LEGIONS OF THE DARK (VAMPIRE NATIONS CHRONICLES) (23 page)

He told her of his meeting with Ross, the Predator leader who supplied their blood every week. He told her how Predators engaged in wanton gratification, how they were smart enough not to get themselves in a bind and be caught, but that they took whatever they wanted when they wanted it. It was this tendency to live larger than life that filled them with violence and caused them to attack, even though they might have refrigerators full of blood, chilled and cleaned and neat.

Did she want to be like Ross? Did she want to leave her family behind in their struggle to live decently and without doing harm upon the Earth? Was being a vampire so thrilling that it superseded morality and good judgment?

Properly chastised, Dell told him no, she did not want to live that way. She did not want the life of the real vampire, the deadly intruder in the night, the monster who lived in madness and depravity. She did not want to hurt Lightning or worry her parents. She would never do this again. She promised.

Yet, in the depths of her being, she felt the pinch and the tug of need that prompted her to add, "Mentor, will you help me? What if I'm not strong enough to resist?"

"I'll help you as much as I can," he said, walking ahead and to one side so the horse could follow. "That's why I came here at your family's urging. But in the silence of the night, in the privacy of your room in your home, the real choice is left up to you. I may not always be available to stop you. Now that you know there's a danger, you'll have to be on the lookout for it yourself. In the end, Dell, we are all on our own."

Alan sat alone in his locked car, nausea still rising in his throat and making him sick. What he had witnessed at the isolated ranch house was nothing short of astonishing. It wasn't simply murder. It was brutal and evil, the most contemptible thing he'd ever seen happen to another human being. No one bit out another's throat! Jeffrey Dahmer, maybe, but no one else he had ever heard of. And Dahmer had been some kind of aberrant monster himself.

Upton, with his volumes of lore, was right. There were creatures walking the Earth who should not exist. They killed wantonly, taking life without a thought. And Upton wanted to be like that. He wanted to live forever even if he had to kill over and over again to remain living. What did that say about him, except that he was as corrupt and insane as the monster Alan had seen murdering the two women?

Turning the ignition, Alan looked around at the bare streets under the pools of lamplight and wondered where he could find a phone. He must call the police and report what he'd seen. He wouldn't be able to get involved, so he would have to make the call anonymously.

Ten blocks back into the city he saw a pay phone outside a closed convenience store, pulled in, and, after twice dropping quarters from his shaking hands, managed to dial 911. He told them where the house was located, what was going on inside it, and described the killer, who obviously owned the house.

He hung up abruptly, got into his car, and drove as fast as he could without getting a ticket to Bette's house.

He knocked on the door. When she didn't answer right away, he tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. He let himself in, calling to her. “Bette?"

He found her still sleeping on the sofa in the living room. She had not moved since he'd checked on her earlier. She had not changed her work clothes. She still wore a white lab jacket over her prim white blouse and dark brown, calf-length skirt. He shook her awake. "Are you all right?"

"No. I'm hungry." She hesitated, bringing a hand to her bosom and laying it flat between her breasts. "I don't think I'm sick. I must have been more tired than I thought."

He sat with her at the little kitchen table while she made herself a cold cut sandwich and poured a glass of milk. "You're sure you don't want something?" she asked.

He raised his hand, tasting the remains of a dinner that had come up again. "No, no, thank you. Bette, who was that old man who came here tonight? Was he a friend of yours?"

"What old man?"

Alan felt an alarm go off. "The old man. The one who came here tonight." She still looked confused. "I didn't tell you, but I was outside watching the house. I saw the old man walk down the street here to your house. You let him in. After a little while he came out again. I rushed in here to see if you were all right, and found you sleeping soundly. I left again, following him. I had to know where he was going, who he was."

Bette shook her head as she sat at the table, turning the glass of milk around and around, watching the wet circle it made as water condensed on the outside of the glass. "I . . . I must be sick or something. I remember coming home and putting down my purse and car keys. I think I was very tired. I must have let in someone. I think I remember going to the door when there was a knock, but . . . I'm just . . . having trouble remembering what it was about."

"Never mind. At least he didn't hurt you. Is he someone you know? You have to think, Bette. It's important."

She raised her gaze to meet him. "I guess I know some old men. Friends of my father's from the neighborhood. There's Mr. Chang, who runs the Chinese store. And Mr. Graber, who operates a barber shop."

"Well, this old man has a secret. You need to think about who he was."'

"What do you mean?"

"I followed him from your house, all the way outside of town, to another man's house. I had to walk about two miles, following him when he got out of a bus and started off. He would have seen me in my car. He went to a house way the hell out in the middle of nowhere, outside of Dallas. He met with a younger man in a huge, isolated ranch house. Anyway, when he left the house, I started to follow him again. Then I heard screams."

"Screams? Alan, I don't know what you're talking about."

"Screams, Bette, people screaming. There were two women in the house with the younger man, the owner of the place. I heard them screaming, so I hurried back and looked through the front windows. They were being . . . he was . . ."

"What? What did you see?" She was leaning forward, gripping his hand on the table.

"He bit them," Alan said, knowing how absurd it sounded, how it wasn't believable. He wouldn't have believed it either, had he not seen it with his own eyes.

"As soon as I could find a phone. But, Bette, what about the old man? He left you here, he went to a killer's house, and then he vanished, and I mean he vanished, as far as I can tell, into thin air. I was behind him and he was on the side of the road and then suddenly he wasn't."

Bette sat back. This reminded her of the stranger who had appeared and then disappeared in her kitchen the night before. Remembering that incident made her shiver where she sat. "What did he look like?"

"You saw him! He was here."

"Alan. What did he look like? Was he Chinese?"

Though puzzled, Alan complied and told her. "No, he was an old white man. He was about my height, wide in the shoulders, white hair that was kind of frazzled, like it was always windblown, deep creases on his face. He looks like he's eighty."

"That's him," Bette whispered, bringing a hand to her lips to hide her horror.

"Who? Graber?"

"No. Graber's a little Black man, bow-legged, you'd know him right off. I'm talking about the man who was here last night. In my kitchen. When you knocked and scared him off. That's who you're talking about."

Alan didn't understand. "But he was here last night, too. He knocked on the front door, and you let him in. I saw you. Why would you do that?"

"I never would have let him in."

"But . . ."

"Alan, I wouldn't have let him in. He isn't real. He's some kind of . . . some kind of . . . I don't know! A spirit. A golem. A devil."

"Do you think that's why you don't remember he was here and why you slept so long?"

He saw she was trying to think back to discover any trace of the meeting. She shook her head finally. "I just can't remember. What did he do to me? Why can't I remember?"

She began to cry, and Alan scooted his chair around the corner of the table and held her in his arms as she sagged against him. He didn't want to say what he thought, but he knew he had to, no matter how crazy it sounded. There was no one else he could confide in.

"I think he's a vampire," he said, getting the worst of it out. "The other man, the killer of the two women—he was one, I know he was by the way he . . . by how he killed. And I think the old man is one, too."

He expected Bette to refute him, to tell him he had seen too many movies, that he was imagining things and letting his judgment get twisted. He was surprised when she stopped crying, shuddered in his arms, and said, her face buried in his shirtfront, "I think you're right. That's what he must be. He's a . . . vampire. It's how he can be there one minute and then wink out. That's why he could come to my house tonight and make me forget he'd ever been here."

"Of course, on the other hand," Alan said, hoping to dismiss his own theory, "there's no such thing as vampires. We're taking what little evidence we have and leaping to one hell of a conclusion. We have no rational explanation, so we're making one up."

"Are we?" She drew away from him and stared into his eyes. "And the man who devours women is nothing more than a demented killer, is that it? The man who emerged from nowhere into my kitchen, then just as swiftly left it, the man who came for a visit that I can't even recall—that man's just a magician, a hypnotist. Does that make any sense either? Is it more logical? Why is one explanation more reliable than another? Because it's respectable and rational? Because that's how we've been taught to look at reality? Or could the myths that last for hundreds or thousands of years have some kind of basis in truth?"

Alan couldn't answer her. He had been reading about vampires. Was on a mission to find one, and that could cause him to deduce he had seen them, just because he was predisposed to seeing them. His was the kind of investigation that only produced bad science and tainted evidence. But what about Bette, who understood more than he that the world wasn't always as it seemed? If she agreed with him and the evidence, no matter how it was gathered, pointed toward it, then perhaps it really was vampires.

Except that the idea, the conclusion, was too crazy. If he accepted it, he would have to rearrange his whole notion of what life was, what being alive meant, and how the world was constructed. If the world admitted creatures who lived on blood and never died, then there might be miracles, a spirit world, a true God and a calculating Satan. There might be leprechauns, for all he knew, and water sprites, and fairies, and ogres.

If the world admitted vampires into reality, there could be anything . . . and . . . everything, some of which no one had ever imagined yet. That was why science fought so hard against superstition. If a thing could not be proven by repeated experiment, then it was not a verifiable truth, but merely an odd aberration. If an apple falls from a tree once, it must always fall from any height, for gravity is dependable, it doesn't go away. There is no other explanation for gravity the way there might be other explanations for what he and Bette had seen and experienced.

He spoke his thoughts aloud, "If it happens again and again, so that we can cross out other possibilities, we might be onto something. I'm not sure we should be saying what something is, beyond all doubt, just yet. I need to investigate more."

"I don't think that would be a good idea, Alan."

"Why? Because I might be hypnotized and have my own throat torn out? You've got a pretty good point. But I have other reasons to pursue this."

He moved his chair back. "Go ahead and eat your sandwich. This will take a while. And when I'm done, you may not like me very much anymore."

"That could never happen." She took a napkin from beside her plate and neatly layered it over her lap. "Nothing," she said, "could make me like you any less."

He thought about that for a moment before he began to laugh and she joined him. Nothing could make her like him less! That could be taken in two ways, one not so flattering. "I'm going to marry you one day," he blurted. "I really am."

She smiled enigmatically and lifted half her sandwich to her lips. "I don't do Houston," she said, before biting into the bread.

"Then maybe I'll learn to do Dallas."

"I was afraid you'd say that."

He drank from her milk, set the glass back into its wet ring on the tabletop, and prepared to tell her about Charles Upton and the strange covenant they'd made.

Outside, in the dark rectangle of window over the stove, neither Alan nor Bette noticed a figure pressing its face against the pane of glass. The face stared at them unblinkingly. No telling breath fogged the window, for no aspiration was taking place in the being's lungs. There was no heartbeat ticking in the chest of the beast that watched and listened just beyond the thin barrier, glaring at the couple.