SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (90 page)

“I keep the cards locked in a metal box beneath the floorboards, but lately they’ve been appearing on their own, stacked here on the table, waiting for me. When I find them, I put them right back in the box and store them away again. Today I gave in and began to turn the cards in the Celtic cross reading, as you see before you. They predict the same thing. They don’t whisper it to me. They shout it. War. Inevitable.”

“Do they predict the outcome or the winners? Is it Upton who will bring it again?”

Mentor sat back and pulled her with him beneath one big arm to hold her close to his side. “No. That’s one thing they won’t speak about. No indication who starts it or why, or what comes after this war they predict will engulf the various vampire nations.”

Although they talked all evening about the cards and the prediction, Mentor finally shuffling the cards together and putting them away, the conclusion was always the same. Something was going to happen to precipitate a battle that would escalate into full-fledged warfare. But they did not know when or by whom the battle would begin. Or even why.

They just knew if the cards were right, that it was on the way. Many would die and perhaps a whole way of life would change forever.

Chapter 4

Malachi sat with Danielle on the banks of the Trinity River. It was near sunset and bullfrogs called from reeds growing near the water. “I wonder why they call it the Trinity?” He wondered.

“Three rivers coming together?” She sat next to him on the hard-packed ground, knees drawn to chin.

“Or father, son, and Holy Ghost?” He laughed a little. He and Danielle had more than a little disdain for their county’s ultra-conservative and religious bent. Once they’d counted six churches within a five-mile radius. If you didn’t attend church services, which they or their families did not, you were thought a heathen.

“I bet it’s got to do with three rivers,” she said.

“When it floods, it’s more like ten rivers.” He shivered involuntarily. It wasn’t so awful to sit near the flowing river, but the thought of spring floods reminded him of his imprisonment in the watery pit in Thailand. He didn’t ever want to be soaked to the skin and out in the elements again.

They sat quietly for a while. Then Danielle said, “You wanted to tell me something?”

He straightened his legs out before him and leaned back on the palms of his hands. “I think I have to.”

She glanced at him, but didn’t speak.

“You’ve always known things aren’t quite…uh…normal at my house, right?”

She shrugged. “Your mom looks pretty young.”

“To have a son as old as I am, you mean.”

“I guess.”

He drew in a bracing breath. “She’s not young. She’s old as my dad. She looks younger because…”

Again she waited patiently for him to continue. Would she still love him when he told her the truth?

“She looks young because she won’t age. Not on the outside anyway. Not in appearance.”

“Did she find the fountain of youth?”

Malachi knew this was going to shake the foundation of all Danielle had known about the world. “Not exactly,” he said. “She won’t look older because she’s…she’s a vampire.”

He expected Danielle to laugh, but the silence stretched. He should have known. She was a very serious girl, and she knew him well. She knew when he was joking and when he wasn’t.

“She’s a vampire,” Danielle repeated dully.

“I’m afraid so. And I’m half what she is.”

Now she moved to look him full in the face. He saw the worry in her eyes. “You’re a vampire,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Just half. My dad isn’t a vampire. I’m what they call a dhampir.”

“You drink blood.”

He shook his head. “No, I just have some of the supernatural abilities from my mother.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” She asked.

He sighed. “I know it sounds fantastic. Crazy, even. You’ll just have to take my word for it. You know I don’t make things up—and I sure wouldn’t make up something like this.”

For the next two hours as the sun set behind the delta fields on each side of the river and the moon began to rise through the trees, Malachi told Danielle everything he knew about the vampire nations. She sat next to him alert, hardly interrupting, listening carefully.

To drive his point home that he had inherited some of the vampire’s qualities, Malachi stood up and moved so quickly it seemed to Danielle that he had disappeared. He called to her from yards away and at her back. She twisted around, squinting to see him in the moonlight.

“You vanished,” she whispered in awe.

He walked back to where she sat on the riverbank. “No, I just moved so fast the human eye is tricked. I can do other things too.”

“Like what?”

He went to the water’s edge where a fallen tree leaned out over the rushing water. He bent down, wrapping his arms around the trunk, and flexing his knees, stood, raising the huge tree as he did so.

“Oh God,” Danielle said.

He dropped the tree, causing water to splash out over the river in a rain of silver. He walked back to her and sat down.

“I can read books in minutes, just by turning the pages. I can remember everything ever said by our professors. I can see in the dark like a cat. I can smell things at a distance…”

She put a hand on his arm to stop him. “Malachi…”

He heard the fear in her voice. He turned and took her into his arms, holding her close to him. “I’ll die just like you will, honey. I’m not really Super Man (???Superman). I’m a mortal and I have weaknesses. But you had to know. I love you, Danielle. I want you to marry me. I couldn’t keep these secrets anymore.”

He felt the wetness of her silent tears on his shirt. She said in a broken voice, “Oh, Malachi, you should have told me before.”

“Why?” Something in her voice alarmed him. A real sadness, a pain she was about to share with him. He braced himself, fearing the worst. She would break up with him. She’d turn her back and walk away and he’d lose her. Something was terribly wrong and she had to tell him so he could deal with it.

“What’s wrong, Danielle? Tell me.”

“I’m pregnant.” Her voice was small, but the words seemed to have been shouted into Malachi’s ears. Pregnant! But they’d been so careful. They were still in college; they weren’t going to get married for two more years.

“Jesus.” He breathed the word, clutching her to him.

“We can…we can terminate the pregnancy.” The catch in her throat made the word “terminate” come out like a peal of doom. “It’s so easy now, no muss, no fuss. We’ll never know it was…”

“No,” he said immediately. “We can’t do that. You don’t want to do that, do you? Because of what I’ve told you?”

She said softly into his shirtfront, “What should we do?”

Malachi closed his eyes to the night and his ears to the wild life singing along the riverbank. He drank in her scented skin and pressed his lips to her neck. Oh God, he thought, what are we going to do?

Chapter 5

TEXAS

Elijah toddled around the living room chasing the golden retriever. He would almost catch him by the tail only to miss by inches. His laughter was as golden as the dog’s flying fur.

Danielle never believed she could be so happy. Her son Eli not only looked like his father, but he possessed many of his personality traits. He was a serious little boy who nevertheless showed a strong sense of humor. He was sweet, open, curious, and truthful.

Malachi had assured her their children would not inherit any of the vampire characteristics. Mentor, the Predator leader of the nation of vampires within a six-state area, had taken Danielle under his tutelage. He and Malachi told her not to fear for her son. He would be merely human, grounded in the real world. Not only would he be watched over by his parents, but also throughout his life the large surrogate family of vampires to whom he was related by blood would protect him.

Danielle tried not to think about vampires. Though not religious by nature, every time she thought of a vampire, much less in the vicinity of one, she felt the urge to cross herself. Malachi did not frighten her, of course, and neither did his mother, but Mentor and some of the other vampires she’d met made her so afraid she grew cold inside. That something could live beyond death was an unholy thing. Dell, Malachi’s mother, was always kind and caring, but there was still something horrible about not aging, about drinking blood to survive, about…being dead.

Danielle had accepted these things as a part of the world, but that didn’t mean she had to like them. She had majored in philosophy and was now an assistant professor at A & M in College Station, Texas. Nothing in her training had prepared her to deal with life immortal. There were no manuals about how to accept unnatural beings without fear.

She could never say she was sorry she had fallen in love with Malachi, found herself pregnant, and then married him. He was her life. She couldn’t imagine having never met him. And now they had a fine son, Eli, who filled her days with joy and her life with brand new pleasures.

But how, really, could there have been vampires since the dawn of man? Why hadn’t their lairs been uncovered, their secrets exposed? Malachi explained how they could bewitch people and cause forgetfulness. In fact they’d done that for many hundreds of people during a past war that Malachi swore had taken place in Dallas. The fires of that year hadn’t been done by human arsonists, as later reported. The deaths hadn’t been of living people.

The Craven had died, Malachi told her. There were so many kinds of vampires it made Danielle’s head swim. Predators, Naturals, Cravens, dhampirs. There were even vampires, Mentor had told her, who had lived so long they were like living gods, their concerns hardly of this world any longer.

One of them lived in Egypt, a vampire by the name of Vohra, and he had been instrumental in helping to find Malachi when he’d been taken prisoner to Thailand.

Danielle had wondered where he had gone and why he’d left her so alone without explanation during that time. But she had waited, faithful to him, hoping he would return and heal her broken heart. When he did come back, he was changed. He was downcast and wandering, though he enrolled and went to his classes. He rarely smiled and tended to be on guard as if something might come out of the shadows at any moment.

Then he had told her the truth that day by the Trinity River. And she had told him about the baby.

Their fates were connected; she had known that from their very first meeting. She couldn’t imagine a future without him in it.

The golden retriever, a dog Malachi had brought home as a pup and named Harper, scampered away from the child, his teeth showing in a smile. Danielle scooped Eli into her arms, swinging him high. “Time for lunch!”

Eli drew in a startled breath on the upswing and giggled on the down. “Mama, do it again!”

She swung him high and low as she carried him to the high chair in the kitchen. “That’s enough now. Let Mama make you something to eat.”

At least it’s not a bag of blood you need, she thought in distaste.

She paused to look out the window over the sink. She could see her in-laws’ big white farmhouse across the pasture. They had helped Malachi build a home for his new family. She liked being on the ranch. Her own family had always lived in town. And now they had invested in a FAX for their house, making it look like an alpine cottage. Danielle never knew how great it was to live out where the wind blew constantly, wildflowers sprouted in the lawn, and cattle grazed just on the other side of the fence.

“Mama! Hungry!”

Danielle turned and smiled at her son. “Okay, okay. Mama’s cooking right now. See?” She grabbed the skillet from the stovetop and held it up for him. His passion was for grilled cheese sandwiches. He’d eat them three times a day if she allowed it. She had to make them manually as neither she nor Malachi went in for the SIRs or one of those automated kitchens her mother swore by.

The sun was overhead, but a cooling breeze swept through the many windows of the house. She could smell the heat as it warmed the earth. Everything smelled so green, fresh and new. She meant to plant two trees today, an oak and a Japanese pine she had gotten from the garden center. It was her day off and she tried to get some planting done every chance she got. She’d turn her bit of pasture where the house was set into a veritable paradise of shade trees and perennial flower beds one day.

She might be a city girl, but she was learning fast as a gardener. Without shade, the coming summer heat was going to turn the house into a furnace. Every summer was hotter. The climate change was on them hard and most of Texas was dry with drought. Although they got rain on the farm, the heat still beat the life out of the land each and every summer.

It might be five years before the trees she placed around the perimeter of the house would provide even a little of the soothing shade she longed for, but she was a patient woman. Besides, there was no alternative.

Just as when Malachi had disappeared. No alternative but to wait. It had taken a year and a half before he was returned from where he’d been a captive in a foreign land.

If she could wait so patiently for the man she loved, she could certainly wait for a few trees to grow.

~*~

Charles Upton didn’t think he could wait any longer. Inactivity was driving him nuts.

Jacques cocked his head to the side in question.

“How many do we have in our troops?” Upton asked. He had been enlisting Predator malcontents for years. His small, bedraggled army had been disbanded once Mentor had defeated him. Now he was gaining in power and vampire recruits again.

Jacques kept track of them, going around to the different groups hidden around the city of Cannes, France, with orders and messages from Upton. He appointed leaders of various groups, making sure all of the inductees understood they were to lie low and not feast upon the city’s inhabitants. There was to be no hint of a coming together.