SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (47 page)

"Aunt Celia?" Dell had been in too much of a hurry to open up the channels of her telepathy and precognition. She now reached out with her mind and saw her aunt driving down the county road toward their home. Next to her Carolyn dozed, her head laid against the seat and slumping toward her shoulder. Celia was driving with one hand and drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup with the other. There was a deep crease imbedded between her eyes. Something was wrong with Carolyn.

"Oh, no, we don't have time," she said, moving past Malachi to the door and opening it.

"She has a problem with Carolyn. Carolyn's sick. Aunt Celia's afraid."

Halfway out the door, her foot stepping onto the porch, she turned to her young son. He had alerted them before when someone was coming to the house. She usually knew before he did, but he played the parlor game for his father's amusement. Yet he'd never told them what was in the minds of the people who approached.

This new ability had to do with his fever and near-catatonic state the night before when she'd called for Mentor, she knew it. Malachi would be changed, Mentor had told them. He'll be true dhampir—human with vampire abilities.

While Dell stood looking at her son, he vanished before her eyes. Her heart stuttered in her chest. "Malachi?"

He reappeared, or seemed to, holding the cordless telephone out to her. "I guess you'll need to call work and the day care center. To tell them we'll be late."

He had moved so quickly that, while she was lost in thought, he'd sped to the living room to retrieve the telephone. This was new. He had never done anything like it before.

She took a deep breath. She realized getting used to this change was going to take some time, "Thank you, yes, I guess I better call in."

Aunt Celia, Malachi's great-aunt, was not vampire, one of the few members of Dell's family who had been spared the disease. Her daughter, Carolyn, had not been infected yet either. Unless the sickness Malachi spoke of was the beginning of it.

By the time Celia arrived, Dell had made excuses to her boss at the library and alerted the day care center that she'd be bringing Malachi in late. When Celia stepped from the car, waving a bit, Dell had already moved her mind across the distance from the house to the car and to her cousin, Carolyn. A year younger than Dell, Carolyn always seemed much younger, especially after Dell became a Natural. Nevertheless, in the past few months Carolyn had fallen in love and she was engaged, planning her wedding for the summer. The whole family was involved, happy for her.

Dell carefully sensed Carolyn's being as if she were a dog sniffing a bone. Carolyn dozed in and out of a fever much like the one Malachi had suffered the night before. At first Dell stiffened, fearing the worst. For Malachi the fever meant he was becoming more fully what he already was as a dhampir. But Carolyn was human and a fever could presage the beginning of porphyria and death and rebirth as vampire. Dell probed her mind, looking for the dread dream place where the soul decided if it would return as Predator, Natural, or Craven.

She found nothing but wisps of regular, human-inspired dreams. Carolyn was ill with a form of pneumonia. Treated with antibiotics she would be fine again. Dell was so glad she felt light all over.

Dell hurried to the car and stepped into her aunt's embrace, returning to herself. She smiled and said, "Carolyn will be fine. It's only pneumonia. With medicine, she'll be good as new."

Celia, used to her vampire relatives possessing advanced knowledge, still showed surprise that Dell had discovered her fear so quickly—even before she'd said a word. She slumped a little in relief. "Oh, thank you, Dell, thank you."

"Come inside. I haven't much time, but it's been so long since I saw you." Dell led her indoors and asked if she wanted coffee. They decided to leave Carolyn sleeping in the car, as sleep, Dell told her aunt, was exactly what Carolyn needed right now. "Coffee?" she asked.

"No, I just had a cup, thanks. I was so worried I just lost my mind. I tried to call you, but no one answered."

Dell wondered why she hadn't heard the phone. They lived so far out in the country, the phone was on a trunk line that sometimes proved unreliable. Often people reported they'd tried to phone when she'd been home and she never received the call.

"It's my phone, I guess," Dell said. "Sometimes my calls don't get through."

"Well, when I couldn't reach you, I was in the car with Carolyn and driving here before I could stop myself. I drove past your parents' house and they had already left for work. I didn't know where else to go, who to go to. I almost called an ambulance, but Carolyn stopped me. She refused to go to the doctor. She was afraid . . . well, you know . . ." Celia ran out of steam, her voice trailing off.

Dell understood her cousin's reluctance. What if she'd been dying with the dread disease that would turn her to vampire? What if she died in the eyes of the world, and then while it looked on, she rose, ravenous and splendidly lethal?

Celia looked at Dell and continued, "But I don't mean to keep you." She sighed, releasing the pent up emotion she'd bottled on the trip. "If it's pneumonia, I can get something for her. I'll call a doctor right away."

"There's a big lump. Right here," Malachi said, walking slowly to his great-aunt and touching her just above her right breast.

"Malachi!" Dell was flabbergasted the way all parents are when a child does something discourteous. What was he saying?

"A . . . a lump?" Celia placed her hand over the top of her breast, and her face blanched. She turned her gaze upon Dell. In a small, weak voice she asked, "Is it true?"

Dell sat next to her aunt and moved her consciousness until it left her body and hovered around Celia's torso, enclosing it as a blanket would, pressing against the flesh, seeking disturbed cells. She jerked back into her own head and closed her eyes.

"Dell? Tell me."

"He's right. It's not really large, but it's . . . growing."

"It's mean," Malachi said. He frowned and then amended himself. "Not really mean. It's . . . hungry. Very hungry."

Dell wished Malachi hadn't said that. He was too young to know the impact his words might have on mortals. She admonished him on a mental level to keep quiet. He must not spout every fact he discovered. He must hush now. He glanced at her, confusion in his eyes and then a slight dawning of understanding. He put his hands behind his back and looked at the floor.

"I didn't know," Celia whispered. "There's no pain."

"There are things they can do," Dell said. "Go to your doctor right away. When you take Carolyn, see someone yourself."

"I will, most certainly." Her voice was stronger, the terrible surprise wearing off quickly. Dell decided she really must have suspected something might be wrong. "I'll be all right. I'm too tough to kill off yet." Her laugh was a nervous trill escaping uncontrollably.

She reached out to Malachi. "Come here, sweetheart. You didn't do anything wrong. In fact, you told me a very good thing and maybe you've saved my life. Don't be upset." She hugged Malachi and kissed him on the cheek. He looked into her eyes and smiled back.

"The hungry lump will go away," he said. "Someone will kill it dead."

Now Celia's laugh was natural and hearty. "I'm very glad to hear that, dear." She turned to Dell. "Aren't we glad?"

Dell put her arm around her aunt's shoulder. "Of course we are. I have to tell you Malachi's had a . . . change, of a sort. He doesn't know yet how to control all the stimuli assaulting him. He's so . . . young."

"I understand," Celia said, standing and clutching her handbag to her soft round belly. "Don't scold him. What he's told me is important. No matter how shocking it is, at least now I know how to protect myself. And I'm so relieved to know Carolyn's going to be all right. Thank you so much, darling."

Once Celia had left, Dell took Malachi onto her lap and said, "I'm glad you told Aunt Celia she had a lump, Malachi, but it might have been better if you'd told me first so I could check things out and then I could have told her. Some things you know can scare people. You have to be careful about what you say. Do you understand?"

"I think so, Mommy."

"I'm not scolding you. I'm just afraid you'll say things to other people, people who won't understand. If you scare people too much, they'll get suspicious of you or they'll get really afraid. You don't want to scare anyone, do you?"

"Uh-uh." He shook his head and his naturally curly hair fell over his brow.

She brushed his hair back and set him on his feet. "All right, we'll talk about this more later. Right now we have to get going."

Once she'd dropped off her son, Dell hurried to the town library and took her position behind the checkout desk, apologizing again for being so late. All day she mulled over what had happened that morning, wondering if her admonition would stick. What if Malachi began telling his playmates things about them he shouldn't know? Or what if he mentioned something odd to his caretaker, odd enough to cause her alarm?

Dell could see how the whole situation could get out of hand. Malachi's friends might stop playing with him, instinctively knowing he was not like them. He could be made an outcast, a pariah. The adults coming into contact with him might discover his predictions were true and bring the news media into the secret. Then what?

All day long Dell worried, watching the clock until she could pick Malachi up and question him. She must really impress on her son the seriousness of all his actions, no matter how innocent they appeared to him. He only wanted to help, she knew, but he hadn't the maturity to realize the ramifications of the news he carried.

What am I going to do, she wondered. Can I really control how a three-year-old behaves when I'm not with him?

The hands of the clock crept toward two in the afternoon, each second a decade, each minute a lifetime.

~*~

Charles Upton woke, coming from deep sleep without any residue of cloudiness. He saw immediately that the cards were gone. He flew to the cell door in a rage, raising his thunderous voice. "Madeline! Did you steal my cards? Give them back!"

A faint voice floated along the corridor and to his ears. "I don't have them. Leave me alone, you simpering beast."

Upton knew she spoke the truth. "Where are they, then? Who took them? I'll take his head and crush it to pieces."

Madeline did not respond. This caused Upton's rage to spin out of control. He shook the iron bars in the grate until Joseph came running, his leather sandals flapping noisily down the long corridor.

"What's going on here?"

"The cards you gave me are gone. I want them back!"

Joseph kept his distance from the door. He put his hands behind his back and glared at the other vampire. "I was remiss in giving them to you. They belonged to a priest who asked for them back."

"Liar!"

"Stop this racket. It won't get you anywhere."

"I'll howl until your ears bleed, you lying bastard. Give me back the cards."

Joseph turned away and was gone in an instant.

Upton beat his head against the bars between his hands until his forehead bled. As he'd threatened, he howled like an animal, furious he'd been lied to. He had to have the cards. Already he'd been able to discern some of their vital message. They told him he was to be a great being, a vampire that would go down in history as infamous as any historical figure in the past. He'd been about to question the cards about how that event would come about and ask for advice on escape when he'd fallen asleep from exhaustion the night before. He'd been on the very brink of knowing everything he needed to get out of the monastery and be free.

How could they do this to him?

Violently, he flung himself away from the door. He struck the opposite wall and rolled around the walls of his cell four feet above the floor. He twirled so fast the world blurred to a dark cylinder. All the while he screamed at the top of his voice.

So violent was his spin around the walls that he never knew when the cell door creaked open and six large monks entered. The first he knew of the intrusion was when strong, cold hands clamped onto his head, shoulders, arms, and legs, throwing him to the stone floor with a tremendous thump.

"Let me go," he shouted, struggling mightily. He bit at his captors, teeth sinking into sinew and bone.

He heard Joseph's voice. "We will enter you now and bind you for your own good."

He hadn't an inkling what that meant. He continued struggling, throwing the whole bunch of them who were clasped to his body around the room.

At first he felt a chill, as if ice had formed to circle his brain. His thoughts diminished to a tiny glow, held deep within the innermost part of his brain. He had stopped moving and gone limp in the hands of the monks. He struggled now with silent voices which whispered, Be still. Rest now. Be not afraid.

He tried to curse and could not. He tried to move, but his limbs would not obey. There were presences inside him, milling about, standing guard, arms crossed. He could not see them, but he sensed them and knew the individuals would not leave until they were ready to do so. His brain seemed dead to him. All light was extinguished. His fury remained, but it was so small that it could not send out a signal to react against the beings who held him. He was as helpless as a babe, his consciousness bound as firmly as if it had been roped and dragged into an eternal pit.

He sat in his mind, crouching in the darkness, nursing his fury, waiting for release. He did not care how long it took. Time meant nothing to him. It meant nothing at all. He would sacrifice a thousand years if he had to.

Time stoked his need for revenge and revenge was a cloak in which he wrapped himself. He would throw it off so that it took his enemies into a whirlwind. Just as soon as he could manage it, that is.

Until then he would wait. He had no other choice.

~*~

Dolan sat in the chapel listening to the tolling of bells. It was midday and he was alone. He could walk around during the day in this place as it was as dark and shadowy as night inside the massive stone walls. The night before the monks had let him into the monastery on his arrival, bowing as he passed. He had never been treated with respect before. It produced an astounding feeling of wellbeing. He was thrilled to be on a mission of importance for Mentor and to be treated like a prince.