SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (62 page)

She turned her head into his palm and pressed her lips against his flesh there, surprising him. All her fear had fled and she turned doting eyes on him. "Will you come with me and meet with him?" she asked.

"I think I would go with you into hell if you asked," he said, almost meaning it. He spread out his arms and she came into them as naturally as if they'd been together as a couple for a hundred years.

That night they mated over and over and over again, Charlie crying out with each orgasmic release like an alley cat with a bitch in heat. When morning came, they stepped outside of Charlie's small domed shelter and there stood before them all of the Predators, waiting, knowing they had been summoned.

"Take down every shelter and burn all evidence of our life here," Charlie said, his arm around the waist of the woman. "We're going with her to Balthazar. We're going to join together with his clan and then we're going to war."

Shouts rose up and the vampires raced one another to tear down the temporary structures while others built up several fires on the plateau in which to burn all indication of their habitations. The sky filled with smoke; it filled with wild laughter and gleeful dancing.

Charlie stood by, fully satisfied, his cat face turned sharply into the blowing wind, Sereny at his side.

His mind slipped away from the chaotic scene and found a pivotal moment from his past. He was fourteen and visiting home from his private school in Connecticut. He hadn't thought of his youth in years, and the memory pleased him.

His parents lived in the exclusive River Oaks section of Houston, Texas, but it seemed to him they'd sent him as far from home for schooling as they could manage, into a prep school in Virginia. He had not developed the dread porphyria yet, so he was not ill or deformed. He was, however, a willful, impertinent child, his intelligence probing and intuitive. He made his parents nervous. He asked questions that revealed hidden truths, picking holes in deception. He was so full of disdain for adults, none of them had a chance to like him. But, of course, he didn't know that. He never really understood why adults were so uneasy around him.

He sat at the breakfast table with his mother during summer vacation. His father had already left for the office. His mother, a society maiden who had brought money to the marriage, had little use for her only son and didn't bother to hide her feelings.

Charles decided to tear away her polite mask so he could see the mother monster beneath. He had known it was there from a young age. Today he was determined to force it into the open. "You don't even like me, do you?" he asked.

His mother put down the society page of the newspaper and smoothed it carefully. "What would make you ask such a horrible thing, Charles? Where have you learned such beastly manners?"

"Oh, stop sounding like a damned Brit. You were born and raised in Texas, who do you think you're kidding? And you're evading the question. You don't like me. Father doesn't trust me. The fact is, I know you both think I'm a mistake and you wish you'd never bred. You must have done it because it was expected of you. All that money . . . and no one to spend it on but your silly selves. You didn't want to appear too self-centered. But you know what, Mother? I don't care. Do you understand? I don't care that my parents hate me. It frees me from having to pretend I love you back."

His mother stood from the table, keeping her gaze from him. He could see he'd hit a raw nerve, which was always what happened when he scraped down to the nugget of hideous truth. "This is a stupid conversation. You're being too ugly. I have shopping to do."

Charles stood abruptly, flinging aside his napkin and with the other hand, sweeping his place setting to shatter on the polished marble floor of the dining room. A servant ran in to see about the commotion, and his mother waved the girl away. "Leave it," she said.

She turned to her son. He saw real fury in her eyes for the first time in his life. Mostly she presented a stolid and brittle exterior. She was not simply a cold woman. She was an ice floe.

"Those dishes were imported. They cost more than one semester of your school. I do not appreciate your destructive nature, Charles. Please contain your temper tantrums until you're outdoors where you can set fire to forests or . . . or . . . run a motorboat into a bridge piling."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you, Mother? You'd like to see me put into prison or drowned in a boating accident. Well, guess what, it's not going to happen. I'm going to be valedictorian. Did you know that? I'm smarter than anyone in that fancy prep school you sent me to. I'm going to Yale. I'm going to inherit your money, Mother, and I'll turn it into a great fortune. You'll be rotting in your grave and I'll be stomping the ground, singing Hallelujah, the bitch is dead, thank God, the bitch is dead."

He had been going for the throat and saw he'd succeeded. Her expression crumpled just shy of a fit of weeping. But he knew even her tears were crocodile, for her heart was stony flint.

Steel came into her demeanor. She said, "Not if we change our will, Charles. If you persist in this type of behavior, I assure you not one penny of our money will be left to you. I'll give it to the Salvation Army before I give it to you, you ungrateful little bastard."

Then she stomped from the room and that was the last time he saw her. She never had the chance to carry through with her threat to disinherit him. Later that evening she met with her husband to tell him of their argument. As they drove from a parking garage at a downtown hotel where they'd dined on salmon with wine sauce, a speeding Ford Explorer ran a red light and slammed into the side of their Mercedes, sending the couple into the arms of death.

Charles was taken in by his paternal grandfather who died in his bed one night just when Charles was about to go off to Yale. Charles took a sixty-million-dollar inheritance and within ten years turned it into six hundred million. Before he was thirty-five, he owned the world's largest shipping company and controlled two major Texas oil companies. He shipped oil around the world in monster tankers. The money rolled in until it was impossible to say just exactly how much Upton was worth, but it was safe to say he was a billionaire.

It was that day, though, the showdown day with his mother, the day she threatened him and died for it, when he knew he didn't give a fig for other people. If they served him well, he let them alone. If they got in his way, he savagely ruined them.

And if they threatened him, as his mother had done that morning, he hired a suicidal maniac with an extreme coke habit to ram a Ford Explorer straight into the side of a Mercedes.

~*~

Charles sent his followers in small groups into the other Canary Islands outside of Lanzarote to reconnoiter areas ripe for taking victims. For his first meeting with Balthazar he wanted to be alone.

He was surprised when Sereny came with him and stayed at his side. She took him first to a small opening in one of the island's volcanoes and told him this was where they'd enter the caves. Using their supernatural ability to defy gravity—an ability that now came as naturally to Charles as breathing to a human, because of the time he'd spent practicing in Australia—they floated through the black volcanic rock opening into a narrow passage that plunged straight down for two miles. Descending into the darkness, smelling the close, pungent scent of damp clay walls so close he could reach out and touch them, Charles thought of Stoker, and Dracula's coffin filled with earth taken from his homeland. How could Balthazar enjoy living like this?

The sun was shut out, the opening above them dwindling to a pinpoint of distant light like a faraway moon over a dark planet. The air grew heavy with moisture. The darkness turned to a chill slab of black so dense nothing could be seen with the mortal eye. Had he not been vampire, Charles would not have been able to maneuver.

After the descent, Sereny gestured him down a winding horizontal passage lit with lanterns. It seemed this labyrinth went on forever and that it was on an incline, so they were still burrowing deeper and deeper underground. Finally they came to Balthazar's lair beneath the island. An arch served as an entryway. Burning torches stood sentinel. The arch opened into a cavernous room roofed with stalagmites, some of which were as large around as tree trunks where they were attached to the ceiling. This gave the whole chamber a sense of impending disaster and for some minutes Charles fought against hunching his shoulders and glancing at the tall ceiling.

The room was furnished, as Charles had been told, with bone furniture. It was obviously an act of contrition for murder, though he was sure Balthazar didn't understand that. The bones were reminders of his sins. Or, on the other hand, reminders of his pleasures.

There were chairs, sofas, tables, shelves, all of them made with human skeletons. Here and there a skull sat peering in accusation out into the smoky gloom, while in other skulls, used like saucers, candles burned, giving off the stink of paraffin. Near the wall stood Balthazar, his back to them. He filled three silver goblets with blood from a glass pitcher whose contents gleamed like a ruby in the lamplight. He handed each of them a goblet and said, "I'm glad you came."

Charles thought Balthazar a handsome vampire in a wild, untamed way. He had strong features, almost rough, as if his ancestral line had been nearer Neanderthal than modern Turk. Yet his eyes were remarkable—blue as the ocean that surrounded Lanzarote and as clear. His lips were finely sculpted and full, with a deep indentation in the center of the lower one. He was tall and trim, his shoulders wide and hips narrow. He wore expensively tailored black silk slacks and shirt. The cloth draped his frame to give him a nonchalant elegance. Were it not for the paleness of his skin, he could have passed for a craggy prince.

On his right hand he wore a ring of gold holding a large sapphire with diamonds flanking it. The unusual sapphire caught the torchlight and shimmered like a chip of dark blue flame when Balthazar gestured with his hand.

Sereny stood at Charles' side when they first took the drinks, but now she moved toward Balthazar. She wrapped a languid arm around his neck, pulling his face down to hers where she kissed him for a long time, her eyes closed, her thick lashes lying like dark butterflies on her white cheeks.

Charles expected no less, but couldn't help feeling a twinge of jealousy. He had coupled with Sereny so many times in one night that he had tricked himself into believing she might belong to him. She did not, of course. She was Balthazar's partner. He didn't suspect Sereny used sensuality to persuade him to join forces with Balthazar. He suspected Sereny loved the one she was with. And now that they were back in Lanzarote, she was with Balthazar.

Sereny unwrapped herself from Balthazar's embrace and took a seat on a sofa covered with cushions made of ivory brocade. She smiled over at Charles as if to say, You see how I am? No one owns me for long.

"How can we help one another?" Charles asked his host.

"Sit down. We'll relax and drink together." Balthazar sat next to Sereny and watched Charles with immense blue eyes that had turned piercing. Charles realized he'd known immediately his woman had coupled with him. Balthazar surely wasn't surprised, but he was also not happy about it. Charles took a chair opposite them. He sipped at the blood that even now was coagulating and creating a rim along the inside of the glass. It was disgusting. He only drank it so as not to appear discourteous.

"How many Predators have you gathered?" Balthazar asked.

"Around two hundred and fifty. And you?"

"Four hundred and fifty."

"We're not a great army," Charles said, "but there would be enough of us to begin changing things."

"I agree. If we move as one, we can be as powerful as an iron fist. So what's your thought on our first move?”

“I'd like to go to America. There are two Predators in Texas who had dealt me a terrible wrong."

"They imprisoned you."

"Yes. For years."

"And they should be punished," Balthazar agreed. "I know who you mean. Mentor and Ross. And I have a problem in Texas, too."

"You do?" Charles was suddenly afraid Balthazar wouldn't go along with his plans. He had his own agenda.

"Yes, I do. There's a dhampir. . . ."

"Excuse me, what's a dhampir?"

"They're half-breeds, half vampire, half human, born from that ungodly union. Not many of them live beyond infancy. The ones who do are usually outcast and never taught how to use their vampire abilities. But this one I speak of is eighteen and strong. He's also an adept fighter with enhanced physical senses. He's the one the prophecy said would come and help destroy many Predators. I want him killed."

Prophecy? What on Earth did Balthazar mean? Also, Charles didn't understand the problem of doing away with the nuisance, no matter how enhanced the dhampir's abilities. "Then just send someone and . . ."

Balthazar raised one had to interrupt him. "I've sent twenty-six of my clan."

"And that many couldn't kill the dhampir?"

"They didn't go as a group. That's where I made my mistake. I sent them one at a time for a while, and then in pairs. The dhampir's mother did away with most of them. She's a very powerful Natural and her mother instinct is resolute."

"Send a group, then."

"I've just done that. The boy left his home and is away from his mother's protection. I sent eight of my men today. They've found where he's hidden."

"That should solve your problem," Charles said. "If not, we can all go and take care of him, along with Mentor and Ross—the two Predators I owe my revenge."

"It's Mentor who imprisoned you?"

Charles nodded. "And Ross who made me."

Balthazar sat quietly, deep in thought. He said finally, lifting his gaze to Charles, "Mentor won't be easy. He's well liked, and many of our kind would come to his aid. Ross, on the other hand, is universally hated. He's arrogant, abusive, and domineering. If we were to attack these two Predators, it would have to be a sudden strike. But we have another problem."