SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (50 page)

The two youths began to go out after the games, visiting the local fast food joints where other high school kids hung out until midnight. Malachi invited Alex over to ride horses, and sometimes he took him up on the offer of fishing trips. They sat for hours, fishing rods dangling from their hands into the wild Trinity River that was not far from their homes. Sometimes they filled coolers full of catfish and climbed a bluff to the pier jutting out over the river where a cleaning station had been set up. They took turns having their mothers fry the catfish fillets, eating whole platefuls, laughing easily and talking about school and football and girls.

Alex wanted to be a pediatrician. He wanted to help kids. He came from a large family of seven siblings. Being the eldest, he'd been called upon to help out with the little ones. He had an affinity for his brothers and sisters that flowed over into the wider world of all children. Malachi had seen him with his family and grinned at his childlike joy as he took a younger brother on his back for a horsey ride, or as he pushed his sisters in a tire swing in the yard. He saw his gentleness as he wiped a young brother's face free of grime or tied the bow at the back of a little sister's dress. His element was childhood. He became as innocent as his younger charges when around them. He hadn't any of the aggression Malachi had seen in him when playing football.

"Alex, I think all those kids would get on my nerves. How do you stand it?"

Alex, tall as Malachi, and even heavier, grinned showing large square teeth and the tip of a pink tongue. He looked like a country oaf in his oversize coveralls and big lace-up boots, but that impression was deceptive. Behind his round brown eyes lay a first-class brain. He was an honor student and had already won a scholarship to Baylor College of Medicine. He'd make a fine doctor.

"You're just an only child," he said to Malachi. "That's your problem. It spoils you, makes you think you're the center of the world." To make sure Malachi didn't think he was being too critical, Alex banged Malachi on his arm with a balled-up fist. "Brat," he said.

Malachi banged him back and laughed. "Don't call me spoiled. You're the brat, not me."

"Hey now, I didn't put the Mountain Dew and pickles in the water bucket." Alex referred to their last game of the season when the championship was on the line. After a narrow win, a bucket that should have held ice water was dumped over the coach. Malachi had earlier poured twenty cans of Mountain Dew into the container of ice and added fifteen jars of sweet gherkins. The coach, expecting his crew to douse him with ice water, got a surprise when the Mountain Dew spilled over his head and the pickles cascaded around his shoulders. He hopped around sputtering and licking his lips.

Malachi just about laughed his ass off. Alex stood aside, pointing at his friend, until the whole team jumped him before Coach could see who was being accused.

"You've got to admit, the Dew and pickles were a stroke of genius," Malachi said.

"You know Coach hates that stuff. He's a Dr. Pepper man."

They laughed easily together. It was always that way. Alex was like a brother. He was a rock, always there on the field when Malachi needed him for protection. He was Malachi's excuse when Malachi forgot the time and was late on a date. "He was at my house," Alex lied easily to Malachi's parents. "We were playing a computer game and forgot how late it was."

Now they were going separate ways and that saddened Malachi. Alex was working two jobs during the summer, saving for college. From early morning until early afternoon he worked as a clerk at Wal-Mart. After washing up and gulping a quick meal at home, he waited tables at Sholinger's Restaurant until it closed at eleven. They hardly got together anymore for fishing or horsing around. Alex told Malachi he was making a mistake by not applying to the better colleges, where he'd be admitted easily. But Alex didn't know Malachi really hadn't a clue about his future. He had no all-abiding passion the way Alex did. He didn't know what he should do with his life. Everything appealed to him, but nothing gripped him to the point he wanted to pursue it. He thought he could farm or ranch and never go to college at all and it would be perfectly all right with him, though he knew his parents had higher ambitions for him.

His mother liked Alex a great deal and thought he was a good influence on her dreamy son. "Why don't you go to medical school like Alex?" she asked. "Or what about veterinary medicine, like your father? You need something, Malachi. You can't just drift."

Well, he didn't know about that. Why couldn't he drift? Was drifting a sin and would he be punished for it? He couldn't help it if he had no focus. He liked football, but not enough to turn pro even though a scout had quietly offered him a starting spot on the new Houston Texans team. He loved books and reading, like his mother, but he hadn't any ambition to teach or write or become a librarian like his mom. Mostly, he loved riding horses, helping his father with their growing cattle herd, and being out in the open, feeling the changing seasons on his skin and in the roots of his hair and in the depths of his soul. What kind of degree did he need in order to do that, he wondered? Where was the money in it, unless he tried ranching? He teetered on the edge of feeling like a bum.

To please his parents, he took up the many college catalogs he'd brought home from the counselor's office, and began to study them in a half hearted way. He was late. He should have already made up his mind about where to go and what to do years before graduation, but before then he just couldn't manage to get excited about it.

Danielle never gave him grief about his lack of direction. They'd been friends since elementary school, and he was more serious about her than he found comfortable to talk about to anyone—even Alex. And he certainly wasn't ready for his parents to meet Danielle, though he knew he should bring her home soon.

Danielle Orlena, a Mexican-American, with parents who had both migrated to Texas from Mexico, was a small, dark girl with the silkiest black hair and sweetest smile this side of the Pecos River. She was hardly five feet three inches tall and did not weigh more than a hundred pounds. She possessed a tremendous sense of true justice, always championing the underdog, the poor, and the outcast.

When he was ten he had witnessed her in a school yard brawl during recess. She rushed in to defend a smaller girl from bullies, rescuing her and facing down the cruel attackers. Malachi stood nearby in a group of boys, watching, and he'd admired the plucky little Mexican girl for her courage. She was as fierce as a tiger, wading in against three larger girls who had their victim pinned to the ground, rubbing dirt on her face.

As she'd helped the smaller child to her feet and began to lead her to the bathroom to wash her face, Malachi broke from the boys and fell in beside them. "That was great," he said, gesturing, "what you did."

Danielle spared him a glance to see if he was mocking her. When she realized he was sincere, she smiled a little, and his boy heart did a triple pitty-pat that made him stumble over his own feet.

After that, he watched and admired her from a distance in grade school, and by junior high had fallen into puppy love. She was smart, pretty, and dignified. By high school he could think of no one but Danielle.

Now that they'd both graduated, his thoughts had turned to some kind of future with her—he couldn't imagine one without her in the picture. But when should they become an official couple? Danielle knew and accepted his slow resolve, her patience another trait he found attractive. She often said, "We're young, Malachi. We need to take our time. I've seen what happens when people get in a hurry and make mistakes."

She referred to classmates who, because of early pregnancies or just from high passion, made commitments before they'd really had time to grow up and experience life. Though both their parents had married young, she wasn't sure youthful relationships were right for everyone. He agreed, though if he were truthful, he'd have to say he was as crazy about Danielle as a man could be about a woman. For the past year they had been having sexual relations, something that had brought them extremely close together.

He was devoted to her, utterly, even if he couldn't fully express that devotion.

Everyone in school saw Malachi and Danielle as a couple, but in every other area Malachi was considered a loner—a quiet, reserved young man, though not withdrawn. He did have Alex as a friend, after all. Others thought Malachi serious, reflective, a perfect gentleman who loved his parents, stayed out of trouble, minded his own business, and was destined for a bright future.

Soon after his eighteenth birthday, when the world had just opened to him with a million opportunities that he recognized, but did not know how to acquire, it all came tumbling down.

For months he had been having dreams that interfered with his waking life. The dreams were essentially the same, the only difference being the intensity of each. In the dreams a wolf came to him beneath a silver moon. It had never tried to lure him away from his house with sleepwalking again, but it still came prowling through his sleep like the predator it was.

"Malachi, have you changed yet?" the wolf asked in the first dream he'd had in many years.

Malachi stood silently, fear a freezing cold hand around his neck. He remembered this place, the silver moon, and the wolf. He'd dreamed of it all before in some dim past when he was a child. The wolf was a magician, changing to vampire and back to wolf at will. It drew him from his bed that long-ago night, intent on letting him be a snack for one of its voracious minions.

"You're a man now. What are your plans?" the wolf asked.

"I . . . I don't know what you mean. I don't have any plans."

"I left you alone for years. I really wasn't going to do you harm the night you walked into the woods. Your mother promised you'd never threaten us, so that was just a test. Now I've come to find out if you are the one from prophecy. If you are, the promise means nothing to either of us."

"Threaten who? What prophecy?"

"It was prophesied a dhampir would be born who would turn on Predators. All of us. Will you? Are you my future killer?"

"I . . . I . . ." Malachi glanced around. He wondered how he could get out of the nightmare. He tried to wake himself, but couldn't. He concentrated, trying to change the dream if he couldn't leave it. But no matter what he tried, the dry, open plain was as real as life, and he was trapped in it, at least for now. He straightened his shoulders.

"Who are you?" he asked, finding a steely center in his being.

The wolf transformed into a man, evolving from four feet to two. The man was a vampire, a large, menacing beast now revealing tremendous fangs. Malachi believed he made himself look that way, manipulating the dream however he wished. In reality he was probably a vampire trapped in a small human body. However, if he merely wanted to scare Malachi in the dream world, he was doing a good job.

"I asked your name," Malachi repeated.

"My name is none of your affair," the vampire said. "I want to know your intentions. I want to know your plans."

"I have no plans. I don't even know what you mean. I'm . . . I'm not your enemy."

The vampire nodded as he contemplated Malachi, looking him up and down from head to feet: "This may be the truth. If it is, I warn you not to take any interest in the world of your mother. If you disobey me, I will return and not in dream. Do you understand?"

Malachi woke from these dreams that came night after night sweating and trembling, the reality of the dream world so strong it seeped over into the reality of his room. For moments after waking he imagined the silver moon was in the corner of his room, shining brilliantly down on his bed. He saw his bed standing in the center of a sandy stretch of ground, the wall at his back as transparent as smoke. Only gradually did the dream world recede, leaving him sitting up in bed at home, eyes wide with anxiety.

"Jesus," he whispered, wiping his brow.

He lay down. He punched the pillow beneath his head, trying to relax. Once asleep again, either the same dream would repeat itself or another one played out in his mind. In this one there was a vampire in chains, an old man skinny of frame, with a twisted mouth and evil intent in his gaze. This vampire was being held somewhere against his will, but just as Malachi tried to decipher why he was watching the old vampire in a dark cell, the scene changed and suddenly, with no transition at all, the vampire was free and on the run.

In the dream Malachi followed him, invisibly pulled along by a thread of consciousness. He was an unwilling spectator, watching as the old vampire killed his way through a dozen victims. After the bloodshed, the vampire went into a wilderness area dominated by high stone cliffs. From there he called Predators to him from all over the world. He sent out a call to the renegades, the loners and misfits, the most desperate and dangerous of the entire vampire nations.

Malachi thought he knew what the dream meant. If he were to believe it, there was going to be an uprising and resultant war. Mortal man hung in the balance. If vampires fought, and it got out of hand, men would die.

On waking a second time, Malachi shook uncontrollably and his nerve endings tingled as if he'd just come from an electric bath. He was unable to move for long minutes while the wisps of nightmare were burned away in the morning light of reality.

He had not spoken of these recurring dreams to anyone, not even to Danielle. As much as he loved Danielle, how could he ever tell her about the supernatural nature of his mother and the talents he'd inherited from her? How could he ever admit there were real vampires, for Pete's sake? In the first place, she wouldn't believe him, and in the second, if she did finally believe, what if the whole notion scared her off? He just couldn't chance losing her.

His mother suspected something was wrong, but waited for him to talk about his troubles. She had long ago promised she would not poke around in his mind, whether he was awake or asleep. She would grant him the privacy all humans expected as a right. Some mornings he almost spoke of the nightmares. He would be sitting at the table with his mother, and she would be carefully watching him, as if waiting. But each time he tried to speak, his tongue knotted and his throat tightened.