HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (51 page)

Ross had run the
blood bank for decades without too many hitches. The bank was his
baby, his idea, and was granted autonomous operation from the many
sects that occupied the Southwest. Everyone knew Ross. Everyone
admired his business sense and how he kept up with the country as it
moved and changed.

Ross was also
feared. Mentor alone could not control the many thousands of vampires
in the entire Southwest section of the country. Although the mutated
porphyria cells that created them was a rare disease, it seemed to
spawn more and more down through the generations, until their kind
had gained in numbers. No one vampire could control them all, no
matter how powerful. Ross not only watched over the bank's operation,
the shipments that went out to the Naturals and Cravens who paid for
the blood, and to Predators who needed the extra supplies to help
control their hunger, Ross also acted as the chief enforcer over
renegades. He was, in essence, Mentor's right-hand man, though
neither of them spoke about the arrangement or admitted to it.

Of the two kinds of
vampires below Ross, he despised the Cravens most. They lived on
welfare, handouts, and begging. In order to pay for their blood, the
strongest ones sometimes resorted to petty theft and drug
trafficking. They lurked in dark alleyways with little bags of poison
to sell, too weak to kill for their living, but not too weak to prey
in another way on society.

Ross disliked the
Cravens for their poverty and had been determined to make himself
wealthy. Though wealth mattered little to most Predators, who were
driven by their hunger to the point where ambition died away, Ross
saw wealth as a tool that could protect him if things ever got out of
hand. Wealth gave him choices, had bought him safe places in the
world where he might hide, and it would insure his safety if his
operation was ever found out.

It was common
knowledge that Ross hated the Cravens. In the early 1900s he'd tried
to eradicate the Cravens from the region. It was a famous bloodbath
in vampire history. He had been stopped from completing his vendetta
by Mentor and a few other ancient Predators who tracked Ross down and
demanded he desist. Didn't he know that if they made the choice in
death to be a Craven, it had something to do with the soul? If the
choice was theirs to make, didn't he know he had no right to take
that choice away?

Mentor knew he and
Ross suffered an uneasy alliance. Ross thought him soft, a
philosophical creature wasting his time with newly made vampires and
old, helpless vampires and suicidal vampires. These were creatures
Ross would have dispatched without a thought. Get them out of the
way, would have been his wish. If they can't make it on their own, we
take risks keeping them alive. What do you do when you see a slug on
the pavement? You step on it, he was often quoted as saying. You step
on it and walk away. That was his philosophy.

"You think
because some of us choose to be weak and sick and pitiful that it's
ordained?" Ross had asked, furious that he was being held back
from the slaughter of the Cravens by Mentor.

"What else
could it mean?" Mentor had responded.

"This means
all of you believe there is some higher power instructing our
existence. Well, you're wrong! We're alone! There is no God, don't
you know that?"

It finally came
down to a decree. Ross, called Brenton at that time, would leave the
Cravens alone or they would all take measures against him. He could
not hope to defeat so many as powerful as he. He relented, grumbling
and cursing, but never forgave Mentor for his part. "I could
have rid the world of them," he'd said. And Mentor had replied,
"Never. There will always be those who choose the Craven way.
That is just the way it is, and it's not up to you to change it."

Now he stood in
Mentor's living room, towering above him, his body youthful, strong,
and beautiful.

Mentor noted how
Ross always chose the most beautiful male body he could find. He was
as conceited as he was arrogant and dangerous. He was, it occurred to
Mentor, the very embodiment of the modem day fictional vampire, with
his rarified ways, haughty manners, and impeccable dress. Mentor
thought he might have adopted the fiction, seeing himself as
romantic, erotic, and dreaded. A ruse, Mentor decided. Or an illusion
he favored, but that was all. He was simply a wicked, greedy,
ambitious fool who happened to be a vampire leader because he was the
smartest, the most ruthless.

Mentor, rested now
and ready for him, rose from the sofa, and stood face-to-face with
the other Predator. "You called for this meeting. Let's get on
with it."

"I don't give
a damn about you either," Ross said, twisting his beautiful
mouth to show his fangs.

Mentor blinked,
catching his own reflection in the wet white glisten of the other
vampire's teeth. He knew this was one of Ross' newest tricks to
entrance a prey. That he thought it would work on someone twice his
age just went to show how pride could go before a fall. If he wanted,
Mentor could have wrung forth from his being a fury that would have
blasted Ross clear across the room and left him defenseless.

Instead of rising
to the bait, Mentor walked to the dead fireplace and placed his hand
on the mantel. He loved to show this Predator how unafraid he was of
him. "Now that we have the polite greetings out of the way, what
do you want?"

Ross turned his
back for Mentor to contemplate as he spoke. "There have been
quiet inquiries about the bank. Hank called me from Houston. Didn't
he call you? He said he was going to."

"Not yet. What
did he say the inquiries concerning your bank were about?"

Ross picked up a
book from the table near the sofa. He dusted it off, though it was
not dusty, read the title, and dropped it. "Our shipments."

"So?"
Mentor was losing patience. Didn't the Predator know he was wasting
valuable time? There was a new vampire being born right this minute
without Mentor there to guide him through death. Mentor resented
Ross' appearance and the talk about the blood bank. It was his
problem. What possible motive did he have for coming to Mentor?

Ross turned so fast
that a mortal would not have seen it happen, though Mentor did. "You
accuse me of pride, but it's you who think yourself indispensable! I
come here to ask for a minute, and you whine in your head about
waste. I should rip you apart for that."

"If you think
that you can, jump, Froggy."

Ross glared at him
before he saw Mentor's small smile, and then he began to laugh.
"Froggy!" He laughed some more, his anger all but gone.

"All right, it
was rude of me to get impatient," Mentor said. "It must be
serious if you've come to tell me personally. Now, what does it mean?
I really do have to leave soon."

"It's a woman
who runs an HIV testing lab. She has access to all the records of all
the blood banks. Federal law requires the blood be tested, I'm sure
you know that. She's discovered we ship out blood to other cities
before it gets tested. She's called some of my people. She even knows
it's been going on for years. She searched back records. She knows
something isn't right."

Mentor realized
this was indeed serious news. "Do you know if she's told anyone
her suspicions?"

"We know she
called a doctor in hematology at Hank's hospital. It's how he found
out. I haven't sent anyone to investigate her yet. For all we know,
she's already called in some federal agency or something. It could
undermine our whole operation."

"Yes, it
could." The thought of the loss of their blood bank threw Mentor
into a sudden anxiety. Even he was nourished by the blood Ross
supplied. The strongest-willed vampire, deprived of fresh blood,
would turn on the closest victim to satiate his hunger. Naturals
could only defeat their craving by having local supplies sold to
them. If left to their own devices, many of them would be driven to
hunt humans.

Ross was silent a
moment. Then he said, "I wanted you to do it."

Taken aback, Mentor
flinched inside. "You want me to investigate this woman?"

"Yes. I
haven't really dealt with mortals in years except for servant types.
I've lost the touch. While you . . ."

Mentor knew he had
to do it. He was able to walk among mankind and pass easily as one of
them. He made it his number one rule not to separate himself from the
world, except for the youth, who changed their fads so often he could
never keep up with them. Without staying close to adult society, he
could never hope to gain the trust of their souls when the time came
to choose the eternal path.

"All right,
tell me what you know."

For the next few
minutes Ross gave him details, addresses, and other data. Mentor knew
what he had to do. He would approach the woman who was about to
uncover their secret and he would mesmerize her into forgetting. That
way she'd come to no harm. If he failed, Ross would simply kill her
and cover up any trail she'd uncovered.

Mesmerizing was an
ancient gift that was as real as a cloud, a leaf, or a stream.
Magicians, bound by earthly magic, considered mesmerizing another
word for hypnotism, but it was far beyond that. Other words for
mesmerize were to spellbind, stupefy, and to find entry. To mesmerize
people, Mentor had to enter their minds, meld with their souls, and
change their memories as one would wipe a slate clean. It had to be
done by a master, or it was considerably dangerous. In the beginning
when he was first learning how, Mentor had accidentally wiped a few
minds that were never the same again.

More guilt. And
guilt he had no choice but to live with.

When Ross had gone,
Mentor left his home and stood outside, feeling the early morning
wind on his face. Earlier, when Dolan had left, the sky had been
clearing, but now a few white clouds with dark underbellies coasted
near the moon. In another city they might portend rain, but in Dallas
they would no doubt scatter and disappear before even a drop of
moisture could condense.

He would see the
woman, Bette Kinyo, on the morrow. Tonight he had urgent business. It
was not in the city, but out in the South Texas countryside near the
border with Mexico. A family of Naturals lived there, and tonight one
of the women was undergoing the change. The disease had begun earlier
in the day when they'd first called for Mentor's help. Now he must
hurry, or his charge would be lost. She might become a Predator. That
was the fear of her family.

She might anyway,
despite his guidance, but at least he would have tried to dissuade
her. There were too many of them already, especially along the border
where he knew more murders were going unsolved than in all the rest
of the state. The authorities thought it was the work of a serial
killer who left his victims horribly mutilated, but Mentor and his
kind knew what it really was. Too many Predators in the area and too
few sources of blood.

What they did not
need was one more running loose.

He must be on his
way.

With a flick of his
will and a mental explosion that changed the very atomic makeup of
his being, Mentor dissipated into the Dallas night wind an
insubstantial shadow among the clouds sailing south. Just before he'd
left the earthly plain, he'd heard the telephone in his house ringing
and knew it must be Hank.

He'd speak with him
later. He had all the information he needed for the time being.

12

It was not Dell's
birthday, that day was in June, after graduation, but it felt like
it. On Saturday morning when she woke, Eddie stood at the end of her
bed. She'd slept so deeply that she felt now as if she were coming up
from a black well of unconsciousness where nothing had ever lived.

She'd heard someone
call her name and opened her eyes. "What are you doing?"
she asked, coming up onto her elbows. Eddie was bending over the foot
of her bed and tugging at her covers.

"Mom and Dad
have a surprise for you."

"What kind of
surprise?" She threw back the covers and stood to stretch.

"It wouldn't
be a surprise if I told you. They're waiting in the living room.
C'mon."

Her parents were
dressed, standing in the center of the room together, and in her
father's hand dangled his car keys. "If you'll hurry and get
your clothes on, we'll take you to see something special," he
said.

"What?"
she asked. "What's going on?"

"Tell her,"
her mother said to her father.

Her father shook
his head, grinning slyly. "We wanted you to see for yourself. So
hurry up, we're waiting. And no reading our minds, young lady."