LEGIONS OF THE DARK (VAMPIRE NATIONS CHRONICLES) (17 page)

She stepped back until the base of her spine hit the sink's edge. She brought up both her hands as if to ward him off. He was old, probably eighty or more, but she knew his age was deceptive. She could feel his power as if it were an electrical current springing out and touching her like a force field. It was causing small electrical shocks all along her arms and chest and face. If anyone else would have touched her at that moment, she thought he would have been electrocuted.

"Don't," she pleaded, tearing her gaze from his depthless eyes and staring at the floor. "Please, don't."

"I have no choice, Bette. You'll be in great danger if I don't do this."

What he said made no sense to her and yet in some way her intuition knew what he was about to do was irrevocable. He was primed to do something horrible, she knew that, but did not know exactly what. It wasn't a physical threat; she did not fear for her flesh or her life. He thought whatever he was going to do would keep her from further danger. But what he meant to do to her was far worse; something he was about to unleash would invade and change her. She would fight with every ounce of her energy and strength against it.

"You can't,” she whispered in terror, cringing away from him so that she was leaning backward over the sink, gripping the edges with her hands until her knuckles turned white. She turned her head as far away from him as possible.

She had been born with some psychic skills she had never questioned because they were always there, always present. She could sometimes divine the future. She often had dreams about colleagues and friends and the dreams would come true later.

She could sense life beneath the surface of the world, as if there was an alternate reality just beyond the five senses, and although she had never penetrated that world, she had a feeling it couldn't possibly be as dangerous and alien as was the event unfolding in her spare kitchen.

Just as the old man stepped closer to do whatever it was he was determined to do, she heard a knock at the front of the house. Her head snapped back, and she held the being's gaze with her own. "Someone's here," she whispered in newfound joy. She knew he must be alone with her to "mingle with her mind," as he'd put it.

"Yes," said the man, stepping back again. His hands hung at his sides, and she thought she detected disappointment and then sadness creeping over his old wrinkled face. "I'll come back," he said, stepping back once more so that he was at the same spot where he'd been standing when she'd first seen him.

The knock at her door was insistent. She could not move. The being before her was winking out of existence, rippling the way a sheet waves in a wind. "Go!" she whispered breathlessly. "Go away!"

And as suddenly as he'd appeared, he was gone. She was alone in her kitchen, clutching hard at the sink's edge, trembling uncontrollably. She felt tears rise in her eyes and blinked hard to clear them.

The knocking at her door had not let up. It was as if whoever was outside knew she was in imminent danger and was about to break the door down if she did not answer it.

She stumbled across the kitchen, down the narrow hall, and to the front door. She held onto the dead bolt lock for long seconds trying to find a reserve of strength to turn it. Finally she had it unlocked and the knob turned and the door standing open to the night. Her entrance light was on and in the flood of light outlining the front steps stood Alan Star, his face twisted with anxiety.

"I saw your car here and the lights on. I was worried something was wrong when you didn't answer."

"Oh, Alan!" She fell into his arms, so weak she nearly buckled at the knees. He caught her and stepped inside, half carrying her. He reached back and shut the door behind him.

"What happened?"

"I . . . I . . . there was . . ." She couldn't get it out. She didn't know what to tell him. He would think her crazy.

"Someone was here?" He had guessed it. He led her into the living room and lowered her to the sofa. He turned immediately and hurried down the hall to the dining room, then out of it and into the kitchen. He came back, puzzled, and looked up the stairs to the loft that lay in darkness beyond the landing. "Up there?" he asked, about to take the stairs. "Is he up there?"

"No, he's gone."

Alan acted as if he didn't believe her, and then she saw his shoulders slump with the relief of his own tension. He came and sat at her side, taking her hands into his own. "What did he do?"

"Noth . . . nothing. He didn't do anything."

"But if I hadn't come, he might have hurt you! Did he have a gun or something? Was he going to . . . rob you?"

Bette put a hand over her eyes. Rape her, he had almost said. She could not stop trembling. Alan had really thought she'd had a rapist in her house, although he hadn't been capable of saying it. He was not far from wrong, except the power the being had held over her had not been for rape of the body, only of the mind.

She felt Alan's arm come around her shoulders and hug her over into his chest. "It's all right," he said. "I'm here now. I told you long ago you ought to move out of this neighborhood.”

How could she tell him it wasn't that? It hadn't been a drugged-out Hispanic or a Black man intent on killing or raping or robbing her. Her neighbors were her friends and watched out for her. She had been accepted as one of them, a minority, one of society's outcasts, no matter what the white population of the country thought of the forward steps that had been made in the name of equality. Deep in their hearts, they all knew they were not truly accepted.

It was normal for Alan, a white man, to think she had been menaced by someone of color, someone who could not find work and so turned to dealing drugs and guns in order to live. In his world that was what people were trained to think. He had no notion of how really protected she was in the racially-mixed neighborhood, how loyal all of them were to one another. If there were robberies, they would be committed far from the confines of her home. At least, that was the way it was in this neighborhood, she thought. She was safer here in her little home than anywhere in the city. Safe until the stranger with the frightening smile and the apparent ability to read her mind showed up in her kitchen, that is.

She removed a shaky hand from her eyes and looked at Alan. When he was perplexed, he squinched up his eyes so that there was a furrow between his brows. He was almost comical to her with his large blue eyes and thin lips, but she could not smile.

"Someone appeared in my kitchen just before you came."

The furrow deepened. "Appeared?"

She nodded her head. "I know you won't believe this, Alan, but it was some kind of man who wasn't human. He wasn't a ghost either. I don't know what he was, but he came to do something to me, something . . . really bad."

"Wasn't human? You mean, like, he as an . . . alien? Is that what you mean?"

With each word his voice had risen because his understanding could not encompass beings that were not human. Even asking her if the apparition was an alien was another way of dismissing what she had experienced. Friends with her since medical school, Alan knew she was born in Japan and had come to the states as a child. He also knew she kept a statue of Buddha on a small altar in her bedroom and that she held beliefs that any Western scientist would scoff at. But trying to explain to him what manner of beast had come to her in the kitchen was not going to be simple.

"It wasn't an alien, Alan. I don't believe in aliens."

He sighed a little, letting out a relieved breath. She mentally cringed at what she would have to tell him. The reality would put the idea of aliens to shame.

"It was some other kind of being. Something supernatural and very powerful. He just appeared in my kitchen while I was doing dishes, and then when he heard you at the door, he left again, twinkling out like smoke. He had a mission that has to do with me, but I don't know what it is. I didn't feel that he was going to kill me. But he was going to do something to my mind. I don't know how, but if you hadn't come, I wouldn't be the same person you have always known. He would have changed me some way. He . . . he promised he'd be back."

Alan didn't say anything. He sat back on the sofa and let go of her hands. The furrow was still between his eyes. That meant he was trying to digest what she'd told him. How could she expect him to understand? Who would? She hardly understood herself, having never come across such a being as this. She hadn't even heard stories of them or of what would cause one of them to be a threat to her.

Then she remembered his teeth and shuddered. She felt Alan's hand touch her arm, and she stilled. She did not think she would tell him about the being's sharp incisors. It was enough that she was asking him to believe she'd seen anything at all. He'd totally discredit whatever she said if she mentioned fangs. Could the old man have been a vampire? From American movies and American culture she had been as immersed in vampire myths as everyone else. Could she have made a mistake and only imagined the fangs?

She began to pray silently as she waited for Alan to come around. She looked down the hall from beneath her eyelashes, worried that she would see a shadow that shouldn't be there. She knew there was no protection from the man and that he would return at his convenience. Except for her prayers, she had no defense. Even if Alan were to stay, or if she moved someone else into her house, the man would come back eventually. He hadn't got what he'd come for, and in the end nothing would deter him.

In other words, she was doomed and there was no help for it. The tears welled in her eyes again, and this time she let them flow unimpeded down her cheeks.

14

Mentor lay on the rooftop of Bette Kinyo's house, listening to how she tried to explain his appearance. He was surprised at her intuitiveness and intelligence. She must have already studied and accepted the supernatural in the world, or she never could have concluded the facts about him she was now relating to the visitor. From where he lay on the roof shingles, he could see her tiny backyard where he could contemplate the Japanese garden there. It was meticulous, right down to the placement of two stones in the raked gravel to indicate rising islands, just as the rake marks indicated swirls of the sea surrounding the land masses. She had built an inlaid stone pathway from her back door to a teak bench beneath a slim weeping willow. From there, she could study the garden in peace. Even the usual noise from cars passing on the street in front of the house was muffled by the trees.

When the man left, Mentor would have to reenter the house and deal with Bette. Ross would not allow her to interfere in the operation of his blood bank. If Mentor did not do something, Ross would dispatch a killer to her door. That would be a shame. This little woman was a shining example of what a human could attain in one lifetime. Serenity. Security in her inner being. The peace of knowing her place in the scheme of the world.

Now he understood why she did not have a husband and children in the house. She had already moved beyond the natural urges of her gender and stepped into another dimension of living. She needed no one in order to be whole. She was sufficient unto herself.

Though he admired her, he would not hesitate to meddle with her mind. Or "mingle" with it, as he had warned her in advance. He would do his best not to jostle or tamper with the part of her mind that had created the wonderful garden and the pleasant home. But he must search out the memories she possessed and eradicate the ones that had to do with Strand-Catel. It would be a tricky procedure. Despite her fears, he was not a demon god, and therefore he was imperfect and sometimes made mistakes.

He paused to listen to the two humans inside the house. The man was full of disbelief, and even a little derision, though he was not voicing it to the woman. Oh, and now he was thinking how delicious she was in bed and had plans to get her there, ostensibly to allay her fears, but in truth it was a selfish motive of a sexual nature.

Mentor sighed to himself and turned his attention back to the empty garden glowing in the moonlight. Sex always made him feel his age, his real and true age. He had not mated in centuries. He had let that portion of his humanity grow lax until, finally, it had died. He missed it—the physical coupling, the overwhelming desire, the heat of congress, and then ultimate relief. He could not remember now why he had been so foolish as to let desire leak from him and vanish altogether.

He had loved a woman once. Her memory was emblazoned on his soul as much as the fact of his vampirism. It had been so long in the dusty past that human women then were an altogether different kind of creature. He had loved her more than his own life and when she'd died, for she had not been of his kind and he could not talk himself into making her one, he had let die his need for any other woman. He did not take a vow of celibacy. His ardor for sex had simply cooled until it was ice, never, he believed, to be rekindled again.

He mentally checked on the couple inside and found them in the loft bedroom, undressing. He might as well not wait, then. The man would probably stay the night.

Lifting straight up from where he lay on the roof, Mentor raised his arms and sailed easily skyward toward the clouds. He would lose himself in them on his way across Dallas to his own home. He would daily in the thin air, clearing his mind of the past and the one woman he'd ever loved. And then, when the morning came, he would return to 2234 Barbary Lane and speak again with the intriguing Bette Kinyo.

~*~

Alan made up his mind to watch her house the next day for the being she insisted had come to her. Right now they lay side by side, sweat drying on their bodies. In a moment Bette would rise to shower and afterward, he would bathe, too. Then they would snuggle in the sheets, lying with their arms around one another until morning. Again he wondered why he had not asked her to marry him. It was silly how he fell in love every time he met with her and then left again, the two of them going separate ways.