"How long?"
"I just picked them up. There's . . . five of them."
Malachi wasn't afraid. He'd fought eight vampires at once in West Texas and he thought nothing could be worse than that. Besides, this time he had a weapon much more suited to the task. He hefted the machete from his belt loop and swung it at the end of his arm.
They began to move, backing up toward the granite wall of the nearest building when the attack started. Coming from above, miraculously descending from the air, the five renegades surrounded them before they reached the wall. Clifton leaped forward, slashing at the renegade nearest him, missing his mark. Malachi faced a renegade who stared angrily at him, an animal growl coming from his throat. As Malachi poised to strike, he saw the Predator's face change. It turned into a jungle cat with black fur and a wide mouth filled with razorlike fangs.
Malachi felt his heart go into deep freeze. The composite of man and jaguar was so startling it created a presence much more fearsome than that of Predator. It had to be Upton.
The transformation took Clifton's eyes off the others just for a second, and the whole group closed the circle in a flash.
Malachi hissed from between his teeth, swinging the machete above his head. Upton rushed him, coming under the machete and taking hold of the hand holding it. It happened so fast Malachi let out a surprised Ah sound and stumbled backward.
Tendons and muscles tore, and numbness took over his limb. He was forced to drop the weapon no matter how mighty a defense he put up. Now he was afraid. He had never been bested by a vampire. He realized suddenly that he had fought weaker creatures than Upton; Upton was not just a Predator, but one with the blood of Ross running in him, and the fire of revenge boiling in his soul. Had Malachi been less tired . . . or had he been with a group of strong Predators . . .
Now it was too late.
He felt Upton's Predators at his back, clawing at him. He saw a pair of vampires holding firmly onto Clifton, driving him to his knees.
Mom, Malachi thought desperately as his numb arm was being drawn hard behind his back. He struck at the Predator with the cat face over and over, but it was like swatting at an elephant. The blows bounced off the rock hard head of the cat, slipped on the fur, and fell away without having done any damage at all.
Now both his arms were bound behind him and the jaguar's snout came within inches of his face. "Malachi." He said the name as if it were a prayer. "Now I've got you," he said.
"You don't know me."
"A master always knows the weakest link," Upton said.
The feral eyes glowed, and a long pink raspy tongue slithered from the cat's lips to touch his cheek and slip up over one of his eyes. Malachi turned his head and saw Clifton's dead face staring up at him. They'd cut off his head and it had rolled near.
MOM! Oh, God, he thought. Oh, God.
"She's too far away. She won't get here in time. Come with me. We're going on a long journey, boy."
Malachi twisted and turned, trying to throw off his captors, but he couldn't. Not this time. These were tremendous creatures, much stronger than the ruffians sent after him under Balthazar's command. He knew now he had limitations. He'd been lulled into the belief he was indestructible. All his life he had escaped every harm, fought his way clear of every attack, and overcome every obstacle. Now this. He had come up against a creature unlike the others. He never thought Charles Upton would ever get near him. He wouldn't have imagined the vampire might want to capture him.
Upton took him by the back of his collar and hauled him off the ground. The two renegades at his back remained there, holding him, as they rose, too. The two Predators who had finished with Clifton hovered nearby.
"Say good-bye, Malachi. You won't be seeing your home again."
Mentor, Malachi cried. Save me!
~*~
Mentor hesitated, telepathically seeking the cause of the sudden disruption in the air. He had just come around a corner in the downtown district, the wind beginning to whip up the tails of his coat and abuse his long white hair. There had been no wind along the street from where he'd come. He had heard a telepathic cry for help from near this place.
He glanced all around, waiting for more instruction. Had that been Malachi?
It had been hours since he led the entranced Detective Teal to his car and back to the man's hotel. Since then he'd had been on the hunt and hadn't seen Malachi again that night.
As suddenly as it had come, the brisk wind died. The air was as still as a cold heart. There were no more telepathic cries calling for him.
He looked around in wonder. Then he looked up. A faint trail of darkness deeper than the background of space rose high and disappeared. It had been Predators. The renegades. Even now he could taste the distinct coppery scent they'd left behind on the sidewalk where he stood staring after them. He would have seen them in person had he come around the corner only a minute earlier. He didn't know who they were, but they must have known he was coming. That mystified him. None of the renegades ever knew of his approach. He was master of the cloak.
If they didn't know, then their taking to the sky held some other meaning that he couldn't yet figure. And had that been Malachi calling for him again?
Moving on, shaking his head, he crossed the city streets and recrossed them, but did not find anyone. It was close to dawn. A street-sweeping machine came lumbering toward him and Mentor decided to call an end to the hunt. He would come out again when the sun set and fewer humans clogged the city.
He crossed a street and something stopped him before he reached the other side. He turned his head to look to his right. No traffic. Parked cars. And a block down a large blue trash bin, the kind garbage trucks backed up to and hooked onto to lift and empty.
Someone dead lay there.
Mentor hurried down the street to the bin and lifted the hard metal lid. Inside sprawled the body of a Predator, his head thrown carelessly at his feet. Mentor did not know him. In death it was impossible to contact the intelligence of a vampire, impossible to know his heart. He might have been one of Ross' clan or he could have been a renegade.
Mentor reached down into the putrid darkness of the bin and placed his hand on the dead Predator's chest. Maybe he could pick up traces of his living compatriots, friend or enemy. In that way he'd know if he should add this dead one to the list of their losses. As soon as his palm touched the vampire's bloody, sticky shirt, Mentor had a start. His hand blazed with a violent psychic imprint of the struggle the vampire had gone through, but, more importantly, his touch picked up a vivid picture of a dhampir, caught, but not killed.
Malachi.
Mentor withdrew, wiping his hand along his pants to clean it.
He turned into the stillness of the street and moved rapidly toward home. He could never follow the group who had absconded with the boy. They were no more than shadows speeding across the night sky. He must let Dell know. Upton might want to trade Malachi for something, though if he thought he could ransom him for control of the city he had to be more insane than anyone imagined. He couldn't win this battle through barter, not even with the dhampir as hostage.
Once home, Mentor sent out a call for Dell to come to him. He wouldn't let her know of the tragedy until he could speak to her face-to-face. His transmission was received, but Dell didn't reply. She might be in the midst of a battle, her concentration needed for the task of survival. She would come when she could get free, he knew.
Meanwhile, he would see about Bette. He'd left two skilled Predators to guard her and the little Predator boy, Jeremy, while he was gone. The guards stood outside the guest bedroom door, their arms crossed. They appeared to be asleep, but nodded as he passed and let himself into the room.
Bette was asleep. She'd kicked the sheet aside and lay on her side in the fetal position, knees to chest, chin down. She must be cold, he thought, and went to cover her. She woke with a jerk.
"I didn't mean to scare you," he said. He saw she'd placed the funeral urn on th
e bedside table. A lamp spilled a yellow lace of dim light around the urn.
She sat up, gathering the sheet over her lap. "Has it ended yet?"
"Not yet. But soon. There aren't enough of them left to do anything. We've been . . . thorough."
"Did you find the leader?"
"Charles? No, he's been careful so far." He thought of Malachi, who had not been careful, and worried about who had taken him. If it was Upton himself, they had a problem.
She ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it back from her face and his attention returned to her. "I can go home soon, can't I?" she asked.
"Only if you want to, Bette." He didn't want her to leave. Just being near her brought him an utter calm he could hardly find on his own. He recalled some reading he'd done recently about the six worlds of the Cabala, a Jewish mystical doctrine. There were many worlds, but six of them were named. Ayn was the world of Nothing. Atsiluth, the world of Origin, Briah, the Creation. Yetsirah, the Formation. Asiyah, the Physicality. And Qlipoth, the Debris. When alone, as he had been for more than a century, he was Ayn. Nothing. When around Bette, he was Asiyah, the Physicality. She brought the physical world to life for him. He lived in Ka'an, Ka'eth, the Here and Now. His hunger left him, his humanity rose inside his chest like a balloon of bright relief, and he was content to just be.
She was a grand gift in his life, but he did not know how to tell her. He had loved her before she ever married, and he'd loved her all through the twenty years of that marriage. He'd kept his distance, only going to her garden to rest when he couldn't reach far off sanctuaries because of pressing duties at home. If she would ever consent to live with him, he would give her anything she wanted. Privacy when she needed it. Consolation when she was sad. Companionship when she required it. Though he knew she did not care for material things, he would shower her with anything she desired.
If only she would stay.
"I know what you want," Bette said. She'd been studying his face while he'd been lost in thought.
He felt as flustered as a young Victorian gentleman courting a proud lady and caught in the act of breaking protocol. She could not possibly know the depth of his longing.
"What do I want?" he asked.
"You want me to live with you."
"I . . . didn't . . . I . . . wouldn't . . ." Words escaped him. Surely she'd read his thoughts, either through his expression or . . . ? He didn't know how much she ever really knew. She possessed quite remarkable psychic talents for a mortal.
She took a dressing gown from the end of the bed and slipped it onto her arms. She stood and tied it at her tiny waist. "I can't make a decision like that right now." She stared at the urn before turning and going to the window. She pulled aside the drapes and looked out at the early silver dawn light in the sky.
Mentor's heart, had it been living, would have fluctuated in its rhythm. She hadn't said she wouldn't live with him. And she hadn't ruled it out. She seemed to be saying, in her way, that now was not the time to decide.
Only days before, she'd brought her husband's ashes to his house, and he would have never voiced his hopes to her so soon after her loss. She'd guessed his feelings or read his mind—regardless, she knew he wanted her to stay so much he dreamed of all the things he could do to make her happy again.
And she had not said no.
"Ka'an, Ka'eth, " he said softly.
She turned from the window. "What does that mean?"
"The Here and Now. It's where I live only when you're around me. It's where I'd like to live all the time."
Her face softened and she came to him, taking his hands. "I'm sorry I judged you when you came back flushed with . . . with what you had to do these last few days," she said. "I had no right. It's not how I was taught—to judge harshly and without respect for whatever reality you're dealing with. If we should live in the Here and Now, as I also believe we should, then the past has no more power over us than a dust mote and the future is a dream we dream. In the Here and Now I have no opinion of what your nature tells you to do."
Oh, how he loved her, he truly loved her. He would, he realized with a slight shock, die for her if he had to. He hadn't loved a woman in so long it was as if he had never loved before at all.
He leaned over and kissed her forehead in a fatherly fashion though it was her lips he yearned most to kiss.
"I'm going to rest a while," he said. "I hope I didn't wake you too early."
He left her, the warmth of her hands still warming his own. He placed them against his cool cheeks and let them warm the flesh there. In his own bedroom he lay on top of the spread, closing his eyes, remembering every detail of the woman he'd just left, repeating in his head every word she'd uttered.
She couldn't make the decision to live with him now. Her wound of loss was too large to permit it. That was the thing. He understood completely.
But perhaps one day she could decide. And the decision might be in his favor.
And he would not be Ayn, the Nothing, but Asiyah, the Physicality, in the Ka'an, Ka'eth.
Chapter 10
Lewis Teal woke in a sweat. He had his suit on, his shoes, and he lay on top of the covers of the bed in his muggy hotel room. Again. Getting to be a nasty habit.
He sat up and rubbed at his thick brow. The room smelled like a wet sock.
Damn it all, what was the matter with him? Did he have a brain tumor? He kept going to sleep without remembering it and waking up in his clothes.
The last thing he remembered was . . .
He was . . .
Hadn't there been a blonde woman? Pretty, but with plumped-up lips that looked like they belonged more properly on a baboon?
He snapped his fingers. The reporter from Channel Nine. He had seen her . . .
Why had she come to mind? Where had he seen her? On TV, on the news? Well, of course she was on the news on television. But that's not where he saw her last. Was it?
Nah. This was crap. He had a brain tumor, he knew it. He had to get to a doctor right away. Maybe they could cut it out, or use a laser and zap it or . . . Oh, God. His memory was as full of holes as a tea strainer.
He climbed out of bed and went to the bathroom to wash his face. Cold water gave him a shock. He consulted his watch. Almost time to get up anyway. Where had the hours gone?
He had worked late. He found a body near the hotel. He went with it to the coroner's. He filed more paperwork. He came home, drank orange juice.
He stepped from the tiny bathroom and looked to the windowsill. Orange juice bottle. Yep. He had drunk the orange juice. Maybe he didn't have a tumor.
He just had to remember the rest of it.
Oh, no. No, no. Wait.
He was remembering the events from the night before. Today he'd gotten his spare suit from Mayfair Cleaners and it made him late for his shift. He spent the day fielding calls and trying to find out the identity of the body in the morgue. The one he had found lying partially beneath the holly tree at his own hotel.
He couldn't find out a thing about the guy. No ID on him, not even a wallet. No record of fingerprints. No missing person's report that matched him. And then the craziest thing happened. The coroner called and in a sheepish voice reported there were bodies missing from the morgue. He hadn't completed his autopsies.
"How many are missing?" Teal asked.
"Three."
"One of them is the body I found?"
"Yes. And two more with similar wounds in the neck area."
"Well, where did they go?" Teal wanted to know.
"I have no idea. They're just gone. This has never . . . it's nuts. This has never happened before."
The conversation made Teal hot-tempered. How could they have lost the bodies? Why would someone steal dead bodies? And how did they do it—did they walk right in and carry out the bodies over their shoulders? Wheel them out on gurneys to a waiting truck? Jesus.
Frustration caused Teal to snap at the receptionist, the secretary, and another detective. He told
Travers, his own sergeant, to can it when Travers came over and told him the box of doughnuts on his desk was going to do wonders for his weight problem.
He left work early, his eyes feeling like lead sinkers. He needed to sleep. He had been up all night the night before. Doing . . . something.
He'd worked all day trying to track down the missing bodies from the city morgue, but no one had seen a thing. He couldn't find a witness, he couldn't find a motive, and the bodies hadn't been identified, so there was no one to question about them.
He came to the hotel, showered, went out for a double-patty jalapeno hamburger at the sports bar behind the hotel. He walked the streets a while, no longer tired. His feet hurt, his big thighs hurt, even his teeth hurt, so he returned and got into his car. He began to drive while his mind chewed on the problem of the murdered and missing bodies.
He thought he remembered driving somewhere downtown.
A picture of three dead bodies sprawled across one another in an alley flashed suddenly into his mind. It was like a faded postcard from 1923. Was his mind mixing this picture up with the missing bodies from the morgue?
He had to admit he was stymied. His memory was a mishmash of information that didn't connect. He was baked, fried, and boiled. He was a cabbage head.
He rubbed at his temples. He picked up the empty orange juice bottle and dropped it into the trash. He didn't let the cleaning staff into his room but twice a week. They'd pick up the place tomorrow.
He sat in the chair by the window and worriedly chewed at the inside of his cheek. If he could remember when the cleaning staff came, why couldn't he remember where he had driven earlier tonight in the car?
And what was it about three bodies in an alley? An alley was not a morgue. And he hadn't seen all three of the missing men from the morgue anyway. What was up with that? It was driving him crazy, this stuff about bodies.
He had to see a doctor, that's all there was to it.
As he gazed down to the city street, his eyes were slowly pulled to the clouds hovering over the skyline and he almost remembered something, but at the last second it escaped him. He decided he might make a visit today to the television station. He'd get the blonde reporter's phone number. He'd call and ask . . .
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