SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (49 page)

Nevertheless, Malachi grew to love the old man and to trust him.

Mentor, by teaching him restraint, had granted him his freedom. He could be like everyone else now. Unknowing. Dumb, deaf, and blind. Swept, just as humanity was, by the whimsy that was his fate.

Until the night of the nightmare when the wolf came and lured him astray.

It was a summer night soon after he'd finished his instruction with Mentor. He had been working on a model truck, a 1955 Ford with a short bed. He was painting it cherry red, lying on the floor on his stomach, screwing up his face as he concentrated. Like his father, he enjoyed tinkering with vehicles, but he was too young to help his dad out in the garage, so his father had bought him model kits. It was after ten at night when his parents told him to put his things away and brush his teeth and go to bed. He carefully set the unfinished model truck on a shelf in his room. Tomorrow his painting would be dry and he could attach the decals. He brushed his teeth, picked up his father's electric razor and pretended to shave his soft, bare cheeks, and left the bathroom finally, grinning. One day he'd shave, just like his dad. He'd be a man, a big man like his dad, and he'd drive the old truck his father had restored. In his room, he slipped on his pajamas and climbed into bed. Within minutes, he was asleep.

The wolf came padding across the bare, coldly lighted plain, its thick silver fur shimmering like a sequined blanket from the pale moon overhead.

Not you again, Malachi thought, trying to push aside the dream world.

"Come with me." The wolf's lips never moved. His mouth was closed, and his nose pointed up at the boy's chest as if sniffing his scent. Malachi stared into the wolf's golden eyes and felt mesmerized. He tried to tear his gaze from the wolf's eyes and could not.

"I can't, I have to go home." Malachi backed away, his bare feet sliding in gritty sand. He looked down and saw he wore the pajamas he'd put on before going to bed. He needed to get out of here. He needed to sleep in his safe bed, in the security of his warm home.

He needed help.

"I won't hurt you," the wolf said in a satiny voice. "Come with me, and I'll show you something."

He turned and trotted away. Malachi's feet began to follow against his will. He cried out, but the wolf ignored him. He couldn't stop himself. He was following the wolf.

And meantime . . . in the reality of the world where he lived when conscious . . . Malachi slipped from the covers, stood beside his bed, and started from the bedroom. Barefoot, he padded quietly through the house to the front door. It opened for him before he reached it, and he glided onto the wide front porch. He was in the yard now, dew wetting his feet. He went toward the back pasture, and looked beyond it to the woods . . .

The wolf took him a long distance. There was not even a breeze in this world of sandy plain and moon. From one horizon to the other emptiness stretched. A great fear seized Malachi's heart, and he tried in desperation to halt his feet. He didn't know where they were going, but he knew he should not go there. Where could it be? There was nothing, nothing in this whole world but the malevolent moon overhead, uncaring of his destiny, and the wide, empty, featureless plain of flat sand.

He thought he protested, but nothing came from his lips. In his mind the wolf hissed, "Shut up. Follow me. All will be revealed."

. . . and in the world of his parents, Malachi strode across the open land where the cattle rested, bunched together, swiveling their heads at his passage. The moon overhead was not pale at all, but gold as egg yolk At his back his mother called, "Malachi! No! Come back!" He heard her, but something waited for him in the woods and he must go there . . .

The silver wolf stopped, and Malachi's feet halted as if he were merely a puppet being moved by strings. "Watch this," said the wolf.

From out of the floor of the plain rose a mound, the sand shifting and falling all around. There was a groaning as the earth buckled and heaved. The sand fell away from the rounded back of a vampire and then the beast rose up, straightening, the sand still falling from his naked shoulders and long wavy hair. He had no body hair and no genitalia. His body looked as neutral as the body of Malachi's G. I. Joe dolls. It was obvious this was no real vampire, as Malachi knew vampires lived within human bodies. No, this was a dream monster and he could be anything, he could be any dimension and wield any sort of power he wished. He was there to punish Malachi. He was there to take his head.

. . . Malachi reached the edge of the woods and plunged into the darkness without hesitation. The yellow moon's light was sucked into this black void, disappearing. He no longer heard his mother at his back, calling to him. He heard a great sound of wind coming from within the thick stand of trees, wanted to see what made it . . .

The vampire seemed fiercer in its nakedness than if it had been clothed. The skin looked stretched to a straining point over the great muscles of the body. The face was disfigured, a distorted image of human mixed with animal. The mouth was too wide for the face, the eyes too huge. The teeth it showed Malachi were exaggerated in size, large enough for a crocodile, each one glistening in the moonlight with pointed ferocity. This beast opened its mouth and roared, filling the plain with rumbling sound so loud it flooded Malachi's ears and caused him to fall to his knees.

. . . in the woods Malachi sought the great wind and found it came from the throat of a beast half as tall as the massive oak trees it stood beneath. The wind was breath, foul and stinking of decay. Malachi bowed his head under the force, gagging. He turned his back to the vampire, hoping his mother still called to him and that she had come to his rescue, but everything behind him was blurred to grayness, as if he had stepped through a doorway in the woods and left the real world behind. He began to cry, tears running down his face. "Mama," he called softly. "Mama, please . . ."

The roar faded across the open night plain. The wolf trotted to Malachi's side and sniffed at his face. "He wants to eat you," he said.

Malachi's heart almost stopped in terror. He could imagine those giant crocodile teeth sinking into his body. It would shred him like cabbage and leave him in strips under the pale moon. "I want to go home," he cried.

"Go home then to your Maker," the wolf said.

The great vampire took steps toward them. With each footstep the earth shuddered. Malachi lifted his head, a cold light coming into his young eyes. "You are nothing," he said, choking back tears. "You're just a dream, that's all you are. I can beat you if I want to."

The beast faltered, threw back its great shaggy head, and roared with laughter until Malachi's ears rang again. He came to his feet. He reached out and struck the muzzle of the silver wolf who had made this monster to scare him. "Make it go away," he commanded. "It doesn't scare me."

. . . the vampire bent from its great height, breaking apart massive tree limbs as it neared the ground: It hovered over the boy and cocked its head at him, eyes glittering with red sparks. “I will eat you," it said. Malachi straightened and wiped at his tears with his fists. He could hear his mother now, at his back, calling for him again. She was frantic. He felt the fabric of the grayness that blocked her tearing as if it were a curtain on a stage. "You can't eat me," Malachi said, given courage by the closeness of his mother. "I'm stronger than you." The vampire threw back its head and laughed, and only then did Malachi note that the beast was undressed and that it had smooth, pale skin, hairless and without gender. "You're made up of smoke," Malachi said . . .

"You're made of smoke." That's what Malachi told the great beast hovering above him and the wolf on the moonlit plain. "The wolf made you. He thinks I'll let you eat me, but I won't. He'll have to do that himself." And then Malachi turned to the wolf and stepped forward, rapping the animal on the head with his small knuckles. "Eat me," he said bravely. "Go ahead, try to eat me, you mean old wolf. You can't hurt me, and I'm not afraid of you."

And suddenly he woke, drenched in fear sweat, and he was in the woods at the rear of the ranch. He ran toward the moonlight, his feet pricked by sticks and acorns so that he began to hop while he ran, hopping, running, tearing apart the gray veil to reveal his mother. He made for the opening to the fields. He found his mother waiting there at the woods' edge, her arms open for him, the look of alarm on her face. At first he thought she was the beast from the woods, from the plain, and in disguise, but she spoke and he knew he was saved.

"Malachi!"

He rushed to her, hugging his head into her belly, wrapping his arms around her waist. "Oh, Mom! He wanted to eat me."

She took him home, holding onto his hand tightly as they crossed the field. She led him to the bathroom and washed his sweaty face with a cool cloth. He sat on the side of the tub and let her wash his dirty feet. He put on clean pajama bottoms as his others had wet, soiled cuffs. Then his mother took him to the kitchen table and sat him down while she prepared hot cocoa. She was calm now and spoke to him softly so as not to wake his father. "The wolf tried to lure you away," she said. "I saw him, too."

Malachi didn't want to talk about it. It was too real and too fresh in his memory. He laced his fingers around the cup of hot chocolate and brought it to his lips. He loved the tiny marshmallows floating on top. He'd always loved marshmallows.

They didn't talk about it anymore. He returned to bed and his mother sat down beside him, her hand on his chest until he slept. He didn't know if she stayed there all night, but he suspected she had because she was in the same spot when he opened his eyes to the morning.

He dreamed and wandered the plain no more that night.

BOOK II

THE DHAMPIR COMES OF AGE

1

The years after his lessons with Mentor passed without for Malachi Major until the summer of his eighteenth year. At the age of three he had come into his own as a dhampir and for the next fifteen years he had been protected and guided by his parents, and, on occasion, Mentor. Now and then there were minor jams, like the night the dream wolf lured him into the woods far from home, but for the most part childhood flew past without mishap.

As his powers grew, he began to understand even more deeply the responsibility that came with supernatural ability. Though he could read minds, he refrained from doing so except when absolutely necessary to make his life run smoothly. Though he could move so fast it appeared in mortal eyes he had vanished, he rarely indulged in the ability around strangers. Though his hearing was acute and his eyesight enhanced, he worked hard not to let anyone know. He wanted nothing more than to embrace his mortality and lead a normal life. Most of all, he wanted to be like his father. Strong, hard-working, and peaceful. A man dedicated to those he loved.

By age eighteen, Malachi stood six feet four and weighed two hundred and sixty pounds. He played football in high school, hailed as the best running back the school ever had. He was president of the honor society, his memory being phenomenal and studies easy for him. He felt like a fraud having so much knowledge gained so easily, but his mother said, "Malachi, many people are born with gifts. Treat all your abilities as gifts and don't waste them. You're competing with students who are also gifted. Don't fail just because you think your gift is unfair. God doesn't make mistakes."

"Do you believe in God, Mom? Did God make you immortal?"

He saw her features at war as she struggled with the questions. She said finally, "I do believe there's something greater than we are. I call it God because there's no other name for it. I don't think He made me . . . what I am. I think that's some quirk of evolution, just as being human in the first place is a quirk. If we came from warm salty waters, crawling first, and then learning to breathe on land, why can't we also become vampire by accident? Without plan or reason. Yes . . . evolution. It's the only thing I can think."

It was the first time she had spoken to him about how she felt and he could hear the confusion in her voice. Mentor had told him nearly the same thing. They all struggled with unanswerable questions.

On the subject of his gifts, however, it was true there were other intelligent students, some of them with IQs that were going to make them leaders in commerce or politics or academia. There were guys on the football team who were the best receivers in the state, always in the right place to catch the ball when the talented quarterback threw it. These tremendously skilled athletes would be picked up by pro teams. There were girls with so much charm and real beauty they were going to sail through life on their physical assets. There were teenagers with so much computer expertise, they started up their own companies, raking in millions before they ever turned twenty.

Finally, he decided his mother was right. He wasn't exactly a fraud. He was just someone born with gifts he had no right to squander. If the world knew the extent of his gifts, he'd be a freak they'd want to study, but in the end he began to believe he was hardly more gifted than other superior humans.

Because of this humility he was well-liked. He kept aloof, however, fearing too many close friends might lead to the discovery of his secret. And he never forgot the loss of his little friend in day care. He feared ever experiencing that loss again. If he got to know someone and care for him, what if he lost that friend, too?

Instead of hanging out with friends, he spent most of his free time riding his horse, Harley—he was better than a motorcycle, after all—or reading books deep into the nights.

When he was sixteen, however, he met Alex Bradner on the football team. Alex was naturally outgoing, friendly, and persistent. He didn't live far from Malachi. He began to drop by on weekend afternoons to invite Malachi out for pizza or for fishing at the river. Alex, like Malachi, was a running back on the team. When he got the ball, he was quick as lightning and resembled a bull as he plowed through the opposition, heading for the goal line.