SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (20 page)

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.

Chapter 16

Ross lived in a modern ranch-style home at the edge of Dallas. He had bought twenty acres so that he would have no close neighbors. He had hired the best of the city's architects and given him enough money to build a castle, but what he created was an oddly shaped monstrosity sitting out on the edge of nowhere, it seemed to Mentor.

The bus lines did not extend to Ross' property, so Mentor left the bus and walked two miles in the night to reach the place. Sometimes he walked like this, rather than travel supernaturally. The night was tropical and balmy, the sky overhead so clear that once he was out of the city's interior he could see the stars. He was happy he'd decided on the walk where he could spend a little time tuning himself to nature's rhythm.

Just as he had enjoyed the hour-long bus ride across the city, now he reveled in the cooling night air. The houses and lights dwindled until darkness settled over the long vista. Mentor took solace from the sounds of night birds, the slither of snakes through the green grass that grew along the highway, and the sparkling clarity of the air he breathed.

He knew Ross was at home, could sense him there, even at this distance. Once he reached the house, he marveled, shaking his head at the overwrought construction. A peaked roof soared two stories tall, and from the entrance portico two wings spread out on each side. With a little squint of the eyes, the house looked like a giant predatory bird squatting in the low grass, its wings extended. In the rear was an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a full tennis court, and a long sleek building that Mentor knew was Ross' own indoor handball court. Ross was nothing if not extravagant. But it was all for show. Ross did not need to exercise. He swam in the pool sometimes, Mentor knew, but he rarely used the other facilities.

Mentor shook his head in consternation. He always felt that way when he visited Ross' home. While the Naturals worked like slaves in the human world in order to buy blood from the Predators, Ross lived like a king off the profits. He had no compunction about the inequity involved. He had chosen to be a Predator and excess was in his nature. Still, it saddened Mentor to see one of his kind so obsessed by possessions that he would take so much without giving back any more than the bare sustenance the Naturals and Cravens required to stay alive.

Cravens lived on welfare and their wits, handing over what money they could scrounge to Ross' people. And here Ross was, living like a king.

He would only stay a few minutes. He did not feel comfortable beneath the two-story ceilings that ended in an overhead vault of glass. The collected artwork on the walls was disturbing to Mentor, since it probably belonged in a museum instead of a private collection. He'd never inquired, but he suspected some of the paintings were original masters, procured illegally. The imported rugs and the modern, garishly colored, stilted furniture that Ross preferred only deepened Mentor's feeling that everything was on display to make visitors feel insignificant.

Also, he had checked on Dell during his bus ride and found that her parents and little brother were frantic with anxiety. Dell had sneaked out of the house after dark, and they did not know where she had gone. They had tried to contact her telepathically, but she apparently had blocked out her family. They had been sending messages to Mentor for more than an hour, asking if he would find her. They knew Mentor, with his greater powers, could get the job done.