SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (63 page)

"What is that?" Charles was growing weary with Balthazar's mounting problems. What was wrong with just going after what they wanted? To hell with all of these reservations.

"Mentor monitors us," Sereny said, answering before Balthazar could speak. "He knows we've sent out assassins for Malachi."

"Malachi?"

"The dhampir," Balthazar said.

Irritated in the extreme, Charles rose from the chair and began to pace the room, his hands locked behind his back. "Mentor knows all about you? He knows of this place?"

"I'm afraid so," Sereny said. "He even visited once. It was years ago; it was a while before I knew Balthazar."

"So what are you saying?" Charles asked. He had stopped pacing and faced Balthazar. "Are we going to combine forces or not? Are you going to help me change how things are run or not?"

Balthazar stood and refilled his glass before responding. With his back to the room, he said, "Of course we're going to work together. You help me with my problem, and I'll help you with yours."

"And if Mentor knows what we're up to?" Charles asked. "If he knows we're coming?"

Balthazar shrugged. "We'll find out what happens when it happens, won't we?"

He held out his hand to Charles, and they shook. Sereny showed Charles to a chamber that had been furnished for him. The bone thing got on Charles' nerves. What was wrong with a stone slab or a normal bed frame?

"When your followers show up, they'll be met and taken into the caves and shown niches where they can rest," Sereny said, turning to leave.

"Tell me about this prophecy." He grabbed her arm to stay her.

"It was foretold more than two hundred years ago." She pried his fingers from her arm.

"What was?"

"A dhampir would be born who could not be vanquished. He would be the downfall of the Predators."

"You don't believe that, do you? Prophecy is . . . it's . . . old wives telling tales."

She gave him a shocked look. "I do believe it. Balthazar said it was Malachi, and I believe him."

"How does he know?"

Sereny turned her back on him and went to the door opening. "Ask him, why don't you?"

Charles impatiently circled his chamber, worrying. Balthazar sounded to him like a man obsessed. Who cared about an old prophecy that probably meant nothing in the real world?

Oh, God, he needed to get out of here and into the open air where he could think. He needed to find a human and feed. Balthazar's cold blood offering had done little to sate his hunger.

~*~

Sereny knew Balthazar had spoken to her, but she hadn't heard the words. Her mind was in some place where it rested while her body performed the repetitive routine of housework.

"What?" she asked, turning with a dust rag in her hand from where she'd been giving the shelves a once over. She had not been a wife and mother for nothing. Now that she was back in her home, she felt the need to clear it and make it her own again. I'm nesting, she thought, like a damn mama hen.

"What do you think of him?"

He meant Charles Upton, of course. Since becoming vampire Sereny had given up habitual lying. People lied to keep society running smoothly. Without all sorts of lies, from little white lies to whoppers, society would fall apart overnight. She said, "I think he'll prove a dangerous partner. You don't really understand one another."

"Why do you say that?"

She returned to her dusting. "He can't be trusted. He's like his Maker."

"Like Ross?"

"Yes. But worse. He's even more arrogant. He expects to rule the whole world—just him. Not the two of you together. Later on, he'll turn on you. He has vast appetites. He's like some evil ancient king looking to fill his coffers, beat the servants into submission, and pillage the towns of all their women." She wished she hadn't said the last. Balthazar wasn't stupid.

"You slept with him, didn't you? He's already pillaged his competitor."

This was why lying was forbidden to her. Lies only complicated what was simple. It covered the truth with the mud of deception and then truth was never clean again. If she lied and said she didn't sleep with Charles, Balthazar would slip into her mind one day and discover the truth. If he hadn't already. He wasn't jealous, as where would jealousy get him? He couldn't own her. But he hated guile. "I slept with him. It was . . . his face."

"His face? You mean that cat thing? He thinks he's a jaguar. That made you want to have sex with him? I don't understand you, Sereny."

"I don't understand myself," she said. She couldn't explain the weird attraction that had come over her when she met Charles. It was his face, yes, that wild animal staring at her from the body of a man. But it was much more. In their first meeting he had attracted her like a magnet drew metal filings. If she didn't know better, she might think he had mesmerized her, but he hadn't. He just possessed an animal eroticism that made her weak-kneed with lust for him. Had Balthazar appeared and gotten between them at that moment, she would have fought him. She would have gone over or through him to get to Charles. She'd wanted his touch all over her body, wanted him to run his long tongue along the curve of her breast. Now that she'd gotten what she wanted, she had no feeling left for him at all.

Except maybe suspicion.

She put the past from her mind, knowing Balthazar had probably tapped into her memory lapse. She returned her thoughts to the chore of dusting. She took out armloads of ancient texts Balthazar loved to read and dusted each one with care before returning it to the high bone bookcase. What she did understand perfectly well was how she loved to tidy a house. This was no house, naturally; it was a cave chamber littered with skeletons, but it served as a living space, so it was her home now and she made do.

When human, she had loved housework so much she found ways to make herself indispensable to her husband. He came to cherish his clean home and had pride in it, though they were of the poorer classes. He began to adore the food she cooked with such meticulous care, the clothes he wore that were so carefully washed and pressed, the feel of the softly ironed sheets upon which he slept. Her children were the best-dressed in their school, not because her husband could afford good wardrobes, but because Sereny taught herself to sew and became a master seamstress. She could imitate haute couture clothing so well no one could tell the little dresses and suits her children wore hadn't come from an expensive boutique.

She learned to make soap and lotions and facial creams from herbs. She took rags and hooked rugs. From scraps she made quilts. Her domesticity knew no bounds.

The secret of her homemaking skills lay in the peace it afforded her. When dusting, washing, pressing, vacuuming, sewing, or cooking, she lost herself in the simplicity of the task and entered a heavenly trance. When things shined from her cleaning, she stood back in awe at their beauty—whether it was a china cup or a wooden floor. When she walked through a completely orderly home, she loved herself. With pure ingenuity and love, she had created an oasis in the midst of squalor.

Most of the world was filled with filth and chaos, especially the small Italian city where she'd lived and raised her family. She made light and beauty out of honest handiwork. Her thoughtful arrangements, from a vase of wildflowers to an old armoire stacked with handmade quilts, gave her such pleasure that it didn't matter whether anyone saw or enjoyed them other than herself.

It was more difficult to reach her peaceful, mindless haven by doing housework inside of a large dark earthen cavern four miles below the surface of an island, but she didn't cease trying. She hoped once the coming vampire war was finished and Balthazar in a position of power, he would let her pick out a European castle and attend to it by herself. Oh, what she could do with a castle and unlimited funds! Think of all the art and sculpture and silver and glass she could care for and make shine. What peace she would enjoy.

She might even kidnap a child again, maybe a vampire girl or boy, to keep as her own. Neither of them would ever grow old. She could be its mother forever.

Here, to keep busy until that fabulous day, she dusted shelves, arranged pillows, made beds, and swept the dirt floors with careful movements that kept tiny debris from accumulating. At first Balthazar protested, wondering at her strange energy and why she would misplace it in this way. When she explained it was the only part of her that was still human, and that she needed the work to make her happy, he let her alone.

She moved on from the book shelving to the sofas and took each pillow in turn, plumping and fluffing, arranging them again in just the right positions across the sofa back to please the eye. She knew Balthazar understood her mania for housework, but the others, his followers, often found her down on her knees picking up tiny rocks or they'd interrupt her scrubbing soot from the glass globes of the lanterns, and they would stand around laughing and making fun of her.

Look at the washerwoman, they jeered. Look at the lowly servant.

She simply shut them out and continued with her work until they tired of their mean-spirited taunts and wandered away.

The "Bone Palace," as they called it, might have little to offer but dark passages, dirt floors and walls, and bone furniture, but it would be a clean place. It would be neat and polished.

And this above all gave her satisfaction.

~*~

The deep caverns were so dark, damp, and cold, they depressed Charles. He was used to the open blue sky and warm sun of Australia. Even his cell in the monastery hadn't been this close. Already he felt suffocated in the confined spaces, menaced by the looming ceilings, and hemmed in by the unrelenting darkness. When first landing on the island and seeing the vista of land covered with black volcanic rock, he had shivered deep down inside with dread. It was such a dead place, like an abandoned black ship nodding in the center of a great, wide sea.

He just had to get out of here, he thought, moving anxiously for the door. He left his chamber and traipsed the long passageway until he found the shaft that rose to the top of the volcano. He sped up the tunnel toward the opening and the sky beyond. It was dusk when he exploded from the caves, hovering over the volcano like a cloud of dusty brown smoke. He was so happy the other Predators had taught him this trick.

"It's not difficult," they said. "All matter is energy. We can control our own matter, the way you do when you change into . . ." They let the words trail off, not wishing to remark on his cat face.

He had spent days trying to change his body into dancing molecules of energy until one day he succeeded. He could point his energy cloud to the heavens and go there. He could rise above the ozone and look down at the Earth in amazement.

Now he stared far out at sea and imagined the African shore. He could be there in minutes if he wished. He was like a new god with the world as his playground. He could go anywhere. He could do anything! If only he had known of this in the monastery. Why hadn't he understood that's how the monks entered his body, entered, for that matter, into his mind, and bound him from escape? If he'd studied what they'd done, he might not have spent nearly two decades under their power.

The dark cloud changed rapidly to his Thai body as he stood on the precipice of the volcano. He thrust out his face, his cat features sharpening, his eyes closing down to slits. He pushed out his mind before him, pulling the physical body in its wake until it broke up for a second time and became nearly transparent. He moved through the sky and across the waters, heading for the Dark Continent. He would not return until he was gorged with fresh blood and the taste of the cold liquid from Balthazar's goblet was erased from his palate.

Perhaps by that time his depression would lift and he'd feel more like working in tandem with the cautious Balthazar. He could tell already their methods were different and they might clash over them. Charles wanted to do things quickly, in a rush of passion. Balthazar wanted to go carefully, thinking over each move from several angles before committing himself. It was said he had spent years gathering together his own clan when it had only taken Charles a few weeks.

Then again, if he wanted the power of another four hundred and more Predators at his back, he needed Balthazar. He couldn't afford to irritate him right now. Later, he thought. Later, when I possess the power and the army I want, Balthazar will have to go.

Charles laughed to himself in joy at the thought of running the elegantly dressed vampire back into his deep dark caves. Why would any of the followers want to stay with the eccentric Balthazar when they could join with Charles and enjoy all the spoils of triumph?

The coast of Africa rose out of the ocean like a green-knuckled giant thrusting up from the sea floor. Not far into the interior, Charles came down gently, molding his face back toward its original Thai human form. He loved "going cat" once he had a victim under his power. Until then he didn't want to frighten them any more than was necessary. Fear drove them to flee, and he'd never enjoyed the physical chase, despite how easy it was to catch a victim.

He moved down a jungle path, feeling as if he were back in Thailand again, and came upon a little town shrouded by night. He smelled the heady scent of meat roasting in banana leaves and a whiff of shredded coconut and spice mixed with a white starchy tuber. He could hear voices speaking softly in the night and the crying of babies. He slipped into the first thatched-roof hut he came to, slithering through an open window. He startled an old woman sitting in lamplight, weaving a reed basket.

She began to speak in her native tongue, but Charles didn't bother to understand her, though he could have if he'd wanted. He knew the gist of her queries. Who are you? What do you want?

He came close slowly and reached out one hand to encircle her throat. She dropped the basket work and clawed at his hand. Her eyes bulged as her air was cut off.

Now Charles let his cat self out, his nose lengthening into snout, his eyes narrowing, his cheekbones sliding back while his skull flattened and elongated. He looked down into the woman's horrified eyes and smiled his cat smile.