SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (12 page)

Dell smiled again, and bit the inside of her lip. At least he was interested enough in her to be staring. He had noticed her. Probably only because she sat in front of him, but still . . . he liked her hair. He had wondered what her shirt was made of.

Then darkness surrounded her thoughts and she fell into a deep depression while her history teacher's voice droned in the background and the seconds ticked off on the schoolhouse clock on the wall above his head. It didn't matter if Ryan noticed her or not. He shouldn't, really. And she shouldn't care. They had no future, not even as friends.

Chancellor, her history teacher, was saying something about a myth concerning living forever, about eternity. She came to suddenly, focusing on his words. They had been studying the myths of primitive South American and African tribes for the past week. She guessed his recital now had something to do with it.

Chancellor said, "The Namibian people tell their children about the hare and the moon to teach a lesson about the afterlife. The hare asked the moon if the moon would ever die. The moon said that he rose each night without fail and the hare could live forever, too, if only he believed. The hare said that he could not believe in the eternal, he had seen too many of his kind die, sometimes horrible deaths, and they did not rise again to live.

"The moon told the hare that even though his fellow hares did not appear to be alive, nevertheless, they lived; no one could see them, that was all. Like when the moon disappeared in the daylight—it had not gone forever, but only for a time. The hare said he could not believe in eternity and so he guessed he would really die, no matter what the moon said. The Namibian parents told their children this story and it was the reason why animals and men appeared to die now and not live again. But the moon was eternal, riding the sky forever, because he believed that he would. And despite the way it looked, men and animals also lived on, invisible, but eternal."

Chancellor ended the story and asked for a show of hands from any students who knew of other myths of eternal life held by primitive people.

Dell, touched by the story of the Namibians, lowered her head and thought it all out. The myth was right. That's what her teacher did not know. Not only was the moon eternal, but all that lived beneath it, even the hares. And some of the eternal life walked among the living as if alive, too, and no one was the wiser. She was now an eternal creature, but even if she'd remained human and died human, she would have only been invisible, and not gone forever.

When the bell rang, indicating the end of class, Dell gathered her books and headed for the door, the thoughts of the Namibian tale still puzzling her. She felt someone tap her on the shoulder in the hall and she turned.

"Hi," he said. "My name's Ryan. You're Della?"

"Just Dell," she said. "My mom named me after a singer she liked." A lump rose in her throat to prevent her from speaking anymore. She'd had a few boyfriends, nothing serious, but she could not remember being this attracted or tongue-tied. Ridiculous, she told herself. Stop being so damn ridiculous.

Despite her own growing sense of foolishness, she sent out an intense thought that she knew would be embedded in his mind. Dell's special. Dell's the one for me. She couldn't help herself. She found him so attractive she felt she had to make sure he thought of her in the same way.

She said, clearing her throat first, "You're from North Dallas? How do you like it here?"

He fell into an easy walk at her side. "I like it just fine," he said. "Particularly all the different kinds of kids here. It's like being in another world." He gestured mildly toward some of the kids dressed in black walking in front of them.

Dell glanced over at him to see if he was for real. He liked the outcasts? He thought them cool? Kids who were only making their lives harder and cutting themselves off from whole groups of people?

"Really?" she said. Then she laughed, thinking how odd she was. "Well, we have a lot of different kinds of kids here, that's for sure."

"Does Mr. Chancellor always talk about rabbits and the moon?"

"Oh, he goes off on these tangents now and again. It's the only time I listen to him."

"I can see why." He grinned. "The rest of the time he's pretty dull.”

"You noticed, huh?" She smiled at him.

They parted ways when she turned into her next classroom and his own class was in another wing of the school. "Nice to meet you, Dell," he said, as he sprinted away in order to beat the bell.

She stood watching him go and thought to herself, Yeah, nice to meet you, too. Now she knew for sure he liked her. So what was she going to do about that, beyond the thought she'd implanted? What could she do?

She could hardly wait for her meeting with Mentor after school. She was to go to his house every day where he would train and guide her until she was ready to go on her own. The first thing she would ask was about a vampire's personal life. Her responsibility to humans and her interaction with them. She really needed guidance. She hoped there was no strict rule against relationships with humans, especially since she would be walking and living among them. She envisioned a dreary thousand-year life without them.

~*~

The first thing that struck Dell on entering Mentor's house was how dark it was. He must have read her mind for he said, "I can turn on the lights if you'd like." He hit a switch that caused an overhead light to come on, though she noticed it was a small, sparkly chandelier holding three small bulbs. It gave out a weak glow that hardly chased the dark away. Shadows retreated, but not far, cringing in the corners of the room.

"No, the light doesn't bother me," he said as if she'd asked him a question. He motioned for her to sit on a sofa near the fireplace. "I've become accustomed to the dark. The sunlight won't bother you for long either. You'll be able to dispose of those soon."

Dell removed her sunglasses, folding the stems carefully and placing them in her lap. "I went back to school today."

"How did it go?" He sounded cheerful as he settled into an opposite sofa, stuffing a pillow behind his back.

"Okay, I guess. One of my best friends asked why I was wearing the sunglasses, but no one else seemed to care. Lots of kids wear them in school."

"Do they?"

"Yeah, sure. Kids into. . . well, alternative thinking, you might say. You know."

He smiled indulgently. "Well, contrary to common belief, I don't really know everything, Dell. I haven't been inside a high school in quite a few years."

She shrugged. "Okay, well, there's some kids who are outside the mainstream. They keep to themselves, they wear different kinds of clothes to distinguish them from others. They wear heavy eye makeup and sunglasses all day. Some of them . . ." she paused, wondering how he would take this, ". . . some of them want to be vampires." She hurried on, seeing his eyebrows raise, "They're just all disillusioned, kind of like the hippies in the Sixties, I guess. The Establishment sucks, that sort of thing. The really sad ones cut themselves on their arms. I don't know if it's for the pain, like they like it . . ." She shrugged. ". . . and sometimes they let others drink their blood, but it looks pretty dangerous to me. Some of them get their teeth filed down. Stuff like that. I always wanted to take them aside and tell them they shouldn't want to act that way. They should love walking in the sunlight and take good care of their bodies. They shouldn't want to live forever on nothing but blood; it's not natural."

She didn't know she'd thought all these things until she just now confessed them to Mentor. It was as if he drew things out of her, her deepest and most private thoughts. It could be a trick, but she suspected it was not. She was simply comfortable with him and knew he had her best interests at heart. She guessed that this was how people felt when they went to shrinks and talked openly about their problems.

That he did not know about the pretend-vampires at her school did not surprise her. Though they had been in the news now and then, most people just tried to pretend they didn't exist. She'd heard about a case where a "vampire" boy in the Northeast lost touch with reality and murdered his parents while they slept. He had self-inflicted cuts all over his arms, and he said vampirism gave him "freedom." She didn't think Mentor paid really close attention to what was going on in society, especially among the youth.

Mentor shifted uneasily on the sofa, stuffing the pillow at his back again. He said, "I didn't know some of your contemporaries were heading in that direction. Like you, I think that's a dangerous road to take. I suppose, because of the way the vampire is romanticized in American entertainment, it would be only natural for the disenchanted to rush toward the unknown, to seek it out, and to make it their own. The young have a way of finding something they think is new to believe in."

"What was that noise?" Dell asked abruptly, sitting forward on the sofa. It was from down below, in his basement, a terrible moaning. All her nerve ends began to tingle, and it was as if her brain came alert, red lights blinking in all corners of her mind as it checked for danger.

"Would you like to see for yourself?" He rose and took her hand. He led her to the kitchen and the basement door.

"No one I know in Texas has a basement," she said, fascinated.

"This was constructed especially for me. I felt it would come in handy. In rainy seasons it weeps a little, but otherwise it seems to do well."

She followed him down the narrow stairs into the soft gloom. There was a small lamp on an old wooden table along the wall facing the stairs, but it illuminated little. The place was damp and cool and smelled like wet metal. She sensed a being in the basement and knew he was their kind, but she was curious as to what he was doing in Mentor's basement and wondered at the despairing moan she'd heard.

Mentor stepped aside at the bottom of the stairs and put his arm around her shoulder. She looked over at the pitiful creature chained to the concrete wall. He lifted his head and opened his eyes. "Do you have to chain her, too?" he asked.

"No, she just wanted to know what the noise was about. How are you today, Dolan?"

"I'm almost ready to go home."

"I'm happy to hear that."

Inquisitive, Dell turned her head toward Mentor, wondering what this was all about.

Reading her mind, Mentor said, "Dolan here almost did away with himself and the whole house of Cravens where he was living. I have talked him out of those desperate actions. Haven't I, Dolan?"

"Yes, Master."

Dell laughed, hearing the sarcastic mockery in the other man's voice. He was mimicking Dr. Frankenstein's toady. "So you've changed your mind because you're chained here?"

He gave her a silent stare before responding. "Mentor's given me some time to think it over."

"This is sort of a 'safe' place," Mentor explained. "If Dolan wished, he could free himself from the chains, and he could get out of this basement, too. By not exerting his will and by staying quietly alone to contemplate the sin he had wished to commit, he has come to a new understanding."

"Don't let him fool you," Dolan said. "It would take tremendous willpower to free myself, and he knows I'm too weak to do it. But he's still right. I have allowed the imprisonment, and I work out my problems in solitude."

Upstairs again, the basement door bolted, they took their seats across from one another on the twin sofas.

"What did his moaning mean?" she asked.

"It probably escaped him when he realized there were two of us free here, upstairs."

"I felt sorry for him."

Mentor nodded knowingly. His eyes reflected his own pity. "Killing is only allowed to the Predators, because it's in their nature and can't be gotten out of them. But a Craven who decides to kill himself and others who have not asked him to do so, is an aberration. He needed help, that's all. But now let's talk about you."

Dell looked away. So many questions were on her mind. Which one should she ask first? "Will I ever feel natural again?"

"You will. Yes, you will. It takes time."

"I met a boy today . . ."

"Human?"

"Yes. I think he may be interested in me. I was interested first, before . . . before this happened." She meant her death in the natural world. She waved her arm around herself as if she were an organic model that had been hand built. "What I want to know is. . ."

She didn't finish her sentence and was quiet for so long that he prompted her. "Yes?"

"Well, what I want to know is can I have a boyfriend? I know it sounds stupid to you. Juvenile." She looked down, embarrassed. "But I'm seventeen, Mentor. I haven't changed so much that I don't care about . . . people."

"Can you have a human boyfriend, you mean?"

She glanced away again, knowing the answer was going to be negative and wishing she'd never asked it. She said in a soft voice, "Can I ever have someone to love?"

Mentor scooted forward on the sofa and rested his hands between his knees. In his old body with his Albert Einstein gray, unruly hair, he was hardly intimidating, but she drew herself to attention under his heavy stare.

"No one can stop you from getting involved with humans," he said. At her look of surprise, he continued, "Naturals live side by side with them. It happens often that the close proximity creates a bond. You must know what the drawbacks are?"

"I know some of them," she said. She thought about it a moment and realized the greatest drawback. "Humans die."

He sat back. "Just so. Humans die. If we really want to, we can give our diseased cells to one of them, changing him into one of us, but that's so rarely done that it's almost nonexistent. Giving someone this kind of life is too monumental a decision to make without any concern or thought. You understand that, don't you? We don't really have the right to grant eternal life. When we do it, we also grant eternal agony."

Yes, she understood. Look at what she was going through and how many years she would continue to go through it. She nodded her head in agreement. It was an immoral act to make the disease spread to the uninfected that way. If they all were to do it, the entire world's population one day would be only vampire, and then they would all truly die.