SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (59 page)

Now Balthazar believed that dead old seer, murdered by a nobleman soon after writing the scroll, had spoken to him from the other side of death. He had been granted a vision of the future.

It had definitely been Malachi. He was the one.

Balthazar went to the child in dreams and tested him. He found no malice toward vampires, so he did not act against the boy. Could he be wrong about him? When the boy's mother, Dell, came into the dreamworld and begged for mercy, making a promise to him, Balthazar decided to wait. He might be wrong. He could be wrong. He had once had a mother, too. He understood how evil it would be to steal away the life of a child if that child was innocent.

For years he monitored the boy and still never found the murderous intent he expected to find. It was all so curious. If Malachi was the villain from his vision, why could Balthazar find no indication in the child's heart? Once he'd even traveled halfway across the world and lured the child from his bed and into the woods. He thought he'd test him in person, in reality. If he found the evil he expected, he'd dispatch the boy right then. But the boy stood up to him. Both in dream and in reality. He was scared, he was terrified, actually, but he was brave and it was his bravery, finally, that convinced Balthazar to wait. Wait just a while longer. He left the woods. He let the child return to his mother.

It went on this way for years, his checking on the boy and then withdrawing. But the closer the boy came to adulthood, the more Balthazar believed he was a threat. For one thing, Malachi was stronger than other dhampirs. His supernatural inheritance from his mother surpassed what any dhampir had ever been granted. Malachi was almost a god. He was as impervious to wounds as any advanced Predator. He was as fleet as the fastest vampire.

His bodily strength was immense, his intelligence superior, his resolve unshakable. Surely only the best dhampir would be the chosen one.

It had to be him.

Balthazar castigated himself for having waited. It would have been simple to dispatch a child. Out of sentimentality, he'd waited, and now the dhampir had grown in ability to the point he would be hard to kill.

As a lone Predator, Balthazar thought he hadn't a chance of success. Mentor, who felt no fear of Malachi, knew about Balthazar's obsession with the dhampir. Mentor knew where Balthazar lived. He knew his preferred hunting grounds on the Canary Islands and the coast of Africa.

Over the years, then, Balthazar began to put a plan into play merely for his own protection. He gathered others to him, those lone vampires like him who refused to come into the natural world and live alongside man. If he had his own sect, Mentor and the others would be loath to attack him.

His first follower was a female Predator he'd found riding one of the camels among the tourists on Lanzarote. From deep in his cave he sensed her presence above him on the island and came out to see her. A vampire passing as a tourist. Too bizarre.

He hid behind volcanic outcroppings and watched from a distance, sending her a mental invitation to join him after the tour.

Her name was Sereny and she was from Italy. She'd been traveling many months disguised as a tourist, learning of the world out of boredom and some despair. She'd been alone a long time, he discovered when they met in his chamber and talked. She was not an extremely old vampire, but had gotten sick in her thirty-fifth year, the only one of her mortal family who had been so afflicted. She'd run away from them, afraid she'd be tempted to make them like her.

She had left behind a husband of eighteen years and four children she adored. Within twenty years of her disappearance her husband had died and in another thirty years, her children were dead, too. Bereft, she began to migrate from country to country, walking with tourists, living like humankind. Except at night when she hunted and fed. She was emotionally unattached and spent long hours every night contemplating suicide.

Now and then, she confessed, she stalked children. Not to kill them, but to kidnap them. She wanted her family back. She hadn't finished her mothering. She missed her past terribly.

"What do you do with kidnapped children?" Balthazar asked, puzzled. "Are they human children?"

She nodded, then continued speaking in her low, husky voice, "Human. Little children who weren't afraid of me. I'd take them away and keep them in a house outside of the cities where I found them. I'd . . . care for them." She sounded ashamed. "When they began to beg for their real mothers, I'd begin to feel so guilty I'd take them home again."

"How often have you done this?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Five times. Six. I never hurt them, not a bit. I fed them good food and cleaned them and played games."

"Then you took them home."

"Yes."

She told Balthazar all this, lounging on one of his bone sofas covered with thick brocade cushions and silken pillows. She was not at all astonished by his lair. It was as if nothing could touch her anymore, except perhaps children; nothing was important enough except playing at motherhood to lift her from the depths of her despair.

Balthazar commiserated with her, presenting an understanding, fatherly figure. She was but a half century old as a vampire and already lost unless someone rescued her. As she spoke in her low, husky voice, he rose from his chair and approached her. He reached out slowly, cupping her chin and lower face in his hand. He raised her face to his and said softly, "How long has it been since a man loved you?" When he'd said that, he didn't know what possessed him, what made him want her so badly.

Tears sprang to her eyes and she blinked at the red film of blood blinding her. He leaned down and kissed her lips. He kissed her cheeks, each in turn, ran his tongue along her cheeks, tasting the blood tears and finding them precious as rubies. He moved his kisses to an earlobe and down to her neck. He felt her body shiver and although he had come to her with selfish intent, hoping to seduce her to keep her with him, he suddenly wanted her to love him in return. He wanted her at his side forever. Without her, eternal life would truly be longer than he could ever hope to manage. No one had ever affected him this way.

He took her into his arms and carried her to his bed, placing her carefully on the soft goosedown mattress and stacked pillows. She wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered into his ear about how long it had been since she'd turned vampire and since her husband had touched her.

Balthazar ran his hands over her breasts and down her slim ribcage to her waist. He found her extremely exciting. Though approaching middle age when she changed, she was as svelte and luscious as a girl. Her flesh was firm and responsive to his touch. She arched her hips and he pressed down on her, burying his face in the crevice of her neck. She smelled of olive flowers and the bark of old trees. He wanted to drown himself in her.

He twined his hands now in her long dark hair and kissed her hard, taking her tongue into his mouth. They fed from one another and, finally, when their blood lust was satiated, they mated in an animal frenzy that would have been revolting to a human observer.

Sereny became his lover and faithful companion. She came to believe with him that Malachi was the dhampir prophesied by the seer as the one who would go against their kind and bring ruin to the Predators. With Sereny's help, Balthazar went into Spain, looking for other disgruntled or lonely vampires who would join them in the Cueva Verdes on Lanzarote. They found a few lost souls in the Azores, more on the African continent, and still more in Sereny's Italian homeland.

For fifteen years Balthazar and Sereny worked ceaselessly to gather a group large enough to implement their plans. Sereny did not stalk children during this time, nor did she speak of wanting to. He kept her as busy as possible, sending her out to recruit. It was very slow going and some nights Balthazar despaired, crying out with his arms flung heavenward.

Sereny always soothed him, taking him into her arms and placing his head upon her breast. "Listen to me," she would whisper. "After the dhampir is dead, we'll convince other Predators they should break way from the clans they belong to and join with us. We're all born into the unnatural world. We have no need for secrets and hiding. Let the mortals know they're just food for superior beings. Food for gods! Let the world belong to the vampire, not the mortal. Let the world end in death and blood, Balthazar. Let it die away in darkness."

Now, as the caves filled with his followers, Balthazar began to send emissaries out to kill the dangerous dhampir who would threaten all their futures. He had walked in the young man's dreams and was sure he was the one.

When, one by one, his minions failed their missions and never came back to the caves, never answering his telepathic queries, Balthazar raged how the prophecy was already coming true. No one could kill the boy. Why couldn't they kill him?

Sereny suggested he send out their people in pairs. If that didn't work, send them out by the dozen, send whole murderous groups. Surely a half-vampire could not defeat a dozen true vampires?

Balthazar neglected to tell her what he knew about this particular dhampir. How he was superior to other dhampirs. How it was going to be much harder to kill him than it might have if he hadn't waited so long.

While Balthazar struggled with all the politics of dealing with the hundreds of vampires he'd gathered, keeping them happy as they built lairs inside the deep caverns, he heard from a new follower about a very great vampire Predator who called himself Charlie. A totally simplistic and stupid name, it seemed to Balthazar, but then not every vampire wanted a powerful name.

Like Balthazar, this Charlie was gathering together the loners, the outcasts, and the eccentrics. Not only did Balthazar feel these Predators belonged to him, but it was said Charlie wanted to do the same thing Balthazar hoped to accomplish. He wasn't interested in the dhampir, Malachi, but he thought the Predators should disentangle themselves from the Naturals and Cravens, and take over the mortal world.

"Ask him to come here," Sereny advised. "We don't want more opposition, do we? Invite him to join us. Together, we'll be indomitable. His force combined with ours will be enough to begin the war. We won't have to wait any longer."

Balthazar thought it over. He shut himself away in a small dark tunnel where he retreated when he couldn't take contact with his followers any longer. He pulled a stone over the opening, lifting it as if it were a feather. All light was extinguished and the dark was deeper than any night.

After so many years of solitude he had been having a difficult time with all the voices and personalities vying for his attention. He needed to hide from his followers more and more often, shutting himself away in the tiny tunnel. He sat on the cold earth, knees up, his arms wrapped around them, and his head down.

Sereny was right, he finally admitted to himself. Charlie, whoever the hell he was, wasn't a threat. Charlie was a godsend. Together they could effect the change among the vampire clans that should have come long before now. All he had to do was convince him to join forces. And why wouldn't he?

Charlie was said to live in Australia's Blue Mountains. Balthazar would send Sereny to ask him for a parley on Lanzarote. He would sit him upon his most elegant bone-encrusted throne and talk reasonably of how together they could bring about the new order.

And if he refused, Balthazar would kill him.

It was as simple as that.

~*~

Mentor sat on Ross' patio in a violent green-and-purple-flowered lounge chair that would have given him a raging headache had he been mortal. "This is an extremely ugly patio set," he said. "Even your pool looks psychedelic with all those zigzag blue stripes painted on the bottom. Who's your decorator? For that matter, has you architect been prosecuted for lack of taste yet?"

"Did you come here to insult or consult?"

"All right. Let's get to it. Upton's still free. No one's talking. I can't find anything out about where he's gone.”

“He'll surface."

"It might be too late when he does. We need to find him, Ross."

"Screw him."

"There's no call for that kind of talk. You know I don't like it."

"Screw you."

Mentor sighed. “Balthazar's got more than four hundred Predators in those caves of his now."

"Good for him. Do they all sleep on those monstrous bone beds?"

"What would it take to arouse you from this sick stupor, Ross?"

"I'm just relaxed."

"If you were any more relaxed, I'd have to get a shovel and cover you with dirt. I think you've been spending too much time opening up clinics and running corporations. You act like the chief of a reservation, everything you see, you own."

"What do you want me to do?"

Rather than answer him, Mentor said, "Balthazar ran Malachi off by sending so many assassins. We don't need innocent blood shed."

"I know that. The kid skedaddled. But he should have. Balthazar's insane."

"Certainly he's insane, but now he's caused trouble outside of his little island. He's got that kid on the run. Malachi's parents are frantic."

"You don't know where the boy went either? You're losing it, Mentor. I always thought you would one day."

"I know where he is. I'm keeping a watch on him as often as I can. That's not the point."

"What is the point, then?"

"The point is Malachi's running away isn't going to stop Balthazar."

"Then put Balthazar out of his misery."

"You forget he has a clan of his own now."

Ross raised his sunglasses and peered at Mentor perching uncomfortably on the lounge chair. "You can't handle that?"

"Why don't you quit being so impossible?"

"You need help, is that it?"

Mentor hung his hands between his knees and stared at his feet. "There's something else."

"What's that?"

"My sources tell me Balthazar's interested in joining with Upton."

"Screw that."

"Come on, Ross, cut it out. Be serious for once in your life. Don't you see where this is heading?"