SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy (86 page)

The man’s hair was black, like Upton’s, but not so full or long. It was clipped short at the back of his neck and as Upton neared, he saw that neck was strong and suntanned a gorgeous shade of honey.

Upton could smell him and his mouth watered with instant anticipation. He was a cinnamon stick, a hint of lemon, and a whiff of manly sweat. He would have that honey-cinnamon neck in his hands. He would bend it to the side until the massive veins stood out and drink from it until this strong specimen lay dry and shriveled and never confident again to walk alone along a beachfront at night.

He came up on him from behind in a flash, moving across the sand without leaving prints as his feet skimmed the earth in haste. He could almost taste the red ruby and life-sustaining blood. He could surely smell it even as it hid beneath the skin, coppery and genuine and warm, so warm.

He grabbed the other man’s shoulders and spun him in his grasp. He saw a flash from the man’s eyes, just an instant that made him falter slightly, but then the hunger drove him forward. The flash from the victim’s eyes was not fear and that is what caused a second’s hesitation. Fear or not, this study figure would give his blood! Give and give until his heart stuttered in his chest and he fell dead to the beach. Passed from life and remembrance.

Upton pressed the large man’s head to the side with one hand, holding his arms tight with his other arm. Even as the struggle ensued it was as nothing to the strength of Charles Upton, the vampire, the Predator, the Avenger.

Upon first sinking his great incisors into the throbbing of the stranger’s carotid artery just at the base of his neck, Upton sensed the victim’s mind, his racing thoughts, his defiance. He linked with that mind, curious.

Would you take me, Master, when I can do you no harm and might well do you great service? Search me. Search me for obedience. Search me for the evil you so love.

Upton felt the first drops of warm blood on his tongue. He swallowed and the urge was to drink deeper, so deep he became one with the man until the victim was drained forever. But this loud sentient plea halted him. He strove to overcome the hunger so that he might think. It was difficult, as hunger drove out all knowledge and intelligence. It was a living thing that had its own way, without thought, without volition. If he were to deny it he might howl like a dying wolf, he might fall back and to his knees and howl like the fatally wounded.

But yet he waited in wonder.

Others had sent him dying thoughts hoping to make a bargain, just as he had so successfully done when attacked by Ross. Some of Upton’s victims offered themselves as slaves, and he had silently laughed it off. He did not need slaves. He did not need a partner. He had no need of anyone but himself in the entire world. A man without God’s light was independent of all help.

Yet he waited and his incisors withdrew slowly, taking with them the last little drop of blood, while the man stood in Upton’s embrace, fearless. The wounds on his neck healed instantly upon Upton’s command. If he saw the twin holes in the skin there, he would be tempted to sip again, this time to the death, to the grave.

Upton was perplexed. He drew away, loosing the man only a little, so that his head would straighten on his neck and he could look into the man’s eyes.

Dark eyes. Like polished black stone. They soaked in the light of the moon so that it vanished into the depths. The steady gaze from the eyes revealed little other than curiosity. The nose was beautifully proportioned to the face without being too small or too haughty. The lips were full and parted now, revealing perfect white teeth. Could he be a new generation SIR? He was almost perfect enough to be one.

A smile slipped into place on the stranger’s lips that could chill the heart of a man, though not the soul of a vampire. It was a bracing smile that said, Touch me not. I am inviolate.

“Who are you?” Upton asked. “What are you?”

“I’m someone you do not want to kill.”

He spoke English with a French accent. Without probing any deeper this being’s soul, Upton knew where he was born in the south of France, where he attended school and university, where he had wandered since that time, and the nerveless attitude that had taken him this night onto the beach.

“Do you know what I am?” Upton roared, suddenly overcome with fury that his meal had been ruined, that the blood he so desperately needed had not already suffused his body with its salient strength.

“You’re vampire. I have never met one, but know you for what you are. A very great vampire, it seems. Is that not so? A wondrous creation.”

“Am I?” Oh, this was stupefying. How did the human know what he was if he had never met one or was not one himself?

“I can work with you if you wish. I think it’s my destiny, if you but will it.”

The Frenchman spoke stiffly, his English good, but not easy for him. “And why would such a great and wondrous vampire such as myself need you? Have you any clever answer that will save your life this time?” Upton stepped closer, threatening.

The man gestured the question away to the winds. By his action he indicated how utterly unafraid he was for his life. Or his impending death, for that matter.

“I will die when I die. Why should that matter to me? Kill me if you need to. But there are plenty of others to feed you and I’m more worthwhile alive than as a dinner for a god. Probe me and search me and you will know without my saying.”

He was impertinent. He was so full of courage and without even a shred of fear for his soul that Upton simply stood before him as he might stand before a shaman who had cast a spell.

I will do it, Upton thought. I will probe him to the ends of his mind and see what makes him more fearless than any man or beast I’ve ever happened upon.

With that he drove his psychic being straight through the wide clear forehead of the other man and seeped around the twin lobes of the brain there, covering it and then filling it. He found all memory, all intelligence, all thought, and lapped it up like wine, taking it to himself, understanding every spark and every obscure bit of matter that made up the personality.

It was darker there than in the caves of Balthazar, darker than beyond the gates of Hell. It was an evil place, this man’s brain, and the seat of his being. If he was not the devil incarnate, he was but one step removed. He was human, that was true, not a SIR. He was mortal, his bones brittle and his skin just a thin skein holding together the mass of the body, but in his brain he was his own god, greater than man, divorced from humanity in this way, not of it and wholly apart.

Upton flew from this place, this palace of putrid evil. Not because it disgusted him, but because he found it so gorgeous it was like looking into the furnace of a sun. It was so dark it blinded, so dreadful it burned, so debauched it caused a shrill mental cry even from the great vampire.

Upton tottered on his feet and the man reached out both hands to steady him. Upton blinked, unbelieving.

“Are you the devil, Lucifer? Are you God’s fallen angel of might?”

The man smiled as if complimented. “I may be. I do not know the answer to that question. God will not speak to me and there is no other to tell me the truth. I only know I was destined to meet someone like you, with your powers, and that when that day came I only had to convince you to know me in order to love me.”

Surprise at these words staggered Upton. He tried not to let the other know this, but he had never met anyone like the man and knew instantly he never would. It was true. He loved him as if he were someone to guard and keep close at hand. This was a human who walked without light, without conscience, without creed or law. He was impervious to rule or convention. In this he was like a god and above even most vampires Upton had known. Many vampires, especially those like Mentor, wallowed in sentiment and in morality, hoping to find and clutch their souls from departing, hoping God would one day show his face and forgive.

Not this man. He had never once asked after God or worried a moment for his soul. Death held no sway over him. He did not lust after forgiveness and heaven. Fear was just a word and not an emotion he had ever felt. He was like an instrument. A bludgeon. An axe. A…sword. A mighty sword that would, if he permitted it, be wielded by someone as evil as he, but no other.

The man let loose his arms and Upton stood straight and steady again. “Come with me.” Upton turned and began to walk down the beach away from him, trusting he would follow. “I want to speak more with you, if only for the sake of my curiosity. But right now I must feed. I hunger and need blood.”

“Yes,” the man said, coming alongside him in an easy stride. He was like a dark swarm of silver bees keeping pace with the vampire master. “I’ll help you find a victim. A treat. A special thrill for your palate. I am very good at this.”

~*~

His name was Jacques Karin and he asked Upton to call him Jacques, please.

The moment the vampire took hold of him, Jacques knew he was being attacked by a supernatural. It had to be a vampire, a real one, for the beast went directly for the jugular. Upton was no marauding serial killer or vampire pretender. He stank of death, was cold as ice, and his business was to warm himself with Jacques’ blood.

Only a scant time was required for Jacques to understand everything. He had met supernaturals before, though never a vampire. Once he’d wrestled an angel and twice he had battled demons. Real ones. In a haunted villa in Spain he had talked to ghosts, and in Vienna he had been sitting at a fountain when a woman approached, drawn to him. She had sat at his side for an hour and performed magic no human could have created, from producing a silver plate of grapes, to making his ears melt down his neck as if made of wax. Once he knew her for a witch, and a real one, she let the dripping flesh of his ears creep back up his head like leeches attaching themselves onto their rightful places.

If there was one thing Jacques Karin was not, it was insane. True, he had come upon more of the earth’s rare supernaturals than anyone he had ever known, but it had to do with who he was. His life’s quest was to know exactly what. He was no supernatural himself, no witch, ghost, ghoul, vampire, angel or demon. But he drew them to him like a magnet, so it was certain he was not quite a normal man either.

Upton had asked if he was Lucifer and he answered honestly. He did not know. Surely if he were Lucifer he could create miracles much greater than the Viennese witch could. He could bellow louder than the angel he wrestled could. He could dig deeper trenches in the flesh of a man than the demons he’d battled.

But he could do none of these things.

His destiny, as far as he could tell, was to be of service to these…others. And some day he would know why he attracted the supernaturals and what sort of human he was.

Once he had invited the vampire, he had felt the beast enter his brain. It was as if an icy scalpel had sliced through the gray matter in one clean swipe that healed itself over instantly. It was physically painful to be so forcibly entered, but Jacques endured it and was glad. It was the only way the great vampire could know about him. Intrigued, as Jacques knew he would be, Upton let him live to prosper another day.

Now he stalked with him, looking for prey. He had promised him a treat and that is what he would procure for him, for Jacques knew Cannes well. He knew where the tastiest morsels of humankind lived, knew their habits, and knew instinctively what might please the vampire.

It was a very long way from the beach, but Jacques led the vampire to an ancient mansion at the top of a hill facing the sea. Below them the sparkling lights of the city spread out like a sequined skirt.

“This had better be good,” Upton said in a growl, patience thinning, and hunger causing his incisors to grow until he could not close his lips over them. “If this is a merry chase…”

Jacques merely smiled. It would be more than good. It would be phenomenal.

They carefully approached the mansion from the left side where cypress trees hugged the stony rampart. No guard dog barked and the night was devoid of sound. There, at a low window open to the night and without screening, white chiffon curtains fluttered. The two men peered inside.

A rosy light suffused the room from lamps with rose damask shades. A young girl not yet fully a woman lay across a bed piled high with mattresses and covered with data blanket material that shivered repeatedly with rainbow colors. She was on her stomach, raised on elbows, tiny remote buds that worked as earphones in her ears. She idly turned the pages of a fashion magazine reflected from a smaller data blanket spread before her.

Jacques heard the old vampire grunt in admiration. For the girl was the most beautiful in all of Cannes, not only in Jacques’ opinion, but also in the whole populace. Her name was Rosie Rachel, her father the incredibly rich Marc Rachel, architect of the city’s tallest and loveliest new buildings and theaters.

Jacques had met Rosie at a dinner given by her father for Cannes’ most important dignitaries. She had sat at the opposite end of the table from her father, as her mother was dead. The company could not keep their eyes off her. It was her skin, pale as the interior of an abalone shell; her lips, plump and naturally red as pomegranate; her limbs svelte and perfect; her movements as graceful as a dancer. And it was her eyes, blue as the Aegean, speckled with sunlit yellow, like blue diamonds hiding a sunset.

She would have to be as lovely in her blood as in her person it seemed to Jacques. He knew of no woman or man in all of the city as beautiful as she.

Even the old vampire had to note how exquisite a prize she was.

“Do you like her?” Jacques whispered, though had he spoken with a natural volume the girl would not have heard him. She was obviously listening to music or speech coming from her data blanket; the little bud remotes were plugged tightly into her ears.

“Oh, do I,” Upton crooned, climbing easily over the sill of the window into the room.

Jacques stood where he was, mesmerized by the supernatural’s ease of entry into the house. He had not actually climbed over the sill as much as he had risen and been lifted, never having touched the sill itself at all before settling down on his feet inside the girl’s bedroom.