"What do you do with kidnapped children?" Balthazar asked, puzzled. "Are they human children?"
She nodded, then continued speaking in her low, husky voice, "Human. Little children who weren't afraid of me. I'd take them away and keep them in a house outside of the cities where I found them. I'd . . . care for them." She sounded ashamed. "When they began to beg for their real mothers, I'd begin to feel so guilty I'd take them home again."
"How often have you done this?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Five times. Six. I never hurt them, not a bit. I fed them good food and cleaned them and played games."
"Then you took them home."
"Yes."
She told Balthazar all this, lounging on one of his bone sofas covered with thick brocade cushions and silken pillows. She was not at all astonished by his lair. It was as if nothing could touch her anymore, except perhaps children; nothing was important enough except playing at motherhood to lift her from the depths of her despair.
Balthazar commiserated with her, presenting an understanding, fatherly figure. She was but a half century old as a vampire and already lost unless someone rescued her. As she spoke in her low, husky voice, he rose from his chair and approached her. He reached out slowly, cupping her chin and lower face in his hand. He raised her face to his and said softly, "How long has it been since a man loved you?" When he'd said that, he didn't know what possessed him, what made him want her so badly.
Tears sprang to her eyes and she blinked at the red film of blood blinding her. He leaned down and kissed her lips. He kissed her cheeks, each in turn, ran his tongue along her cheeks, tasting the blood tears and finding them precious as rubies. He moved his kisses to an earlobe and down to her neck. He felt her body shiver and although he had come to her with selfish intent, hoping to seduce her to keep her with him, he suddenly wanted her to love him in return. He wanted her at his side forever. Without her, eternal life would truly be longer than he could ever hope to manage. No one had ever affected him this way.
He took her into his arms and carried her to his bed, placing her carefully on the soft goosedown mattress and stacked pillows. She wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered into his ear about how long it had been since she'd turned vampire and since her husband had touched her.
Balthazar ran his hands over her breasts and down her slim ribcage to her waist. He found her extremely exciting. Though approaching middle age when she changed, she was as svelte and luscious as a girl. Her flesh was firm and responsive to his touch. She arched her hips and he pressed down on her, burying his face in the crevice of her neck. She smelled of olive flowers and the bark of old trees. He wanted to drown himself in her.
He twined his hands now in her long dark hair and kissed her hard, taking her tongue into his mouth. They fed from one another and, finally, when their blood lust was satiated, they mated in an animal frenzy that would have been revolting to a human observer.
Sereny became his lover and faithful companion. She came to believe with him that Malachi was the dhampir prophesied by the seer as the one who would go against their kind and bring ruin to the Predators. With Sereny's help, Balthazar went into Spain, looking for other disgruntled or lonely vampires who would join them in the Cueva Verdes on Lanzarote. They found a few lost souls in the Azores, more on the African continent, and still more in Sereny's Italian homeland.
For fifteen years Balthazar and Sereny worked ceaselessly to gather a group large enough to implement their plans. Sereny did not stalk children during this time, nor did she speak of wanting to. He kept her as busy as possible, sending her out to recruit. It was very slow going and some nights Balthazar despaired, crying out with his arms flung heavenward.
Sereny always soothed him, taking him into her arms and placing his head upon her breast. "Listen to me," she would whisper. "After the dhampir is dead, we'll convince other Predators they should break way from the clans they belong to and join with us. We're all born into the unnatural world. We have no need for secrets and hiding. Let the mortals know they're just food for superior beings. Food for gods! Let the world belong to the vampire, not the mortal. Let the world end in death and blood, Balthazar. Let it die away in darkness."
Now, as the caves filled with his followers, Balthazar began to send emissaries out to kill the dangerous dhampir who would threaten all their futures. He had walked in the young man's dreams and was sure he was the one.
When, one by one, his minions failed their missions and never came back to the caves, never answering his telepathic queries, Balthazar raged how the prophecy was already coming true. No one could kill the boy. Why couldn't they kill him?
Sereny suggested he send out their people in pairs. If that didn't work, send them out by the dozen, send whole murderous groups. Surely a half-vampire could not defeat a dozen true vampires?
Balthazar neglected to tell her what he knew about this particular dhampir. How he was superior to other dhampirs. How it was going to be much harder to kill him than it might have if he hadn't waited so long.
While Balthazar struggled with all the politics of dealing with the hundreds of vampires he'd gathered, keeping them happy as they built lairs inside the deep caverns, he heard from a new follower about a very great vampire Predator who called himself Charlie. A totally simplistic and stupid name, it seemed to Balthazar, but then not every vampire wanted a powerful name.
Like Balthazar, this Charlie was gathering together the loners, the outcasts, and the eccentrics. Not only did Balthazar feel these Predators belonged to him, but it was said Charlie wanted to do the same thing Balthazar hoped to accomplish. He wasn't interested in the dhampir, Malachi, but he thought the Predators should disentangle themselves from the Naturals and Cravens, and take over the mortal world.
"Ask him to come here," Sereny advised. "We don't want more opposition, do we? Invite him to join us. Together, we'll be indomitable. His force combined with ours will be enough to begin the war. We won't have to wait any longer."
Balthazar thought it over. He shut himself away in a small dark tunnel where he retreated when he couldn't take contact with his followers any longer. He pulled a stone over the opening, lifting it as if it were a feather. All light was extinguished and the dark was deeper than any night.
After so many years of solitude he had been having a difficult time with all the voices and personalities vying for his attention. He needed to hide from his followers more and more often, shutting himself away in the tiny tunnel. He sat on the cold earth, knees up, his arms wrapped around them, and his head down.
Sereny was right, he finally admitted to himself. Charlie, whoever the hell he was, wasn't a threat. Charlie was a godsend. Together they could effect the change among the vampire clans that should have come long before now. All he had to do was convince him to join forces. And why wouldn't he?
Charlie was said to live in Australia's Blue Mountains. Balthazar would send Sereny to ask him for a parley on Lanzarote. He would sit him upon his most elegant bone-encrusted throne and talk reasonably of how together they could bring about the new order.
And if he refused, Balthazar would kill him.
It was as simple as that.
~*~
Mentor sat on Ross' patio in a violent green-and-purple-flowered lounge chair that would have given him a raging headache had he been mortal. "This is an extremely ugly patio set," he said. "Even your pool looks psychedelic with all those zigzag blue stripes painted on the bottom. Who's your decorator? For that matter, has you architect been prosecuted for lack of taste yet?"
"Did you come here to insult or consult?"
"All right. Let's get to it. Upton's still free. No one's talking. I can't find anything out about where he's gone.”
“He'll surface."
"It might be too late when he does. We need to find him, Ross."
"Screw him."
"There's no call for that kind of talk. You know I don't like it."
"Screw you."
M
entor sighed. “Balthazar's got more than four hundred Predators in those caves of his now."
"Good for him. Do they all sleep on those monstrous bone beds?"
"What would it take to arouse you from this sick stupor, Ross?"
"I'm just relaxed."
"If you were any more relaxed, I'd have to get a shovel and cover you with dirt. I think you've been spending too much time opening up clinics and running corporations. You act like the chief of a reservation, everything you see, you own."
"What do you want me to do?"
Rather than answer him, Mentor said, "Balthazar ran Malachi off by sending so many assassins. We don't need innocent blood shed."
"I know that. The kid skedaddled. But he should have. Balthazar's insane."
"Certainly he's insane, but now he's caused trouble outside of his little island. He's got that kid on the run. Malachi's parents are frantic."
"You don't know where the boy went either? You're losing it, Mentor. I always thought you would one day."
"I know where he is. I'm keeping a watch on him as often as I can. That's not the point."
"What is the point, then?"
"The point is Malachi's running away isn't going to stop Balthazar."
"Then put Balthazar out of his misery."
"You forget he has a clan of his own now."
Ross raised his sunglasses and peered at Mentor perching uncomfortably on the lounge chair. "You can't handle that?"
"Why don't you quit being so impossible?"
"You need help, is that it?"
Mentor hung his hands between his knees and stared at his feet. "There's something else."
"What's that?"
"My sources tell me Balthazar's interested in joining with Upton."
"Screw that."
"Come on, Ross, cut it out. Be serious for once in your life. Don't you see where this is heading?"
"War. That's where it's headed."
"We can't have war," Mentor said carefully.
Ross sat up, ripping his sunglasses off his face. The muscles along his cheekbones tightened and his lips thinned as he grimaced in sudden fury. "Why not? Because some ancient, some ancestor of us all decreed it? Who was that, Mentor, can you tell me? Was it Moses, for Christ's sake? How far back were the rules made? How many hundreds or thousands of years have we mindlessly followed all the rules? Don't you know we're entering a whole new age? The world changes from day to day faster than it used to change in a twenty-year span. Time's speeding up. If Balthazar or Upton or both of them together bring war, then we'll go to war. That's all there is to it, Mentor. Face it, this is no longer the Old Days. Some of the Predators are as young in vampire years as small children. There are only a few of us as old as you and me. The mutation's spreading. There're more and more of us. How long did you think we could control it; how long could we hide out?"
"As long as we have to."
"No." Ross stood and threw the towel off his shoulders. He stood at the poolside in swimming trunks, his back to Mentor. In the bright sun he looked like a bronze god. He stood six feet six inches, his body as strong and toned as a professional athlete's. He wore his hair long to his shoulders. An errant breeze blew it away from his neck like a black sail. "No, we can't control it anymore, Mentor. Balthazar is only the beginning, Upton just a symptom. This has been coming for a long time. It's a miracle it never happened before now. The clans are too loose and disorganized. There are too many of us. A lot of Indians and not enough chiefs, as you put it. If it takes war, then . . . that's what it takes."
He turned to glare at Mentor. He said, "You'll have to lead us. You need to prepare. I don't think you can stop this. All you can do is get ready."
"Christ." Mentor again looked down and now he shut his eyes.
"Screw him and the cloud he rode in on," Ross said and then he laughed. "What'd he ever do for us?" He turned and plunged into the pool.
Mentor stood and without looking at his host in the water, went through the house and let himself out the front door. Ross had an ugly mouth lately. He'd been watching too many gangster movies. And he was getting as moody and tense as everyone else Mentor had to deal with these days.
But Ross was probably right.
War was inevitable. The strange, indestructible tarot cards had predicted it. Upton's escape had signaled it. If someone didn't stop him, Balthazar would initiate it.
Was Ross right? Was it all getting out of hand? Were things changing so that the old rules didn't apply anymore?
Mentor walked down the long empty highway away from Ross' ranch house and turned his attention to Malachi. He was just an old man out for a walk. When people passed in their cars and SUVs and trucks, they waved to him and he waved back. He kept one wavelength open just for the boy, but he couldn't always monitor it. His intelligence had a boundary, his abilities a stopping point.
Dell had made him promise to watch over Malachi. He was her only child, probably the only one she'd ever have. It would tear her apart to lose him.
Mentor no more believed in the old prophecy that a dhampir would come to destroy the Predators than he believed there was a man in the moon. But if Balthazar and all his clan believed it, that's all it would take to make prophecy reality.
And isn't that how it usually worked, he asked himself? Someone predicts the future. And someone else makes sure that particular future comes to pass.
He touched Malachi's mind lightly and knew he was all right for now. Soon he wouldn't be. Balthazar would find him, just as Mentor had. Then all hell would break loose and Mentor knew he'd have to get there to protect the boy.
Would it precipitate war? Would Predators rise up and fight one another because of his decision to protect an innocent dhampir from a mad and obsessed Balthazar?
He didn't want that. He dreaded it. He was too old in both mortal body and vampire years to withstand the pain and blood of extended battle. Every day he remembered how old the body he inhabited was. He should find another any day now. He didn't want to find himself suddenly trapped in a dying body, as Joseph had in the monastery.
He wished, hoped, and prayed an upheaval would not come. But if it did, if it couldn't be prevented, then as Ross would say in his vernacular tongue: To hell with it.
Bring it on.
~*~
Malachi stayed only days in Austin. The western plains called, and he answered by packing his small bag and leaving the rooming house where he'd hidden himself. None of the assassin vampires had come for him since he'd left home. Perhaps they'd given up. He hoped so.
He took a bus to El Paso, a city with a true Old West feel to it. It sat on the edge of Texas and bordered Mexico. At night the lights of the city stretched out like a sparkling necklace of lights lying at the foot of dark mountains. Once there he bought an old Yamaha motorcycle with dents in the gas tank and black clotted grease along its silver chain. He cleaned it up, tinkered with the old engine, and got it in running order. He drove north out of the city, following a highway that used to be the main artery west until super freeways were built. Now travelers rarely used it.
He could see for miles in the empty distance, the sunlight ricocheting off flinty stones embedded in dry mountainsides. Miles of speckled and patched tarmac rolled beneath the bike's tires. It seemed this was the end of the Earth, all human habitation having fled these dry, hot, sandy flats between distant mountains. If Malachi squinted as he drove, he was able to create mirages of water standing on the road ahead.
In his imagination he could see history unfold across this desolate land. As he raced his noisy little motorcycle down the long road, he could see Plains Indians riding bareback on their ponies, dressed in breechcloths of animal hide, feathered arrows hoisted on their backs. He could see campfires, cattle drives, and wagon trains desperate to cross the valley floors to be free of the brooding bald mountains surrounding them.
This western land was indeed wild and lonely, the vegetation sparse, and the sun scorching. As inhospitable as it wa
s, Malachi came to like it very much. It possessed a wild natural beauty that made him feel free. The farther he drove, the more he became part of the landscape of desert and sky. He might have been a tumbleweed rolling down the highway, lost in the clear golden light.
One of the reasons he liked it so much was because the landscape was so completely different from his ranch in Southeast Texas. There were no trees here, when they were abundant at home. There were no rivers or streams, when at home he couldn't ride a mile on his horse before coming upon water. Except for the dry mountains, there was nothing here to relieve the gaze from the long stretches of desert. He thought it amazing how Texas possessed so many varied landscapes, from desert to forest, from seashore to hill country.
A dot in the distance grew as Malachi raced toward it. The closer he got, the more curious he became. When close enough, he realized it was a house or a store with a large billboard. As he closed in, he could read the billboard above the ramshackle building, which he saw now was indeed a store or service station. Faded red lettering announced a rattlesnake farm. HOWARD'S RATTLESNAKE HAVEN, it read.
SEE THE DEADLIEST SNAKES ON EARTH.
RATTLESNAKE
SANDWICHES & DRIED RATTLERS FOR SALE.
Malachi smiled as he slowed the bike. Someone had a great sense of humor. Who would want to buy both a snake sandwich and a rattler as a souvenir all in the same place? Or in any place, for that matter?
In front of the building stood one ancient gas pump that appeared to still work. It had a red insignia of wings on a clear upper tank, the bottom being faded white paint spotted with rust. Malachi stopped beside it and pushed down the kickstand on the bike. Before he could lift the gas pump handle, an old man in worn, dusty overalls came from the shadowed porch and approached him.
"Howdy," he called, smiling like a fool. "You're lucky to find us. Not another gas station for a hundred miles any direction."
"Then I really am lucky," Malachi said. "I was nearing empty."
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