HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (73 page)

"Not like me,"
Mentor said, rising from the floor and going to the door. He turned
back. "You will never be like me. I'm not a monster with my face
turned away from God."

He left him there
in his bewilderment and met Dell and the boy on the steps. "Don't
ask," he said. "Let’s go home now. We have done all
we could do."

~*~

Ross was let into
the palatial home of Charles Upton by his butler, George. He probed
the butler's mind and discovered Upton had tracked the man down and
brought him back to live with him. He was not vampire, but understood
every detail of a vampire's life. He was handsomely compensated and
felt no compunctions against his employer's lifestyle. A typical,
greedy little human, Ross thought.

"Mr. Upton is
waiting, sir."

Ross followed the
butler into a dark library where Upton sat behind a desk and another
man, a human, sat in a Chippendale chair. Upton rose. He looked fit
and lean. There was no evidence of disease or sores on his body.

"Ross, I want
you to meet David, my second-in-command. I've given him proof of what
kind of creature you've made me. He's scared, as you can see . . ."
He gestured to the other man who was hunkered down in the chair, his
eyes darting wildly. ". . . but he knows exactly what my plans
are and will institute them. Together, the three of us will succeed
beyond any of your dreams."

Ross wondered about
that, but he didn't dispute Upton. He said instead, "Bringing
mortals into your affairs is a very risky endeavor, Upton. I'm not
sure I approve. They can betray you at any moment."

"Would you
betray me, David?" Upton came around the desk and put a strong
hand on David's shoulder. "Would you even dare?"

"No, sir, I'd
never do that."

Upton flourished
his hands in the air at Ross. "You see? He's totally
trustworthy. I've given him visions of what will happen to him, to
his wife, and to both of his children if he disappoints me."

Ross shrugged. "I
just don't like it," he said. "I thought it was going to be
you and me."

"We need
David. He can deal with the real world so much better than either of
us. That leaves us free to enjoy the bounty."

Ross felt he had
been betrayed. Upton was a fierce vampire, fueled by desire,
ambition, and hate. It was possible Mentor had been right. He'd made
a mistake.

"Don't ever
think you'll ease me out," Ross said. "I'm going to share
equally in your wealth and all your affairs. If I ever discover
either of you have cheated me, you'll find me on your doorstep,
extracting my revenge."

"Fair enough,"
Upton said, moving behind the desk again. "Now sit down and
let's get on with the meeting. We have a lot to tell David."

Ross sat, fuming
and gnawing at worry. A human was involved. That never boded well.

25

For a long time
life was nothing if not beautiful in Dell Cambian's eyes. She and
Ryan graduated from high school and had a small marriage ceremony in
her parents' backyard. Cheyenne was there and Aunt Celia and Carolyn.
Grandma and Grandpa sat in the front row of chairs set up on the
lawn, beaming at her. Though none of her family thought it the best
decision to marry Ryan, they acquiesced to her mounting pleas.

Dell wore a white
gown and a veil falling from a small pillbox hat ringed with pearls.
She wore an emerald necklace given to her by her parents. It was an
emerald cut stone to match the emerald and diamond band Ryan had
bought for her wedding ring.

It was a beautiful
balmy June day, the crape myrtle bursting with pink blooms. Dell
thought she'd never been so happy. Her family surrounded her, the
weather was glorious, and Ryan was to be her husband. Nothing might
ever be as good again as her wedding day.

Mentor stood far
back in the crowd, but he smiled at her as she walked down the aisle
created between folding chairs.

After the ceremony
Dell asked her mother if she'd be too upset if she and Ryan lived on
a ranch a little distance away. Ryan's grandfather had a lot of land
and had given Ryan a generous portion as a wedding gift. It was where
he'd always wanted to settle down.

"I'll always
be in touch, sweetheart, it's all right with me."

Dell knew her
mother meant they'd communicate telepathically and could visit very
easily.

Dell and Ryan
discussed college and decided to take courses over the Internet. For
a couple of years, Ryan could take the basic credits and later go to
A & M for more advanced courses to finish a degree so that he
could be a vet. Every night they took turns at the computer in a
corner of their bedroom, downloading course work and uploading
finished assignments. It was a perfect arrangement.

For a while Dell
missed her parents and Eddie, and she missed Mentor and even her
friends and teachers. But the longer she was away and with Ryan, the
less she missed her old life.

Sometimes her
family visited, and the visits always cheered Dell. In the first
spring of her life on the ranch, she watched Aunt Celia drive up in
her old Toyota Camry. She waved her inside and got iced tea. They sat
at the dining table while Ryan worked on his old truck in the garage.

"It's a nice
place you have here," Celia said. "I like it."

"Me too. I
think I was cut out to be a country girl. I'm really glad you came,
Aunt Celia. Where's Carolyn?"

Celia grinned.
"Well, she has a boyfriend and they spend a lot of time
together. It seems she doesn't have much time left over for her old
mom."

Dell understood
that. Once she'd fallen in love with Ryan she couldn't think of
anyone else.

"What I came
for was to tell you about something I've been reading," Celia
said, taking up her glass of tea to sip.

"Yes? Is it
about vampires?" Aunt Celia had been researching physics for
years trying to find a clue about vampire existence. Though she had
never become one, her daughter might face the ordeal one day, and
like the clan's researchers in Houston, Celia hoped to find a way to
prevent it.

"In a way it
might be about vampires," Celia said. "It's a book by Dr.
Kaku, one of the top seven physicists in the States. It's called
Hyperspace."

"What's a
hyperspace?"

"It's not a
what, actually, it's a where and I think its existence is the reason
vampires can dematerialize and reassemble themselves. Here's how Kaku
explains it.

"He was
contemplating a small pool of goldfish one day. They swam in no more
than three or four inches of water, hiding under lily pads. He got
his face right down to the water's surface, but the fish didn't
respond, not knowing he was there. He said that's how we are, in our
third dimension, unaware of the fourth dimension, hyperspace.

"You see the
goldfish can move back and forth and side to side, but beyond the
surface of the water they don't have any conception of 'up.' Up to
them doesn't exist and everything above the surface of their world
would be another dimension to them."

"Oh, yeah, I
see," Dell said, interested in the little goldfish world.

"Well, Kaku
postulates this theory and it made some sense to me because I think
you and the others go into that hyperspace realm when you disappear.
Kaku said if you pick up a goldfish from the pool, the other goldfish
think it simply disappeared. If you put it back, they think it
appeared, out of thin nothingness. They don't know we exist up above
them in our own dimension. But if a wind comes along to ripple the
surface of the water, or if raindrops pound it, they begin to sense
an outside force, you see? From another dimension. It's affecting
their world. Kaku explains that light beams aren't straight, they
ripple, too, it's been discovered."

"They do?
Wow."

"And light
ripples because it's acted on by another dimension—what Kaku
calls hyperspace. So like the fish, we're feeling the effects of that
fourth dimension, though we can't see it and most of the time, to us,
it doesn't even exist."

"Gee, I'm
going to have to read about that, Aunt Celia. It makes sense to me.
Maybe we're all part of that fourth dimension, we act within it at
times . . . vampires, I mean."

"That's
exactly what I was thinking! If some of you could try to harness that
space or dimension or explore it and the power there, there's no
telling what we could discover."

Dell sat silently,
thinking about what her aunt had said. Hyperspace. A fourth
dimension. The place that allowed vampires to disappear and reappear
back into human form.

"It's part of
the Unified Field Theory," Celia was saying. "There's
speculation that there might even be ten dimensions, eleven, who
knows yet how many. I find that just amazing."

After her Aunt
Celia left, Dell went to the bedroom where the computer sat and did a
search on the Internet for hyperspace and Dr. Kaku. She wanted to
know more, she wanted to try to understand it better.

Ryan found her
there and asked, "How was Celia?"

Dell turned from
the monitor, "Oh, she's fine, just fine. I'll tell you all about
it later."

That night she
discussed it with him and saw he wasn't quite as excited as she had
been. "What if he's wrong?" Ryan asked. "Has it been
proved scientifically?"

"I'm trying to
find out. It just opens up a whole new thought for us, Ryan, all of
us, not just vampires, but for the human race. If there are
dimensions beyond the reality we know, then the existence of
creatures such as ourselves isn't so strange, is it? In other
dimensions, why . . . there might be all sorts of worlds and
creatures, but they're just beyond our notice, like our world is to
the goldfish."

"Well,"
he admitted, "since there are vampires and I know that's real, I
guess nothing should surprise me."

She boxed him on
the ear and laughed. "Funny guy," she said, hugging him
close.

Later that night as
they sat studying in the living room, Dell let her mind wander over
their new life together. They lived outside a small town south of
Dallas where she could still buy supplies from Ross' worker bees.
They had a hundred acres, a small house, and a barn for Lightning.
The old horse was showing his age, but he still didn't mind a little
trail riding now and again. Ryan bought a roan gelding for himself
and most weekends found them riding across their land, talking and
laughing.

Ryan had taken work
on a local ranch, breaking horses and training them for cattle
roundups. Dell worked at the town library, spending her days reading
everything on the shelves when she wasn't arranging story parties for
area children or checking out a book for the occasional reader who
wandered in.

Life was calm,
quiet, routine even, and as wonderful as Dell might ever have
imagined. The brightest element in her universe was Ryan. He was all
she needed. He loved her fully and without restraint. She loved him
back with every ounce of her being. When they'd married, she knew her
destiny was sealed to Ryan and that, yes, she would suffer a thousand
deaths when he grew old and died. But she also knew without him she
might have wasted away, or given in to her baser instincts and become
a heartless machine, a taker of blood, a killer.

She never let him
see her take the blood they kept in the refrigerator and she never
told him how sometimes when they were making love she wanted nothing
more than to lick and nip at the skin just at the juncture of his
strong, smooth jaw. Mentor had not told her she would fight forever
the urge to drink even from the one she loved.

One evening, days
after Aunt Celia's visit, as Dell sat poring over an assignment in
math, she felt something move in her abdomen. It was nothing more
than a slight flutter, but it was undeniably something unusual.
Growing stiff, she sat straighter on the sofa and glanced at Ryan. He
was watching a football game and eating from a can of cashew nuts.

She moved into her
own thoughts and began to probe her body. She let her consciousness
move from her mind to her chest and then lower, to her abdomen. She
sought out her reproductive organs, ovaries, tubes, and finally, her
womb.

She was pregnant!
It was unmistakable. Though she did not have monthly periods and
therefore never thought about impregnation, it had happened to her.
To them. A baby.