Charles neared, meaning to move past so fast they'd never see him, but something about their confident strides and calm voices caused him to slow. They were so arrogant and secure. They hadn't a shred of fear in their minds, and he hated them for their easy camaraderie. His presence was that of a man, they thought. Just a man moving past them, someone on the periphery of their consciousness they could safely ignore.
Charles easily rearranged his human face, the brown Thai skin darkening and sprouting slick black fur, the forehead elongating while his human nose and mouth formed into a snout. His eyes glowed as they slimmed to thin almond shapes. His cheekbones rose. His teeth sharpened.
He growled.
Two males on the edge of the group of people heard him and turned to stare.
Charles came closer. He growled again, louder, the sound coming from deep in his chest and drowning out their chatter.
The whole group paused and turned as one body. They could see him clearly now. He'd stopped not more than three feet from them, his face completely transformed into that of a jungle cat rising up out of the prim white collar of his shirt. More specifically, he had taken on the image of a black jaguar from the neck up.
He turned into their minds.
A cat . . .
He's wearing a mask . . .
What kind of . . . ?
Need to get out of here quick . . .
Oh, God, no, I must be drunk . . .
"Hello." Charles could speak as human with vocal cords though his exterior was perfectly animal. "Would you like to die tonight?"
Two women screamed and one fainted into the arms of her partner, standing at her side. One of the men whispered, "What the hell?"
Another said, breathlessly. "Let's get out of here."
Charles watched them curiously as their reactions evolved from disbelief to understanding. Whether they could have voiced their thoughts or not, their instincts—and their eyes—told them he wasn't entirely human. He was the alien they had always wanted to meet, yet could never really believe existed. He was the childhood bogeyman. He was the fantastic thing hovering just at the edge of their nightmares, the shadow in the open closet door that shouldn't be there. He was the grave and the darkness of the void.
He wouldn't attack. He cared too little about these little people to take their lives. They were the ants working away at the base of a giant tree. They were ephemeral ripples on the surface of a pond.
They were nothing but food. They were blood containers. They were stupid and inferior.
They broke and ran, one of the men carrying the unconscious woman in his arms, staggering with her weight as he made his way across the street with the others. Passing cars screeched as the stunned drivers hit their brakes and bent over their horns in frustration.
Charles let his human face take over his features and then he laughed, his laughter trailing the fleeing mortals like a dark storm.
Once they had disappeared from the street, Charles walked on, a frightening smile on his face. He knew he'd played a parlor trick, but he'd enjoyed the moment immensely. There would be so many more like it. One day he'd transform before television cameras so that even those at the ends of the world could see him go from man to jaguar in milliseconds. They would worship and obey or die. Once his army grew from hundreds to hundreds of thousands, nothing could stop him.
Mankind did not need an Antichrist. They only needed Charles Upton.
Upton's plan to disrupt the natural order of the vampire nations was already underway. His soldier Predators walked the streets of Dallas, methodically decimating the lower level vampires, the despicable Cravens. A few of Ross' clan tried to intercept, but were quickly surrounded, outnumbered, and taken down.
In his first days as vampire Upton learned of the three distinct categories of vampires and how they lived on the Earth in peace and in hiding. He was repulsed by the Cravens from the beginning. They were weak and useless, creatures that hid from the sun which could scorch and burn them. They were physically ill, suffering the drastic symptoms of porphyria, the same disease that had plagued Upton when he'd been human.
Their very existence infuriated him because they reminded him too much of his last years with the same disease. They were an affront to the supernatural—bottom feeders who drained the efforts of Predators who helped keep them alive. Before his change, he'd believed vampires were not just supernatural beings using human forms, but nearer to gods who ruled the planet. When he'd found out about Cravens, who had no business taking up space, and Naturals, who in their fantasies thought they could continue to function as humans alongside mankind—well, he wanted to protest vehemently. It wasn't at all like he'd imagined. It wasn't at all as it should be. Better that vampires be exactly like the fictional depictions of them than to be so divided and weak.
That it had been this way from the beginning when porphyria mutated to create the vampire meant nothing to him. He thought the Predators should have made it their task to kill off the other nations immediately. They never should have been allowed eternal life, something rightfully reserved only for the creature who deserved the dark gift.
Mentor gave Upton some ridiculous explanation of why Cravens had chosen their path and why none of the rest of them had the authority to interfere. Upton had laughed in his face. "You must believe in a Supreme Being who is able to reason and create life. What a delusion!"
Mentor hadn't appreciated Upton's scorn. He had refused to speak to him of these things again. He warned him, however, to leave the Cravens alone. Leave all the others alone, he'd said.
Before he'd been imprisoned, Upton had followed the edict. Now he was free to do things his way, and it wouldn't include mercy for any but the Predators. And not even them if they refused to join with him. He didn't care how many vampires died. There were already more than enough to rule humanity. More Predators were born out of their human deaths every day. Humans might outnumber them a hundred thousand to one, but one Predator could bring a city to its knees if he wished. What were mortals going to do? Chase a being who could disappear? Fire weapons at a creature who healed in seconds and regenerated the flesh without thought or will?
Humans could not get close enough to take their heads. And if they used fire, they'd have to burn down all of civilization and still they wouldn't kill them all.
A stray little whirl of wind swept down the street, picking up leaves and litter from curbs and gutters. Upton glanced around to see he'd entered a rundown neighborhood. Older cars were parked along the street and in driveways. Shotgun houses stood in dark silent rows, all of them built fifty years ago or more and now sagging with age. There were few streetlights, no patrol cars, and no evidence of guard dogs.
He had reached his destination. Inside the small white house he faced resided the woman Mentor had come to love. He had learned of her from snooping in Mentor's thoughts one day before he displeased him enough to be sent to Thailand. Oh, Mentor loved her, all right. She was like a permanent stain he could not erase. She camped in his soul like a demon latched onto the devil's tail.
That woman slept now next to her husband, a doctor, neither of them dreaming their lives were about to end.
The predator cat came forward again, changing Upton's face into jaguar. He licked his wide cat lips with a rough feline tongue and moved stealthily toward the door.
4
Detective Lewis Teal was on his way home after a long day filling out paperwork. He had helped lead a task force to round up a crack cocaine ring in the city. All that had been left on the case were the endless forms he had to fill out and file with the correct departments.
He lived near the station in a second-rate hotel called The Swan, named, he presumed, long ago in a better economic climate and a more poetic time. The six-story hotel had once been home to addicts and welfare recipients who ran numbers and prostitutes too old for pimps. When he moved in, the whole place was nearly emptied and another sort of clientele moved in. In order to attract that clientele, the man
agement had painted the lobby and hallways a pretty cream color, fixed the elevator, and put new light bulbs in the hanging sign over the sidewalk where the great, white swan herself floated on a neon strip of blue fizzing gases. Civil servants lived here now, bank clerks, the elderly on pensions, and, of course, a cop.
Teal had never married, not because he didn't want to, but because it just never quite worked out. He was a big, burly sort of fellow with brown suits that never really fit him and big black, lace-up shoes that he bought at a discount in warehouse department stores. His brow overhung his faded blue eyes and his jaw was a couple inches too long for his face. He wasn't Russell Crowe, he knew that. He wasn't even Jay Leno. He wasn't witty. He did not make much money because he was an honest cop and immune to graft. He wasn't anything to speak of, except smart and dedicated.
Those qualities didn't seem to turn women on.
Now at forty-five years old, and three years from retirement, he had accepted the idea he would always live alone. The Swan Hotel suited him just fine.
Tonight the air stank of exhaust fumes and dust, but he drank it in anyway, glad to be out of the office with the piles of papers. He was never happy anywhere but on the street. Paperwork almost killed him, like it did most cops.
A shady character walked toward him on the sidewalk, and Teal mentally froze. He began to wonder. Was the guy a contract killer? Was he a pedophile? A wife beater, at the very least? There was something hinky-odd about him and Teal didn't know what it was. After all, he was just a stranger passing in the night. Without grabbing the guy, handcuffing him, taking him back to the station for a fingerprint run, he had to pass the stranger by.
But he was definitely bad. Something bad about him.
As Teal and the man drew close and passed on the sidewalk, Teal looked into the other's eyes, searching for a telling hint to his character. For a split second he thought the eyes were those of a cat and the face that of a jungle beast. Jesus! They must have slipped something in the station's coffee urn. He was psychotic.
Truth was, he was probably overtired and his brain wasn't hitting on all cylinders. In fact, at this point, it didn't even have spark plugs.
Once the man passed by, Teal forced himself not to glance back. Guy hadn't broken the law. He was bad, but how was anyone to prove it? There were lots of bad guys. Lots.
Let it go, Teal, he told himself. You're a dead-ass, paperwork-blind cop and need ten hours' sleep. You're seeing monsters.
And then Teal saw the corpse. He knew it was a corpse. It wasn't moving and it was sprawled all wrong on the edge of the sidewalk, the head stuck under a dusty holly tree that grew just beside the entrance to The Swan Hotel.
Teal took his time approaching the dead body. It was dead. It wasn't going anywhere.
He looked all around and saw no one on the street. The bad stranger had come from this direction and maybe he'd killed this person, but then maybe he hadn't. Who knew? He'd call forensics and let them scope it out.
Maybe the dead guy had died from an overdose or too much booze and his liver did a fatal flip-flop or he had keeled over from a heart attack.
But it was the way he was lying on the sidewalk that told the veteran cop it was probably murder. It just didn't look good at all. It looked like the result of violence.
As he reached the body, Mrs. Carrie came out of the hotel dressed to the nines. She had on heels, patent leather, white. She wore a low-cut, flowered dress that showed off too much of her aged bosom. A strand of fake pearls dangled in the crevice. She was on her way to the bar two blocks distant, The Rocky Road. Teal always thought of ice cream when he went down there.
Mrs. Carrie hit the place at eight every night and didn't come back to her room until eleven, but she was never really drunk. Slightly tipsy and sweet, yes, but not drunk. Teal liked her just fine. She reminded him of his Polish grandmother, the one with the last name of Tealiski.
Teal reached the body before she saw it and he passed it by, hurrying to take her arm as she came down the concrete steps. "Evening, Miz Carrie. Beautiful night."
She looked up at him in alarm for an instant and, recognizing him, finally smiled to show her dentures, all white and large and as counterfeit as the pearl necklace. "Hello, Mr. Teal. Won't you have a drink with me?"
"Not tonight, but thank you. I'm a little tired. Next time, maybe." He guided her down the steps, careful to stay between her and the body on the sidewalk. He could block a truck when he wanted to. He turned her toward the bar and waggled his fingers at her as she tottered off on the patent leather high heels.
When she was across the street and into the next block, he turned and hunkered down near the body. Dead man. Murdered man. He just knew it.
He carefully moved the short, spiky branches of the holly tree aside so he could see the face. He grew very still, breathing shallowly. His massive barrel chest deflated. "Oh, shit," he said.
The man had a wound in his throat as wide as a wrestler's hand. There were . . . teeth marks. All the tendons and muscles lay bare, sucked or licked or sponged dry of blood. There wasn't a speck of blood anywhere on him. His eyes were open and glassy and looked as if they'd been sucked right back into his skull. The skin of his face was so tight it had pulled his lips back from his teeth, which appeared to be perfectly capable of tearing the hide from a running cow.
Teal let the holly limbs go and stood up. He reached to his waist for his cell phone. He hit the auto dial.
"Teal," he said. "Send the meat wagon and forensics down here to The Swan. I've got something . . . um . . . different here."
It was after midnight before Teal again left the station and headed for home. He had been over to the coroner's office. Well, not the office, he thought. The morgue. That's where he'd been. Curious, standing around with his big meaty hands behind his back, rocking from one foot to the other. The city coroner said the wound looked like some kind of animal attack. "Dog?" Teal wanted to know.
"Not likely," the coroner said.
"Not even a big dog?"
"Don't think so. This will take some study."
In his hotel room on the fourth floor, Teal got a quart bottle of orange juice from the little refrigerator in the corner, and pulled up a chair to the open window. He sat sipping the good, cold juice and looking out at the night. While he had been at the station, two other reports of dead bodies came in, throats slashed or gashed or . . . torn, hell if they knew. Other detectives were sent out on those cases.
The coroner was busy tonight. He had three mysteries to plague him and he was sorely pissed off about it.
Teal drank and looked at the street and thought he was getting pissed, too. Animals didn't kill people in his city. They just didn't.
~*~
Bette Kinyo's eyes flashed open as she was aroused from deep sleep by a psychic alarm going off in her head. She was breathing quickly, her heart throbbing painfully in her chest. It was no nightmare that had awakened her. There was something real prowling around her house seeking entry. She knew it was there as surely as she knew the Earth revolved. It was not Mentor. This presence was vampire and Predator, but not at all like Mentor.
She sat up and threw back the covers. She reached for Alan and shook him.
"Wake up," she whispered urgently. "Someone's here."
Alan woke slowly, rubbing at his eyes as he sat up. "Who's here?"
"Someone bad. A vampire." Bette was out of bed and going for the door. "Hurry, we need to get out."
Alan was slow in obeying his wife, sleep still dragging him down. "What did you say, Bette?" He looked at the clock on the bedside table. "My God, it's three in the morning."
She had the door of the bedroom open, her head turned to the side to listen down the stairwell. She put a finger to her lips and shut the door again, the soft click of the lock she turned sounding to her ears like a gunshot. She came to the bed and said next to his ear, "A vampire. To kill us. He's downstairs."
She didn't know what to do. Their escape was bloc
ked. She glanced at the window that overlooked her garden. She knew she should have bought a rope ladder in case of fire, but she'd always put it off.
There was a roof below the window that sheltered the back door. It was small, but they could climb onto it one at a time and drop to the ground from there. It was the only way.
"Hurry," she said, hauling him by the hand from the bed. Her heart was now beating so rapidly she could hardly breathe.
She didn't really believe they'd be allowed to leave the house, but they must try. The vampire she detected downstairs was unlike any she'd met before. It was a Predator with the face of a cat. A very large black cat. She didn't believe it was Ross, the Predator Alan had once witnessed murdering two women. This was another vampire, one with his hatred held before him like a shield. He was heartless and would never be talked out of his murderous rage.
Alan had the window raised and she sat on the sill, swinging her legs out. She turned onto her belly and inched down the outside wall, feet dangling as she felt for the solid roof below.
She cried out mentally, calling Mentor's name. She'd only done that once before, and she'd been able to contact him before he reached Alan in Houston. She hoped he would hear her this time. Their lives depended on it. Fleeing would not take them far from the danger. The vampire in her house was coming up the stairs now and soon he'd be in the bedroom. He could appear and disappear at will if he was anything like Mentor. He wouldn't have to climb, but could fly from her window. A lock on a door was no deterrent for him.
Escape was truly impossible and though she knew it, she hurriedly dropped to the roof and caught herself from toppling to the ground. If they could keep the vampire at bay for just a few minutes more, Mentor might come and save them. It was their only hope.
SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy Page 53
