SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (111 page)

Chapter 35

Jacques told his guards to take the night off. He needed to be alone. If they must guard him, he said, do it at a greater distance.

He watched as they moved away from the tent. They were an army now and none of them needed shelter, but Jacques. They’d brought the large canvas and fashioned him a tent with poles of tall saplings scrubbed clean of bark. All around the tent the arid desert shimmered with mirage. The vampires winked in and out of existence as if they were made of smoke. The human crowds that had taken to showing up wherever he was were kept back in their villages and not allowed to enter the desert compound of the lone canvas tent.

So it was during dusk when the stars began to prick the night sky and the moon hadn’t yet rose when Jacques found himself in relative privacy. Sure, the supernaturals kept appearing, but each time they did, he grumbled until they went away. Demons, gargoyles, and revenants wandered into his space and upon his command they left again. It was a relief to him that he had not seen the small person he took to be the Devil. Not since the first and only time the creature appeared to him. He didn’t think his mind could take a second meeting so it was a small mercy.

I wonder how I can sneak away, Jacques wondered, as he stood alone in the wan light of the canvas tent. He didn’t expect an answer, even from his own muddled mind, but one came.

“You’re going away with me.”

Jacques whirled from the tin bowl of water he’d been using to wash his face. Water dripped from his chin. There in the tent with him was a vampire Jacques didn’t recognize. He was tall, with short blonde crew-cut hair, broad shoulders, and piercing blue eyes.

Jacques carefully took a striped cotton cloth and dried his face and hands before saying, “Didn’t I demand to be left alone?” Jacques anger was always just below the surface these days. His patience had worn thin weeks before.

“I’m not one of your soldiers. I don’t take orders from you. In fact, the only reason I could come is because you’ve let your guards wander away.”

Jacques felt his anger die and apprehension replace it. He blinked rapidly at the way this creature probed his mind. “Who are you?”

“They call me Mentor. I haven’t used my living name in centuries.”

“Mentor! Upton’s enemy.” Jacques had never seen this one before. During the siege of Dallas with Upton’s rogues Mentor had led battles, but Jacques had never been in his vicinity. Or if he had, Mentor must have looked completely different. It was certain he’d never seen this being.

“What do you want? Revenge for Malachi’s woman? Why didn’t Malachi come to do his own dirty work?”

“He’s going to. Once you come with me.”

Jacques knew that wasn’t the plan. The plan was everything. His mission was to perform miracles, to deceive the world and make it smile upon him. Then once he’d accomplished that, he and Malachi and their armies would finally clash. The whole world would know about it and watch the cataclysm. That was the plan. How could Mentor alter it on a chance encounter this way?

Mentor had been standing quietly, studying him even as Jacques thought these things. A smile played around his lips.

“I’m not going with you.” Jacques brushed past the great vampire and threw back the flap of the tent. He was jerked from behind, the canvas ripped from his hand. He was in the vampire’s embrace. He could smell the scent of death on him and feel his cold flesh.

“You are going with me.”

Jacques closed his eyes, knowing he was going to be taken on another flying journey through space. It made him sick when this happened, when his soldier Corgi or one of the other vampires took him out of his body and dispersed his very molecules. Every time he’d wanted to die rather than feel the touch of the void.

The interior of the dusty tent faded from sight and the earth dropped from beneath Jacques’ feet. He sagged in the vampire’s arms and gave in to the dizzy spinning of his brain, losing consciousness.

This is it, he thought a moment before he vanished. This is how it ends.

~*~

Vohra found Malachi sitting on the floor of the dark earth, the tunnel wall propping up his back, his legs splayed before him. Malachi slept. His mind was as slack in sleep as his fine lips.

The change of the ambient temperature and the movement of air molecules alerted Malachi of an intruder. He was on his feet instantly, his hands held out in combat position. When he saw it was Vohra, his old teacher, he relaxed slowly. He began to smile. “Well, now they’ve sent you to fetch me. If Sereny couldn’t do it, they decided to call in the Big Dog.”

Vohra rarely smiled, but the corners of his eyes crinkled in amusement. “Mentor and I have decided to give you your wish, Malachi.”

“You’ve brought Jacques to me?” Malachi was incredulous. His gaze flickered toward the tunnel behind Vohra, searching the shadows.

“No, we’re bringing the two of you together somewhere else. Not here.”

“How did Mentor find him? I’ve been on his tail for months and couldn’t manage to catch him.”

“Mentor called upon all the powers he possesses, it’s true,” Vohra said. “We have ancestors who know more about these things than any of us.”

“Ancestors?”

“Ones older than Mentor and older than me. Mentor and I called on them for help.”

Malachi licked his upper lip nervously. “No one’s ever told me there are vampires like that.”

“Oh yes. But you had no need to know of them before. They reside in dark places beneath the earth and we only go to them in direst need.”

“They’re down in tunnels like this? Or graves? Where are they?”

Vohra shook his head, stepped forward and took Malachi in a loose embrace. He whispered near his ear. “Where they are is of no concern. We asked for their help and they sent Mentor to Jacques’ side. And now he has him. Come. Let us go.”

Malachi joined with Vohra in the fantastic dance of atoms that would sweep them from the reality of the Nazi tunnel into the stream of time. He saw nothing and felt nothing and became nothing, lapsing into Vohra’s control, letting himself be taken away for a last journey.

Until he could think no more, his mind dispersed to the heavens, Jacques’ name rang throughout his being.

Jacques…Jacques…I’m coming…

~*~

Mentor stepped back from Jacques.

Vohra stepped back from Malachi.

The four beings stood in a great hall with cold Carrera marble floors, giant white marble columns, and walls of ancient plaster painted with spectacular murals of people in purple and white Roman togas reclining before a feast.

“This doesn’t look like the plains of Armageddon,” Jacques said lightly. He had taken in Malachi facing him only yards away, but he turned in a circle to look over his surroundings.

Malachi glanced about and knew he was in a huge old palace on the outskirts of Rome, Italy. He also knew the building was deserted and wondered if Vohra and Mentor had made the people who lived here leave it. It was appropriate they were back in the city where Malachi had first found evidence of Jacques’ miracle works.

“It’s under custodial care,” Mentor said, answering Malachi’s unspoken question about the palace. “The caretakers are absent at our request. At one time it belonged to a Roman senator under one of the Caesars.”

Jacques faced Malachi again. He glanced at the two great vampires standing near the wall. He wondered where the devil was and why he hadn’t intervened in his abduction. Why had he let the plans go so awry? Were the vampires even greater magicians than the devil himself?

“Why do you believe you’ve met with…with the one you call the devil?” Vohra asked, having read Jacques’ mind and found it puzzling.

Jacques drew himself up. He looked straight at the vampire who was dressed somewhat like the reclining guests painted at the frescoed feast on the walls. He wore a white toga edged with gold and leather slippers on his brown feet. “Because I have met him.”

Malachi laughed. Then his laughter died abruptly. He moved forward a step. His face changed, hardened, and his incisors lowered. "There is no devil, you fool. And if there were, he would have taken your name.”

Jacques turned out his hands palm upwards and shrugged. “It was never personal, Malachi. I was told to kill the woman. It was war…”

Before the last word left his mouth, Malachi was upon him. He held him in arms of steel and his fangs were already sunk into the carotid artery at the side of Jacques’ neck.

Jacques cried out, startled. Malachi had moved so fast. He felt the sharp, needle-like teeth embedded in his neck and he twisted to free himself. He called upon his hands that were pinned to his sides to work one of the miracles they’d been so used to performing. He turned this way and that and screamed to be let loose.

And then he felt his heart stutter as the blood began an upward rush, backing out of the chambers.

It was all a lie, Jacques thought. I can be killed. I’m not powerful like the vampire. And there is no one to protect me now.

His head clouded and it was as if the muscles of his limbs were in revolt. He could feel himself dancing, kicking, arms flailing and he couldn’t do anything about it. His neck was in the vice of the fangs and his blood was flooding out of his body into the mouth of this beast latched onto him like a giant leech.

“Oh!” Blood spilled from his open mouth. Again he drew in air into his lungs and said, “Ohhhhhh…”

Darkness crept from the pale painted walls like the wraiths of ghosts gathering. The Romans of old who reclined on stone benches began to wither and fade.

Jacques felt his heart clench in his chest and the pain was excruciating. He closed his eyes against the horror of it, against the sting of death as it bore down on his vulnerable neck. The river of his life pushed past the dam of his heart, leaving it empty, until finally the room narrowed to a tunnel of light and then to a spark, like an ember floating on the wind above a fire.

But I can’t die. He truly had thought he would live forever. Some way. Somehow. Wasn’t he favored by the Son of the Morning? Hadn’t he been promised everlasting life for bringing the world to its knees before him?

And yet he knew none of it mattered, he was surely dying. Finally his still heart knew fear for the first time in his whole existence.

Fear being something he had never experienced in all of his life, he was surprised to find it sweet as a cool drink to a thirsting man. Fear was normal. It was mortal. Fear was a necessary tool to survival. And yet, until now, he had never felt it. What a shame…

A soft “ah” floated out of his open mouth and his eyes opened to the ceiling of the cavernous room. One word lingered in his mind even as his mind was extinguished to darkness.

Sorry
.

And then there was blessed silence and the world died with him.

Chapter 36

Malachi took great droughts of his enemy’s blood while his mind was on Danielle. He conjured up his small, milk chocolate and cream wife, his so beautiful, so lovely wife. Childhood sweetheart. Love of his life. In bed holding one another she had promised to love him forever. She had told him they would grow old and die together. She had said it must be God’s doing that he was half vampire and imbued with powers beyond normal man. Everything in the world was God’s decision, she assured him, even that they met and fell in love. Vampires were as natural as the sunlight, she said, as needed as the wind and rain. He should never regret what he was and what his family was. If God had not decreed it, then it would not be so, she said.

She had always trusted in simple principles and simple immutability.

He had believed her and lived so happily, accepting himself and the world around him.

Then her God had taken her from him and he gave up all trust in a Supreme Being who could be so cruel to someone who had never done him harm.

And now, with the killer’s throat in his mouth, he thought only of Danielle and of this one who had murdered her so senselessly. He drank from him as if he were the last man on earth and the last meal Malachi would ever consume.

He drank from him so rapidly and deeply the body convulsed in his arms.

He drank until the heart shriveled and dried in the chest cavity, a cold, clenched basket of flesh harder than rock.

He felt hands pulling at his back and he loosened the corpse, dropping it to the marble floor with a thud that echoed around the great hall.

He wiped his bloody mouth with the back of his hand. He turned dazed eyes on Vohra and Mentor who stood near, each of them with a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s over, Malachi. Come with us now.” Mentor’s hand dropped to Malachi’s elbow and led him away from the dead man.

“I don’t hate him anymore,” Malachi said, the words feeling clumsy in his mouth.

“No,” Vohra said, “you can let it go now. It’s over.”

Beyond the wide doors of the hall Malachi was led to a staircase and brought up it to a large chamber that was a bedroom. An oak bed, the wood darkened with age, was covered over with silk coverlets and piled with pillows. The structure dominated the room. Malachi was led to it and bade to lie down. He did as he was asked, still dazed and surfeited with blood.

Mentor took off his leather boots and Vohra unbuttoned his shirt. Both of them covered him with a satin comforter.

Malachi closed his eyes. After all this time and after having given up his humanity to become Predator, he had taken the life of the one who had stolen his wife from him.

He would sleep now. For an eternity if they let him.

Forever and an eternity.

#

After the disappearance of their messiah, the cults and the religious followers dispersed and went back to their lives. The world trudged on toward some other Armageddon through years of peace and years of conflict.

Jacques’ soldier, Corgi, learned of his master’s death and announced it to the many Predators who had followed him from place to place. Corgi did not understand it, how Jacques had gone unprotected to his death, but he knew it as a fact and there was nothing to do but accept it as fate.