LEGIONS OF THE DARK (VAMPIRE NATIONS CHRONICLES) (34 page)

"Look up," Mentor instructed.

Upton looked beyond the stands of bare limbs at the night sky and the full red moon. It began to melt and drip. "Eiiii!"

"You are in the place of the Predator Maker. He is coming for you. Shall we flee? Do you want to stay and wait for him, Mr. Upton? It's up to you. There are other choices, less violent choices."

Upton was immobile, his hand clutched around Mentor's hand. He saw the thing coming now. It bore down on them from the woods, rushing through the trees with a long wailing cry. It was as large as the world. It was taller than trees, greater than the bloody moon. It blocked out the stars and the heavens above. Upton could not move. He could feel its power. He knew he wanted it. He wanted this thing to invade him, to take him to its bosom and whisk him to its home.

"I urge you to flee," Mentor said, gently prying Upton's hand loose so that he could step back. "If you stay, you will be his."

The beast was nearly upon them. It was dressed in layers of black that were more night than cloth. A hood covered its head and from beneath it eyes as large as fists shone yellow bright. Below the eyes all that could be seen were white, glistening teeth, teeth as sharp as razors, rows and rows of them that went back into the horrid head to a pit of darkness.

Upton fell back and threw out his arms. "Go ahead and take me!" he screamed. "I am yours!"

Mentor stood by silently, his head bowed. He would not watch while the Predator took the old man and made him. He had never been able to watch. It had happened to him when he'd first died and he could not watch it when others invited the Predator into their souls.

When it was done—the gurgling and frightful moans, the rattles of death and the susurration of last breath—Mentor watched the corpse for new life. The old man's eyes opened but a slit and within them was a wicked glint. From out of their depths Mentor saw the new hunger.

"Come along," Mentor said. "It's over. It's time to rejoin the world."

The old man opened his eyes in the body on the floor of the abandoned house. Light from the lantern reflected off his eyeballs, causing them to appear milky white. He sat up stiffly, ran his hands up each arm, down each leg, over his face. Then the fingers of his right hand slipped into his mouth and he felt of his teeth, his tongue, the roof of his mouth. He removed his fingers and looked at Mentor. His voice was changed, stronger and fearless. "Glory be, I am like you," he said.

"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."

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.