SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (60 page)

"War. That's where it's headed."

"We can't have war," Mentor said carefully.

Ross sat up, ripping his sunglasses off his face. The muscles along his cheekbones tightened and his lips thinned as he grimaced in sudden fury. "Why not? Because some ancient, some ancestor of us all decreed it? Who was that, Mentor, can you tell me? Was it Moses, for Christ's sake? How far back were the rules made? How many hundreds or thousands of years have we mindlessly followed all the rules? Don't you know we're entering a whole new age? The world changes from day to day faster than it used to change in a twenty-year span. Time's speeding up. If Balthazar or Upton or both of them together bring war, then we'll go to war. That's all there is to it, Mentor. Face it, this is no longer the Old Days. Some of the Predators are as young in vampire years as small children. There are only a few of us as old as you and me. The mutation's spreading. There're more and more of us. How long did you think we could control it; how long could we hide out?"

"As long as we have to."

"No." Ross stood and threw the towel off his shoulders. He stood at the poolside in swimming trunks, his back to Mentor. In the bright sun he looked like a bronze god. He stood six feet six inches, his body as strong and toned as a professional athlete's. He wore his hair long to his shoulders. An errant breeze blew it away from his neck like a black sail. "No, we can't control it anymore, Mentor. Balthazar is only the beginning, Upton just a symptom. This has been coming for a long time. It's a miracle it never happened before now. The clans are too loose and disorganized. There are too many of us. A lot of Indians and not enough chiefs, as you put it. If it takes war, then . . . that's what it takes."

He turned to glare at Mentor. He said, "You'll have to lead us. You need to prepare. I don't think you can stop this. All you can do is get ready."

"Christ." Mentor again looked down and now he shut his eyes.

"Screw him and the cloud he rode in on," Ross said and then he laughed. "What'd he ever do for us?" He turned and plunged into the pool.

Mentor stood and without looking at his host in the water, went through the house and let himself out the front door. Ross had an ugly mouth lately. He'd been watching too many gangster movies. And he was getting as moody and tense as everyone else Mentor had to deal with these days.

But Ross was probably right.

War was inevitable. The strange, indestructible tarot cards had predicted it. Upton's escape had signaled it. If someone didn't stop him, Balthazar would initiate it.

Was Ross right? Was it all getting out of hand? Were things changing so that the old rules didn't apply anymore?

Mentor walked down the long empty highway away from Ross' ranch house and turned his attention to Malachi. He was just an old man out for a walk. When people passed in their cars and SUVs and trucks, they waved to him and he waved back. He kept one wavelength open just for the boy, but he couldn't always monitor it. His intelligence had a boundary, his abilities a stopping point.

Dell had made him promise to watch over Malachi. He was her only child, probably the only one she'd ever have. It would tear her apart to lose him.

Mentor no more believed in the old prophecy that a dhampir would come to destroy the Predators than he believed there was a man in the moon. But if Balthazar and all his clan believed it, that's all it would take to make prophecy reality.

And isn't that how it usually worked, he asked himself? Someone predicts the future. And someone else makes sure that particular future comes to pass.

He touched Malachi's mind lightly and knew he was all right for now. Soon he wouldn't be. Balthazar would find him, just as Mentor had. Then all hell would break loose and Mentor knew he'd have to get there to protect the boy.

Would it precipitate war? Would Predators rise up and fight one another because of his decision to protect an innocent dhampir from a mad and obsessed Balthazar?

He didn't want that. He dreaded it. He was too old in both mortal body and vampire years to withstand the pain and blood of extended battle. Every day he remembered how old the body he inhabited was. He should find another any day now. He didn't want to find himself suddenly trapped in a dying body, as Joseph had in the monastery.

He wished, hoped, and prayed an upheaval would not come. But if it did, if it couldn't be prevented, then as Ross would say in his vernacular tongue: To hell with it.

Bring it on.

~*~

Malachi stayed only days in Austin. The western plains called, and he answered by packing his small bag and leaving the rooming house where he'd hidden himself. None of the assassin vampires had come for him since he'd left home. Perhaps they'd given up. He hoped so.

He took a bus to El Paso, a city with a true Old West feel to it. It sat on the edge of Texas and bordered Mexico. At night the lights of the city stretched out like a sparkling necklace of lights lying at the foot of dark mountains. Once there he bought an old Yamaha motorcycle with dents in the gas tank and black clotted grease along its silver chain. He cleaned it up, tinkered with the old engine, and got it in running order. He drove north out of the city, following a highway that used to be the main artery west until super freeways were built. Now travelers rarely used it.

He could see for miles in the empty distance, the sunlight ricocheting off flinty stones embedded in dry mountainsides. Miles of speckled and patched tarmac rolled beneath the bike's tires. It seemed this was the end of the Earth, all human habitation having fled these dry, hot, sandy flats between distant mountains. If Malachi squinted as he drove, he was able to create mirages of water standing on the road ahead.

In his imagination he could see history unfold across this desolate land. As he raced his noisy little motorcycle down the long road, he could see Plains Indians riding bareback on their ponies, dressed in breechcloths of animal hide, feathered arrows hoisted on their backs. He could see campfires, cattle drives, and wagon trains desperate to cross the valley floors to be free of the brooding bald mountains surrounding them.

This western land was indeed wild and lonely, the vegetation sparse, and the sun scorching. As inhospitable as it was, Malachi came to like it very much. It possessed a wild natural beauty that made him feel free. The farther he drove, the more he became part of the landscape of desert and sky. He might have been a tumbleweed rolling down the highway, lost in the clear golden light.

One of the reasons he liked it so much was because the landscape was so completely different from his ranch in Southeast Texas. There were no trees here, when they were abundant at home. There were no rivers or streams, when at home he couldn't ride a mile on his horse before coming upon water. Except for the dry mountains, there was nothing here to relieve the gaze from the long stretches of desert. He thought it amazing how Texas possessed so many varied landscapes, from desert to forest, from seashore to hill country.

A dot in the distance grew as Malachi raced toward it. The closer he got, the more curious he became. When close enough, he realized it was a house or a store with a large billboard. As he closed in, he could read the billboard above the ramshackle building, which he saw now was indeed a store or service station. Faded red lettering announced a rattlesnake farm. HOWARD'S RATTLESNAKE HAVEN, it read.

SEE THE DEADLIEST SNAKES ON EARTH.

RATTLESNAKE

SANDWICHES & DRIED RATTLERS FOR SALE.

Malachi smiled as he slowed the bike. Someone had a great sense of humor. Who would want to buy both a snake sandwich and a rattler as a souvenir all in the same place? Or in any place, for that matter?

In front of the building stood one ancient gas pump that appeared to still work. It had a red insignia of wings on a clear upper tank, the bottom being faded white paint spotted with rust. Malachi stopped beside it and pushed down the kickstand on the bike. Before he could lift the gas pump handle, an old man in worn, dusty overalls came from the shadowed porch and approached him.

"Howdy," he called, smiling like a fool. "You're lucky to find us. Not another gas station for a hundred miles any direction."

"Then I really am lucky," Malachi said. "I was nearing empty."

As Malachi pumped the gas, the old man leaned on the pump watching. "We've got cold soda pop inside," he said. "Only a quarter a can. I get cases of off-brands in the Wal-Mart when I go to El Paso."

"That sounds fine to me." Malachi replaced the pump handle and screwed on the gas cap. "What about a place to wash up?"

"Oh, we got that, too. Running water and everything." The old man laughed as he sauntered back to the deep porch and a screen door there. He paused on the first step and Malachi stopped at his back, waiting to enter the little store.

"Dottie, you and Jeremy come on out," the old man called to his right.

Malachi looked and saw the flash of a little girl's blue dress before it disappeared behind the comer of the store.

"Dottie? Jeremy? You hear me now. We got a customer. Y'all come on out and show some manners."

Dottie was a child of nine or ten, thin, barefoot, wearing a blue dress made of some kind of shiny material. She looked like a little princess who had forgotten her slippers, for her feet were bare and dusty. Her hair was brushed and shining like spun gold as it cascaded around her face in thick curls. Her face was made up with pink lipstick, rouge on her cheeks like round red moons, and even mascara on her long lashes. A silver purse dangled from her arm. Behind her a boy appeared looking over her shoulder. He was the same age and wore a white T-shirt and overalls. He, too, was barefoot.

The two children came up another set of steps at the end of the porch, keeping their gazes down.

"Dottie, Jeremy, say hello to the nice young man. What's your name, son?"

"Malachi."

"Say hi to Malachi. See how it rhymes, hey? Say hi to Malachi."

"Hi," the little girl said shyly.

"Hi," said the little boy.

"This sweet little gal and this big boy are my grandbabies. She's Dottie, he's Jeremy, and I'm Howard Clemmons. Come on in with us, kids. We're going to have a soda pop."

The children fell into line behind Malachi as they went through the screen door.

Inside more surprises waited. The darkness was broken by long cords holding tin-shaded lamps dangling from an open-beamed ceiling. Along one side of the big open room loomed a waist-high glass case. Inside were shadowy objects that drew Malachi to them. He put his hands on the glass countertop and leaned over, looking down inside at boxes of rattlesnake tails lying on squares of cotton. Farther down the case he saw carefully constructed rattlesnake skeletons held by steel pins attached to pieces of driftwood.

"I got the live ones back there." Howard pointed to the back of the room.

"Thanks, but I like to steer clear of rattlesnakes. We had them around our ranch every spring. I don't much like them."

"Not like them? Why, the rattlesnake's the King of Texas, don't you know that? They been here longer than the Apache. They're God's only creature really equipped to live in the desert. We're just strangers here. The rattlers, now, they're the ones own the land."

"I can't dispute that."

"They sing."

Malachi turned around to the little girl who had spoken. He wasn't sure he'd understood her, she spoke so low. "What?"

"They sing. The rattlesnakes."

The old man said, "She means when they rattle their tails. It sounds like a song."

Malachi shook his head. What a weird family. Singing rattlesnakes. Oh, man. But what did he expect to find out here in the middle of a desert? The old man and little kids were so isolated they probably made up stories for one another just to stay sane.

"Uh, how much do I owe you for the gas?"

"Here, have a cold soda pop first. We don't get many travelers. You're not in a hurry, are you?"

Malachi didn't know how it happened, but after sharing Cokes with the old man and the children, the four of them sitting around a square table covered with slick red oilcloth, the gloom of the shadowed store drying his sweat, he started talking about where he'd come from. East Texas was like a foreign country when compared to West Texas. The old man had never been east of El Paso. East Texas piney woods was like a fable to him. Trees and whole forests growing in Texas sounded like a lie God made up to entice folks away from the west, he told Malachi.

"Not only have I never been across Texas, but I ain't been any farther west neither. I hear there's rain forests up in Washington State and streams so clear you can reach out and touch fat, sassy bass in Colorado, but all I know is my place here. That's why it suits me. That's why the King Rattlers let me stay. I was born and raised and guess I'll die and get buried right out back behind the store when my time comes."

"You can't ever die," Jeremy said, his face serious as a car wreck.

"Oh, no, uh-uh, not for a long, long time. Don't you fret about that, boy."

"What happened to their folks?" Malachi asked, chugging down the cold Coke.

"Their momma was my girl, Sherry Ann. She left here with a Marine who came one day for gas, just like you. Sherry Ann had been telling me she was going with the first available looker stopped in. She wasn't lying. Bill—that was his name—Bill gave her a smile and a wink and off she went, everything she owned already packed in her ma's old suitcase. She didn't come back until over a year later, tiny little Dottie and Jeremy in her arms. They're twins." The old man smiled indulgently at his grandchildren. "Dottie's five minutes older, aren't you, Sugar?" He waited for the little girl to smile and nod before he continued. "Not long after Sherry Ann was home, she got sick. I drove her all the way to El Paso to a doctor, but they said it was too late. She had septa . . . septa . . ."

"Septicemia," Jeremy said, pronouncing the word carefully. "Poison in her blood."

"That's it! Septicemia. Jeremy here is a smart kid. Anyway, they said she hadn't never healed right inside her from the cesarean she had when the twins were born. So it's been me and these two scamps ever since."