.”

“Soldiers?”

“For the war with God, you idiot.”

Malachi was now thoroughly confused. “What war with God?”

“The Healer. He’s the Great Deceiver. That’s why he was able to cure those people.” The vampire waved his grubby hand at the crowd down the street.

“Great Deceiver. You mean like the Antichrist?”

“Didn’t I say?”

Malachi didn’t like this ill-tempered scourge of a vampire, but he seemed to know more than the Natural at the bakery. “What makes you think he’s the Antichrist?”

“Everyone knows. Everyone of
us
. Those idiots out there don’t know. They think he’s a saint. A savior. The Second Coming. They would follow him anywhere. If they could find him.”

“Where’d he go?”

“I have no idea. I’m not one of his.”

“Not one of his soldiers?”

“Do I look like a soldier?”

Malachi admitted this creature didn’t look good enough to live, much less able to fight a battle. He was an argumentative cuss at that.

“Have you been inside the apartment house?” Malachi would keep trying.

“No. This was my territory before the Healer came. Now he’s gone, I’m taking it back.”

Malachi knew he was waiting for darkfall, too. They waited in silence, watching the sky, two very different Predators on separate missions.

As the sun waned and the street began to empty, the vampire slipped away without even a word of goodbye. He took his smell of decay with him. He was a poor and starving vampire, a rogue, and an indiscriminate killer.

Malachi waited a few minutes longer, until full dark, before he left the doorway as a shroud of mist.

For the past two hours all he could think about was what his companion had said about Jacques being the Antichrist. It was ludicrous. There wasn’t any God, they all knew that. Why would anyone take up the old story from religious prophecy and decide Jacques was part of a great plan for the earth?

Sure, it was a mystery why people were being healed by him, but there had been healers before, some real, some fraudulent. That didn’t mean anything.

Vampires, being supernatural creatures, were sometimes more superstitious than they ever had been as humans. Malachi guessed one of them was playing a joke on Jacques by spreading such a bald-faced lying rumor. Or Jacques himself was the instigator for his own nefarious reasons.

The very apartment where Jacques had lived came into focus as Malachi appeared in the silent darkness of the interior. It stank of vampires. Above and below and on each side of this apartment, vampires had made their lairs, surrounding Jacques. Malachi could smell their bedding and the old stench of dried blood. Some of them had not been very meticulous about cleaning up after their kills.

In the bedroom that had belonged to Jacques, Malachi stood staring at first the unmade bed. He could tell from the scent there that the linen hadn’t been changed in weeks. His nose crinkled. There was nothing more offensive than an unwashed human. He turned away and saw the open closet door, the overturned plastic carton, the noose hanging still from a wooden rod.

Suicide? Jacques had tried to kill himself?

Malachi’s fists clenched. He wished he’d done it. He wished the man was hanging there now, face turned black with bloating. His hate was so near the surface that for an instant he could almost envision the murderer’s body swaying from the noose.

But he was not.

He was alive. Gone from here. Not to come back.

He had a battalion of soldier Predators who thought him some kind of god or avenger. Poor, stupid, deluded creatures! They would follow anyone if they had sunk so low as to make Jacques their commander.

There was no such thing as the goddamn devil!

Soft whispering at his back made Malachi whirl around. He had heard something. Something…

Again, behind him, the whispering.

He whirled again. “Who’s there? Come out, you cowards!”

The whispering ceased, but Malachi felt the presence of many creatures he could not see. It was as if the air had filled with intelligence, the way it felt when someone was in a room with him.

“I don’t believe in the devil,” he said to the room.

“I don’t believe in God.”

“I don’t believe in this bullshit!”

The whispering, like wind through leafy trees, started up at his back. Malachi knew it would do no good to turn and to stare. Nothing was there, or at least nothing he was going to be able to see or to probe with his mind.