LEGIONS OF THE DARK (VAMPIRE NATIONS CHRONICLES) (8 page)

"Mentor is on his way," her father said, leading her into the hall as Boyd and Daniel and their wives moved silently back into the living room. "There's more to this than the initial sense of power. There's also . . . danger."

She let them lead her back to the room, though she knew if she caught them by surprise, she could have shaken her parents off like pesky insects. She felt the strength in her arms rippling through her and imagined how easily she could heft cars and small buildings and blocks of stone.

In some ways she realized she was acting like someone hopped up on a narcotic. She'd seen kids at school act if as they were superhuman, as if they owned the planet. They were deluded, of course, and she knew she was not, but she was still behaving like a drug addict nearing euphoric frenzy. She must listen to her parents, her family. She must sit and wait for Mentor to tell her what she could and could not do. There were secrets that had not yet been revealed to her, that's what her mother was trying to say.

But it was going to be hard to do as she was told. It was going to take all her willpower to keep from running out of the house and throwing up her hands to the sky to thank heaven for her new life.

"Okay," she said, "Okay, I'll relax. I'll try, really."

She felt her mother's hand tense on her upper arm and knew that she was worried about her. She turned her attention to her father and found his mind also gnawing at worry like a termite on fresh wood.

"Not me," Eddie said at her back, where he trailed them down the hallway. "I'm not worried one little bit."

Dell smiled, and remembering, moved her tongue to her incisors to feel for them. Now she knew the blood was not drunk. It was not like food that had to go through the digestive system to be turned into energy. It went straight into her veins and arteries, straight into her heart and brain, renewing all the organs to their original healthy living states. It made her live again. It was the means to survival. And she would do anything for it. Anything.

~*~

Mentor used the door as a human would, though it was within his power to migrate through solid objects. He always forced himself to be as natural as the Naturals when possible. To understand their anxieties and problems, he had to have intimate knowledge of their lives and to do that, he must live and act as they did. There were times he lived as the Predators, too, using his abilities to their fullest, and now and again he lived as the Cravens, shutting himself up in the house, drawing the curtains, letting his mind die down to a weak signal. To be of service, he had to know intimately the inner workings of the different clans' emotional lives.

He did not bother to knock, knowing those inside would know he was there. He stepped across one of the Cravens lying at the foot of the door, head pillowed on outthrust arm, staring up at him with wide eyes. "You should get up and out of the way in order to help yourself," he said casually as he left that one behind.

Mentor's "patient," the vampire he had been summoned to help, was toward the back of the house in one of the last bedrooms. The vampire was a Craven named Dolan, and it was rumored Dolan was on a suicidal rampage. Any act of undue aggression, even one involving only the self, Mentor tried to stop. Unfortunately, Dolan meant to do harm to others of his kind before destroying himself. And that was not going to happen. It was against all moral law to destroy your own kind unless there was just cause.

Mentor stepped into the room and said to Dolan, "I've come to stop you."

Dolan was an old vampire, crouched in the corner, his back to the door. He had both arms over his head and was shivering as if he were cold. Mentor said, "Don't try to make me feel sorry for you. That's not going to work. What you're planning to do is against our law. I can't stop you from ending your life. But I will stop you from taking anyone with you. Do you understand?"

Dolan turned slowly to face Mentor. There was no telling how many lifetimes he had lived, but they were many. His face reflected a soul gouged with ruts and roads that made him look a thousand years old. Like Mentor, he had chosen an older male body to inhabit, but it was in his eyes that his true age showed.

He bared his teeth now to show Mentor he was willing to fight. Mentor said, "I will take you down if I have to. But listen to me, I would rather you talk this out."

"Why should I talk to you?" said Dolan. "You're only here to stop me from doing what I want to do. I think I would rather fight you and die in the trying. At least there might be some honor in that."

"And what would you know about honor?" asked Mentor. "Do you think it's honorable to wish to take others with you?"

"They all want to die anyway. I'd be doing them a favor. Why must you always interfere? Who gave you the right to intervene? You're not God Almighty."

"No, I'm not. But I've earned the right to intervene and you know that. Believe me, you're not taking any of the others in this house with you."

"Oh, good Christ! Have you seen them? What about the one by the door, did you see him? Do you really think he wants to live?"

"Maybe he doesn't want to live, but that's up to him, not you."

"Listen to me! Why aren't you listening, Mentor? Have you ever been a Craven? Do you know what it's like to be powerless and to live in the darkness forever? Have you ever begged for death?"

Mentor recalled the times when he'd gone into seclusion, living as a Craven, feeding on hopelessness. "We've all begged for death. But if we give it to ourselves, we pay with our souls."

"That's totally incomprehensible to me. I don't believe it. There is no punishment worse than what I've already suffered."

Mentor shrugged. "You may be right, but you won't find out until you're gone and then it's too late. I can't let you make that decision for others."

Dolan swooped from the floor, enraged and ready to do battle. It was only then that Mentor smelled smoke and saw a cloud of it coming from the corner where the old vampire had been stooping, his back to the room. He'd set a fire. He meant to burn the place down. He meant the fire to consume them all.

One second before Dolan reached his throat, Mentor stepped aside and then rushed forward to the corner. He waved his hand, concentrating mightily on the molecules in the room's air, and created a damp cloak of mist that put out the fire. He then turned swiftly and struck Dolan on the side of his head, knocking him to the floor. "If I have to," he said, "if you force me to it—I will have you put into chains. You'll never be free again. You know I speak the truth."

Dolan bellowed in frustration.

Mentor continued, "If you want to do away with yourself, that's fine with me. That's entirely up to you. But you will not, do you hear me, you will not take anyone else with you."

Dolan fell to his knees, head hanging. In a small voice he said, "You have to help me. Mentor, you have to help me. I can't go on this way."

Mentor checked the fire to be sure it was out before stepping close to his patient. "That's all you had to do," he said. "All you had to do was ask. Now stand up and come with me."

As he escorted Dolan out of the house, he noticed the Craven who had been on the floor was gone now, probably locked in his room, living out his fate with whatever strength he had left. Mentor sensed many more of the Cravens hiding in other rooms, cringing from the disturbance they'd sensed going on in the house. At least he had saved them from an untimely demise.

It was dark outside, so Dolan could be led back to Mentor's house, as the Craven could not bear sunlight. At home, Mentor would place Dolan into a specially built basement room where he could rest and be instructed on how to live out the rest of his life. If he set fire to himself when Mentor was gone, then at least something had been done to try to save him first.

Mentor did not save them all. In fact, he saved relatively few once they had decided to do away with themselves. But he was charged to have mercy. It was his job to deal with the despairing. It had never been promised that he would always triumph.

As he hustled the old vampire along the street, pools of iridescence shining through an early evening fog, the streetlights made the two of them appear to be a couple of old friends going home from work. If only it were so, thought Mentor. If only we were human again, friends out having a drink, and on our way home.

Mentor saw an alleycat dart across the sidewalk and behind a garbage can with a bulging lid. He felt its hunger and experienced a sense of kinship with it. "You don't have to confess to anything. You just have to talk about your feelings."

The tale began, haltingly at first, with long pauses. As they walked the silent street, Dolan shying from the beams of headlights from an occasional car, the story unfolded. It was not that different from others Mentor had heard, but nevertheless he paid strict attention. Dew fell from the fog and soaked their shoulders and gathered like silver jewels in their hair.

Dolan talked, he wept softly, and Mentor listened carefully without responding, guiding the old one closer and closer to safety. Near his home, Mentor heard the silent plea reach him from the Cambian family. Dell, the new vampire, had taken blood and was in a state of ecstasy. She was listening to her parents, staying put in her home, but they feared she might break free from them into the night.

Mentor hurried Dolan into the house, down into the basement, and asked him to hold out his wrists.

Dolan stared at the handcuffs made of solid steel. He laughed. "Do you really think they will hold me if I want to go? I possess more strength than it may appear."

Mentor slapped the cuffs on him anyway, fastening them tight. "Of course they can't hold you. But they might make you think before you fight your way out of them. I have to leave for a while. You'll be on your own for a few hours. It's up to you, Dolan. What happens now is up to your own conscience. But if you do free yourself, and if you return to that house where the others lie helpless, I swear I will be on you in a millisecond."

"I don't know how you do this. I don't know how you keep going year after year when there are so many of us who need you."

Mentor went up the stairs. At the landing before the door he said, "If I didn't do it, I'd be like you are now. I'd turn myself to ash." He heard the old vampire's low growl of a laugh as he shut the door behind him and locked it with dead bolts. He didn't think what he'd admitted to was a laughing matter. But laughter was better than tears, so he forgave his houseguest, moved to the front door, and left him behind in the darkness of solitude.

7

Dr. Alan Star had been working on Charles Upton's case for nearly a year. Upton's porphyria was unrelenting, taking the old man in one of the most horrible ways anyone could meet his end. The disease being quite rare, this was only the second case Alan had attended in his career as a specialist in blood diseases. The first one had been a woman in Birmingham, Alabama, where Alan had finished his residency. Maggie. She had been elderly like Upton, and finally untreatable, dying in the hospital while Alan sat by her side, watching and agonizing. Maggie of the bright eyes, dimming into stillness. Yet there had been no reproach there for him that he hadn't done all that he could.

Alan hated to lose a patient. All doctors were wretched when it happened, but Alan truly counted a loss as a personal failure. With all the modern drugs and technology at his disposal, he couldn't believe something hadn't been found yet to counteract the finality of many blood diseases. Yes, people died; it was to be expected. Some came to him as a last resort, already too far gone to save. But that didn't matter. As a blood specialist, when Alan couldn't change the course of a disease or at least alleviate the worst symptoms, he felt devastated. He knew he wasn't responsible—he always did everything he could to prevent a death. Yet the few losses he'd suffered haunted him. They were never far from his mind.

So when Charles Upton requested to see Alan at his penthouse, Alan found the time to make it. Perhaps it was best to talk to the old man and give him the bad news—that there was little that could be done now—in person, in his own home.

It surprised Alan when he was let into the extravagant apartment and ushered by a man in uniform into Upton's private bedroom. On the edge of the bed sat the old man in the last stages of his disease, but he was brimming with energy and excitement. He stood and greeted Alan, shaking his hand before resuming his place on the bed.

Most people had trouble even looking at Upton. The disease had deformed his face, caused hair to grow in tufts on the backs of his hands and in spots on his upper arms, and then there were the open sores covered by bandages. Upton was so swathed with white wrappings that he looked like a torn-up accident victim.